Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Politesse]

This has got to be one of the most thoughtless bad analogies I've seen in a while.

It's not an analogy. It's a question of ethics.

Let's make this a wee bit more realistic: If my neighbor had been consistently threatening to kill me for decades, had physically attacked me multiple times, had killed my dog and tried to kill my cat, had kidnapped and tortured my spouse and my kid, and had continued doing so after me having tried multiple times to get them to stop... Yeah, I don't think I'd have a problem setting his house on fire. I'd warn his spouse and children to take the pets and leave (assuming they weren't actively helping him attack me on a regular basis), but my willingness to tolerate abuse and violence from my neighbor does actually have a limit.

I'm satisfied with your answer, though. That you would in fact resort to bloody vigilante justice, and burn children alive for the sake of your vendetta if they refused to leave when warned. I think you're full of shit, and that you would in fact be far too much of a coward to commit acts like yourself, but it is very revealing of the kind of world you expect us all to live in. I have no use for such savagery, personally.

The choices are kill or die. In choosing to refuse to kill you are choosing to die.

You can make that choice for yourself, you don't get to make it for a nation.

Seriously, what the hell do you think should happen here? Should Israel be expected to just continue tolerating violence, attacks, and persistent vilification forever with no end in sight? Aren't you one of those that likes to trot out the "paradox of tolerance" as a means to justify attacking those whose beliefs and positions you disagree with?

Not commit (or attempt, or intend) genocide. Yes, that means the conflict will continue. But so does Netanyahu's campaign of death. No matter how many Palestinians he kills, the war will continue to rage imn perpetui. f violence is its only outlet. There is no such thing as a "final solution", emotionally sataisying though they may seem to the simple-minded. An entire people cannot be killed. Even if you have no moral objections, it's jsut not logistically possible. In the real world, it doesn't happen. And survivors and their alliesburn with vengeance. Committing atrocities has never led to peace, and it never will. The only question is which acts of violence you are willing to sanction.

I have no idea what you mean by "paradox of tolerance". I oppose genocide, in all contexts. I never promised to "tolerate" mass killings of civilians, nor ever would promise such a thing. Indeed, I don't know what "tolerance" of a pro-genocide position would even mean. Do you want me to just... look the other way while it happens? With my tax dollars? In the name of "tolerance"? The very idea is absurd.

Paint me a picture. How would a "tolerant" person respond to a call for genocide?

The problem is you oppose anything Israel does to try to avoid becoming the victim of genocide.

Well, no. I am opposing my nation's sponsorship of one very specific and heinous thing that Israel is doing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But please also be cautious of the numbers. In stats, both a 6 year old innocent child and a 16 year old combatant are counted in the same group as "children". That makes the number of "child" casualties virtually useless.

Yup, females are a much better proxy for civilians than "children" (and even then it's not perfect--while they rarely take combatant roles they sometimes take spotter roles.) In past conflicts where we had a complete enumeration most of the "children" were a few years under 18. And with this conflict be cautious with the numbers because they're actually coming from Hamas. And Hamas just let slip some data that makes it pretty clear they've been cooking the books. A lot more children lost their father than their mother. A lot more men than women have amputations.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The narrative that Palestinians are second class citizens in Israel, is insane. Its just lies. Inside Israel the rights of Muslims and Christians is protected more than the rights of Jews.

I guess that make it alright to slaughter Palestinians in the Wast Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

There's a war on. Its on Hamas to figure out how you keep their own people safe. Starting a war in the current situation will inevitably lead to mass casualties for the Gazans. Hamas knew that. But didn't care.

Since Hamas had taken hostages Israel has no other option than to attack in full force. The tunnel system meant mass bombing was the only way to proceed. The fact that Hamas don't fight in uniforms means that Palestinian civilians will get shot by mistake. They have uniforms BTW. Notice how they put them on whenever bullets aren't flying

But I guess you don't care about any of this?

Forced displacement​

OCHA recorded demolitions without military justification of 1,128 buildings, forcibly displacing 2,249 Palestinians in the West Bank including East Jerusalem. Additionally, the Israeli High Court of Justice approved the demolition of six homes of relatives of suspected attackers, despite Israeli civil rights organization HaMoked’s objection that this constituted collective punishment. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities approved the construction of 18,500 settler homes in East Jerusalem alone, according to Israeli urban planners Ir Amim. Settlements in the rest of the West Bank, illegal under international law, also continued to expand.

Settler violence spread with the accession of politicians who incited racial violence, and significantly increased after 7 October. Israeli settlers killed 18 Palestinians and injured 367, while Palestinian attackers killed 18 settlers and injured 107, according to OCHA.

Military and settler actions created coercive environments that displaced all 1,009 inhabitants of 16 herding communities, according to human rights organization B’Tselem. On 11 October, Israeli settlers killed three Palestinians in a family home in Qusra, near Huwara. A fourth was shot dead when Israeli soldiers came to protect the settlers. On 30 October, dozens of settlers set fire to two homes in Isfay al-Tahta in Masafer Yatta, southern West Bank. Many settlers were armed, some wore army uniforms, and most violent settlers enjoyed impunity for their crimes.<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/location...the-occupied-palestinian-territory/#endnote-7">6</a>

The authorities continued to deny recognition to Palestinian citizens of Israel in 35 Bedouin villages in the Negev/Naqab in southern Israel, and to conduct home demolitions there. In July, courts approved the forced eviction of all 500 residents of Ras Jrabah. The residents had asked to be incorporated as a neighbourhood into the nearby Jewish city of Dimona but the local authorities dismissed that request without due consultation. On 27 September, Israeli forces demolished the village of al-‘Araqib for the 222nd time.

In Gaza on 12 October, the Israeli army issued a vague collective “evacuation order” to all 1.1 million residents in northern Gaza. In November and December, Israeli forces ordered the displacement of civilians in southern areas, including Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis. By early December, 1.9 million Palestinians were forcibly displaced in Gaza.

Unlawful killings​

West Bank including East Jerusalem​

The year was the deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, as Israeli policing operations became increasingly lethal amid impunity for police killings and incitement from leaders.

According to OCHA, Israeli forces killed 493 Palestinians, mostly civilians, during operations against armed groups in Jenin and Nablus. Over 12,500 were injured.

Defence for Children International-Palestine reported that Israeli forces killed 110 children in the West Bank including Jerusalem in 2023. On 5 June, Mohammed al-Tamimi, aged three, succumbed to his wounds after being shot by Israeli forces in Nabi Saleh north of Ramallah as his father drove him to a birthday party. No criminal investigation was opened.

Throughout the year, Jenin refugee camp in the north endured Israeli law enforcement operations that killed at least 23 Palestinians between January and July. Revenge attacks by armed Palestinians against Israeli civilians killed four near the settlement of Eli on 20 June. On 21 June, hundreds of settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Turmusayya south of Eli, killing one resident and setting 15 houses on fire. From October, Israeli forces raided Jenin repeatedly, killing at least 116 people, according to the Palestinian ministry of health, including in an air strike on Al-Ansar mosque on 22 October.

Right to truth, justice and reparations​

Israeli authorities failed to promptly, thoroughly and independently investigate crimes and violations committed by the Israeli army, including unlawful killings in the West Bank and war crimes in Gaza. Israel continued to refuse to cooperate with the UN commission of inquiry and to deny entry to the UN Special Rapporteur on the OPT. At the end of October, the ICC prosecutor visited Israel, the West Bank, and the Rafah Crossing on Egypt’s border with Gaza. On 29 December, South Africa applied to the ICJ for proceedings to be initiated against Israel regarding its breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention in Gaza.

Human rights in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Stay up to date on the state of human rights in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory with the latest research, campaigns and education material from Amnesty International.

www.amnesty.org

"Without military justification". According to whom? Hamas has made it as hard as possible for the IDF to identify who is a soldier and who is a civilian. This is the inevitable result

But interesting that your minimum demand for Jews is that they have psychic powers

 

[Loren Pechtel]

War is hell, its glory is all moonshine.

The noted quotation of another genocidal maniac, as I recall.

In stats, both a 6 year old innocent child and a 16 year old combatant are counted in the same group as "children".

As is quite reasonable. A twelve year old feels no more empowered than an eight year old to refuse when their father holds them a gun and tells them to guard a door. And since Netanyahu and his troops make no distinction between civilian and soldier anyway, it would make no difference if they did. They live in the same house as a terrorist, they die, whether. They desire to fight for Hamas or not. Their spilled entrails are "collateral damage"; that crying child struggling to move through the shock of their abruptly severed leg is a "soldier". You glorify war, but its glories truly are moonshine; they are a horror to witness and diplomatically worse than useless.

Note he said 16, not 12. In past conflicts an awful lot more 16 year olds than 12 year olds died.

And if the IDF didn't distinguish civilians from combatants we would see a death toll approximating their ratio in society. Since the numbers are in the ballpark of a factor of 100 off from that it's clear that Israel must be doing a good job of targeting.

They are already plotting another 10/7, I am sure.

Of course they fucking are. This whole action has been pointless, and did absolutely nothing to halt the next outpouring of violence. You will not be able to murder every single Palestinian, and even if you did, some other nation and people would rise in their place. The chauvinism of the gun has no practical benefits.

At least a year's worth of GDP of military infrastructure got destroyed. That's going to take a long time to replace.

By not excusing them just because they are Palestinian.

"Excuse" them? From what? Calls for genocide? I don't excuse the Palestinians from the execution of genocide, I excuse all humans from the execution of genocide, as our natural right. Or if you do not believe in natural rights, than a right every human being should desire to claim.

All humans except the Jews, because you are saying that Israel must do nothing to defend itself against genocide.

 

[Politesse]

Note he said 16, not 12. In past conflicts an awful lot more 16 year olds than 12 year olds died.

So you are also pretending that everyone who died was a swarthy, scary looking foreign 16 year old with a gun, eh? Unfortunately, the rest of us are neither stupid nor blind. Do we need to start sharing photos? Because I think that's probably against forum TOU, but I think you know damn well that evidence of war crimes exists. Not only exists, but is being widely disseminated outside of American media.

 

[Politesse]

All humans except the Jews, because you are saying that Israel must do nothing to defend itself against genocide.

I've said nothing of the sort. I've said that committing genocide is wrong, and that abetting genocide is wrong. That's what you're losing your fucking mind over, because that's the only claim I've made.

 

[Arctish]

Hamas controls Gaza.

The PA, run by Fatah but not without opposition from other factions, controls the West Bank.

Israel controls the Negev, where Bedouin people living where the IDF told them to, who would be automatically recognized as Israeli citizens if Israel were the non-racist non-discriminatory State some folks here imagine it to be, are nevertheless denied citizenship and equal rights.

If any of you have been following the news about Smotrich and Ben Gvir, you would know that Smotrich has been fast tracking the construction of illegal settlements In the West Bank while Ben Gvir tried to overstep his authority and order police to destroy occupied housing in Israel in order to displace non-Jews.

You can't blame Hamas for everything that goes on in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.

 

[DrZoidberg]

So how long time do you think it will take before Hamas breaks the truce? Without war, or imminent Israeli threat, Hamas has no power, so they will need to create it. It's just a matter of time before they get going again. So how long time do you think it'll take? A week? A month?

Shall we get some betting going?

 

[ZiprHead]

So how long time do you think it will take before Hamas breaks the truce? Without war, or imminent Israeli threat, Hamas has no power, so they will need to create it. It's just a matter of time before they get going again. So how long time do you think it'll take? A week? A month?

Shall we get some betting going?

Noted that you dodged Arctish's post just above this one.

The posts by Arctish and me show how ridiculous

The narrative that Palestinians are second class citizens in Israel, is insane. Its just lies. Inside Israel the rights of Muslims and Christians is protected more than the rights of Jews.

your statement is.

Were your fingers crossed when you typed it or are you just that uninformed?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Is everything a "genocide" to you?

I'd actually consider the present situation in Gaza and Syria a religious ethnocide, if you want to get technical, but that tends to confuse people. Simple times need simple words. As for Sherman ordering the death of every last "man woman, and child of the Sioux"? If that wasn't genocide, I am baffled as to what would qualify.

Sherman, yes. Gaza, no. I see a lot of dead people in a war, I see no genocide.

I am not talking about 12 year olds "guarding a door" (where did you even get that scenario?) I am talking about teenagers recruited into Hamas and Islamic Jihad

Because that's the kind of task you hand off to an underaged "soldier". But whatever. In any case, you wish us to believe that when a house or a hospital is bombed, only sixteen year old jihadiis perish. And that every child casualty in this war has been a maximally unsympathetic imaginary teenager? Even if I approved of the slaughter of sixteen year olds, which I do not, that just isn't the story the "statistics" are telling. What happens to the actual children in the neighborhoods Israel levels to the ground for blocks around? Do sweet angels swoop in to protect them with their holy wings? Grow up. Innocence is not a cute look on an adult, especially not when child murder is what you're trying to remain innocent about.

So even enemy soldiers are not to be killed. All that leaves is for the Jews to die.

No, Israel should have pushed on. It would be more bloody in the short term, but would make a more lasting peace possible long term.

There is no historical evidence to support the idea that outbreaks of unrestrained violence lead to peaceful outcomes. Quite the opposite is true.

Israel isn't suffering under the illusion that there will be peace. And history has shown that when Israel presents the sword they're safer, when they present the olive branch they get hurt. Again and again.

From starting this war. For wanting to "erase the border with Israel and tear Israelis' hearts from their chests" as their leader Yahya Sinwar proclaimed in 2018 during the supposedly "peaceful" March of Retrun

I'm not even going to bother with this one, except to say that I know that you know, because it has been pointed out to you countless times, that are blaming an entire ethnic group for the positions of a faction within the autocratic government thst rules some of their people, and that this is the very attitude that produces war crimes, no matter who is espousing it.

And how are you to defeat an army without killing it's soldiers?

 

[Politesse]

Sherman, yes. Gaza, no. I see a lot of dead people in a war, I see no genocide.

If you don't see directly ordering the deaths of everyone belonging to a certain racial group as genocide, then I can see why you're struggling to understand how the term might or might not apply to the actions in Gaza. There's not much point in talking about this further if the basic concept of genocide is alien to you, apparently you have no idea what I've been on about this whole time.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Paint me a picture. How would a "tolerant" person respond to a call for genocide?

The problem is you oppose anything Israel does to try to avoid becoming the victim of genocide.

Well, no. I am opposing my nation's sponsorship of one very specific and heinous thing that Israel is doing.

No, you are opposing anything Israel does to defend itself as unacceptable. You've even ruled enemy combatants off limits if they're under 18. If that were actually the rule then Hamas would send a bunch of 17 year olds to slaughter the Jews.

As for that tolerant person--why have you tolerated the Hamas call for genocide?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Sherman, yes. Gaza, no. I see a lot of dead people in a war, I see no genocide.

If you don't see directly ordering the deaths of everyone belonging to a certain racial group as genocide, then I can see why you're struggling to understand how the term might or might not apply to the actions in Gaza. There's not much point in talking about this further if the basic concept of genocide is alien to you, apparently you have no idea what I've been on about this whole time.

The only such order I see is from Hamas. Israel most certainly has not done so.

The concept of genocide is not alien to me but you are arguing based on an extremely distorted picture of reality.

 

[ZiprHead]

Normal rules of engagement would have been far more deadly than what we saw. Israel was already several times better than others have done

You have been asked numerous time how you made this determination, what you compared Israels operations to, and you have never responded.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Note he said 16, not 12. In past conflicts an awful lot more 16 year olds than 12 year olds died.

So you are also pretending that everyone who died was a swarthy, scary looking foreign 16 year old with a gun, eh? Unfortunately, the rest of us are neither stupid nor blind. Do we need to start sharing photos? Because I think that's probably against forum TOU, but I think you know damn well that evidence of war crimes exists. Not only exists, but is being widely disseminated outside of American media.

If evidence of war crimes exist why do we not see it? So far there are a gazillion general allegations and very few specifics. Yes, there has been some mistreatment of prisoners--and Israel has punished those it has been able to identify who were doing it. The tactic of having civilians demonstrate that their stuff isn't booby-trapped isn't a war crime because they're free to refuse. Israel will simply treat the stuff as booby trapped. Photos inherently are incapable of proving war crimes because they prove nothing about how the situation came to be. And are very frequently staged, besides.

(And note that the policy with sensitive stuff is that it must not show up unless someone knowingly chooses to view it. Inlined stuff should be behind spoiler tags that identify what it is, links should be clearly marked as to their nature. Don't post stuff to shock, but if it's actually relevant it's not forbidden.)

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The only solution that Hamas, Palestine, and the entire Muslim region will accept is the extermination of Jews. They've proven that over and over again.

If you swapped every Jewish person in Israel with Texans, I'm going to think the same problems will subsist. This isn't nearly as much about religion as being sold.

Iran is using religion as a means to power. They have subverted multiple countries to this end, although they just lost Syria.

That is what I said, they are using religion as a political tool. Once we get to the point that this isn't about religion, but politics, we move to the next step in a terribly long road to ending this madness. If we swapped out the Israelis for Swedes, there would still be problems. Iran would just adjust the narrative a bit.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Israel isn't the Borg

Somehow the loudest voices in this are unwilling or unable to accept that. There is a compulsion to “exonerate Israel” every time someone accurately describes the actions of the Netanyahu government.
Why not accept the genocidal nature of Netanyahu’s pursuit of vengeance for the Hamas massacre? Why not acknowledge its expedience for Bibi personally, and the possibility that such benefit might enter into his decision making?
Elephants of that size barely fit into rooms this small.

Chanting "genocide" isn't proof it's happening. War is hell, Hamas is playing the world's media like a violin to blame Israel for what Hamas caused.

The abuse of hyperbole can be witnessed from many sides of the discussion. From radicals on both sides to otherwise rational folk on both sides.

 

[Politesse]

As for that tolerant person--why have you tolerated the Hamas call for genocide?

I most certainly have not. I condemn Hamas and its leadership in the strongest terms. They absolutely instigated this current wave of violence, and with the full knowledge and intention of causing this very outcome, up to and including their own martyrdom. Hurting whom they hated was worth more to them than their own lives, and those of millions of innocents, and I hope the lot of them are being flayed with whips of acid in the Jahannam they so adore right now, it would be just punishment for what they've done. But retaliatory mass killings are not going to bring any of their victims back.

My position is not complicated to understand. I oppose the use of genocide as a tactic, in all times and places. Most people agree with me, most of the time. Until its their own governments' genocide, and suddenly all the rationalizations and denials come out of the closet.

It's absurd to me that I'm having all this bile poured out on me for daring to criticize Biden, when my one and only complaint about the man concerns the one thing he himself counts among his regrets, and immediately started trying to undo less than a week after he did it. Obviously I am not alone in being horrified by the results of his actions, if the man himself shares my opinon. And if Biden is not in a position to know what's actually going on in Gaza, who is? Benjamin Netanyahu? In cases of genocide, I tend to take the word of the accused with a grain of salt, especially when it is corroborated by exactly no one.

 

[laughing dog]

2) Even if true the Israeli action that started the war was it's existence. Thus the only "solution" along those lines is Hitler's Final Solution. Is that what you want?

So in your universe, one must support genocide, because they only alternative to genocide is genocide? As opposed to, say, not genocide?

That's not what Loren is saying, and you should be able to infer that on your own, Poli.

Israel has tried repeatedly for decades to keep some sort of peace with muslims living within Israel's borders - and whether you like it or not, Palestine is not a separate country, it is part of the nation of Israel, where Israel has essentially ceded a degree of independence within it's own border to the people who live there. But the residents of that stretch of land have repeated initiated altercations with Israel, including this most recent situation.

Your history omits crucial facts. Gaza was part of Egypt. It wasn't until 1956 when Israel invaded Gaza that it became part of the nation of Israel.

I think your timeline is wrong but I'm not going to check as it's irrelevant. What's important is that Israel invaded because of continual attacks from Gaza. Gaza picked a fight with Israel, not Israel picking a fight with Gaza.

As usual, you are evading the issue. Israel invaded Gaza decades ago - the reason is not relevant in the correction of fact.

The only solution that Hamas, Palestine, and the entire Muslim region will accept is the extermination of Jews. They've proven that over and over again.

It takes a whole lot of ignorance to come up with that claim. The entire Muslim region encompasses many areas that don't really care one way or the other about Israel.

Simple test: In what countries does a Israeli passport ban you from entry? In what countries does having any evidence of having been to Israel (the stamps from any land border crossing) in your passport ban you from entry? I would say that any country that meets either of these tests cares. They're far more obsessive about it than Africa was about South Africa. There two stamps in our passports from land borders didn't matter. While I do not recall and can't check I strongly suspect our cholera boosters were in South Africa (timing's right and that was the best medical system we saw for months in either direction)--and listed in the yellow book that we presented at every border crossing. We spent a day unpacking absolutely everything and taking a sharpie to anything that said "product of South Africa", but the English/Afrikaans labels didn't matter even though Afrikaans is spoken in only one country. And the fact that we were on the Johannesburg-London overland route would hardly be secret. Many companies operated such "tours", they had to know. But so long as the words "South Africa" didn't appear they didn't object. Kampala, Uganda even provided security troops for the standard camping area--they didn't want to scare away the dollars we brought. At that time Kampala at night was not a place you wanted to be, but the troops were there to ensure the trouble stayed outside.

Cool story bro. Pointless but cool. The reasoning that leads to equating denial based on passport with approval of Jewish genocide is mind-numbing.

 

[laughing dog]

All humans except the Jews, because you are saying that Israel must do nothing to defend itself against genocide.

You trot out that vicious slander on a regular basis. It is unacceptable, especially from a moderator. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.