Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Loren Pechtel]

Israel = are low balling numbers. They sit on the only reliable numbers, because they control most of Gaza, and have an effective inteligence gathering organisation. Its been clear from the start that they had better data on Gaza than Hamas' own administrators. But because it's war and Israel reporting lower numbers than it is, is good for morale.

Low-balling? Where are they even balling in the first place?

Israel has given estimates of the combatants it's killed. I have seen no Israeli estimate of civilians.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You say bad data is still bad, no matter the cause. True – but dismissing it outright without acknowledging why it’s incomplete isn’t skepticism, it’s moral abdication. Gaza’s infrastructure was shattered by blockade and bombs. Acting like bad data emerges from cultural incompetence rather than imposed destruction is dehumanizing, whether you admit it or not.

It's not that I dismiss it outright, it's that we have seen no indication the answer is relevant.

You call Al Jazeera part of Hamas because they showed the hospital strike clip. That’s not evidence of complicity; it’s evidence that war reporting is messy, immediate, and flawed. The footage didn’t “cut off to hide anything” – it just didn’t catch the explosion. You’re dissecting timeline frames while ignoring 500 corpses claimed. Whether the count was wrong doesn’t erase the crux: civilians died in a war that has no moral brakes left.

No, it was after the fact, they had time to figure it out. And it's not a matter of it not catching the explosion, it's that the timestamp on the video cuts off before the boom. The timestamp of the boom was given--and it was after the end of the video. Their own article was self-contradictory.

And you're acting like a truther here. I said 500 claimed. Not 500 dead. The world (at least those that cared to learn) knew the truth the next day. But you are criticizing my ignoring corpses that unquestionably never existed. And it was an IJ misfire, not Israel. You're trying to blame Israel for corpses supposedly created by IJ.

You say journalists “report what Hamas tells them to.” Yet every major newsroom corroborates deaths through independent local staff, NGOs, morgue workers, and family interviews. Are all of them Hamas puppets in your mind? Or does dismissing them keep your narrative simpler?

You're in Gaza, you do what Hamas says. They're not puppets, but they have a very real fear of telling the truth. Occasionally you'll see a piece from someone who isn't going back that talks about the conditions.

You claim every Hamas administrator is a fighter. That’s false under international law. The guy issuing birth certificates isn’t a combatant. The teacher running a Hamas-funded school isn’t a target. You reduce an entire civilian bureaucracy to “valid kills” to avoid grappling with moral complexity.

And you think those underlings are Hamas??

You shrug off UNRWA’s destruction because they were “basically under Hamas control.” That’s convenient. Israel still coordinates with UNRWA because without them, children starve. If you cared about civilians, you’d acknowledge that cutting off their only lifeline punishes the powerless, not Hamas leaders.

Israel isn't trying to cut the lifeline. They're trying to cut the Hamas control of the lifeline.

You say “lots of people are dying” but it doesn’t make Israel’s actions wrong. Numbers alone don’t define war crimes, yes. But you refuse to examine proportionality, intent, or alternatives. You wave away mass death because admitting its weight might crack your moral certainty.

I'm looking at what we can deduce about proportionality--it's just it doesn't say what you want to hear.
Intent--you're making this one up entirely, ascribing motives there's no reason to suspect.
Alternatives--baa for Hamas.

You scoff at satellite evidence of mass graves because of resolution limits. Sure, satellites can’t count corpses by the inch, but imagery analysis can identify new burial zones, disturbed earth, grave expansions, and correlates that align with field reports. You know this. Dismissing it wholesale isn’t rigor, it’s selective skepticism to protect your comfort zone.

In other words, they can't remotely count the dead. They'll count a pretend burial the same as a real one.

And finally, you say “a lot of bodies is not proof of wrong.” True. But a lot of bodies is proof that something catastrophic is happening. The difference between us is that I see that as a call to accountability. You see it as an acceptable cost.

And 10/7 wasn't catastrophic?

Hamas chose this war. Hamas continues this war. Hamas wanted a catastrophe. Blame Hamas.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You say Israel doesn’t treat Palestinian lives as expendable, that it’s just media spin. But thousands of civilians buried under rubble aren’t a narrative. They’re reality. You can admire Israeli restraint relative to what’s possible in total war, sure – but don’t pretend mass civilian death is just PR distortion. Those bodies exist, whether you choose to see them or not.

Some of them, yes. As Hamas intended. Goodhart.

You’re “impressed by how Israel has handled itself.” That’s telling. You measure morality by operational discipline rather than human cost. You see proportional destruction and call it impressive; I see children dying under airstrikes and call it a moral catastrophe. That’s the difference between strategy worship and human decency.

He was not talking about discipline, he was talking about minimizing civilian casualties.

Because at the end of the day, if your standard for “doing well” in war leaves entire neighborhoods flattened and half a population displaced or starving, you might want to rethink what exactly you’re applauding.

You just don't realize how awful war can be. Especially when one side wants to see it's people dead.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Finally, you say “One dead person is a horrific tragedy. Let’s hope Israel wins ASAP so more people won’t die.” But if one death is too many, why cheer a strategy guaranteeing thousands more? That’s not hope. That’s just resignation wrapped in moral theater.

You're cheering a strategy that guarantees more 10/7s.

You are smart enough to know a false-dichotomy when you see it.

To make matters worse, you've already said that you think more 10/7s are inevitable as is, so this is about pushing it back. So how can you tell NoHolyCows that he is a cheering a strategy for more 10/7s, when you have conceded what Netanyahu's response is, isn't going to stop more 10/7s?

I don't believe they can be prevented. The goal is minimizing.

I think, in hindsight, Netanyahu's response to 10/7 has been a lot more cerebral than first understood, regarding Iran. Israel put into place a plan that took out Hezbollah and generally weakened the Houthis to a point where they were capable of then going on the offensive directly in Iran, with much less risk at home. That said, it has been over 18 months of attacks on Gaza, which doesn't appear to have been remotely as guided by intricate planning as the staged responses by the IDF on the other targets.

Nothing that Israel did created a situation where they could take the offensive to Iran.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You're cheering a strategy that guarantees more 10/7s.

So are you.

Why would you say that?

Destroying the military strike capabilities of a violent Muslim supremacy organization probably won't result in more violent Muslim supremacy terrorism.

Continuing the indoctrination of Muslims into the violent Islamic supremacy probably will, but that's not the same thing.
Tom

You cannot kill an idea by killing people, especially 1000s of innocent civilians. It will breed more terrorists in the future with more revenge fever.

You're baaing for terrorism.

It's not a matter of killing an idea. It's a matter of at least tens of billions poured into creating the fight. Remove the money, the war ends.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yes, we should be trying to make things better. The difference is that I look at it from the defense side rather than overall. By trying to minimize overall deaths you inherently fall for the bad guy killing their people. You are saving Gazan lives now at the cost of Israeli lives down the road--and I do not believe a defender is required to sacrifice their people to spare the attacker.

Please be specific, how many Gazan civilian lives are acceptable losses per Israeli life allegedly saved?

I consider it a stupid question.

I care about how well Israel picks out combatants from civilians. I do not blame Israel for defending itself no matter how much cannon fodder Iran throws at them.

When you count the bodies you automatically side with evil because evil has no qualms about creating more bodies.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You dismiss the Arab Peace Initiative as unrealistic while offering no alternative except perpetual siege and bombardment. That isn’t realism. That’s fatalism dressed up as strategy. You accuse others of falling into fascism while defending policies that collectively punish civilians to enforce obedience. You’ve normalized a worldview where decency is weakness and domination is the only viable path.

How am I supposed have an alternative??

You're falling into the leftist trap again, assuming there must be an answer. And your keys must be under the streetlight.

Peace can only happen if Iran agrees--and Iran has not shown up at the table.

You say you’re misunderstood because rebuttals don’t match your words. But here’s the reality: we’re responding to what your words imply. If you say mass civilian deaths “don’t matter,” don’t act shocked when people hear you defending a moral abyss.

No, you keep making important changes to what I said.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Israel is responsible for its actions. Israel substantially reduced the flow of food snd medical supplies into Gaza. It is insane to argue that blockade had no effect on well being. It is insane to argue that reduction in well being was not intended.

Let's look at that a bit more.

The claim was Gaza had no food.

Israel cut off the supplies while they switched over to the GHF approach, bypassing Hamas.

The wolf-criers said the population would be dead within weeks.

The people didn't die. Clearly there was plenty of food. It was just under Hamas control.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You say I’m assuming the blockade pressures rulers without evidence. So why else cut off food, fuel, and medicine to an entire population? Humanitarian starvation isn’t a neutral tactic. It’s coercion by definition. Calling it “taking over distribution” doesn’t erase the reality of children going hungry to weaken Hamas’s grip. That is collective punishment, whether you admit it or not.

Why else? Because it's Hamas's primary means of control and it's primary source of income.

Direct distribution makes it pretty hard for them to do this.

You argue civilian-to-combatant ratios are the “closest yardstick” for strategic gain. That’s not a yardstick at all. Proportionality isn’t about body counts – it’s about whether anticipated military advantage justifies foreseeable civilian harm. Reducing proportionality to ratios flattens moral reasoning into a spreadsheet.

And how do you propose to measure this?

You insist my standard would condemn every Western urban operation, therefore my standard is wrong. Maybe it condemns them because they deserve condemnation. Your logic amounts to: “If this rules out things we do, the rule must be flawed.” That’s not principle. That’s institutional self-preservation masquerading as moral clarity.

It amounts to you not understanding war.

Finally, you say I keep citing hospital strikes as evidence of wrongdoing despite knowing hospitals lose protection when used militarily. Yes – when used militarily. But targeting decisions still require verification, warnings, and precautions. Not every hospital strike is automatically justified just because Hamas violates the rules first. You keep using their war crimes as an umbrella for anything done in response. That’s not law. That’s moral outsourcing.

And you have zero evidence of any such wrongs.

 

[Swammerdami]

UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory:

The war started in 1948. Thus the conditions of 1948 are sufficient to cause the Arabs to attack.

YOU keep insisting that "only 1948 matters" or some such crap. I keep asking you to prepare an intelligible paragraph helping us understand WTF you're talking about. Can't do it?

FWIW, I came across another YouTuber for whom "1967 ... 1967 ... 1967" was the be-all and end-all. And what about 1917?

I'm looking forward to the paragraph where you explain why "1948 ... 1948 ... 1948 ... 1948 ... 1948" is ALL that matters. Hopefully the paragraph will explain why 1967 and 1917 are TOTALLY irrelevant. And also explain why 1948-1948-1948 makes EVERYTHING Palestinians do in 2025 evil-evil-evil and EVERYTHING IDF does in 2025 righteous-righteous-rghteous.

Exactly one condition existed: the existence of Israel.

But your side never looks at this, always trying to find explanations that are based in events that happened during the war.

What "side" do you think I am on? Be frank now: I accuse you of hating Palestinians, do you accuse me of hating Jews?

If objecting to Netanyahu's war crimes makes one anti-Jewish, did objecting to Hitler's war crimes make one anti-Christian?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You say Hamas only asks for certain prisoners “showing their motives aren’t about the people.” Of course Hamas’s motives are corrupt – but you’re still accepting their hostage list as proof of guilt. That’s outsourcing moral judgment to a terrorist PR campaign, whether you admit it or not.

Once again, strawman.

The point about only asking for the terrorists is that it's not about freeing their people.

You argue Mandela’s popularity was “just the left liking him,” not a reflection on his actions. Yet you call him a terrorist without applying the same label to state forces targeting civilians. Your definitions remain convenient tools for your politics, not consistent principles.

1) For some stupid reason the world doesn't call it terrorism when state forces do it.

2) You haven't established the relevance. Once again, you're assuming Israel is wrong so the facts must be that Israel is wrong.

You dismiss accountability by claiming I only want to prove Israel wrong. No – I want any side killing civilians to be accountable. You want to define justice as whatever your allies do. That’s not law. That’s tribalism.

But you want to give Hamas what it wants.

You ask what my perfidy reply addressed. It addressed your logic that widespread Hamas deception voids all civilian protections. It doesn’t. Geneva strips protection for direct misuse, not entire populations based on suspicion.

But what act are you referring to?

You say Israel debunked “the biggest mass grave claim” so the rest can be ignored. That’s not logic. That’s strategic denial. Mass graves exist whether one photo was miscaptioned or not. You keep pretending refuting a single example erases the reality of mass death.

The photo showed it was done by Hamas, not Israel. The claim in the news has been about supposed mass graves by Israel, are you referring to something else?

You argue colonial land purchases were purely legal, ignoring that law under occupation was designed to privilege settlers. Legality and justice aren’t synonyms. If you can’t grasp that, you’ll never understand why dispossession breeds resistance.

Occupation? The purchases were pre 1948.

On Arafat, you insist walking away proves sabotage. No – it proves the deal didn’t meet minimum demands for dignity. If it was so generous, why not publish the full maps and terms? Because Israel’s offers preserved control while granting nominal sovereignty – a flag on a cage.

What wasn't published?

Finally, you say Palestinians are just pawns with “nothing you can do about it.” That’s precisely the problem. You see them as cannon fodder in Hamas’s strategy and dismiss their rage as manipulation. You never ask why their lives became so disposable – only how best to dispose of them.

NHC

The why is the vast sums being poured into continuing the war. And I answer what to do about it: stop funding the terror.

I have no means of doing that, doesn't mean the questions isn't answered.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You say “It’s not retribution, it’s consequences.” That’s semantics, Lauren. When civilians are made to suffer to punish their rulers’ choices, that is collective retribution by definition – regardless of whether you prefer to call it “consequence.”

Calling it retribution doesn't make it so.

Harming civilians is not the objective. It is an unfortunate consequence of war.

It's like those idiots in Texas complaining about a flash flood after building in flash flood alley. There is no god smiting them, just the results of their actions.

On Deir Yassin, you pivot to uniforms and mistaken identity. Geneva bans perfidy precisely because it endangers civilians – but massacring villagers wasn’t shooting enemies in uniform. Women and children weren’t combatants misidentified. They were civilians targeted to terrorize. Your historical sanitizing doesn’t change what happened.

The Capture of Deir Yassin

Encyclopedia of Jewish and Israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-Semitism to Zionism.

www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org

You ask where Israel walked from talks. Camp David, Taba, Annapolis: each time final status talks ended with Israel continuing settlement expansions and refusing meaningful sovereignty. “Refusing concessions” while annexing land isn’t negotiation – it’s stalling to cement control.

Ah, now you change your tune. It's not "Israel walks", it's "Israel won't meet their demands." And by what means do you know their demands were reasonable??

You dismiss B’Tselem because you caught them “listing bodyguards as civilians.” Even if one report framed deaths questionably, it doesn’t erase their extensive documentation of settlement violence, dispossession, and administrative abuses. Your logic is selective deletion: discredit one fact to ignore the entire record.

It's not one report, I was simply using it to illustrate the sort of deception.

You say you prioritize combatant status over age because it’s “reality.” That’s an admission you’re comfortable labeling children as targets if it fits your threat frame. Geneva was written precisely to restrain that moral collapse.

No, you continue to think that Geneva says things it doesn't. Geneva says those under 18 shouldn't be combatants--says nothing about not treating them as combatants if they are.

You dismiss sniper killings as Hamas fakes because it’s “more logical.” Yet your only evidence is your assumptions about motive and logistics. No actual proof. Just narrative preference. Meanwhile, independent investigations, including Israeli human rights groups, have documented systematic targeting of medics and journalists. You ignore it because it shatters your moral certainty.

We have no proof either way. I'm simply looking for what makes sense.

You say Palestinians never offered peace. Hamas’s 2006 election was internationally recognized. Israel responded by blockading the Strip before Hamas fired a single rocket in government. As for ceasefire proposals, yes, they are flawed – but your refusal to even engage shows you don’t want peace terms. You want surrender.

And that's supposed to be meaningful??

Having an election is not the same thing as offering peace.

Finally, you justify sniper fire at protests by claiming Hamas uses civilians as shields. That’s the rhetoric of every power that fires into crowds: blame the bodies for being in the way.

NHC

It's not that they use them as shields, it's that they make them violate the border.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What "side" do you think I am on? Be frank now: I accuse you of hating Palestinians, do you accuse me of hating Jews?

I don't hate Palestinians. I recognize that they are victims in all of this. It's just that I understand the true oppressor and it isn't Israel.

If objecting to Netanyahu's war crimes makes one anti-Jewish, did objecting to Hitler's war crimes make one anti-Christian?

Error: You must first establish war crimes before using them to support something.

 

[laughing dog]

Israel is responsible for its actions. Israel substantially reduced the flow of food snd medical supplies into Gaza. It is insane to argue that blockade had no effect on well being. It is insane to argue that reduction in well being was not intended.

Let's look at that a bit more.

The claim was Gaza had no food.

Israel cut off the supplies while they switched over to the GHF approach, bypassing Hamas.

The wolf-criers said the population would be dead within weeks.

The people didn't die. Clearly there was plenty of food. It was just under Hamas control.

It doesn’t matter what claims were made. What matters are the actual effects of the blockade which was in effect for 3 months before any switchover. So unless you now making the argument that keeping food and medicine out of Gaza for 3 months did not affect the amount of food and medicine in Gaza, your responses have no relevancy. If you are, there is no effective response to such lunacy.

 

[NoHolyCows]

You say there was no prevention, just no bodies. But famine isn’t just corpses. It’s stunted growth, organ failure, kids with permanent cognitive damage from starvation. You dismiss all that because it’s not cinematic enough for your proof standard. That isn’t skepticism. That’s moral blindness.

The claims always predicted large numbers of deaths.

You insist Hamas lies about everything, yet cite Israel’s combatant death claim as if it’s gospel. If you admit tens of thousands are dead, don’t pretend this is purely about bad data formatting. You’re using “fog” to justify refusing to care.

Israel has a record of generally being within 10%. I expect future performance similar to past performance.

Hamas claimed 500 dead at the hospital when one decent look at the scene was enough to call that bogus. Anyone in position to even ballpark the dead would be in position to know it was nothing like 500, it's not a mistake they could have made. That number was pulled out of their ass for the cameras. I expect future performance similar to past performance.

You reduce famine warnings to false prophecies because “no mass graves.” You don’t want to see mass death, so you define it out of existence.

It's not that I don't want to see (and while I have never seen a conflict zone I have seen some rather unpleasant parts of the world), it's that Hamas can't present it. Their PR is very good, if they can't show the press it most likely does not exist.

You reject Amnesty and HRW because they’re inconvenient, but accept IDF figures with 10% grace. That’s not analytical rigor. That’s power loyalty dressed up as critical thinking.

I expect the future to approximate the past. AI and HRW claim verified counts of the dead, but we know there are no verified counts of the dead. Thus they are lending their name to propaganda, I expect them to continue to lend their name to propaganda.

You treat Gaza’s collapsed apartment blocks as math problems, ignoring that real humans live above tunnels. Geneva doesn’t say “evacuation calls = free fire zone.” It requires proportionality, foreseeability, and restraint. Blowing up entire civilian blocks because Hamas dug underneath is military logic, not humanitarian law.

Geneva has no problem with it.

Finally, you keep insisting Geneva’s “preventable” standard just means call ahead. No – it means don’t bomb if civilian harm outweighs gain. Your reading isn’t legal. It’s just moral convenience to justify anything as long as it’s labeled strategic.

They bombed tunnels. They got the civilians out of the buildings that were at risk from the tunnel collapsing. Military target, bend over backwards on protecting civilians--fine by Geneva.

You’re not analyzing. You’re rationalizing, so you never have to face what this war is actually doing to real people.

NHC

I am analyzing. You're just endlessly using Israel-is-bad as the starting point of your analysis and shaping "facts" to match.

You say famine claims always predicted mass deaths, and because there weren’t piles of corpses, the warnings were false. But famine isn’t a Hollywood battlefield. It’s kids wasting silently, organs failing, immune systems collapsing. You dismiss all that because it isn’t dramatic enough for your proof standard. That’s not analysis. That’s willful blindness to human suffering.

You trust Israel’s combatant death claims because “they’re usually within 10%,” yet dismiss every other source wholesale. That’s not skepticism. That’s loyalty masquerading as rigor. If Hamas lied about one hospital blast, that doesn’t erase every death report in a flattened city. It just gives you a convenient excuse to never look closer.

You say Hamas can’t “present the dead,” so mass death must not exist. That’s grotesque logic. Bodies don’t vanish because Hamas fails PR. They vanish under rubble, under siege, under destroyed medical systems. Your standard is simple: if it isn’t paraded before you on camera, it doesn’t count.

You dismiss Amnesty and HRW as propaganda because they reported what you don’t want to hear. Meanwhile, you take IDF statements at face value as if military PR is pure gospel. That’s not consistency. That’s ideological filtering disguised as skepticism.

You claim Geneva “has no problem” with bombing civilian blocks over tunnels. Read it again. Proportionality isn’t just about hitting a valid target. It’s about ensuring civilian harm isn’t excessive relative to military gain. “Call ahead then bomb entire neighborhoods” isn’t humanitarian law. It’s just war sanitized for your conscience.

You say they “bent over backwards” to evacuate. Thousands are dead. Entire families wiped out in their homes. Calling it proportional just because someone made a phone call first is moral anesthesia, not legal clarity.

Finally, you say you’re analyzing while I’m just “starting from Israel-is-bad.” No. I start from human lives mattering, regardless of flag or faction. You start from Israel’s innocence as a given. That’s why your analysis never changes – it’s engineered to never find fault.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

I expect Israel to behave as well as the other western powers. In practice, they do far better.

Lauren, you’re not holding Israel to a Western standard — you’re lowering that standard until anything is excusable. You keep shifting the mirror, the baby, the bullet, the meaning of punishment — anything to make sure no action is ever too much to justify.

And here we see the blasphemy problem.

I said Israel is doing much better. You even understood that before in saying that my standard would condemn all western armies. But now without reason you flip it over to Israel is doing worse.

Your own words prove the point: you call mass civilian death just “better than the good guys,” shrug at sloppy data because it’s “from Hamas,” and dismiss every law meant to protect civilians as unrealistic. That’s not integrity. It’s moral permission slip after moral permission slip.

Keep telling yourself it’s clear. It’s clear alright — clear what you’re willing to look away from.

NHC

If we accept Hamas data at face value we still end up with Israel doing far better than the good guys. At face value we get about 1.5 civilians per combatant. Typical western performance is around 10 to 1.

You say Israel’s civilian kill ratio is “far better than typical Western performance” – as if mass death becomes noble once it’s below an arbitrary benchmark. That’s not ethics. That’s moral accountancy: body counts as branding metrics.

You keep citing 1.5:1 like it’s a badge of honor. Tell that to the parents burying children. Tell it to the families wiped out in collapsed apartments. “Better than average” is not the standard for decency – it’s just the floor beneath which your conscience refuses to sink.

And yes, I understood your point before. You think if NATO does it, it’s justified. But that was never my argument. My argument is that using Western militaries – who themselves commit immense civilian harm – as your moral yardstick is exactly how every atrocity gets a permission slip stapled to it.

Finally, you accuse me of blasphemy because I won’t bow to your calculations. You’re right in one way: if your god is moral relativism, then yes, I’m a heretic. I think no child’s death is excusable just because the ratio looks good on a Geneva PowerPoint.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Lauren,

You keep calling my perspective “magic spells,” but really, it’s just refusing to accept that cruelty is the only way forward. You say you’re open to realistic solutions, but every time one is offered, you dismiss it as naïve because it requires Israel to give up the comfort of control.

I call them magic spells because you keep pretending they'll work.

You call them realistic, but none are.

You blame Iran for Gaza’s misery, as if bombs, walls, and economic strangulation were minor details. Iran exploits despair, yes. But despair had to exist first.

Despair didn't exist before 1948.

Despair didn't exist before the second intifada.

You say you treat children, ambulances, and hospitals “as what they act like.” But that’s the problem. You see every risk as proof of guilt and every civilian as a threat to be managed, not a person to be protected. That’s not clarity. That’s surrendering to fear.

I see the symbols misused and thus not getting protected status.

And when you call basic human rights “Hamas talking points,” you reveal everything. These aren’t slogans. They’re the bare minimum of decency any side should uphold, no matter who they’re fighting.

NHC

You have it backwards. You're repeating Hamas lies about what's happening and being upset that I won't accept the lies.

You say I’m pretending solutions will work, but what you’re really saying is that nothing short of domination is realistic. That’s not pragmatism – it’s fatalism with a flag draped over it.

You claim despair didn’t exist before 1948 or the Second Intifada. That’s a historical erasure so sweeping it borders on delusion. Gaza was under Egyptian military rule before 1967 and endured poverty, neglect, and refugee camp life long before Hamas even existed. You talk about despair like it’s a PR campaign, not a generational reality built on dispossession, siege, and daily humiliation.

You say you see symbols misused, so they lose protection. Geneva doesn’t work that way. The misuse of a hospital doesn’t erase the hundreds of real patients inside. The misuse of an ambulance doesn’t make every injured child in it a combatant. You’re just looking for moral shortcuts to avoid wrestling with complexity.

Finally, you accuse me of parroting Hamas lies because I insist on human rights as non-negotiable. That’s your tell. You’ve fused decency with enemy propaganda in your mind, so anything demanding restraint or empathy feels like treason.

Here’s the truth:

If you think dignity and basic protection are illusions, then the only spell here is the one you’ve cast on yourself – to see cruelty as realism, and resignation as wisdom.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

You say Geneva “doesn’t say much more than it does,” but it says exactly what you ignore: that aid must reach civilians unless there is direct, concrete evidence it will be used for combat. Suspecting diversion isn’t the same as proving it. Blocking food because some might end up with fighters isn’t legal. It’s collective punishment.

Read it again.

1) It says "diversion". It doesn't say "for combat".

2) There's no doubt about the diversion.

3) It's not because the fighters might end up with it. It's because the fighters will use access to it as a means of control and a means of income.

4) You still haven't established "punishment".

You ask where Geneva imposes alternative obligations. It’s in the principle of humane treatment embedded throughout – if direct passage fails, arrangements must be made. That’s customary IHL codified through decades of case law you keep waving away because it complicates your absolution.

Where does it say that? You gave a very nebulous answer before that was just a statement of general principles, the means spelled out in the various articles.

You shrug that Israel’s control comes with obligations but dismiss them instantly by claiming “diversion.” That’s not law. That’s a blank check to starve civilians under the pretext of security.

Diversion was happening.

You insist Hamas abuses erase Israel’s duties. No. That’s not how law works. Both can violate simultaneously. Your worldview treats it like moral algebra: Hamas bad, therefore Israel’s ledger is clean. Reality doesn’t work like that.

It is how the law works. Aid is permitted unless it's being diverted. Israel gets complete say on the details of distribution.

You say you’d love an answer but reject every proposal as “shit.” Maybe because any real solution requires giving up the comfort of domination.

You're suffering from leftist disease--the assumption that there must be an answer and the side with the power is under a duty to find it.

You claim food trucks can’t reach kids anyway. That’s the trap you defend: blockade starves them, Hamas exploits them, and your solution is to shrug because fixing it isn’t neat.

Hamas exploits them is the limiting factor.

You dismiss bombings of hospitals and aid convoys with “Hamas exploits them.” Even if true, it doesn’t erase obligations to verify and protect. “They might abuse it” is not a license to turn humanitarian corridors into free-fire zones.

Again, you find something that you can tag as "civilian" and fail to recognize the dual nature.

You ask “What Israel statement?” Israel itself has acknowledged civilian casualties and confirmed strikes on sites later shown to be civilian. You ignore these because it punctures your “all Hamas propaganda” excuse.

Sites proven to be civilian? Proven how???

And don't count Israeli apologies as proof. They tend to apologize if they can't quickly conclude they aren't responsible, which ends up with them apologizing for some things that didn't happen.

Finally, your incel analogy fails because radicalization under occupation isn’t just perception. It’s lived reality reinforced by daily brutality. Incels imagine oppression. Palestinians endure it. Pretending there’s no difference is moral laziness rebranded as analysis.

NHC

Which utterly ignores my point. You were citing that study that radicalization stems from "oppression" as proof that Israel oppressed.

You say Geneva only mentions “diversion,” not combat. Let’s read it plainly: diversion for enemy use. Food diverted to fighters is not legitimate cause to starve civilians. Fighters eating bread doesn’t nullify the obligation to keep civilians alive. You’re redefining diversion to mean any aid Hamas touches – that’s not law, it’s loophole hunting to justify siege.

You claim “there’s no doubt about diversion.” Funny how certainty only ever points toward collective punishment. Show the proof that bread and insulin are systematically rerouted to weapons stockpiles. Otherwise, you’re arguing civilians should die because you can’t separate them cleanly from their rulers. That’s exactly what collective punishment is.

You demand where Geneva imposes alternative arrangements. Start with Articles 23 and 59, then read the ICRC commentary: if direct passage fails, parties must negotiate means to ensure aid reaches civilians. That principle is embedded in customary IHL: humane treatment isn’t optional because distribution is complicated.

You say diversion was happening, as if that ends the discussion. No, it begins it. The question is whether that diversion justified mass starvation. “Some is stolen” has never been a legal basis to cut off all aid. That’s moral cowardice posing as pragmatism.

You argue Israel gets “complete say.” Wrong. Israel has the right to regulate for security, not to weaponize starvation as leverage. Your reading turns international law into a dictatorship’s handbook.

You call me diseased for believing there must be an answer. That’s your confession: you’ve given up. You think because it’s hard, we’re permitted to abandon decency. If you truly believed there’s no answer, you wouldn’t waste time defending cruelty as strategy. You’d just admit it’s all about punishment dressed up as realism.

You blame Hamas for exploiting kids, so you wash your hands of the starvation those kids endure. That’s not analysis. That’s moral outsourcing.

You keep citing “dual use” as a blank cheque for attacks. Dual use triggers proportionality analysis, not immunity from accountability. You collapse complexity into excuses because anything more honest would force you to grapple with these civilian lives as human.

You demand proof that Israel struck civilian sites. Your own military acknowledged airstrikes that hit schools and hospitals later found not to contain Hamas infrastructure. You dismiss Israeli apologies as PR, but happily cite IDF claims when they suit you. That’s not skepticism. It’s selective trust to maintain your moral comfort.

The study showed radicalization correlates with oppression – not that oppression is the only factor. My point wasn’t that Palestinians radicalize because Israel oppresses them, but that oppression fuels radicalization. Your analogy to incels collapses because incels radicalize despite privilege, while Palestinians radicalize under siege and daily violence. That’s not the same psychology. That’s comparing loneliness to military occupation.

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[NoHolyCows]

You say bad data is still bad, no matter the cause. True – but dismissing it outright without acknowledging why it’s incomplete isn’t skepticism, it’s moral abdication. Gaza’s infrastructure was shattered by blockade and bombs. Acting like bad data emerges from cultural incompetence rather than imposed destruction is dehumanizing, whether you admit it or not.

It's not that I dismiss it outright, it's that we have seen no indication the answer is relevant.

You call Al Jazeera part of Hamas because they showed the hospital strike clip. That’s not evidence of complicity; it’s evidence that war reporting is messy, immediate, and flawed. The footage didn’t “cut off to hide anything” – it just didn’t catch the explosion. You’re dissecting timeline frames while ignoring 500 corpses claimed. Whether the count was wrong doesn’t erase the crux: civilians died in a war that has no moral brakes left.

No, it was after the fact, they had time to figure it out. And it's not a matter of it not catching the explosion, it's that the timestamp on the video cuts off before the boom. The timestamp of the boom was given--and it was after the end of the video. Their own article was self-contradictory.

And you're acting like a truther here. I said 500 claimed. Not 500 dead. The world (at least those that cared to learn) knew the truth the next day. But you are criticizing my ignoring corpses that unquestionably never existed. And it was an IJ misfire, not Israel. You're trying to blame Israel for corpses supposedly created by IJ.

You say journalists “report what Hamas tells them to.” Yet every major newsroom corroborates deaths through independent local staff, NGOs, morgue workers, and family interviews. Are all of them Hamas puppets in your mind? Or does dismissing them keep your narrative simpler?

You're in Gaza, you do what Hamas says. They're not puppets, but they have a very real fear of telling the truth. Occasionally you'll see a piece from someone who isn't going back that talks about the conditions.

You claim every Hamas administrator is a fighter. That’s false under international law. The guy issuing birth certificates isn’t a combatant. The teacher running a Hamas-funded school isn’t a target. You reduce an entire civilian bureaucracy to “valid kills” to avoid grappling with moral complexity.

And you think those underlings are Hamas??

You shrug off UNRWA’s destruction because they were “basically under Hamas control.” That’s convenient. Israel still coordinates with UNRWA because without them, children starve. If you cared about civilians, you’d acknowledge that cutting off their only lifeline punishes the powerless, not Hamas leaders.

Israel isn't trying to cut the lifeline. They're trying to cut the Hamas control of the lifeline.

You say “lots of people are dying” but it doesn’t make Israel’s actions wrong. Numbers alone don’t define war crimes, yes. But you refuse to examine proportionality, intent, or alternatives. You wave away mass death because admitting its weight might crack your moral certainty.

I'm looking at what we can deduce about proportionality--it's just it doesn't say what you want to hear.
Intent--you're making this one up entirely, ascribing motives there's no reason to suspect.
Alternatives--baa for Hamas.

You scoff at satellite evidence of mass graves because of resolution limits. Sure, satellites can’t count corpses by the inch, but imagery analysis can identify new burial zones, disturbed earth, grave expansions, and correlates that align with field reports. You know this. Dismissing it wholesale isn’t rigor, it’s selective skepticism to protect your comfort zone.

In other words, they can't remotely count the dead. They'll count a pretend burial the same as a real one.

And finally, you say “a lot of bodies is not proof of wrong.” True. But a lot of bodies is proof that something catastrophic is happening. The difference between us is that I see that as a call to accountability. You see it as an acceptable cost.

And 10/7 wasn't catastrophic?

Hamas chose this war. Hamas continues this war. Hamas wanted a catastrophe. Blame Hamas.

You keep calling death counts “irrelevant” because they don’t affect your strategy conclusions. But for everyone under the rubble, they are the only reality. Saying “it’s irrelevant” isn’t analysis – it’s moral disengagement repackaged as pragmatism.

I’m not blaming Israel for that misfire. I’m pointing out your tactic: one exposed lie becomes your license to dismiss every death report. You obsess over timestamps while ignoring the broader reality – civilians are dying daily, with or without that hospital strike. You use one fraudulent claim to wash your hands of every real corpse.

So every local medic, fixer, morgue worker, and NGO staffer is lying out of fear? That’s convenient. You erase every single source as tainted so nothing can ever challenge your narrative. That isn’t realism. It’s selective blindness.

No, I think you’re redefining them out of civilian status to justify anything. Birth registrars, sewage workers, teachers – these aren’t valid targets under any law. Calling them “underlings” doesn’t erase their humanity.

And when cutting Hamas control means children starve with no replacement in place, what do you call that outcome? Strategic brilliance? Because from the outside, it just looks like collective punishment dressed as policy.

You treat proportionality as a death ratio when it also weighs alternatives and foreseeability – tests you ignore. On intent, you claim civilians are hit by accident every time, as if near-total aerial surveillance produces permanent accidents. You dismiss alternatives because they’d require giving up total control. That isn’t rigor. It’s moral laziness.

No, satellites identify burial activity which field teams then corroborate. You dismiss all triangulated evidence because partial proof is still proof – and your worldview can’t tolerate even that crack in certainty.

10/7 was catastrophic. Nothing I’ve said denies that. But your logic stops there: Hamas committed an atrocity, therefore any scale of civilian death in response is justified. That’s not strategy. That’s moral vengeance. Both can be true: Hamas is guilty, and Israel is choosing mass suffering. You refuse to hold both truths.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

You say Israel doesn’t treat Palestinian lives as expendable, that it’s just media spin. But thousands of civilians buried under rubble aren’t a narrative. They’re reality. You can admire Israeli restraint relative to what’s possible in total war, sure – but don’t pretend mass civilian death is just PR distortion. Those bodies exist, whether you choose to see them or not.

Some of them, yes. As Hamas intended. Goodhart.

You’re “impressed by how Israel has handled itself.” That’s telling. You measure morality by operational discipline rather than human cost. You see proportional destruction and call it impressive; I see children dying under airstrikes and call it a moral catastrophe. That’s the difference between strategy worship and human decency.

He was not talking about discipline, he was talking about minimizing civilian casualties.

Because at the end of the day, if your standard for “doing well” in war leaves entire neighborhoods flattened and half a population displaced or starving, you might want to rethink what exactly you’re applauding.

You just don't realize how awful war can be. Especially when one side wants to see it's people dead.

Yes, Hamas exploits civilian deaths. But your quick “some of them, yes, as Hamas intended” shrug is exactly the problem. You reduce thousands of lives to Hamas’s PR strategy, as if that erases the reality of what bombs actually do. A body isn’t less dead because your enemy benefits from it.

You say he meant minimizing civilian casualties. Fine. But if “minimizing civilian casualties” still means thousands dead, half the population displaced, and children dying of starvation and trauma, then your moral baseline is broken. Calling that “impressive” just reveals how little human cost factors into your praise.

You keep telling me I don’t realize how awful war can be. I do. I just refuse to accept that “war is awful” automatically justifies any level of atrocity. Your logic boils down to: war is hell, so let’s stop counting the burned. That isn’t realism. It’s moral surrender rebranded as clarity.

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