The NYT says: "In the month since Hamas launched an attack inside Israel, and Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign." "Hamas launched an attack inside Israel" doesn't accurately convey what happened: Hamas terrorists murdered more than a thousand civilians, and deliberately engaged in widespread, barbaric acts of torture, rape, and kidnapping. "Launched an attack" is, I guess, not exactly a lie, but so euphemistic as to be wildly misleading.
Talking about how bad a war is seems always misleading to me. Does "Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign" convey that in the last 32 days since October 7, 10,328 people were killed in Gaza. Does it convey that 67% of those killed were children and women? It is all barbaric.
It also doesn't convey that those people being used by Hamas as human shields, Hamas told Palestinians not to evacuate, Hamas shot people that did evacuate, and Hamas used IEDs on roads.
A UNICEF spokesperson has defended the death toll being reported out of Gaza, saying the organization’s figures had historically matched those of the Hamas-controlled Gazan health ministry.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said on Tuesday the organization’s estimates had closely aligned with the ministry’s in the past, which gave him confidence in the current figures. He told CNN’s Julia Chatterley: “Our numbers were within a couple of percent of that, almost identical. We don’t have that concern based on past history.”
> it’s hamas that uses civilian infrastructure to hide behind.
Would you approve of the IDF bombing occupied Israeli apartments, schools, hospitals, etc if Hamas tunnelled under those?
It's a ~ 4K children body count the IDF have racked up since the Hamas attack - is that a fair and considered response?
That's nice re: UNICEF. Frankly it's unlikely anybody knows the death count in Gaza - it won't be zero, but any charity that has access to Gaza does so on behalf of Hamas and some (UNHCR) even directly fund Hamas.
> Would you approve of the IDF bombing occupied Israeli apartments, schools, hospitals, etc if Hamas tunnelled under those?
It's unlikely that Israelis would let a terrorist organisation operate our of a school or hospital. But yes, the IDF would evacuate the area before engaging just like they do with Gaza.
> It's unlikely that Israelis would let a terrorist organisation operate our of a school or hospital.
By the same standard that is used for evaluating the situation in Gaza, namely the equation of civil administrations with an affiliated military whose reputation is marred by attacks against civilians for allegedly political purposes (the definition of terrorism), all public hospitals in Israel are operated by a terrorist organization.
But of course, that's because it's a very stupid standard.
> By the same standard that is used for evaluating the situation in Gaza, namely the equation of civil administrations with an affiliated military
That's not the standard that's used in Gaza. Hamas is Hamas and targeted. Civilians are not targeted but rather protected hence warnings and, now that Israel is further into Gaza, armed evacuation to the south.
How many of those civilians were ex-military (all?), how many were settlers in stolen land? If you knowingly occupy someones stolen land you are not that innocent are you?
And, Israel does not have the right to defend itself. Israel is the settler aggressor. The biggest terrorist is Israel. Israel is a settler colonial racist Apartheid regime.
This is a bit more complicated. Jews were in Palestine before 1948 and lived alongside Arabs in peace throughout the Ottoman Empire. They often fled persecution in Europe to the Ottoman Empire: https://en.wikipedia.orgt/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ot...
> lived alongside Arabs in peace throughout the Ottoman Empire
No. Multiple violent confrontations. You can find ample sources for this. Partition into jewish and Arab states was to avoid bloodshed.
> The historical timeline of Palestine leading up to and since 1948
This is a bizarre document that starts in 1885, at minimum you would start about 136AD with the renaming of Israel to Philestinea by the Romans. But then again, the UN is famously run by various tinpot dictators that raise more resolutions against Israel than themselves.
I have cited sources that include a balanced account of Jews living alongside Arabs in peace throughout the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years. Neither I or the source I cited indicates there was zero violence. If you read into it, you'll find violence started escalating in the 19th century after nationalism was introduced. Over hundreds of years, is there anywhere where anyone didn't encounter "multiple" violent confrontations? If zero violent confrontations is the standard we're judging by, I don't think any country will meet that standard.
I'm not sure why a factual account of history is "bizarre" because it starts in 1885. The "Jews were there first" argument, the idea that we should redrew the world as it was 2000+ years ago (but ignore the subsequent ~1000 years), isn't a new one. I just always wonder why the logic only applies to Palestine, but somehow not the rest of the world.
Dehumanizing buzzwords. People who were born somewhere are not "settlers". It implies they had some other choice about where to be born. Anyone born somewhere has an equal right to be there as anyone else.
Russians "settlers" born in Crimea have every right to live in Crimea even if their grandparents came there due to Stalin's colonial policies against the Tartars. White or Asian "settlers" born in the US have every right to live there even if they are on lands that were originally stolen from the Native Americans. And so on.
But we all know what you really mean. It's only the Israeli "settlers" that deserve what they get. The Jews who were kicked out of all the neighboring Arab countries and had their previous houses and lands "settled" in and became refugees in Israel with nowhere else to go can eat dust. The Jews who were living in Palestine/Israel before the creation of Israel, and their children, can also be classified as "settlers". We know what you really mean behind this soup of buzzwords.
> And, Israel does not have the right to defend itself.
Rhetorical language games. Should all 9 million Israelis be killed because they are "settlers"? If you answer "no", then you disprove your own claim. If you answer "yes", then you discredit yourself more than I could ever have done.
I'm far from being unabashedly pro-Israel, you can see my comment history here for yourself. But this buzzword-laden dehumanizing language needs to be called out.
Those settlers do know the history (or should know) and they do know its stolen land. And many did fight in the military defending the Apartheid system. And they know they are not willing to share with native Palestinians. I don't mean Hamas has the right to kill civilians, but what reaction are we to expect? Flowers and gifts? Come on.
Yes, Israel does not have the right to defend itself against Palestinians.
>Should all 9 million Israelis be killed because they are "settlers"
No one said that.
It's such an illiberal, dehumanizing and racist perspective that an Israeli that was born in that land is less justified of being there than a Palestinian, just because of something their parents or grandparents did. If only they had different genes.
> Yes, Israel does not have the right to defend itself against Palestinians.
So just to be clear, a Palestinian is totally within his rights to come over and murder me, my children, and the rest of my family, because... why? Because I was born in Israel and haven't moved to another country voluntarily, despite actually not being legally allowed to move to another country since I was born in Israel and only have Israeli citizenship?
I mean that sincerely, in my position, what do you think I did that justifies someone coming over and killing me?
An unproportional savegery response to a savegery makes you even a bigger savage! Sorry, but the world is not deaf and blind! Keep supporting the genocide and thus you're digging Israel into a deeper hole! The young people are all against Israel's genocidal apartheid - and these are the future voters! Israel with all its high-tech cannot manipulate the narrative!
Israel has 2.1M arabs, the descendents of the arabs that stayed after 1948 when arab states declared war on Israel.
Israeli arabs have better lives than in any Arab state. They can vote for their own leaders, be elected to parliament, be of a different sect of Islam without concern for their safety, leave Islam without concern for their safety, be gay without concern for their safety, and serve in the IDF.
Arabs in Qatar and the UAE and west bank and Gaza wish they had the freedoms of Arabs in Israel.
Ask any Jewish person in Tel Aviv and they'll tell you the best Hummus in town is actually not in Tel Aviv, it's at Abu Hassan in Yafo (the smaller one near the coast).
You're not the person I was speaking to, and that report seems off topic, talking about arabs outside Israel, who, like anyone outside any country, obviously does not have the same rights in the country as the country's own citizens.
Just ask the Arabs in Israel if they feel like first-class citizens. Any connection with Arab countries and Arab ethnicities makes you a target of systemic discrimination.
I have. They say sure there’s discrimination (individual rather than systemic), but they also have better lives than anywhere else in the middle east, and that other arabs like to pretend they don’t exist.
Israeli arabs can vote, run for office, don't have issues with sectarian violence, leave Islam without the threat of violence, have sex sex relationships without the threat of violence, there's no extended royal family that are allowed to impose their will on others. Compare to the UAE, Qatar, or Gaza.
It's not the same. Before 1948, even Jews in Palestine had Palestinian passports. They were all Palestinians. Jews were Palestinian Jews, and there were Jews all around the Middle East and Africa.
thats absolutely false, I have lived in haifa for years and nearly all my friends are arabs and druze.. they have the exact same rights as I do, only they dont have to go to the army (though some choose to !)
The meta-disagreement is whether the "now" is all that matters, or whether Israel doing all that is necessary to recover the hostages is a pretext to greater, more sustained Israeli control of Palestinian territory.
People also seem to think the Palestinians all support Hamas, which uses the Palestinians as human shields. Gaza did vote for Hamas in 2006, but that was 18 years ago.
That's interesting and sad that they're polling so high.
It makes me question what culpability a nation has with the actions of its government. If "let the politicians run politics" or (they're a mean mob so we don't risk putting up a fight) is the thought of the citizens and then a war is started, as civilians are we indemnified or responsible?
Below copied from page 25 of the document you linked:
Q70) Concerning armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel, I....
Total West Bank Gaza Strip
1) Strongly support 23% 16% 34%
2) support 34% 32% 36%
3) oppose 27% 34% 17%
4) Strongly oppose 11% 10% 12%
5) DK/NA 11% 10% 12%
It is notable that "Strongly support" is twice as high in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military has built a wall around it and has maintained an indefinite ongoing land, sea, and air blockade on since 2007.
The counter-take I've heard to that is "if bad guys in the US take 30 hostages in an office building, we don't bomb the building". Other than the overt anti-semites, I think everyone[0] agrees about the unacceptable nature of Oct. 7 and the hostage situation.
But the number of (alleged) Palestinian civilian casualties dwarfs those attacks. I've seen numerous videos of mangled Palestinian kids (visibly under 10) and bomb-massacred schools (jabalia iirc?).
[0] Well, non-skin-in-game people like us at least. I have seen a lot of "progressive/left wing" people actually sympathising with Hamas and saying the attacks were justified because "violence is the voice of the oppressed" but that's nonsense when you target civilians.
I believe this narrative really misses the point. It's not about revenge or "tit for tat", where Hamas killed X people so Israel gets to kill X people back. That would be immoral, no matter what - I don't think any civilian death is justified as an act of revenge.
But that's not the situation. Hamas is the controlling government of Gaza, it effectively invaded Israel, killed (horrifically) many other civilians, and has been continuing to bomb Israel for a month. (Their bombing of Israel is very ineffective, because Israel spent a lot of time and money into developing systems to counter the rockets they shoot, but they're trying to continually bomb civilian cities).
So this isn't a "they did some terrorism so Israel will kill some of them" situation. This is a "a foreign government showed they are more powerful than you thought, and have effectively declared war on you" situation. In war, you use whatever means you can to stop your enemy.
What makes things even worse, and makes Hamas's crimes even bigger, is that they are supposed to help and protect the Gazans they "represent", and yet they are using them as human shields and sacrficing them. So they not only committed crimes against Israel, they are committing crimes against their own people.
That is the situation. Israel has no good options here. It's a war, which is horrible and brutal, but was thrust upon Israel (and the Gazans) by Hamas - as their leaders openly say. And right now, almost all of Israel is united in agreeing on one thing - Hamas must therefore be destroyed. I honestly don't see any other stance to take, and it is entirely morally appropriate to destroy Hamas.
(None of this is to say the situation doesn't have a long history, or that Israel has behaved well over the years - it really hasn't, and there's plenty of blame to lay at Israel's feet. But that doesn't mean what it's doing now is unjustified - it's not.)
> it is entirely morally appropriate to destroy Hamas.
Short of entirely depopulating Gaza, Israel isn't capable of 'destroying Hamas', and even if they magically did, they'd only be leaving a void to be filled by more extreme resistance groups (both in terms of violence and in terms of Islamism) like Palestinian Islamic Jihad. One of the things that the October 7 attacks proved is that Israel doesn't in fact know where Hamas are or what they're up to. If Israel had known who the Hamas leadership responsible for the attack were and where to find them prior to the attack, they would have already assassinated them before the attack ever took place. But they don't, which is why Israel has murdered ten thousand civilians in order to kill mere (alleged) 'dozens'¹ of Hamas commanders.
That the stated purpose of this bombing campaign is in reality unachievable is part of its function: that the completion condition is infeasible and impossible to verify means that the IDF has no stopping point. There is no amount of carnage and destruction which the impossible mission of 'eliminating Hamas' would 'not unjustify'. Indeed, Israeli officials have said as much on international television.
This is an 'opportunity' for Israel to unload (at least) several hundred thousand more of the indigenous population it never wanted within its borders by making Gaza as near uninhabitable as it can. It is also at once why Israel is publicly pressuring neighboring states to take in refugees from Gaza and why those neighboring states refuse: every party involved knows that any refugees who set up camp outside Gaza will never, ever be allowed back in. Israel wants to keep the dowry of 1967 and divorce the bride, to paraphrase a famous Israeli metaphor.
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[ 84.6 ms ] story [ 2544 ms ] threadPart of high-quality journalism is being precise without emotion or opinion clouding the reporting.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CzWbutetwys/
That said, it's reasonable to suggest Israel should have done a better job of protecting Palestinians from Hamas, as they are now doing:
https://twitter.com/hilzfuld/status/1722306279861809659
They've protected over 10,000 Palestinians so far!
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/07/world/gaza-death-toll-acc...
> it’s hamas that uses civilian infrastructure to hide behind.Would you approve of the IDF bombing occupied Israeli apartments, schools, hospitals, etc if Hamas tunnelled under those?
It's a ~ 4K children body count the IDF have racked up since the Hamas attack - is that a fair and considered response?
> Would you approve of the IDF bombing occupied Israeli apartments, schools, hospitals, etc if Hamas tunnelled under those?
It's unlikely that Israelis would let a terrorist organisation operate our of a school or hospital. But yes, the IDF would evacuate the area before engaging just like they do with Gaza.
By the same standard that is used for evaluating the situation in Gaza, namely the equation of civil administrations with an affiliated military whose reputation is marred by attacks against civilians for allegedly political purposes (the definition of terrorism), all public hospitals in Israel are operated by a terrorist organization.
But of course, that's because it's a very stupid standard.
That's not the standard that's used in Gaza. Hamas is Hamas and targeted. Civilians are not targeted but rather protected hence warnings and, now that Israel is further into Gaza, armed evacuation to the south.
> Would you approve of the IDF bombing occupied Israeli apartments, schools, hospitals, etc if Hamas tunnelled under those?
And, Israel does not have the right to defend itself. Israel is the settler aggressor. The biggest terrorist is Israel. Israel is a settler colonial racist Apartheid regime.
Zero.
Jews were in Israel under: Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans and the British.
Look at the Al Aqsa mosque. See the giant thing underneath it?
Before 1948, they purchased land from Ottomans. After 1948 Arab states kept declaring war on Israel and losing, making Israel larger.
The historical timeline of Palestine leading up to and since 1948 is https://www.un.org/unispal/historical-timeline/
The timeline is good overall, but the four-minute video there is a good summary. A direct link to the video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBjMbe24Vu0.
No. Multiple violent confrontations. You can find ample sources for this. Partition into jewish and Arab states was to avoid bloodshed.
> The historical timeline of Palestine leading up to and since 1948
This is a bizarre document that starts in 1885, at minimum you would start about 136AD with the renaming of Israel to Philestinea by the Romans. But then again, the UN is famously run by various tinpot dictators that raise more resolutions against Israel than themselves.
I'm not sure why a factual account of history is "bizarre" because it starts in 1885. The "Jews were there first" argument, the idea that we should redrew the world as it was 2000+ years ago (but ignore the subsequent ~1000 years), isn't a new one. I just always wonder why the logic only applies to Palestine, but somehow not the rest of the world.
> settler colonial
Dehumanizing buzzwords. People who were born somewhere are not "settlers". It implies they had some other choice about where to be born. Anyone born somewhere has an equal right to be there as anyone else.
Russians "settlers" born in Crimea have every right to live in Crimea even if their grandparents came there due to Stalin's colonial policies against the Tartars. White or Asian "settlers" born in the US have every right to live there even if they are on lands that were originally stolen from the Native Americans. And so on.
But we all know what you really mean. It's only the Israeli "settlers" that deserve what they get. The Jews who were kicked out of all the neighboring Arab countries and had their previous houses and lands "settled" in and became refugees in Israel with nowhere else to go can eat dust. The Jews who were living in Palestine/Israel before the creation of Israel, and their children, can also be classified as "settlers". We know what you really mean behind this soup of buzzwords.
> And, Israel does not have the right to defend itself.
Rhetorical language games. Should all 9 million Israelis be killed because they are "settlers"? If you answer "no", then you disprove your own claim. If you answer "yes", then you discredit yourself more than I could ever have done.
I'm far from being unabashedly pro-Israel, you can see my comment history here for yourself. But this buzzword-laden dehumanizing language needs to be called out.
Yes, Israel does not have the right to defend itself against Palestinians.
>Should all 9 million Israelis be killed because they are "settlers" No one said that.
So just to be clear, a Palestinian is totally within his rights to come over and murder me, my children, and the rest of my family, because... why? Because I was born in Israel and haven't moved to another country voluntarily, despite actually not being legally allowed to move to another country since I was born in Israel and only have Israeli citizenship?
I mean that sincerely, in my position, what do you think I did that justifies someone coming over and killing me?
Israel has 2.1M arabs, the descendents of the arabs that stayed after 1948 when arab states declared war on Israel.
Israeli arabs have better lives than in any Arab state. They can vote for their own leaders, be elected to parliament, be of a different sect of Islam without concern for their safety, leave Islam without concern for their safety, be gay without concern for their safety, and serve in the IDF.
Arabs in Qatar and the UAE and west bank and Gaza wish they had the freedoms of Arabs in Israel.
Ask any Jewish person in Tel Aviv and they'll tell you the best Hummus in town is actually not in Tel Aviv, it's at Abu Hassan in Yafo (the smaller one near the coast).
Doesn't sound like euphemism to me.
What kind of international attack is the nice kind of attack??
People also seem to think the Palestinians all support Hamas, which uses the Palestinians as human shields. Gaza did vote for Hamas in 2006, but that was 18 years ago.
https://x.com/JituChaudhary25/status/1720097411547500652
Keep in mind Hamas kill Fatah and other opposition members, so speaking out against them is dangerous. But I have about 10 other videos of similar.
Just one data point, but provide contrary data if you have it.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/hamas-middle-east-science-32095d8...
It makes me question what culpability a nation has with the actions of its government. If "let the politicians run politics" or (they're a mean mob so we don't risk putting up a fight) is the thought of the citizens and then a war is started, as civilians are we indemnified or responsible?
It is a sobering truth -- but an objective truth -- that many Palestinians simply want to kill Israelis/Westerners.
[1] https://pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2088%20English%20...
Below copied from page 25 of the document you linked:
Q70) Concerning armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel, I.... Total West Bank Gaza Strip 1) Strongly support 23% 16% 34% 2) support 34% 32% 36% 3) oppose 27% 34% 17% 4) Strongly oppose 11% 10% 12% 5) DK/NA 11% 10% 12%
It is notable that "Strongly support" is twice as high in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military has built a wall around it and has maintained an indefinite ongoing land, sea, and air blockade on since 2007.
The category Strongly support and support (as opposed to the next category, oppose) are 34%+36%, which sum to 70%.
But the number of (alleged) Palestinian civilian casualties dwarfs those attacks. I've seen numerous videos of mangled Palestinian kids (visibly under 10) and bomb-massacred schools (jabalia iirc?).
[0] Well, non-skin-in-game people like us at least. I have seen a lot of "progressive/left wing" people actually sympathising with Hamas and saying the attacks were justified because "violence is the voice of the oppressed" but that's nonsense when you target civilians.
But that's not the situation. Hamas is the controlling government of Gaza, it effectively invaded Israel, killed (horrifically) many other civilians, and has been continuing to bomb Israel for a month. (Their bombing of Israel is very ineffective, because Israel spent a lot of time and money into developing systems to counter the rockets they shoot, but they're trying to continually bomb civilian cities).
So this isn't a "they did some terrorism so Israel will kill some of them" situation. This is a "a foreign government showed they are more powerful than you thought, and have effectively declared war on you" situation. In war, you use whatever means you can to stop your enemy.
What makes things even worse, and makes Hamas's crimes even bigger, is that they are supposed to help and protect the Gazans they "represent", and yet they are using them as human shields and sacrficing them. So they not only committed crimes against Israel, they are committing crimes against their own people.
That is the situation. Israel has no good options here. It's a war, which is horrible and brutal, but was thrust upon Israel (and the Gazans) by Hamas - as their leaders openly say. And right now, almost all of Israel is united in agreeing on one thing - Hamas must therefore be destroyed. I honestly don't see any other stance to take, and it is entirely morally appropriate to destroy Hamas.
(None of this is to say the situation doesn't have a long history, or that Israel has behaved well over the years - it really hasn't, and there's plenty of blame to lay at Israel's feet. But that doesn't mean what it's doing now is unjustified - it's not.)
Short of entirely depopulating Gaza, Israel isn't capable of 'destroying Hamas', and even if they magically did, they'd only be leaving a void to be filled by more extreme resistance groups (both in terms of violence and in terms of Islamism) like Palestinian Islamic Jihad. One of the things that the October 7 attacks proved is that Israel doesn't in fact know where Hamas are or what they're up to. If Israel had known who the Hamas leadership responsible for the attack were and where to find them prior to the attack, they would have already assassinated them before the attack ever took place. But they don't, which is why Israel has murdered ten thousand civilians in order to kill mere (alleged) 'dozens'¹ of Hamas commanders.
That the stated purpose of this bombing campaign is in reality unachievable is part of its function: that the completion condition is infeasible and impossible to verify means that the IDF has no stopping point. There is no amount of carnage and destruction which the impossible mission of 'eliminating Hamas' would 'not unjustify'. Indeed, Israeli officials have said as much on international television.
This is an 'opportunity' for Israel to unload (at least) several hundred thousand more of the indigenous population it never wanted within its borders by making Gaza as near uninhabitable as it can. It is also at once why Israel is publicly pressuring neighboring states to take in refugees from Gaza and why those neighboring states refuse: every party involved knows that any refugees who set up camp outside Gaza will never, ever be allowed back in. Israel wants to keep the dowry of 1967 and divorce the bride, to paraphrase a famous Israeli metaphor.
—
1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/08/israeli-airstr...
> ... wouldn't 'not unjustify' ...
Here’s a link: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-...
Than why are you making political arguments?
Russians: "First time?"