Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[NoHolyCows]

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.

I don't reduce them to a PR strategy. I recognize them for what they are: the biggest weapon Hamas has.

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.

And you continue to baa for Hamas.

We have one acknowledged medical case.
We have one AI "case".

Where's the starvation???

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.

You realize your position amounts to granting victory to whoever kills as many of their people as they can? What do you think this is, Pandemic?

Lauren, the tragedy is that you believe recognizing suffering equals rewarding it — as if human decency is some kind of diplomatic loophole Hamas is waiting to exploit. So let’s address your points clearly, because your entire framework flips morality upside down and calls it realism.

So let’s get this straight: thousands of dead civilians — children, medics, aid workers — are, in your view, not primarily victims, but weapons wielded by Hamas. That’s not recognition. That’s inversion. That’s turning suffering into complicity so you don’t have to reckon with the moral cost of what’s being done to them. Yes, Hamas exploits death. But when you use that fact to emotionally detach from the dead themselves, you’re doing the same thing — just from the other side of the missile.

Where’s the starvation? It’s in the UNICEF reports showing widespread child malnutrition. It’s in the WHO alerts about famine-like conditions in the north. It’s in the parents boiling weeds because nothing else is available. You reduce it all to PR failures because the suffering hasn’t met your photographic threshold. That’s not skepticism. That’s willful blindness. You’re not looking for facts. You’re looking for excuses not to care unless the pain is camera-ready.

No, Lauren. That’s not what I’m saying — it’s what you’re afraid of admitting. My position is that war, even against monstrous enemies, must have red lines. Your position says: if the enemy is brutal enough, no red line exists. That’s not preventing victory by manipulation — that’s granting impunity to power. If you think the only alternative to crushing civilians is surrendering to terror, then you’ve already accepted Hamas’s logic: that everything must be war, and war excuses everything.

I’m not saying stop defending Israel. I’m saying stop abandoning the very principles Israel claims to defend. Because if the only way to fight Hamas is to mirror their disregard for civilian life, then what exactly is being defended?

War is hell — but it’s not a moral void. And if your answer to atrocity is simply “they started it,” then you’ve already conceded the ethical ground you think you’re standing on.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

You ask how you’re supposed to have an alternative. That’s the point. You’ve surrendered to the idea that cruelty is the only path left. You talk about “the leftist trap” of believing solutions exist, as if searching for ways to end mass death is naïve. No – what’s naïve is thinking perpetual siege and bombardment will produce anything but deeper cycles of violence. Iran is a player, yes, but blaming them for everything just masks that Israel still chooses its methods. Fatalism isn’t realism. It’s just despair masquerading as analysis.

Israel chooses from amongst the options that exist. You want to deny them any defense options, just let Hamas bleed them to death because you can't face reality.

You insist I’m misrepresenting you, but your words are clear: “civilian deaths don’t matter because they’re the wrong yardstick.” That’s not a distortion. That’s your own admission that human cost isn’t part of your moral calculus. If you don’t like what your words reveal, change them – don’t blame others for hearing exactly what you’re saying.

NHC

Context!

I said civilian deaths do not matter for proving wrongdoing. Not that they don't matter in general.

You are looking at lots of deaths and proclaiming Israel must be wrong. Your "solution" is to reward genocide.

Lauren, the problem isn’t that I misunderstood your words — it’s that I understood them perfectly. And the context only confirms what I said: you’ve walled off the moral cost of this war from any serious scrutiny, so you can claim it’s just unfortunate fallout instead of a deliberate result of chosen tactics.

No — what I’m saying is that the existence of Hamas doesn’t justify treating two million people like insurgents by default. You call that “facing reality.” I call it moral surrender. You want to reduce every option to siege, airstrikes, and denial of aid, and call that the entire menu. But if you box out every path that isn’t collective punishment and then declare, “These are the only choices,” you’re not analyzing. You’re rationalizing.

If Israel chooses from “the options that exist,” then expand the options. Demilitarized corridors, international monitors, mediated truces — they’ve all been proposed and shelved. Not by Hamas. By Israel. That’s not forced necessity. That’s chosen strategy.

That’s not context. That’s compartmentalization. You say you do care about civilian deaths, just not when evaluating whether something is wrong. That’s like saying, “Yes, the building collapsed, but I’m only evaluating the blueprint.” Human suffering isn’t a side note in a legal memo — it’s the outcome that the law is supposed to restrain.

You’ve drawn a firewall between empathy and evaluation. But they can’t be separated — because if your moral framework doesn’t start with the human cost, then your conclusions will always excuse it.

This is the heart of it, isn’t it? You think refusing to bomb civilians equals rewarding genocide. But that’s not how morality works. Restraint isn’t surrender. Protecting civilians isn’t capitulation. And if the only way you believe Israel can be safe is by acting with total impunity, then you’re not defending peace — you’re just defending control.

I’m not asking you to excuse Hamas. I’m asking you not to mirror them. Because when your answer to mass suffering is: “Well, look who started it,” you’ve already stopped asking what’s right. You’ve only asked what’s justifiable. And history has never looked kindly on that standard.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

You say Hamas uses aid as income and control, and that justifies starving civilians to break their grip. But punishing an entire population to weaken rulers is the very definition of collective punishment. You can’t bomb bakeries, block flour trucks, and cut off water then call it “humanitarian strategy.” Direct distribution isn’t happening at scale – children are still starving. That isn’t moral precision. It’s coercion by starvation.

More magic words. Your spells don't work.

You ask how to measure proportionality if not with body ratios. Simple: by asking whether striking a target offers concrete, direct military advantage significant enough to outweigh foreseeable civilian harm. If destroying one tunnel shaft collapses an apartment block, is that shaft worth fifty civilians? That’s proportionality analysis. Reducing it to “combatant kill counts vs civilians” is moral accountancy, not ethical warfare.

And we have no ability to evaluate this, making it a basically useless metric.

And your ass isn't a useful source of data. Got an example of one apartment that killed 50 civilians? And if you do do you have evidence that Hamas wasn't shooting those who tried to leave?

You say I don’t understand war because I refuse to exempt Western militaries from critique. That’s revealing. You think if a standard indicts your side, the standard is flawed. I think if a standard indicts your side, maybe your side needs to change. That’s the difference between moral reasoning and tribal defense.

You are the one imposing the standard.

You claim I have zero evidence of wrongdoing in hospital strikes. Multiple independent investigations, including by UN agencies and humanitarian groups, documented attacks lacking proper verification or carried out despite warnings of patients and staff present. You dismiss them all as biased because acknowledging them would force you to confront the reality that even justified targets don’t erase obligations to protect the innocent around them. Your blanket denial isn’t rigor. It’s reflex.

"Independent investigations". Stop there, I've already shown there are none.

And what's an attack "lacking proper verification"?? Until some time long in the future when all the intel is laid out the concept is meaningless.
"Warnings of patients and staff present"--human shields. And note that warning of their presence doesn't mean the attack was improper.

This isn’t Hogwarts, Lauren. The Geneva Conventions aren’t incantations — they’re the legal boundaries between war and barbarism. You wave off starvation of civilians as if it’s just tough love. But when you justify cutting off aid because Hamas might use it somewhere, that’s not targeting — it’s siege warfare designed to grind civilians down. That’s what “collective punishment” means. If you have a better term for starving children to weaken a regime, by all means — let’s hear it.

First: yes, we do have the ability to evaluate proportionality. We do it all the time — post-strike assessments, satellite imagery, hospital and morgue reports, survivor testimony. You act like proportionality is unknowable unless we can pull up an Excel sheet with body counts and blast radii. But law doesn’t demand omniscience — it demands restraint based on foreseeable outcomes.

And since you asked: yes. On multiple occasions, strikes on residential buildings killed entire families, including infants. Don’t play dumb. You’ve seen the footage. You just don’t count it unless Hamas delivers notarized proof of intent.

As for Hamas shooting people trying to flee — yes, they do that. It’s a war crime. But it doesn’t erase the obligation to avoid turning apartment blocks into coffins. Two wrongs don’t make a proportionality waiver.

No, Lauren — I’m referencing the standard. The one your side claims to follow. The one enshrined in international law, not dreamt up by me. You treat anything that makes Israel accountable as a foreign imposition, when it’s the legal baseline every military is expected to uphold. If your only response to accountability is “unfair standard,” maybe it’s not the standard that needs changing.

You’ve “shown” nothing but distrust. UN agencies, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders — all dismissed by you because they’re inconvenient. Meanwhile, every IDF statement is taken as gospel unless they apologize, in which case you say they’re apologizing too easily. That’s not consistency. That’s a rhetorical bunker.

And yes — “lack of proper verification” has meaning. It means bombing a known civilian site with weak or no evidence of military use. It means bombing after coordinates were shared to prevent exactly that. It means mistaking “Hamas might be nearby” for “fire away.” You call those people human shields. The law calls them civilians. You just don’t want to face what that means.

You keep defending a framework where any moral restraint is a liability, any civilian death is either propaganda or someone else’s fault, and every legal standard is dismissed unless it exonerates your side.

That’s not realism. That’s moral insurance fraud — signing every airstrike with a shrug and calling it “the cost of war,” as long as the receipts don’t pile up on your doorstep.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

You say the hostage list proves Hamas doesn’t care about its people. True – but your broader argument treats their list as proof of guilt for everyone named. That’s my point. Hamas’s depravity doesn’t transform their propaganda into a court ruling. You keep using their demands as a moral shortcut to erase due process entirely.

Yes, I treat it as proof. Hamas knows if they're terrorists or common criminals, why should I question their naming one as a terrorist?

You admit the world doesn’t call state violence terrorism but dismiss it as a semantic quirk rather than a moral inconsistency. You ask for relevance? The relevance is simple: your definitions of terrorism and legitimacy change depending on who wields the gun. That’s not justice. That’s selective outrage.

I disagree with the exclusion. I believe state actions can be terrorism.

You claim I just want to “give Hamas what it wants.” No. I want civilians not to be collectively punished for what Hamas wants. If your justice system mirrors Hamas’s disregard for civilian life, what exactly are you defending?

What you want is to make conditions such that Hamas is happy and quits killing it's people.

You ask what act I meant regarding perfidy. I was addressing your sweeping argument that Hamas’s use of civilian disguise voids protections for all civilians in Gaza. Under Geneva, perfidy strips protection for direct misuse, not for everyone under the same flag. That distinction matters if law matters.

And I'm not understanding the relevance. Hamas doesn't even have a combat uniform, they're automatically guilty of perfidy.

You pivot from one debunked photo to dismissing mass graves altogether. The claim about mass graves under Israeli strikes has been documented by multiple field teams. Whether one photo showed Hamas burials doesn’t negate other burial sites verified by aid groups. You keep grasping for any flaw to reject the entire record.

When the poster boy for something is shown to unquestionably be false then I assume the rest of it is also false.

You say pre-1948 land purchases weren’t occupation. Technically they weren’t under Israeli occupation – they were under British colonial rule. Purchases enforced through colonial frameworks of land tenure, eviction, and policing aren’t neutral market transactions. Legality imposed by empire isn’t justice to those displaced by it.

As you say--British. Not Israeli. What's your evidence that they aren't neutral market transactions? Who was even in a position to apply pressure?

You ask what wasn’t published in the Camp David offers. Maps were selectively released, and core proposals remained off-record to shape public perception. Regardless, even leaked terms showed fragmented cantons, continued border control, and security vetoes that preserved Israeli supremacy while granting administrative autonomy. That’s why Arafat walked. It wasn’t dignity. It was subordination rebranded.

There is no way Israel is going to tolerate a militarized Palestine. That's just a recipe for a bigger war.

You say “stop funding terror” is the answer but admit you can’t do it. That’s not an answer. That’s resignation disguised as solution. You keep defining Palestinians purely as pawns of foreign funding rather than people with grievances rooted in decades of dispossession, blockade, and military rule. If you see them only as cannon fodder, your proposed “solutions” will always be about managing bodies, not resolving the conflict that produces them.

Your answer is Holocaust 2.0.

That won't bring peace, either, because they'll just turn to other targets.

Because we don’t outsource justice to terrorist organizations. You’re letting Hamas’s prisoner list stand in for trial, evidence, and due process — all while claiming moral superiority. If Israel rounded up 12-year-olds for throwing rocks and Hamas asked for their release, would you still say, “Well, Hamas must know best”? You don’t get to claim you’re fighting for justice while outsourcing guilt to hostage negotiators.

Then say it when it happens. Don’t hide behind “but Hamas is worse.” The point isn’t denying Hamas’s crimes — it’s demanding consistency. If you acknowledge that state violence can be terrorism, then don’t wave it away when it targets ambulances, journalists, or apartment blocks full of civilians. Moral clarity doesn’t only apply when it’s easy.

No, I want conditions where Palestinians aren’t starved, shelled, and erased because you think cruelty is the only language Hamas understands. You keep pretending that reducing suffering equals appeasing terrorists. But if your only tool is siege, you’re not targeting Hamas — you’re targeting everyone in reach of your discomfort.

Sure. And Geneva punishes them for that. But it doesn’t give Israel legal or moral permission to ignore all other protections. Perfidy isn’t a legal nuke. It doesn’t dissolve civilian status like acid. If it did, the entire framework of the laws of war would be obsolete the moment one side broke the rules.

That’s not logic. That’s convenient amnesia. One false photo doesn’t erase satellite-documented burial sites, mass casualty reports by Doctors Without Borders, or UN teams recovering bodies from collapsed homes. You just want an excuse to say “nothing counts” because something once didn’t.

The entire British Mandate system was pressure. Evictions. Armed escorts for land transfers. Suppression of Arab revolt while Zionist militias trained. You can’t separate purchases from the colonial structure that made resistance nearly impossible. That’s like calling a foreclosure neutral while armed sheriffs drag a family out.

That’s not what was offered. Arafat didn’t walk away from demilitarization — he walked away from a patchwork of disconnected bantustans, zero border control, and Israeli veto power over everything from airspace to trade. If you can’t see the difference between sovereignty and supervised autonomy, no wonder you think walking away was sabotage.

No. My answer is accountability, restraint, and the rejection of collective punishment. You hear that and scream genocide because your worldview has fused Palestinian dignity with existential threat. That’s why you can’t distinguish between moral decency and enemy propaganda — to you, they’re the same.

What won’t bring peace is your formula: treat an entire people as pawns, define justice by who has the most firepower, and call every plea for humanity a Hamas talking point.

That’s not clarity, Lauren. That’s surrender to the logic of endless war — and you’re dressing it up as realism because you’re afraid to face what it really is.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Calling it “just consequences” doesn’t erase the reality. When you knowingly inflict suffering on civilians to deter or punish a political choice, that is collective retribution under any moral or legal definition. Your flood analogy fails because floods aren’t sentient actors making choices. War policies are. Pretending inevitability absolves agency is moral cowardice in realist clothing.

Quit it with the magic words.

Your Deir Yassin reply dodges the core fact: women, children, and elderly weren’t misidentified fighters – they were executed or expelled to terrorize surrounding villages. That’s why even Begin’s own allies condemned it as massacre. Geneva’s perfidy provisions are about false combatant identity, not slaughtering noncombatants to send a message.

I already showed you the data on what actually happened. Many stories have been added since.

No, I didn’t change my tune. Israel walked from meaningful negotiation repeatedly by continuing settlement expansions while refusing sovereignty terms Palestinians couldn’t possibly accept. When you negotiate with a gun in one hand and bulldozers rolling in the background, it isn’t bargaining. It’s extortion posing as diplomacy.

Israel knew that Arafat couldn't make peace. They were simply not making concessions for talks they knew to be useless.

You say B’Tselem’s deception is systemic, not isolated. Fine – produce your comprehensive proof. Because their documentation includes decades of cross-verified legal records, witness testimonies, and photographic evidence. Dismissing the entire body of work because you dislike their conclusions is intellectual laziness, not rigor.

Their records are to the best of my knowledge accurate but highly deceptive. Consider my example of hitting a commander and his bodyguards--yes, the bodyguards were not actively taking part in hostilities. Doesn't make them not combatants.

You claim Geneva permits treating under-18 combatants as lawful targets. Yes – if they directly participate in hostilities. But you extend that logic to treat all minors as suspect, voiding the entire principle of special protection for children in war. That isn’t legal nuance. That’s moral rot.

Once again you fail to understand.

The mortality data clearly shows that males are becoming combatants before 18. Thus showing someone is under 18 is not evidence they are not a combatant. You seem to be allergic to the notion of a piece of data being unknown.

You claim sniper killings are fakes because it’s “more logical.” More logical for whom? For the families burying medics shot while evacuating wounded? For journalists shot despite clear markings? You’re just choosing the narrative that absolves your side without requiring evidence.

How about addressing why I said it was more logical for being a "fake". (I'm not saying the people weren't shot--they clearly were. The issue is whether they were shot by IDF snipers. And in no case do we have any evidence that it was the IDF.)

An election isn’t peace, but your argument ignored that Hamas’s electoral victory was immediately met with blockade before armed resistance resumed. You keep acting like Palestinians rejecting surrender terms is proof they don’t want peace. They’ve repeatedly proposed flawed ceasefires and diplomatic overtures. You refuse to engage because to you, any agreement requiring Israeli concessions is by definition illegitimate.

The Palestinian answer is we keep the hostages, the fighting stops. Can you possibly comprehend why Israel finds that unacceptable?

You claim border protesters weren’t human shields but violators. That doesn’t erase the reality that these were unarmed demonstrators overwhelmingly kept within fence zones and sniper range. Firing on them isn’t defending a border. It’s enforcing a siege with live ammunition – a policy choice, not an act of fate.

Once again, you have no understanding.

Most stayed in Gaza. Proves nothing, as most weren't shot. We had video of people coming up to the fence, hesitating, climbing it and getting shot.

Lauren, every answer you’ve given is just another shell game — shifting definitions, cherry-picked outrage, and excuses dressed up as clarity. Let’s walk through this:

You keep calling legal principles “magic” because they don’t suit your narrative. Collective punishment isn’t a spell — it’s a term with legal weight. You can’t bomb bakeries and block baby formula because you’re mad at the local government and then pretend the suffering was just a coincidence. That’s not justice. That’s retribution in denial.

You can claim historical inflation, but the core facts remain: unarmed civilians were deliberately killed. Even Israeli military records and survivors admitted to executions. You don’t get to rewrite history by saying “people exaggerated later” and using that to excuse what even your own sources once called a massacre.

That’s not how negotiations work — or law. If you’re expanding settlements during peace talks, you’re not negotiating, you’re annexing. “We didn’t think it would work” isn’t an excuse for unilateral land grabs. That’s like showing up to a peace meeting with a bulldozer and then saying the other side wasn’t serious.

So your issue isn’t their facts — it’s their framing? That’s not discrediting. That’s admitting the evidence is sound and just being uncomfortable with what it shows. If you don’t like that a bodyguard not shooting is still listed as a civilian, make your case — don’t toss the whole record like it’s fiction.

You’re not treating it as an unknown — you’re treating it as irrelevant. Geneva gives children special protection because child combatants are often coerced, not because they carry paperwork proving innocence. You’re using vague demographic trends to treat all male teens as threats. That’s not security. That’s profiling with a rifle.

You claim logic, but your logic is simple: if there’s no name tag on the sniper, Hamas must have done it to frame Israel. That’s not logic. That’s just refusal to even consider accountability. Meanwhile, observers like Breaking the Silence — Israeli veterans — say otherwise. But their testimony doesn’t count to you either, does it?

Hamas’s demands are absolutely unacceptable. That’s not the debate. The debate is: does Israel’s total war strategy offer a viable alternative? Because flattening Gaza hasn’t brought the hostages home either — and it’s buried thousands of people in the process. If your only response to hostage-taking is siege and starvation, you’re not saving lives. You’re burying more.

There’s video after video of kids, medics, journalists, and unarmed demonstrators being picked off hundreds of feet from any threat. You call that justified because some climbed a fence. That’s like justifying a massacre because someone pushed a gate open. You’re defending live ammunition against people carrying flags and signs. That’s not border defense. That’s the logic of occupation.

Lauren, you keep demanding moral clarity while twisting every standard to suit a single goal: whatever Israel does must be justified, and whatever Palestinians suffer must be someone else’s fault. That’s not clarity. That’s moral surrender repackaged as strategy. You want to win the argument — I want people to stop dying. That’s the difference.

NHC

 

[Tammuz]

Israel's Supreme Court has ruled against allowing people to identify themselves as Israeli on their national ID cards because it would have "weighty implications" for the preservation of Israel's founding principle of being a Jewish state for the Jewish people.

That is really nuts.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Iran would get its ass handed to it before it could get within 1,000 miles of Israel. Hell, Iran would be lucky if its military wasn't destroyed the moment it crossed into Iraq.

Iran does what it does because it knows it has a less than zero chance of winning a war against Israel. The only thing I'll give them credit for is learning the lessons that Syria, Egypt, and Jordan did when attempting to make "From the River to the Sea" a reality (multiple times btw).

Iran and Hamas are the geopolitical version of two little shits TP'ing their neighbors house and thinking it's an enormous show of force.

And al the Arab nations perfectly well know they can't destroy Israel. The last serious attempt was 1973, since then it's been clear that Israel could take them with her if she were to go down. Thus it's all through proxies or pinpricks. But while we are being distracted by Gaza look at how much else Iran has basically gobbled up. That's the real point of Hamas.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Israeli Settlers Kill American Citizen in Occupied West Bank, Family Says

Sayfollah Musallet was visiting his family in the village of Al-Mazra'a ash-Sharqiya when settlers allegedly beat him unconscious and blocked an ambulance from reaching him for hours.

zeteo.com

Israeli settlers brutalized an American, beating him unconscious and blocking an ambulance from reaching him, according to the victim’s family. The young Palestinian-American was pronounced dead by the time he arrived at a hospital.

Sayfollah Musallet, who was in his 20s, was visiting his family in the Palestinian town of Al-Mazra'a ash-Sharqiya. Two of his cousins, Fatmah Muhammad and another, granted anonymity due to safety concerns, say he had arrived in June. Born in Florida, Musallat grew up in the town of Port Charlotte.

The Israeli military is reportedly investigating the killing.

The State Department and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Note that everything there is taking them at their word. And note:

His family said in a statement he was beaten "while he was protecting his family's land from settlers who were attempting to steal it." The settlers, according to the family's statement, surrounded Musallet for more than three hours, preventing paramedics from reaching him and "providing life-saving aid."

Really, now, how do you walk off with a piece of land?

Understand that most of this "settler" violence looks an awful lot like they are defending themselves, not attacking. It is quite possible for an attacker to end up shot in the back by a defender (attacker sees gun, flees--but the shoot/don't-shoot decision takes longer than the track target decision--look at such things 1 second before the shot was fired to see what they were shooting at), but it's pretty unlikely for someone fleeing to get hit in the front--yet somehow it's common in the West Bank.

And from elsewhere on that site:

From the time that I woke up Tuesday morning, dressed my children, fed them breakfast, and sat down at my computer to write this article, three children died of starvation in Gaza.

Yet somehow Hamas can't even manage to find any of the dead to put in front of the camera?

That site is not remotely honest.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It is the last hours to martyrdom, insha'Allah. I am wondering if there is a more beautiful thing. The more beautiful thing is only my mother, but I'm not sure. The comparison is very difficult. Martyrdom or my mother?

It sounds like he planned to get himself killed.

One ship resisted, the people on that ship had made martyrdom videos. Clearly planned.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So now the Israelis are bombing Damascus because they're so worried about the Druze. What kind of Barbosian like excuses are there for these Israeli acts of aggression?

Netanyahu is hellbent on making sure Syria doesn't stand a chance.

Following calls in Israel to help Druze in Syria, scores of Israeli Druze broke through the border fence on Wednesday, linking up with Druze on the Syrian side, a Reuters witness said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli military was working to save the Druze and urged Israeli Druze citizens not to cross the border. The Israeli military said it was working to safely return civilians who had crossed.
U.S. Syria envoy Tom Barrack, who has praised Syria's new rulers and declared in May that peace was possible between Syria and Israel, condemned violence against civilians in Sweida.
"All parties must step back and engage in meaningful dialogue that leads to a lasting ceasefire. Perpetrators need to be held accountable," he said.

When the US envoy puts out this type of statement it means our side is wrong but we can't flat out say it.

And I'm sure the Israeli Druze had a hell of a time breaking through the border fence. They must have overwhelmed whatever Israeli security forces there were. Twenty dollars and my left nut says there was little if any resistance in crossing the border.

Are you not aware of how many of the Druze in Syria are being massacred by the new regime?
(Update, found the tab I meant to post before):

Syrian regime forces execute Druze civilians, reports say: 'Adopted brutal tactics'

Syrian government declares ceasefire, but deadly clashes persist in Sweida; over 200 killed as Druze accuse al-Sharaa loyalists of atrocities; Israel strikes in response

www.ynetnews.com

Even Wikipedia manages to admit it:

April 2025 massacres of Syrian Druze - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

As does the BBC:

'They shot patients in beds' – BBC hears claims of massacre at Suweida hospital

The BBC visits Suweida's National Hospital where staff claim patients were killed by Syrian government forces.

www.bbc.com

But you automatically blame Israel and ignore what they are reacting to. And since it's not about blaming Israel we can be reasonably confident the images are true.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You are misinformed. According to the UN, among children, the proportion of malnourished had almost doubled since March.

You have provided no evidence to support your counterfactual explanations.

Since you seem to think the UN is a credible source of information it's clear you are misinformed. I've gone into a long explanation with NHC over this--any group that supposedly verified the data yet missed the obvious stuff Israel caught did not actually verify the data--and thus everything else should also be assumed to be Hamas propaganda.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I doubt anyone understands and agrees with your distinctions.

Sadly, lots of Americans do agree.
Understand is a bit different.

But yeah, there are a bunch of Islamic supremacy apologists in this country, he is not unique.
Tom

Can you actually elaborate on that? I’d love to know how you concluded that I’m an apologist for Islamic supremacy. You can’t, because it’s a lie. Just say you don’t like being challenged and move on.

The problem is that you do exactly what the Islamists want you to do. I believe you have been duped, Z doesn't think it's possible you're blind to it, I don't know where TomC stands on that.

So the Islamists want me to recognize Israel and support its efforts to ensure security by removing Hamas from Gaza? That’s... interesting.

You are against anything that would actually work against Hamas. They don't care that you don't like them, they just care that you do what their propaganda tells you to do.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You say to wipe them off the face of the Earth, but you prohibit anything less than perfection in doing so.

No, you’re claiming that I demand perfection, but that’s pure fiction you made up. Or better yet, it's just an emotional reaction to reading words written by brown folks, a tendency to interpret everything in the most negative light possible. I’m not the only forum user expressing the opinion that civilian safety is a concern (the state of Israel does it too btw), yet you, DrZoidberg, and TomC seem to single me out with this 'Hamas puppet' nonsense. Wonder why.

Why do you keep making this about racism?

You claim to not demand perfection but you have objected to anything that isn't perfection. You focus on "civilian safety", meaning that Hamas can defend anything by putting enough civilians in the way.

None of us are saying that civilians are enemy combatants--we are saying that just because someone has some indication that they are civilian is not proof they are. And we recognize that human shield deaths are on the side that used the human shields.

If that’s the case, then I agree. What I’ve been pushing back on is the rhetoric that lumps all Palestinians in with Hamas, whether it’s blaming them for an election most of them weren’t even alive to vote in, or ignoring the fact that Hamas has maintained power largely through force.

As I've said repeatedly, they are pawns. I'm not lumping them, but I recognize the reality that the civilians of a nation will suffer for the wars of it's leaders.

The real issue here, talking to all three of you, is that no matter what I say, you’ll just keep repeating the same nonsense. So I’m done. You don’t have to trouble yourselves with the opinions of this brown person anymore.

You continue to repeat Hamas propaganda.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Israel’s One-State Reality

Reading this article really changed my perception of the conflict. It retrospect it shouldn't have, because it was obvious all along, I was just too stupid to notice.

I would like for those here more supportive of Israel to read it and comment on it.

They're bonkers. A one-state solution is not viable.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think that’s a solid and thought-provoking article. Unfortunately, I suspect many will dismiss it by focusing on perceived bias rather than engaging with the core facts it presents. I used to support the two-state solution as the most realistic and just outcome. But looking at the current situation, expanding settlements, political fragmentation among Palestinians, rising extremism on both sides, and the repeated collapse of meaningful negotiations , it’s becoming harder to see that path as viable anymore.

That’s not solely the fault of one side; it’s the result of a long chain of missteps, bad-faith actions, and missed opportunities by multiple actors , Israeli, Palestinian, regional, and international. The article does a decent job confronting that reality.

The problem is Iran will not permit a peaceful solution.

And there has never been meaningful diplomacy, it's always been a game to fool the west. Arafat walked rather than make a counter-offer and there has never been anything more than can-kicking since.

And of course there is rising extremism in Israel--because the terrorists keep teaching them the lesson over and over: extremist governments protect the people better than moderate ones. You want to see moderation in Israel, make steps towards moderation produce positive rather than negative outcomes.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't like to get into these arguments because I don't think they accomplish a thing, but I will gift an article written by an Israeli who, not only served in the IDF, but is an expert on genocide. I think he knows a lot more than those of you who refuse to believe that Israel's actions equate with genocide and I hope that some of you will at least read what he has to say and what he bases his opinion on. I'm quoting just a small portion of the article where this scholar makes his case.

And proceeds to repeat Hamas propaganda.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Israel’s One-State Reality

Reading this article really changed my perception of the conflict. It retrospect it shouldn't have, because it was obvious all along, I was just too stupid to notice.

I would like for those here more supportive of Israel to read it and comment on it.

I only had to get as far as:

"a Greater Israel defined not just as a Jewish state but one in which the law enshrines Jewish supremacy over all Palestinians who remain there."
to stop caring that it's behind a paywall.

There's plenty of anti-Jewish bigotry in the UN, Western media, and this thread to be more than sufficient.
Tom

Really? You think the article is antisemitic?

And you think it's not???

 

[Loren Pechtel]

yet you, DrZoidberg, and TomC seem to single me out with this 'Hamas puppet' nonsense. Wonder why.

Disagree. They do it to us all.

I get why it might feel that way, your views often line up with mine, so when I’m targeted, you end up getting caught in the crossfire by association. And yeah, you’ve spoken up in my defense, but that’s just it, it’s in my defense. To be fair, I haven’t seen them directly label you a Hamas propagandist.

As far as I can tell, Loren has labelled us all Hamas propagandists and Dr Z has called us all anti semites.

1) Even if true, how is that about race?

2) I have not labeled you Hamas propagandists. I have pointed out that you are parroting Hamas propaganda, but I believe you have been duped, not that you actually support Hamas. You accept the Hamas fairy tales as truth and come to conclusions that would be reasonable if the fairy tales were true. Just look at the MAGAs--same thing, other direction. You can see they have fallen for disinformation, you don't see that you have also.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As far as I can tell, Loren has labelled us all Hamas propagandists and Dr X has called us all anti semites

Anybody who confuses the Gazan use of civilians as cannon fodder/human shields for Israeli collective punishment qualifies as a Hamas propagandist.

Disagree, as that implies intent that I do not think exists.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

He’s not. You, Dr Z and LP play race cards, just different “suits”.

Please be more specific. Where, exactly, did any of us play a race card?

This is but a sample.
From DrZoidberg
“The Palestinians have had 70 years to stop trying to murder Jews at every opportunity...” (Post 7863)
Yes, Muslims (and everybody else who wants to live in peace with their neighours) have to accept that they're not the master race. “ (Post 7743)

And that's a race card?

First, "Muslim" is not a race. And second, it's about accepting they have to share rather than dominate.

From you
“But as long as the Palestinians don't want to get rid of leadership like Hamas, enough to get it done, the best bet Israel has is destroying the ability to launch military attacks like Oct 7.” Post 4029

And that a race card how?

From LP
“With anything related to Israel/Palestine, figure that anything that should be there but is missing is favorable to Israel. You will almost never be wrong.” Post 9199

Again, I see no races.

And I'm talking about the accuracy of what we see and read. Don't look so much at what's there, look at what's not there. Same problem we so often have when bystanders record something--the important bit is already over before the cameras rolled, the camera is capturing the consequences, not the cause.