wargenocideWar. It’s a conflict in a highly urbanised area with one side (hint: not Israel) actively using civilians as human shields. Of course there’s civilian casualties, that simply can’t be prevented in war, they can’t even be minimised if one side actively prevents it.
If you care about Palestinian lives then you want Hamas to surrender or to be destroyed. If you don’t then all you really want is to prolong the conflict, because Hamas has made it abundantly clear that they will not stop attacking Israeli civilians, forcing retaliation, and that they do not care one bit how many Palestinians die in that retaliation. They cannot be negotiated with.
Edit - it’s remarkable how hard y’all are ignoring who started this escalation with an utterly and inexcusably barbaric attack on innocent civilians.
Genocide. Can you provide any other explanation for cutting off food and water to the civilian population? This is indefensible. There is no purpose other than to kill or harm the innocent, and they cannot claim this was “unintentional” in any way. Even before we get into the various statements from Israeli officials.
Here is the relevant part of the definition of genocide:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
You only need to do one of these things with the intent to destroy for it to be genocide. Israel has done these 3 out of 5 total. Support them if you want but let’s be clear about what is actually happening here.
By this definition nearly everything the Allies did in WWII was genocide. To name just a few:
-firebombing of German cities (such as Dresden)
-unrestricted submarine warfare
-bombing of Tokyo
-Hiroshima/Nagasaki
So maybe, just maybe, as ridiculous as this sounds, maybe we should learn from the past, instead of repeating it.
Out of curiosity, what do you think is the right thing to do? Ignore the terrorist attack by the legitimately elected Gaza government? Why wouldn’t they keep doing it if you did that?
They’ve done that for a long time with rockets fired at (and killing civilians) in terrorist attacks that NO other country on earth would tolerate.
Negotiate for your hostages, cede a mile or two of Israel in a perimeter around Gaza as a DMZ, and ask for a UN peackeeping service.
Maybe mine the everloving fucking hell out of the DMZ as well
Eww mines are such a horrible problem worldwide. I get the intent, though.
They’ve done permiter security at crazy levels already. Hamas with the help of Quatar, Iran, Iraq, Hezbolla, etc… they have failed. To a spectacular degree. October’s attack makes trying to build a better wall or mined areas not likely as an effective solution.
Plus, then you get all the recriminations Bout racist apartheid, and nothing gets better.
There have been negotiations. But negotiating with terrorists is a debatable strategy, at the very least, right? Don’t have to disagree or agree, I’m just saying we are both aware that’s a strategy that has proponents and opponents for a reason.
The UN has had decades to inject a peacekeeping force. But the sad truth is that UN peacekeeping missions have a terrible failure rate, for many reasons, and I’m not just throwing stones at the UN here. But the reality is the outcomes from their deployment have been wanting.
That said, I’d love Israel to pull put and have an UN force in there instead. Even with the UN schools having taught anti-Israel sentiments and militarism in the UN printed text books.
Even with the UNs hostility towards Israel, I definitely would prefer them there. With the responsibility for preventing further attacks on Israel and Gaza and real repercussions for failure.
But no more mines. I wish mines were banned. I know they won’t ever be… but so awful.
I’ll say I appreciate your sincerity and taking the time to answer. And just because I disagree that this would help, doesn’t mean I don’t respect your position. We just disagree. I do sincerely want to find a convincing alternative to the current state of affairs as well. And know that my position is what it is because I don’t see a clear alternative atm. I’d love for that to change.
I’m much more worried about a future where we would not be willing to repeat doing whatever is required to stop a fundamentally evil empire that is actively committing actual genocide.
What would have been a better course of action for the Allies that wouldn’t result in greater death and suffering? I can’t think of anything myself… but perhaps you have some ideas beyond surrendering?
That’s a false choice if I ever saw one, either commit war crimes or surrender? Lmao
The only way to stop Hamas is to kill all of the innocent children. If you kill 10k I heard you officially have beaten terrorism and they all just quit.
For them? Idk.
For today, with fucking sword missiles? A little more precision guided weaponry, a lot less dumb bombs.
But what with Israeli soldiers, burning food and water, destroying toys, cutting off food and water, and killing the Israeli hostages, and straight up admitting that they are keeping Gaza and that a two state solution will not happen?
I figure there will be a lot more innocent children killed.
BOYCOTT, DIVEST, SANCTION!
Fuck Hamas and fuck Israel!
Atrocities of the past don’t excuse modern day atrocities. Your whataboutism is meaningless.
This is the UN dude, I didn’t write it. What’s your definition?
-Hiroshima/Nagasaki
I mean… This may not be the fantastic point you think it is.
In regards to nuclear weapons use in WWII, the dominant narrative is that the alternative is a ground invasion with greater loss of life. I guess the Allies just surrendering was an option to… but that’s would have lead to more genocide, no?
And while I know that’s the UN definition. I’m saying I disagree with it for being too broad and including most forms of warfare. I think actually planned slaughter of an entire group with the attempt of elimination is worth keeping a separate (and worse) category.
Most accept that the horrors of WWII committed by the Allies were ‘worth it’ to stop the more evil Axis. But if it actually was worth it is perhaps worth debating, I don’t disagree.
Yeah that was American propaganda at the time. Actual studies on Okinawa fighting suggest far fewer troop losses. The Japanese leadership themselves said the bombs were impressive but conventional bombing raids weren’t far off in power. They were far more scared of still being at war when Russia reached them.
No, that’s the dominant narrative in the US, but the data, even the US government then-contemporary data, doesn’t support that narrative in the slightest.
Any sources for that? I’ve never seen anything that indicated that Japan was going to surrender, just philosophizing about if it was justified to drop the bombs.
I guess the Allies just surrendering was an option to… but that’s would have lead to more genocide, no?
Yeah I mean there were probably options between surrender and nuclear warfare, but I think this is beside the point. Clearly it was at least collective punishment and a war crime, that’s how I would describe it.
And while I know that’s the UN definition. I’m saying I disagree with it for being too broad and including most forms of warfare.
It doesn’t include most forms of warfare because it has to be, “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” So the US in Afghanistan, despite being shitty, were not doing genocide. For example. The allied liberation of France? Fine. The goal was not to kill Germans, even though it was a necessary component.
I think actually planned slaughter of an entire group with the attempt of elimination is worth keeping a separate (and worse) category.
Yeah I mean obviously putting people in extermination camps is worse than starving them, in a way, but also, if the numbers were the same, does it matter? Is the Holodomor “not as bad” as Pol Pot’s genocide?
What would you call this category you propose? And what word would you use for what Israel is doing?
probably options between surrender and nuclear warfare
Yes, a ground invasion. Which was mentioned in the previous comment. And no, I don’t think it was intended to ‘punish’ civilians, but rather to make clear that the Japanese empire could not win. A common claim is that it actually saved civilian lives.
the US in Afghanistan, despite being shitty, were not doing genocide
Agreed. But they were killing a part of an ethnic group in the process. And it included civilians at times. Doesn’t seem vastly dissimilar. And the goal in the fire bombings of Germany was absolutely to kill German civilians and it was explicitly stated as such.
if the numbers were the same, does it matter?
Yes, very much so. The intent and methods absolutely matter. 9/11 killed thousands of civilians, but it would absurd to consider it genocide.
Is the Holodomor “not as bad” as Pol Pot’s genocide?
Simply put, yes. But more importantly, they are fundamentally different things, which is what I’m pointing out.
What would you call this category you propose?
Doesn’t matter to me as long as it’s agreed upon.
what word would you use for what Israel is doing?
I’d probably just stick with warfare. Brutal and horrible warfare. They are waging war to destroy an enemy that attacked them, and in doing so are killing a fuck load of civilians in the process. Sort of like Britain in WWII.
I’ll pose a question back, how many civilian deaths/collateral damage does it take for it to be genocide in your eyes? What if the Israeli’s only killed 1 single civilian as collateral damage? 10? 100? 1000?
To me, genocide requires intentional effort to end a group of people and/or their culture through specific and measurable actions. Some definitions agree with me, others don’t.
So you ignore the question?
Which question?
How do you propose the logistics of providing supplies to Hamas-controlled areas should work?
If you don’t respond to my point why should I respond to yours?
Oh yeah, because I have self respect: not sure about the specifics, but maybe don’t cut off food and water to civilians? You know, if you lock down an area and control the water supply, maybe don’t use this as leverage? There are also many aid trucks Israel could simply allow in from Rafah. I really don’t see your point here, other than a pathetic attempt to avoid admitting this is obviously genocide.
Charming. And no, Isreal cannot simply allow in supplies because it would also be suppling Hamas, and it would potentially open a route for the smuggling of actual military supplies.
You are totally ignoring my point because you don’t want to admit to what is obviously a genocide.
Good luck with that! But clearly you aren’t capable of having an honest conversation so I’m out. Hope you feel good about starving innocent civilians.
I’m not, I simply disagree with you.
But if you are unable to understand that, bye, blocked ya, since that’s apparently what you want. Hope you can sleep with the knowledge that you’re supporting a group that proudly parades stripped, raped and broken women through the streets.
No, Israel cannot possibly allow these civilians to eat.
They must starve until the last Qassam Brigade fighter is dead alongside the whole 2.3 million.
Instead they sent Hamas money. God forbid we let people eat and have economic activity. But it’s perfectly okay to fund Hamas.
The mask is fully off, how can you still support this?
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No. It’s a conflict in a highly urbanised area with one side (hint: Israel) deliberately bombing targets to cause as many civilian casualties as they can
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/
No, it’s a response to the elected and majority supported government of Gaza’s war crimes in the horrible October terrorists attacks. It’s unfortunate for the 43% who don’t support hamas that the rest of Gaza shelters and supports them.
Leaving Gaza’s government’s attack unanswered would have just encouraged them more. Now, they will be wiped out as they should be.
Doesn’t seem vastly different from the firebombing of German cities by the Allies.
War is horrible. But it isn’t always genocide.
Those are all war crimes by today’s standards. We looked at what we’d done and realised it was wrong.
So then the bombing of Dresden was genocide?
Certainly a war crime. Yes.
So then it isn’t vastly different. Yes?
One of the worst war crimes of all this has been Hamas operating from civilian areas and buildings. Co-locations strip locations of their protected status and make them legitimate targets by international law.
One of the worst crimes that can be committed is co-location. The CIA has done it too with medical groups around the world… and those agents and anyone in that chain of command should also be charged with war crimes.
Atrocities of the past don’t excuse modern day atrocities. Your whataboutism is meaningless.
Many would argue those atrocities of the past were justified.
Do evil things to prevent greater evil. If you disagree with that, that’s totally ok too. But what would you have had the Allies do in WWII? Just like, lose?
I literally said war is horrible. I’m not at all saying it’s a happy fun thing we should strive towards.
War is horrible enough without war crimes. We don’t need to juice it
You aren’t very up-to-date on modern warfare if you think Israel is trying to cause as many civilian casualties as possible.
Fareed Zakaria reported this past weekend that Israel has the dropped the equivalent tonnage of two nuclear bombs on Gaza and 18,000 people have died. Yes, of course that’s bad, but two actual nuclear bombs, or the equivalent tonnage dropped indiscriminately, would probably have killed hundreds of thousands. They obviously aren’t trying to kill as many civilians as possible. The hyperbole isn’t helpful.
Because if you do it slow, people like you won’t notice, until it’s too late, and then you’ll just say that we should forgive them because it’s in the past
They said they’re keeping Gaza.
No, he’s saying they could have removed ALL of Gaza without any invasion, IF they didn’t care about avoiding civilian casualties.
Pretending they’re intentionally trying to murder civilians like the elected government of Gaza did in October is disingenuous.
If Israel were intentionally targeting civilians, they’d have killed WAY more than 18,000–by literally magnitudes.
Because if you do it slow, people like you won’t notice, until it’s too late, and then you’ll just say that we should forgive them because it’s in the past
The faster we can kill every member of Hamas, the better. The sooner we can ease the suffering of the Palestinians being used by Hamas, the better.
who started this escalation
that’s a very careful phrase, that. “this escalation” as though everything was fine back when millions of people were living in an open air prison and the flow of food, water and people was controlled by an adversarial foreign power that was denying them basic human rights, and the problem only started when someone who isn’t any of them committed a terrorist attack. “Look what they made me do to you” is the language of a narcissistic abuser.
When you justify a deliberate war crime by the Gaza government, when you align yourself with terrorists and apologize for them and grasp for justifcations… that’s a VERY bad place to be.
It’s good that people who are being radicalized and express support for terrorists are being tracked.
🥱
The problem with the word ‘terrorism’ is it makes you seem like you’re immediately the good guy and anyone who disagrees with you is a bad guy. Even if the “good guys” are killing 10x as many civilians as the “terrorists.”
More people are waking up to these tactics, so they are becoming less effective. You’re going to have to come up with a new strategy in the future.
A lot of people need to wake up and realize that evaluating conflicts based on uneven casuality numbers is super sick and poorly thought out.
That it’s the driver for so much mistaken hostility speaks volumes.
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In 2023 we have missiles that are so accurate we can arm them with swords instead of explosives.
Almost half of the missiles Israel has used were unguided
Yes, it’s too bad they don’t have more of the high tech ones. I guess we’ll have to give them more military aid so they can afford them.
Man you really worked to miss the point there.
Impressive!
Thanks!
ignoring who started this escalation
Israel has killed more civilians in Gaza every year before the Hamas attack.
utterly and inexcusably barbaric attack on innocent civilians.
Israel has killed at least 10x as many civilians as Hamas since the beginning of the attacks.
Sure, casualities can’t be avoided in war, but why in this particular war have there been literally thousands of children killed in a matter of two months? Innocent people killed at a rate unimaginable when compared to any conflict currently.
“Who started it” might work in kindergarten. Might.
Israel response is disproportional. It is also a single leaked document or an accidentally honest statement away from showing a clear genocidal intent. For now you could argue that it’s a sparkling ethnic cleansing.
Hamas being open about its genocidal intentions doesn’t render Israel indisputably good.
How exactly do you determine “who started it”? Is it based on who attacked first? Is it based on who killed the most people? How are you determining who started this escalation to be so sure?
How does it feel to be a modern day Holocaust denier? I’m sure the Germans felt they were only waging war against minorities as well.
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The downvotes from the Hamas supporters are a badge of honor. It’s Gaza’s elected terrorist government and has 57% support from Gaza residents according to the latest pole.
Always be a threat to Nazis and terrorists, and wear downvotes and bans with honor!
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I think they’re this close from losing support from every western nation. Keep protesting. Let your representatives know you don’t support this genocidal aggression against Palestine.
Israel can never really lose US government support. It’s too well entrenched. The most they’ll ever get is lukewarm support instead of full throated support (while military and financial aid is unimpeded in either case) and even that Israel will call antisemitic.
Of course. But they might stop sending military equipment until Israel gets its act together. At least I hope.
Wym, it’s only getting worse in Gaza day after day. Israel have totally fucked themselves.
I think you are over-estimating the anger at Israel in the West. Sure, polls show that a majority of people want a ceasefire. And, of course, people want Israel to minimize civilian casualties. That’s just common human decency.
But war is basically entertainment when you are watching it on TV from thousands of miles away and it isn’t personallly costing you anything. It has always been that way. Therefore, in reality, the average work-a-day adult in the vast majority of the world doesn’t give a shit about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict except in the most abstract way.
It comes down to media and drama, I think. Everybody supported Ukraine when the conflict was fresh and dramatic and the Russians were on the run. Most people still support Ukraine, of course, but now that the conflict has bogged down and is getting less interesting media coverage, people are less interested. Israel and Palestine have captured the media’s interest now and there are lots of human interest stories to mine for clicks, but that will die down soon enough. All the drama of the Trump situation and the 2024 election season is just around the corner. Plus, some other conflict may grab our attention. China is getting pretty aggressive with the Philipinnes. Venezuela might invade Guyana, right in the US’s backyard. So many potentially dramatic events could draw media attention away.
As long as Israel mouths the right platitudes about minimizing civilian casualties and rooting out Hamas terrorists, they’ll be fine with the vast, vast majority of adults, not just in the West, but world-wide.
If this weren’t a global moment of systemic realization - sure. From a cynical, “always bet on the null” perspective, sure, but I can’t agree it boils down to drama.
Something deeper is happening. I’m seeing people who I know for certain wouldn’t know the context of/around settler-colonialism start to synthesize that information into their own national and local contexts.
Something is happening. People are learning - I don’t think the genie is going back in the bottle. Thank god. All that’s left is for people to learn how simple individual praxis can be to start doing and suddenly we’re looking at something very, very wide.
I do agree that there is a major change happening. In my own culture, the former British colonies of Canada, USA, Australia, and New Zealand are all engaging in various forms of truth and reconciliation with their indigenous populations, and that coming-to-terms affects how we perceive the rest of the world. I’m sure this is true in other countries as well.
I would note, however, that this may be closer to the end of a process than the beginning. I don’t know that for a certainty, but I think back on the post-WW2 era when America refused to support efforts by Europeans to maintain control of British, Dutch and French overseas colonies. The anti-colonialist project has been underwayfor some time. One can’t help but wonder if the self-reflection required to address problems at home comes only after criticizing others, and that’s what I mean by being possibly closer to the end of a process. Anyway, that’s a tangent.
Back to current events. As you say, I certainly felt like something was happening during the Arab Spring. I certainly felt like something was happening when we all rallied behind Ukraine after being invaded by imperialist Russia. I felt like something was happening when the Hong Kong democracy protests were in full swing and the world was interested. In all of those cases, autocracy has the upper hand again and the support of Western democracies is cooling off. Also, technology may be favoring the authoritarians rather than the democrats.
I agree with you that the genie doesn’t go back in the bottle with regard to awareness of injustice. That is a major achievement that I do not wish to downplay. But the examples above and the waning of enthusiasm to support these causes once they start to falter is what makes me a bit cynical about what we call people’s “attention span”. There does seem to be a pattern to these events similar to a dramatic arc. If the novel gets bogged down in the middle and we don’t reach the climax in a reasonable amount of time, our attention wanders and we look for a new book, so to speak. Yes, that’s cynical when applied to real events and I hope I’m wrong, but you probably see where I’m coming from.
Israel-Palestine is just not clear cut enough for most people and there is no realistic solution. Israelis and Palestinians appear to be locked in a perpetual conflict and, morally, they trade sides as to who is the “good guy” and who is the “bad guy.”
In terms of force, Palestine can’t end it because they lack the means. Israel can’t end it because they can’t get away with mass killing or deportation for too long. As they say, the world opinion clock is always ticking once Israel launches a new offensive. In terms of diplomacy, it always comes back to the two-state solution. Maybe that will work out someday but no one is holding their breath.
In the meantime, I cannot help coming to the conclusion that the governments of the world, and the vast, vast majority of their people, watch Israel-Palestine mostly with a view towards containment and not letting an actual gas-chamber level genocide happen. Outside of that, we all know that injustice happens every day all over the world (see my examples above), and there is apparently little we can (or will) do about it. The Israel-Palestine conflict is a classic and proven quagmire with no realistic solution unless the Israeli and Palestinian populations want one enough to make major compromises. They aren’t in that state now and haven’t been for at least 15 years (some would say they have never been in that state). Thus, I predict that the world will do little, little will change in terms of the fundamental dynamics of the conflict, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will go back to more-or-less the status quo. I am happy to hear counter-arguments.
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Goals must be achievable.
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Betcha they draw down in a matter of weeks, not months
I could see it happening. Both sides want to continue.
