Hamas attacks Israel with kit rockets and AK47's... US sends aircraft carrier in support.

[J.C.MacSwell]

1 minute ago, zapatos said:

I suspect the reason that blame keeps getting heaped on Israel more than Hamas is because Hamas is no longer rampaging through Israel, but Israel is still rampaging through Gaza. Every time someone kills a child they invite criticism. In the beginning of this most recent mess Hamas received the lion's share of rebuke. Now that Israel is on the offensive it is they who receive the lion's share of the rebuke. I personally don't find that surprising at all.

Once the fighting dies down I suspect there will be a more even-keeled evaluation of who is to blame for what. 

You are probably correct.

[Externet]

Hi.  The news reported three hostage israelis killed by 'friendly' fire by mistake.

If they were hostages, how come were they not in captivity, found by israeli soldiers ?  Do you know details ?

[iNow]

1 hour ago, Externet said:

If they were hostages, how come were they not in captivity, found by israeli soldiers ?  Do you know details ?

 

They seem to have escaped or simply been abandoned by their captors. Which actually happened is unclear since they couldn’t be questioned or debriefed.

They were hiding in a building and came out shirtless waving a white flag with SOS written out using leftover food when the soldier felt threatened and fired. Two immediately died. One was wounded and went back into the building, but was then shot again and killed when he exited a second time. 

Edited December 19, 2023 by iNow

[CharonY]

On 12/18/2023 at 5:21 PM, J.C.MacSwell said:

To assert the blame more clearly on Hamas (they are Palestinians...but read below)than is typical in this thread, including the comparison of Gaza to a concentration camp, despite that Israel alone doesn't control the perimeter, and inside Hamas has been diverting resources toward the destruction of Israel  that were intended for, or could be utilized to help, other Gazans lead a more normal life. 

I think the Hamas part is very much implied, but perhaps too implied. That being said, the rest mostly referred to the otherwise hard to understand situation why Hamas has come to power in the first place. I think it is pretty obvious that Hamas has no intention to make lives better for Gazans (though potentially at the beginning some might have thought that). 

As mentioned, the issue is the ongoing campaign, and basically as some analysts and also Barak have mentioned, the issue is that the the suffering heaped on civilians (not Hamas) is depleting the goodwill that Israel had from suffering the violent attack by Hamas. They were therefore saying that Israel needs a targeted and timed action, but so far it is no unclear where things are going to end up. It does not help that some officials have floated the permanent displacement of Gazans and I think the original 24h deadline for Gazans to leave the North Gaza, without any assurance of a safe path (that came later, but the damage was done).

On 12/18/2023 at 5:21 PM, J.C.MacSwell said:

Unfortunately yes. Israel is justified in some of their actions even when innocent deaths occur. Hamas started the current war. If just you and I were hostages of the Hamas leadership, and Israel had a chance to take us all out, our deaths would be justified. If it was you and I, plus the rest of the members on this Forum, perhaps not. (I don't know where they draw the line)

That is a fair assessment . I think the issue I had with some justifications is the lack of a scope (I have mentioned commando-style actions as suggested by the US for example). But lack of announcements in that regard and again and in some cases pushing the likelihood of permanent displacement (with others contradicting those statements) does not really inspire  confidence.

As I said, I have simple thoughts and the thoughts said that at least we should spare the children (and then perhaps move up the morality ladder a bit if we hadn't failed that step already. And again, it does not matter whose child it was).

 

On 12/18/2023 at 5:21 PM, J.C.MacSwell said:

Does a late term fetus and their civilian mother both count?

I know you are trying to find policies that contradict this particular moral stance but as we have discussed in threads on abortion, it depends on the developmental stage of the fetus and its likelihood of survival, but also the risk to the mother.

And in this context, late term abortion is a conservative talking point that misses its mark entirely. Medically, late term refers to pregnancies past 41 week gestation. I.e. if birth happens later than expected (40 weeks). Of course there is no abortion in that time frame. Moreover, fewer than 1% of abortions happen after the 21st week and I am not sure whether any of those are without some medical indication. But I suspect that it was more a jab at my simple moralism rather than a serious argument.

[AIkonoklazt]

On 12/17/2023 at 9:27 PM, zapatos said:

Can you please expand on this? I'm not sure that Israelis feels Hamas has the ability to put the survival of the state of Israel at risk. Or why Israelis wouldn't feel they are fully justified to respond to such a brutal attack.

It's kill or be killed- Kill Hamas, or Hamas comes back to kill more.

I was responding to the use of the term "justification" in the thread. I don't think it's a matter that's subject to justification (i.e. not even a question of it being justified or not), because it's not a matter of fairness; It's not an administration of justice that's going on here. By the same token, the term "collective punishment" wouldn't apply either, so the accusation of the administration of "collective punishment" upon the Palestinian population leveled against IDF and the Israeli government are moot. It isn't a matter of justice, or punishment.

Edited December 19, 2023 by AIkonoklazt
i.e.

[J.C.MacSwell]

7 hours ago, CharonY said:

I know you are trying to find policies that contradict this particular moral stance... 

First off good post.

My point on the quoted is that while your statement seems commendable Israel cannot take it on as policy. There will always be children in the way, especially given Gaza's population demographics, and Israel cannot defend itself without putting children and other civilians at risk. If they cannot defend themselves they have learned from a long history that that puts their own children and civilians at greater and greater risk. Any excess pacifism will invite more terror.

We can only ask that they try to minimize civilian casualties and insist they obey international law. We cannot demand even that they give as much consideration to other civilians as they do their own, even if it makes no difference to us. I would consider it very differently if Israel had started the war but they did not. Hamas started the war in a way that made clear they must be eliminated.

 

[joigus]

13 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

13 hours ago, zapatos said:

I suspect the reason that blame keeps getting heaped on Israel more than Hamas is because Hamas is no longer rampaging through Israel, but Israel is still rampaging through Gaza. Every time someone kills a child they invite criticism. In the beginning of this most recent mess Hamas received the lion's share of rebuke. Now that Israel is on the offensive it is they who receive the lion's share of the rebuke. I personally don't find that surprising at all.

Once the fighting dies down I suspect there will be a more even-keeled evaluation of who is to blame for what. 

Expand  

You are probably correct.

Amen.

(Sorry for using Hebrew.)

And +1 to both.

[CharonY]

5 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

My point on the quoted is that while your statement seems commendable Israel cannot take it on as policy. There will always be children in the way, especially given Gaza's population demographics, and Israel cannot defend itself without putting children and other civilians at risk. If they cannot defend themselves they have learned from a long history that that puts their own children and civilians at greater and greater risk. Any excess pacifism will invite more terror.

That goes towards the main thrust of my argument. The first point is that using proximate events (i.e. attacks) will result innocent life lost (on either side, and we can ignore the relative scale to avoid complications). The second is that the status quo inevitably will lead to attacks.

From this it follows that the current situation is a morally untenable one, as it require the acceptance of regular innocent deaths. The point I was therefore trying to make is that anything other than a large-scale redesign of the relationship is necessary, and so far a two-state solution as the endpoint has been the only theoretically viable option. This also means that groups actively eroding this or other peaceful paths, are culpable in the ensuing death cycle. So yes, Hamas clearly are the proximate perpetrators, but the existing system is the overarching framework resulting in them (or eventually other groups) to attack Israeli civilians. And as it stands, actors on both sides have been torpedoing peace efforts, with civilians bearing the outcomes. 

That is not to say that there are any clear paths ahead, but I do think that it is necessary to focus and elevate voices that work toward that goal, rather than allowing populists and terrorists to frame the condition and direct the outcome. Building peace is so much harder than waging war and requires a disproportionate effort. But it is the only way out of it. In other words, the gist of the argument is that we should not focus on proximate conflicts as those will obscure any paths out of violence.

Somewhat unrelated to this point, but touching on many aspects presented in this thread, there is an excellent assay on the New Yorker by Gessen that is worth a read. It starts with a Jewish perspective on anti-Semitism but also links that to the situation in Gaza. It is well worth the time to read: https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust

Quote

In 1948, Hannah Arendt wrote an open letter that began, “Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the ‘Freedom Party’ (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.” Just three years after the Holocaust, Arendt was comparing a Jewish Israeli party to the Nazi Party, an act that today would be a clear violation of the I.H.R.A.’s definition of antisemitism. Arendt based her comparison on an attack carried out in part by the Irgun, a paramilitary predecessor of the Freedom Party, on the Arab village of Deir Yassin, which had not been involved in the war and was not a military objective. The attackers “killed most of its inhabitants—240 men, women, and children—and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem.”

Quote

Seven years later, the judge who had presided over the Kastner libel trial was one of the three judges in the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Here was the devil himself. The prosecution argued that Eichmann represented but one iteration of the eternal threat to the Jews. The trial helped to solidify the narrative that, to prevent annihilation, Jews should be prepared to use force preëmptively. Arendt, reporting on the trial, would have none of this. Her phrase “the banality of evil” elicited perhaps the original accusations, levelled against a Jew, of trivializing the Holocaust. She wasn’t. But she saw that Eichmann was no devil, that perhaps the devil didn’t exist. She had reasoned that there was no such thing as radical evil, that evil was always ordinary even when it was extreme—something “born in the gutter,” as she put it later, something of “utter shallowness.”

Arendt also took issue with the prosecution’s story that Jews were the victims of, as she put it, “a historical principle stretching from Pharaoh to Haman—the victim of a metaphysical principle.” This story, rooted in the Biblical legend of Amalek, a people of the Negev Desert who repeatedly fought the ancient Israelites, holds that every generation of Jews faces its own Amalek. I learned this story as a teen-ager; it was the first Torah lesson I ever received, taught by a rabbi who gathered the kids in a suburb of Rome where Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union lived while waiting for their papers to enter the United States, Canada, or Australia. In this story, as told by the prosecutor in the Eichmann trial, the Holocaust is a predetermined event, part of Jewish history—and only Jewish history. The Jews, in this version, always have a well-justified fear of annihilation. Indeed, they can survive only if they act as though annihilation were imminent. [...]

Netanyahu has been brandishing Amalek in the wake of the Hamas attack. The logic of this legend, as he wields it—that Jews occupy a singular place in history and have an exclusive claim on victimhood—has bolstered the anti-antisemitism bureaucracy in Germany and the unholy alliance between Israel and the European far right. But no nation is all victim all the time or all perpetrator all the time. Just as much of Israel’s claim to impunity lies in the Jews’ perpetual victim status, many of the country’s critics have tried to excuse Hamas’s act of terrorism as a predictable response to Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Conversely, in the eyes of Israel’s supporters, Palestinians in Gaza can’t be victims because Hamas attacked Israel first. The fight over one rightful claim to victimhood runs on forever.

For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time—in other words, a ghetto. Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany. In the two months since Hamas attacked Israel, all Gazans have suffered from the barely interrupted onslaught of Israeli forces. Thousands have died. On average, a child is killed in Gaza every ten minutes. Israeli bombs have struck hospitals, maternity wards, and ambulances. Eight out of ten Gazans are now homeless, moving from one place to another, never able to get to safety.
 

The term “open-air prison” seems to have been coined in 2010 by David Cameron, the British Foreign Secretary who was then Prime Minister. Many human-rights organizations that document conditions in Gaza have adopted the description. But as in the Jewish ghettoes of Occupied Europe, there are no prison guards—Gaza is policed not by the occupiers but by a local force. Presumably, the more fitting term “ghetto” would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.

The Nazis claimed that ghettos were necessary to protect non-Jews from diseases spread by Jews. Israel has claimed that the isolation of Gaza, like the wall in the West Bank, is required to protect Israelis from terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinians. The Nazi claim had no basis in reality, while the Israeli claim stems from actual and repeated acts of violence. These are essential differences. Yet both claims propose that an occupying authority can choose to isolate, immiserate—and, now, mortally endanger—an entire population of people in the name of protecting its own.
 

From the earliest days of Israel’s founding, the comparison of displaced Palestinians to displaced Jews has presented itself, only to be swatted away. In 1948, the year the state was created, an article in the Israeli newspaper Maariv described the dire conditions—“old people so weak they were on the verge of death”; “a boy with two paralyzed legs”; “another boy whose hands were severed”—in which Palestinians, mostly women and children, departed the village of Tantura after Israeli troops occupied it: “One woman carried her child in one arm and with the other hand she held her elderly mother. The latter couldn’t keep up the pace, she yelled and begged her daughter to slow down, but the daughter did not consent. Finally the old lady collapsed onto the road and couldn’t move. The daughter pulled out her hair … lest she not make it on time. And worse than this was the association to Jewish mothers and grandmothers who lagged this way on the roads under the crop of murderers.” The journalist caught himself. “There is obviously no room for such a comparison,” he wrote. “This fate—they brought upon themselves.”

Jews took up arms in 1948 to claim land that was offered to them by a United Nations decision to partition what had been British-controlled Palestine. The Palestinians, supported by surrounding Arab states, did not accept the partition and Israel’s declaration of independence. Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Transjordan invaded the proto-Israeli state, starting what Israel now calls the War of Independence. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled the fighting. Those who did not were driven out of their villages by Israeli forces. Most of them were never able to return. The Palestinians remember 1948 as the Nakba, a word that means “catastrophe” in Arabic, just as Shoah means “catastrophe” in Hebrew. That the comparison is unavoidable has compelled many Israelis to assert that, unlike the Jews, Palestinians brought their catastrophe on themselves.

 

[TheVat]

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

The fight over one rightful claim to victimhood runs on forever.

Yep.  Good essay.  And comments from you.  There is no morally tenable position that involves victimized groups claiming a basis to victimize another group.

One would hope that functional adults could at some point own up to the Nakba and ensuing ghettoization. The process where people in a nation develop some historical self-awareness can happen, though it's often slow.  In the US, for example, a huge majority now understand the American Nakba of indigenous people, and that the European settlers were culpable in acts of genocide and dispossession.  At some point, we were able to shift from viewing Native Americans solely as terrorists to viewing them as brutally murdered and displaced peoples trying to keep some shred of their former lives, lands, and cultures.  

As with so many such situations, land is key.  And displacement often is run on the principle that my people can make better use of that land than you do, we are better, more civilized, and some ancient text proves it!

 

 

[StringJunky]

35 minutes ago, TheVat said:

As with so many such situations, land is key.  And displacement often is run on the principle that my people can make better use of that land than you do, we are better, more civilized, and some ancient text proves it!

I remember my grandad presenting that argument. I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. It's like saying: "You are a crap driver, I think I deserve your Bugatti more than you"

Edited December 19, 2023 by StringJunky

[AIkonoklazt]

5 hours ago, TheVat said:

Yep.  Good essay.  And comments from you.  There is no morally tenable position that involves victimized groups claiming a basis to victimize another group.

One would hope that functional adults could at some point own up to the Nakba and ensuing ghettoization. The process where people in a nation develop some historical self-awareness can happen, though it's often slow.  In the US, for example, a huge majority now understand the American Nakba of indigenous people, and that the European settlers were culpable in acts of genocide and dispossession.  At some point, we were able to shift from viewing Native Americans solely as terrorists to viewing them as brutally murdered and displaced peoples trying to keep some shred of their former lives, lands, and cultures.  

As with so many such situations, land is key.  And displacement often is run on the principle that my people can make better use of that land than you do, we are better, more civilized, and some ancient text proves it!

 

 

Land is indeed the key, but in a whole different way than described.

Let's look at things from POV of Hamas. the "occupation" covers a whole lot more than just stuff that other people decided upon in 1988. It's the entire map of Mandatory Palestine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine

See the shape of it? What do we notice here?

The "destruction of Israel" is "the end of this state that we didn't sponsor, that sprouted up right under our noses, inside of our land."

Of course they wouldn't want a "two state solution." That's just making the occupation (their sense, not the Gaza+enclave sense that all the post 1988 people tried to set up) permanent.

So when some Arab countries announced that will do a new upcoming round of peace deals (to make this "Israel" permanent to those countries too), they wanted to STOP THAT and that's what October 7th was about.

That, is the actual occupation and liberation- Get rid of this thing called "Israel."

[dimreepr]

On 12/19/2023 at 12:05 PM, J.C.MacSwell said:

If they cannot defend themselves they have learned from a long history that that puts their own children and civilians at greater and greater risk. Any excess pacifism will invite more terror.

Is that an extract from mien kampf?

If history teaches us anything, it's that every war ends with excessive pacifism.

Watch from 25 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM3Pb3ejA54

 

[dimreepr]

On 12/20/2023 at 2:14 PM, dimreepr said:

Is that an extract from mien kampf?

If history teaches us anything, it's that every war ends with excessive pacifism.

I'm sorry @J.C.MacSwell this was never intended to insult (as it seems to be perceived), it's just an observation; and I'm pretty sure our politics broadly align, so neither is it an accusation. 

Being a pacifist doesn't mean I won't defend me and mine and it doesn't mean I snivel and collaborate, what it means is, let's not use people as cannon fodder before an overwhelming force. 

I hope that clears thing's up. 

[J.C.MacSwell]

28 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I'm sorry @J.C.MacSwell this was never intended to insult (as it seems to be perceived), it's just an observation; and I'm pretty sure our politics broadly align, so neither is it an accusation. 

Being a pacifist doesn't mean I won't defend me and mine and it doesn't mean I snivel and collaborate, what it means is, let's not use people as cannon fodder before an overwhelming force. 

I hope that clears thing's up. 

No worries. I didn't neg rep you.

...and I did watch the "baddies" skit in the video

[dimreepr]

Just now, J.C.MacSwell said:

No worries. I didn't neg rep you.

Didn't imagine otherwise, but I was hoping for a reply.

[J.C.MacSwell]

37 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Being a pacifist doesn't mean I won't defend me and mine and it doesn't mean I snivel and collaborate, what it means is, let's not use people as cannon fodder before an overwhelming force. 

 

Sometimes you have to choose one or the other, compromising the other or the one, or both and compromise both.

That's Israel's dilemma and Hamas's tactic to force it on them., 

[dimreepr]

18 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Sometimes you have to choose one or the other, compromising the other or the one, or both and compromise both.

That's Israel's dilemma and Hamas's tactic to force it on them., 

I just mean there's other ways to fight and getting what you want, that doesn't involve killing people; for both side's.

If only a good guy could get heard... 

[iNow]

42 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

there's other ways to fight and getting what you want, that doesn't involve killing people; for both side's.

And those other ways ARE necessary, but sadly too often insufficient on their own. 

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

I just mean there's other ways to fight and getting what you want, that doesn't involve killing people; for both side's.

 

"Other ways" only work if both sides are willing to use those other ways. If while you are negotiating the other guy is hitting you over the head, you will lose. If while you are peacefully involved in a sit-in the other guy decides to sic his dog on you, you will lose. You can bring a knife to a fight but if they other guy brings a gun you will lose.

Eventually if you want to prevail, you must at least resort to the level of tactics your opponent uses.

Edited December 21, 2023 by zapatos

[iNow]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

Eventually if you want to prevail, you must at least resort to the level of tactics your opponent uses.

Or at least gather a sufficient mass to alter the underlying ecosystem in a manner that the opponents power gets extinguished. Fancy way of saying change the environment and culture, but this too is often insufficient on its own. 

[npts2020]

It shows just how intractable this problem is when people as smart as those who frequent this forum can't even come up with good ideas for a solution. Seems to me that, nobody is arguing Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself only that such a right might have limits. Would Israel be justified in dropping a nuke on Gaza (leaving aside the fact that they are unlikely to do so on their own border)? That would almost certainly eliminate Hamas, along with the rest of the local population... Or should the IDF be limited to special forces operations or something else?

The next question is do the people of Gaza and the West Bank have any rights? If so, what are they and how are they enforced?

Even after reading this entire thread and seeing news and pundits trying to shed light on the subject, I am still sorting things out and trying to answer the above questions. IMO neither side has any claim to being the "good guys". Furthermore, it seems Oct. 7 was allowed to happen one way or another. How is it that an intelligence agency that knows where Hamas command centers and weapons stockpiles are was completely clueless about such a large scale operation?

In addition, you have people who want conflict, i.e. weapons manufacturers, those who think it helps keep/get them into power, religious fanatics etc. I see no workable solution as long as these people are allowed to control the narrative and make all of the decisions

[dimreepr]

21 hours ago, iNow said:

And those other ways ARE necessary, but sadly too often insufficient on their own. 

20 hours ago, zapatos said:

"Other ways" only work if both sides are willing to use those other ways. If while you are negotiating the other guy is hitting you over the head, you will lose. If while you are peacefully involved in a sit-in the other guy decides to sic his dog on you, you will lose. You can bring a knife to a fight but if they other guy brings a gun you will lose.

Other ways for both sides; for instance, if Isreal really want to rid themselves of Hamas and the like, then why not spend some of that vast military funding, on making life more comfortable for the Palestinians than Hamas can achieve, it shouldn't be difficult. 

20 hours ago, zapatos said:

Eventually if you want to prevail, you must at least resort to the level of tactics your opponent uses.

You must learn to subvert them, if they're stronger, or a constant irritant/threat.

All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

Edited December 22, 2023 by dimreepr

[zapatos]

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

if Isreal really want to rid themselves of Hamas and the like, then why not spend some of that vast military funding

As I said, that only works if both sides agree. Israel can spend all they want on the Palestinians, but if the Palestinians want Israel to die and keep lobbing missile, it won't work. The part you seem to bypass whenever you suggest alternatives to violence is that BOTH SIDES have to agree to alternatives to violence.

[CharonY]

25 minutes ago, zapatos said:

As I said, that only works if both sides agree. Israel can spend all they want on the Palestinians, but if the Palestinians want Israel to die and keep lobbing missile, it won't work. The part you seem to bypass whenever you suggest alternatives to violence is that BOTH SIDES have to agree to alternatives to violence.

I think a fundamental challenge is building trust between the groups. And from what I see, these happen mostly on the ground with local association and between activists. But Oct. 7 put a heavy strain on these initiatives. And the political entities in this conflict are very  apt in leveraging the distrust. 

[AIkonoklazt]

16 hours ago, npts2020 said:

It shows just how intractable this problem is when people as smart as those who frequent this forum can't even come up with good ideas for a solution.

What is the solution to Hamas wanting Israel to disappear along with all of its people

I'm all ears