Israel / Palestine

[Mori Chu]

How does cutting off water and power for 2m civilians, fencing them in, and indiscriminately bombing them help defeat Hamas?

[Mori Chu]

[Shabazz]

How does cutting off water and power for 2m civilians, fencing them in, and indiscriminately bombing them help defeat Hamas?

Here is a better answer than I could articulate. I'd also take issue with the use of the word "indiscriminately." Israel is bombing targets identified as important to Hamas operations. Unfortunately, Hamas often operates within civilian structures that Israel is less likely to target like schools and hospitals. Israel also goes out of its way to warn Gazans prior to hitting their targets despite the military cost of doing so.

[JeremyG]

She states: "International law only requires that Israel facilitate the passage of food and medicine by third parties, if such goods can be reliably delivered without diversion to Hamas, and we know that is not the case because Hamas controls Gaza."

So it is perfectly fine, legal, ethical, and moral to starve to death 2.2 million civilians because we think Hamas might get their hands on some of the food or medicine. There is no way that would hold up in court.

And that argument is easily countered by the fact that Israel has now been "allowing" Egypt to facilitate up to 20 aid trucks per day into Gaza, when Gazans need many more than the normal 455 aid trucks per day. How are they certain that the 20 aid trucks won't get diverted to Hamas, but if they allow 21 trucks then the aid will get diverted?

[Cap]

She states: "International law only requires that Israel facilitate the passage of food and medicine by third parties, if such goods can be reliably delivered without diversion to Hamas, and we know that is not the case because Hamas controls Gaza."

Medicine potentially getting diverted to Hamas is a reason not to try to deliver it? I mean, it sucks that it doesn’t get to the intended recipients, but what nefarious things are we imaging Hamas might do with it?

[Nodack]

Hamas always takes all of the aid. This isn’t their first rodeo. Hamas doesn’t make helping the Palestinians a priority, especially in times like these where Hamas is being hunted and they are desperate.

This is a very tricky subject that has the entire planet on edge. I am old now. I have seen this fight play out my entire life over and over so many times I lost count. It is this endless Hatfield and McCoy dispute that never stops, ever. They have lulls and then it heats up and then a lull and then an all out war and then a lull and then a skirmish. I am getting sick of it and I am sure a lot of the people there are a lot more sick of it than I could ever be.

This time was different. Hamas launched a well planned all out sneak attack on Israel and seemed to target civilians. They killed over 1000. They didn’t just kill them. They lucky ones were just gunned down. The unlucky ones were brutally tortured and then killed. They cut a baby out of its mother’s womb and then beheaded it. Then they beheaded the mother. That’s some seriously F’ed up shit. They did a lot more things. That leads me to believe they did it on purpose just to get as much of a rise out of Israel as possible, so Israel would respond like they always have. Hamas can’t win a war with Israel but, they might be able to provoke Israel to punishing Gaza in hopes of instigating a much broader war with other players. Maybe this is a chess game.

It’s Israel’s move and they did take the bait and have responded enough to cause much friction in the world and they haven’t started the ground war yet. I have tried to ask myself what I would do if I was Israel. Coming from not being Jewish or even religious at all and not living in Israel where the attack came from allows me to detach emotionally more than some I think. Having said that, if I was the leader of Israel after this latest Hamas attack, I think I would say to myself and the people of Israel that we will hunt down every last Hamas terrorist there is until Gaza has been cleansed of Hamas. I would have much anger. This perpetual game of terror ends now, one way or the other.

There are millions in Gaza. It is supposedly the most densely populated place on the planet from what I heard. There are 36,000 Hamas that hide amongst the Palestinian people and love to shoot rockets at Israel from those densely populated areas as if it was a safe zone that Israel can’t touch because of the human shields. The leader of those human shields is Hamas. It’s like me coming to your house and shooting your family and then hiding behind my family in my house and saying you can’t shoot me because you might hit one of my family members.

What do you do if you are Israel? Pretend the attack didn’t happen? I don’t think so. Bomb Gaza into the Stone Age? They have leveled some sections. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed. It appears that the US has had an effect on Israel’s actions. There was no aid. Now some. The ground war has been put on hold. The US has moved a lot of military hardware around in preparation of possible conflict. US military ships have come under drone attack and have also shot down a bunch of missiles fired towards Israel. This thing has the potential to spiral out of control. What was the purpose of Hamas’s attack? To start a broader war? Here we are, right where they want us.

Are the Palestinian people innocent? When we send our military into harms way are we all innocent here because we are safe at home? When they fight they represent the US. They represent all of us. Our elected leaders have sent them in our name. Our military and US are the same as far as our enemies are concerned. The Palestinian people and Hamas are the same in some ways too. The Palestinians aren’t 100% innocent. They share some of the blame. They allow themselves to be lead by terrorists who don’t care about them, abuse them and use them as human shields when Hamas indiscriminately fires missiles into Israel decade after decade.

Many in the Arab world refuse to acknowledge that Israel is even allowed to exist and vow to wipe them off the planet. How do you fix that? Israel is going in to Gaza to kill Hamas and told the Palestinians to leave or die basically. It seems no one from the Arab world wants them. It seems Hamas won’t let them leave anyway. It seems Israel is sort of trying to cut down on civilian Palestinian casualties. Misinformation nowadays is off the charts. The fog of war makes it difficult.

You’re the leader of the US. What do you do? You sympathize with Israel. That was an off the charts brutal attack. An attack on Israel is basically an attack on the US. We are that strong of allies. At the same time you have a sizable number of Americans that sympathize with the Palestinian people. They see Israel taking more and more of their land from the Palestinian people every time there is an uprising and building condos on it for the people of Israel.

I see what was supposed to be a two state solution where they both live side by side in harmony. The Arab world doesn’t seem to like that arrangement and refuse to acknowledge Israel even exists. The Palestinian people and many in the Arab world refuse to live in peace with Israel and constantly attack them. Israel has responded and started grabbing land after failed Arab attacks and that has tarnished Israel’s image and angered the Arab world. At the same time, stop attacking. If the Palestinian people wanted peace they could have just announced a long time ago that they recognize Israel and look forward to a peaceful two state solution. But they won’t. They would rather keep up the Hatfield and McCoy fight along with being shoved in that direction by other actors.

US “Look residents of Gaza, here’s the deal. Israel is going to level Gaza and make the whole place brand new condos for Israeli’s because they are tired of the attacks and they need the land to complete their manifest destiny. We could make this all go away today if you guys agreed to reject Hamas, acknowledge Israel and agree to the two state solution”.

US “Look Israel, here’s the deal. You agree to give back the land you acquired from the original drawing of the border after WWII and agree to a two state solution, Israel and Palestine. The people of Palestine agree to acknowledge your right to exist, agree to denounce Hamas and agree to stop all hostilities towards Israel.

If they both accept it would mean a chance at peace. If they both reject the deal then we go back to seeing just how far this could escalate.

[Mori Chu]

[Nodack]

There used to be a Nagasaki and a Hiroshima before WWII ended. Then we turned them into ashes and killed hundreds of thousands to save our people. We used incendiary bombs on Japans wooden cities and turned them into ashes before that. The allies made Berlin into a parking lot killing scores of German civilians. Hitler tried to make London into a parking lot by bombing their civilians into submission. Putin is attempting to bomb the people of Ukraine into submission.

It’s called war. Hamas declared war and now Israel declared war in return. It’s not very fair that Israel has a much more sophisticated military than Hamas or the Palestinians. I get it that there are mostly civilians there mixed with the tens of thousands of Hamas.

What do you do as leader of Israel Mori? Do you just ignore the attacks and hope they go away? It has been going on for many decades and never ever stops. They just snuck across your border and massacred over 1000 of your people in the most brutal ways imaginable and then took hostages back to Gaza. For the most part most of the attacks come from Gaza. You are the leader of Israel mori. What do you do? Is Hamas the good guys or the bad guys? Is Israel the good guys or the bad guys?

I have some sympathy for the Palestinian people of Gaza but they have done absolutely nothing to deter Hamas and seem to be very much pro Hamas for many decades. Israel is not going to allow what just happened to ever happen again and I would like to know how you expect to stop Hamas without taking them on in Gaza. Remember Black Hawk Down? Going into a hostile area where the local civilians are very much anti you is very dangerous.

I expected Israel to start leveling Gaza and they have. Israel has sent messages with bombs before in previous Hamas attacks and so far it hasn’t deterred Hamas or the Palestinians. This time Israel is really really pissed off. You can label them mass murderers for dropping bombs on Gaza. Israel could have flattened Gaza any time they wanted before the Hamas attack. They didn’t. Hamas knows they are outgunned. Does that ever stop them from continually firing rockets into Israel? It didn’t stop them from sneaking into Israel and try to kill as many Jews as possible with the blessings of the locals and then running back to the safety of Gaza.

I think what is happening in Gaza is a human tragedy. I would like to see an alternative to Israel destroying Gaza and hunting down Hamas door to door. I haven’t heard one other than just don’t retaliate and just pretend it never happened and hope that Hamas never attacks them again, which is ridiculous.

What do you do mori? You are the leader of Israel…

[Mori Chu]

What would I do? I'm no expert in war, but I would *not* fence in 2 million civilians and then just bomb them and kill them over and over. I don't think I need to provide you with a comprehensive winning war strategy here in order to criticize the torture and genocide of an entire group of people.

IMO at a high level, Israel needs to agree to a two-state solution with Palestine where the latter gets some official territory and sovereignty in exchange for peace. I know that is very hard to do, but that's the solution I think makes sense just as a random observer from far away.

[Nodack]

They are fenced in by other countries and the ocean. Israel put up a barrier to protect them from attacks like the one we just had. Hamas bulldozed the wall in places and flew over the wall in paragliders so they could massacre Jews. People defending Hamas/Palestinians ignore that. People defending Hamas/Palestinians seem to think their sneak attack and massacre of civilians was totally justified and that Israel has no right to respond in any way. Hamas sneaking into Israel and massacring civilians wasn’t an attack in their eyes. It was them defending themselves. Since Israel is stronger militarily it gives Hamas/Palestinians the right to attack at will any time they want and Israel isn’t allowed to respond.

Your solution isn’t feasible and naive. You think the only thing holding up a two state solution is Israel agreeing to it.

A two state solution would be great. It was the original plan after WWII. I could be wrong but, it is my understanding that the Arab world including the Palestinians/Hamas/Iran want no part of that plan. They want Israel wiped off the map and there is no negotiating a two state solution. They want a one state solution where Jews don’t exist. Israel and the Saudi’s were negotiating a normalization of relations between the two countries right before the Hamas attack and it looks like they were about to finalize the plan. Many think that was the reason behind the Hamas attack. They don’t want Israel to be recognized by anyone. They don’t want peace with Israel. They want Israel to die.

They massacred a thousand Jews and got them to respond ending the Saudi negotiations. Now the evil mean Jews are attacking the poor innocent Palestinians who just want peace….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_solution
Support for a two-state solution varies according to the way the question is phrased. Some Israeli journalists suggest that the Palestinians are unprepared to accept a Jewish State on any terms.[61][62] According to one poll, "fewer than 2 in 10 Arabs, both Palestinian and all others, believe in Israel's right to exist as a nation with a Jewish majority."

As of 2021, most Palestinians are against the two-state solution. In 2021, a poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research revealed that 39% of Palestinians accept a two-state solution, while 59% said they rejected it.

[JeremyG]

Are the Palestinian people innocent? When we send our military into harms way are we all innocent here because we are safe at home? When they fight they represent the US. They represent all of us. Our elected leaders have sent them in our name. Our military and US are the same as far as our enemies are concerned. The Palestinian people and Hamas are the same in some ways too. The Palestinians aren’t 100% innocent. They share some of the blame. They allow themselves to be lead by terrorists who don’t care about them, abuse them and use them as human shields when Hamas indiscriminately fires missiles into Israel decade after decade.

It could perhaps be argued that many Palestinians share some of the blame for not rising up against Hamas.

But half of Gaza's 2.2 million people are children. And about half of those killed in Gaza have been children. Is Hamas being in control their fault?

[Mori Chu]

They massacred a thousand Jews and got them to respond ending the Saudi negotiations. Now the evil mean Jews are attacking the poor innocent Palestinians who just want peace….

I think this is a strange phrasing. I don't think anybody here feels that Jews are evil or mean.

Israeli government =/= all Israelis =/= all Jewish people.
Hamas =/= all Palestinians =/= all Islamic people.

I don't think criticizing the Israeli government for violence is anti-Semitic, and I don't think criticizing Hamas is Islamophobic.

I think Israeli and Jewish people should be safe and should not be subject to violence or persecution.
I think Palestinian people should be safe and should not be subject to violence or persecution.

Even in war, there are rules and expectations. You are not supposed to just indiscriminately bomb civilians just because there might be a military target nearby.

Hamas attack on Israel was unconscionable. Murdering thousands of Palestinian civilians in response is not appropriate or acceptable.

I don't think it is very controversial to say that.

[JeremyG]

[Nodack]

In response to 9/11 we invaded and blew the crap out of Iraq, who had nothing to do with 9/11 and killed between 200-300,000 people by bombing them.

I get that bombing them is bad and kills civilians. The whole war between them is stupid imo. I’m not religious whatsoever so I don’t care whether they are Jewish or Muslim or how holy the land is to any of them. I am saying if Mexico attacked us like Hamas/Palestinians attack Israel we would have invaded Mexico decades ago and probably kill civilians. What makes this whole thing so awful is that both sides are right next to each other and can easily inflict harm on each other and do.

I am saying the Palestinians have a responsibility here too. You saw the stats. Not many Palestinians are in favor of reconciliation or a two state solution. The old Sting song comes to mind. “If the Russians love their children too” Don’t start a nuclear war because your children will die too. If the Palestinians wanted peace they could have gone a different route a long time ago. The people who attacked Israel are hiding behind women and children and have been doing it a long time. They fire thousands of rockets from densely populated areas hiding behind women and children. The people that attacked Israel targeted women and children and there was a great celebration around the world celebrating their deaths. Hamas took over 200 hostages and hid them behind women and children. And apparently there is nothing Israel can or should do about it.

You mentioned Israel was torturing people mori. I haven’t heard of that. Maybe they captured a Hamas soldier and tortured him for information. I don’t think they captured a pregnant woman and cut her baby out of her and then beheaded it before beheading the mother. Now that would be some serious torture.

Palestinians bloody Israel’s nose. Israel breaks their jaw. Palestinians heal and then come back and sucker punch Israel in the face. Israel breaks their arm. Palestinians heal and then sneak up behind Israel and hit it over the head with a bat. Israel stabs them in the leg.

The Palestinians need to get their shit together and decide what they want. Iran/Hamas are always going to push the attack Israel button from Gaza. The Palestinians put their own children in harms way by making Hamas their leadership and allowing them to attack Israel with impunity.

I am not into arguing whether Israel has a right to bomb Gaza. Hamas just literally raped and pillaged Israel and now Israel is going to F them. Iran/Hamas/Palestinians will never stop attacking Israel and Israel will never stop F’ing them up in return. Women and children will die on both sides and they will all take turns F’ing each other for the rest of time. We can argue which side is more at fault or maybe which side is more brutal than the other. The whole thing is just dumb to me.

[Mori Chu]

I am not into arguing whether Israel has a right to bomb Gaza. Hamas just literally raped and pillaged Israel and now Israel is going to F them.

I guess we just don't see it the same way, then. I am "into" arguing whether a government should bomb a region or a group of civilians. And I also think it's noteworthy that you say that Israel gets to "F them", where "them" is referring to Hamas; but the bombing is on all Gazans / Palestinians, not Hamas. It's very post-9/11 thinking; "Some kind of Arab attacked us! Invade some other Arab country! That'll show 'em!"

[JeremyG]

Yeah, it's criminal that the US invaded Iraq and caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. It doesn't make another government doing something similar okay.

Even our sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s killed at least hundreds of thousands. Remember Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's infamous quote from 1996?

"We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima," Stahl said. "And, you know, is the price worth it?"

"I think that is a very hard choice," Albright answered, "but the price, we think, the price is worth it."

https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madelein ... es-1691193

[Nodack]

In your mind it seems Hamas is kind of a little bad and the Palestinians are totally innocent civilians caught in the middle. In my mind Hamas is an evil terrorist group funded by Iran who wants to wipe Israel off the map and they are the official leaders of the Palestinian people who don’t want peace with Israel and who are totally ok with Hamas attacking Israel any time they want from Gaza. In my mind that doesn’t make the Palestinians totally innocent people.

I asked you what Israel should do and you said negotiate a two state solution. To me that’s like asking what the US should do after Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor a you saying the US should negotiate a peaceful solution. After 9/11 we should have negotiated with the terrorists and asked them nicely to stop. I have been hearing about negotiating a peaceful solution to Israel/Palestinian dispute since I was born. Almost every US President said he was going to bring about peace and they all failed. This has been going on long before you were born and now your answer is negotiate a two state solution as if it were just that easy.

I don’t think Israel is targeting women and children. I think they are targeting Hamas who is surrounded by women and children. I think Israel is very angry that Hamas just mass murdered 1000 Israeli’s in the most brutal ways imaginable targeting women and children intentionally. I think Israel is tired of the constant attacks and I think Israel has decided that they are going to end this one way or another this time. Pro Palestinian people seem to be ok with Hamas/Palestinian/Iran attacking Israel and hiding in the civilian population. I watched a lot of video of people celebrating the killing of Jews around the world including in the US. That was disgusting behavior. I don’t see any Jews celebrating Israel’s response.

You don’t have an answer mori. Your answer seems to be let Hamas attack as much as they want. Fire as many missiles into Israel as they want. Launch as many sneak attacks into Israel killing women and children as they want and there is absolutely nothing Israel should do about it except negotiate a peace plan. That answer doesn’t cut it with me. If it was your pregnant wife who had your unborn child cut from her belly and beheaded and then your wife was beheaded, I think your attitude would be different.

The Palestinians need to ask themselves if losing their loved ones is worth the joy they get from killing Jews. So far they seem to be ok with it. For the past 70+ years their answer has been yes, we are ok with our loved ones being killed as long as the Jews suffer too. End the conflict? No, we don’t want to end the conflict. We just want to kill Jews and then play the victim card when they retaliate.

[Nodack]

Yeah, it's criminal that the US invaded Iraq and caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. It doesn't make another government doing something similar okay.

Even our sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s killed at least hundreds of thousands. Remember Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's infamous quote from 1996?

"We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima," Stahl said. "And, you know, is the price worth it?"

"I think that is a very hard choice," Albright answered, "but the price, we think, the price is worth it."

https://www.newsweek.com/watch-madelein ... es-1691193

I think the US overreacted over 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and we used 9/11 as the reason behind attacking Iraq when we knew that most of the attackers came from Saudi Arabia. We used bogus evidence to justify the attack. We knew that Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was behind the attack and they lived in Afghanistan. I think George Bush junior wanted to finish the job his father started. It was pretty evil.

I think we had a right to go after Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We asked the Taliban who ran Afghanistan to hand over Bin Laden and they gave us the middle finger. I think I would have handled it differently than we did though. We decided to take on the Taliban and liberate Afghanistan. That was a mistake. That wasn’t the mission. I would have tried to gather intelligence on where Bin Laden and his minions were hiding and strike them whenever they stuck their heads out. Ignore the Taliban unless they get in your way. I wouldn’t have placed tens of thousands of American soldiers on the ground. Satellites, drones and small commando teams gathering intelligence and strike with smart bombs when a target appears. Much less danger and much cheaper to finance.

Sanctions, bombing and ground offensives. They are all ways of punishing your enemy. How do you punish your enemies for behavior you find unacceptable without hurting civilians? There is no simple answer or right one. The simple answer is if you hurt me I will hurt you worse.

[JeremyG]

As far as the US goes, if we had just stayed out of other people's business, we wouldn't have enemies. See Switzerland.

[Nodack]

See WWII. Staying out of other people’s business doesn’t always work out. We tried to stay out of WWII until Japan attacked us. By then Hitler had taken most of Europe and only England stood in their way. FDR had to secretly sent military aid to England because a good portion of the US thought we should stay out of other peoples business. The US is the worlds top Super Power. Our Allie’s look to us for guidance and help. Blow off NATO and the UN and let Putin take over Europe? Don’t challenge China who is wanting to be the top dog and is terraforming islands into military bases and telling the rest of the world they can no longer sail those waters because China has claimed them. Abandon the Philippines and Australia?

There is minding you own business and then there is defending the free world. You can’t do both.