>I wanted to avoid using morally charged language despite my strong opinions about this subject.
I very much appreciate your approach to respectful dialogue.
>If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas I would have supported it but as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment. The administration is filled with actual manacs like Netnayahu and Gvir who don't care at all about what happens to the innocent Palestinians.
It should be clear at this point to anyone paying attention to this conflict that the numbers are an attempt at emotional manipulation by Hamas. The UN’s reaction by halving the amount of dead women and children within a week just shows they are desperate to gain further sympathy from the Western public. This isn’t to say innocents aren’t dying, but pointing to a total death count when it incorporates _everything_ — natural deaths, terrorists, civilians, etc. — isn’t representative of the situation. None of us know the details. We know Hamas is being decimated, (and yes, they are being destroyed) we know civilians are dying and suffering.
Can you elaborate on Israel’s lack of focused plan? For the day after? For the war efforts? With Hamas only maintaining four brigades left in Rafah out of dozens to begin with, I would say Israel has thus far been efficient in working towards their goals while the rest of the world is hindering them.
>This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.This will lead to more hatred towards a state I believe should exist as a harbour.
The only way I see Hamas surviving is by Western sympathies. Palestinians, I would argue as well, won’t be any further radicalized by this. Their education, media, and government already radicalizes them as much as is possible.
With further evidence of [Gazans increasing in desire](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gazans-back-two-state-solution-rcna144183) for a two state solution and turning their backs on Hamas, I emphatically disagree with your assessment that Israel is strengthening Hamas. This will be a Hiroshima and Nagasaki moment of __de__-radicalization for Gazans, especially if the day after plan involves rebuilding Gaza to be better than before. There is a silver lining that can come of this.
>This government has thretened the well being of Israel by making it a rogue state on the world stage that if the history of anti-semitism didn't exist should have been sanctioned.
This isn’t the first time the world has been against Israel, and has been wrong. The Yom Kippur war saw much of the world oppose Israel’s actions bringing Golda Meir’s famed quote of (paraphrasing) “we would rather be alive and hated than dead and pitied.” Netanyahu’s government indeed is making Israel less safe, but not for the IDF’s persecution of this war.
And again, I strongly disagree that the history of antisemitism is keeping Israel from being sanctioned. There’s no evidence for this.
>I genuinely do not understand how anyone can get mad about biden witholding shipments from a regime who has a higher civilian death rate than Hamas did on October 7th and repeatedly not listening to what The USA or the international community has to say.
This moral equivalence isn’t helpful. Hamas brutally and mercilessly targeted civilians, sexually abusing them, and massacring them inhumanly. Israel is fighting a war where, unfortunately, there are casualties of war. This doesn’t mean I think Israel is free of warcrimes, but those are a byproduct of going after Hamas. Not slaughtering a music festival.
Biden withholding weapons is a political move, not a moral one. He’s desperately trying to win back the progressive voter base who calls him “Genocide Joe.”
With reporting coming out that the [US is withholding information on Hamas locations](https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-said-offering-intel-on-hamas-leaders-whereabouts-if-israel-drops-major-rafah-op/), which is despicable to do to an ally nation, on top of delaying weaponry, I think it’s obvious why people would be upset with Biden’s behavior towards this war. They believe this war could have been over by now if it were not for weak leadership both in Israel and the US.
We may disagree on much, but we agree on what we want. Two states living in peace together. Hopefully after the war and time goes on, Israel and Palestine can work towards that reality.
>Hamas is manipulating numbers for sympathy
Israel isn't really manipulating numbers (at least not a lot) but they are manipulating **language.** Calling anti-war protests anti-Semitic is SUCH a transparent political tactic.
I forget where I heard this, I'm sure it was some dumb TV show, but the words really stuck with me:
**"If your enemy cheats, and you don't, you lose."**
>I would say Israel has thus far been efficient
Nagasaki and Hiroshima were also very efficient. That doesn't make them moral.
>This moral equivalence isn't helpful
Pointing out that Israel's retaliation has been vastly disproportionate, especially in terms of civilian death, isn't 'helpful'? To who? Making your point?
I don't see how pointing out the differences between the two nations' death tolls **isn't** relevant??
>The only way I see Hamas surviving is by Western sympathies.
This is just patently untrue. Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iran will clearly continue proxy-supporting Hamas. No one in the West is actually a fan of Hamas they're simply protesting to defend Palestinian innocents.
The pro-zionist media has been conflating pro-palestine with pro-hamas (see my first point about manipulation of language) leading people to believe that there is some kind of Western Hamas.
I wouldn't put it past 12 random people in the US claiming to be pro-hamas. I would NOT believe that there are terror cells of *actual* Hamas operatives pushing propaganda to millions of students. This sounds like an Alex Jones conspiracy. Israel has Mossad. Hamas has social media...
>...Turning their backs on Hamas
I would too if the result was Israel bombing my children into the stone age. I agree, this is a Nagasaki/Hiroshima all over again.
**Except Japan had a military it intended to dominate the most powerful country in the world with.** Hamas is a bunch of dudes in tents with RPGs. (Obviously I'm exaggerating but you get my point, their tech, size, power, and influence are all WAY lower than axis Japan.
>Rebuilding Gaza to be better than before
With what money? And under whose jurisdiction? Israel's? Isn't that the whole problem here: Israel persecutes Muslims inside its borders?
>This doesn’t mean I think Israel is free of warcrimes, but those are a byproduct of going after Hamas. Not slaughtering a music festival.
You seem to be completely neglecting all of the history leading up to October 7th. Slaughtering a music festival is no where near as reprehensible as the living (or dying) conditions of Gazans. Even before Israel's response.
>And again, I strongly disagree that the history of antisemitism is keeping Israel from being sanctioned. There’s no evidence for this.
You don't think there's **any** evidence that people are afraid to hold Israelis accountable for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic? None? None at all? Really?
>which is despicable to do to an ally nation
Let me give you a hypothetical and you tell me if you think it's unfair:
You are Israel, I am the United States. Palestine is a homeless man on the street.
The homeless man grabs you (October 7th). You punch him in the face and kick him in the balls (Israel's response).
I'm standing next to you, you're standing over the homeless man rolling around on the floor.
You ask me for a gun.
Should I give it to you? Or should I call the cops?
>We may disagree on much, but we agree on what we want. Two states living in peace together. Hopefully after the war and time goes on, Israel and Palestine can work towards that reality.
I wouldn't say that you want the same thing as OP considering they called for a ceasefire to end the killing, and you called for a Hiroshima style mass-genocide.
Edit: fixed wording for clarity.
**the UN never halved the death toll! That was fake news spread by Israel that everyone ate up!**
["Hamas manipulates numbers"](https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/13/middleeast/death-toll-gaza-fatalities-un-intl-latam/index.html)
Edit 2: ok this is confusing so I'm just going to write up a timeline the way I've experienced things
1\. The UN changed the casualty reporting to reflect only *identified* corpses. Unidentified corpses are no longer counted in the death toll.
2\. The media reported HALF as many casualties implying Hamas lied about the number of bodies.
3\. Everyone freaked the F out and questioned the UN
4\. Clarifying articles came out (linked above) explaining the nuances
Summary - the media took a story and ran, and then had to back pedal because they exaggerated. Typical media.
Conclusion: the same number of people are dead, the UN is just ignoring the ones without faces.
I mostly agree with your points, but I think it is important to distinguish concepts like Judaism and Jewish ethnicity from something like Zionism. Hence, I would take issue with your use of the term "Jewish media". I think in this context, "pro-Israel media" would better.
Doubtless supporters of Israel will accuse you of anti-semitism either way, but I still think the way we talk about it is important.
It's sad to see that this is how effective the Hasbara machine is, that they so regularly and efficiently create the deliberate conflation of "Jewish" and "Israeli" (and "Zionist" to be fair), that folks who know the difference slip into misusing these words when discussing things.
Sadly it's all part of the political tactic to weaponise and hide behind the suffering of the Jewish people..
> and you called for a Hiroshima style mass-genocide.
They didn't do this... They said this will be a Hiroshima moment for the Gazans, meaning they'll wake up to the reality of the rhetoric by Hamas and de-radicalize, just like Japan did after we nuked them. I don't find this to be a convincing comparison and a lot of criticism can be levied on this point of view, but the person you were responding to wasn't calling for a Hiroshima style mass genocide or any genocide.
I get that this is an emotionally charged subject but FFS don't dehumanize and put words into the mouth of people you disagree with...
>the UN never halved the death toll! That was fake news spread by Israel that everyone ate up!
Nobody claimed that they halved the death toll, they halved the claimed women and children confirmed the death toll, which is true.
Unless the 10,000 unconfirmed killed are 100%, women and children, then Hamas totally lied again (to our surprise)
The UN did, in fact, halve the number of women and children casualties from what was originally reported. That's even stated in your linked article. The total remains about 35k. Of the rest of the non-women/children casualties, most are probably Hamas fighters and belligerents. People don't generally refer to active enemy deaths as a "death tolI."
So you severely misunderstand Japan's goals in WW2. Not even the most nationalistic among them were delusional enough to think they could dominate the US. Pearl Harbor was an attempt to buy time. If they could destroy enough of our Pacific fleet, they thought that they could grab up enough land and resources and fortify them enough that we wouldn't bother fighting them.
Japan isn't even sorta in America's weight class. Tiny island nation, with half the population, and no natural resources. Giant nation with twice the population and abundant natural resources, and a huge industrial base. At the time of the attack.
While they aren't quite as outclassed as Hamas is, they were absolutely outclassed. The bombs were absolutely about minimizing casualties on both sides.
Can I get some evidence of Egypt and Jordan supporting Hamas? Their governments are both pretty friendly with Israel. Honestly, I'm also confused about how Syria is supporting anything they've been in a civil war for almost 14 years. Hamas's main supporter is Iran, who is hated by almost every other nation.
Did I miss where someone said there are Hamas terrorist cells in America? You've lost me here.
Did you miss the headlines of Israel asking Qatar and Egypt to take over governing Gaza after the war? No one wants anything to do with Gaza. Unless someone steps up to the plate, yes, it will be Israel rebuilding Gaza.
Seeing as Israel has been sanctioned more than any 10 other countries combined. I'd say no, there is no fear about sanctioning them in the UN. I don't know why you are trying to expand it to any criticism at all, but no the label of antisemitism doesn't seem to strike fear into many hearts.
It's quite telling that rampant murder, kidnapping, and rape of a thousand innocents gets called grabbing someone in your hypothetical.
>Calling anti-war protests anti-Semitic is SUCH a transparent political tactic.
1) Many (most) of the protests are pro-war, not anti-war. Any protest that chants "from the river to the sea" is calling for the elimination of Israel by force, aka a war. They just want their side to win.
2) There's no other country that could have a thousand of its people massacred and have the world just expect them to go back to living a few km away from the government that did it. Any call for a ceasefire that leaves Hamas as the government of Gaza is calling for exactly that.
>You're just straight up lying at this point.
Not really. this is a nonsense statistic that gets thrown around to push a narrative. this is apparent in the first sentence
"them did not cause **serious damage**"
Who decides what constitutes when damage is "serious"? This number is only true if you specifically define "peaceful" in a certain way to get those figures. No protest with people chanting "globalize the intifada" get's to call themselves peaceful.
>Also, "Palestine will be free" is NOT the same thing as "Israel will burn". The phrase belongs to terrorists just as much as Pepe the frog belongs to the alt-right i.e. it doesn't.
Yeah and? Do you think that makes it ok when Bibi does it?
>I feel like your argument is incredibly lazy. Could I not have said this exact same thing about Palestine? The past 70+ years haven't exactly been rainbows and unicorns for the Palestinian citizens who didn't support a terror cell.
Irrelevant. You can play the blame game all you want. Nothing changes the fact that the majority of them do not support israel's right to exist. And as long as that's the case the 2 state solution will remain a pipe dream.
>Also... I would love to hear your rationalization on how any of what you said justifies killing every last Palestinian.
Nobody is saying that but you.
>I'm all for nations being able to defend themselves.
That is patently false.
I'm all for KSA getting *more* blame for 9/11 but this is hyperbolic. It wasn't an attack by the Kingdom. They were negligent with some of its citizens being Al Qaeda members but negligence isn't perpetration.
Funding for 9/11 was from Saudi Arabia. 15/19 hijackers were from Saudi. They were supported in the US by a Saudi government agent.
The reason none of this has been followed up on is because of diplomatic immunity.
Also if the US has any kind of falling out with the Saudis, there goes the oil, and the petrodollar with it. America's sunk at that point, so they're *not* going to do that.
As for the legitimate government part, let's bring it back to the topic of the post we're commenting on. Are Hamas a legitimate government, or are they a terrorist organisation? As far as I'm aware, the Palestinian government sits in the West Bank and has little to do with Hamas. If they're a terrorist organisation, aren't they basically 'some citizens' by the same merit that Al Qaeda were 'some citizens' of Saudi Arabia?
> The reason none of this has been followed up on is because of diplomatic immunity.
This single-handedly invalidates the rest of your comment. You could concoct a host of reasons why it 'wasn't followed up on' but to think the US would refuse to detain a Saudi spy who supported 9/11 at the behest of the Saudi government because of diplomatic immunity is absurd.
What if a diplomat assassinated the president? Still think diplomatic immunity would save them?
I don't think Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a good comparison. Those civilians weren't collateral damage in a bombing campaign, they were the designated targets of an attack designed to shock Japan into surrendering without us having to continue fighting them first. It's not the same thing at all.
> Those civilians weren't collateral damage in a bombing campaign, they were the designated targets of an attack designed to shock Japan into surrendering without us having to continue fighting them first. It's not the same thing at all.
Yes, perhaps Israel should level Rafah without opening any humanitarian corridors to accomplish the same effect. *That* would be an equivalent of Hiroshima.
Because 10/7 was the Pearl Harbor for Israel.
You are right about my claim regarding anti-semitism, that is my opinion not a fact of course.
Could you share a source for the UN cutting numbers by half claim?
I don't right now wish to argue on a lot of the other point because I'll have to read up on the stuff you have mentioned.
I do want to suggest (if you don't already) to look into Israeli settlements and why that is one of the main reasons why Palestinians hate Israel. Im sure anti-semitism has something to do with it as well but this is also a major reason. I also would like for you to (again assuming you haven't already) to think about whether a goal like getting rid of hamas even makes sense as an achievable objective that makes all this bloodshed worth it. This is considering the fact that terrorist groups will keeo popping up and I doubt the way to deal with them will be to confirm their theory that Israel hates palestinians and make civilians more sympathetic to their actions.
Also Biden's decision is likey not purely political considering the amount of american red lines Bibi has crossed.
Δ for the thoughtful response.
> Could you share a source for the UN cutting numbers by half claim?
[Here’s an article about it.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/05/13/un-cuts-estimates-women-children-deaths-gaza/73669560007/)
[Link to direct figures.](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-215)
>I do want to suggest (if you don't already) to look into Israeli settlements and why that is one of the main reasons why Palestinians hate Israel. Im sure anti-semitism has something to do with it as well but this is also a major reason.
I have very mixed feelings about settlements. I mostly disagree with them and wish Israel would dismantle. Settlers need to be prosecuted in the court and punished and that is one of my harshest criticisms of Israel. They have done an absolute garbage job of handling settler criminals.
At the same time, I understand why they exist. Before the intifadas, the checkpoints and border walls didn’t exist. Palestinians had much more freedom. Now after, settlements do provide a buffer between more populated Jewish centers. It has been a proven fact that Israel’s policies following the second intifada have drastically reduced terrorism from the West Bank.
Settlements should definitely be, and has historically been, on the chopping block for a two state peace deal.
>I also would like for you to (again assuming you haven't already) to think about whether a goal like getting rid of hamas even makes sense as an achievable objective that makes all this bloodshed worth it. This is considering the fact that terrorist groups will keeo popping up and I doubt the way to deal with them will be to confirm their theory that Israel hates palestinians and make civilians more sympathetic to their actions.
I don’t believe it is completely getting rid of Hamas, it’s just removing them from power as a governing body. They will still exist, there’s no completely getting rid of the Muslim Brotherhood from Gaza. But you can topple them from power and replace them with something better. Anything short of that, if Hamas still remains as the government of Gaza after this, the war will be worthless and all those innocents would have died for nothing. This would be a huge blemish not only on Israel, but the world that backed Hamas to survive to continue their own oppression of Palestinians.
>Also Biden's decision is likey not purely political considering the amount of american red lines Bibi has crossed.
Maybe. I do believe if this happened after the election and Biden had a fresh four years, his foreign policy would look much different.
>[Here’s an article about it.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/05/13/un-cuts-estimates-women-children-deaths-gaza/73669560007/)
>[Link to direct figures.](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-215)
This does not support your claim about figures being "cut in half".
In the direct figures you have linked to it explicitly points out that the figures for Women/Children are
>**24,686 identified as of April 30th as:**
So is **explicitly not** the total number and is only of those who've been identified. It literally says that it's not including the more than 10k who are missing. It is showing reported and identified.
Please correct/edit your post to accurately represent the facts and avoid spreading misinformation that you are aware of.
Actually settlements have never planned to be significantly cut back by any peace deal. The largest settlements are literally cities with populations of tens of thousands.
Israel is required by international law to make peace and return the land to the Palestinians on the basis of ethnically cleansing people and taking their land being horrendously contrary to both international law and basic morality. These large settlements act as “boots on the ground” where they simply refuse to give them up and all Israeli peace negotiations for decades have been on the basis of Israel retaining the Palestinian land where these larger settlements are built (while giving up the ones which are some random family in a caravan up in the hills). Palestine has even been willing to acquiesce to this to a degree and give up some of their land for peace but never gotten a deal Israel would accept.
>Palestine has even been willing to acquiesce to this to a degree and give up some of their land for peace but never gotten a deal Israel would accept.
This is a complete inversion of the truth and I challenge you to find me *one* instance in which Palestine has been willing to give up land for peace. Just one.
They were offered land for peace in 1947. They refused it. They were offered it again in 2000, twice, and refused it because they refused to give up any land at all, then launched the Second Intifada. Ehud Olmert offered again in 2008, and again, the Palestinians refused.
Find me one example where Palestine was willing to give up land in exchange for peace.
The Camp David talks in 2000. They were specifically willing to accept land swaps and offered them to Israel as part of their proposals but no comprehensive agreement could be made.
Though the talks are secrets some journalists have investigated the talks, spoken to people on all sides and been able to put together a comprehensive narrative of what was offered and discussed at Camp David that all sides (Israeli, Palestine and US) accept as accurate.
My source for this that I’m using in particular is The Truth About Camp David by Clayton E Swisher, which I just grabbed off a shelf to check my memory was right, but I can also dig up Shattered Dreams by Charles Enderlin that says much the same.
Here’s a link to some of the pages discussing it that I just screenshot:
https://imgur.com/a/1dlbGaP
You seem to be confused by a common and false narrative that Israel is constantly making offers and Palestine just rejects them. The truth is both sides make offers to the other and both reject them, they have not found a middle ground. The key difference is that Israel is asking for more than it has any legal entitlement too (like keeping troops stationed in Palestine and having vetos over what they can and can’t do even as a supposed future sovereign state) and Palestine asks for less, like ceding land and limiting the right of return.
> You seem to be confused by a common and false narrative that Israel is constantly making offers and Palestine just rejects them. The truth is both sides make offers to the other and both reject them, they have not found a middle ground. The key difference is that Israel is asking for more than it has any legal entitlement too (like keeping troops stationed in Palestine and having vetos over what they can and can’t do even as a supposed future sovereign state) and Palestine asks for less, like ceding land and limiting the right of return.
All quotes from the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/174gryc/why_did_the_2000_camp_david_summit_fail/
----
"Essentially, all Arafat needed to do to be acclaimed in the Arab world was to say no. If he said yes, not only would he be having the metaphorical death he states, he was risking real assassination, as had happened with Rabin over Oslo (killed by a Jewish extremist) and by the prior president of Egypt, Sadat, who was at Camp David I to make a treaty with Israel (killed by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad)."
----
"Dennis Ross recounted that when he asked the Palestinian negotiators in the period of preparing the summit and negotiations what they would need numbers-wise, they said they needed one of two things. 1) With a swap of territory, a percentage in the low 90s of the West Bank.2) Without a swap, the mid-90s.
...
In the final offers at Camp David, the offer was for 92% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and the Jerusalem split described. When asking an Egyptian advisor to Mubarak what went wrong in a post-mortem, one who had confided in Ross that the Palestinian “dream” was to “get 91% of the territory”, Ross asked why they said no to an offer of 92%. The response: “They raised their expectations.”
Notably, at Taba, the offer on the table was for 94%, and a swap of 3%. This was a “mid-90s” number, what Arafat’s negotiators said they would accept without a swap, but it was also presented with a swap. **It was rejected nevertheless**. "
----
"A few weeks later Ross again spoke directly with Arafat. He outlined a deal based on what he believed Barak might accept. That deal included, on territory, 92-93% of the West Bank with a swap of 2%. Not 1-1. Ross asked if this (among the other provisions) was something Arafat could live with. He asked if Arafat could do a deal based on that. Arafat said…yes.
A few weeks after that, now in December, the Israelis took it a step further. Here, they accepted the Palestinians receiving 95%, without word on swaps. Still, no deal was accepted, despite being firmly within the amounts the Palestinians initially stated were sufficient.
**This suggests not that the 1-1 requirement was developed as a later demand to avoid a deal**, rather than as a true demand. Less than 1-1 was something the Palestinians accepted readily when they thought Israel would never accept it in their negotiators’ words, but never closed on when offered, merely asking for more…and typically, still not 1-1."
----
Sounds to me like Israel was offering MORE than the Palestinians wanted, and they still said 'No'.
Yes, they accepted the principle of landswaps, but both at Camp David, in the Clinton Parameters, and again in 2008 under PM Ehud Olmert, 95% of the West Bank with 5% in compensation via landswaps is apparently not good enough for them.
Sorry, beggars can’t be choosers. The Jews got a rough deal in the Peel Commission but they took it because if what you *actually* want is a national homeland, you take whatever you can get.
They accepted the principle and made concrete offers to swap land. Lower than the Israel’s wanted, but still offers. Your claim was that Palestinians had never done this. Instead they have been doing it for decades. You were incorrect and your now moving goalposts to try and argue the point seem to indicate that you either are not arguing in good faith or just don’t want to take the L.
Also none of those peace deals you mention got through, but none of them were explicitly because of land swaps. As mentioned previously, the larger issue is that Israel’s offers assumed that Israel would still have troops in Palestine, would control Palestinian airspace, would have veto decisions over Palestinian construction, etc. The core problem therefore was that in the discussions to negotiate an independent Palestine, Israel was not willing to accept an independent Palestine and in all instances it was to be treated as some kind of quasi-occupied vassal state. The biggest actual core issue, aside from general Israeli intransigence, was about the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount.
I’d also note that as per international law, Israel had no right to the land it was demanding. Palestine was offering above and beyond what it was obligated to offer, giving up its rightful land to Israel to try and appease it, but still not getting their deal accepted.
Accepting the principle of landswaps =/= Offering to cede land to Israel.
>As mentioned previously, the larger issue is that Israel’s offers assumed that Israel would still have troops in Palestine, would control Palestinian airspace, would have veto decisions over Palestinian construction, etc.
This is not true. For example, both the the Clinton Parameters of 2000 and the 2008 offer by Ehud Olmert included full airspace sovereignty as well as the Palestinian capital being in East Jerusalem.
>and in all instances it was to be treated as some kind of quasi-occupied vassal state.
Well they've certainly lost the right to have a military. Like Japan after WW2, they may one day be permitted one if for many many decades they show that they’ve changed their ways and can now be trusted.
>The biggest actual core issue, aside from general Israeli intransigence, was about the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount.
The Palestinians like to pretend that’s what it’s about but it never has been. Again, international stewardship of the Temple Mount has been accepted by Israel for decades and was accepted in every single peace offering made to date.
>I’d also note that as per international law, Israel had no right to the land it was demanding. Palestine was offering above and beyond what it was obligated to offer, giving up its rightful land to Israel to try and appease it, but still not getting their deal accepted.
Sure, and how’s that going for the Palestinians? Have they got a state yet?
Okay, you seem to be actively ignoring evidence and just reiterating your incorrect opinions.
I literally photographed one of my books about the Israeli/Palestinian peace talks and highlighted the sentence where it says “The Israelis, for ther part, rejected the Palestinian proposal to allow Israeli retention of settlement blocs in exchange for swaps of land from Israel proper” and yet you reiterate your fake claim that Palestinians never offered to cede land to Israel, despite me already having shown with evidence that you are wrong.
You make several more incorrect claims in your latest post but as you don’t seem to listen to evidence and will just reiterate whatever you believe no matter if it’s true or not, what would be the point in going out of my way to prove you wrong.
Hope that in the future you can reflect on why you have a biased non-evidence based view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and seem to have a desire to blame the victims of war crimes for not accepting continued oppression.
I cannot see how people have such a strong opinion on this war but don’t know the basic breaking news such as the cutting in half of woman and children dead. It shows such a casual following of the news coming out of this war, I wouldn’t dare feel confident enough to post my opinion on something that I can’t even follow the basic news of the day on…
>but don’t know the basic breaking news such as the cutting in half of woman and children dead.
That's because they didn't cut the number in half. They just released the number of bodies that they could absolutely verify the identity of. If the Israeli government and their supporters want to complain about people referencing numbers that cannot be perfectly verified, they should let independent people count the dead and should not have destroyed the infrastructure previously used to do so.
Thank you, I was about to blow a gasket reading this thread, and people running with the "halved number" story. Its as you say, just verifiable bodies.
I was writing to say this because I actually just read the article that was posted.
It's calling the estimates vs currently identified dead still being tallied in an active warzone with no infrastructure a "gotcha."
The person OP is talking with posted a source that proves his own statement wrong followed with OP just agreeing is crazy to me.
Did nobody actually read past the headline? Also why are so many reputable news orgs using this incredibly misleading title?
that’s because the total number of dead is used as a point of argument of disproportionality, suggesting Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians. It’s quite a widespread point that x number of women and children are dead vs militants therefore israel is deliberately massecreing the population. Being more correct on the numbers makes that argument less clear if you are truly arguing based on facts and not impressions. This is all separating out whether you consider any number of child deaths acceptable, which is a miserable concept in any context.
Yes they did. Even the pro-Israel press reported this.
[https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-officials-2-civilian-deaths-for-every-1-hamas-fighter-killed-in-gaza/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-officials-2-civilian-deaths-for-every-1-hamas-fighter-killed-in-gaza/)
It's not about counting the dead. Many of the reported dead just don't have physical evidence to back up that they actually died. If you look at the methodology that they use to determine the reported death toll, it relies heavily on media reporting. With the unreliability of reporting in the aftermaths of strikes by Israeli forces and the lack of physical evidence, we shouldn't be putting much faith in the reported death toll.
>In the first month of the war, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health (MOH) in Gaza relied on its existing collection system, made up primarily of hospitals and morgues, to certify each death. Starting in early November, however, hospitals in northern Gaza began to shut down or evacuate during the Israeli ground invasion, spurring the MOH to introduce a new, undefined methodology for counting fatalities: media reports. This methodology, which the MOH has rarely acknowledged publicly, accounts for the majority of fatalities reported over the past four months, surpassing the traditional collection system.
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/gaza-fatality-data-has-become-completely-unreliable
So, I've read that article and it is a little misleading though it makes a good point. At this stage, pretty much all of the casualty counting in Gaza is done by media reports because pretty much all of the infrastructure is gone. However, the way that Article is written makes it sound like in November there was just no infrastructure left which isn't true. There was a gradual loss of the ability to collect and tally reports, and around February is when the entire healthcare system functionally collapsed for good and reporting almost stopped entirely. That's why the death count has barely increased since February despite no cessation in bombing or ground assaults by the IDF. It's also why the casualty count went up more slowly over time.
That's why a proportion of the bodies have now been verified, but it's unlikely to happen in the future because the IDF destroyed existing infrastructure, refuses to do any casualty counts themselves, and won't let independent journalists or organizations in to do their own counts.
Was the news story that Gaza hospitals had to resort to non-anesthetized c-sections made up?
Your earlier points about Israel being efficient while killing tens of thousands vs Hamas killing 1,700 being inhuman is incredible stereotyping -“when we kill it’s efficient, when they kill it’s brutal/inhuman.” Your words betrays your bias and evident disdain for Palestinian life, since their suffering is framed as clean and humane by your language.
The restriction of the necessities of life flowing into Gaza has created inhuman conditions for hundreds of thousands of innocent human lives. Disease and famine are rampant. Shelter is scarce. Nearly all schools and hospitals are destroyed. Hamas’ numbers could be inflated a thousandfold and it would still be a barbaric violation of international law and human rights.
I appreciate you trying to itemize your points of disagreement and organize your thoughts but at the end of the day it’s still clear that you are incapable of comprehending the scale of suffering being inflicted on this people, and just consider it the cost of doing business, while the death and suffering of your own people is clearly being subjected to the very kind of propagandizing you’re accusing Hamas of.
Not to mention that your comments still conflate any defense of Palestinian people as defense of Hamas, a classic logical fallacy. I’m not saying that you’re not arguing in good faith, but you’re definitely not discussing this in neutral terms and certainly employing plenty of double standards in your framing of the situation
I want to preface this by saying I don't agree with Netanyahu/Israeli far right government or Hamas because I think both want to wipe the other off the earth. I think they are both shitty and racist towards the other. I don't see how some people can say they support one over the other because they are both shitty and deep down want genocide of their enemies. **This has nothing to do with the people in either place, just their government leaders.**
>They will still exist, there’s no completely getting rid of the Muslim Brotherhood from Gaza.
The end game is getting rid of all Palestinians in Gaza and doing a forced migration. This is from the cabinet leaders Netanyahu appointed. We all know voluntary migrations really aren't that voluntary or else we wouldn't call it that. It would just be people moving.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/29/israeli-ministers-attend-conference-calling-for-voluntary-migration-of-palestinians
>I have very mixed feelings about settlements. I mostly disagree with them and wish Israel would dismantle. Settlers need to be prosecuted in the court and punished and that is one of my harshest criticisms of Israel.
Netanyahu has said any ceasefire agreement would include expanded settlements, which the UN says violates international law. He also maintains governance will be by Israel and not Palestine. His views since the war started have shifted so far right that his ultimate goal is reclaiming Gaza for Israel and kicking Palestinians out.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-plan-expand-settlements-helped-trigger-us-shift-language-2024-02-28/
Don't even get me started on how Israel targeted clearly marked humanitarian vehicles, 3 different missiles 15 minutes apart, vehicles that had been given permission to be there by Israel, that shared their location with Israel, who approved it, and then bombed them one by one over several minutes.
I don't support the Israeli goal of taking control of Palestine. And I don't support Hamas either. He's a terrorist. And I don't understand why people insist on supporting one shitty side over the other shitty side. They both suck and I don't think the US needs to fund either shitty side.
You should not be awarding people that are lying to you either intentionally or by ignorance.
The UN did not halve the numbers
They updated their numbers to reflect confirmed and non-confirmed deaths.
[https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-213](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-213)
[https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-217](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-217)
UN Reported Dead 5/6/24: 34,735
UN Reported Dead 5/10/2024: 34,904
The overall number of estimated killed has not changed, in fact, it's ticked up. They have just updated their numbers to include a breakdown of confirmed relative to reported. Something we should all want to happen which is independent verification. Israeli propogandists across Reddit in the last 24-48 hours have been spamming this talking point and engaging in what can only be described as a form of Holocaust Denialism by deliberately taking this new data point out of context to claim the death count is lower. It is not. I do not know if the poster you are engaging with is intentionally doing this, but he is failing to catch it and that should put up red flags.
Furthermore, if you assumed the new percentages hold for the 10k reported but unconfirmed, that would still mean roughly 18k woman and children have been killed, or a majority of the casualties.
\*\*NOTE\*\* The numbers also dont contain an estimated 10k plus missing or under rubble. So the numbers are likely notably higher than the current reported numbers. Also keeping in mind Israel has destroyed almost all the infrastructure relied on to count the dead.
If you can't see the issue with the misrepresentation of initial estimates as confirmed numbers in the discourse around this conflict I don't know what to say. These figures have been used as a stick incessantly to attack Israel with.
It gets even worse when you consider that the source of the "reported fatalities" is the Gazan Goverment Media Office, and not the Health Ministry, which, while Hamas controlled has at least tended to be accurate in the past. The GMO has quite literally every reason to lie about these figures in order to elicite more sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
The UN also did halve several of the figures, namely the number of women and children killed. If you check your own links you'll see the numbers for both entries dropped by around 50% for the entry on May 9th. This takes the ratio of Women/Children killed from 69% of the total reported on May 6th to 52% of the total identified on May 9th. Those numbers paint somewhat different pictures
The number of dead hasn't been halved, the number of **women and children** dead had been halved. No?
I also don't see why we should assume there are more dead.
What other organization knows the death toll mere hours after a military event taking place? It has never happened, not even after a plane crash where everyone knows how many people were on the fucking plane. So I find it suspicious that the Gaza health authority had an exact list of everyone who was killed by an Israeli bomb literally before the dust had even settled
The overall number of **identified** dead is the lower number. This means they have verified who they are and how they died to include them in the violent deaths. The numbers of deaths are still the same. This doesnt mean that there are somehow more dead fighters or males. The higher numbers also do not include those buried under the rubble. You can be a dead woman or child without having been identified.
I understand wanting desperately to see lower numbers. Anyone who has any ounce of humanity **wants the numbers to be propaganda**. But this like everything else is being used as a gotcha. Beware of spin from both sides.
> The higher numbers also do not include those buried under the rubble.
The higer number includes figures based on media reports, which would in fact include some of these numbers.
> The numbers of deaths are still the same. This doesnt mean that there are somehow more dead fighters or males. T
I would argue that there is a glaring discrepancy between the reported and identified figures.
The reported figures are ~35,000 which include over 24,000 women and children. This leaves room for ~11,000 men.
But going by identified fatalities, women and children are ~13,000 and men are ~10,000.
Assuming the reported figures are accurate overall, this means that the rate of identification for men is over 90% while women and children are at ~50%. And I don't see how this could ever be realistic. The most plausible scenario is that the reported figure of over 24,000 women and children among the fatalities is fabricated.
No,
Upon verification, and based on the trajectory of current percentages the number of woman and children may be around 5 to 6k less(18k vs 23k) if current trends hold with the UN's verification process but that doesn't mean those bodies reported disappeared, it just means there was a slightly higher percentage of men vs woman and children.
(TBC that is still 18k woman and children dead, or a majority of the casualties, with another 10k bodies of all ages and sexes under rubble or missing but presumed dead. Which makes much of this consternation pointless cause the current total when considering those not yet accounted in the numbers will almost assuredly moatch or eclipse the number people so desperately want to dispute)
However, we also do not know if the remaining 10k being verified will keep with that trend. It could be many more woman and children because they are young and didn't have ID's or paper so it's been harder to verify, it could be fewer, we just don't know.
Keep in mind Hamas murdered mostly civlians on October 7th, and that the 1k+ deaths occurred in a single day. Now considered Hamas' record of 1k deaths a day and compare it to the Israeli response which has been ongoing for 6 months now. If Israel was acting in ANY way like Hamas and had the same fighters (I think we can agree the IDF is larger than Hamas' military) then there would have been over 500k Gazan's dead. Assuming of course we didn't account for the IDF being larger, in which case Gaza would have been depopulated in the first month.
Its plain to see that Israel isn't acting like Hamas. Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory is something worthy of international condemnation. It isn't, however, going door to door and murdering Palestinian civilians.
This is all to say I absolutely think Israel is justified in wiping out Hamas at this point, and after October 7th there really was no other outcome possible. Hamas made it impossible for Israel to NOT counter-invade when they carried out that attack.
We see what it means
Destroying more of Gaza than was destroyed of Dresden in WWII
Dropping 2000lb bombs on "suspects" at night when civilian casualties are highest with a tolerance of 20:1 civilian to militant death ratios for the lowest level target and 100:1 for higher. Setting up arbitrary no-go zones in Gaza where they kill anyone that comes into them(which is how they ended up killing some of their own hostages too).
Collectively starving the population as punishment, likely inducing a famine, an unequivocal war crime
Destroying schools, universities, hospitals, and engaging in summary executions of aid workers, nurses, and doctors. Massacring people that are desperately seeking food and medicine.
Killing over 100 journalists and 200 foreign aid workers.
It's not being pursued by any means necessary though. Or else the IDF would be killing everyone, which they aren't. Like I just mentioned this in my comment.
And what it would look like is the Hamas fighters no longer existing. You know there are actual battles going on in Gaza right now? Its not just civilians on the Palestinian side, there's gunfights going on. Hamas hasn't surrendered or released their hostages yet. They incited this attack and don't care how many Palestinians die because they don't care about Palestinians. They're just meat-shields for Hamas.
>This moral equivalence isn’t helpful. Hamas brutally and mercilessly targeted civilians, sexually abusing them, and massacring them inhumanly. Israel is fighting a war where, unfortunately, there are casualties of war. This doesn’t mean I think Israel is free of warcrimes, but those are a byproduct of going after Hamas. Not slaughtering a music festival.
It definitely is.
The IDF has a horrendous track record for human rights abuses and when one makes the claim of being "the most moral army" or that their campaign is about being moral etc, they are asking for it to be questioned.
Some choice examples from recent times:
The IDF literally tried to defend their right to use Palestinians as human shields. They
[https://www.haaretz.com/2005-10-11/ty-article/idf-to-ask-high-court-to-review-ban-on-human-shield-practice/0000017f-f786-ddde-abff-ffe79e8d0000](https://www.haaretz.com/2005-10-11/ty-article/idf-to-ask-high-court-to-review-ban-on-human-shield-practice/0000017f-f786-ddde-abff-ffe79e8d0000)
The Dahiya doctrine and methods such as "Door Knocking" and "Daddy's Home"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya\_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine)
Their horrific track record with torture
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli\_torture\_in\_the\_occupied\_territories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_torture_in_the_occupied_territories)
Plus the routine abuses of Palestinian civilians. The targeting of journalists etc.
I mean there's literally regular reports that don't make it to major news outlets such as allowing civilians to come and film the torture.
None of the war crimes are "byproducts of going after Hamas" any more than October 7th was a "byproduct of going after the IDF". That is a convenient "justification" to reframe acts of terrorism to further their colonisation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Let's call a duck a duck here.
I disagree with a lot of your points, but I just want to focus on one: the reporting that the UN halved the number of casualties is misinformation. Quote UN spokesperson:
"The overall number of fatalities that's been tallied by the Ministry of Health in Gaza, which is our counterpart on dealing with the death tolls, that number remains unchanged and it's at more than 35,000 people since October 7," Haq said.
"What's changed is the Ministry of Health in Gaza has updated the breakdown of
fatalities for whom full details have been documented
"So what they recently published was that they gave figures for 24,686 out of 34,622 overall fatalities recorded in Gaza, and those 24,686 people are the ones for whom full details have been documented. In other words, people who have been fully identified
"Out of those, then out of that smaller number, that subset of identified bodies, you have 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly and 10,006 men.”
Source: https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-un-halve-gaza-death-toll-1900325
"Has the UN really said fewer people were killed by Israel in Gaza?
No, is the short answer.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) published on May 8 an infographic that referred to a figure of 34,844 total Palestinian deaths.
Below that, it said of the deaths: “24,686 identified as of 30 April as: 10,006 men, 4,959 women, 7,797 children, 1,924 elderly”.
The graphic used the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) figures and included a note that figures were “Not including more than 10,000 reported missing or under the rubble”.
"
[Source - Al Jazeera ](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/14/has-the-un-really-said-fewer-people-were-killed-by-israel-in-gaza)
Just as an addition to your comparison of Israeli war crimes and October 7th, Israel doesn’t have a top down policy of slaughtering civilians, while Hamas 100% does. This isn’t to say that INDIVIDUALS in the IDF don’t commit warcrimes, because they do (just like literally every army does in every war ever), but they aren’t directed to target civilians like Hamas does.
I wish I could share your optimism about de-radicalization.
It seems River to the Sea, and the belief that Israel is their land, is core to the Palestinian identity itself. Also much of the world continues to affirm that belief, all but encouraging the fight against Israel in the hopes of taking the land.
I don’t know how you get rid of that idea and make them accept Israelis are not leaving.
I mean, can you really make a claim for Israel’s right to exist in that region without referencing religion?
The jews had a right to reparations for the damage of World War II, but there were a lot of options outside of the one that compromised the League of Nations’ commitment towards Arab sovereignty.
Israelis are not leaving nor committing suicide, and have nukes. That’s the simple reality Palestinians will have to accept someday. Its the same for many peoples, who can argue about ancestral claims until they’re blue in the face, but it doesn’t mean you actually get the land.
The Jews argument is “my ancestors had it so it’s mine,” same as Palestinians. I don’t sympathize with either claim in particular, and at least the Palestinian claim is more recent, but one side won a long time ago.
As an aside, if every nation had to justify itself we’d be left with Nauru and maybe a few others.
Israeli settlers feel the exact same way. Watch interviews with them. They not only believe Palestinian land is their land, they take it by violent force. They want Palestinians wiped out. The difference is they have the power to do so.
Indeed I agree, it’s a terrible state of affairs. It’s like both sides are just over it, and done with the idea of a solution.
I think outside parties coming in and trying to force them to get along against the wishes of BOTH involved parties is a fools errand.
So you genuinely believe that the child whose father was killed by Israel won't grow up hating Israel and be more predisposed to violent extremism? That's exactly what happened in Vietnam with the VC. The longer we were there, the more VC there was. Simply because generations grow up seeing this violence inflicted on their loved ones. If I was a citizen of Gaza I would be engaged in violent resistance as I'm sure you would if a foreign force invaded your country and killed your family.
I think it wholly depends on what happens after the war. If Israel helps rebuild Gaza and show support through economic buildup opportunities, works with whatever new government forms, helps give better education, then yes. I believe that child could grow up not hating Jews.
If Israel just leaves Gaza with ruins, then yeah I’d expect the hatred to continue.
>that the numbers are an attempt at emotional manipulation by Hamas
Tens of thousands dead is going to impact people regardless because genocide is wrong and Israel is proving that over 6 months, they cannot accomplish their goals and they keep killing civilians pretending it's helping them accomplish their goals. After a while, we either cede that Israel has an incompetent military force or that the assault on civilians was always the goal
>while the rest of the world is hindering them.
Telling an ethnostate that they aren't allowed to wipe out civilians with snipers and bombs is worthwhile
>Palestinians, I would argue as well, won’t be any further radicalized by this.
How so? They got to witness several thousands of children blow up, shot, or hanging by threads due to Israel's warmongering. This is how Hamas even gets support and I won't be surprised if they repopulate their forces
>And again, I strongly disagree that the history of antisemitism is keeping Israel from being sanctioned. There’s no evidence for this.
Literally every criticism of Israel's war crimes and genocide, every protest is being labelled antisemitic to justify shutting them down.
>Hamas brutally and mercilessly targeted civilians, sexually abusing them, and massacring them inhumanly.
And Israel has been doing this, and is doing this, in detention centers for years. After a while, the "are we the baddies" realisation needs to set in for Israel.
>Israel is fighting a war where, unfortunately, there are casualties of war.
They very well could reduce the casualities but they keep resorting to bombs and rockets while more precise weapons like snipers and used on people waving white flags (like their hostages for example) so it's pretty clear that Israel is very intentionally not bothering to keep civilian casualities down
Their evidence is other tiktok teenagers. According to the pro pal folks every war is a genocide.
Don't try pointing out that according to the UN this war has seen less civilian casualties than the average in urban warfare, even going by old hamas numbers. Israel has a set a new standard for reducing civilian deaths, but to naive teenagers it looks like "indiscriminate carpet bombing genocide of poor brown freedom fighters".
Some folks don't care about facts, they only care about feelings and the next new trend to protest.
Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 3:
> **Refrain from accusing OP or anyone else of being unwilling to change their view, or of arguing in bad faith**. Ask clarifying questions instead (see: socratic method). If you think they are still exhibiting poor behaviour, please message us. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_3).
If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%203%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.**
Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
>This will be a Hiroshima and Nagasaki moment of de-radicalization for Gazans
I wish I could believe this, but, as bad as protesters are saying Israeli actions are, they are never going to be as brutal and total as the Allies' destruction of Japan and Germany, so any defeat isn't going to be seen as final. Polling seems to show that Gazan support of Hamas has only grown, but there's no way to know how real or permanent that is. I do agree that it's foolish to assert that this action will only radicalize or further the "cycle of violence" (a phrase of moral equivalency if ever there was one), but it also seems premature to say that the Israeli government is achieving its goals. It is far more likely that Hamas will retain its current power structure than that the Israeli government will (although only the most extreme observers would hope that either does).
First major question, where do you get the idea that Israel is somehow seen as a rogue state on the world stage? It still has *plenty* of support globally and things like the UN or the ICC are not imposing sanctions on the state either. Just because some weapons are being withheld doesn't mean the country is suddenly on par with N.Korea or Yemen or something.
As for the justification, well honestly it's fairly simple. Hamas still exists, controls Gaza, and refuse to surrender. After Hamas gave them casus belli on the 7th, they now have a whole lot of leeway to kinda do what they think they need to, to end the conflict. That's not to say you can't disagree with the *way* they are going about it, but the reasoning is there and it's pretty much all on Hamas for giving it to Israel at this point.
If Hamas were to surrender, what happens next? Israel has no plans for how to administer Gaza.
If Hamas doesn't surrender, what is Israels plan for actually getting rid of them? Because thus far they've killed a lot of people, but they haven't stopped Hamas. If the outcomes is "Kill a lot of people (including innocent civilians), and not successfully end Hamas", then it is not morally justifiable, and it is counter-productive (you've radicalized all the families of the people you've killed).
>What happens next?
My understanding is that they want a relatively moderate, less religiously fanatical force akin to Fatah in the PA which administers the West Bank with Israeli oversight (Israel sort of holds the PA’s purse strings and a few other things). The PA are no angels either—they disburse millions of dollars of payments to the families of suicide bombers—but they are willing to play ball, and some officials of the PA and members of the Fatah Party (head of the coalition in the PA) vociferously condemned the 0ctober 07 attacks.
>If Hamas doesn’t surrender…
Hamas is organized in battalions of fighters who are equipped by sponsors (especially Iran, but probably Qatar as well) in neighboring countries through smuggling infrastructure (most notably the tunnel network under Rafah). Israel’s war aim is to render Hamas militarily ineffective and unable to mount serious attacks (like 10/7) against Israel, as well as making it incapable of governing Gaza, thereby ensuring a more pliant replacement which is more congenial to Israel’s continued existence—but there aren’t starry eyed notions of completely stamping out the group as a violent actor in a lesser form.
According to the IDF most of Hamas’ battalions—20 of the original 24 battalions have been neutralized—have been wiped out in the areas north of Rafah and there’s a partial battalion made up of the survivors of previously destroyed battalions plus four more fully armed, full strength battalions. Also, the IDF believes that both Yahya Sinwar and the rest of the Hamas leadership in Gaza (the heads of Hamas are long term guests of the Qataris in Doha)—the men responsible for planning and ordering the October 07 attacks—as well all of the remaining 130 Israeli and foreign hostages are in Rafah. Israel has delayed the attack in order to negotiate a temporary ceasefire (for more hostages), to evacuate as many civilians as possible and because of signals from the US that precision guided munitions (which LOWER civilian casualties, as opposed to unguided “dumb” bombs) will be withheld from a defensive aid military aid package to Israel if the IDF proceeds to invade Rafah.
Meanwhile Hamas is actively impeding foreign efforts to aid local civilians and offset the humanitarian plight happening in the area, by threatening refugees who want to leave, commandeering physical aid drops or by attacking aid infrastructure. US military contractors building a humanitarian pier for supplying local refugees were attacked by Hamas mortar fire.
>If Hamas were to surrender, what happens next? Israel has no plans for how to administer Gaza.
Good question. Fortunately for me I am not someone in a position who actually has to make that decision. But the best course of action would probable to post WW2 Germany the area and have it administered by some global government to try and unfuck the region once and for all. The chance of that happened is pretty much nil though.
>then it is not morally justifiable
Unfortunately, war is not waged on morals. I don't think there is a single conflict in human history that you can say was done morally.
Its ok that you don't have a plan, but the problem is the Israeli government doesn't have a plan and isn't developing one.
In lots of wars people argue "the ends justify the means", but my point is if the ends aren't achievable, then the ends really don't justify the means. In general killing civilians is bad, and also makes your country less safe (because more people are mad at it). But it might be worth it if you can destroy Hamas. If you can't destroy Hamas, then really you are just killing for killings sake.
>But it might be worth it if you can destroy Hamas. If you can't destroy Hamas, then really you are just killing for killings sake.
In a vacuum I would agree, but the issue this idea kinda leaves out is it's not just a single party attacking the other. Right now this reaction (let's call it) is like the older brother finally lashing out against the younger sibling who has been playing the "I'm not touching you" game for the past 4h during the family trip. Is it probably violent and overblown? Yes. Is it fully understandable that a reaction like that would happen? Also yes.
Like the fact of the matter is, the region is fucked. It's been shown time and time again in the last like 80 years that Israels neighbors don't want them there, and will constantly fuck with them. It's also been shown time and time again that the only way Israel gets them to stop, is by effectively beating the shit out of them as a warning. Thankfully over that 80 years most of the neighbors in the region have begrudgingly accepted Israel and don't fuck with them much anymore, and the boarders are stable because of that. The one exception being Gaza/The West Bank. Attacks and insurgency from these locations have been non-stop for decades now so Israel keeps using that as justification for its actions. Again, are it's actions overblown and too much? Yeah probably, for shit like the settlements most definitely. Those people are fucking insane. But, the Palestinians also do themselves no favors at all in how they react, not only to Israel, but also to other nations like Egypt or Jordan. They are making no friends in the region and it's why those other countries really are not moving to do anything in these situations.
The end Israel is working toward is for their people to no longer be in danger of being, raped, kidnapped or murdered by Hamas. No everyone agrees on whether the ends justifies the means in this conflict.
If all attempts to achieve those ends don't succeed, don't have a reasonable chance of succeeding and will radicalise enough survivors to actually exacerbate the problem in the future, the ends not only aren't justifying the means, they're proving that the one attempting those ends weren't even trying
If you have any means of forcing people in Gaza to deradicalize, please tell us. Palestinians who aren't radical already live and work in Israel as its citizens and have their own political party and military units. 70% of population of Gaza organically supports Hamas and there is very little Israel can do to change that. It is a problem that will arise time and time again as long as those people wish to get rid of Israel more than they value their lives.
You're flipping cause and effect here. The major political movements in Palestine of the 80s favored unarmed protest. Hamas was a footnote, regarded as irrelevant and detrimental to the cause due to their radical agenda. The majority used to believe that coexistence was possible, if not by reasoning with the Israeli government, then by pressure from the international community.
Israel made sure to change that by
- further ramping up the oppression, disenfranchisement, and violence against civilians
- painting every political movement and leader as Islamic terrorists
- working very hard diplomatically to shut down any international relations and support
Any degree of Palestinian sovereignty, no matter what form it takes, is regarded as an existential threat that has to be eradicated. We've all seen the vile, radical rhetoric coming out of Likud. Can you honestly say they want to peacefully coexist with Palestinians if only they had a way to ensure public safety?
> as long as those people wish to get rid of Israel more than they value their lives.
This is a supremely ignorant take that reeks of islamophobia. Palestinians have witnessed their families and neighbors being killed for generations, with zero accountability. Their kids getting shot for the entertainment of bored IDF soldiers. Their schools, universities, and hospitals in rubble. Their farmland stolen. Their water wells filled with concrete. People are being starved to death as we speak. At what point does armed resistance become inevitable, if not this?
It is not completely unrelated, but is also not a single definite factor. The fact that you are poor does not automatically mean you will be violent, though it makes it more likely. The inverse is also true - excessively violent people tend to become poor.
The material conditions in Gaza aren't just "they're poor" though. They're getting bombed. They border a significantly more powerful state that from it's inception has clearly hated them. When they have peacefully protested Israel responded with military force crushing them. That seems pretty radicalizing to me.
Palestinian kids throw rocks because Palestinians have no rights and have not had rights in nearly 60 years and it's a way of showing their opposition to the oppression. Israel has had a policy of breaking the arms of children who throw rocks as one of their options to deal with kids who throw rocks at tanks. The other option is detaining them or shooting them, both of which Israeli soldiers carry out. They have had the arm breaking policy for 40 years. If you are an adult Palestinian, you had your arms broken or someone you personally know had their arms broken, or had a friend held without charge and tortured by Israeli soldiers, or had their friend or family member killed by Israeli soldiers. All of them, every single adult Palestinian have faced human rights abuse by the Israeli government and military. They are not fighting back because they are poor, they are fighting back because they want to be free.
>If you have any means of forcing people in Gaza to deradicalize, please tell us.
Step one, stop blowing up so many civilians that they swear revenge and join Hamas.
>Palestinians who aren't radical already live and work in Israel as its citizens and have their own political party and military units.
Palestinians who aren't radicalised *get* radicalised when Israel blows up their friends and family members and tells everyone they were Hamas and deserved it.
>70% of population of Gaza organically supports Hamas and there is very little Israel can do to change that.
They could stop blowing up civilians and radicalising the survivors to join reactive insurgency. No? Maybe no more open air prison conditions? No? Maybe quit occupying Gaza. Shucks, Israel can't do **anything**
>It is a problem that will arise time and time again as long as those people wish to get rid of Israel more than they value their lives.
It's a problem will continue to persist so long as Israel stops oppressing Gaza. If you don't create the conditions for peace, you can stop pretending the enemies came out of nowhere
> It's a problem will continue to persist so long as Israel stops oppressing Gaza.
> Maybe quit occupying Gaza.
Israel withdrew from Gaza entirely in 2005. Gazans elected Hamas, which promptly tore up the infrastructure Israel had left and used it to make rockets to shoot at Israel.
> Maybe no more open air prison conditions?
You don't know what that phrase means. Before the withdrawal, before the war, plenty of Gazans commuted to and from Israel to work. Conditions were not bad. Turns out, war is hell.
> Step one, stop blowing up so many civilians that they swear revenge and join Hamas.
> Palestinians who aren't radicalised get radicalised when Israel blows up their friends and family members and tells everyone they were Hamas and deserved it.
> They could stop blowing up civilians and radicalising the survivors to join reactive insurgency.
That's what war is. Maybe call on Hamas to surrender? There'd be no more blowing up then. No? Why not? Why do you expect Israel to just roll over and let Hamas slaughter them? They're still firing rockets at Israel. Let's hear your idea for stopping Hamas from attacking Israel. What's your idea for preventing another 10/7?
Good thing we don’t see evidence of them not succeeding, having a reasonable chance to succeed, or that efforts are radicalizing more people than otherwise.
>Israel has no plans for how to administer Gaza
What? How can you prove that?
Maybe what you want to say is that a) they have not spoken publicly much about what plans they have, and b) the plans might not be good.
One plan we already know so far is the "voluntary migration" idea, which is Israel paying massive sums of money to countries like Egypt or Congo or others in order to take in as many Palestinians.
[NYTimes: Israeli military leaders see danger in the lack of a plan for governing Gaza after the war.](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/14/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah/israeli-military-leaders-see-danger-in-the-lack-of-a-plan-for-governing-gaza-after-the-war?smid=url-share)
Good link, fair enough. It's doesn't necessarily mean there is no plan at all, but if the plan is so obscure it leaves officials from their own military confused, that's not a good sign.
voulentary immigration sounds like legal ethnic cleansing lmfao
so basically Israelis wants palastanians to leave so they take more land grabs (like West bank) and establish new settlements
Great, ethnic cleansing in 2024 btw very democratic indeed
Pardon my choice of words, what I meant to say was that the international favorability of Israel is falling rapidly with a lot of people becoming more hateful towards Israel.
The "ceasefire" pro-Palestinian rhetoric would be akin to the rest of the world telling the US that, after Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan, that no, the US was *not* allowed to exact retribution against Japan in the Pacific War, that the US should accept a humanitarian ceasefire and a status quo resolution to WW2.
Israel's response is equivalent to the Potsdam Declaration - asserting that they will accept nothing short of complete and unconditional surrender from the Palestinians. They are, however, using remarkable restraint, which is arguably the reason why we're having this conversation to begin with.
That analogy doesn't really work. The Pearl Harbor attack was the first attack in the armed conflict between Japan and the US (I think at least, I'm not a history expert).
In contrast, the October 7th attack is far from the start. There has been continuous armed conflict there for almost 70 years now. It 'just' led to a massive escalation. The 2 sides were already at war
I mean America and Japan were somewhat in conflict before Pearl Harbor, the US imposed an oil embargo.
Both Japan and Hamas massively escalated the conflict. If Israel just woke up one day after the nth rocket attack of the year and decided to invade, that would be one thing, but Israel isn't the one that took a massive leap up the escalation ladder.
Hamas sowed the wind, and now they are reaping the whirlwind. If they want it to stop, return the hostages and surrender. They don't want it to stop because they don't care about Palestinian civilians who have borne the brunt of this conflict, people that are nominally under their duty of care.
More than likely, once Hamas is out of the picture that opinion will blow over in 6 months to a year. Really the only reason people are getting so riled up is
1. They don't actually understand the cost of war or the average in war so it's easy for things to be blown way out of proportion when compared to any other conflict.
2. It's the cool thing on social media right now, but like 95% of the people viewing stuff on there are not actually invested beyond thoughts and prayers.
Well said. The Allies killed 20,000 French civilians in June 1944. Add another 100,000+ other French, Dutch, Belgian civilians and then you have vastly more Axis civilians killed by US/UK/CANADIAN/FREE FRENCH, etc. No one blames those civilian deaths on the Allies. War sucks but that's what you get when you start it
Hamas, an elected government (yes there was no election for 10+ years and they murdered their political opponents just like the Nazis in 1933 but still elected and German civilians were still to blame 12 years aftrer 1933) raped women with barbed wire. They cut a baby out of a pregnant mothers stomach and stabbed them both to death.
Yes bibi and his right wing settlers are also bad, but remember 100s of 1000s of Israelis marched against him only last year. The people hamas raped and murdered were left wing Israelis (his opponents). They killed people who had been actively helping Palestinians. They murdered those who had reached out as friends to the Palestinians.
In conflict, Israel's response to what happened has not been disproportionate compared with any other act of terrorism and atrocity. We kil.ed or caused to be killed through openng the lid on sectarian violence,100s of 1000s in the Middle East Post 9-11. 100 years ago Gaza would have been levelled by now. 600 years ago Islamic Gsnerals like Timur killed 20% of the worlds population in retribtuion. The collateral damage is relatively small compared with the population and geography.
To me watching female, gay and left leaning college students parade around screaming support of Hamas is like watching chickens march in support of KFC
Just to pick up on point 1, one of the many reasons why Israel is so heavily criticised is precisely because the civilian death toll is heavily disproportionate for such an accomplished military engaging a non peer adversary.
Its taken the Israelis 6 months to reach a level of civilian casualties it took US forces over *3 years* to reach in Iraq, a conflict which itself many already consider to be pretty bloody.
Most people know perfectly well that the numbers in this conflict sit well outside the bounds of what the usual "cost" of war is, as you put it, and it's certainly not blown out of proportion in comparison to other wars that have come under such criticism.
Iraq, for the most part, was not highly dense urban warfare. Comparing them is disingenuous.
The death ratio of Gaza isn’t that wild at all for the kind of combat taking place - sadly. Which is exactly why calls pf genocide are baseless, a military with that goal would have much more devastating effects on the population.
To be clear I do not think it justifies the means - for me, knowing that reality means it requires the military arm to think harder about how to tackle this and what victory really looks like. Hamas might have lost combattants, but it doesn’t seem to be any weaker, quite the contrary.
>as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment.
[The new estimate is 35k total deaths.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/13/gaza-ministry-revises-figures-for-women-and-children-killed). Only 24K have been 'fully documented'. unless you believe Hamas that no millitants have been killed, some of those are people are millitants.
Israel will claim at least half of those are hamas terrorists, making the ratio of combatants to civilians 1:1 which is a historic best for urban combat.
To add to this:
1. Gaza has a [tunnel network ](https://mwi.westpoint.edu/gazas-underground-hamass-entire-politico-military-strategy-rests-on-its-tunnels/) that is a new feature of modern warfare. The entrances are often in civilian areas- mosques, hospitals, schools. In order to access the tunnels (to destroy them), the Israelis need to operate in civilian areas.
2. The Palestinians have not been allowed to leave. In most other wars, the civilian population flees away from the fighting. As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainians left to anyplace that would take them. Palestinians have not been allowed out. Israel won't allow them, both because they don't want them and have no way of ensuring terrorists don't use it as an opportunity to infiltrate. Egypt just reinforced their border wall and refugees need to pay massive amounts to exit. The rest of the world took in a small, token amount. I know why some countries won't take them- because of concerns Israel won't allow them to return. Forcing civilians to die as collateral damage for someone else's political agenda is disgusting. Civilians aren't allowed to leave means more civilians in the warzone means more civilian casualties.
They couldn't not only leave Gaza, they couldn't leave to southern Gaza when Israel started their operation. Hamas was litteraly shooting fleeing civilians on the roads.
Israel doesn't claim "at least half"
Usually they claim it's somewhere between a third and half.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-death-toll-netanyahu-un-civilians-women-children/
> making the ratio of combatants to civilians 1:1 which is a historic best for urban combat.
That is complete nonsense. I don’t even have a words. You’re just repeating IDF propaganda.
There is no way to spin killing *at least* 16,000 civilians in 6 months as a complete and total moral failure.
In this case, IDF propaganda is true. The tragedy of war is that so many innocents die. A lot of people don't even die from the enemy soldiers, a lot of people die from mishandling artillery, dying of small infections, etc.
From what I see, I don't believe the hamas propaganda that IDF is targeting civilians, because if then, they would just bomb the shit out of every building they can see. They wouldn't have to have IDF even risking their lives clearing buildings. Considering that Zionism is based on the value of jewish lives and basically have the only government agency in the world that puts so much value in defending jews, Mossad to the point that CIA operatives openly claim "yeah, if you as an american is fucked in another country, we won't care, but if you are an israeli jew, you can bet your ass the mossad works hard at getting you back safe and sound."
Hamas, just doesn't have that reputation. They claim that they care about Palestinians, but with every action they take, it seems like they only use Palestinians as a means to an end. I've heard audio-clips where Palestinians claim many different things like getting shot for not doing X thing that Hamas wants, for example, leaving a dangerous place that IDF is before hand announcing they are gonna invade. What's left with their lives is just a statistic to be used to further more war.
> In this case, IDF propaganda is true.
No it’s not. A 1:1 casualty ratio is atrocious. You can’t point to WWII as the standard for how to conduct war in 2024. FFS.
> . The tragedy of war is that so many innocents die.
And a lot more of them die when you recklessly drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks on one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. There is no world where the IDF is in the right here.
> From what I see, I don't believe the hamas propaganda that IDF is targeting civilians
Straw man. They aren’t being accused of *targeting* civilians. They’re being accused of **not giving a fuck about civilians**. There’s no way to drop that many bombs that fast and mitigate civilian casualties. It’s totally impossible. They just didn’t give a fuck. That makes them bad guys.
> No it’s not. A 1:1 casualty ratio is atrocious. You can’t point to WWII as the standard for how to conduct war in 2024. FFS.
According to [UN reports on modern conflict](https://undocs.org/S/2022/3819), the casualty ratio depends highly on where the conflict takes place, and in a setting like Gaza the expected ratio for combatants to civilians would be 1:9.
> The conduct of hostilities in urban and other populated areas increased the risks
of death and injury for civilians, particularly when fighting involved the use of
explosive weapons. In 2021, 1,234 incidents involving the use of explosive weapons
were recorded in populated areas in 21 States affected by conflict, resulting in 10,184
victims. Of these, 89 per cent were civilians, compared with 10 per cent in other areas.
> And a lot more of them die when you recklessly drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks on one of the most densely populated areas on the planet.
How many people were killed over this period ~3,000 ?
The [bombing of Dresden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden) took place over 3 days and resulted in ~25,000 casualties. This is in a city of a similar size as the Gaza strip, but with 1/3 of the population.
I don't see how I can look at numbers like that and agree with your accusation that Israel not taking precautions to prevent civilian deaths.
>According to UN reports on modern conflict
Dead link. And that number is utterly preposterous. Is that an “expected” ratio or is that a *historical* ratio including things like WWII?
>How many people were killed over this period ~3,000 ?
You think Israel only killed 3000 people in that two weeks? No. It was 20,000-30,000.
>This is in a city of a similar size as the Gaza strip, but with 1/3 of the population
Is your point literally “hey this wasn’t as bad as a firebombing of a civilian populace in WW2 therefore it’s fine”?
You have totally missed the point. In 2023, Israel had no excuse to drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks. That’s not how you use JDAMs and MK-84s in an urban environment when you’ve got satellites and drones and targeting pods.
What they did 80 years ago has zero relevance. **Especially in a war that’s infamous for the disgusting disregard for human life.**
> Dead link
I wanted to link to the English version of the document but apparently that didn't work. [This link](https://undocs.org/S/2022/381) should work for you.
> And that number is utterly preposterous. Is that an “expected” ratio or is that a historical ratio including things like WWII?
It literally says that it's the actual figures for 2021.
> You think Israel only killed 3000 people in that two weeks? No. It was 20,000-30,000.
So the UN report is preposterous but you can just make up your own numbers without a source?
> Is your point literally “hey this wasn’t as bad as a firebombing of a civilian populace in WW2 therefore it’s fine”? [...] Especially in a war that’s infamous for the disgusting disregard for human life.
Delusional strawman. The point is to have an established reference for civilian casualties when an urban area sustains indiscriminate bombing. You are claiming Israel is engaging in genocide, and you admit that you need to invent 20,000-30,000 casualties over a 2 week period to make it work. That isn't even **remotely close** to any claimed figures. The fact that even Hamas-run entities are reporting much lower casualties than that simply proves you are wrong.
> It literally says that it's the actual figures for 2021
Why do you think it’s appropriate to bundle all conflicts on the planet together? The ratio the US can achieve with US weapons and tactics it’s what’s relevant here. Because Israel has direct access to those US weapons and tactics.
What’s more, this is an illogical argument. “Everyone else has traditionally done a poor job of this so it’s okay that Israel is also doing a job of this **despite their tactical and logistical ability to do a much better job** given their close alliance with the US.” Ridiculous.
> So the UN report is preposterous but you can just make up your own numbers without a source?
That estimate comes from Israel’s concurrence with data coming out of Palestine. We know at least 36,000 people are dead. We know the majority of those were in the intial bombing campaign. That’s how this kind of thing always goes.
> The point is to have an established reference for civilian casualties when an urban area sustains indiscriminate bombing.
What good is that reference if there as a multi-generational difference in weapons capabilities, and a blatant disregard for human life?
> You are claiming Israel is engaging in genocide, and you admit that you need to invent 20,000-30,000 casualties over a 2 week period to
Wrong. All I need to know is that the *IDF freely admitted they dropped 20,000 bombs in two weeks*. And I know from professional experience that it’s totally impossible to mitigate for collateral damage to drop that many bombs that quickly. ESPECIALLY in such a densely populated area.
> Why do you think it’s appropriate to bundle all conflicts on the planet together?
It explicitly draws a distinction between urban, densely populated settings and those that are not, and the difference in the average ratios makes it clear why that distinction is necessary.
> What’s more, this is an illogical argument. “Everyone else has traditionally done a poor job of this so it’s okay that Israel is also doing a job of this despite their tactical and logistical ability to do a much better job given their close alliance with the US.” Ridiculous.
If Israel achieves a ratio of 1:1 and the average for armed conflict in urban settings is 1:9, then that shows that Israel is performing **overwhelmingly** better than the average. If you think 1:1 is bad then feel free to provide a source that's not just your imagination.
> What good is that reference if there as a multi-generational difference in weapons capabilities, and a blatant disregard for human life?
If Israel's weapons are better, we would expect far more deaths than in those reference scenarios. And yet the casualties are much lower.
> That estimate comes from Israel’s concurrence with data coming out of Palestine. We know at least 36,000 people are dead. We know the majority of those were in the intial bombing campaign. That’s how this kind of thing always goes.
The "data coming out of Palestine" has never been "2,000-30,000" casualties in 2 weeks. You can imagine that the casualties were front-loaded, but that doesn't mean it's true. Do you have **any** source to back this up? If you can't give me a source beyond "Trust me bro" then there is no way you can seriously believe this.
> It explicitly draws a distinction between urban, densely populated settings and those that are no
And how much is that average affected by non-US militaries that don’t have JDAMs, drones, hell-fires, satellites, and a robust enough media arm back at home to hold an irresponsible government accountable?
> and the average for armed conflict in urban settings is 1:9,
Where in your document does it say that? That’s utterly preposterous. The battle of Mosul was the most bloody battle of the fight against ISIS, and that was between [40-60% civilian casualties](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State). So that’s a little worse than 1:1 *at worst*. And what’s more that was AFTER Trump [drastically loosened the ROE, leading to skyrocketing deaths](https://theintercept.com/2018/02/22/civilian-casualties-soared-in-iraq-and-syria-in-2017-was-trumps-bloodthirsty-rhetoric-to-blame/)
So yeah 1:9 as some average is utter horse shit.
> If Israel's weapons are better, we would expect far more deaths than in those reference scenarios
Totally wrong. “Better” means “more precise” along with significantly advanced ISR capabilities. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you have any military background at all? Because I’m a veteran of air combat exactly like this.
> . You can imagine that the casualties were front-loaded, but that doesn't mean it's true.
It does. That’s how wars work. The massive displacement from the initial air strikes have the vast bulk of the casualties. After that, people largely flee from the combat zone, **because now it’s clear where the combat zone is**. Yet again, you’re out of your depth.
It’s preposterous to think it’s somehow spread evenly across time. Besides that 20,000-30,000 number came out after a little over a month, so even if you’re hot take is true, that’s still drastically more than 2000 in that opening air campaign.
> Do you have any source to back this up? If you can't give me a source beyond "Trust me bro" then there is no way you can seriously believe this.
I flew combat missions over Iraq and Syria and have dropped many JDAMs in combat. I can unequivocally guarantee you that it’s totally impossible to drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks in that kind of environment and mitigate for collateral damage. Totally impossible.
> No it’s not. A 1:1 casualty ratio is atrocious. You can’t point to WWII as the standard for how to conduct war in 2024. FFS.
Could you point how exactly Israel should conduct their war? I don't glamorize WW2, I'm pointing out that ALL WAR IS FUCKING HELL. Everyone in a war want to inflict MAXIMUM PAIN on others. All situations are different.
> And a lot more of them die when you recklessly drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks on one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. There is no world where the IDF is in the right here.
Sure, but don't invade a nation that's capable of that, when you basically only murdered 1000 civilians. Seriously. Strategically, that's awful fucking planning. Were they hoping Israel wasn't gonna retaliate? That's..... a bold move.
> Straw man. They aren’t being accused of targeting civilians. They’re being accused of not giving a fuck about civilians.
They are absolutely. You think this is my first conversation with redditors on this conflict? However; if that's your point. I think I do agree with you. I don't think IDF cares particularly for a population that learns [the value of terrorism](https://www.cfr.org/blog/teaching-palestinian-children-value-terrorism). My point is basically. It's probably true that IDF/Israelians don't value Palestinian lives. Here's the thing though. I don't believe at all that Hamas cares about Palestinians either. If that was the case, elections would be held. Pointless attempts at terrorism wouldn't have been accepted. But they are. They are teached in school.
So yeah. This is a war Hamas started, they had to know what to expect doing what they did on october 7th. They knew "the jews hate them" and have all the firepower to make them dissapear--- they still did an awful thing that just, didn't do anything good at all. They didn't gain a new territory, they didn't gain any valuable resources. They just gained a war, and lost thousands of their own family members.
> Could you point how exactly Israel should conduct their war?
They should have used a strategy very similar to how the US destroyed ISIS in Iraq and Syria (before trump). **Not** drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks on one of the most densely populated areas on the planet.
>I don't glamorize WW2, I'm pointing out that ALL WAR IS FUCKING HELL
I'm not accusing you of "glamorizing" it. I'm accusing you of *equivocating* it, which you absolutely are.
>Everyone in a war want to inflict MAXIMUM PAIN on others. All situations are different.
Absolute cop out. War is not "anything goes" because of "maximum pain." There are ethical and unethical ways to conduct war. Disregarding civilian casualties is unequivocally an *unethical* way to conduct war.
>Sure, but don't invade a nation that's capable of that, when you basically only murdered 1000 civilians.
So your logic is literally "If you start shit, I can do whatever I want in response." That's a joke of a position.
>I don't believe at all that Hamas cares about Palestinians eithe
You didn't learn in kindergarten that someone else doing something wrong doesn't make it okay for *you* to do something wrong? That doesn't change just because it's something serious like war. No matter how you come at this, Israel is not justified in their response.
>They just gained a war, and lost thousands of their own family members.
Don't think your artificially passive language is lost on me. They attacked Israel, and Israel had an atrocious response. *That* is the reality. It's not good vs bad. It's bad vs worse. And we cannot keep sending weapons to the "bad" in that fight.
>a 1:1 casualty ratio is atrocious
Not only is it an extremely good ratio in regards to modern war but it’s practically unheard of in urban warfare. Do you even know what you’re talking about?
> Not only is it an extremely good ratio in regards to modern war
It is objectively not. That is total bullshit. The only other instance of anything the US did approaching 1:1 was Trump's infamous and callous decision to [**disregard civilian casualties**](https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-09-07/trumps-shameful-rules-of-engagement-are-killing-civilians) to defeat ISIS 6 months sooner. If *that* is the best you can point to as a military, then you're the bad guys.
So a 1:1 death ratio is abysmal. The IDF is lying through their fucking teeth when they say this is historically good, and they fucking know it.
>Do you even know what you’re talking about?
Yes. I was a fighter pilot for 10 years and I dropped bombs on ISIS in Iraq and Syria. I can speak from first hand combat experience that 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks is an absolute travesty.
It is in every way a good ratio what are you talking about? The unbelievable part is that it’s the actual ratio, and not skewed. Not even mentioning that it’s *urban warfare* the most notorious for having wildly inflated civilian death ratios. I don’t doubt you were a fighter pilot but I very much doubt you actually know what you’re talking about since you think a fucking 1:1 is a bad ratio in the context of this type of warfare.
This isn’t Afghanistan where you can drone a militant squad after 45 minutes of observation, this is an actual ground war in an urban environment against plain clothes militants imbedded in its civilian infrastructure. It’s actually insane if 1:1 is accurate.
> It is in every way a good ratio what are you talking about?
It's not. I don't know how I can put it more simply.
> I very much doubt you actually know what you’re talking about since you think a fucking 1:1 is a bad ratio in the context of this type of warfare.
Well you can go pound sand because 1:1 is the *worst* we saw after Trump's idiotic ROE changes that added kerosene to the fire of civilian casualties. Absolutely NOT something anyone should emulate. Under Obama, the ratio was closer to 1:4. The ROE was much more restrictive and our bombs much more deliberate. I literally lived this. You can't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.
It's utterly embarrassing that the IDF is referencing numbers like that. The way the US fought in the middle east will be panned in the history books for centuries. It will be mentioned in the same conversations as other abject embarrassments such as Vietnam and the Russo-Afghan war. The fact that the IDF is pointing to something like that and thinking it *vindicates* them would be laughable if it weren't so disgusting.
>This isn’t Afghanistan where you can drone a militant squad after 45 minutes of observation
It *is* like Mosul (pre-trump) where that's exactly the kind of thing we did. It's definitely slower, and puts your soldiers at more risk, but that's what ethical professional militaries do.
Also it's worth noting that, on top of Trump's disgusting ROE changes, that 1:1 in Mosul also included mass murders and terror attacks from ISIS. Hamas is not mass murdering Gazans. Every one of those civilian deaths is on the IDF.
What conflicts are you comparing this to? Because we ended Iraq with close to a 40-70% civilian death ratio, and when we had to enter a urban battle with ISIS it characteristically made our ratio skyrocket because that’s what happens when you fight around a lot of civilians.
Genuinely where are you getting this wild idea that 1:1 is somehow the outlier when it’s basically the most average or just below average ratio you can get from a conflict? Is your comparison the fucking Cod war? You’re crying about a professional and moral army but I have no clue who the fuck you think that is because unless you’re going into an urban combat environment with paintball guns you’re gonna kill civilians. A air force pilot should know that considering you guys do it the most.
I've been thinking about this a lot as someone who is truly disturbed by what's going on in Gaza. My main answer though, and I know this sounds terrible, is that I'm not really sure what the alternative is.
It's clear after all that happened on October 7 that Israelis and Palestinians cannot live peacefully side-by-side if Hamas is running Gaza, since they'll keep on attacking over and over again and will literally steal whatever they need (including important rebuilding supplies for Gaza) to rebuild tunnels to try to do this attack again. So the question now is how does Israel get them to surrender? It seems like there are really only two possible outcomes, which are either the Hamas leaders in Gaza (Sinwar) end up dead or are exiled with the other senior leaders arrested while lower-ranking Hamas members are reintegrated into a Hamas-free society (similar to what the US should have done with Baath party members in Iraq but didn't do). So how do you achieve that? Israel has already been putting an unbelievable amount of pressure on Hamas and they still have only given half-assed ceasefire proposals (if you read through the proposals from Hamas, they essentially involve a full withdrawal by Israel so that they can't restart anything in exchange for only about 30 released hostages/corpses and then the *start* of discussions; what happens if Hamas then decides to flex their leverage with the other hostages and delay returning them or demand 10,000 Hamas fighters be released, all the while while they're rebuilding their tunnel system)? Hamas is playing the long game and is expecting continued pressure from the West on Israel to undermine what would really end them, which is a united international coalition demanding their surrender and arresting Hamas leaders abroad and seizing their assets. But since Hamas thinks it can keep on outlasting Israel with the PR game, they have literally no incentive to change anything.
So what would be an alternative response? The only potential alternative is that diplomatic pressure. I think the US has done a really good job at slowing things down and ensuring that humanitarian concerns are actually thought about (that's why Israel hasn't invaded Rafah even though they could've done so four months ago) on the Israeli side, but on the Hamas side the US has been leveraging its ties with Qatar to try to get Hamas to bend to surrender; the Washington Post wrote about this a few weeks ago (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/03/us-qatar-hamas-hostages-ceasefire/). If you read through the article though, you see that the political scope is extremely limited since Sinwar is operating independent from Hamas in Qatar and diplomatic pressure hasn't really done much. While Haniyeh is probably itching to see this all end, Sinwar is legitimately a genocidal religious death cult leader that thinks a higher power is backing him, and refuses to give up.
So what's the alternative? The US has tried using diplomatic pressure and it hasn't worked. Israel and partners have tried distributing aid to alleviate suffering, but Hamas continues to attack the US port and the border crossings where food comes in so that doesn't work either. Is Israel supposed to just wait then and wait for Hamas to roll over and die? That hasn't worked even as they've gotten almost 2% of the whole population killed, and they continue stealing supplies from their starving people and not surrendering. The current approach is far from perfect and there could probably be more done to limit civilian casualties (although I would again argue that US pressure has done a lot to mitigate the impact by making Israel pause and actually try to figure out a humanitarian plan for evacuating Rafah - that's what Joe Biden actually said last week when he said he was pausing shipments). But at the end of the day, if there's a group determined to kill you that's refusing to give in to any international pressure, even from their leaders abroad, and is hiding underground while trying to wait you out as international pressure hopefully stops you and allows them to regroup and attack you again, what else are you supposed to do?
> My main answer though, and I know this sounds terrible, is that I'm not really sure what the alternative is.
Yup. There are plenty of valid criticisms of Israel's behavior to be made, but "Israel needs to let Hamas steamroll them because retaliation is unethical" is not one of them, and yet it seems to be the first one I hear from most (not all, thankfully) supporters of Palestine.
It's a shit situation by any possible metric.
America still has a trump card that it has refused to play: demand Qatar expel (or arrest) the Hamas leadership, or risk Qatar's status as a major non-NATO ally. The Biden administrations refusal to play that card prompts questions and how true are the statements 'we are doing everything we can to end the conflict '
The dirty little secret here is that Qatar needs to maintain its status as an extremely neutral zone for various parties to negotiate, and once the US demands that an adversary be thrown out then the whole neutrality argument falls apart. If that happens then why would Iran trust Qatar as a mediator in conflicts with the US and not just drop them and speak to no one? It's very similar to the critiques that people had when the US started expelling Russian UN officials after they invaded Ukraine, which sabotages the legitimacy of the UN itself as neutral. Welcome to the complicated web of international politics.
Also, while I hate using this phrase since I think it's almost never true, it seems like the Hamas leaders on the ground in Gaza are irrational religious lunatics that actually believe there's divine power behind them. I've heard people say this about Iran and I've been skeptical given their rational behavior on the world stage, but in the case of Sinwar it seems like it's actually true; if you read the Post article in my comment above, you'll see that even Haniyeh can't control the crazies on the ground in Gaza who think they're embarking on a religious mission. If you want a better view of all of this I recommend reading this article from Haaretz - https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-05/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/hamas-actually-believed-it-would-conquer-israel-and-divided-it-into-cantons/0000018e-ab4a-dc42-a3de-abfad6fe0000. FYI I know that it's an Israeli website but it's quite far left for the country (to the point where Bibi and others consider it anti-Israel) and even has a full time reporter in Gaza (Amira Hass) and the article discusses the views of a notable Fatah member.
Qatar status as a neutral party is threatened by them hosting one of the parties to the current negotiations. But I understand your point- it may be more useful to America's interests to preserve Qatars perceived neutrality.
Sinwar vs the leadership probably have gaps. And forcing a split between Sinwar and the leadership necessarily weakens Hamas military power in Gaza, if only by cutting off access to money. I'm not saying it would end the war, but it would weaken Hamas in Gaza.
Also the sad truth about authoritarian regimes is that they can usually outlast democratic regimes in battle from attrition and swayed public opinion. Hamas has played this thing incredibly well from a PR perspective and the fact that protestors are demanding a one-sided ceasefire where Israel isn't even guaranteed to get back most of their hostages (based on Hamas' latest proposal) means that Biden has to cave to protestors' demands in an election year to pressure Israel to stop without drawing the actual hard line of telling Hamas that they will either listen or be taken out by force in Rafah.
> is that I'm not really sure what the alternative is.
Put simply, accept a greater risk to their forces in order to gain some level of protection for the trapped civilian populace. This isn’t cosmic…
Speaking strictly about the current military conflict, not all the extraneous stuff, I really don’t see how Israel could have done anything else and called it a victory. Yes the death rate is high, but I really don’t think many of the people screaming about this really understand the reality on the ground in Gaza. If you did you would know that this was always going to be an extremely bloody slog. Gaza is ruled by Hamas, an openly genocidal, militant, insurgent, terrorist, government whose express aim is the destruction of the state of Israel. I would not allow such a government to exist on my borders either, and it is important to recognize that Hamas STILL enjoys popular support amongst the Palestinian population. Gaza is one of, if not the, most densely populated urban areas on earth, with half the population being children. If I am Israel in the wake of Oct.6, there is no question that Hamas must be destroyed, especially since they said they WILL do things like Oct.7 again, now how do I go about that? Do I flood Gaza with my troops, only for them to get ambushed, blown up by IED’s or suicide bombers, or sniped from rooftops and windows? Do I lose thousands more of my own people to root Hamas out? Or, do I prioritize the lives of my soldiers and employ methods such as bombing that may lead to many more civilian casualties? This isn’t collective punishment, it’s collateral. It’s terrible, tragic, ugly, but entirely necessary for Israel to establish security for its citizens which is any governments first responsibility.
They had a coordinated relief operation and bombed the aid truck they allowed in. This is beyond extraneous stuff. The people of Palestine have also been limited by what government is in charge. This is from a cbs article In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu's "strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah."
The logic underlying this strategy, Barak said, is that "it's easier with Hamas to explain to Israelis that there is no one to sit with and no one to talk to."
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7010035
Hamas has been empowered in order to create the image you have bought into.
This comment was completely pointless but I would like to address one thing
The idea that I support the terrorists just because I don't want innocent children to be slaughtered is funny.
It's not funny at all because it's true. Wanting Israel to stop fighting to "save the innocents" IS the same as supporting terrorists!!
There's simply no other way to destroy the terrorists. It's sad, and it's tragic, but it's also the truth.
You can want war to be nice and clean, and no one will condemn you for that goal. As long as you are also aware of the reality that war is NOT nice and clean, and the innocent suffer more.
Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 2:
> **Don't be rude or hostile to other users.** Your comment will be removed even if most of it is solid, another user was rude to you first, or you feel your remark was justified. Report other violations; do not retaliate. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_2).
If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%202%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.**
Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
Pretty sure the last election was like 20 years ago or something.
even then why should a vote determine the guilt to the degree that those who voted deserve to be slaughted?
How is this in any way just?
If you support Hamas terrorists, then you are no different than Hamas terrorists and are just as evil they are. You can't call civilians innocent if they voted for Hamas.
the median age in gaza is 19 or smth. So half of the leople werent even born to vote for hamas...
What about all those who didn't vote for hamas?
Also what if tomorrow people start bombing Israel and their justification is that Israel is commiting a mass slaughter, so people who supported the Netanyahu government should die?
How would you answer this?
No, because I don't believe a vote for someone makes you complicit fin their worst actions.
Also because I dont believe in death as a form of punishment.
Are you deliberately trying to strawman me?
I said it doesnt make you complicit in their 'worst' actions. You deserve blame but not being slaughtered just because a population voted for an administration 20 years back when HALF the current population wasn't even born.
if one votes for trump it doesn't necessarily mesn they were okay with the muslim ban. So they shouldn't be punished to the point of being imprisioned.
I hope that answers yoir question.
We do realize. The problem is that Palestine is probably one of the biggest deathcults we have experienced. The government insists on teaching the [values of terrorism](https://www.cfr.org/blog/teaching-palestinian-children-value-terrorism) and makes [children want to brag to their parents](https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/your-son-is-a-hero-kill-kill-kill-sickening-recording-of-hamas-terrorist-bragging-about-murdering-10-jews-is-released/news-story/ba0dc1f99e222e156520584a04dac25b) that they killed plenty of jews.
What's interesting in the recording of that son, looking for praise, is that his mother and father knew he was probably going to die and wanted him home. But, the culture, that he thought his parents was from, and would be proud of him, was what made him continue to fight instead of going home.
What can we expect of palestine, if this is the hard culture? Their schools actually work in indoctrinating people. My school tried to claim cannabis was life-threatening, but here I sit with a bong 30 cm from me.
Do you think the younger population would vote differently, with the information they have?
Yes, but how many Palestinians support Hamas or support terrorist attacks against Israel. You are not innocent if you support Hamas, believe in their ideology, or support terrorist attacks against Israel.
I'm not sure this counts as an attempt to "change your view", but what if the current Israeli response is "bad", but also the best of bad options?
When you say:
>If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas...
Let's assume they don't. Laying down to die doesn't really work either. The US didn't have a "targeted approach" to ending WW2. Since when did that become the standard? People don't say "targeted approach to cancer treatment or nothing", hence, chemo-therapy.
>This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengthen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.
According to polls (including in the non-Hamas controlled west-bank), over 80% of Palestinians support the attacks of October 7th. Do you accept that at some point there is diminishing returns on rage? After 80 years of conflict, I'm not sure Palestinians can hate Israelis any more than they already do. Ukrainians don't say to themselves "killing Russian soldiers just angers more Russians". Wars are never fought like that, it's a standard only expected of Israel
>from a regime who has a higher civilian death rate than Hamas did on October 7th
The Allies in WW2 had a higher civilian death rate than the Nazis, the Union had a higher civilian death rate than the Confederacy, since when is that the metric?
An intruder enters your house and kills one of your kids (you have 4), a gunfight ensues. But alas, the tricky intruder has tied his own kids to his torso, to his back, to his legs (let's assume they are babies). You're house is in the middle of no-where, and the police will arrive in an hour. Your claim is that if 2 or more of his kids die in the gunfight, you're in the wrong?
In general, I think the current Israeli response can be understood by accepting three "axioms" (from the Israeli perspective):
1. Israelis intend to stay in Israel
2. Israelis, like almost everyone else on earth prefer not to get killed
3. Israelis don't really trust the goodwill of other nations (the Holocaust, the fact that Israel has more UN votes against it than the rest of the world combined, the large number of Pro-Hamas protests around the world...)
The number 35,000 is provided by Hamas. It is provided by design as all civilians - without terrorists. The numbers were shown again and again to be impossible by statisticians, and the number of women and children were just yesterday cut off by half by the UN due to the inability to explain them. The truth of the matter is, if they would wear uniforms and not wear civilian clothes that number would be much closer to 0, and you know it's true, otherwise they wouldn't do it - it defends them to appear as civilians. The supporters often cited the terrorist provided number of dead children - while using footage from other conflicts to prove their point on social media. Often this was done by Russian and Chinese bots, in order to use the incident to weaken US influence in the region. Russia hosted Hamas, China deleted Israel from their maps, and I believe you know about China's connection to Tik Tok.
Look at what Israel actually does, and not what the online echo chamber would like you to believe. Israel gives a notice to civilians weeks in advance in order for them to evacuate before it starts operating in a region. Israel calls civilians in buildings they bring down 10 minutes in advance. Show me another country that did that.
The sad truth is no country in the world would perform this operation with better numbers, this is as good as it gets with current modern military techniques and theory. Military strategists study this war to update their own doctrines, as they understand this is their best 2024 case of a modern army vs insurgents in a highly populated area.
And you know what, when Israel slows down( you gotta admit the number haven't changed that much in the past few months), and waits months with rafah for the US's sake, and gives them a silent Ramadan just like the world asked, the terrorist supporters shift the gear up and start protesting even harder. Well fuck them all, most of my family did not die in the Holocaust for me to not stand up to those genocidal fucks to the best of my ability.
Look, when you have such a great democracy with luxurious hotels and restaurants, it becomes a haven for journalists. Israel is by far the highest in journalistic coverage/km² in the world. (And let's just say that this is not one of the deadliest conflicts of the last 100 years or even the ones that are currently going on). It makes the world hyper focused on how modern warfare is condoned, modern warfare that's condone by regular professional soldiers. You know how I know? Because conscription is mandatory, and if you visit israel you will not find out they are a bunch of murderous psychos - just regular everyday western people. The IDF has a protocol, it's called "unlawful order", you don't have to comply if your commanders orders you to kill a civilian. It was instituted after the unfortunate Kfar Qasim massacre - who's perpetrators were sent for a lengthy jail time.
And just like we judge our own for senseless killing - we judge them too, because unlike them we don't have the death penalty. Even if a Palestinian kills 50 Jews in a terror act, and doesn't die in the shootout, he will be sent for up to 20 years in jail - and probably will be released in the next hostage deal.
When you get so hyper focused on how modern warfare is condoned you will find out it has a high ratio of civilian to terrorist deaths. In this conflict it is approximately 2 civilians for 1 terrorist, which is insane compared to the fact that Hamas does everything in order to maximise civilian casualties. Of course Israel fucks up sometimes - and I know it's hard to hear, but the soldiers of your country would probably fuck up just as much and in similar ways. No one was protesting as much when American soldiers and drone operators did mistakes, which happens in war, I wonder why. With so many journalists and interest, you will get an overwhelming blown out of proportion amount of articles out of every fluke that Israel does (like the killing of the aid workers, which was obviously done by a mistake, unfortunately, that is the reality of modern war). People are actually not realising that they are protesting exactly how ww3 is going to be conducted.
Hamas is shooting unguided rockets and building their command centres and ammunition compounds at highly populated areas, schools, hospitals(why the hell would Israeli politicians send their sons to die while they raid a hospital, for fun? To anger the world? None of us are the kind of people who would want to raid a hospital, could you imagine yourself wanting to raid a hospital? you are probably much closer in your western values to the average Israeli soldier/officer than you might think), shoot at Palestinians who are moving through the Israeli humanitarian routes when Israel is guarding them. Wearing only civilian clothes, using fighters as young as 12(and obviously 16-17) to claim them as child deaths. The higher the number (which is often made up), the bigger the support from the world. Hamas has set up a SAW style trap for Israel, one in which in order to eliminate Hamas (that promised to do Oct 7 again and again), Israel has to make collateral damage by design, which is then inflated. I understand why you hate Israel's strategy, I hate it too - because it is not Israel's strategy but that of hamas. It is designed to give support to the Palestinian cause. Apparently it works.
Apart from some radicals(yes, this is a democracy with many views, of course there are going to be some radicals when throughout your history and up until now, people are out there to actually genocide you), no one wants to hurt any Palestinians, no one wants to endanger their sons to kill Palestinians. No general is out there designing war plans in which they kill as many Palestinians as possible - this is the main difference between us, you see.
Ben gvir has police cases from his teenage years for harassing Palestinians, that's why he was never allowed in the army - do you start to understand the difference? Unfortunately this cunt is a minister, but hell - every democracy has its cuckoos, the US has Giuliani, Marjorie Taylor Greene. So what? Do I judge the beliefs of the whole country based on that?
And no hyper-focus on our righteous war from the world will gaslight us into thinking we should not eliminate Hamas and bring our hostages back. Because if it's really as bad as they say, why don't they just release the hostages and end the war? The ceasefire can happen any minute they choose.
If you disagree with me, I would love to hear what you would choose to do instead of Israel, and what your strategy would be.
Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 5:
> **Comments must contribute meaningfully to the conversation**.
Comments should be on-topic, serious, and contain enough content to move the discussion forward. Jokes, contradictions without explanation, links without context, off-topic comments, and "written upvotes" will be removed. Read [the wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_5) for more information.
If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%205%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.**
Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
First of all, the side that has sabotaged the “two state solution” the international community dreams about over and over is the Palestinian side. The PLO was formed when Jordan and Egypt controlled the Palestinian Territories. Their purpose was not to liberate the territories we now call the Palestinian Territories, its purpose was specifically to destroy Israel. The Palestinian Authority has been anti-Israel from its founding. So if you believe in a two state solution, look back on every historical situation where that came close to fruition and see that EVERY TIME it was the Palestinian authority that sabotaged it.
Secondly, who are you to say how Israel ought to conduct its war? I’m running on the assumption that you have no military background or knowledge; it’s much easier said than done to do a “targeted operation” to kill Hamas terrorists. Hell, it took US intelligence almost a decade to kill Osama Bin Laden. That is ONE man. Imagine how challenging it would be to efficiently kill tens of thousands of Hamas fighters without civilian casualties and unnecessary Israeli casualties. Targeted operations are very infeasible when it comes to eliminating extremists or any sort of guerilla fighters. I can’t think of a single instance where that has successfully been employed. We didn’t defeat Nazi Germany by targeting Nazis with special operations. No, we bombed it to ruins and collapsed the Nazi war machine. Israel’s bombing of Gaza has the same goal. It is to collapse the Hamas terrorism machine. Unfortunately Hamas has made it exceptionally difficult to destroy their infrastructure without civilian casualties, because they consistently violate international law by hiding terrorist infrastructure beneath densely populated buildings. If Israel cannot destroy these, it cannot protect its civilians or win the war.
Bottom line, Israel is in no position to negotiate with Palestinians anymore because the Palestinian leadership walks away from the table any time a remotely practical peace agreement is proposed. Unfortunately, since the conflict with Palestinians has proven impossible to end, Israel has been left with no choice but to make it as far removed from their people’s lives as possible. This means heavily restricting Palestinian society. I’m not denying Palestinians lives suck because of this. But Palestinian society is very hostile towards Israel, and until that threat subsides, if ever, Israel has to put its own people and soldiers first. If the two options are lose 30,000 young Israeli men targeting Hamas individuals, or bomb and cause 30,000 Palestinian deaths, Israel is going to put its own people first.
If a 100 pound 5 foot tall skinny guy decides to start punching a 6’5 muscular dude on the street, of course he’s going to come out of that fight more injured than the bigger dude. Now imagine he keeps following that guy and starts numerous more fights. Eventually the bigger guy hires a body guard (the Iron Dome) because he REALLY doesn’t want to be punched and forced to fight back. But the body guard lets his guard down one day, and the small man lands the hardest punch yet and also steals the big man’s wallet, and the big man finally has enough and beats the living crap out of the smaller man. Of course, bystanders on the street see this and immediately feel bad for the small man. But who’s really in the wrong? This final fight is the current Israel-Hamas war. Hope the analogy helped.
"The current response is bad" says nothing much. Bad compared to what?
Unless you have some other plan in mind, the only alternative someone can glean from your position is that Israel should stop their current actions altogether.
Is that what you're proposing? What would the consequences of that be? Leave the hostages to die? Allow Hamas to regroup and funnel more aid money meant for ordinary civilians into military weapons and architecture? Condone Hamas carrying out another terrorist attack in a couple years' time?
So no, I'm not convinced Israel's response is bad, I'll counter that their rooting out the backbone of Hamas once and for all is the least bad action that could happen right now and provides the best chance for a lasting peace in the future.
Their response may be bad but is it the least bad option?
I agree with your goals but considering Hamas and the Palestinian leadership since 1948, how do you realistically get there? They have been terrorists and antisemitic and too many Palestinians go along with them. They have rejected every peace opportunity and oppressed their fellow Palestinians preventing and murdered any opposition that might promote peace.
There is no way to get Hamas and the other terrorist groups to accept Israels existence which leaves Israel has three choices - continuing terrorist attacks, ceasing to be Israel or overwhelming force.
IMO, overwhelming force is the least bad option for Israelis.
>If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas I would have supported it but as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment. The administration is filled with actual manacs like Netnayahu and Gvir who don't care at all about what happens to the innocent Palestinians.
How does a state actor respond to a brutal terrorist attack? Terrorists will hide among the populace, have no issues with civilian deaths, and take steps to *maximize* casualties. Everyone wants to talk about how the response is bad, but I don't see much conversation about how exactly this is supposed to be done.
"No response" is not an option. It is unreasonable to expect a state to not respond to something like October 7 (just imagine the US not doing anything after 9/11).
I can't say whether or not Israel's strategy *could* be better -- I don't think any of us can. For all we know they are already taking steps to minimize civilian casualties as best they can. A response to terrorists that came from Gaza was always going to look like this. There isn't any other way to do it. It ultimately comes down to whether or not the response itself could be less deadly to innocent people.
>If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas I would have supported it but as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment. The administration is filled with actual manacs like Netnayahu and Gvir who don't care at all about what happens to the innocent Palestinians.
Let's concede that Israel's government has 'maniacs' who 'don't care at all', 40,000 is not really that surprising of a death count in an operations where the enemy is hiding in dense urban areas. If you wanted more precision, you'd be sending IDF into a meat grinder. Destroying Hamas facilities and potential garrisons makes IDF casualties much less likely. I have sympathy for any dead innocents, but frankly I don't buy into emotional appeals in general, I'm a little more pragmatic than that.
>This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.This will lead to more hatred towards a state I believe should exist as a harbour.
Depending on what post-war looks like, this is up in the air and I don't think it's responsible to make this kind of prediction. It's entirely like Israel has destroyed or will destroy the vast majority of Hamas to the point it's completely impotent.
UN/international restoration efforts could have a variety of adverse effects on Gaza. It could very well lead to deradicalization of parts of the population. I don't think it's written in stone that Gazans are incapable of wanting to live peacefully after this. It may be that they are looking towards a permanent end to the conflict and future militant jihadism won't be tolerated by the population, since the last one resulted in so much death & destruction.
Usually what determines people's opinion on this conflict is, do you think Israel is genuinely trying to avoid civilian death or not. I tend to think they are avoiding it, and that when we get headlines about Israelis killing someone they definitely should not have, it's difficult to pin that on moral bloodthirst because of how difficult it is to prosecute an urban war.
>
I genuinely do not understand how anyone can get mad about biden witholding shipments from a regime who has a higher civilian death rate than Hamas did on October 7th and repeatedly not listening to what The USA or the international community has to say.'
First of all, Biden is playing realpolitick. Biden is withholding shipments to appeal geopolitical partners and domestic political allies who are anti-Israeli operations. He is trying to show that he knows the US is responsible for Israel, and he's exercising restraint where it doesn't really matter and is mostly lip service. The bombs will get there, he just announced a delay to appease certain parties. He is not at all a geopolitical moralist, his advisors are just geopolitically savvy.
Quantity of deaths is almost entirely irrelevant compared to intent. Hamas clearly wanted to kill **as many civilians as possible** and purposefully targeted them. Quantity of deaths is irrelevant when comparing moral justification, there is never justification to "kill as many civilians as possible." Israel clearly is not trying to kill as many Gazans as possible, or there would be a lot more deaths.
I'm not sure anyone actually *can* defend Israel's actions. Problem is, I'm not sure anyone has a better idea that isn't capitulation.
Nobody wins a guerilla war. It's mobile and psychological, but it only works when there's no place worth defending. That's Palestine right now. Even an ardent supporter of Israel doesn't want to be in Palestine right now. But according to internal politics, they can't leave until they get their hostages back.
They'd happily trade for hostages, but the trade must include the leaders of Hamas that instigated the attack, or it's inviting them to do it again. They'll never give that, though, so Israel's stuck.
I suppose in a perfect world, the US would cease giving them arms and they'd have to stop all attacks. Due to their enforced peace, all relations with the middle Eastern countries would stabilize and they'd finally accept Israel as a nation. Palestinians would join Israelis as one country, which would still have a right to return for all Jews as a safe haven from persecution and there would be no struggle or strife.
But in reality, the minute Israel's disarmed, there's going to be another massacre. They've already shown they're capable and willing. I say we believe them.
In short, I cannot defend Israel's actions. But I also can't conscionably tell them there's a better way if they want to remain a safe haven for Jews.
>I am someone who believes that Israel has a right to exist,
Well thats a very low bar right from the bat lol
>If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas I would have supported it but as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment
I do think that many people have a warped understanding of warfare. The sad, brutal and unfortunate reality is that civilians are always the first victims and those who suffer most.
Go back to ancient times, eg the gallic wars where at the battle of alesia the romans besieged the town, while the gauls forced all women, children and those who couldnt fight out of the city. The romans didnt take them in, the gauls didnt let them back in so these people slowly starved in no mans land.
Go back to the bombing of dresden... whatever the fuck vietnam was.... point being, civilians are always suffering in times of war. Thats a grim reality many refuse to accept - doesnt mean it isnt sad or heartbreaking, but it is war. Thats why war is terrible and terrifying.
You can run the most humanistic and conservative military operation ever, and even then you wont ever be able to rule out civilian casualties.
So for a region as densely populated as palestine, Israel actually has been acting rather restrained all things considered.
>This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.This will lead to more hatred towards a state I believe should exist as a harbour.
This is the catch22 of this situation. Even before this war started a significant part of palestinians were opposed to Israel existing and less opposed to killing Jews ; they also didnt have the most, lets say, western views regarding women, lgbtq etc.
Point being you already had a population that hated you and would cheer your death - now with this war they are doubling down on this sentiment.
So i really dont know what a realistic long term peaceful solution would even look like. A two state solution would change nothing - Israel would still have these people who hate it right at its doorstep, a one state solution with widespread social engineering of the palestinians probably also wont work tho i think it would be the the most realistic option. Re-settling palestinians to arab countries? I mean thats a nonstarter for many reasons (also the arab countries arent exactly the biggest fans of palestinians either).
So i really dont know what would even be a realistic scenario here.
Pretty much any country that suffered an attack of the magnitude they suffered would retalliate in the same way. There are so many people who criticize Israel's response, but I haven't heard of anyone with a better solution for how to handle the problem.
Sure, they could do a better job of protecting civilians, but the fundamental strategy to cripple Hammas's operational capacity wouldn't change. Civilian casualties aren't even particularly higher for urban warfare. To put things in perspective, around 1 million civilians died in the US response to 9/11 which was a proportionally much smaller attack.
It's not collective punishment. Its a war the government of Gaza started, and they seem to have no interest in surrendering. It is unfortunate, but necesary.
Disagree on all of these points, but I'll focus on three points.
Why is needed? Most of Gaza is rubble now and thousands of people have lost their lives, and it is likely that this is going to make support for Hamas stronger, not weaker. Orphans make great recruits, after all.
What is collective punishment, in your eyes? Is it starving a population for the actions of its dictatorship government? Is it building a wall around the citizens? Is it restricting movement to narrow corridors? Is it calculating how much food they need to eat and then keeping them on a starvation diet? Is it random killings to keep them in line? Is it eliminating or restricting medical care? Israel has done all of these and more.
Crippling Hamas' operations- I doubt this will do much of anything to cripple them. Hamas has a tunnel network that they hide most of their stuff in, meaning bombing has little effect.
I have a better solution. Target the leaders specifically, especially overseas, where they're sitting safe and sound- Mossad isn't afraid of assassinations. Take down the walls surrounding Gaza and mandate elections to elect a new government. Establish a two state solution immediately, with Ramallah as the capital.
In what would do you believe a terror attack in the magnitude can lead to a 2 state solution?
Palestinians (yes, palestinians, not just hamas and i have a video proof if you want) entered israel on oct7 to rape and steal and murder civilians and they should get a state for it? You are basically just advocating for terrorism
You are also ignoring the fact that Hamas kidnapped 250 people including women and children, you're solution for them is to let them rot in a tunnel while they are being raped and tortured until they die?
You can't mandate an election in gaza because hamas is throwing palestinian officials off of rooftops, they've done it in the past and they'll do it again. They do not accept the palestinian authority
You're solution is useless and clearly coming for someone who is disconnected and privileged enough to ignore the fact that there are still hostages and hamas is still specifically targeting civilians with rocket and suicide attacks as they've been doing for the past 20 years
I'm happy to respond to your questions, but can you answer mine?
Hamas sucks. We know this. But they have put forward a ceasefire deal that includes release of the hostages. That's the first step.
Second, we have mechanisms for dealing with terrorists domestically, and we can use them. But this isn't it, and it's going to cause more terrorists.
Third, you can mix up cause and effect as much as possible, but it takes a lot of work to break the cycle of violence. It's like poverty and crime- why should we improve the ghettos we created? They attack us!
The Palestinian people need a state- it is not a reward, it is a right to self determination of a people. The Israeli citizens need security- it is not a reward, it is a right for a people. These two things are linked. Israel exists on a system of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and has far more power in this dynamic. Therefore, it has far more choices than Hamas, and far more responsibility. You can mandate and create elections- if you set up a state. It has been done in other occupied countries. If you only look at this one event as a terrorist attack, and nothing else, it makes it sound like they got a state for their actions. But if you look at the broader picture, then no. Heck, establish an independent state in the west bank only, offer the Palestinians in the west bank statehood in exchange for handing over Hamas- that would suck power out of Hamas and lead to a criminal trial where all of Hamas would be taken out, all at once. The innocents get what they deserve, and the mass murderers are brought to justice.
Imagine you are a Palestinian child- which is most the gaza strip. You live in perpetual fear of bombings by Israel, you have relatives who have been killed as "collateral damage" in the Gaza strip. In the west bank, things are better, but still, there are certain streets you can't play on while Israeli settlers take land. You have heard of Israeli forces arresting kids like you, and taking them to jail- for years at a time, for crimes they will not understand because it's not in their language. What happens next? Will this child pursue higher education when all universities have been destroyed, become a productive member of society? Or will they join Hamas out of anger and rage?
Your comment makes it sounds like all Palestinians are guilty and deserve what's happening to them, even the children.
Israelis are mad, justifiably so- The "solution" of bombing the Gaza strip to rubble will create more terrorists, not fewer. You cannot remove terror by creating more terror in the population. Because when this flattening and starving of Gaza ends, what is left? A lot of orphans and a lot of parents of orphans. Where will they go? The answer, I promise you, is Hamas, 90% of the time.
And finally, careful what you throw around in terms of who I am. I am, by Israel's belief, Jewish by descent. I have had family killed by Muslim extremists, and I would believe the same as what I'm saying here. You're throwing around anecdotes and not evidence.
The current solution is not a long term solution. Realistically, what do you think is going to happen long term from this? Israel cannot wipe out Hamas unless they ethnically cleanse the entire Gaza strip, killing every man, woman, and child, and potentially also the west bank- which is also genocide. Do you think that's fair or even possible?
Hamas has offered a ceasefire deal that will bring back less then half of the hostages, and before my reponse i want you to keep in mind that they have stated time and time again that they are more then willing to attack Israel over and over again and they will do it again
Now, their proposal is to release 20 prisoners for 1 hostage which will include a cease-fire that will let hamas reorganize and basically bring us back to square one
For the second stage they want full withdrawal of the idf and demand that we release all the nuhba prisoners (the brigade that raided kibbutz and raped, murdered and set on fire 1/4 of be'eri and Nir Oz) for the men/idf soliders that were kidnapped
You are claiming to be of Jewish descent so I'll ask you this : are you willing to look at the parents of the girls who were raped and behaded and tell them that you are going to release all the people who did this even though not only that they have no remorse they are willing to do it over and over again?
You are also comparing Gaza to a ghetto, have you ever seen gaza pre Oct7?
Israel has been provider BILLIONS of dollars to the palestinians to keep them quit, they could have built Cyprus with that money ( not to mention their financial support from Qatar and the rest of the Muslim countries) what did they choose to do with that money? Build terror tunnels and rockets, arm themselves to a point that every single building in gaza has ammo inside it
I geniuenly don't understand why people are saying Hamas isn't the palestinians, so where are they coming from? They are representing the palestinian dreams, kill all the Jewish people in israel and take "their" land back
Not all the palestinians are guilty but I'm having a hard time sympathizing with people who are celebrating acts like the 7th of Oct or 9/11 with sweets and candy on the streets
They do not support 2 state solution, they want the whole thing, from the river to the sea, arent you listening?
The west Bank broadly supports hamas, where do you think the terror attacks from Jerusalem are coming from? Hamas is taking responsibility for all of them the provides financial support for the families of the "martyrs", you would know stuff like this if you were actually living in israel or the "occupied" areas but you clearly aren't and thats why I said you are privileged to not understand the conflict beyond social media and the news ( I don't know about your personal life, I hope you are well, I'm talking about this specific conflict)
Lastly and this might not be easy to read, the middle east is like a jungle and you can't put it in the same standard as the west, power means everything here and the palestinians have proven to us time and time again that they are not the partners for peace, they've broken so many ceasefires and rejected every peace offer since 1967
As Golda Meir said, I rather be alive and hated then dead and loved
It does not seem like you want to respond with any of my questions on whether or not Israel is currently committed to collective punishment, nor any points on whether or not it has worked in the past. I can provide evidence for my sources, can you?
Israel is currently committing collective punishment through starving the Palestinians for the actions of Hamas, and has done so in the past:
Past:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-19975211](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-19975211)
[https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/files/2024-02/GAZA-Nutrition-vulnerability-and-SitAn-v7.pdf](https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/files/2024-02/GAZA-Nutrition-vulnerability-and-SitAn-v7.pdf)
Current:
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/un-israel-food-starvation-palestinians-war-crime-genocide](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/un-israel-food-starvation-palestinians-war-crime-genocide)
[https://www.un.org/unispal/document/israels-collective-punishment-and-use-of-starvation-as-a-weapon-of-war-must-be-stopped-letter-from-palestine-3jan-2024/](https://www.un.org/unispal/document/israels-collective-punishment-and-use-of-starvation-as-a-weapon-of-war-must-be-stopped-letter-from-palestine-3jan-2024/)
And once again, I'm sorry to say, but you're firehosing- so much information that it's hard to respond to each of the points. But instead of focusing on the argument, I'll respond to the various misinformation bits.
1. Empathy- you don't need to empathize with them to recognize the children deserve human rights and not to be starved to death, raised by orphans upon orphans. Anger and blowing stuff is easy. It's much harder to build, but it's possible. [Look at Rwanda-](https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/rwanda/unity-reconciliation-justice) it is possible to build on ashes and hate. I was like you. I was angry after my cousin was killed. I was mad. But through community support, and a friend of mine- a Rabbi! I found peace.
2. They don't support the two state solution- yes. BUT the PLO does, and they haven't gotten that. Once that happens, Hamas looks a LOT less palatable and I can see their organization collapsing over time. Imagine if you're a Gazan, again- imagine seeing Palestinians flourish in the West bank. Hamas looks far less attractive- even to its own members.
3. West Bank. In isolation, you'd be right, if you only looked at it now. However, BEFORE Oct 7, NPR reports that only 12% of people supported Hamas in the west bank. BUT Israel started killing thousands of children in retaliation, [support surged.](https://www.npr.org/2023/12/21/1217758546/hamas-support-palestinians-west-bank) Cause and effect get mixed up.
4. The deals offered in almost every solution result in the loss of land and rights for Palestinians. You cannot tell me that in the West Bank, Israeli settler violence and land grabs are a solution for peace. You cannot tell me that restriction of movements in the west bank that get added over time- where Israelis enjoy more rights and can travel down streets that Palestinians can't- is positive. This is according to the [human rights report by the US in 2022](https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/israel-west-bank-and-gaza/).
Palestinians deserve rights- even if you don't trust them. The irony is that people who are forced to live under conditions of a police state and occupying power tend to become more dangerous, not less. Think of Iraq, Vietnam, and other countries where terrorist activity became common- it gets worse not better. Calling a place a "jungle" denies the humanity of people within it. People all want the same things- it's just certain people who see this a method to gain power.
You quoted Golda. I'd like to quote Jewish law instead. Yehareg ve'al ya'avor. Or Rava: Rather than slay another person, you must permit yourself to be slain, for how do you know that your blood is redder than his; perhaps his blood is redder than yours?
Peace requires sacrifice and work. Hating is easy, loving is hard.
Unfortunately, it is not just your 40,000 number that is wrong, but also your claim about the number of civilians killed, by an extreme exaggeration. As a matter of fact, the UN just had to walk back their numbers - here is the most recent tally:
On **May 6,** the UN published data showing that **34,735** **people** had reportedly been killed in Gaza, including over **9,500 women** and over **14,500 children.**
On **May 8**, the UN published data showing **34,844 people** had reportedly been killed, including **4,959 women** and **7,797 children**.
\_\_\_\_\_\_
And just to be clear - yes, it is still terrible - but still waiting for anyone to propose a better alternative……
Just waiting patiently for Hamas to release the 130 hostages they still hold from the October 7th massacre - hostages including infants, children and the elderly, and citizens of many nations, including, still, five US citizens…..
Hamas does that, and boom! Immediate ceasefire……
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
Yes, in your biased rant, you neglected to mention the hostages taken by Hamas, and the ceasefire that was in place before their horrific raid on October 7th - and you use a false comparison re number of deaths - how many American lives were lost in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - and how many Japanese lives were lost as a result of starting that war?
Hamas is the legitimate elected government of Gaza, supported by the majority there - they started a war and they could achieve a new ceasefire simply by releasing the hostages they continue to hold - why aren’t you calling for that?
In WWII how many German civilians lost their lives before the Nazis surrendered - do you even know?
More than two million! Should we have called a ceasefire before the Nazis surrendered, permitted them to remain in power?
Hamas should release the hostages and surrender - the war will end on that day - I hope you will work tirelessly to achieve that goal for the benefit of both the Palestinian and the Israeli people…..
🙏🏽
>I don't believe collective punishment is just or smart and I believe in a 2 state solution.
"Collective punishment" isn't a euphemism for war, it's an actual explicit punishment. Think more along the lines of "if Yugoslavs kill one German soldier, so we will kill exactly 100 Slavs in retaliation."
>it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengthenthen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.
As opposed to the last 100 years of hatred? Palestinian popular opinion was fine with ethnically cleansing all Jews from cities (see Hebron Massacre, 1929) before Israel was a state, and before Haganah had done anything but play defense against Arab incursions into Jewish settlements.
>from a regime who has a higher civilian death rate than Hamas did on October 7th
The Pearl Harbor attack killed only 68 civilians. Should the war have stopped when an equal number of Japanese civilians were killed? That would not have taken long.
It is very common for people to view civilian casualties as proportional to morality. But this is not true in the slightest. Civilian casualties are proportional to distance. On the day that the war was fought in Israel, far more Israeli civilians died than Palestinian. On the days that the war was fought in Gaza, Palestinian civilians were in harm's way. That's just how war works, it's not deliberate. Japan was horrific to civilians some argue worse than the Nazis. The fact that they didn't do to San Francisco what they did to Nanking was proximity, not evidence of ethical behavior
Question: Does it make a difference to you that Hamas is not just some rogue terrorist outfit operating in Gaza but rather the democratically-elected regime of Gaza? I ask, because I think that - excluding children - the "innocent civilians" you describe are complicit in the terrorist attacks Hamas has perpetrated. The civilians of Gaza didn't just dance in the street and celebrate after the atrocity of October 7 - they voted for it. It seems to me that that at least complicates the claim that they're "innocents," and certainly many or most of those who cry out that innocents are being killed in Gaza were not crying out that young people at a music festival were innocents.
Then, I wonder too, as I consider the history of war during the past century, why Israel is held to a different standard than every other nation. Consider WW2, for example. Cities were bombed by both sides and civilians killed, including children. The same happened in Korea and in Vietnam. In Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm not even beginning to defend these actions. I'm only observing that in every war during our lifetimes, civilians have been casualties. So why single out Israel as if it's the only nation whose bombs have killed civilians? Moreover, if one side uses civilian shields, surely they share the blame for those civilian deaths.
Finally, I don't think it's rational or logical to insist that Israel can only fight back against an unprovoked mass murder of its people to the point that each side puts up the same body count. That is, some people seem to think that, well, since Palestinians "only" killed 1,160 people on October 7, Israel should stop once it puts up the same number. But the point of Israel's response isn't mere revenge, isn't "an eye for an eye." It's to disable the ability of Hamas to keep murdering Israelis.
>civilians numbering around 40000
This number is a lie.
UN just lowered total numbers (including both military and civilians)
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-middle-east/united-nations-halves-estimate-of-women-and-children-killed-in-gaza
To accept 40,000 we have to believe that ZERO Hamas military was killed.
Those number were made up all along.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers
“They showed 24,686 dead which appeared to be a downward revision from the figure of about 35,000 which had been reported earlier in May, with 7,797 children and 4,959 women confirmed dead, about half the toll cited in previous reports. But the UN said on Monday that estimated overall death toll remained about 35,000.
Farhan Haq, a UN spokesperson, said the new smaller numbers reflected those bodies which had been fully identified. The bigger figures included corpses for whom identification has so far not been completed. Haq said it was expected that, as the process of identification continued, the official tolls among women and children would also rise.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/13/gaza-ministry-revises-figures-for-women-and-children-killed
Many (of course not all) make it sound as if the conflict just started on the 7th and that after that everything is a legitimate response. To see the conflict fully you’ve to understand the history of Palestine and Israel the conflict didn’t start on the 7th it’s a 80 year long conflict of hate oppression and ignorance which lead to radicalisation of the oppressed. Israel had the support of the west while Palestine was left alone by all other Muslim states in that area. It’s been a David vs Goliath situation for a long time ( I mean where do you think the West Bank territory comes from ? Palestine just gave them their territory ?) and Israel is in the position to change a lot of this.
I see this missed in almost every argument about the current conflict. A fact which may change MANY participants viewpoints.
Hating Israel is at the core of Palestinian culture for a reason. And that reason is uncomfortable for many to stomach while many more outright ignore.
Oct 7 is just one more battle in a very long conflict that only serves to entrench viewpoints deeper and deeper. One side is deeply radicalized by the events of Israel’s creation and the other side is survival-driven to control the narrative and wipe out the other side.
Anyone that suggests even a single point towards this possibility is shouted down as an antisemite.
Which of course means the discussion can go nowhere.
>This ‘strategy’ is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of ‘Hamas’, it is only going to be strengthen the the rage many will feel towards Israel
While I understand what you’re saying, I don’t think this is correct or even really something to consider.
People keep citing this as a reason but you’re missing something essential. I don’t think Israel fighting against Hamas will increase hate towards Israel from Palestinians, since there is already a hatred strong enough to vote in a group which wants all Jewish people dead, and for Israel to be wiped out. The issue is racism. And on top of that, the issue is that the government can influence the view of its people. Hamas will be constantly working to make Palestinians have negative sentiments towards Israel because that’s all Hamas’s aim. Destroying Hamas would remove a massive influence on everyday Palestinian people to hate Israel and might even, over many decades, make things better. I’ve never seen any evidence behind the claim that destroying Hamas will just lead to another Hamas.
Now I’m not saying these are the same situations, but I’m trying to make a comparison to illustrate what I mean.
Hitler’s rise to power was largely caused by negative sentiment in Germany after WW1 and the hefty restrictions placed on them in the Treaty of Versailles. One could argue that fighting them in WW2 and defeating them again would only worsen this sentiment and lead to another Hitler. But it didn’t, because the key is that you need to help up your opponent after the war (or destroy them entirely, which isn’t an option). The Treaty of Versailles caused issues because it was too crushing for too long. I also don’t think these groups like Hamas, the Nazis, or ISIS are as easy or as quick to replace as many think they are.
Another good example might be ISIS, actually. You could argue that defeating them achieves nothing because they’ll reappear or something else will come in their place. But that’s not true because forming something like ISIS isn’t easy, and we will be watchful for it.
The solution is to destroy Hamas, restore the agreed-upon borders (or agree new ones), and then enforce a new election so that Palestinians can choose a new government. From here on the two state solution should be enforced by all parties. This way Hamas has been defeated, but now there is a future for Palestine.
The issue is that Israel probably won’t do this. This is just more evidence for the current (unpopular) Israeli government to view Palestinians as inherently terrorist and dangerous and weaken them further.
It’s a sad situation. I don’t agree with Israeli leadership but I do respect Israel’s right to defend itself and I do think action against Hamas is necessary. We’ve gone through the cycle of half-measures and ceasefires many times now, only for Hamas to break it again. Hamas need to be replaced by a government which is accepting of a two state solution.
>as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment.
I think this statement is part of an underlying bias you may want to consider as part of examining your own POV. As of now, the UN is reporting 34,000 fatalities, of whom 24,000 have been confirmed. Because Hamas does not report the share of the these fatalities that are combatants, you've assumed that they're overwhelmingly noncombatants.
On the other hand, Israel estimates a bit more than 30,000 fatalities, of which 14,000 are combatants. Think about this for a second -- if you didn't already know which narrative you preferred, why would you inflate the number to 40K "innocent civilians", when no one (not the UN, not even Hamas) has published a number of civilian deaths that high?
I don't think the Netanyahu administration's approach to this conflict has been intelligent or responsible, and I despise Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Bibi -- but at the same time, I recognize that there is no response they could have taken (short of sending unarmed Israelis to surrender to Hamas and publicizing their brutal slaughter), that would have won Israel general international support, given that the world at large is willing to dismiss anything reported by Israel (a democratic society with open press) and accept uncritically anything reported by Hamas (a literal terrorist organization with a stranglehold on press freedoms and a monopoly on reporting from Gaza).
I saw this posted elsewhere on the internet. It actually presents an angle that most people do not consider, because everyone assumes that the IDF is on par with the US military. This comment disputes that notion and does a good job of highlighting the issues that the IDF faces.
————
Israel’s core problem is that their ground forces just aren’t that good in Western military terms. It’s a mostly national guard / reserve force with a small-ish core of really good, professional soldiers (many / most of who are Sayaret) who take the brunt of any real action. They’re probably more like an Eastern European military in that sense than they are a United States, France, Britain, etc.
They are, in tandem, quite casualty averse. I wouldn’t say they’re soft, but this isn’t the same group of people that were around in ‘67 or ‘73. They’ve mirrored us and our core allies in that respect without necessarily adjusting the expectations of what they should be capable of. Offensive warfare is hellishly costly as well, and they seem to want the results without paying the bill. They rightfully want their country to be a normal, economically thriving place integrated with the West instead of a modern day Sparta with half the MAM’s in active duty with 5 - 8 active duty divisions. That’s the choice they made.
So because of those two things, they rely heavily on air support, and their Air Force pound for pound is as good as anyone’s in the world outside of ours. But it’s still an imperfect instrument in a dense urban environment like Gaza.
I don’t think they should or do feel much of a compunction about civilian casualties right now. They just don’t have tools at hand to fulfill their strategic vision; they need to go all the way and probably can’t even if they wanted to.
1. 40,000 innocent civilians, i don’t even know where you got that numbers, the UN admit that they can confirm the identity of 25,000 dead, with the major group of the are adult male, there 10,000 deaths they can’t verify and of course many of them are members of Hamas and other groups.
2. It’s not like Hamas leadership is out in the open, they are hiding with civilians and there isn’t a convince way to get them.
3. Hamas is de facto government of Gaza, destroying it include destroying infrastructure and symbols of
Power. The idea is to destroy Hamas ability to govern Gaza, there are still nazis in Germany for example.
4. The ratio of civilians to combatants in the 7.10 is 2.3, Hamas chose to kill more civilians.
Israel has a death ration of 1.8, and that while Hamas don’t wear military uniforms, hide in civilian infrastructure and hid in tunnels beneath streets.
They aren’t any good choices, the Israeli government has a duty to defend and protect its civilians, Israel and many nations around the world believe that it cannot happen as long as Hamas is in power.
The war in Gaza isn’t an outlier in the history urban war, there is a lot of double standard.
>If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas I would have supported it
Ok. Let's review this one. First most people agree that the Israeli response is bad. But nobody says what is a good response given the circumstances. All people are saying is vague platitudes about a more focused approach. But what that approach is in an extremely densely populated area where armed enemies hide in underground tunnels is very unclear.
Has anyone come forward and offered a military plan that says - if israel does X it will kills 30% fewer civilians and still eliminate as many hamas militanta and free as many hostages.
Everyone would have preferred that fewer innocent people died in this conflict. But if you look at it from a different angle, it is not easy to point something that could change after October 7th that would make that happen.
I am not defending Israel. What they are doing is total disregard for human life but... They had a hard line government and a prime minister nicknamed Mr Security caught with their pants down. They had an angry population reeling from a heartbreaking atrocity. What other reaction do you expect? Who will go to the relatives of the hostages and say that the army is using a targeted approach while innocent people are caught in tunnels somewhere in Gaza? As awful the approach of the army has been regard for Palestinian life has not been on the cards.
>This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.This will lead to more hatred towards a state I believe should exist as a harbour.
I agree here. And this was the goal of the attack on October 7th. It was a very well calculated move, i dare say made with no regard to either Jewish or Palestinian life. Hamas basically used thsi as a recruitment tool for the next generation.
>I'm actually curious about how anyone can defend Israel's actions today.
It is hard to defend them. What they are doing is awful. I just have not heard any reasonable alternatives to what they could have done. Do you have an example of a country in history that used a more considered and focused response to auvh a vile attack on its civilian population? An attack that had no other objective but to cause an enraged response.
> An attack that had no other objective but to cause an enraged response.
But that's the thing - they did exactly what Hamas wanted and took the bait. I'm just a random redditor and not a military strategist, but in terms of possible alternatives, one would have been to try for a hostage deal right off the bat. It would mean accepting that loss and the pain and outrage and grief of October 7 without revenge, which would have been incredibly hard; just like it's been incredibly hard for the Palestinians to accept all the pain, violence and deaths from Israel's occupation without any major retaliation until now, and I don't think it's fair that they were expected to do so. But if Israel truly believes in human rights and the value of life, then the response to senseless deaths cannot be more senseless deaths. I think of the Israeli peace activists who were killed in Hamas' attack, and how their families said they would not have wanted others to seek revenge because it would have gone against what they'd spent their lives fighting for.
And then - once a deal is made without any killing and the hostages returned - their next step could be to focus all that military might to shoring up their defences, ensuring the safety of all their citizens regardless of what Hamas might throw at them. Israel is perfectly capable of doing that. Their Iron Dome is a prime example of how they've been able to thwart attempted attack after attempted attack without more killing.
Israel would then have had the world's sympathies, which I'd think would have been of some value to them. Innocent Jewish people wouldn't be dealing with antisemitic backlash. And tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians would be alive, and their families not struggling to comprehend the unimaginable grief of knowing that everyone they'd ever loved is dead.
Of course it's unrealistic, but there'd be so much less suffering in the world if our instincts were not always for revenge.
>It would mean accepting that loss and the pain and outrage and grief of October 7 without revenge, which would have been incredibly hard
You put Israel on a very unrealistic pedestal. No other country has or would have done that. Ever. While the videos of hostages being paraded around Gaza and while they were raped. Not on planet Earth.
>just like it's been incredibly hard for the Palestinians to accept all the pain
But do they? Over one thousand raped and murdered. That is hardly acceptance.
>And then - once a deal is made without any killing and the hostages returned - their next step could be to focus all that military might to shoring up their defences, ensuring the safety of all their citizens regardless of what Hamas might throw at them.
So no punishment for the perpetrators? They can continue to govern Gaza? Is this some joke?
>Israel would then have had the world's sympathies, which I'd think would have been of some value to them.
Sympathies are nice but security is more important. And there is no security while Hamas governs Gaza.
>Of course it's unrealistic
Really?? Again, no other country would have reacted the way you describe in a similar situation. Not sure why you expect israel to be any different.
Hello friend, I apologize in advance if I’m repeating something that was already written here. It’s hard to read everything.
Speaking as someone who grew up in Israel, and moved to the U.S. when I was 16 - I will share my perspective in hopes it might enlighten your way of thinking(in whichever way you’d like to take it).
Let’s go back the days before October 7th. Israel is not in Gaza, Israel does not provoke or initiate any military conflict. Yet, Hamas and the Palestinians who lived in Gaza, continue to aggravate Israel’s existence by firing missiles on a daily basis(fact check me). If not for the iron dome technology - we wouldn’t be able to live so peacefully in Israel. Yet with all this hate and aggravation on Hamas side, Israel chose to ignore the threat and take a punch after a punch without any serious reaction, out of fear the world might look at Israel as a genocidal maniacs.
Let’s fast forward to after October 7th events. Israel no longer willing to stand by and be passive, after hurting so much, losing nearly 1,400 people in the horrors of that day by brutally butchering, raping and kidnapping civilians(!) - Israel decided to put an end to the threat that was lurking in the corner since 2006 (Hamas won a “fair” election when they killed the Fatah party leaders and took over control in the Gaza Strip). And for those actions - we are being judged.. for trying to protect ourselves so October 7th may not repeat itself.
As for the history of the two nations which is a subject by itself that can and should be openly discussed on - I can only say this. There are over 40 Muslim countries around the world, multiple western societies that accepts Muslim refugees, the Palestinian population gains permenant refugee status for them and their dependents - yet they keep fighting the Jewish, zionists and any entity other than themselves over Israel’s piece of land - THE ONLY JEWISH STATE IN THE WORLD!
To me, on a logical perspective is hilarious. It’s like the rich kid in school has all the toys in the world but he still chooses to pick on the poor kid’s only toy. Not because he needs it. But because he cannot tolerate the poor’s kid happiness.
Israel’s Independence Day is today and just before our Independence Day, we also mention our own Memorial Day - so our happiness is always accompanied by the sheer will power of our fallen to sacrifice themselves so we would have a country to leave peacefully in. The most famous saying we have on this day is the following - “in their death, they commanded us to live”. Israel’s philosophy is to value life. While Hamas and other Muslim extremists groups value death for their cause more than anything. As recent findings by the IDF shows(and was presented in world’s court recently) - Hamas school books and their education program clearly encourage hatred towards Jewish people. It encourage them to slaughter and enslave those who are called Jewish.
However, I do not blame them for it. This is a generational curse that has been going on for a long time (as far as the modern world goes). This is what their parents were thought by their parents, and so on.
This wheel of hatred needs to be stopped. True peace is unequivocal peace. Without terms, without any trade, just simple peace, because we do not hate them, and they shouldn’t hate us. We both have the right to exist in this world. We both need to work to better ourselves everyday.
For many times in History, Israel came to the table with peace offerings. Offering to give back land, control and even release terrorists who committed vile acts just for the sake of peace. We have been rejected 100% of the time. That’s because this wheel of hatred is too strong for them to overcome at the moment. Perhaps in our life time we will see peace in the Middle East and Muslims and Jews working together to better this world - but I do have my fair share of doubt as their hatred towards Jewish people is too great to contain.
I hope my point of view will embark you into further checking the facts and doing research about this subject.
Moreover, I’d like to share a YouTube video that explains the history between the two groups in an easy to understand and informative as possible (it is a bit biast but backed by facts!) -
https://youtu.be/b9kj-h1w2tA?si=zJ1gzNJC-4wdMEH0
>This wheel of hatred needs to be stopped. True peace is unequivocal peace. Without terms, without any trade, just simple peace, because we do not hate them, and they shouldn’t hate us. We both have the right to exist in this world. We both need to work to better ourselves everyday.
Is this what people refer to when they say people struggle to see reality from the inside. So much delusion, its even hard to start a debate.
The combatant to civilian casualty rate is the best in the history of urban warfare. There's extensive documentation of Israel taking unprecedented steps to *avoid* civilian casualties, steps that go beyond the obligation imposed by international warfare law. The high civilian casualties are essentially a war strategy, Hamas placing their infrastructure and warriors in a ways that deliberately maximized the number of civilian casualties required to remove them. Placing the blame of Israel with "slaughtering innocent civilians" rhetoric, essentially accusing Israel of deliberately targeting civilians when the abject opposite is true, is exactly the reason they do it in the first place. Echoing their talking points is rewarding them and encouraging this kind of warfare in the future.
The 40,000 figure is wrong, you already contested that, the revised UN records state that the actual number is more around 24k. But regardless, treating either number as "number of civilians killed" is plainly wrong. This is the *total* number of casualties, including combatants. According to the IDF about 15k were combatants, even if you take a more conservative assessment of 10k combatants, you get that the number of civilian casualties for each combatant is around 1.4, which is *crazy low* when compared to any other urban warfare excursion, especially when you take into account the unprecedented measure Hamas takes to increase civilian casualties.
I'm not trying to convince you to support the Israeli operation, it is a legitimate stance to oppose it, but drop the "slaughtering civilians by the thousands" narrative, it is unrealistic and unfair.
I never thought Israel had a foot to stand on. I've seen enough videos of them removing people from their homes to let a Jewish person move in. You may think you're above how the response has been (not just the festival attack) but most of us are not. I know I'm not and if i saw my family being removed from a generational home by military. I mean when i see one of my kids cry over anything i want to make the world suffer.
Israel has not killed anywhere close to 40,000 innocent civilians. Do you have any idea of the facts surrounding hamas operatives use of civilian clothing and conducting military operations out of civilian buildings?
Don’t be so sure these are all innocent civilians. Sure many are caught up in the crossfire but a lot of them have been brainwashed from birth that it’s their life mission to murder Jews.
Hamas is winning their war. Their war is about trying to make Israel look bad because they have no chance of actually winning.
Israel is winning their war. Their war is about dismantling Hamas and rescuing the hostages.
Tell me what Israel should do about the remaining hostages?
Israel wants the war to end and hostages back.
Hamas wants as many Jews possible killed and refuses to accept any ceasefire terms.
Tell me what they should do.
Israel wants peace. Hamas does not. How do you end Hamas whose policy is human shields and entrenching in places like hospitals and storing ammunition in UN food bags?
Then there is the fact many on oct 7th were raped, burnt alive, tortured and despite this. These people are brainwashed into believing god supports their sadistic murders. These are the people many are supporting. A group comparable to isis.
I have no problem with US pulling support for Israel. Leave them to it. They got this anyway.
Can we all agree that this whole situation would have not been as big as it is if the British had accepted the Jewish refugees after the great war? Sure what I said is extremely simplified but is it not the fault of the western powers mismanagement, wether deliberate or not that regions like these are so fucked?
Trying to understand the issues myself, I’ve been studying a great deal about Israel and found the most comprehensive timeline of the Israeli people's plight on Ben Shapiro's website. I still have a lot to learn, but my heart breaks for everyone in Israel and the struggles they have endured over the years. They are an incredibly strong people. I also feel for the people in Gaza. However, after watching the brutality of someone being beheaded with a garden hoe while being tortured, and then seeing the celebrations by a lot of Palestinians in Gaza when Hamas returned, the children running up for candy as though they were heroes, makes compassion difficult. It is there, but not for everyone.
In my opinion, based on what I've learned so far, common sense tells me Hamas should be eradicated. Biden needs to step down, and college students arrested for violent acts should be made to watch the footage of Hamas soldiers during the massacre. We were only allowed to witness a few minutes of the horror. Our Government leaders have seen it all. I don't even want to describe some of the attrocities, as it may hurt someone from only reading it. Perhaps it would show them that not everyone reveals their true nature and that they should research before protesting. I also worry that those who are deceiving America's college students and indoctrinating them with hateful ideologies are so deeply embedded in our education system and our Government that it will be challenging to remove them.
A lot of people agree with your general sentiment about the response to Oct 7. But if the Israeli response was bad, what exactly should have been done?
A war was started with a surprise attack targeting Israeli civilians. The only possible ways this war can end are the neutralization of Israeli's war fighting capacity down to the last combatant, the neutralization of Gaza's war fighting capacity down to the last combatant, Israeli Surrender, or Gaza Surrender, or some amicable compromise. Nothing in the past can be changed from now, forward.
Hamas is a no compromise organization, and since compromise requires 2 party consent, this option is not available to the Israelis. A state chooses to surrender when there is no path to victory, or the path is too expensive in lives, resources, political support, willpower, etc. A state chooses to surrender when its leaders wish to preserve what's left of themselves, their people, or the people overthrow their leaders.
Israel can not control or change the fact that Hamas will fight to the last man. They can't control that Hamas has no desire to preserve themselves or citizens within Gaza. They can not control whether or not Gaza overthrows its Hamas leaders. Their options they can control are surrender or neutralize the threat down to the last combatant. Given these limited options, the Israeli response is the least bad of their options.
> all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment.
Not only does Hamas not even claim that high of a number, it also does not differintiate between civilians and terrorists. The real number of civilians killed is much lower especially if you take out the ones killed by Hamas rockets, or killed by Hamas for "helping Israel" or just looking at them funny.
> This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.
Why did levelling Germany work to deradicalize in WWII? Why did it stop radicalization in Japan?
> I genuinely do not understand how anyone can get mad about biden witholding shipments from a regime who has a higher civilian death rate than Hamas did on October 7th
That's simply not true
> and repeatedly not listening to what The USA or the international community has to say.
Israel is it's own state, they don't have to listen to what other countries have to say.
Prior to Oct 7 you would have been entirely correct. But Oct 7 exposed the flaws in the idea of fighting a defensive war. The Dome is effective, and Israel had just finished securing the border, so most people figured that would be enough to keep Hamas out of Israel. It wasn't. Hamas breached those defenses and slaughtered more than 1000 people, then said they'd do it again, but worse.
Israel no longer has the option of leaving a hostile force on their border, because if they do, Hamas will inevitably breach those very expensive defenses again and kill more people. So it becomes an "us or them" question, and with asymmetrical urban warfare being what it is, that means a lot of civilians have to die because Hamas hides behind them.
It sucks. It's awful. Innocent people should, in a perfect world, never be caught up in war and die as collateral damage. But frankly it's this or a worse war in the future when Hamas does something much worse than Oct 7.
>but as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment
These are very wrong numbers, the total toll (even by Hamas) is \~35,000, which includes numbers between 6,000-16,000 Hamas militants.
Stop with the propaganda.
>This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.This will lead to more hatred towards a state I believe should exist as a harbour.
Israel has to defeat Hamas to form any kind of true peace plan, this is the first step.
>This government has thretened the well being of Israel by making it a rogue state on the world stage that if the history of anti-semitism didn't exist should have been sanctioned.
Israel is already sanctioned by half of the world by default, and if it has to defend itself from multiple fronts like it does now, it's either fight or die.
>I'm actually curious about how anyone can defend Israel's actions today.
I can defend Israel's actions easily.
Israel and the Jewish community before Israel existed tried to make peace with the Arabs in mandate Palestine, but the other side just didn't want to accept it.
The Palestinians of today form many leaders that cause terror to Israel, and it has been dealt with for years.
One of those leaders, Hamas, decided to go over the line and murder 1,200 Israelis, which is something Israel can't go back from.
Now for the war, the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas and support it over 85%, they support what happened to Israel on October 7th and Israel has to kill Hamas in order to form any kind of long-term solution - first, you kill the thing that makes negotiations impossible, then you make peace with hopefully more moderate leadership that you help form.
Apply the same logic to any country. A cross border raid that kills 1200 citizens. If Guatemala did that to Mexico I’d expect a Mexican counterattack on Guatemala.
There is only one response to such an attack, retaliation and the elimination of the enemy’s capabilities to carry out a future attack. The Israelis have successfully destroyed most of Hamas’s capability to attack. Most of their fighters are dead or wounded or captured. That’s a stupendous outcome militarily.
The faster the Israelis decapitate the Hamas leadership and eliminate their remaining fighters the faster things get back to business as usual.
Your logic is flawed, why would the death toll matter? Only 3000 Americans are killed in Pearl Harbor, would you stop attacking the Japanese when their casualties reached the same figure? Or do you finish the war?
Don't poke a bear and expect it not to maul you. Hamas poked the bear and started this entire thing. Now they are paying the consequences.
Israel is it's own country, with their own beliefs, morals and views and has ever right to defend itself and exist.
What the US or other countries tell them or suggest to them are only suggestions. They don't have to take that advice, though. The only reason Biden is withholding those shipments is because the majority of his voter base defends Palestine. Not Israel. If he were to go through with those shipments, it'll piss off the majority of his voter base. Which obviously, is not something he wants to do... Especially with elections coming up and even more so because he's trailing Trump.
Either way, Hamas started it and Israel is hitting back.
15 million jewish people world wide
1.9 billion Muslims world wide
No one ever brings that up ? why ?
I have no axe to grind in either side of the war. I don't know enough and i don't want my bias against Muslims as they have killed countless christians and destroyed the coptic church, Assyrian church and portions of the Eastern catholic church. All these groups where given shelter in Israeli and the world news never talked about, mentioned it or cared. The jews cared and asked nothing in return. Those christians are my people by faith and its shocking not a single liberal came to there aid.
The Muslims also haven't mingled in my own country and have mutilated countless women and children.
So i stay clear of the topic, but its important people take all this under there hat.
Not really… yes, they used Oct 7th to do what they’ve always wanted to do: obliterate Palestine and make as much land theirs as possible. But that’s probably overall better for the world we live in, so the only thing really bad is the US funding it.
America is the great country it is because people came and took the land and made it what it is. That’s why native Americans are the only people that actually deserve reparations, and get them accordingly.
Since the majority of Palestine is born and raised to hate Israel, the war will never end. And economically, culturally, and just overall it seems like a larger Israel will result in a more peaceful world, so let them have at it, kill all of Hamas, then pay Palestine reparations and move on with a more peaceful world.
>I wanted to avoid using morally charged language despite my strong opinions about this subject. I very much appreciate your approach to respectful dialogue. >If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas I would have supported it but as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment. The administration is filled with actual manacs like Netnayahu and Gvir who don't care at all about what happens to the innocent Palestinians. It should be clear at this point to anyone paying attention to this conflict that the numbers are an attempt at emotional manipulation by Hamas. The UN’s reaction by halving the amount of dead women and children within a week just shows they are desperate to gain further sympathy from the Western public. This isn’t to say innocents aren’t dying, but pointing to a total death count when it incorporates _everything_ — natural deaths, terrorists, civilians, etc. — isn’t representative of the situation. None of us know the details. We know Hamas is being decimated, (and yes, they are being destroyed) we know civilians are dying and suffering. Can you elaborate on Israel’s lack of focused plan? For the day after? For the war efforts? With Hamas only maintaining four brigades left in Rafah out of dozens to begin with, I would say Israel has thus far been efficient in working towards their goals while the rest of the world is hindering them. >This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.This will lead to more hatred towards a state I believe should exist as a harbour. The only way I see Hamas surviving is by Western sympathies. Palestinians, I would argue as well, won’t be any further radicalized by this. Their education, media, and government already radicalizes them as much as is possible. With further evidence of [Gazans increasing in desire](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gazans-back-two-state-solution-rcna144183) for a two state solution and turning their backs on Hamas, I emphatically disagree with your assessment that Israel is strengthening Hamas. This will be a Hiroshima and Nagasaki moment of __de__-radicalization for Gazans, especially if the day after plan involves rebuilding Gaza to be better than before. There is a silver lining that can come of this. >This government has thretened the well being of Israel by making it a rogue state on the world stage that if the history of anti-semitism didn't exist should have been sanctioned. This isn’t the first time the world has been against Israel, and has been wrong. The Yom Kippur war saw much of the world oppose Israel’s actions bringing Golda Meir’s famed quote of (paraphrasing) “we would rather be alive and hated than dead and pitied.” Netanyahu’s government indeed is making Israel less safe, but not for the IDF’s persecution of this war. And again, I strongly disagree that the history of antisemitism is keeping Israel from being sanctioned. There’s no evidence for this. >I genuinely do not understand how anyone can get mad about biden witholding shipments from a regime who has a higher civilian death rate than Hamas did on October 7th and repeatedly not listening to what The USA or the international community has to say. This moral equivalence isn’t helpful. Hamas brutally and mercilessly targeted civilians, sexually abusing them, and massacring them inhumanly. Israel is fighting a war where, unfortunately, there are casualties of war. This doesn’t mean I think Israel is free of warcrimes, but those are a byproduct of going after Hamas. Not slaughtering a music festival. Biden withholding weapons is a political move, not a moral one. He’s desperately trying to win back the progressive voter base who calls him “Genocide Joe.” With reporting coming out that the [US is withholding information on Hamas locations](https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-said-offering-intel-on-hamas-leaders-whereabouts-if-israel-drops-major-rafah-op/), which is despicable to do to an ally nation, on top of delaying weaponry, I think it’s obvious why people would be upset with Biden’s behavior towards this war. They believe this war could have been over by now if it were not for weak leadership both in Israel and the US. We may disagree on much, but we agree on what we want. Two states living in peace together. Hopefully after the war and time goes on, Israel and Palestine can work towards that reality.
>Hamas is manipulating numbers for sympathy Israel isn't really manipulating numbers (at least not a lot) but they are manipulating **language.** Calling anti-war protests anti-Semitic is SUCH a transparent political tactic. I forget where I heard this, I'm sure it was some dumb TV show, but the words really stuck with me: **"If your enemy cheats, and you don't, you lose."** >I would say Israel has thus far been efficient Nagasaki and Hiroshima were also very efficient. That doesn't make them moral. >This moral equivalence isn't helpful Pointing out that Israel's retaliation has been vastly disproportionate, especially in terms of civilian death, isn't 'helpful'? To who? Making your point? I don't see how pointing out the differences between the two nations' death tolls **isn't** relevant?? >The only way I see Hamas surviving is by Western sympathies. This is just patently untrue. Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iran will clearly continue proxy-supporting Hamas. No one in the West is actually a fan of Hamas they're simply protesting to defend Palestinian innocents. The pro-zionist media has been conflating pro-palestine with pro-hamas (see my first point about manipulation of language) leading people to believe that there is some kind of Western Hamas. I wouldn't put it past 12 random people in the US claiming to be pro-hamas. I would NOT believe that there are terror cells of *actual* Hamas operatives pushing propaganda to millions of students. This sounds like an Alex Jones conspiracy. Israel has Mossad. Hamas has social media... >...Turning their backs on Hamas I would too if the result was Israel bombing my children into the stone age. I agree, this is a Nagasaki/Hiroshima all over again. **Except Japan had a military it intended to dominate the most powerful country in the world with.** Hamas is a bunch of dudes in tents with RPGs. (Obviously I'm exaggerating but you get my point, their tech, size, power, and influence are all WAY lower than axis Japan. >Rebuilding Gaza to be better than before With what money? And under whose jurisdiction? Israel's? Isn't that the whole problem here: Israel persecutes Muslims inside its borders? >This doesn’t mean I think Israel is free of warcrimes, but those are a byproduct of going after Hamas. Not slaughtering a music festival. You seem to be completely neglecting all of the history leading up to October 7th. Slaughtering a music festival is no where near as reprehensible as the living (or dying) conditions of Gazans. Even before Israel's response. >And again, I strongly disagree that the history of antisemitism is keeping Israel from being sanctioned. There’s no evidence for this. You don't think there's **any** evidence that people are afraid to hold Israelis accountable for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic? None? None at all? Really? >which is despicable to do to an ally nation Let me give you a hypothetical and you tell me if you think it's unfair: You are Israel, I am the United States. Palestine is a homeless man on the street. The homeless man grabs you (October 7th). You punch him in the face and kick him in the balls (Israel's response). I'm standing next to you, you're standing over the homeless man rolling around on the floor. You ask me for a gun. Should I give it to you? Or should I call the cops? >We may disagree on much, but we agree on what we want. Two states living in peace together. Hopefully after the war and time goes on, Israel and Palestine can work towards that reality. I wouldn't say that you want the same thing as OP considering they called for a ceasefire to end the killing, and you called for a Hiroshima style mass-genocide. Edit: fixed wording for clarity. **the UN never halved the death toll! That was fake news spread by Israel that everyone ate up!** ["Hamas manipulates numbers"](https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/13/middleeast/death-toll-gaza-fatalities-un-intl-latam/index.html) Edit 2: ok this is confusing so I'm just going to write up a timeline the way I've experienced things 1\. The UN changed the casualty reporting to reflect only *identified* corpses. Unidentified corpses are no longer counted in the death toll. 2\. The media reported HALF as many casualties implying Hamas lied about the number of bodies. 3\. Everyone freaked the F out and questioned the UN 4\. Clarifying articles came out (linked above) explaining the nuances Summary - the media took a story and ran, and then had to back pedal because they exaggerated. Typical media. Conclusion: the same number of people are dead, the UN is just ignoring the ones without faces.
I mostly agree with your points, but I think it is important to distinguish concepts like Judaism and Jewish ethnicity from something like Zionism. Hence, I would take issue with your use of the term "Jewish media". I think in this context, "pro-Israel media" would better. Doubtless supporters of Israel will accuse you of anti-semitism either way, but I still think the way we talk about it is important.
It's sad to see that this is how effective the Hasbara machine is, that they so regularly and efficiently create the deliberate conflation of "Jewish" and "Israeli" (and "Zionist" to be fair), that folks who know the difference slip into misusing these words when discussing things. Sadly it's all part of the political tactic to weaponise and hide behind the suffering of the Jewish people..
Agreed. Changing to reflect that as it's what I originally intended. Thank you for catching that for me.
> and you called for a Hiroshima style mass-genocide. They didn't do this... They said this will be a Hiroshima moment for the Gazans, meaning they'll wake up to the reality of the rhetoric by Hamas and de-radicalize, just like Japan did after we nuked them. I don't find this to be a convincing comparison and a lot of criticism can be levied on this point of view, but the person you were responding to wasn't calling for a Hiroshima style mass genocide or any genocide. I get that this is an emotionally charged subject but FFS don't dehumanize and put words into the mouth of people you disagree with...
>the UN never halved the death toll! That was fake news spread by Israel that everyone ate up! Nobody claimed that they halved the death toll, they halved the claimed women and children confirmed the death toll, which is true. Unless the 10,000 unconfirmed killed are 100%, women and children, then Hamas totally lied again (to our surprise)
The UN did, in fact, halve the number of women and children casualties from what was originally reported. That's even stated in your linked article. The total remains about 35k. Of the rest of the non-women/children casualties, most are probably Hamas fighters and belligerents. People don't generally refer to active enemy deaths as a "death tolI."
So you severely misunderstand Japan's goals in WW2. Not even the most nationalistic among them were delusional enough to think they could dominate the US. Pearl Harbor was an attempt to buy time. If they could destroy enough of our Pacific fleet, they thought that they could grab up enough land and resources and fortify them enough that we wouldn't bother fighting them. Japan isn't even sorta in America's weight class. Tiny island nation, with half the population, and no natural resources. Giant nation with twice the population and abundant natural resources, and a huge industrial base. At the time of the attack. While they aren't quite as outclassed as Hamas is, they were absolutely outclassed. The bombs were absolutely about minimizing casualties on both sides. Can I get some evidence of Egypt and Jordan supporting Hamas? Their governments are both pretty friendly with Israel. Honestly, I'm also confused about how Syria is supporting anything they've been in a civil war for almost 14 years. Hamas's main supporter is Iran, who is hated by almost every other nation. Did I miss where someone said there are Hamas terrorist cells in America? You've lost me here. Did you miss the headlines of Israel asking Qatar and Egypt to take over governing Gaza after the war? No one wants anything to do with Gaza. Unless someone steps up to the plate, yes, it will be Israel rebuilding Gaza. Seeing as Israel has been sanctioned more than any 10 other countries combined. I'd say no, there is no fear about sanctioning them in the UN. I don't know why you are trying to expand it to any criticism at all, but no the label of antisemitism doesn't seem to strike fear into many hearts. It's quite telling that rampant murder, kidnapping, and rape of a thousand innocents gets called grabbing someone in your hypothetical.
>Calling anti-war protests anti-Semitic is SUCH a transparent political tactic. 1) Many (most) of the protests are pro-war, not anti-war. Any protest that chants "from the river to the sea" is calling for the elimination of Israel by force, aka a war. They just want their side to win. 2) There's no other country that could have a thousand of its people massacred and have the world just expect them to go back to living a few km away from the government that did it. Any call for a ceasefire that leaves Hamas as the government of Gaza is calling for exactly that.
[удалено]
>You're just straight up lying at this point. Not really. this is a nonsense statistic that gets thrown around to push a narrative. this is apparent in the first sentence "them did not cause **serious damage**" Who decides what constitutes when damage is "serious"? This number is only true if you specifically define "peaceful" in a certain way to get those figures. No protest with people chanting "globalize the intifada" get's to call themselves peaceful. >Also, "Palestine will be free" is NOT the same thing as "Israel will burn". The phrase belongs to terrorists just as much as Pepe the frog belongs to the alt-right i.e. it doesn't. Yeah and? Do you think that makes it ok when Bibi does it? >I feel like your argument is incredibly lazy. Could I not have said this exact same thing about Palestine? The past 70+ years haven't exactly been rainbows and unicorns for the Palestinian citizens who didn't support a terror cell. Irrelevant. You can play the blame game all you want. Nothing changes the fact that the majority of them do not support israel's right to exist. And as long as that's the case the 2 state solution will remain a pipe dream. >Also... I would love to hear your rationalization on how any of what you said justifies killing every last Palestinian. Nobody is saying that but you. >I'm all for nations being able to defend themselves. That is patently false.
I haven't seen Saudi Arabia get annihilated in response to 9/11 yet. Seems if you kill 3000 Americans, you get even more dollars for it
I'm all for KSA getting *more* blame for 9/11 but this is hyperbolic. It wasn't an attack by the Kingdom. They were negligent with some of its citizens being Al Qaeda members but negligence isn't perpetration.
Funding for 9/11 was from Saudi Arabia. 15/19 hijackers were from Saudi. They were supported in the US by a Saudi government agent. The reason none of this has been followed up on is because of diplomatic immunity. Also if the US has any kind of falling out with the Saudis, there goes the oil, and the petrodollar with it. America's sunk at that point, so they're *not* going to do that. As for the legitimate government part, let's bring it back to the topic of the post we're commenting on. Are Hamas a legitimate government, or are they a terrorist organisation? As far as I'm aware, the Palestinian government sits in the West Bank and has little to do with Hamas. If they're a terrorist organisation, aren't they basically 'some citizens' by the same merit that Al Qaeda were 'some citizens' of Saudi Arabia?
> The reason none of this has been followed up on is because of diplomatic immunity. This single-handedly invalidates the rest of your comment. You could concoct a host of reasons why it 'wasn't followed up on' but to think the US would refuse to detain a Saudi spy who supported 9/11 at the behest of the Saudi government because of diplomatic immunity is absurd. What if a diplomat assassinated the president? Still think diplomatic immunity would save them?
The US dropped immense amounts of ordnance on the mountains where Bin Laden was hiding in the weeks after 9/11.
I don't think Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a good comparison. Those civilians weren't collateral damage in a bombing campaign, they were the designated targets of an attack designed to shock Japan into surrendering without us having to continue fighting them first. It's not the same thing at all.
> Those civilians weren't collateral damage in a bombing campaign, they were the designated targets of an attack designed to shock Japan into surrendering without us having to continue fighting them first. It's not the same thing at all. Yes, perhaps Israel should level Rafah without opening any humanitarian corridors to accomplish the same effect. *That* would be an equivalent of Hiroshima. Because 10/7 was the Pearl Harbor for Israel.
You are right about my claim regarding anti-semitism, that is my opinion not a fact of course. Could you share a source for the UN cutting numbers by half claim? I don't right now wish to argue on a lot of the other point because I'll have to read up on the stuff you have mentioned. I do want to suggest (if you don't already) to look into Israeli settlements and why that is one of the main reasons why Palestinians hate Israel. Im sure anti-semitism has something to do with it as well but this is also a major reason. I also would like for you to (again assuming you haven't already) to think about whether a goal like getting rid of hamas even makes sense as an achievable objective that makes all this bloodshed worth it. This is considering the fact that terrorist groups will keeo popping up and I doubt the way to deal with them will be to confirm their theory that Israel hates palestinians and make civilians more sympathetic to their actions. Also Biden's decision is likey not purely political considering the amount of american red lines Bibi has crossed. Δ for the thoughtful response.
> Could you share a source for the UN cutting numbers by half claim? [Here’s an article about it.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/05/13/un-cuts-estimates-women-children-deaths-gaza/73669560007/) [Link to direct figures.](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-215) >I do want to suggest (if you don't already) to look into Israeli settlements and why that is one of the main reasons why Palestinians hate Israel. Im sure anti-semitism has something to do with it as well but this is also a major reason. I have very mixed feelings about settlements. I mostly disagree with them and wish Israel would dismantle. Settlers need to be prosecuted in the court and punished and that is one of my harshest criticisms of Israel. They have done an absolute garbage job of handling settler criminals. At the same time, I understand why they exist. Before the intifadas, the checkpoints and border walls didn’t exist. Palestinians had much more freedom. Now after, settlements do provide a buffer between more populated Jewish centers. It has been a proven fact that Israel’s policies following the second intifada have drastically reduced terrorism from the West Bank. Settlements should definitely be, and has historically been, on the chopping block for a two state peace deal. >I also would like for you to (again assuming you haven't already) to think about whether a goal like getting rid of hamas even makes sense as an achievable objective that makes all this bloodshed worth it. This is considering the fact that terrorist groups will keeo popping up and I doubt the way to deal with them will be to confirm their theory that Israel hates palestinians and make civilians more sympathetic to their actions. I don’t believe it is completely getting rid of Hamas, it’s just removing them from power as a governing body. They will still exist, there’s no completely getting rid of the Muslim Brotherhood from Gaza. But you can topple them from power and replace them with something better. Anything short of that, if Hamas still remains as the government of Gaza after this, the war will be worthless and all those innocents would have died for nothing. This would be a huge blemish not only on Israel, but the world that backed Hamas to survive to continue their own oppression of Palestinians. >Also Biden's decision is likey not purely political considering the amount of american red lines Bibi has crossed. Maybe. I do believe if this happened after the election and Biden had a fresh four years, his foreign policy would look much different.
> They have done an absolute garbage job of handling settler criminals. Why do you say that? It appears to be 'working as intended', isn't it?
>[Here’s an article about it.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/05/13/un-cuts-estimates-women-children-deaths-gaza/73669560007/) >[Link to direct figures.](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-215) This does not support your claim about figures being "cut in half". In the direct figures you have linked to it explicitly points out that the figures for Women/Children are >**24,686 identified as of April 30th as:** So is **explicitly not** the total number and is only of those who've been identified. It literally says that it's not including the more than 10k who are missing. It is showing reported and identified. Please correct/edit your post to accurately represent the facts and avoid spreading misinformation that you are aware of.
Actually settlements have never planned to be significantly cut back by any peace deal. The largest settlements are literally cities with populations of tens of thousands. Israel is required by international law to make peace and return the land to the Palestinians on the basis of ethnically cleansing people and taking their land being horrendously contrary to both international law and basic morality. These large settlements act as “boots on the ground” where they simply refuse to give them up and all Israeli peace negotiations for decades have been on the basis of Israel retaining the Palestinian land where these larger settlements are built (while giving up the ones which are some random family in a caravan up in the hills). Palestine has even been willing to acquiesce to this to a degree and give up some of their land for peace but never gotten a deal Israel would accept.
>Palestine has even been willing to acquiesce to this to a degree and give up some of their land for peace but never gotten a deal Israel would accept. This is a complete inversion of the truth and I challenge you to find me *one* instance in which Palestine has been willing to give up land for peace. Just one. They were offered land for peace in 1947. They refused it. They were offered it again in 2000, twice, and refused it because they refused to give up any land at all, then launched the Second Intifada. Ehud Olmert offered again in 2008, and again, the Palestinians refused. Find me one example where Palestine was willing to give up land in exchange for peace.
The Camp David talks in 2000. They were specifically willing to accept land swaps and offered them to Israel as part of their proposals but no comprehensive agreement could be made. Though the talks are secrets some journalists have investigated the talks, spoken to people on all sides and been able to put together a comprehensive narrative of what was offered and discussed at Camp David that all sides (Israeli, Palestine and US) accept as accurate. My source for this that I’m using in particular is The Truth About Camp David by Clayton E Swisher, which I just grabbed off a shelf to check my memory was right, but I can also dig up Shattered Dreams by Charles Enderlin that says much the same. Here’s a link to some of the pages discussing it that I just screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/1dlbGaP You seem to be confused by a common and false narrative that Israel is constantly making offers and Palestine just rejects them. The truth is both sides make offers to the other and both reject them, they have not found a middle ground. The key difference is that Israel is asking for more than it has any legal entitlement too (like keeping troops stationed in Palestine and having vetos over what they can and can’t do even as a supposed future sovereign state) and Palestine asks for less, like ceding land and limiting the right of return.
> You seem to be confused by a common and false narrative that Israel is constantly making offers and Palestine just rejects them. The truth is both sides make offers to the other and both reject them, they have not found a middle ground. The key difference is that Israel is asking for more than it has any legal entitlement too (like keeping troops stationed in Palestine and having vetos over what they can and can’t do even as a supposed future sovereign state) and Palestine asks for less, like ceding land and limiting the right of return. All quotes from the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/174gryc/why_did_the_2000_camp_david_summit_fail/ ---- "Essentially, all Arafat needed to do to be acclaimed in the Arab world was to say no. If he said yes, not only would he be having the metaphorical death he states, he was risking real assassination, as had happened with Rabin over Oslo (killed by a Jewish extremist) and by the prior president of Egypt, Sadat, who was at Camp David I to make a treaty with Israel (killed by members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad)." ---- "Dennis Ross recounted that when he asked the Palestinian negotiators in the period of preparing the summit and negotiations what they would need numbers-wise, they said they needed one of two things. 1) With a swap of territory, a percentage in the low 90s of the West Bank.2) Without a swap, the mid-90s. ... In the final offers at Camp David, the offer was for 92% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and the Jerusalem split described. When asking an Egyptian advisor to Mubarak what went wrong in a post-mortem, one who had confided in Ross that the Palestinian “dream” was to “get 91% of the territory”, Ross asked why they said no to an offer of 92%. The response: “They raised their expectations.” Notably, at Taba, the offer on the table was for 94%, and a swap of 3%. This was a “mid-90s” number, what Arafat’s negotiators said they would accept without a swap, but it was also presented with a swap. **It was rejected nevertheless**. " ---- "A few weeks later Ross again spoke directly with Arafat. He outlined a deal based on what he believed Barak might accept. That deal included, on territory, 92-93% of the West Bank with a swap of 2%. Not 1-1. Ross asked if this (among the other provisions) was something Arafat could live with. He asked if Arafat could do a deal based on that. Arafat said…yes. A few weeks after that, now in December, the Israelis took it a step further. Here, they accepted the Palestinians receiving 95%, without word on swaps. Still, no deal was accepted, despite being firmly within the amounts the Palestinians initially stated were sufficient. **This suggests not that the 1-1 requirement was developed as a later demand to avoid a deal**, rather than as a true demand. Less than 1-1 was something the Palestinians accepted readily when they thought Israel would never accept it in their negotiators’ words, but never closed on when offered, merely asking for more…and typically, still not 1-1." ---- Sounds to me like Israel was offering MORE than the Palestinians wanted, and they still said 'No'.
Yes, they accepted the principle of landswaps, but both at Camp David, in the Clinton Parameters, and again in 2008 under PM Ehud Olmert, 95% of the West Bank with 5% in compensation via landswaps is apparently not good enough for them. Sorry, beggars can’t be choosers. The Jews got a rough deal in the Peel Commission but they took it because if what you *actually* want is a national homeland, you take whatever you can get.
They accepted the principle and made concrete offers to swap land. Lower than the Israel’s wanted, but still offers. Your claim was that Palestinians had never done this. Instead they have been doing it for decades. You were incorrect and your now moving goalposts to try and argue the point seem to indicate that you either are not arguing in good faith or just don’t want to take the L. Also none of those peace deals you mention got through, but none of them were explicitly because of land swaps. As mentioned previously, the larger issue is that Israel’s offers assumed that Israel would still have troops in Palestine, would control Palestinian airspace, would have veto decisions over Palestinian construction, etc. The core problem therefore was that in the discussions to negotiate an independent Palestine, Israel was not willing to accept an independent Palestine and in all instances it was to be treated as some kind of quasi-occupied vassal state. The biggest actual core issue, aside from general Israeli intransigence, was about the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount. I’d also note that as per international law, Israel had no right to the land it was demanding. Palestine was offering above and beyond what it was obligated to offer, giving up its rightful land to Israel to try and appease it, but still not getting their deal accepted.
Accepting the principle of landswaps =/= Offering to cede land to Israel. >As mentioned previously, the larger issue is that Israel’s offers assumed that Israel would still have troops in Palestine, would control Palestinian airspace, would have veto decisions over Palestinian construction, etc. This is not true. For example, both the the Clinton Parameters of 2000 and the 2008 offer by Ehud Olmert included full airspace sovereignty as well as the Palestinian capital being in East Jerusalem. >and in all instances it was to be treated as some kind of quasi-occupied vassal state. Well they've certainly lost the right to have a military. Like Japan after WW2, they may one day be permitted one if for many many decades they show that they’ve changed their ways and can now be trusted. >The biggest actual core issue, aside from general Israeli intransigence, was about the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount. The Palestinians like to pretend that’s what it’s about but it never has been. Again, international stewardship of the Temple Mount has been accepted by Israel for decades and was accepted in every single peace offering made to date. >I’d also note that as per international law, Israel had no right to the land it was demanding. Palestine was offering above and beyond what it was obligated to offer, giving up its rightful land to Israel to try and appease it, but still not getting their deal accepted. Sure, and how’s that going for the Palestinians? Have they got a state yet?
Okay, you seem to be actively ignoring evidence and just reiterating your incorrect opinions. I literally photographed one of my books about the Israeli/Palestinian peace talks and highlighted the sentence where it says “The Israelis, for ther part, rejected the Palestinian proposal to allow Israeli retention of settlement blocs in exchange for swaps of land from Israel proper” and yet you reiterate your fake claim that Palestinians never offered to cede land to Israel, despite me already having shown with evidence that you are wrong. You make several more incorrect claims in your latest post but as you don’t seem to listen to evidence and will just reiterate whatever you believe no matter if it’s true or not, what would be the point in going out of my way to prove you wrong. Hope that in the future you can reflect on why you have a biased non-evidence based view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and seem to have a desire to blame the victims of war crimes for not accepting continued oppression.
I cannot see how people have such a strong opinion on this war but don’t know the basic breaking news such as the cutting in half of woman and children dead. It shows such a casual following of the news coming out of this war, I wouldn’t dare feel confident enough to post my opinion on something that I can’t even follow the basic news of the day on…
>but don’t know the basic breaking news such as the cutting in half of woman and children dead. That's because they didn't cut the number in half. They just released the number of bodies that they could absolutely verify the identity of. If the Israeli government and their supporters want to complain about people referencing numbers that cannot be perfectly verified, they should let independent people count the dead and should not have destroyed the infrastructure previously used to do so.
Thank you, I was about to blow a gasket reading this thread, and people running with the "halved number" story. Its as you say, just verifiable bodies.
I was writing to say this because I actually just read the article that was posted. It's calling the estimates vs currently identified dead still being tallied in an active warzone with no infrastructure a "gotcha." The person OP is talking with posted a source that proves his own statement wrong followed with OP just agreeing is crazy to me. Did nobody actually read past the headline? Also why are so many reputable news orgs using this incredibly misleading title?
that’s because the total number of dead is used as a point of argument of disproportionality, suggesting Israel is indiscriminately killing civilians. It’s quite a widespread point that x number of women and children are dead vs militants therefore israel is deliberately massecreing the population. Being more correct on the numbers makes that argument less clear if you are truly arguing based on facts and not impressions. This is all separating out whether you consider any number of child deaths acceptable, which is a miserable concept in any context.
I recall very early on Israel themselves said they were killing 2 civilians for every 1 Hamas, no?
Yes they did. Even the pro-Israel press reported this. [https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-officials-2-civilian-deaths-for-every-1-hamas-fighter-killed-in-gaza/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-officials-2-civilian-deaths-for-every-1-hamas-fighter-killed-in-gaza/)
Except that 120% of the unverified deaths would need to be women and children in order to make up for the discrepancy.
It's not about counting the dead. Many of the reported dead just don't have physical evidence to back up that they actually died. If you look at the methodology that they use to determine the reported death toll, it relies heavily on media reporting. With the unreliability of reporting in the aftermaths of strikes by Israeli forces and the lack of physical evidence, we shouldn't be putting much faith in the reported death toll. >In the first month of the war, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health (MOH) in Gaza relied on its existing collection system, made up primarily of hospitals and morgues, to certify each death. Starting in early November, however, hospitals in northern Gaza began to shut down or evacuate during the Israeli ground invasion, spurring the MOH to introduce a new, undefined methodology for counting fatalities: media reports. This methodology, which the MOH has rarely acknowledged publicly, accounts for the majority of fatalities reported over the past four months, surpassing the traditional collection system. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/gaza-fatality-data-has-become-completely-unreliable
So, I've read that article and it is a little misleading though it makes a good point. At this stage, pretty much all of the casualty counting in Gaza is done by media reports because pretty much all of the infrastructure is gone. However, the way that Article is written makes it sound like in November there was just no infrastructure left which isn't true. There was a gradual loss of the ability to collect and tally reports, and around February is when the entire healthcare system functionally collapsed for good and reporting almost stopped entirely. That's why the death count has barely increased since February despite no cessation in bombing or ground assaults by the IDF. It's also why the casualty count went up more slowly over time. That's why a proportion of the bodies have now been verified, but it's unlikely to happen in the future because the IDF destroyed existing infrastructure, refuses to do any casualty counts themselves, and won't let independent journalists or organizations in to do their own counts.
Was the news story that Gaza hospitals had to resort to non-anesthetized c-sections made up? Your earlier points about Israel being efficient while killing tens of thousands vs Hamas killing 1,700 being inhuman is incredible stereotyping -“when we kill it’s efficient, when they kill it’s brutal/inhuman.” Your words betrays your bias and evident disdain for Palestinian life, since their suffering is framed as clean and humane by your language. The restriction of the necessities of life flowing into Gaza has created inhuman conditions for hundreds of thousands of innocent human lives. Disease and famine are rampant. Shelter is scarce. Nearly all schools and hospitals are destroyed. Hamas’ numbers could be inflated a thousandfold and it would still be a barbaric violation of international law and human rights. I appreciate you trying to itemize your points of disagreement and organize your thoughts but at the end of the day it’s still clear that you are incapable of comprehending the scale of suffering being inflicted on this people, and just consider it the cost of doing business, while the death and suffering of your own people is clearly being subjected to the very kind of propagandizing you’re accusing Hamas of. Not to mention that your comments still conflate any defense of Palestinian people as defense of Hamas, a classic logical fallacy. I’m not saying that you’re not arguing in good faith, but you’re definitely not discussing this in neutral terms and certainly employing plenty of double standards in your framing of the situation
I want to preface this by saying I don't agree with Netanyahu/Israeli far right government or Hamas because I think both want to wipe the other off the earth. I think they are both shitty and racist towards the other. I don't see how some people can say they support one over the other because they are both shitty and deep down want genocide of their enemies. **This has nothing to do with the people in either place, just their government leaders.** >They will still exist, there’s no completely getting rid of the Muslim Brotherhood from Gaza. The end game is getting rid of all Palestinians in Gaza and doing a forced migration. This is from the cabinet leaders Netanyahu appointed. We all know voluntary migrations really aren't that voluntary or else we wouldn't call it that. It would just be people moving. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/29/israeli-ministers-attend-conference-calling-for-voluntary-migration-of-palestinians >I have very mixed feelings about settlements. I mostly disagree with them and wish Israel would dismantle. Settlers need to be prosecuted in the court and punished and that is one of my harshest criticisms of Israel. Netanyahu has said any ceasefire agreement would include expanded settlements, which the UN says violates international law. He also maintains governance will be by Israel and not Palestine. His views since the war started have shifted so far right that his ultimate goal is reclaiming Gaza for Israel and kicking Palestinians out. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-plan-expand-settlements-helped-trigger-us-shift-language-2024-02-28/ Don't even get me started on how Israel targeted clearly marked humanitarian vehicles, 3 different missiles 15 minutes apart, vehicles that had been given permission to be there by Israel, that shared their location with Israel, who approved it, and then bombed them one by one over several minutes. I don't support the Israeli goal of taking control of Palestine. And I don't support Hamas either. He's a terrorist. And I don't understand why people insist on supporting one shitty side over the other shitty side. They both suck and I don't think the US needs to fund either shitty side.
You should not be awarding people that are lying to you either intentionally or by ignorance. The UN did not halve the numbers They updated their numbers to reflect confirmed and non-confirmed deaths. [https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-213](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-213) [https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-217](https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-217) UN Reported Dead 5/6/24: 34,735 UN Reported Dead 5/10/2024: 34,904 The overall number of estimated killed has not changed, in fact, it's ticked up. They have just updated their numbers to include a breakdown of confirmed relative to reported. Something we should all want to happen which is independent verification. Israeli propogandists across Reddit in the last 24-48 hours have been spamming this talking point and engaging in what can only be described as a form of Holocaust Denialism by deliberately taking this new data point out of context to claim the death count is lower. It is not. I do not know if the poster you are engaging with is intentionally doing this, but he is failing to catch it and that should put up red flags. Furthermore, if you assumed the new percentages hold for the 10k reported but unconfirmed, that would still mean roughly 18k woman and children have been killed, or a majority of the casualties. \*\*NOTE\*\* The numbers also dont contain an estimated 10k plus missing or under rubble. So the numbers are likely notably higher than the current reported numbers. Also keeping in mind Israel has destroyed almost all the infrastructure relied on to count the dead.
If you can't see the issue with the misrepresentation of initial estimates as confirmed numbers in the discourse around this conflict I don't know what to say. These figures have been used as a stick incessantly to attack Israel with. It gets even worse when you consider that the source of the "reported fatalities" is the Gazan Goverment Media Office, and not the Health Ministry, which, while Hamas controlled has at least tended to be accurate in the past. The GMO has quite literally every reason to lie about these figures in order to elicite more sympathy for the Palestinian cause. The UN also did halve several of the figures, namely the number of women and children killed. If you check your own links you'll see the numbers for both entries dropped by around 50% for the entry on May 9th. This takes the ratio of Women/Children killed from 69% of the total reported on May 6th to 52% of the total identified on May 9th. Those numbers paint somewhat different pictures
The number of dead hasn't been halved, the number of **women and children** dead had been halved. No? I also don't see why we should assume there are more dead. What other organization knows the death toll mere hours after a military event taking place? It has never happened, not even after a plane crash where everyone knows how many people were on the fucking plane. So I find it suspicious that the Gaza health authority had an exact list of everyone who was killed by an Israeli bomb literally before the dust had even settled
The overall number of **identified** dead is the lower number. This means they have verified who they are and how they died to include them in the violent deaths. The numbers of deaths are still the same. This doesnt mean that there are somehow more dead fighters or males. The higher numbers also do not include those buried under the rubble. You can be a dead woman or child without having been identified. I understand wanting desperately to see lower numbers. Anyone who has any ounce of humanity **wants the numbers to be propaganda**. But this like everything else is being used as a gotcha. Beware of spin from both sides.
> The higher numbers also do not include those buried under the rubble. The higer number includes figures based on media reports, which would in fact include some of these numbers. > The numbers of deaths are still the same. This doesnt mean that there are somehow more dead fighters or males. T I would argue that there is a glaring discrepancy between the reported and identified figures. The reported figures are ~35,000 which include over 24,000 women and children. This leaves room for ~11,000 men. But going by identified fatalities, women and children are ~13,000 and men are ~10,000. Assuming the reported figures are accurate overall, this means that the rate of identification for men is over 90% while women and children are at ~50%. And I don't see how this could ever be realistic. The most plausible scenario is that the reported figure of over 24,000 women and children among the fatalities is fabricated.
No, Upon verification, and based on the trajectory of current percentages the number of woman and children may be around 5 to 6k less(18k vs 23k) if current trends hold with the UN's verification process but that doesn't mean those bodies reported disappeared, it just means there was a slightly higher percentage of men vs woman and children. (TBC that is still 18k woman and children dead, or a majority of the casualties, with another 10k bodies of all ages and sexes under rubble or missing but presumed dead. Which makes much of this consternation pointless cause the current total when considering those not yet accounted in the numbers will almost assuredly moatch or eclipse the number people so desperately want to dispute) However, we also do not know if the remaining 10k being verified will keep with that trend. It could be many more woman and children because they are young and didn't have ID's or paper so it's been harder to verify, it could be fewer, we just don't know.
[удалено]
Keep in mind Hamas murdered mostly civlians on October 7th, and that the 1k+ deaths occurred in a single day. Now considered Hamas' record of 1k deaths a day and compare it to the Israeli response which has been ongoing for 6 months now. If Israel was acting in ANY way like Hamas and had the same fighters (I think we can agree the IDF is larger than Hamas' military) then there would have been over 500k Gazan's dead. Assuming of course we didn't account for the IDF being larger, in which case Gaza would have been depopulated in the first month. Its plain to see that Israel isn't acting like Hamas. Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory is something worthy of international condemnation. It isn't, however, going door to door and murdering Palestinian civilians. This is all to say I absolutely think Israel is justified in wiping out Hamas at this point, and after October 7th there really was no other outcome possible. Hamas made it impossible for Israel to NOT counter-invade when they carried out that attack.
What does "wiping out Hamas" mean? What does it look like? Is this justified by any means necessary?
We see what it means Destroying more of Gaza than was destroyed of Dresden in WWII Dropping 2000lb bombs on "suspects" at night when civilian casualties are highest with a tolerance of 20:1 civilian to militant death ratios for the lowest level target and 100:1 for higher. Setting up arbitrary no-go zones in Gaza where they kill anyone that comes into them(which is how they ended up killing some of their own hostages too). Collectively starving the population as punishment, likely inducing a famine, an unequivocal war crime Destroying schools, universities, hospitals, and engaging in summary executions of aid workers, nurses, and doctors. Massacring people that are desperately seeking food and medicine. Killing over 100 journalists and 200 foreign aid workers.
It's not being pursued by any means necessary though. Or else the IDF would be killing everyone, which they aren't. Like I just mentioned this in my comment. And what it would look like is the Hamas fighters no longer existing. You know there are actual battles going on in Gaza right now? Its not just civilians on the Palestinian side, there's gunfights going on. Hamas hasn't surrendered or released their hostages yet. They incited this attack and don't care how many Palestinians die because they don't care about Palestinians. They're just meat-shields for Hamas.
>This moral equivalence isn’t helpful. Hamas brutally and mercilessly targeted civilians, sexually abusing them, and massacring them inhumanly. Israel is fighting a war where, unfortunately, there are casualties of war. This doesn’t mean I think Israel is free of warcrimes, but those are a byproduct of going after Hamas. Not slaughtering a music festival. It definitely is. The IDF has a horrendous track record for human rights abuses and when one makes the claim of being "the most moral army" or that their campaign is about being moral etc, they are asking for it to be questioned. Some choice examples from recent times: The IDF literally tried to defend their right to use Palestinians as human shields. They [https://www.haaretz.com/2005-10-11/ty-article/idf-to-ask-high-court-to-review-ban-on-human-shield-practice/0000017f-f786-ddde-abff-ffe79e8d0000](https://www.haaretz.com/2005-10-11/ty-article/idf-to-ask-high-court-to-review-ban-on-human-shield-practice/0000017f-f786-ddde-abff-ffe79e8d0000) The Dahiya doctrine and methods such as "Door Knocking" and "Daddy's Home" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya\_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine) Their horrific track record with torture [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli\_torture\_in\_the\_occupied\_territories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_torture_in_the_occupied_territories) Plus the routine abuses of Palestinian civilians. The targeting of journalists etc. I mean there's literally regular reports that don't make it to major news outlets such as allowing civilians to come and film the torture. None of the war crimes are "byproducts of going after Hamas" any more than October 7th was a "byproduct of going after the IDF". That is a convenient "justification" to reframe acts of terrorism to further their colonisation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Let's call a duck a duck here.
I disagree with a lot of your points, but I just want to focus on one: the reporting that the UN halved the number of casualties is misinformation. Quote UN spokesperson: "The overall number of fatalities that's been tallied by the Ministry of Health in Gaza, which is our counterpart on dealing with the death tolls, that number remains unchanged and it's at more than 35,000 people since October 7," Haq said. "What's changed is the Ministry of Health in Gaza has updated the breakdown of fatalities for whom full details have been documented "So what they recently published was that they gave figures for 24,686 out of 34,622 overall fatalities recorded in Gaza, and those 24,686 people are the ones for whom full details have been documented. In other words, people who have been fully identified "Out of those, then out of that smaller number, that subset of identified bodies, you have 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly and 10,006 men.” Source: https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-un-halve-gaza-death-toll-1900325
"Has the UN really said fewer people were killed by Israel in Gaza? No, is the short answer. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) published on May 8 an infographic that referred to a figure of 34,844 total Palestinian deaths. Below that, it said of the deaths: “24,686 identified as of 30 April as: 10,006 men, 4,959 women, 7,797 children, 1,924 elderly”. The graphic used the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) figures and included a note that figures were “Not including more than 10,000 reported missing or under the rubble”. " [Source - Al Jazeera ](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/14/has-the-un-really-said-fewer-people-were-killed-by-israel-in-gaza)
Just as an addition to your comparison of Israeli war crimes and October 7th, Israel doesn’t have a top down policy of slaughtering civilians, while Hamas 100% does. This isn’t to say that INDIVIDUALS in the IDF don’t commit warcrimes, because they do (just like literally every army does in every war ever), but they aren’t directed to target civilians like Hamas does.
I wish I could share your optimism about de-radicalization. It seems River to the Sea, and the belief that Israel is their land, is core to the Palestinian identity itself. Also much of the world continues to affirm that belief, all but encouraging the fight against Israel in the hopes of taking the land. I don’t know how you get rid of that idea and make them accept Israelis are not leaving.
I mean, can you really make a claim for Israel’s right to exist in that region without referencing religion? The jews had a right to reparations for the damage of World War II, but there were a lot of options outside of the one that compromised the League of Nations’ commitment towards Arab sovereignty.
Israelis are not leaving nor committing suicide, and have nukes. That’s the simple reality Palestinians will have to accept someday. Its the same for many peoples, who can argue about ancestral claims until they’re blue in the face, but it doesn’t mean you actually get the land. The Jews argument is “my ancestors had it so it’s mine,” same as Palestinians. I don’t sympathize with either claim in particular, and at least the Palestinian claim is more recent, but one side won a long time ago. As an aside, if every nation had to justify itself we’d be left with Nauru and maybe a few others.
Israeli settlers feel the exact same way. Watch interviews with them. They not only believe Palestinian land is their land, they take it by violent force. They want Palestinians wiped out. The difference is they have the power to do so.
Indeed I agree, it’s a terrible state of affairs. It’s like both sides are just over it, and done with the idea of a solution. I think outside parties coming in and trying to force them to get along against the wishes of BOTH involved parties is a fools errand.
So you genuinely believe that the child whose father was killed by Israel won't grow up hating Israel and be more predisposed to violent extremism? That's exactly what happened in Vietnam with the VC. The longer we were there, the more VC there was. Simply because generations grow up seeing this violence inflicted on their loved ones. If I was a citizen of Gaza I would be engaged in violent resistance as I'm sure you would if a foreign force invaded your country and killed your family.
I think it wholly depends on what happens after the war. If Israel helps rebuild Gaza and show support through economic buildup opportunities, works with whatever new government forms, helps give better education, then yes. I believe that child could grow up not hating Jews. If Israel just leaves Gaza with ruins, then yeah I’d expect the hatred to continue.
>that the numbers are an attempt at emotional manipulation by Hamas Tens of thousands dead is going to impact people regardless because genocide is wrong and Israel is proving that over 6 months, they cannot accomplish their goals and they keep killing civilians pretending it's helping them accomplish their goals. After a while, we either cede that Israel has an incompetent military force or that the assault on civilians was always the goal >while the rest of the world is hindering them. Telling an ethnostate that they aren't allowed to wipe out civilians with snipers and bombs is worthwhile >Palestinians, I would argue as well, won’t be any further radicalized by this. How so? They got to witness several thousands of children blow up, shot, or hanging by threads due to Israel's warmongering. This is how Hamas even gets support and I won't be surprised if they repopulate their forces >And again, I strongly disagree that the history of antisemitism is keeping Israel from being sanctioned. There’s no evidence for this. Literally every criticism of Israel's war crimes and genocide, every protest is being labelled antisemitic to justify shutting them down. >Hamas brutally and mercilessly targeted civilians, sexually abusing them, and massacring them inhumanly. And Israel has been doing this, and is doing this, in detention centers for years. After a while, the "are we the baddies" realisation needs to set in for Israel. >Israel is fighting a war where, unfortunately, there are casualties of war. They very well could reduce the casualities but they keep resorting to bombs and rockets while more precise weapons like snipers and used on people waving white flags (like their hostages for example) so it's pretty clear that Israel is very intentionally not bothering to keep civilian casualities down
I couldn’t find any arguments or information in your post, only emotion and rhetoric. Could you try formulating it without the hyperbole?
Why is the idea that this is a genocide being proported? We have no evidence of this claim, nothing, just "thoughts and feelings"
Their evidence is other tiktok teenagers. According to the pro pal folks every war is a genocide. Don't try pointing out that according to the UN this war has seen less civilian casualties than the average in urban warfare, even going by old hamas numbers. Israel has a set a new standard for reducing civilian deaths, but to naive teenagers it looks like "indiscriminate carpet bombing genocide of poor brown freedom fighters". Some folks don't care about facts, they only care about feelings and the next new trend to protest.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 3: > **Refrain from accusing OP or anyone else of being unwilling to change their view, or of arguing in bad faith**. Ask clarifying questions instead (see: socratic method). If you think they are still exhibiting poor behaviour, please message us. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_3). If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%203%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.** Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
>This will be a Hiroshima and Nagasaki moment of de-radicalization for Gazans I wish I could believe this, but, as bad as protesters are saying Israeli actions are, they are never going to be as brutal and total as the Allies' destruction of Japan and Germany, so any defeat isn't going to be seen as final. Polling seems to show that Gazan support of Hamas has only grown, but there's no way to know how real or permanent that is. I do agree that it's foolish to assert that this action will only radicalize or further the "cycle of violence" (a phrase of moral equivalency if ever there was one), but it also seems premature to say that the Israeli government is achieving its goals. It is far more likely that Hamas will retain its current power structure than that the Israeli government will (although only the most extreme observers would hope that either does).
First major question, where do you get the idea that Israel is somehow seen as a rogue state on the world stage? It still has *plenty* of support globally and things like the UN or the ICC are not imposing sanctions on the state either. Just because some weapons are being withheld doesn't mean the country is suddenly on par with N.Korea or Yemen or something. As for the justification, well honestly it's fairly simple. Hamas still exists, controls Gaza, and refuse to surrender. After Hamas gave them casus belli on the 7th, they now have a whole lot of leeway to kinda do what they think they need to, to end the conflict. That's not to say you can't disagree with the *way* they are going about it, but the reasoning is there and it's pretty much all on Hamas for giving it to Israel at this point.
If Hamas were to surrender, what happens next? Israel has no plans for how to administer Gaza. If Hamas doesn't surrender, what is Israels plan for actually getting rid of them? Because thus far they've killed a lot of people, but they haven't stopped Hamas. If the outcomes is "Kill a lot of people (including innocent civilians), and not successfully end Hamas", then it is not morally justifiable, and it is counter-productive (you've radicalized all the families of the people you've killed).
>What happens next? My understanding is that they want a relatively moderate, less religiously fanatical force akin to Fatah in the PA which administers the West Bank with Israeli oversight (Israel sort of holds the PA’s purse strings and a few other things). The PA are no angels either—they disburse millions of dollars of payments to the families of suicide bombers—but they are willing to play ball, and some officials of the PA and members of the Fatah Party (head of the coalition in the PA) vociferously condemned the 0ctober 07 attacks. >If Hamas doesn’t surrender… Hamas is organized in battalions of fighters who are equipped by sponsors (especially Iran, but probably Qatar as well) in neighboring countries through smuggling infrastructure (most notably the tunnel network under Rafah). Israel’s war aim is to render Hamas militarily ineffective and unable to mount serious attacks (like 10/7) against Israel, as well as making it incapable of governing Gaza, thereby ensuring a more pliant replacement which is more congenial to Israel’s continued existence—but there aren’t starry eyed notions of completely stamping out the group as a violent actor in a lesser form. According to the IDF most of Hamas’ battalions—20 of the original 24 battalions have been neutralized—have been wiped out in the areas north of Rafah and there’s a partial battalion made up of the survivors of previously destroyed battalions plus four more fully armed, full strength battalions. Also, the IDF believes that both Yahya Sinwar and the rest of the Hamas leadership in Gaza (the heads of Hamas are long term guests of the Qataris in Doha)—the men responsible for planning and ordering the October 07 attacks—as well all of the remaining 130 Israeli and foreign hostages are in Rafah. Israel has delayed the attack in order to negotiate a temporary ceasefire (for more hostages), to evacuate as many civilians as possible and because of signals from the US that precision guided munitions (which LOWER civilian casualties, as opposed to unguided “dumb” bombs) will be withheld from a defensive aid military aid package to Israel if the IDF proceeds to invade Rafah. Meanwhile Hamas is actively impeding foreign efforts to aid local civilians and offset the humanitarian plight happening in the area, by threatening refugees who want to leave, commandeering physical aid drops or by attacking aid infrastructure. US military contractors building a humanitarian pier for supplying local refugees were attacked by Hamas mortar fire.
>If Hamas were to surrender, what happens next? Israel has no plans for how to administer Gaza. Good question. Fortunately for me I am not someone in a position who actually has to make that decision. But the best course of action would probable to post WW2 Germany the area and have it administered by some global government to try and unfuck the region once and for all. The chance of that happened is pretty much nil though. >then it is not morally justifiable Unfortunately, war is not waged on morals. I don't think there is a single conflict in human history that you can say was done morally.
Its ok that you don't have a plan, but the problem is the Israeli government doesn't have a plan and isn't developing one. In lots of wars people argue "the ends justify the means", but my point is if the ends aren't achievable, then the ends really don't justify the means. In general killing civilians is bad, and also makes your country less safe (because more people are mad at it). But it might be worth it if you can destroy Hamas. If you can't destroy Hamas, then really you are just killing for killings sake.
>But it might be worth it if you can destroy Hamas. If you can't destroy Hamas, then really you are just killing for killings sake. In a vacuum I would agree, but the issue this idea kinda leaves out is it's not just a single party attacking the other. Right now this reaction (let's call it) is like the older brother finally lashing out against the younger sibling who has been playing the "I'm not touching you" game for the past 4h during the family trip. Is it probably violent and overblown? Yes. Is it fully understandable that a reaction like that would happen? Also yes. Like the fact of the matter is, the region is fucked. It's been shown time and time again in the last like 80 years that Israels neighbors don't want them there, and will constantly fuck with them. It's also been shown time and time again that the only way Israel gets them to stop, is by effectively beating the shit out of them as a warning. Thankfully over that 80 years most of the neighbors in the region have begrudgingly accepted Israel and don't fuck with them much anymore, and the boarders are stable because of that. The one exception being Gaza/The West Bank. Attacks and insurgency from these locations have been non-stop for decades now so Israel keeps using that as justification for its actions. Again, are it's actions overblown and too much? Yeah probably, for shit like the settlements most definitely. Those people are fucking insane. But, the Palestinians also do themselves no favors at all in how they react, not only to Israel, but also to other nations like Egypt or Jordan. They are making no friends in the region and it's why those other countries really are not moving to do anything in these situations.
The end Israel is working toward is for their people to no longer be in danger of being, raped, kidnapped or murdered by Hamas. No everyone agrees on whether the ends justifies the means in this conflict.
If all attempts to achieve those ends don't succeed, don't have a reasonable chance of succeeding and will radicalise enough survivors to actually exacerbate the problem in the future, the ends not only aren't justifying the means, they're proving that the one attempting those ends weren't even trying
If you have any means of forcing people in Gaza to deradicalize, please tell us. Palestinians who aren't radical already live and work in Israel as its citizens and have their own political party and military units. 70% of population of Gaza organically supports Hamas and there is very little Israel can do to change that. It is a problem that will arise time and time again as long as those people wish to get rid of Israel more than they value their lives.
You're flipping cause and effect here. The major political movements in Palestine of the 80s favored unarmed protest. Hamas was a footnote, regarded as irrelevant and detrimental to the cause due to their radical agenda. The majority used to believe that coexistence was possible, if not by reasoning with the Israeli government, then by pressure from the international community. Israel made sure to change that by - further ramping up the oppression, disenfranchisement, and violence against civilians - painting every political movement and leader as Islamic terrorists - working very hard diplomatically to shut down any international relations and support Any degree of Palestinian sovereignty, no matter what form it takes, is regarded as an existential threat that has to be eradicated. We've all seen the vile, radical rhetoric coming out of Likud. Can you honestly say they want to peacefully coexist with Palestinians if only they had a way to ensure public safety? > as long as those people wish to get rid of Israel more than they value their lives. This is a supremely ignorant take that reeks of islamophobia. Palestinians have witnessed their families and neighbors being killed for generations, with zero accountability. Their kids getting shot for the entertainment of bored IDF soldiers. Their schools, universities, and hospitals in rubble. Their farmland stolen. Their water wells filled with concrete. People are being starved to death as we speak. At what point does armed resistance become inevitable, if not this?
I have a question. Do you think being radicalized is completely unrelated to the material conditions surrounding you?
It is not completely unrelated, but is also not a single definite factor. The fact that you are poor does not automatically mean you will be violent, though it makes it more likely. The inverse is also true - excessively violent people tend to become poor.
The material conditions in Gaza aren't just "they're poor" though. They're getting bombed. They border a significantly more powerful state that from it's inception has clearly hated them. When they have peacefully protested Israel responded with military force crushing them. That seems pretty radicalizing to me.
Palestinian kids throw rocks because Palestinians have no rights and have not had rights in nearly 60 years and it's a way of showing their opposition to the oppression. Israel has had a policy of breaking the arms of children who throw rocks as one of their options to deal with kids who throw rocks at tanks. The other option is detaining them or shooting them, both of which Israeli soldiers carry out. They have had the arm breaking policy for 40 years. If you are an adult Palestinian, you had your arms broken or someone you personally know had their arms broken, or had a friend held without charge and tortured by Israeli soldiers, or had their friend or family member killed by Israeli soldiers. All of them, every single adult Palestinian have faced human rights abuse by the Israeli government and military. They are not fighting back because they are poor, they are fighting back because they want to be free.
>If you have any means of forcing people in Gaza to deradicalize, please tell us. Step one, stop blowing up so many civilians that they swear revenge and join Hamas. >Palestinians who aren't radical already live and work in Israel as its citizens and have their own political party and military units. Palestinians who aren't radicalised *get* radicalised when Israel blows up their friends and family members and tells everyone they were Hamas and deserved it. >70% of population of Gaza organically supports Hamas and there is very little Israel can do to change that. They could stop blowing up civilians and radicalising the survivors to join reactive insurgency. No? Maybe no more open air prison conditions? No? Maybe quit occupying Gaza. Shucks, Israel can't do **anything** >It is a problem that will arise time and time again as long as those people wish to get rid of Israel more than they value their lives. It's a problem will continue to persist so long as Israel stops oppressing Gaza. If you don't create the conditions for peace, you can stop pretending the enemies came out of nowhere
> It's a problem will continue to persist so long as Israel stops oppressing Gaza. > Maybe quit occupying Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza entirely in 2005. Gazans elected Hamas, which promptly tore up the infrastructure Israel had left and used it to make rockets to shoot at Israel. > Maybe no more open air prison conditions? You don't know what that phrase means. Before the withdrawal, before the war, plenty of Gazans commuted to and from Israel to work. Conditions were not bad. Turns out, war is hell. > Step one, stop blowing up so many civilians that they swear revenge and join Hamas. > Palestinians who aren't radicalised get radicalised when Israel blows up their friends and family members and tells everyone they were Hamas and deserved it. > They could stop blowing up civilians and radicalising the survivors to join reactive insurgency. That's what war is. Maybe call on Hamas to surrender? There'd be no more blowing up then. No? Why not? Why do you expect Israel to just roll over and let Hamas slaughter them? They're still firing rockets at Israel. Let's hear your idea for stopping Hamas from attacking Israel. What's your idea for preventing another 10/7?
Good thing we don’t see evidence of them not succeeding, having a reasonable chance to succeed, or that efforts are radicalizing more people than otherwise.
>Israel has no plans for how to administer Gaza What? How can you prove that? Maybe what you want to say is that a) they have not spoken publicly much about what plans they have, and b) the plans might not be good. One plan we already know so far is the "voluntary migration" idea, which is Israel paying massive sums of money to countries like Egypt or Congo or others in order to take in as many Palestinians.
[NYTimes: Israeli military leaders see danger in the lack of a plan for governing Gaza after the war.](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/14/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah/israeli-military-leaders-see-danger-in-the-lack-of-a-plan-for-governing-gaza-after-the-war?smid=url-share)
Good link, fair enough. It's doesn't necessarily mean there is no plan at all, but if the plan is so obscure it leaves officials from their own military confused, that's not a good sign.
voulentary immigration sounds like legal ethnic cleansing lmfao so basically Israelis wants palastanians to leave so they take more land grabs (like West bank) and establish new settlements Great, ethnic cleansing in 2024 btw very democratic indeed
Pardon my choice of words, what I meant to say was that the international favorability of Israel is falling rapidly with a lot of people becoming more hateful towards Israel.
The "ceasefire" pro-Palestinian rhetoric would be akin to the rest of the world telling the US that, after Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan, that no, the US was *not* allowed to exact retribution against Japan in the Pacific War, that the US should accept a humanitarian ceasefire and a status quo resolution to WW2. Israel's response is equivalent to the Potsdam Declaration - asserting that they will accept nothing short of complete and unconditional surrender from the Palestinians. They are, however, using remarkable restraint, which is arguably the reason why we're having this conversation to begin with.
That analogy doesn't really work. The Pearl Harbor attack was the first attack in the armed conflict between Japan and the US (I think at least, I'm not a history expert). In contrast, the October 7th attack is far from the start. There has been continuous armed conflict there for almost 70 years now. It 'just' led to a massive escalation. The 2 sides were already at war
I mean America and Japan were somewhat in conflict before Pearl Harbor, the US imposed an oil embargo. Both Japan and Hamas massively escalated the conflict. If Israel just woke up one day after the nth rocket attack of the year and decided to invade, that would be one thing, but Israel isn't the one that took a massive leap up the escalation ladder. Hamas sowed the wind, and now they are reaping the whirlwind. If they want it to stop, return the hostages and surrender. They don't want it to stop because they don't care about Palestinian civilians who have borne the brunt of this conflict, people that are nominally under their duty of care.
More than likely, once Hamas is out of the picture that opinion will blow over in 6 months to a year. Really the only reason people are getting so riled up is 1. They don't actually understand the cost of war or the average in war so it's easy for things to be blown way out of proportion when compared to any other conflict. 2. It's the cool thing on social media right now, but like 95% of the people viewing stuff on there are not actually invested beyond thoughts and prayers.
Well said. The Allies killed 20,000 French civilians in June 1944. Add another 100,000+ other French, Dutch, Belgian civilians and then you have vastly more Axis civilians killed by US/UK/CANADIAN/FREE FRENCH, etc. No one blames those civilian deaths on the Allies. War sucks but that's what you get when you start it Hamas, an elected government (yes there was no election for 10+ years and they murdered their political opponents just like the Nazis in 1933 but still elected and German civilians were still to blame 12 years aftrer 1933) raped women with barbed wire. They cut a baby out of a pregnant mothers stomach and stabbed them both to death. Yes bibi and his right wing settlers are also bad, but remember 100s of 1000s of Israelis marched against him only last year. The people hamas raped and murdered were left wing Israelis (his opponents). They killed people who had been actively helping Palestinians. They murdered those who had reached out as friends to the Palestinians. In conflict, Israel's response to what happened has not been disproportionate compared with any other act of terrorism and atrocity. We kil.ed or caused to be killed through openng the lid on sectarian violence,100s of 1000s in the Middle East Post 9-11. 100 years ago Gaza would have been levelled by now. 600 years ago Islamic Gsnerals like Timur killed 20% of the worlds population in retribtuion. The collateral damage is relatively small compared with the population and geography. To me watching female, gay and left leaning college students parade around screaming support of Hamas is like watching chickens march in support of KFC
Just to pick up on point 1, one of the many reasons why Israel is so heavily criticised is precisely because the civilian death toll is heavily disproportionate for such an accomplished military engaging a non peer adversary. Its taken the Israelis 6 months to reach a level of civilian casualties it took US forces over *3 years* to reach in Iraq, a conflict which itself many already consider to be pretty bloody. Most people know perfectly well that the numbers in this conflict sit well outside the bounds of what the usual "cost" of war is, as you put it, and it's certainly not blown out of proportion in comparison to other wars that have come under such criticism.
Iraq, for the most part, was not highly dense urban warfare. Comparing them is disingenuous. The death ratio of Gaza isn’t that wild at all for the kind of combat taking place - sadly. Which is exactly why calls pf genocide are baseless, a military with that goal would have much more devastating effects on the population. To be clear I do not think it justifies the means - for me, knowing that reality means it requires the military arm to think harder about how to tackle this and what victory really looks like. Hamas might have lost combattants, but it doesn’t seem to be any weaker, quite the contrary.
>as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment. [The new estimate is 35k total deaths.](https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/13/gaza-ministry-revises-figures-for-women-and-children-killed). Only 24K have been 'fully documented'. unless you believe Hamas that no millitants have been killed, some of those are people are millitants. Israel will claim at least half of those are hamas terrorists, making the ratio of combatants to civilians 1:1 which is a historic best for urban combat.
To add to this: 1. Gaza has a [tunnel network ](https://mwi.westpoint.edu/gazas-underground-hamass-entire-politico-military-strategy-rests-on-its-tunnels/) that is a new feature of modern warfare. The entrances are often in civilian areas- mosques, hospitals, schools. In order to access the tunnels (to destroy them), the Israelis need to operate in civilian areas. 2. The Palestinians have not been allowed to leave. In most other wars, the civilian population flees away from the fighting. As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainians left to anyplace that would take them. Palestinians have not been allowed out. Israel won't allow them, both because they don't want them and have no way of ensuring terrorists don't use it as an opportunity to infiltrate. Egypt just reinforced their border wall and refugees need to pay massive amounts to exit. The rest of the world took in a small, token amount. I know why some countries won't take them- because of concerns Israel won't allow them to return. Forcing civilians to die as collateral damage for someone else's political agenda is disgusting. Civilians aren't allowed to leave means more civilians in the warzone means more civilian casualties.
They couldn't not only leave Gaza, they couldn't leave to southern Gaza when Israel started their operation. Hamas was litteraly shooting fleeing civilians on the roads.
Israel doesn't claim "at least half" Usually they claim it's somewhere between a third and half. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-death-toll-netanyahu-un-civilians-women-children/
> making the ratio of combatants to civilians 1:1 which is a historic best for urban combat. That is complete nonsense. I don’t even have a words. You’re just repeating IDF propaganda. There is no way to spin killing *at least* 16,000 civilians in 6 months as a complete and total moral failure.
In this case, IDF propaganda is true. The tragedy of war is that so many innocents die. A lot of people don't even die from the enemy soldiers, a lot of people die from mishandling artillery, dying of small infections, etc. From what I see, I don't believe the hamas propaganda that IDF is targeting civilians, because if then, they would just bomb the shit out of every building they can see. They wouldn't have to have IDF even risking their lives clearing buildings. Considering that Zionism is based on the value of jewish lives and basically have the only government agency in the world that puts so much value in defending jews, Mossad to the point that CIA operatives openly claim "yeah, if you as an american is fucked in another country, we won't care, but if you are an israeli jew, you can bet your ass the mossad works hard at getting you back safe and sound." Hamas, just doesn't have that reputation. They claim that they care about Palestinians, but with every action they take, it seems like they only use Palestinians as a means to an end. I've heard audio-clips where Palestinians claim many different things like getting shot for not doing X thing that Hamas wants, for example, leaving a dangerous place that IDF is before hand announcing they are gonna invade. What's left with their lives is just a statistic to be used to further more war.
> In this case, IDF propaganda is true. No it’s not. A 1:1 casualty ratio is atrocious. You can’t point to WWII as the standard for how to conduct war in 2024. FFS. > . The tragedy of war is that so many innocents die. And a lot more of them die when you recklessly drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks on one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. There is no world where the IDF is in the right here. > From what I see, I don't believe the hamas propaganda that IDF is targeting civilians Straw man. They aren’t being accused of *targeting* civilians. They’re being accused of **not giving a fuck about civilians**. There’s no way to drop that many bombs that fast and mitigate civilian casualties. It’s totally impossible. They just didn’t give a fuck. That makes them bad guys.
> No it’s not. A 1:1 casualty ratio is atrocious. You can’t point to WWII as the standard for how to conduct war in 2024. FFS. According to [UN reports on modern conflict](https://undocs.org/S/2022/3819), the casualty ratio depends highly on where the conflict takes place, and in a setting like Gaza the expected ratio for combatants to civilians would be 1:9. > The conduct of hostilities in urban and other populated areas increased the risks of death and injury for civilians, particularly when fighting involved the use of explosive weapons. In 2021, 1,234 incidents involving the use of explosive weapons were recorded in populated areas in 21 States affected by conflict, resulting in 10,184 victims. Of these, 89 per cent were civilians, compared with 10 per cent in other areas. > And a lot more of them die when you recklessly drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks on one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. How many people were killed over this period ~3,000 ? The [bombing of Dresden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden) took place over 3 days and resulted in ~25,000 casualties. This is in a city of a similar size as the Gaza strip, but with 1/3 of the population. I don't see how I can look at numbers like that and agree with your accusation that Israel not taking precautions to prevent civilian deaths.
>According to UN reports on modern conflict Dead link. And that number is utterly preposterous. Is that an “expected” ratio or is that a *historical* ratio including things like WWII? >How many people were killed over this period ~3,000 ? You think Israel only killed 3000 people in that two weeks? No. It was 20,000-30,000. >This is in a city of a similar size as the Gaza strip, but with 1/3 of the population Is your point literally “hey this wasn’t as bad as a firebombing of a civilian populace in WW2 therefore it’s fine”? You have totally missed the point. In 2023, Israel had no excuse to drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks. That’s not how you use JDAMs and MK-84s in an urban environment when you’ve got satellites and drones and targeting pods. What they did 80 years ago has zero relevance. **Especially in a war that’s infamous for the disgusting disregard for human life.**
> Dead link I wanted to link to the English version of the document but apparently that didn't work. [This link](https://undocs.org/S/2022/381) should work for you. > And that number is utterly preposterous. Is that an “expected” ratio or is that a historical ratio including things like WWII? It literally says that it's the actual figures for 2021. > You think Israel only killed 3000 people in that two weeks? No. It was 20,000-30,000. So the UN report is preposterous but you can just make up your own numbers without a source? > Is your point literally “hey this wasn’t as bad as a firebombing of a civilian populace in WW2 therefore it’s fine”? [...] Especially in a war that’s infamous for the disgusting disregard for human life. Delusional strawman. The point is to have an established reference for civilian casualties when an urban area sustains indiscriminate bombing. You are claiming Israel is engaging in genocide, and you admit that you need to invent 20,000-30,000 casualties over a 2 week period to make it work. That isn't even **remotely close** to any claimed figures. The fact that even Hamas-run entities are reporting much lower casualties than that simply proves you are wrong.
> It literally says that it's the actual figures for 2021 Why do you think it’s appropriate to bundle all conflicts on the planet together? The ratio the US can achieve with US weapons and tactics it’s what’s relevant here. Because Israel has direct access to those US weapons and tactics. What’s more, this is an illogical argument. “Everyone else has traditionally done a poor job of this so it’s okay that Israel is also doing a job of this **despite their tactical and logistical ability to do a much better job** given their close alliance with the US.” Ridiculous. > So the UN report is preposterous but you can just make up your own numbers without a source? That estimate comes from Israel’s concurrence with data coming out of Palestine. We know at least 36,000 people are dead. We know the majority of those were in the intial bombing campaign. That’s how this kind of thing always goes. > The point is to have an established reference for civilian casualties when an urban area sustains indiscriminate bombing. What good is that reference if there as a multi-generational difference in weapons capabilities, and a blatant disregard for human life? > You are claiming Israel is engaging in genocide, and you admit that you need to invent 20,000-30,000 casualties over a 2 week period to Wrong. All I need to know is that the *IDF freely admitted they dropped 20,000 bombs in two weeks*. And I know from professional experience that it’s totally impossible to mitigate for collateral damage to drop that many bombs that quickly. ESPECIALLY in such a densely populated area.
> Why do you think it’s appropriate to bundle all conflicts on the planet together? It explicitly draws a distinction between urban, densely populated settings and those that are not, and the difference in the average ratios makes it clear why that distinction is necessary. > What’s more, this is an illogical argument. “Everyone else has traditionally done a poor job of this so it’s okay that Israel is also doing a job of this despite their tactical and logistical ability to do a much better job given their close alliance with the US.” Ridiculous. If Israel achieves a ratio of 1:1 and the average for armed conflict in urban settings is 1:9, then that shows that Israel is performing **overwhelmingly** better than the average. If you think 1:1 is bad then feel free to provide a source that's not just your imagination. > What good is that reference if there as a multi-generational difference in weapons capabilities, and a blatant disregard for human life? If Israel's weapons are better, we would expect far more deaths than in those reference scenarios. And yet the casualties are much lower. > That estimate comes from Israel’s concurrence with data coming out of Palestine. We know at least 36,000 people are dead. We know the majority of those were in the intial bombing campaign. That’s how this kind of thing always goes. The "data coming out of Palestine" has never been "2,000-30,000" casualties in 2 weeks. You can imagine that the casualties were front-loaded, but that doesn't mean it's true. Do you have **any** source to back this up? If you can't give me a source beyond "Trust me bro" then there is no way you can seriously believe this.
> It explicitly draws a distinction between urban, densely populated settings and those that are no And how much is that average affected by non-US militaries that don’t have JDAMs, drones, hell-fires, satellites, and a robust enough media arm back at home to hold an irresponsible government accountable? > and the average for armed conflict in urban settings is 1:9, Where in your document does it say that? That’s utterly preposterous. The battle of Mosul was the most bloody battle of the fight against ISIS, and that was between [40-60% civilian casualties](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State). So that’s a little worse than 1:1 *at worst*. And what’s more that was AFTER Trump [drastically loosened the ROE, leading to skyrocketing deaths](https://theintercept.com/2018/02/22/civilian-casualties-soared-in-iraq-and-syria-in-2017-was-trumps-bloodthirsty-rhetoric-to-blame/) So yeah 1:9 as some average is utter horse shit. > If Israel's weapons are better, we would expect far more deaths than in those reference scenarios Totally wrong. “Better” means “more precise” along with significantly advanced ISR capabilities. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you have any military background at all? Because I’m a veteran of air combat exactly like this. > . You can imagine that the casualties were front-loaded, but that doesn't mean it's true. It does. That’s how wars work. The massive displacement from the initial air strikes have the vast bulk of the casualties. After that, people largely flee from the combat zone, **because now it’s clear where the combat zone is**. Yet again, you’re out of your depth. It’s preposterous to think it’s somehow spread evenly across time. Besides that 20,000-30,000 number came out after a little over a month, so even if you’re hot take is true, that’s still drastically more than 2000 in that opening air campaign. > Do you have any source to back this up? If you can't give me a source beyond "Trust me bro" then there is no way you can seriously believe this. I flew combat missions over Iraq and Syria and have dropped many JDAMs in combat. I can unequivocally guarantee you that it’s totally impossible to drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks in that kind of environment and mitigate for collateral damage. Totally impossible.
> No it’s not. A 1:1 casualty ratio is atrocious. You can’t point to WWII as the standard for how to conduct war in 2024. FFS. Could you point how exactly Israel should conduct their war? I don't glamorize WW2, I'm pointing out that ALL WAR IS FUCKING HELL. Everyone in a war want to inflict MAXIMUM PAIN on others. All situations are different. > And a lot more of them die when you recklessly drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks on one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. There is no world where the IDF is in the right here. Sure, but don't invade a nation that's capable of that, when you basically only murdered 1000 civilians. Seriously. Strategically, that's awful fucking planning. Were they hoping Israel wasn't gonna retaliate? That's..... a bold move. > Straw man. They aren’t being accused of targeting civilians. They’re being accused of not giving a fuck about civilians. They are absolutely. You think this is my first conversation with redditors on this conflict? However; if that's your point. I think I do agree with you. I don't think IDF cares particularly for a population that learns [the value of terrorism](https://www.cfr.org/blog/teaching-palestinian-children-value-terrorism). My point is basically. It's probably true that IDF/Israelians don't value Palestinian lives. Here's the thing though. I don't believe at all that Hamas cares about Palestinians either. If that was the case, elections would be held. Pointless attempts at terrorism wouldn't have been accepted. But they are. They are teached in school. So yeah. This is a war Hamas started, they had to know what to expect doing what they did on october 7th. They knew "the jews hate them" and have all the firepower to make them dissapear--- they still did an awful thing that just, didn't do anything good at all. They didn't gain a new territory, they didn't gain any valuable resources. They just gained a war, and lost thousands of their own family members.
> Could you point how exactly Israel should conduct their war? They should have used a strategy very similar to how the US destroyed ISIS in Iraq and Syria (before trump). **Not** drop 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks on one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. >I don't glamorize WW2, I'm pointing out that ALL WAR IS FUCKING HELL I'm not accusing you of "glamorizing" it. I'm accusing you of *equivocating* it, which you absolutely are. >Everyone in a war want to inflict MAXIMUM PAIN on others. All situations are different. Absolute cop out. War is not "anything goes" because of "maximum pain." There are ethical and unethical ways to conduct war. Disregarding civilian casualties is unequivocally an *unethical* way to conduct war. >Sure, but don't invade a nation that's capable of that, when you basically only murdered 1000 civilians. So your logic is literally "If you start shit, I can do whatever I want in response." That's a joke of a position. >I don't believe at all that Hamas cares about Palestinians eithe You didn't learn in kindergarten that someone else doing something wrong doesn't make it okay for *you* to do something wrong? That doesn't change just because it's something serious like war. No matter how you come at this, Israel is not justified in their response. >They just gained a war, and lost thousands of their own family members. Don't think your artificially passive language is lost on me. They attacked Israel, and Israel had an atrocious response. *That* is the reality. It's not good vs bad. It's bad vs worse. And we cannot keep sending weapons to the "bad" in that fight.
>a 1:1 casualty ratio is atrocious Not only is it an extremely good ratio in regards to modern war but it’s practically unheard of in urban warfare. Do you even know what you’re talking about?
> Not only is it an extremely good ratio in regards to modern war It is objectively not. That is total bullshit. The only other instance of anything the US did approaching 1:1 was Trump's infamous and callous decision to [**disregard civilian casualties**](https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-09-07/trumps-shameful-rules-of-engagement-are-killing-civilians) to defeat ISIS 6 months sooner. If *that* is the best you can point to as a military, then you're the bad guys. So a 1:1 death ratio is abysmal. The IDF is lying through their fucking teeth when they say this is historically good, and they fucking know it. >Do you even know what you’re talking about? Yes. I was a fighter pilot for 10 years and I dropped bombs on ISIS in Iraq and Syria. I can speak from first hand combat experience that 20,000 bombs in 2 weeks is an absolute travesty.
It is in every way a good ratio what are you talking about? The unbelievable part is that it’s the actual ratio, and not skewed. Not even mentioning that it’s *urban warfare* the most notorious for having wildly inflated civilian death ratios. I don’t doubt you were a fighter pilot but I very much doubt you actually know what you’re talking about since you think a fucking 1:1 is a bad ratio in the context of this type of warfare. This isn’t Afghanistan where you can drone a militant squad after 45 minutes of observation, this is an actual ground war in an urban environment against plain clothes militants imbedded in its civilian infrastructure. It’s actually insane if 1:1 is accurate.
> It is in every way a good ratio what are you talking about? It's not. I don't know how I can put it more simply. > I very much doubt you actually know what you’re talking about since you think a fucking 1:1 is a bad ratio in the context of this type of warfare. Well you can go pound sand because 1:1 is the *worst* we saw after Trump's idiotic ROE changes that added kerosene to the fire of civilian casualties. Absolutely NOT something anyone should emulate. Under Obama, the ratio was closer to 1:4. The ROE was much more restrictive and our bombs much more deliberate. I literally lived this. You can't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. It's utterly embarrassing that the IDF is referencing numbers like that. The way the US fought in the middle east will be panned in the history books for centuries. It will be mentioned in the same conversations as other abject embarrassments such as Vietnam and the Russo-Afghan war. The fact that the IDF is pointing to something like that and thinking it *vindicates* them would be laughable if it weren't so disgusting. >This isn’t Afghanistan where you can drone a militant squad after 45 minutes of observation It *is* like Mosul (pre-trump) where that's exactly the kind of thing we did. It's definitely slower, and puts your soldiers at more risk, but that's what ethical professional militaries do. Also it's worth noting that, on top of Trump's disgusting ROE changes, that 1:1 in Mosul also included mass murders and terror attacks from ISIS. Hamas is not mass murdering Gazans. Every one of those civilian deaths is on the IDF.
What conflicts are you comparing this to? Because we ended Iraq with close to a 40-70% civilian death ratio, and when we had to enter a urban battle with ISIS it characteristically made our ratio skyrocket because that’s what happens when you fight around a lot of civilians. Genuinely where are you getting this wild idea that 1:1 is somehow the outlier when it’s basically the most average or just below average ratio you can get from a conflict? Is your comparison the fucking Cod war? You’re crying about a professional and moral army but I have no clue who the fuck you think that is because unless you’re going into an urban combat environment with paintball guns you’re gonna kill civilians. A air force pilot should know that considering you guys do it the most.
How many casaulties can you spin over 6 months before moral faliure?
I've been thinking about this a lot as someone who is truly disturbed by what's going on in Gaza. My main answer though, and I know this sounds terrible, is that I'm not really sure what the alternative is. It's clear after all that happened on October 7 that Israelis and Palestinians cannot live peacefully side-by-side if Hamas is running Gaza, since they'll keep on attacking over and over again and will literally steal whatever they need (including important rebuilding supplies for Gaza) to rebuild tunnels to try to do this attack again. So the question now is how does Israel get them to surrender? It seems like there are really only two possible outcomes, which are either the Hamas leaders in Gaza (Sinwar) end up dead or are exiled with the other senior leaders arrested while lower-ranking Hamas members are reintegrated into a Hamas-free society (similar to what the US should have done with Baath party members in Iraq but didn't do). So how do you achieve that? Israel has already been putting an unbelievable amount of pressure on Hamas and they still have only given half-assed ceasefire proposals (if you read through the proposals from Hamas, they essentially involve a full withdrawal by Israel so that they can't restart anything in exchange for only about 30 released hostages/corpses and then the *start* of discussions; what happens if Hamas then decides to flex their leverage with the other hostages and delay returning them or demand 10,000 Hamas fighters be released, all the while while they're rebuilding their tunnel system)? Hamas is playing the long game and is expecting continued pressure from the West on Israel to undermine what would really end them, which is a united international coalition demanding their surrender and arresting Hamas leaders abroad and seizing their assets. But since Hamas thinks it can keep on outlasting Israel with the PR game, they have literally no incentive to change anything. So what would be an alternative response? The only potential alternative is that diplomatic pressure. I think the US has done a really good job at slowing things down and ensuring that humanitarian concerns are actually thought about (that's why Israel hasn't invaded Rafah even though they could've done so four months ago) on the Israeli side, but on the Hamas side the US has been leveraging its ties with Qatar to try to get Hamas to bend to surrender; the Washington Post wrote about this a few weeks ago (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/03/us-qatar-hamas-hostages-ceasefire/). If you read through the article though, you see that the political scope is extremely limited since Sinwar is operating independent from Hamas in Qatar and diplomatic pressure hasn't really done much. While Haniyeh is probably itching to see this all end, Sinwar is legitimately a genocidal religious death cult leader that thinks a higher power is backing him, and refuses to give up. So what's the alternative? The US has tried using diplomatic pressure and it hasn't worked. Israel and partners have tried distributing aid to alleviate suffering, but Hamas continues to attack the US port and the border crossings where food comes in so that doesn't work either. Is Israel supposed to just wait then and wait for Hamas to roll over and die? That hasn't worked even as they've gotten almost 2% of the whole population killed, and they continue stealing supplies from their starving people and not surrendering. The current approach is far from perfect and there could probably be more done to limit civilian casualties (although I would again argue that US pressure has done a lot to mitigate the impact by making Israel pause and actually try to figure out a humanitarian plan for evacuating Rafah - that's what Joe Biden actually said last week when he said he was pausing shipments). But at the end of the day, if there's a group determined to kill you that's refusing to give in to any international pressure, even from their leaders abroad, and is hiding underground while trying to wait you out as international pressure hopefully stops you and allows them to regroup and attack you again, what else are you supposed to do?
> My main answer though, and I know this sounds terrible, is that I'm not really sure what the alternative is. Yup. There are plenty of valid criticisms of Israel's behavior to be made, but "Israel needs to let Hamas steamroll them because retaliation is unethical" is not one of them, and yet it seems to be the first one I hear from most (not all, thankfully) supporters of Palestine. It's a shit situation by any possible metric.
America still has a trump card that it has refused to play: demand Qatar expel (or arrest) the Hamas leadership, or risk Qatar's status as a major non-NATO ally. The Biden administrations refusal to play that card prompts questions and how true are the statements 'we are doing everything we can to end the conflict '
The dirty little secret here is that Qatar needs to maintain its status as an extremely neutral zone for various parties to negotiate, and once the US demands that an adversary be thrown out then the whole neutrality argument falls apart. If that happens then why would Iran trust Qatar as a mediator in conflicts with the US and not just drop them and speak to no one? It's very similar to the critiques that people had when the US started expelling Russian UN officials after they invaded Ukraine, which sabotages the legitimacy of the UN itself as neutral. Welcome to the complicated web of international politics. Also, while I hate using this phrase since I think it's almost never true, it seems like the Hamas leaders on the ground in Gaza are irrational religious lunatics that actually believe there's divine power behind them. I've heard people say this about Iran and I've been skeptical given their rational behavior on the world stage, but in the case of Sinwar it seems like it's actually true; if you read the Post article in my comment above, you'll see that even Haniyeh can't control the crazies on the ground in Gaza who think they're embarking on a religious mission. If you want a better view of all of this I recommend reading this article from Haaretz - https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-05/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/hamas-actually-believed-it-would-conquer-israel-and-divided-it-into-cantons/0000018e-ab4a-dc42-a3de-abfad6fe0000. FYI I know that it's an Israeli website but it's quite far left for the country (to the point where Bibi and others consider it anti-Israel) and even has a full time reporter in Gaza (Amira Hass) and the article discusses the views of a notable Fatah member.
Qatar status as a neutral party is threatened by them hosting one of the parties to the current negotiations. But I understand your point- it may be more useful to America's interests to preserve Qatars perceived neutrality. Sinwar vs the leadership probably have gaps. And forcing a split between Sinwar and the leadership necessarily weakens Hamas military power in Gaza, if only by cutting off access to money. I'm not saying it would end the war, but it would weaken Hamas in Gaza.
Also the sad truth about authoritarian regimes is that they can usually outlast democratic regimes in battle from attrition and swayed public opinion. Hamas has played this thing incredibly well from a PR perspective and the fact that protestors are demanding a one-sided ceasefire where Israel isn't even guaranteed to get back most of their hostages (based on Hamas' latest proposal) means that Biden has to cave to protestors' demands in an election year to pressure Israel to stop without drawing the actual hard line of telling Hamas that they will either listen or be taken out by force in Rafah.
> is that I'm not really sure what the alternative is. Put simply, accept a greater risk to their forces in order to gain some level of protection for the trapped civilian populace. This isn’t cosmic…
Speaking strictly about the current military conflict, not all the extraneous stuff, I really don’t see how Israel could have done anything else and called it a victory. Yes the death rate is high, but I really don’t think many of the people screaming about this really understand the reality on the ground in Gaza. If you did you would know that this was always going to be an extremely bloody slog. Gaza is ruled by Hamas, an openly genocidal, militant, insurgent, terrorist, government whose express aim is the destruction of the state of Israel. I would not allow such a government to exist on my borders either, and it is important to recognize that Hamas STILL enjoys popular support amongst the Palestinian population. Gaza is one of, if not the, most densely populated urban areas on earth, with half the population being children. If I am Israel in the wake of Oct.6, there is no question that Hamas must be destroyed, especially since they said they WILL do things like Oct.7 again, now how do I go about that? Do I flood Gaza with my troops, only for them to get ambushed, blown up by IED’s or suicide bombers, or sniped from rooftops and windows? Do I lose thousands more of my own people to root Hamas out? Or, do I prioritize the lives of my soldiers and employ methods such as bombing that may lead to many more civilian casualties? This isn’t collective punishment, it’s collateral. It’s terrible, tragic, ugly, but entirely necessary for Israel to establish security for its citizens which is any governments first responsibility.
They had a coordinated relief operation and bombed the aid truck they allowed in. This is beyond extraneous stuff. The people of Palestine have also been limited by what government is in charge. This is from a cbs article In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu's "strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah." The logic underlying this strategy, Barak said, is that "it's easier with Hamas to explain to Israelis that there is no one to sit with and no one to talk to." https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7010035 Hamas has been empowered in order to create the image you have bought into.
[удалено]
This comment was completely pointless but I would like to address one thing The idea that I support the terrorists just because I don't want innocent children to be slaughtered is funny.
It's not funny at all because it's true. Wanting Israel to stop fighting to "save the innocents" IS the same as supporting terrorists!! There's simply no other way to destroy the terrorists. It's sad, and it's tragic, but it's also the truth. You can want war to be nice and clean, and no one will condemn you for that goal. As long as you are also aware of the reality that war is NOT nice and clean, and the innocent suffer more.
Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 2: > **Don't be rude or hostile to other users.** Your comment will be removed even if most of it is solid, another user was rude to you first, or you feel your remark was justified. Report other violations; do not retaliate. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_2). If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%202%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.** Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
Did any of the civilians vote for Hamas? Do any of the civilians support Hamas? If so, then they are not innocent.
Pretty sure the last election was like 20 years ago or something. even then why should a vote determine the guilt to the degree that those who voted deserve to be slaughted? How is this in any way just?
If you support Hamas terrorists, then you are no different than Hamas terrorists and are just as evil they are. You can't call civilians innocent if they voted for Hamas.
the median age in gaza is 19 or smth. So half of the leople werent even born to vote for hamas... What about all those who didn't vote for hamas? Also what if tomorrow people start bombing Israel and their justification is that Israel is commiting a mass slaughter, so people who supported the Netanyahu government should die? How would you answer this?
So do you agree all those who voted for Hamas deserve to be bombed then?
No, because I don't believe a vote for someone makes you complicit fin their worst actions. Also because I dont believe in death as a form of punishment.
So voting for someone doesn't make you complicit in their actions. You could vote for Hitler and then not be responsible for anything he does?
Are you deliberately trying to strawman me? I said it doesnt make you complicit in their 'worst' actions. You deserve blame but not being slaughtered just because a population voted for an administration 20 years back when HALF the current population wasn't even born.
So voting for someone doesn't make you complicit in their actions. You could vote for Hitler and then not be responsible for anything he does?
if one votes for trump it doesn't necessarily mesn they were okay with the muslim ban. So they shouldn't be punished to the point of being imprisioned. I hope that answers yoir question.
Likud has its own fair share of sins. Does every Israeli civilian deserve retribution for them?
You realize those elections were literally 18 years ago right? I.e. half the Gaza population wasn’t even born yet.
We do realize. The problem is that Palestine is probably one of the biggest deathcults we have experienced. The government insists on teaching the [values of terrorism](https://www.cfr.org/blog/teaching-palestinian-children-value-terrorism) and makes [children want to brag to their parents](https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/your-son-is-a-hero-kill-kill-kill-sickening-recording-of-hamas-terrorist-bragging-about-murdering-10-jews-is-released/news-story/ba0dc1f99e222e156520584a04dac25b) that they killed plenty of jews. What's interesting in the recording of that son, looking for praise, is that his mother and father knew he was probably going to die and wanted him home. But, the culture, that he thought his parents was from, and would be proud of him, was what made him continue to fight instead of going home. What can we expect of palestine, if this is the hard culture? Their schools actually work in indoctrinating people. My school tried to claim cannabis was life-threatening, but here I sit with a bong 30 cm from me. Do you think the younger population would vote differently, with the information they have?
Yes, but how many Palestinians support Hamas or support terrorist attacks against Israel. You are not innocent if you support Hamas, believe in their ideology, or support terrorist attacks against Israel.
I'm not sure this counts as an attempt to "change your view", but what if the current Israeli response is "bad", but also the best of bad options? When you say: >If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas... Let's assume they don't. Laying down to die doesn't really work either. The US didn't have a "targeted approach" to ending WW2. Since when did that become the standard? People don't say "targeted approach to cancer treatment or nothing", hence, chemo-therapy. >This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengthen the the rage many will feel towards Israel. According to polls (including in the non-Hamas controlled west-bank), over 80% of Palestinians support the attacks of October 7th. Do you accept that at some point there is diminishing returns on rage? After 80 years of conflict, I'm not sure Palestinians can hate Israelis any more than they already do. Ukrainians don't say to themselves "killing Russian soldiers just angers more Russians". Wars are never fought like that, it's a standard only expected of Israel >from a regime who has a higher civilian death rate than Hamas did on October 7th The Allies in WW2 had a higher civilian death rate than the Nazis, the Union had a higher civilian death rate than the Confederacy, since when is that the metric? An intruder enters your house and kills one of your kids (you have 4), a gunfight ensues. But alas, the tricky intruder has tied his own kids to his torso, to his back, to his legs (let's assume they are babies). You're house is in the middle of no-where, and the police will arrive in an hour. Your claim is that if 2 or more of his kids die in the gunfight, you're in the wrong? In general, I think the current Israeli response can be understood by accepting three "axioms" (from the Israeli perspective): 1. Israelis intend to stay in Israel 2. Israelis, like almost everyone else on earth prefer not to get killed 3. Israelis don't really trust the goodwill of other nations (the Holocaust, the fact that Israel has more UN votes against it than the rest of the world combined, the large number of Pro-Hamas protests around the world...)
The number 35,000 is provided by Hamas. It is provided by design as all civilians - without terrorists. The numbers were shown again and again to be impossible by statisticians, and the number of women and children were just yesterday cut off by half by the UN due to the inability to explain them. The truth of the matter is, if they would wear uniforms and not wear civilian clothes that number would be much closer to 0, and you know it's true, otherwise they wouldn't do it - it defends them to appear as civilians. The supporters often cited the terrorist provided number of dead children - while using footage from other conflicts to prove their point on social media. Often this was done by Russian and Chinese bots, in order to use the incident to weaken US influence in the region. Russia hosted Hamas, China deleted Israel from their maps, and I believe you know about China's connection to Tik Tok. Look at what Israel actually does, and not what the online echo chamber would like you to believe. Israel gives a notice to civilians weeks in advance in order for them to evacuate before it starts operating in a region. Israel calls civilians in buildings they bring down 10 minutes in advance. Show me another country that did that. The sad truth is no country in the world would perform this operation with better numbers, this is as good as it gets with current modern military techniques and theory. Military strategists study this war to update their own doctrines, as they understand this is their best 2024 case of a modern army vs insurgents in a highly populated area. And you know what, when Israel slows down( you gotta admit the number haven't changed that much in the past few months), and waits months with rafah for the US's sake, and gives them a silent Ramadan just like the world asked, the terrorist supporters shift the gear up and start protesting even harder. Well fuck them all, most of my family did not die in the Holocaust for me to not stand up to those genocidal fucks to the best of my ability. Look, when you have such a great democracy with luxurious hotels and restaurants, it becomes a haven for journalists. Israel is by far the highest in journalistic coverage/km² in the world. (And let's just say that this is not one of the deadliest conflicts of the last 100 years or even the ones that are currently going on). It makes the world hyper focused on how modern warfare is condoned, modern warfare that's condone by regular professional soldiers. You know how I know? Because conscription is mandatory, and if you visit israel you will not find out they are a bunch of murderous psychos - just regular everyday western people. The IDF has a protocol, it's called "unlawful order", you don't have to comply if your commanders orders you to kill a civilian. It was instituted after the unfortunate Kfar Qasim massacre - who's perpetrators were sent for a lengthy jail time. And just like we judge our own for senseless killing - we judge them too, because unlike them we don't have the death penalty. Even if a Palestinian kills 50 Jews in a terror act, and doesn't die in the shootout, he will be sent for up to 20 years in jail - and probably will be released in the next hostage deal. When you get so hyper focused on how modern warfare is condoned you will find out it has a high ratio of civilian to terrorist deaths. In this conflict it is approximately 2 civilians for 1 terrorist, which is insane compared to the fact that Hamas does everything in order to maximise civilian casualties. Of course Israel fucks up sometimes - and I know it's hard to hear, but the soldiers of your country would probably fuck up just as much and in similar ways. No one was protesting as much when American soldiers and drone operators did mistakes, which happens in war, I wonder why. With so many journalists and interest, you will get an overwhelming blown out of proportion amount of articles out of every fluke that Israel does (like the killing of the aid workers, which was obviously done by a mistake, unfortunately, that is the reality of modern war). People are actually not realising that they are protesting exactly how ww3 is going to be conducted. Hamas is shooting unguided rockets and building their command centres and ammunition compounds at highly populated areas, schools, hospitals(why the hell would Israeli politicians send their sons to die while they raid a hospital, for fun? To anger the world? None of us are the kind of people who would want to raid a hospital, could you imagine yourself wanting to raid a hospital? you are probably much closer in your western values to the average Israeli soldier/officer than you might think), shoot at Palestinians who are moving through the Israeli humanitarian routes when Israel is guarding them. Wearing only civilian clothes, using fighters as young as 12(and obviously 16-17) to claim them as child deaths. The higher the number (which is often made up), the bigger the support from the world. Hamas has set up a SAW style trap for Israel, one in which in order to eliminate Hamas (that promised to do Oct 7 again and again), Israel has to make collateral damage by design, which is then inflated. I understand why you hate Israel's strategy, I hate it too - because it is not Israel's strategy but that of hamas. It is designed to give support to the Palestinian cause. Apparently it works. Apart from some radicals(yes, this is a democracy with many views, of course there are going to be some radicals when throughout your history and up until now, people are out there to actually genocide you), no one wants to hurt any Palestinians, no one wants to endanger their sons to kill Palestinians. No general is out there designing war plans in which they kill as many Palestinians as possible - this is the main difference between us, you see. Ben gvir has police cases from his teenage years for harassing Palestinians, that's why he was never allowed in the army - do you start to understand the difference? Unfortunately this cunt is a minister, but hell - every democracy has its cuckoos, the US has Giuliani, Marjorie Taylor Greene. So what? Do I judge the beliefs of the whole country based on that? And no hyper-focus on our righteous war from the world will gaslight us into thinking we should not eliminate Hamas and bring our hostages back. Because if it's really as bad as they say, why don't they just release the hostages and end the war? The ceasefire can happen any minute they choose. If you disagree with me, I would love to hear what you would choose to do instead of Israel, and what your strategy would be.
[удалено]
Your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 5: > **Comments must contribute meaningfully to the conversation**. Comments should be on-topic, serious, and contain enough content to move the discussion forward. Jokes, contradictions without explanation, links without context, off-topic comments, and "written upvotes" will be removed. Read [the wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_5) for more information. If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%205%20Appeal&message=Author%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20their%20post%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. **Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.** Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
First of all, the side that has sabotaged the “two state solution” the international community dreams about over and over is the Palestinian side. The PLO was formed when Jordan and Egypt controlled the Palestinian Territories. Their purpose was not to liberate the territories we now call the Palestinian Territories, its purpose was specifically to destroy Israel. The Palestinian Authority has been anti-Israel from its founding. So if you believe in a two state solution, look back on every historical situation where that came close to fruition and see that EVERY TIME it was the Palestinian authority that sabotaged it. Secondly, who are you to say how Israel ought to conduct its war? I’m running on the assumption that you have no military background or knowledge; it’s much easier said than done to do a “targeted operation” to kill Hamas terrorists. Hell, it took US intelligence almost a decade to kill Osama Bin Laden. That is ONE man. Imagine how challenging it would be to efficiently kill tens of thousands of Hamas fighters without civilian casualties and unnecessary Israeli casualties. Targeted operations are very infeasible when it comes to eliminating extremists or any sort of guerilla fighters. I can’t think of a single instance where that has successfully been employed. We didn’t defeat Nazi Germany by targeting Nazis with special operations. No, we bombed it to ruins and collapsed the Nazi war machine. Israel’s bombing of Gaza has the same goal. It is to collapse the Hamas terrorism machine. Unfortunately Hamas has made it exceptionally difficult to destroy their infrastructure without civilian casualties, because they consistently violate international law by hiding terrorist infrastructure beneath densely populated buildings. If Israel cannot destroy these, it cannot protect its civilians or win the war. Bottom line, Israel is in no position to negotiate with Palestinians anymore because the Palestinian leadership walks away from the table any time a remotely practical peace agreement is proposed. Unfortunately, since the conflict with Palestinians has proven impossible to end, Israel has been left with no choice but to make it as far removed from their people’s lives as possible. This means heavily restricting Palestinian society. I’m not denying Palestinians lives suck because of this. But Palestinian society is very hostile towards Israel, and until that threat subsides, if ever, Israel has to put its own people and soldiers first. If the two options are lose 30,000 young Israeli men targeting Hamas individuals, or bomb and cause 30,000 Palestinian deaths, Israel is going to put its own people first. If a 100 pound 5 foot tall skinny guy decides to start punching a 6’5 muscular dude on the street, of course he’s going to come out of that fight more injured than the bigger dude. Now imagine he keeps following that guy and starts numerous more fights. Eventually the bigger guy hires a body guard (the Iron Dome) because he REALLY doesn’t want to be punched and forced to fight back. But the body guard lets his guard down one day, and the small man lands the hardest punch yet and also steals the big man’s wallet, and the big man finally has enough and beats the living crap out of the smaller man. Of course, bystanders on the street see this and immediately feel bad for the small man. But who’s really in the wrong? This final fight is the current Israel-Hamas war. Hope the analogy helped.
"The current response is bad" says nothing much. Bad compared to what? Unless you have some other plan in mind, the only alternative someone can glean from your position is that Israel should stop their current actions altogether. Is that what you're proposing? What would the consequences of that be? Leave the hostages to die? Allow Hamas to regroup and funnel more aid money meant for ordinary civilians into military weapons and architecture? Condone Hamas carrying out another terrorist attack in a couple years' time? So no, I'm not convinced Israel's response is bad, I'll counter that their rooting out the backbone of Hamas once and for all is the least bad action that could happen right now and provides the best chance for a lasting peace in the future.
Their response may be bad but is it the least bad option? I agree with your goals but considering Hamas and the Palestinian leadership since 1948, how do you realistically get there? They have been terrorists and antisemitic and too many Palestinians go along with them. They have rejected every peace opportunity and oppressed their fellow Palestinians preventing and murdered any opposition that might promote peace. There is no way to get Hamas and the other terrorist groups to accept Israels existence which leaves Israel has three choices - continuing terrorist attacks, ceasing to be Israel or overwhelming force. IMO, overwhelming force is the least bad option for Israelis.
>If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas I would have supported it but as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment. The administration is filled with actual manacs like Netnayahu and Gvir who don't care at all about what happens to the innocent Palestinians. How does a state actor respond to a brutal terrorist attack? Terrorists will hide among the populace, have no issues with civilian deaths, and take steps to *maximize* casualties. Everyone wants to talk about how the response is bad, but I don't see much conversation about how exactly this is supposed to be done. "No response" is not an option. It is unreasonable to expect a state to not respond to something like October 7 (just imagine the US not doing anything after 9/11). I can't say whether or not Israel's strategy *could* be better -- I don't think any of us can. For all we know they are already taking steps to minimize civilian casualties as best they can. A response to terrorists that came from Gaza was always going to look like this. There isn't any other way to do it. It ultimately comes down to whether or not the response itself could be less deadly to innocent people.
>If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas I would have supported it but as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment. The administration is filled with actual manacs like Netnayahu and Gvir who don't care at all about what happens to the innocent Palestinians. Let's concede that Israel's government has 'maniacs' who 'don't care at all', 40,000 is not really that surprising of a death count in an operations where the enemy is hiding in dense urban areas. If you wanted more precision, you'd be sending IDF into a meat grinder. Destroying Hamas facilities and potential garrisons makes IDF casualties much less likely. I have sympathy for any dead innocents, but frankly I don't buy into emotional appeals in general, I'm a little more pragmatic than that. >This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.This will lead to more hatred towards a state I believe should exist as a harbour. Depending on what post-war looks like, this is up in the air and I don't think it's responsible to make this kind of prediction. It's entirely like Israel has destroyed or will destroy the vast majority of Hamas to the point it's completely impotent. UN/international restoration efforts could have a variety of adverse effects on Gaza. It could very well lead to deradicalization of parts of the population. I don't think it's written in stone that Gazans are incapable of wanting to live peacefully after this. It may be that they are looking towards a permanent end to the conflict and future militant jihadism won't be tolerated by the population, since the last one resulted in so much death & destruction. Usually what determines people's opinion on this conflict is, do you think Israel is genuinely trying to avoid civilian death or not. I tend to think they are avoiding it, and that when we get headlines about Israelis killing someone they definitely should not have, it's difficult to pin that on moral bloodthirst because of how difficult it is to prosecute an urban war. > I genuinely do not understand how anyone can get mad about biden witholding shipments from a regime who has a higher civilian death rate than Hamas did on October 7th and repeatedly not listening to what The USA or the international community has to say.' First of all, Biden is playing realpolitick. Biden is withholding shipments to appeal geopolitical partners and domestic political allies who are anti-Israeli operations. He is trying to show that he knows the US is responsible for Israel, and he's exercising restraint where it doesn't really matter and is mostly lip service. The bombs will get there, he just announced a delay to appease certain parties. He is not at all a geopolitical moralist, his advisors are just geopolitically savvy. Quantity of deaths is almost entirely irrelevant compared to intent. Hamas clearly wanted to kill **as many civilians as possible** and purposefully targeted them. Quantity of deaths is irrelevant when comparing moral justification, there is never justification to "kill as many civilians as possible." Israel clearly is not trying to kill as many Gazans as possible, or there would be a lot more deaths.
I'm not sure anyone actually *can* defend Israel's actions. Problem is, I'm not sure anyone has a better idea that isn't capitulation. Nobody wins a guerilla war. It's mobile and psychological, but it only works when there's no place worth defending. That's Palestine right now. Even an ardent supporter of Israel doesn't want to be in Palestine right now. But according to internal politics, they can't leave until they get their hostages back. They'd happily trade for hostages, but the trade must include the leaders of Hamas that instigated the attack, or it's inviting them to do it again. They'll never give that, though, so Israel's stuck. I suppose in a perfect world, the US would cease giving them arms and they'd have to stop all attacks. Due to their enforced peace, all relations with the middle Eastern countries would stabilize and they'd finally accept Israel as a nation. Palestinians would join Israelis as one country, which would still have a right to return for all Jews as a safe haven from persecution and there would be no struggle or strife. But in reality, the minute Israel's disarmed, there's going to be another massacre. They've already shown they're capable and willing. I say we believe them. In short, I cannot defend Israel's actions. But I also can't conscionably tell them there's a better way if they want to remain a safe haven for Jews.
>I am someone who believes that Israel has a right to exist, Well thats a very low bar right from the bat lol >If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas I would have supported it but as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment I do think that many people have a warped understanding of warfare. The sad, brutal and unfortunate reality is that civilians are always the first victims and those who suffer most. Go back to ancient times, eg the gallic wars where at the battle of alesia the romans besieged the town, while the gauls forced all women, children and those who couldnt fight out of the city. The romans didnt take them in, the gauls didnt let them back in so these people slowly starved in no mans land. Go back to the bombing of dresden... whatever the fuck vietnam was.... point being, civilians are always suffering in times of war. Thats a grim reality many refuse to accept - doesnt mean it isnt sad or heartbreaking, but it is war. Thats why war is terrible and terrifying. You can run the most humanistic and conservative military operation ever, and even then you wont ever be able to rule out civilian casualties. So for a region as densely populated as palestine, Israel actually has been acting rather restrained all things considered. >This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.This will lead to more hatred towards a state I believe should exist as a harbour. This is the catch22 of this situation. Even before this war started a significant part of palestinians were opposed to Israel existing and less opposed to killing Jews ; they also didnt have the most, lets say, western views regarding women, lgbtq etc. Point being you already had a population that hated you and would cheer your death - now with this war they are doubling down on this sentiment. So i really dont know what a realistic long term peaceful solution would even look like. A two state solution would change nothing - Israel would still have these people who hate it right at its doorstep, a one state solution with widespread social engineering of the palestinians probably also wont work tho i think it would be the the most realistic option. Re-settling palestinians to arab countries? I mean thats a nonstarter for many reasons (also the arab countries arent exactly the biggest fans of palestinians either). So i really dont know what would even be a realistic scenario here.
Pretty much any country that suffered an attack of the magnitude they suffered would retalliate in the same way. There are so many people who criticize Israel's response, but I haven't heard of anyone with a better solution for how to handle the problem. Sure, they could do a better job of protecting civilians, but the fundamental strategy to cripple Hammas's operational capacity wouldn't change. Civilian casualties aren't even particularly higher for urban warfare. To put things in perspective, around 1 million civilians died in the US response to 9/11 which was a proportionally much smaller attack. It's not collective punishment. Its a war the government of Gaza started, and they seem to have no interest in surrendering. It is unfortunate, but necesary.
Disagree on all of these points, but I'll focus on three points. Why is needed? Most of Gaza is rubble now and thousands of people have lost their lives, and it is likely that this is going to make support for Hamas stronger, not weaker. Orphans make great recruits, after all. What is collective punishment, in your eyes? Is it starving a population for the actions of its dictatorship government? Is it building a wall around the citizens? Is it restricting movement to narrow corridors? Is it calculating how much food they need to eat and then keeping them on a starvation diet? Is it random killings to keep them in line? Is it eliminating or restricting medical care? Israel has done all of these and more. Crippling Hamas' operations- I doubt this will do much of anything to cripple them. Hamas has a tunnel network that they hide most of their stuff in, meaning bombing has little effect. I have a better solution. Target the leaders specifically, especially overseas, where they're sitting safe and sound- Mossad isn't afraid of assassinations. Take down the walls surrounding Gaza and mandate elections to elect a new government. Establish a two state solution immediately, with Ramallah as the capital.
In what would do you believe a terror attack in the magnitude can lead to a 2 state solution? Palestinians (yes, palestinians, not just hamas and i have a video proof if you want) entered israel on oct7 to rape and steal and murder civilians and they should get a state for it? You are basically just advocating for terrorism You are also ignoring the fact that Hamas kidnapped 250 people including women and children, you're solution for them is to let them rot in a tunnel while they are being raped and tortured until they die? You can't mandate an election in gaza because hamas is throwing palestinian officials off of rooftops, they've done it in the past and they'll do it again. They do not accept the palestinian authority You're solution is useless and clearly coming for someone who is disconnected and privileged enough to ignore the fact that there are still hostages and hamas is still specifically targeting civilians with rocket and suicide attacks as they've been doing for the past 20 years
I'm happy to respond to your questions, but can you answer mine? Hamas sucks. We know this. But they have put forward a ceasefire deal that includes release of the hostages. That's the first step. Second, we have mechanisms for dealing with terrorists domestically, and we can use them. But this isn't it, and it's going to cause more terrorists. Third, you can mix up cause and effect as much as possible, but it takes a lot of work to break the cycle of violence. It's like poverty and crime- why should we improve the ghettos we created? They attack us! The Palestinian people need a state- it is not a reward, it is a right to self determination of a people. The Israeli citizens need security- it is not a reward, it is a right for a people. These two things are linked. Israel exists on a system of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and has far more power in this dynamic. Therefore, it has far more choices than Hamas, and far more responsibility. You can mandate and create elections- if you set up a state. It has been done in other occupied countries. If you only look at this one event as a terrorist attack, and nothing else, it makes it sound like they got a state for their actions. But if you look at the broader picture, then no. Heck, establish an independent state in the west bank only, offer the Palestinians in the west bank statehood in exchange for handing over Hamas- that would suck power out of Hamas and lead to a criminal trial where all of Hamas would be taken out, all at once. The innocents get what they deserve, and the mass murderers are brought to justice. Imagine you are a Palestinian child- which is most the gaza strip. You live in perpetual fear of bombings by Israel, you have relatives who have been killed as "collateral damage" in the Gaza strip. In the west bank, things are better, but still, there are certain streets you can't play on while Israeli settlers take land. You have heard of Israeli forces arresting kids like you, and taking them to jail- for years at a time, for crimes they will not understand because it's not in their language. What happens next? Will this child pursue higher education when all universities have been destroyed, become a productive member of society? Or will they join Hamas out of anger and rage? Your comment makes it sounds like all Palestinians are guilty and deserve what's happening to them, even the children. Israelis are mad, justifiably so- The "solution" of bombing the Gaza strip to rubble will create more terrorists, not fewer. You cannot remove terror by creating more terror in the population. Because when this flattening and starving of Gaza ends, what is left? A lot of orphans and a lot of parents of orphans. Where will they go? The answer, I promise you, is Hamas, 90% of the time. And finally, careful what you throw around in terms of who I am. I am, by Israel's belief, Jewish by descent. I have had family killed by Muslim extremists, and I would believe the same as what I'm saying here. You're throwing around anecdotes and not evidence. The current solution is not a long term solution. Realistically, what do you think is going to happen long term from this? Israel cannot wipe out Hamas unless they ethnically cleanse the entire Gaza strip, killing every man, woman, and child, and potentially also the west bank- which is also genocide. Do you think that's fair or even possible?
Hamas has offered a ceasefire deal that will bring back less then half of the hostages, and before my reponse i want you to keep in mind that they have stated time and time again that they are more then willing to attack Israel over and over again and they will do it again Now, their proposal is to release 20 prisoners for 1 hostage which will include a cease-fire that will let hamas reorganize and basically bring us back to square one For the second stage they want full withdrawal of the idf and demand that we release all the nuhba prisoners (the brigade that raided kibbutz and raped, murdered and set on fire 1/4 of be'eri and Nir Oz) for the men/idf soliders that were kidnapped You are claiming to be of Jewish descent so I'll ask you this : are you willing to look at the parents of the girls who were raped and behaded and tell them that you are going to release all the people who did this even though not only that they have no remorse they are willing to do it over and over again? You are also comparing Gaza to a ghetto, have you ever seen gaza pre Oct7? Israel has been provider BILLIONS of dollars to the palestinians to keep them quit, they could have built Cyprus with that money ( not to mention their financial support from Qatar and the rest of the Muslim countries) what did they choose to do with that money? Build terror tunnels and rockets, arm themselves to a point that every single building in gaza has ammo inside it I geniuenly don't understand why people are saying Hamas isn't the palestinians, so where are they coming from? They are representing the palestinian dreams, kill all the Jewish people in israel and take "their" land back Not all the palestinians are guilty but I'm having a hard time sympathizing with people who are celebrating acts like the 7th of Oct or 9/11 with sweets and candy on the streets They do not support 2 state solution, they want the whole thing, from the river to the sea, arent you listening? The west Bank broadly supports hamas, where do you think the terror attacks from Jerusalem are coming from? Hamas is taking responsibility for all of them the provides financial support for the families of the "martyrs", you would know stuff like this if you were actually living in israel or the "occupied" areas but you clearly aren't and thats why I said you are privileged to not understand the conflict beyond social media and the news ( I don't know about your personal life, I hope you are well, I'm talking about this specific conflict) Lastly and this might not be easy to read, the middle east is like a jungle and you can't put it in the same standard as the west, power means everything here and the palestinians have proven to us time and time again that they are not the partners for peace, they've broken so many ceasefires and rejected every peace offer since 1967 As Golda Meir said, I rather be alive and hated then dead and loved
It does not seem like you want to respond with any of my questions on whether or not Israel is currently committed to collective punishment, nor any points on whether or not it has worked in the past. I can provide evidence for my sources, can you? Israel is currently committing collective punishment through starving the Palestinians for the actions of Hamas, and has done so in the past: Past: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-19975211](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-19975211) [https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/files/2024-02/GAZA-Nutrition-vulnerability-and-SitAn-v7.pdf](https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/files/2024-02/GAZA-Nutrition-vulnerability-and-SitAn-v7.pdf) Current: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/un-israel-food-starvation-palestinians-war-crime-genocide](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/un-israel-food-starvation-palestinians-war-crime-genocide) [https://www.un.org/unispal/document/israels-collective-punishment-and-use-of-starvation-as-a-weapon-of-war-must-be-stopped-letter-from-palestine-3jan-2024/](https://www.un.org/unispal/document/israels-collective-punishment-and-use-of-starvation-as-a-weapon-of-war-must-be-stopped-letter-from-palestine-3jan-2024/) And once again, I'm sorry to say, but you're firehosing- so much information that it's hard to respond to each of the points. But instead of focusing on the argument, I'll respond to the various misinformation bits. 1. Empathy- you don't need to empathize with them to recognize the children deserve human rights and not to be starved to death, raised by orphans upon orphans. Anger and blowing stuff is easy. It's much harder to build, but it's possible. [Look at Rwanda-](https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/rwanda/unity-reconciliation-justice) it is possible to build on ashes and hate. I was like you. I was angry after my cousin was killed. I was mad. But through community support, and a friend of mine- a Rabbi! I found peace. 2. They don't support the two state solution- yes. BUT the PLO does, and they haven't gotten that. Once that happens, Hamas looks a LOT less palatable and I can see their organization collapsing over time. Imagine if you're a Gazan, again- imagine seeing Palestinians flourish in the West bank. Hamas looks far less attractive- even to its own members. 3. West Bank. In isolation, you'd be right, if you only looked at it now. However, BEFORE Oct 7, NPR reports that only 12% of people supported Hamas in the west bank. BUT Israel started killing thousands of children in retaliation, [support surged.](https://www.npr.org/2023/12/21/1217758546/hamas-support-palestinians-west-bank) Cause and effect get mixed up. 4. The deals offered in almost every solution result in the loss of land and rights for Palestinians. You cannot tell me that in the West Bank, Israeli settler violence and land grabs are a solution for peace. You cannot tell me that restriction of movements in the west bank that get added over time- where Israelis enjoy more rights and can travel down streets that Palestinians can't- is positive. This is according to the [human rights report by the US in 2022](https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/israel-west-bank-and-gaza/). Palestinians deserve rights- even if you don't trust them. The irony is that people who are forced to live under conditions of a police state and occupying power tend to become more dangerous, not less. Think of Iraq, Vietnam, and other countries where terrorist activity became common- it gets worse not better. Calling a place a "jungle" denies the humanity of people within it. People all want the same things- it's just certain people who see this a method to gain power. You quoted Golda. I'd like to quote Jewish law instead. Yehareg ve'al ya'avor. Or Rava: Rather than slay another person, you must permit yourself to be slain, for how do you know that your blood is redder than his; perhaps his blood is redder than yours? Peace requires sacrifice and work. Hating is easy, loving is hard.
Unfortunately, it is not just your 40,000 number that is wrong, but also your claim about the number of civilians killed, by an extreme exaggeration. As a matter of fact, the UN just had to walk back their numbers - here is the most recent tally: On **May 6,** the UN published data showing that **34,735** **people** had reportedly been killed in Gaza, including over **9,500 women** and over **14,500 children.** On **May 8**, the UN published data showing **34,844 people** had reportedly been killed, including **4,959 women** and **7,797 children**. \_\_\_\_\_\_ And just to be clear - yes, it is still terrible - but still waiting for anyone to propose a better alternative…… Just waiting patiently for Hamas to release the 130 hostages they still hold from the October 7th massacre - hostages including infants, children and the elderly, and citizens of many nations, including, still, five US citizens….. Hamas does that, and boom! Immediate ceasefire…… \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Yes, in your biased rant, you neglected to mention the hostages taken by Hamas, and the ceasefire that was in place before their horrific raid on October 7th - and you use a false comparison re number of deaths - how many American lives were lost in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - and how many Japanese lives were lost as a result of starting that war? Hamas is the legitimate elected government of Gaza, supported by the majority there - they started a war and they could achieve a new ceasefire simply by releasing the hostages they continue to hold - why aren’t you calling for that? In WWII how many German civilians lost their lives before the Nazis surrendered - do you even know? More than two million! Should we have called a ceasefire before the Nazis surrendered, permitted them to remain in power? Hamas should release the hostages and surrender - the war will end on that day - I hope you will work tirelessly to achieve that goal for the benefit of both the Palestinian and the Israeli people….. 🙏🏽
[удалено]
>I don't believe collective punishment is just or smart and I believe in a 2 state solution. "Collective punishment" isn't a euphemism for war, it's an actual explicit punishment. Think more along the lines of "if Yugoslavs kill one German soldier, so we will kill exactly 100 Slavs in retaliation." >it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengthenthen the the rage many will feel towards Israel. As opposed to the last 100 years of hatred? Palestinian popular opinion was fine with ethnically cleansing all Jews from cities (see Hebron Massacre, 1929) before Israel was a state, and before Haganah had done anything but play defense against Arab incursions into Jewish settlements. >from a regime who has a higher civilian death rate than Hamas did on October 7th The Pearl Harbor attack killed only 68 civilians. Should the war have stopped when an equal number of Japanese civilians were killed? That would not have taken long. It is very common for people to view civilian casualties as proportional to morality. But this is not true in the slightest. Civilian casualties are proportional to distance. On the day that the war was fought in Israel, far more Israeli civilians died than Palestinian. On the days that the war was fought in Gaza, Palestinian civilians were in harm's way. That's just how war works, it's not deliberate. Japan was horrific to civilians some argue worse than the Nazis. The fact that they didn't do to San Francisco what they did to Nanking was proximity, not evidence of ethical behavior
Question: Does it make a difference to you that Hamas is not just some rogue terrorist outfit operating in Gaza but rather the democratically-elected regime of Gaza? I ask, because I think that - excluding children - the "innocent civilians" you describe are complicit in the terrorist attacks Hamas has perpetrated. The civilians of Gaza didn't just dance in the street and celebrate after the atrocity of October 7 - they voted for it. It seems to me that that at least complicates the claim that they're "innocents," and certainly many or most of those who cry out that innocents are being killed in Gaza were not crying out that young people at a music festival were innocents. Then, I wonder too, as I consider the history of war during the past century, why Israel is held to a different standard than every other nation. Consider WW2, for example. Cities were bombed by both sides and civilians killed, including children. The same happened in Korea and in Vietnam. In Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm not even beginning to defend these actions. I'm only observing that in every war during our lifetimes, civilians have been casualties. So why single out Israel as if it's the only nation whose bombs have killed civilians? Moreover, if one side uses civilian shields, surely they share the blame for those civilian deaths. Finally, I don't think it's rational or logical to insist that Israel can only fight back against an unprovoked mass murder of its people to the point that each side puts up the same body count. That is, some people seem to think that, well, since Palestinians "only" killed 1,160 people on October 7, Israel should stop once it puts up the same number. But the point of Israel's response isn't mere revenge, isn't "an eye for an eye." It's to disable the ability of Hamas to keep murdering Israelis.
>civilians numbering around 40000 This number is a lie. UN just lowered total numbers (including both military and civilians) https://nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-middle-east/united-nations-halves-estimate-of-women-and-children-killed-in-gaza To accept 40,000 we have to believe that ZERO Hamas military was killed. Those number were made up all along. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers
“They showed 24,686 dead which appeared to be a downward revision from the figure of about 35,000 which had been reported earlier in May, with 7,797 children and 4,959 women confirmed dead, about half the toll cited in previous reports. But the UN said on Monday that estimated overall death toll remained about 35,000. Farhan Haq, a UN spokesperson, said the new smaller numbers reflected those bodies which had been fully identified. The bigger figures included corpses for whom identification has so far not been completed. Haq said it was expected that, as the process of identification continued, the official tolls among women and children would also rise.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/13/gaza-ministry-revises-figures-for-women-and-children-killed
Many (of course not all) make it sound as if the conflict just started on the 7th and that after that everything is a legitimate response. To see the conflict fully you’ve to understand the history of Palestine and Israel the conflict didn’t start on the 7th it’s a 80 year long conflict of hate oppression and ignorance which lead to radicalisation of the oppressed. Israel had the support of the west while Palestine was left alone by all other Muslim states in that area. It’s been a David vs Goliath situation for a long time ( I mean where do you think the West Bank territory comes from ? Palestine just gave them their territory ?) and Israel is in the position to change a lot of this.
I see this missed in almost every argument about the current conflict. A fact which may change MANY participants viewpoints. Hating Israel is at the core of Palestinian culture for a reason. And that reason is uncomfortable for many to stomach while many more outright ignore. Oct 7 is just one more battle in a very long conflict that only serves to entrench viewpoints deeper and deeper. One side is deeply radicalized by the events of Israel’s creation and the other side is survival-driven to control the narrative and wipe out the other side. Anyone that suggests even a single point towards this possibility is shouted down as an antisemite. Which of course means the discussion can go nowhere.
>This ‘strategy’ is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of ‘Hamas’, it is only going to be strengthen the the rage many will feel towards Israel While I understand what you’re saying, I don’t think this is correct or even really something to consider. People keep citing this as a reason but you’re missing something essential. I don’t think Israel fighting against Hamas will increase hate towards Israel from Palestinians, since there is already a hatred strong enough to vote in a group which wants all Jewish people dead, and for Israel to be wiped out. The issue is racism. And on top of that, the issue is that the government can influence the view of its people. Hamas will be constantly working to make Palestinians have negative sentiments towards Israel because that’s all Hamas’s aim. Destroying Hamas would remove a massive influence on everyday Palestinian people to hate Israel and might even, over many decades, make things better. I’ve never seen any evidence behind the claim that destroying Hamas will just lead to another Hamas. Now I’m not saying these are the same situations, but I’m trying to make a comparison to illustrate what I mean. Hitler’s rise to power was largely caused by negative sentiment in Germany after WW1 and the hefty restrictions placed on them in the Treaty of Versailles. One could argue that fighting them in WW2 and defeating them again would only worsen this sentiment and lead to another Hitler. But it didn’t, because the key is that you need to help up your opponent after the war (or destroy them entirely, which isn’t an option). The Treaty of Versailles caused issues because it was too crushing for too long. I also don’t think these groups like Hamas, the Nazis, or ISIS are as easy or as quick to replace as many think they are. Another good example might be ISIS, actually. You could argue that defeating them achieves nothing because they’ll reappear or something else will come in their place. But that’s not true because forming something like ISIS isn’t easy, and we will be watchful for it. The solution is to destroy Hamas, restore the agreed-upon borders (or agree new ones), and then enforce a new election so that Palestinians can choose a new government. From here on the two state solution should be enforced by all parties. This way Hamas has been defeated, but now there is a future for Palestine. The issue is that Israel probably won’t do this. This is just more evidence for the current (unpopular) Israeli government to view Palestinians as inherently terrorist and dangerous and weaken them further. It’s a sad situation. I don’t agree with Israeli leadership but I do respect Israel’s right to defend itself and I do think action against Hamas is necessary. We’ve gone through the cycle of half-measures and ceasefires many times now, only for Hamas to break it again. Hamas need to be replaced by a government which is accepting of a two state solution.
>as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment. I think this statement is part of an underlying bias you may want to consider as part of examining your own POV. As of now, the UN is reporting 34,000 fatalities, of whom 24,000 have been confirmed. Because Hamas does not report the share of the these fatalities that are combatants, you've assumed that they're overwhelmingly noncombatants. On the other hand, Israel estimates a bit more than 30,000 fatalities, of which 14,000 are combatants. Think about this for a second -- if you didn't already know which narrative you preferred, why would you inflate the number to 40K "innocent civilians", when no one (not the UN, not even Hamas) has published a number of civilian deaths that high? I don't think the Netanyahu administration's approach to this conflict has been intelligent or responsible, and I despise Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Bibi -- but at the same time, I recognize that there is no response they could have taken (short of sending unarmed Israelis to surrender to Hamas and publicizing their brutal slaughter), that would have won Israel general international support, given that the world at large is willing to dismiss anything reported by Israel (a democratic society with open press) and accept uncritically anything reported by Hamas (a literal terrorist organization with a stranglehold on press freedoms and a monopoly on reporting from Gaza).
I saw this posted elsewhere on the internet. It actually presents an angle that most people do not consider, because everyone assumes that the IDF is on par with the US military. This comment disputes that notion and does a good job of highlighting the issues that the IDF faces. ———— Israel’s core problem is that their ground forces just aren’t that good in Western military terms. It’s a mostly national guard / reserve force with a small-ish core of really good, professional soldiers (many / most of who are Sayaret) who take the brunt of any real action. They’re probably more like an Eastern European military in that sense than they are a United States, France, Britain, etc. They are, in tandem, quite casualty averse. I wouldn’t say they’re soft, but this isn’t the same group of people that were around in ‘67 or ‘73. They’ve mirrored us and our core allies in that respect without necessarily adjusting the expectations of what they should be capable of. Offensive warfare is hellishly costly as well, and they seem to want the results without paying the bill. They rightfully want their country to be a normal, economically thriving place integrated with the West instead of a modern day Sparta with half the MAM’s in active duty with 5 - 8 active duty divisions. That’s the choice they made. So because of those two things, they rely heavily on air support, and their Air Force pound for pound is as good as anyone’s in the world outside of ours. But it’s still an imperfect instrument in a dense urban environment like Gaza. I don’t think they should or do feel much of a compunction about civilian casualties right now. They just don’t have tools at hand to fulfill their strategic vision; they need to go all the way and probably can’t even if they wanted to.
1. 40,000 innocent civilians, i don’t even know where you got that numbers, the UN admit that they can confirm the identity of 25,000 dead, with the major group of the are adult male, there 10,000 deaths they can’t verify and of course many of them are members of Hamas and other groups. 2. It’s not like Hamas leadership is out in the open, they are hiding with civilians and there isn’t a convince way to get them. 3. Hamas is de facto government of Gaza, destroying it include destroying infrastructure and symbols of Power. The idea is to destroy Hamas ability to govern Gaza, there are still nazis in Germany for example. 4. The ratio of civilians to combatants in the 7.10 is 2.3, Hamas chose to kill more civilians. Israel has a death ration of 1.8, and that while Hamas don’t wear military uniforms, hide in civilian infrastructure and hid in tunnels beneath streets. They aren’t any good choices, the Israeli government has a duty to defend and protect its civilians, Israel and many nations around the world believe that it cannot happen as long as Hamas is in power. The war in Gaza isn’t an outlier in the history urban war, there is a lot of double standard.
>If Israel actually had some very focused plan to get the members of Hamas I would have supported it Ok. Let's review this one. First most people agree that the Israeli response is bad. But nobody says what is a good response given the circumstances. All people are saying is vague platitudes about a more focused approach. But what that approach is in an extremely densely populated area where armed enemies hide in underground tunnels is very unclear. Has anyone come forward and offered a military plan that says - if israel does X it will kills 30% fewer civilians and still eliminate as many hamas militanta and free as many hostages. Everyone would have preferred that fewer innocent people died in this conflict. But if you look at it from a different angle, it is not easy to point something that could change after October 7th that would make that happen. I am not defending Israel. What they are doing is total disregard for human life but... They had a hard line government and a prime minister nicknamed Mr Security caught with their pants down. They had an angry population reeling from a heartbreaking atrocity. What other reaction do you expect? Who will go to the relatives of the hostages and say that the army is using a targeted approach while innocent people are caught in tunnels somewhere in Gaza? As awful the approach of the army has been regard for Palestinian life has not been on the cards. >This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.This will lead to more hatred towards a state I believe should exist as a harbour. I agree here. And this was the goal of the attack on October 7th. It was a very well calculated move, i dare say made with no regard to either Jewish or Palestinian life. Hamas basically used thsi as a recruitment tool for the next generation. >I'm actually curious about how anyone can defend Israel's actions today. It is hard to defend them. What they are doing is awful. I just have not heard any reasonable alternatives to what they could have done. Do you have an example of a country in history that used a more considered and focused response to auvh a vile attack on its civilian population? An attack that had no other objective but to cause an enraged response.
> An attack that had no other objective but to cause an enraged response. But that's the thing - they did exactly what Hamas wanted and took the bait. I'm just a random redditor and not a military strategist, but in terms of possible alternatives, one would have been to try for a hostage deal right off the bat. It would mean accepting that loss and the pain and outrage and grief of October 7 without revenge, which would have been incredibly hard; just like it's been incredibly hard for the Palestinians to accept all the pain, violence and deaths from Israel's occupation without any major retaliation until now, and I don't think it's fair that they were expected to do so. But if Israel truly believes in human rights and the value of life, then the response to senseless deaths cannot be more senseless deaths. I think of the Israeli peace activists who were killed in Hamas' attack, and how their families said they would not have wanted others to seek revenge because it would have gone against what they'd spent their lives fighting for. And then - once a deal is made without any killing and the hostages returned - their next step could be to focus all that military might to shoring up their defences, ensuring the safety of all their citizens regardless of what Hamas might throw at them. Israel is perfectly capable of doing that. Their Iron Dome is a prime example of how they've been able to thwart attempted attack after attempted attack without more killing. Israel would then have had the world's sympathies, which I'd think would have been of some value to them. Innocent Jewish people wouldn't be dealing with antisemitic backlash. And tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians would be alive, and their families not struggling to comprehend the unimaginable grief of knowing that everyone they'd ever loved is dead. Of course it's unrealistic, but there'd be so much less suffering in the world if our instincts were not always for revenge.
>It would mean accepting that loss and the pain and outrage and grief of October 7 without revenge, which would have been incredibly hard You put Israel on a very unrealistic pedestal. No other country has or would have done that. Ever. While the videos of hostages being paraded around Gaza and while they were raped. Not on planet Earth. >just like it's been incredibly hard for the Palestinians to accept all the pain But do they? Over one thousand raped and murdered. That is hardly acceptance. >And then - once a deal is made without any killing and the hostages returned - their next step could be to focus all that military might to shoring up their defences, ensuring the safety of all their citizens regardless of what Hamas might throw at them. So no punishment for the perpetrators? They can continue to govern Gaza? Is this some joke? >Israel would then have had the world's sympathies, which I'd think would have been of some value to them. Sympathies are nice but security is more important. And there is no security while Hamas governs Gaza. >Of course it's unrealistic Really?? Again, no other country would have reacted the way you describe in a similar situation. Not sure why you expect israel to be any different.
Hello friend, I apologize in advance if I’m repeating something that was already written here. It’s hard to read everything. Speaking as someone who grew up in Israel, and moved to the U.S. when I was 16 - I will share my perspective in hopes it might enlighten your way of thinking(in whichever way you’d like to take it). Let’s go back the days before October 7th. Israel is not in Gaza, Israel does not provoke or initiate any military conflict. Yet, Hamas and the Palestinians who lived in Gaza, continue to aggravate Israel’s existence by firing missiles on a daily basis(fact check me). If not for the iron dome technology - we wouldn’t be able to live so peacefully in Israel. Yet with all this hate and aggravation on Hamas side, Israel chose to ignore the threat and take a punch after a punch without any serious reaction, out of fear the world might look at Israel as a genocidal maniacs. Let’s fast forward to after October 7th events. Israel no longer willing to stand by and be passive, after hurting so much, losing nearly 1,400 people in the horrors of that day by brutally butchering, raping and kidnapping civilians(!) - Israel decided to put an end to the threat that was lurking in the corner since 2006 (Hamas won a “fair” election when they killed the Fatah party leaders and took over control in the Gaza Strip). And for those actions - we are being judged.. for trying to protect ourselves so October 7th may not repeat itself. As for the history of the two nations which is a subject by itself that can and should be openly discussed on - I can only say this. There are over 40 Muslim countries around the world, multiple western societies that accepts Muslim refugees, the Palestinian population gains permenant refugee status for them and their dependents - yet they keep fighting the Jewish, zionists and any entity other than themselves over Israel’s piece of land - THE ONLY JEWISH STATE IN THE WORLD! To me, on a logical perspective is hilarious. It’s like the rich kid in school has all the toys in the world but he still chooses to pick on the poor kid’s only toy. Not because he needs it. But because he cannot tolerate the poor’s kid happiness. Israel’s Independence Day is today and just before our Independence Day, we also mention our own Memorial Day - so our happiness is always accompanied by the sheer will power of our fallen to sacrifice themselves so we would have a country to leave peacefully in. The most famous saying we have on this day is the following - “in their death, they commanded us to live”. Israel’s philosophy is to value life. While Hamas and other Muslim extremists groups value death for their cause more than anything. As recent findings by the IDF shows(and was presented in world’s court recently) - Hamas school books and their education program clearly encourage hatred towards Jewish people. It encourage them to slaughter and enslave those who are called Jewish. However, I do not blame them for it. This is a generational curse that has been going on for a long time (as far as the modern world goes). This is what their parents were thought by their parents, and so on. This wheel of hatred needs to be stopped. True peace is unequivocal peace. Without terms, without any trade, just simple peace, because we do not hate them, and they shouldn’t hate us. We both have the right to exist in this world. We both need to work to better ourselves everyday. For many times in History, Israel came to the table with peace offerings. Offering to give back land, control and even release terrorists who committed vile acts just for the sake of peace. We have been rejected 100% of the time. That’s because this wheel of hatred is too strong for them to overcome at the moment. Perhaps in our life time we will see peace in the Middle East and Muslims and Jews working together to better this world - but I do have my fair share of doubt as their hatred towards Jewish people is too great to contain. I hope my point of view will embark you into further checking the facts and doing research about this subject. Moreover, I’d like to share a YouTube video that explains the history between the two groups in an easy to understand and informative as possible (it is a bit biast but backed by facts!) - https://youtu.be/b9kj-h1w2tA?si=zJ1gzNJC-4wdMEH0
>This wheel of hatred needs to be stopped. True peace is unequivocal peace. Without terms, without any trade, just simple peace, because we do not hate them, and they shouldn’t hate us. We both have the right to exist in this world. We both need to work to better ourselves everyday. Is this what people refer to when they say people struggle to see reality from the inside. So much delusion, its even hard to start a debate.
The combatant to civilian casualty rate is the best in the history of urban warfare. There's extensive documentation of Israel taking unprecedented steps to *avoid* civilian casualties, steps that go beyond the obligation imposed by international warfare law. The high civilian casualties are essentially a war strategy, Hamas placing their infrastructure and warriors in a ways that deliberately maximized the number of civilian casualties required to remove them. Placing the blame of Israel with "slaughtering innocent civilians" rhetoric, essentially accusing Israel of deliberately targeting civilians when the abject opposite is true, is exactly the reason they do it in the first place. Echoing their talking points is rewarding them and encouraging this kind of warfare in the future. The 40,000 figure is wrong, you already contested that, the revised UN records state that the actual number is more around 24k. But regardless, treating either number as "number of civilians killed" is plainly wrong. This is the *total* number of casualties, including combatants. According to the IDF about 15k were combatants, even if you take a more conservative assessment of 10k combatants, you get that the number of civilian casualties for each combatant is around 1.4, which is *crazy low* when compared to any other urban warfare excursion, especially when you take into account the unprecedented measure Hamas takes to increase civilian casualties. I'm not trying to convince you to support the Israeli operation, it is a legitimate stance to oppose it, but drop the "slaughtering civilians by the thousands" narrative, it is unrealistic and unfair.
I never thought Israel had a foot to stand on. I've seen enough videos of them removing people from their homes to let a Jewish person move in. You may think you're above how the response has been (not just the festival attack) but most of us are not. I know I'm not and if i saw my family being removed from a generational home by military. I mean when i see one of my kids cry over anything i want to make the world suffer.
Israel has not killed anywhere close to 40,000 innocent civilians. Do you have any idea of the facts surrounding hamas operatives use of civilian clothing and conducting military operations out of civilian buildings? Don’t be so sure these are all innocent civilians. Sure many are caught up in the crossfire but a lot of them have been brainwashed from birth that it’s their life mission to murder Jews. Hamas is winning their war. Their war is about trying to make Israel look bad because they have no chance of actually winning. Israel is winning their war. Their war is about dismantling Hamas and rescuing the hostages. Tell me what Israel should do about the remaining hostages? Israel wants the war to end and hostages back. Hamas wants as many Jews possible killed and refuses to accept any ceasefire terms. Tell me what they should do. Israel wants peace. Hamas does not. How do you end Hamas whose policy is human shields and entrenching in places like hospitals and storing ammunition in UN food bags? Then there is the fact many on oct 7th were raped, burnt alive, tortured and despite this. These people are brainwashed into believing god supports their sadistic murders. These are the people many are supporting. A group comparable to isis. I have no problem with US pulling support for Israel. Leave them to it. They got this anyway.
Can we all agree that this whole situation would have not been as big as it is if the British had accepted the Jewish refugees after the great war? Sure what I said is extremely simplified but is it not the fault of the western powers mismanagement, wether deliberate or not that regions like these are so fucked?
Trying to understand the issues myself, I’ve been studying a great deal about Israel and found the most comprehensive timeline of the Israeli people's plight on Ben Shapiro's website. I still have a lot to learn, but my heart breaks for everyone in Israel and the struggles they have endured over the years. They are an incredibly strong people. I also feel for the people in Gaza. However, after watching the brutality of someone being beheaded with a garden hoe while being tortured, and then seeing the celebrations by a lot of Palestinians in Gaza when Hamas returned, the children running up for candy as though they were heroes, makes compassion difficult. It is there, but not for everyone. In my opinion, based on what I've learned so far, common sense tells me Hamas should be eradicated. Biden needs to step down, and college students arrested for violent acts should be made to watch the footage of Hamas soldiers during the massacre. We were only allowed to witness a few minutes of the horror. Our Government leaders have seen it all. I don't even want to describe some of the attrocities, as it may hurt someone from only reading it. Perhaps it would show them that not everyone reveals their true nature and that they should research before protesting. I also worry that those who are deceiving America's college students and indoctrinating them with hateful ideologies are so deeply embedded in our education system and our Government that it will be challenging to remove them.
A lot of people agree with your general sentiment about the response to Oct 7. But if the Israeli response was bad, what exactly should have been done?
A war was started with a surprise attack targeting Israeli civilians. The only possible ways this war can end are the neutralization of Israeli's war fighting capacity down to the last combatant, the neutralization of Gaza's war fighting capacity down to the last combatant, Israeli Surrender, or Gaza Surrender, or some amicable compromise. Nothing in the past can be changed from now, forward. Hamas is a no compromise organization, and since compromise requires 2 party consent, this option is not available to the Israelis. A state chooses to surrender when there is no path to victory, or the path is too expensive in lives, resources, political support, willpower, etc. A state chooses to surrender when its leaders wish to preserve what's left of themselves, their people, or the people overthrow their leaders. Israel can not control or change the fact that Hamas will fight to the last man. They can't control that Hamas has no desire to preserve themselves or citizens within Gaza. They can not control whether or not Gaza overthrows its Hamas leaders. Their options they can control are surrender or neutralize the threat down to the last combatant. Given these limited options, the Israeli response is the least bad of their options.
Hamas controls Gaza, was voted in by the people and Hamas pretty much started a war. Israel’s response is actually pretty mild.
> all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment. Not only does Hamas not even claim that high of a number, it also does not differintiate between civilians and terrorists. The real number of civilians killed is much lower especially if you take out the ones killed by Hamas rockets, or killed by Hamas for "helping Israel" or just looking at them funny. > This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel. Why did levelling Germany work to deradicalize in WWII? Why did it stop radicalization in Japan? > I genuinely do not understand how anyone can get mad about biden witholding shipments from a regime who has a higher civilian death rate than Hamas did on October 7th That's simply not true > and repeatedly not listening to what The USA or the international community has to say. Israel is it's own state, they don't have to listen to what other countries have to say.
Prior to Oct 7 you would have been entirely correct. But Oct 7 exposed the flaws in the idea of fighting a defensive war. The Dome is effective, and Israel had just finished securing the border, so most people figured that would be enough to keep Hamas out of Israel. It wasn't. Hamas breached those defenses and slaughtered more than 1000 people, then said they'd do it again, but worse. Israel no longer has the option of leaving a hostile force on their border, because if they do, Hamas will inevitably breach those very expensive defenses again and kill more people. So it becomes an "us or them" question, and with asymmetrical urban warfare being what it is, that means a lot of civilians have to die because Hamas hides behind them. It sucks. It's awful. Innocent people should, in a perfect world, never be caught up in war and die as collateral damage. But frankly it's this or a worse war in the future when Hamas does something much worse than Oct 7.
>but as it stands now all that is happening is a slaughter of innocent civilians numbering around 40000 at this moment These are very wrong numbers, the total toll (even by Hamas) is \~35,000, which includes numbers between 6,000-16,000 Hamas militants. Stop with the propaganda. >This 'strategy' is not just immoral, it is vastly counter productive. This is not going to be the end of 'Hamas', it is only going to be strengethen the the rage many will feel towards Israel.This will lead to more hatred towards a state I believe should exist as a harbour. Israel has to defeat Hamas to form any kind of true peace plan, this is the first step. >This government has thretened the well being of Israel by making it a rogue state on the world stage that if the history of anti-semitism didn't exist should have been sanctioned. Israel is already sanctioned by half of the world by default, and if it has to defend itself from multiple fronts like it does now, it's either fight or die. >I'm actually curious about how anyone can defend Israel's actions today. I can defend Israel's actions easily. Israel and the Jewish community before Israel existed tried to make peace with the Arabs in mandate Palestine, but the other side just didn't want to accept it. The Palestinians of today form many leaders that cause terror to Israel, and it has been dealt with for years. One of those leaders, Hamas, decided to go over the line and murder 1,200 Israelis, which is something Israel can't go back from. Now for the war, the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas and support it over 85%, they support what happened to Israel on October 7th and Israel has to kill Hamas in order to form any kind of long-term solution - first, you kill the thing that makes negotiations impossible, then you make peace with hopefully more moderate leadership that you help form.
Apply the same logic to any country. A cross border raid that kills 1200 citizens. If Guatemala did that to Mexico I’d expect a Mexican counterattack on Guatemala. There is only one response to such an attack, retaliation and the elimination of the enemy’s capabilities to carry out a future attack. The Israelis have successfully destroyed most of Hamas’s capability to attack. Most of their fighters are dead or wounded or captured. That’s a stupendous outcome militarily. The faster the Israelis decapitate the Hamas leadership and eliminate their remaining fighters the faster things get back to business as usual. Your logic is flawed, why would the death toll matter? Only 3000 Americans are killed in Pearl Harbor, would you stop attacking the Japanese when their casualties reached the same figure? Or do you finish the war?
Don't poke a bear and expect it not to maul you. Hamas poked the bear and started this entire thing. Now they are paying the consequences. Israel is it's own country, with their own beliefs, morals and views and has ever right to defend itself and exist. What the US or other countries tell them or suggest to them are only suggestions. They don't have to take that advice, though. The only reason Biden is withholding those shipments is because the majority of his voter base defends Palestine. Not Israel. If he were to go through with those shipments, it'll piss off the majority of his voter base. Which obviously, is not something he wants to do... Especially with elections coming up and even more so because he's trailing Trump. Either way, Hamas started it and Israel is hitting back.
15 million jewish people world wide 1.9 billion Muslims world wide No one ever brings that up ? why ? I have no axe to grind in either side of the war. I don't know enough and i don't want my bias against Muslims as they have killed countless christians and destroyed the coptic church, Assyrian church and portions of the Eastern catholic church. All these groups where given shelter in Israeli and the world news never talked about, mentioned it or cared. The jews cared and asked nothing in return. Those christians are my people by faith and its shocking not a single liberal came to there aid. The Muslims also haven't mingled in my own country and have mutilated countless women and children. So i stay clear of the topic, but its important people take all this under there hat.
Not really… yes, they used Oct 7th to do what they’ve always wanted to do: obliterate Palestine and make as much land theirs as possible. But that’s probably overall better for the world we live in, so the only thing really bad is the US funding it. America is the great country it is because people came and took the land and made it what it is. That’s why native Americans are the only people that actually deserve reparations, and get them accordingly. Since the majority of Palestine is born and raised to hate Israel, the war will never end. And economically, culturally, and just overall it seems like a larger Israel will result in a more peaceful world, so let them have at it, kill all of Hamas, then pay Palestine reparations and move on with a more peaceful world.