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What an idiotic take on this situation.
Western governments understand that the choice isn't genocide vs no genocide, it's just which side is being genocided. Iran would happily take the opportunity a lack of support for Israel would provide to attack them.
This is a proxy war, not some sort of civil problem.
“We have to genocide the Palestinians to stop them from committing a genocide,“ is not a serious take.
I honestly can't grok the degree to which one must dehumanize a group to hold this position.
Are you truly this stupid? What do you think a war is?
The World Wars were Germany invading a bunch of countries, and the world telling them to go fuck themselves by killing over 10 million Germans between the two wars.... That's literally "to stop Germany from committing genocide, we committed genocide"
How young are you that you don't know this?
Sorry, are you referring to the defense against Nazi Germany as a genocide?
You are not a serious person. And you should investigate what it is within yourself that allows you to decide an entire ethnicity needs to be eliminated. Because it's psychotic.
Oh, so it's a defence when it's against the Nazi party, but not against Hamas?
Both of those groups are(or were) governments in their respective areas with stated plans to kill and replace a group of people in an area.
Hamas' official position is not simply to control Gaza, it's to wipe out and replace Israel.
You're the one who's not being serious.
Firstly, the first and only rule of the instance you are commenting on is "be nice", but you couldn't even do that for one comment. Why are you even here? It's like going to a place whose sole purpose is having somewhere where there isn't rubbish on the floor, and throwing something on the ground as soon as you set foot in the area.
Secondly,
This situation and WW2 are not remotely the same thing. And no historian would call what the allies did to the Germans "genocide", because it wasn't. What Israel is doing has been. And it will be remembered as such. Just some differences:
They don't hold even remotely the same kind of power and influence over the people in their region. The Nazis were given power through legal elections, Hamas was not. And Hamas is only in control in Gaza, not in the West Bank, where Palestinians still suffer at the hands of Israel.
The existence of Hamas is a direct consequence of what Israel has been doing for several decades; this conflict did not just start last year. There was not an ongoing genocide of Germans before WW2, and it's not how the Nazis came about.
WW2 was a war being fought between mainly armed soldiers, and people do not defend or support the bombing and killing of civilian targets, nor were they the primary targets. Israel has bombed and killed Palestinians indiscriminately, and that is what you are defending.
The rise of the Nazis before WW2 was definitely partly caused by the imposition of the allies after WW1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_World_War_I
Of course the allies don't call it genocide, the winners of a conflict rarely refer to themselves in a poor light. They write the history books after all. They still killed about 8% of the total German population during WW2.
Almost 50% of German casualties during WW2 were civilians....
Your arguments don't even hold water against reality. How about you try again.
You ignored most of what I said, cherry-picked things, and even then had to leave out context and use vague language to make your argument seem anything less than insane.
The rise of the Nazis before WW2 was definitely partly caused by the imposition of the allies after WW1.
You mean economic sanctions? Around the same time that Germany was suffering from those economic sanctions and Hitler was rising to power, the world was going through The Great Depression, and by the time Hitler rose to power Germany's economy was already improving. And even you are aware enough to use the word "partially" in that sentence. More on this towards the end (*).
They write the history books after all.
That's an argument made by people who don't know history and have nothing to back their claims. I really would not be shocked if you tried to claim the Holocaust wasn't real, next.
They still killed about 8% of the total German population during WW2.
I'm not gonna bother to check that number because 8% of the population of a country being killed during a war is not a genocide, and not even an inherent attempt at one. What the Nazis did to the Jews, and what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians, that is genocide. Push them away from where they live, close them off in ghetto's or walled compounds, and slowly kill them off. That's how the Holocaust started too, before they moved to concentration camps and gas chambers.
Almost 50% of German casualties during WW2 were civilians…
Firstly: According to this, about 2.25M civilians were killed during expulsions, and 500K Germans were killed by strategic bombing, but it does not specify how many are civilian. Even if we assume 100% of those are civilian and say the number of civilians casualties is 2.75M, that still only makes up 39% of the German death toll. That "almost" is certainly doing a lot of work there, for someone complaining about reality.
Secondly: How many civilians do you think make up the Palestinian death toll when they indiscriminately (and sometimes purposefully) bomb civilian areas? Israel has purposefully bombed civilian targets; 4 in 10 killed in Gaza are children; just in 2023 22K Palestinians were killed.
Finally: That still doesn't cover the important part you ignored, which is that no one is defending the bombing of German civilians during WW2, (*) and most people acknowledge the sanctions on Germany after WW1 were too harsh. Meanwhile, you are actively defending the ongoing killing of innocent civilians, and the genocide that has been ongoing for decades. Even if (and this is a giant fucking if) you were right in your comparison, you are merely arguing against yourself, because most people are not okay with any of those things.
You are somehow both (1): trying to equate Nazi Germany to Palestine, when Israel is the one doing to Palestinians what Nazi Germany was doing to the Jews, and (2): at the same time, purposefully or not, trying to victimize and justify the fucking Nazis.
I'm pretty sure we're not far from this conversation straying into Holocaust denial, either by you or someone else coming in here, so I'm leaving this convo permanently. I hope neither you nor your loved one ever get bombed because of people living in your general area; peace.
You are getting emotional about this and I know that you're afraid. You may be too afraid to hear what you need to hear right now. You have a common fear among white people which is that if you lift your heel from the neck of those you oppress they will strike back at you and you will deserve it. By advocating to remove the heel of the Likud Party's boot from the necks of Palestinian people, we are not saying that we expect Palestinians to kill all Jewish people and support their "right" to do so. We actually expect that not to happen, as there is no precedent for that happening when a nation extends rights to formerly oppressed people. We are saying that Palestinians are human beings who do not deserve genocide as no group of humans deserves genocide. This idea which I believe strongly was proliferated mainly by Jewish groups and individuals.
When African nations turned their backs on Israel after the six-day-war causing them to have to collaborate with the ex-Nazi head of the Apartheid South African government John Vorster to have the means to continue their genocide rather than change course and restore those relations, it was not because everyone in all those nations suddenly wanted to kill all Jewish people. It was because they had experienced the kind of violence inflicted by the nation of Israel in the six-day-war by people like John Vorster and opposed that kind of violence being enacted against anyone.
In fact, by being the main or only exposure many people have toward any Judaism and claiming that opposing genocide is the same as opposing Judaism, Israel is now proliferating anti-semitism due to their behavior and propaganda and putting everyone affected by anti-semitism in greater danger. Likud Israel must cease their siege and rebuild Gaza at the very least, and ultimately Isreal must free its prisoner population by granting them citizenship and equal rights in Israel. The alternative is maintaining this intolerable situation or enacting a kind of "final solution" one way or another which would truly be the end of Israel and any kind of Zionsim.
You're laboring under a misunderstanding.
I don't think Palestinians are going to strike back and hurt Israel. I think Iran will do it, because Iran is using Palestine as a proxy to conduct a larger war against Israel.
How has Israel been in a proxy conflict with Iran since before Iran's current government even existed? The civil conflict taking place in israel has been going on since the early 20th century, with the Nakba occurring in 1948. Contemporary Iran didn't exist until the '79.
Who said Iran is the only one involved, or that they've been doing it since 1948?
5 different Arab nations invaded Israel the day they declared independence. Gaza was specifically created from the area where Egypt invaded.
Iran is just one of the strongest military powers in the region, and wants to destroy Israel for both religious and political reasons.
So many different cultures and governments have each opposed Israel for their own reasons with the Palestinians and revisionist Zionists being the only common belligerents? Of course geopolitics plays an influence. What I am arguing is that the struggle between revisionist Zionist colonists and Palestinian people is primary rather than secondary. Each group has had different relationships internationally at different times, but this is about colonization not about whatever historical foreign governments want at any given time. Those relationships are very relevant, but not more relevant than what had directly been happening for many decades.
Except Isreal’s actions in Gaza aren’t defending themselves against Hamas, are they? If they were targeting Hamas, half the Israeli munitions would not have been dumb bombs that are not physically accurate enough to target a spasific building. They would not be using their smart weapons to kill over two and a half times as many journalists as have died in Ukraine since that war started in 2014. They would condem the Israeli politicians who call for the elimination of every last Palestinian in Gaza.
The same party that currently holds office in Israel proudly and publicly funded the Hamas until 2019. They knew what the Hamas had planned for over a year, and did nothing, because an attack would be good for the prime minister’s numbers.
If Israel was focused on mearly defending itself, they would not be in front of a UN war crimes tribunal. If Israel was mearly defending itself, it would not be burning though its goodwill with the west. Instead its leaders have chosen to escalate and kill innocent people who have no connection to Hamas, and that has consequences on how much other nations donate to support it.
Israel literally spent billions of dollars building a wall, and even a missile defence system... How much more defensive do you want Israel to be before they get tired of getting punched and retaliate?
Palestinians got around them anyways and killed almost a thousand Israeli civilians.
Would you let you neighbor come over to your house every day and punch you without retaliation despite you installing a fence and an alarm system?
Hamas is hiding in the same buildings as civilians and using them as human shields, it's literally guerilla warfare 101. They are winning the propaganda war because of this, and they did it very intentionally.
The west is going to keep supporting Israel, and it has nothing to do with goodwill. Governments understand this isn't a civil war, this isn't even about Palestinians, it's part of a larger geopolitical battle between the west on one side, and Iran and other middle eastern nations on the other.
Yea it sucks that Palestinians are caught in the crossfire, but this could end very quickly if the supply of weapons being smuggled to Palestinians was cut off. Instead, Iran and others will keep building tunnels from Egypt and smuggling rockets and ammo in for them to keep the fighting going.
How much more defensive do you want Israel to be before they get tired of getting punched and retaliate?
That's a framing designed to justify murder. I don't want them to be less defensive, I want them to be less bloodthirsty.
I don’t know, maybe use bombs and missiles that have a CAP small enough that there is even a 50% in perfect conditions that they land on the building they were targeted at. You know, the missiles the US has been using since the eighties and which make up a significant portion of the Israeli stockpile, but which arn’t getting used. That way, there would even be a possibility that such rounds migh kill a Hamas soldier and not the family half a block over.
Maybe Israel could prioritize useing snipers to counter fire at the Hamas soldier who just launched a shoulder fired rocket off the roof of an apartment building and ran, instead of blowing up the whole building fifteen minutes after they got into their truck drove off, this might also actually kill some Hamas too.
Maybe Israel could send some of its own ground forces into the hospital or church they are so sure had a tunnel entrance underneath instead of giving everyone an hours warning to flee and then bombing it. You could then even send some of these soldiers into the network to slowly clear if of Hamas, instead of them only needing a half hour to clear the rouble out of the tunnel entrance and continue on completely the same. Yes, I know bunker clearing sucks, but if you want to destroy Hamas, congratulations, this is how you find Hamas. If you don’t go in to their bunkers, there is not even the theoretical possibility that you actually eliminate the Hamas.
Maybe, you could use this little thing called ground penetrating radar to look for tunnels under the border and follow them. Tunnels arn’t exactly able to doge out of the way of a border patrol after all, and militaries are trained on bunker mapping and clearing. This might actually cut them off from resuply, and is a necessary prerequisite for an blockade to actually do anything at all. Again, as might be a theme here, doing so would not only comply with the Geneva convention, but actually have the possibility of killing a Hamas soldier by more than just random chance.
Maybe, just maybe, those are bad ideas. Which is why Israel has chosen it's current tactics.
Sending in troops to clear individual buildings is dangerous as fuck, go ask the Americans about what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan when they tried that. Why sacrifice Israeli lives to preserve Palestinians who are supporting Hamas by allowing them to be in their living spaces?
Ground penetrating radar? Are you fucking high? The Israelis and Egyptians a lot better tech than that and it still isn't stopping them. There are hundreds or thousands of these tunnels, with new ones constantly being constructed. The US tries this too, they've found hundreds and there are still plenty they haven't found.
you've been persistently testing the boundaries of what's acceptable rhetoric toward other users in this thread and i think it's time you take some time off here to chill out a bit.
It’s funny you didn’t respond to the comment about using weapons that can hit the specific building they were aimed at.
Yes, fighting the people that can actually shoot back is hard, that’s why the military constantly practices and drills doing it. It is however impossible that avoiding the Hamas and only killing random innocent people will ever have an impact on stoping the Hamas from attacking Israel. That is why it was so easy to outlaw collective punishment as a war crime under common article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, because it does not and has never worked to do anything but breed resentment and prolong a conflict.
You know tunnels of any significant length take months to years to construct, right? They also lead back to the places you want to target if you want to actually achieve anything. It also seems to work ok on along the rest of Gaza’s borders, as for some strange reason none of these magically infinite tunnels had crossed that border, or we would have seen them on Oct 7th.
But please, explain how Isreal’s current tactics of avoiding using weapons that can hit Hamas and never engaging any stronghold or trying to capture any Hamas leader without explicitly warning Hamas they are coming hours in advance is magically going to end this war.
Why, it’s almost like the government party that publicly funded the most extreme members of Hamas until 2019 to explicitly foster increased hostility and prevent a two state solution from ending hostilities might just not actually be trying to do what they were forced to say was their goal after October seventh.
The fact that you are being sanctioned for speaking sense does not reflect well upon the administrator of this forum.
Edit: Never mind, you were a bit rude below. You are making good points, so please keep doing that, just without insulting people.
But you see, this is the internet. Israel isn't allowed to defend itself from these attacks. Logic be damned!
If someone chases you back to your house, and kills not only you but your family and friends and neighbors, it's not called self defense.
It is when they are taking shots at you from their house from the start.
No, killing the friends and neighbors is still not self defense, bro. Israel has bombed and damaged 65%+ of homes in Gaza. Hamas was not hiding in 65%+ of homes. But keep caping for Israel's genocide.
I don't understand this article or it's author. In my mind, the reaction to 9/11, the search for weapons of mass destruction, The quick disappearance in silencing of the occupy Wall Street movement, the quick disappearance and silencing of the Black lives matter movement....
Hell, let's go further back... The Vietnam war!
Sweet summer child... how are they just now figuring this out?
Not that I'm against the US action world war II, but even then the American populace needed some very strong convincing to become involved. Nobody wanted to touch it. The sentiment of the people then was that it was unimportant and distant and had no impact on the US.
I remember a history teacher pointing out that it was just a little bit odd, just a little bit unusual, that during such political unrest in the world that so many ships would be drydocked at Pearl harbor, just lined up all pretty.
To be clear, that war was a fully righteous cause but how we got there was... well, let's just say there's a lot of gray area.