Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[TomC]

“Overwhelming”. fortifies my point.

What point is that?
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So it's okay the Gazans are slaughtered?

What does that have to do with ridiculing a group of people for being useful idiots for a terrorist organization that'd just as soon kill them as look at them?

As to your question: of course not! But Gaza started this war, and they have it in their power to end it.

Hamas (which is the de facto government of Gaza) and allied terror groups (Islamic Jihad, Popular Resistance Committees and such) should have capitulated unconditionally a year ago. Then much suffering would have been spared the Gazan people.

Gaza is being rendered into Dresden. How many more Gazans do you think need to die before Gazans overlook all the death and side with Israel... with Hamas guns to their heads of course.

The Gazans have no realistic choice the matter. They are victims. What you miss is that Iran is the oppressor.

I've literally said Iran is the primary source of the issue... many times.

 

[laughing dog]

“Overwhelming”. fortifies my point.

What point is that?
Tom

I didn’t chew my children’s food for them, and I don’t intend to chew it for you.

 

[TomC]

“Overwhelming”. fortifies my point.

What point is that?
Tom

I didn’t chew my children’s food for them, and I don’t intend to chew it for you.

In other words,
I'd rather not explain why I said what I did.

[removed]
Tom

 

[TomC]

By Hamas' own data there have only been 60 malnutrition deaths.

. “Only” 60 malnutrition deaths.

“Only” 60 malnutrition deaths.

“Only” 60 malnutrition deaths.

After all, to paraphrase the famous moral philosopher Jodi Ernst, “we all die”.

Hamas is holding over two million people hostage in a tiny warzone, and using them as human shields. They can only find sixty deaths that they can attribute to malnutrition.
I'm not minimizing the suffering. I'm pointing out the responsibility for the suffering.
Tom

You feel you ate, but you aren’t when you point to only one party.

What the hell?
Tom
ETA "You feel you ate, but you aren't" is what I responded to

oops, substitute “are” ffor “ ate”, (sorry for that tupi) but if you think about it, either works.

No it doesn't and never did.
Adding "when you point to only one party" changes the meaning a great deal, but that wasn't in the post I responded to.

Here's the thing. I'm not only pointing to one party. I'm pointing to the party which is overwhelmingly responsible for the current debacle amongst a batch of posters who mostly handwave the reason for the suffering in Gaza. It's Hamas and their supporters.
Tom

“Overwhelming”. fortifies my point.

In English, when one writes “ the responsibility “ , literate readers take that to mean a dingle source.

What the fuck is a "dingle source"?
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

By bringing it up in this conflict you are impliying that they have any say in IDF actions. I think that is antisemitic

Calling out Israel for ethnic cleansing and genocide is not anti-semitic.

When there's no truth to the accusations it is antisemitic. Showing a lot of dead Gazans isn't showing ethnic cleansing.

Stereotyping people or “kind of people” is the opposite of not being a racist. We are dealing with individual terrorists or small groups of terrorists. The vast majority of more than a billion Muslims desire the same thing as most everyone else, to live in peace. The Palestinians are under deep provocation because Israel stole their land in 1948.

Except when it comes down to it an awful lot of them will side with the jihadists rather than against "Islam". It's like all the idiots that voted for The Felon--choosing a side that they perfectly well should know will lead to bad things.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Calling out Israel for ethnic cleansing and genocide is not anti-semitic.

I also despise the word anti-Semitic, it's stupidly imprecise. What @DrZoidberg is calling out is the rampant anti-Zionism, which commonly spreads to anti-Jewish bigotry.

Most anti "Zionism" is antisemitism in disguise. Thus I quibble with "spreads to".

What you are doing is blaming the Israeli leadership for protecting their people from an implacably murderous attack. That's not ethnic cleansing or genocide.
Tom

The thing is to admit that it's not ethnic cleansing is to admit that all those bodies are due to Hamas. But the leftist faith is that the underdog is always in the right. Not blaming Israel is blasphemy, and as so often happens reason flies out the window when people are confronted with blasphemous statements.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Reported.

You're not the paragon of virtue. Your view of the conflict is twisted to a bizarre degree. You see the perpetrators as victims. Your narrative couldn't be more twisted

What exactly do you think justifies Hamas to take Israeli hostages? And what justifies them to keep them? Until you can answer that I suggest you get off your high horse.

I'm very happy there's still some decent people supporting Israel right now. They need it. The world has gone sick with antisemitism

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Two Israeli embassy staffers shot dead in downtown Washington, lone suspect held
But when a couple Israelis get gunned down the world's suppose to mourn. Because their lives have so much more value than thousands of Palestinian children.

There's a difference. These are random Jews around the world.

The Palestinians in Gaza are citizens of a country that declared war on Israel and uses it's own population as human shields.

Why wouldn’t take whatever extreme measure they need to take to get the hostages back? It's on the Gazan government to take responsibility for the safety of the Palestinian people. Do you think they’re doing that by keeping the hostages?

You appear to be justifying ineffective methods of getting the hostages back to get the hostages back. That seems quite ridiculous.

A: Look, we support these draconian methods because we want to get the hostages back.
B: These methods have been put in place for months and we haven't gotten an additional hostage released. There methods don't appear to be working.
A: You are being seduced by Hamas and the media, you anti-Semite!

1) It's gotten back some of the hostages.

2) It's reduced Hamas' ability to take more. Years worth of military infrastructure has gone boom, that's going to push back the next attack.

3) Hamas could end this. They don't want to.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You appear to be justifying ineffective methods of getting the hostages back to get the hostages back. That seems quite ridiculous.

The Palestinians in Gaza are citizens of a country that declared war on Israel and uses it's own population as human shields.

I wonder why Jimmy didn't respond to this, the main point of Zoid's post?
Probably because it's hard to strawman such an obvious reality.
Tom

That is easy to respond to.

Gaza is not a country and it did not declare war on anyone. A small band of terrorists over whom the Palestinian people have no control committed atrocities and innocent people are being collectively punished for that, which is a war crime.

A small band? Last I saw (and that's a bit out of date) Israel was saying they've killed 20,000 terrorists (all groups, not just Hamas.) Hamas claims to have "recruited" (you join up or else!) 15,000 replacements. (Which is an indirect admission they've lost 15,000.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Please stop slurring people as anti-Semitic for opposing Israeli genocide against Gazans. No one here hates Jews. This latest slur will be reported.

Please stop slurring Israelis by referring to their self defense as genocide.

I won’t stop telling the truth. Killing tens of thousands. of people, starving them, driving them from their homes, are war crimes —all under the wonderful banner Operation Gideon’s Chariots. Go follow the link I posted to what that means.

Nope.

The number dead says nothing about whether the actions are war crimes. Fundamentally, a war crime is targeting civilians or failing to take reasonable care to protect them. The fact that you equate it with a war crime is a direct factor in why there are so many dead: for Hamas to parade in front of the cameras to deceive you into thinking there was a war crime.

Starving them--by Hamas' own data there are 60 deaths and never have we seen family members that looked like they were starving. Compare that to an actual famine: half a million dead kids in Sudan. Furthermore, once again you don't realize what the rules say. Hamas steals much of the aid--which removes any Israeli obligation to permit it.

Driving them from their homes--if that were the objective you would be right. But, as always, with such matters military trumps civilian. When Hamas uses them as cover it becomes a legitimate military action to tell them to go elsewhere to avoid providing cover for Hamas.

Geneva protects things which are purely civilian. It does not protect things which are used for military purposes.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The real meaning of “from the river to the sea,” and the obscenity of our political discourse — again, courtesy of Slavoj Zizek.

Finding an Israeli use of the term does not address the Palestinian use of the term. Thus this guy is deceiving you.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Gaza is not a country and it did not declare war on anyone. A small band of terrorists over whom the Palestinian people have no control committed atrocities and innocent people are being collectively punished for that, which is a war crime.

Change "country" to "territory" then the rest of your response is crap.

And your claim is still crap, even if you change “country” to “territory.”

Hamas did not “declare war,” they committed terrorist atrocities. The Gazan people did not do that — they are victims, not perpetrators.

Yes, the Gazan people are victims. Iran, via Hamas, is the perpetrator.

And the 10/7 attack sure waddled and quacked even though there was no formal declaration of war. Hint: nobody declares war anymore.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I recognize that not every Gazan had any say in the buildup or the attacks. I was out in the streets opposing the US invasion of Iraq, that doesn't change the reality "America invaded Iraq"!

So you'd be okay with Iraqi soldiers bombing US hospitals, killing US ambulance drivers, and starving US children because all Americans did it.

You realize every hospital in Gaza is a Hamas base?

You realize that Israel has repeatedly complained about the misuse of ambulances for military purposes and the Red Crescent (Muslim equivalent to the Red Cross) will not condemn that? In doing so they have forfeited the protections ambulances normally have.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Gazans fired about 10,000 missiles at a neighboring country. They killed and kidnapped a bunch more Israelis. They continue to hold the hostages and launch missiles.
I recognize that not every Gazan had any say in the buildup or the attacks. I was out in the streets opposing the US invasion of Iraq, that doesn't change the reality "America invaded Iraq"!

“Gazans fired missiles.”

Yes—and if that’s where your moral analysis starts and stops, you’re not thinking, you’re excusing. Hamas committed war crimes on Oct 7. But that doesn’t justify turning Gaza into a graveyard. Over 2 million people—half of them children—are being punished for the actions of militants they can’t control and often didn’t vote for.

That's unfortunately what war looks like. If you refuse to allow harm to the civilians of an aggressor you inherently say that we must bow down before any such aggressor.

Gaza is a walled-in, blockaded prison. People can’t flee. They can’t vote. They can’t get food or medical supplies without permission from the state bombing them. And now, after thousands of bombs, mass starvation, and deliberate targeting of civilians, legal experts around the world are calling it what it looks like: genocide.

Except you are not establishing mass starvation, nor deliberate targeting of civilians (although we have multiple examples of Hamas doing just that).

You don’t get to condemn terrorism while justifying state terror on a larger scale. If you really opposed Iraq, prove it wasn’t just performative. Because Gaza is Iraq—but worse, live-streamed, and happening right now.

Terror is about attacking civilians. It is not about attacking military forces even if they are hiding amongst civilians. Thus Israel's actions are not terrorism.

As for Iraq: Do you realize that Saddam killed a lot more of his own people to parade in front of the cameras than both invasions did? Look at what happened with the oil for food deal: Saddam reexported food for money to buy weapons. And he never spent what was allowed, either. Thus all the shortages were on him.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hamas, not “Gazans.” By now it is obvious you are deliberately eliding the distinction to bolster your crap apologetics.

By now it's obvious that Hamas is Gazans leadership. And that the attacks against Israel came from Gaza, so attacking the military strike capabilities that attacked Israel means attacking Gaza.

Leading by violence is not leading, it's tyranny.

Yeah, it's tyranny. Doesn't mean they get a free pass. Must Ukraine refrain from hitting targets in Russia because the people didn't vote for the war??

It's also obvious that you are desperate to blame Israel for the policies and decisions made by the Gazans Who Matter. That's your crap apologetics for violent Muslim terrorists.
Tom

Israel makes all it's own decisions. Nothing else.

Do you really think the Israeli government wouldn't have fallen had they not gone after the 10/7 perpetrators? They would have been replaced by a government that would.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hamas, not “Gazans.” By now it is obvious you are deliberately eliding the distinction to bolster your crap apologetics.

By now it's obvious that Hamas is Gazans leadership. And that the attacks against Israel came from Gaza, so attacking the military strike capabilities that attacked Israel means attacking Gaza.

It's also obvious that you are desperate to blame Israel for the policies and decisions made by the Gazans Who Matter. That's your crap apologetics for violent Muslim terrorists.
Tom

Hamas does not have a “military.” So more crap apologetics from you for Israeli genocide. Also, it seems that all of Israel’s genocide has failed to free the hostages or destroy Hamas. So now what? Do you favor Israel killing most Gazans and driving the rest into exile as Netanyahu’s Final Solution — which is what he has clearly stated? How do you like that Operation Gideon’s Chariots, hmmm?

Hamas has forces that sure waddle and quack as a military.

As for freeing the hostages--some are freed. Zero would be freed if they had followed what you want.

Hamas still insists on fighting. They are the de-facto government of Gaza. I'm sorry for the people trapped in there but they should be blaming Tehran, not Jerusalem.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hamas, not “Gazans.” By now it is obvious you are deliberately eliding the distinction to bolster your crap apologetics.

By now it's obvious that Hamas is Gazans leadership. And that the attacks against Israel came from Gaza, so attacking the military strike capabilities that attacked Israel means attacking Gaza.

It's also obvious that you are desperate to blame Israel for the policies and decisions made by the Gazans Who Matter. That's your crap apologetics for violent Muslim terrorists.
Tom

Also, do NOT label me an apologist for violent Muslim terrorists. I have CONDEMNED the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks. Furthermore, you should realize that condemning violent MUSLIM terrorists, instead of HAMAS terrorists, does not speak well of you. One billion Muslims did not attack Israel on Oct. 7, Yours is the typical Othering slur to indict an entire class of people for the sins of a tiny sliver of them.

It is, of course, perfectly appropriate for me to call you an apologist for Israeli terrorism, since you have not condemned it, as I have condemned Hamas terrorism.

You "condemn" Hamas terrorism but demand that no Gazan civilians be harmed in defending against it. Do you see why we don't believe your condemnation?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'll try to get back to the rest of your post, but this is where you are profoundly wrong and immoral.
Israel was attacked by Gazans and the attack is ongoing. Israel is defending itself.

That's utterly unlike the situation in Iraq in 2003. The USA were the aggressors, without question. We're responsible for the death and destruction because we and our policies caused them. The GWM are the aggressors in this situation. There's nothing like moral parity between an aggressor and a defender.

And the biggest war crime in this situation is Hamas, and their supporters both Gazan and international, using the rest of the Gazans to protect their military strike capabilities.

You’re trying to draw a moral boundary between an “aggressor” and a “defender,” but you’re doing it by erasing context, legal obligations, and the actual scale and nature of the response. Let’s take your claims one by one.

Yes, he's drawing the fundamental boundary: between those who seek atrocity and those who seek to avoid atrocity.

Yes, Hamas committed war crimes on October 7—indisputable. But war crimes do not license more war crimes in return. That’s not “defense.” That’s revenge. And under international law, self-defense is not a blank check for mass killing, especially when civilians are the primary victims.

Chanting "War Crimes!" does not make it so. We have a few cases of what appears to be mistreatment of captives. Any conflict on this scale results in some of that, what counts is how the government deals with it. (And note that the only reason it's even relevant is because they are granting combatant status to those who do not actually qualify. By Geneva they fall into the category of spies/saboteurs and get no protections at all.)

And the reality is that when war is fought on an urbanized territory the primary victims in that territory will be civilians. War is extremely ugly. Blame the aggressor: Tehran.

Collective punishment is a war crime. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that “no protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed.” Yet Israel has razed entire neighborhoods, bombed refugee camps, blocked aid, and engineered famine, all while claiming to be targeting Hamas. Over 35,000 Palestinians are dead—two-thirds of them women and children, according to UN and WHO estimates. That is not proportional, and it’s not morally or legally justified under any doctrine of self-defense.

Razing a neighborhood is not an automatic war crime. Look at those pictures of razed "neighborhoods" and you'll generally notice a pattern: the damage is focused on a line, not on a point. Why would you see a line of damage? Because the bomb exploded in a tunnel. Military target, valid. The fact that it's built under civilians doesn't change that.

Bombed refugee camps. I do not recall any examples of this, but I do recall cases where they dropped near a refugee camp and the camp got damaged by secondaries. Hint: very few civilian things make secondaries. Lots of military things do.

Blocked aid. The aid was being diverted, that makes it military and blocking it is permitted by Geneva. And note that despite dire claims their blocking didn't cause mass famine. But what it did do is put a severe crimp in Hamas operations because they couldn't hijack the aid and sell it for exorbitant prices--and that's where much of their operating funds were coming from.

Engineered famine. Nope, no famine except in the minds of those who want to blame Israel.

As for that 35,000.
1) Way out of date. Current claims are in the ballpark of 50k.
2) Neither the UN nor WHO is remotely credible on this. They're both just parroting Hamas.
3) I've already shown upthread where Hamas inadvertently leaked the truth a couple of times. Far more children have lost their father than their mother, and far more males have amputations than females.

Proportional. That term does not mean what you think it means. In military terms "proportional" is measured in the ratio of military advantage to civilian harm. Ratio, not absolute units. So long as the enemy poses a realistic ability to inflict any harm (and note that simply possessing a weapon capable of reaching any of your units is normally considered to meet this threshold even if not currently in range) you are free to keep killing them. There is no bag limit.

You say “the biggest war crime is Hamas using civilians as shields.” First, yes, if Hamas embeds within civilian infrastructure, that’s a violation. But even if human shields are present, it does not absolve Israel of its legal duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians. You cannot flatten a city and then say the other side made you do it. That’s not defense. That’s a pretext.

You can flatten anything military, anything else too close that gets hit, too bad. "Too close" has undergone considerable revision over the decades, the area bombing of WWII doesn't happen anymore because the weapons have gotten a lot more precise. And you are likewise expected to use the minimum boom that will accomplish the mission.

You talk of razed neighborhoods--but watch some of the video of Israel hitting the tunnels. You see the direct blast effect of the bomb and you see lines of damage radiating from it. Lines where the tunnel collapsed, typically extending far beyond the area directly hit by the blast. The military objective is collapsing the tunnels, the buildings destroyed by the blast are the undesired result. Area goes at the square of radius, if the tunnels are killed farther out than the buildings this strongly suggests the best option is to drop the biggest things available (the 2000# bombs.) (What's happening here is the bombs were fused to explode underground, the tunnels propagate the blast so it no longer dissipates at the square of distance like it does in air.) (Note that there are also the buildings that failed because their foundations were compromised by the tunnel caving in. Those were doomed by anything that collapsed the tunnel and thus shouldn't be counted in either direction.)

Let’s be clear: Gaza is not a sovereign state with a standing army. It is an occupied, blockaded territory under Israeli control—airspace, sea, borders, population registry, electricity, and fuel. The people of Gaza did not “invade” Israel. A militant group did. In response, Israel has unleashed a scale of destruction so vast that multiple UN experts, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the ICJ have all raised the alarm for genocide. This isn’t fringe commentary—it’s grounded in law and fact.

It waddles and quacks as a country. It's being held to the standards of a country.

AI and HRW are water-carriers for the terrorists, both simply assume the underdogs are right. ICJ simply was accepting a case filed by a member country--note that no evidence was provided. And there was another filing involved that sought to redefine genocide because what's been happening in Gaza is not genocide.

And as for “Gazans attacked Israel”—do you understand what it means to trap 2.2 million people for 17 years, half of them children, and then bomb them when militants retaliate? That’s not defending yourself. That’s manufacturing a perpetual enemy and calling the slaughter that follows justified.

You conveniently forget that the fighting long predates that. This has been going on since they failed to destroy Israel back in 1948.

Finally, let’s talk about your moral framing: you say Israel is the “defender” and there’s no “moral parity.” But morality without restraint, without law, and without proportionality isn’t morality. It’s supremacy.

If Hamas using civilians as shields is a war crime—and it is—then Israel killing those civilians anyway, en masse, is not justified. It’s a second, independent war crime. Two wrongs don’t cancel. They compound.

No. The death of human shields is on the side that made them into human shields.

So yes, you’re right that 2003 Iraq was a war of aggression. But if you think this is self-defense, then you’ve redefined defense to mean whatever power says it means—and that’s the same logic Bush used in 2003.

I don't like what happened in 2003 but note that Saddam was hurting his people more than we did. Where we failed abysmally is that they failed to consider what would happen after victory. The reality is that the country fell to an Iranian-backed insurgency.

 

[bilby]

Military target, valid. The fact that it's built under civilians doesn't change that.

It does, according to international law.

Your opinion to the contrary is irrelevant, because you are a nobody; And monstrous, because you are calling for war crimes.