Updated Google Maps shows destruction of the city of Rafah
twitter.com
twitter.com
https://www.google.com/maps/place/31%C2%B016'58.6%22N+34%C2%...
There was internet connectivity at least before the widespread destruction - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_Palestine#Ga...
For a great example of this, look at this pin https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZcMbdFcx87PrqoYNA
And here's a pin of where the farms were spared https://maps.app.goo.gl/iZbbTH4iH27FCz4s9
Caterpillar even supplies the IDF with bulldozers just for this purpose, which then get up-armored and sent into Palestinian civilian areas to do this (including unmanned versions).
* surprise, it was in Rafah, the city formerly located in the wasteland from the article we're discussing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_paramedic_massacre
Let's be clear and honest: Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians and they routinely murder civilians as part of this.
I suggest that you learn more about the Nakba, friend. [1]
The claim I was responding to was: "By the time the bulldozers are there civilians have long moved out of the area."
Rachel Corrie's case is a counterexample to that general claim: she was a civilian physically present in the area of an Israeli military bulldozer operation.
Saying that it happened 23 years ago, under a different government, doesn't make the counterexample cease to exist.
It only tells us that the example isn't evidence about every Israeli bulldozer operation today.
If you're arguing that civilians currently leave before demolition operations in Gaza, then make that case.
"That happened under a previous government" doesn't establish that.
did someone else call their catastrophe a catastrophe too? guess it just goes to show how different cultures independently come up with similar names for similar things. ideally there are no catastrophes.
for what it's worth, over decades of being a jew, I've never once heard anyone refer to the holocaust as "Shoah". I did have a jewish friend named that, though. Interesting.
Been watching it for years. A great stain on history, with weapons paid for and built by Americans, not to mention a complicit media.
Please check Norman Finkelstein's latest book namely Gaza's Gravediggers on this matter [1].
He also has a very telling and chilling interview recently on Palestine and Gaza [2].
[1] Gaza's Gravediggers: An Inquiry into Corruption in High Places [book].
[2] Norman Finkelstein Reveals Shocking Discoveries While Researching History of Israel’s Gaza Obsession [video]:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/uyqjn2/norman_fink...
Also Tucker Carlson? Seriously?
At least that was my takeaway after watching his debate with Destiny (the streamer) and Benny Morris (the historian):
You be the judge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X_KdkoGxSs&list=PLrAXtmErZg...
"Hamas's military force prior to October 7, 2023, was roughly 3 to 4.5 times larger than the United States military when measured as a percentage of their respective total populations."
Anyway, IDF as ≈170k active duty personnel and 465k reservists[1]. Literally a different order of magnitude. Add to it the vast different of resources, access to an air force and nuclear weapons and it become even more clearer that there is no comparison possible.
(And comparing personnel count to the USA is laughable as it is vastly different military type. Both a fighter jet pilot and a foot soldier count as one personnel, but it's neither the same force projection nor the same investment of civilians working for the war machine).
1: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/10/14/idf-explai...
Forced displacement is also considered a war crime and, considering what is happening in Gaza and at the West Bank, it would qualify as genocide as well.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
Farmers were killed, even in different part of Palestine.
Killing farmers have nothing to do with the definition of genocide.
Doesn't mean that here the targeting couldn't have been done with the primary goal of displacing the population, but the buildings being destroyed doesn't prove the motive.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/5/24/satellite-...
And that just from the start of war.
Mariupol probably did see less destruction. But for the actively contested regions, the biggest difference between Russian destruction and Israeli destruction is that the Russians use artillery, which leaves shells of buildings standing, while Israel uses bulldozers that are a lot more thorough in leaving no stone on the other
You can find lots of videos of Russia firing thermobaric weapons into populated areas - you will find none fired by Israel into Gaza. And I don't think that's because IL doesn't have them.
It's exactly the same in Gaza! You basically justified Israel's actions here... Check the distance between Gaza City & Israel border, vs distance beetween Bakhmut & Russia's border. Tell me which one is farther away - I'll wait
It does not.
> and at least there it's most likely not primarily because Russians wanted flatten the city (I'm sure they'd have preferred taking it in one piece) but rather because fighting happens from buildings resulting in the buildings getting targeted.
What happened on the Ukrainian frontlines is a war of position. Everything gets pounded, even forests and tree lines. It’s more like Verdun than anything that happened in Gaza.
In absolutely does [1].
> What happened on the Ukrainian frontlines is a war of position
If Gaza is a genocide then Ukraine almost certainly is too. The same messaging about exterminating a culture that doesn't "actually" exist from senior leadership. The same attacks on children. The same destruction and systematic razing of civilian settlements.
It seems like the state of Ukraine frontline cities is due to intense artillery fire and air bombingn whereas gaza cities states seem to be more of systematic bulldozing of entire areas which would erase the marks of actual bombings and make the scale harder to assess
Both are the results of aggressive madmen, but both situations are different. And the genocide aspect is not what is discussed here.
Also, why do you think that “Russia is doing the same thing” is some kind of gotcha?
Systematic destruction of urban areas is sadly what modern urban combat operations look like.
When an enemy digs in and choose to fight and die in an urban area, this is how war plays out.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/10/28/how-russias-invas...
WAR IS HELL
But that’s not what we see in Gaza. The parents specifically mentioned that only towns were leveled. The destroyed towns are not the only relevant aspect. The other one is that major damage happens only there. And of course it would, because the Israeli forces don’t want to sterilise the land; they want to take it. In contrast, Russia is happy to be king of the rubble as long as Ukrainians eat shells.
This is how urban war is played out between near peer armies.
Think about this, I’m in a concrete bunker with a machine gun, do you want to charge the bunker and get shot, or do you want to call in an airstrike to destroy the bunker with the machine gun position? I know what I’d do
https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2015/07/24/history-july-25th-2006-m...
Of note, just days before the strike, one of the Observers sent an unencrypted email home to his wife noting that he was observing Israeli war crimes and would be reporting them.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/un-officer-reported-is...
"When in doubt, send in an airstrike."
In 2015, the Egyptian government announced a plan to demolish the entire Egyptian city of Rafah, in order to deter smuggling with the Gaza Strip. More than a decade on, most of it is gone. The residents were forcibly relocated to elsewhere in Egypt.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/15/world/middlee...
Urban warfare is brutal, especially when one side systematically digs in and uses IEDs and booby traps in civilian buildings.
They wanted to level the city, they did. That's all. There was some fighting eventually with a few fighters holed in in Rafah, but nothing that would justify this. And Israelis continue leveling entire areas the whole year after so called "ceasefire" during which there were almost no attacks on them, yet they managed to murder more than a thousand of people.
Scary! Can we get photos of those? Wait, they look suspiciously like medical equipment and incubators…
(Will the Chosen Ones reclassify radiological equipment as nuclear weapons next? Stay tuned for more!)
The link provided in your parent post explicitly says there is no precise definition of “ethnic cleansing”, so I don’t even understand why you’d think the distinction matters.
The OG genocides involved deaths in the millions [1]. That requires killing with industrial efficiency, something that made it categorically unique from the "wipe out the village" warfare that goes back to, probably, before civilisation. (Chimpanzees do it. To my knowledge, they're the only other species that annihilates versus merely fighting off enemies.)
At lower kill volumes, even in the tens and possibly even hundreds of thousands, the line between conventional warfare done conservatively, conventional warfare done brutally and a process that, if left unhindered, will reach a million-man death toll.
(Then you have the ambiguity, one which does not apply in Gaza, introduced by displacement also being included in genocide and it starts to intersect pretty much perfectly with war.)
If we want these words to keep having meaning, we have to nitpick around their use. Otherwise, overinclusivity will consume them.
Because there are lots of wars burning all over the planet. We tried to carve an exception into international law, after WWII, about it being permissible to intervene in the internal affairs of another sovereign state if they're doing genocide. So this is a real debate that should be had. The problem is by practically every definition, there are at least a handful of active genocides happening in multiple theaters around the world.
The abhorrence of genocide is one that needs to be refreshed with action if we're to restore the norm that it's not okay. But to do that, you have to set the new threshold.
So if less than a million people are killed it's not a genocide? Seems like a very obtuse understanding of the word, which is also defined in the wiki you linked.
Nobody said that. OP asked why this is being debated. That's why. It's not clear what generally constitutes a genocide in a way that is separate from warfare in general. (Gaza and Ukraine are simpler, to me, because Russia and Israel explicitly message genocidal intent in a way New Delhi, Beijing and Washington do not.)
It's incredibly ambiguous. There are very few sets of people who agree on the list of ongoing genocides, much less historic ones. The only places where there is even a semblance of agreement is in Europe and urban America, and that's largely due to deferral to our institutions.
> There's no ambiguity as to what Israel is doing
I agree. That doesn't mean it's beyond discussion or debate. I think it's a genocide. I also think that term has been mangled, particularly online, to the point that it's virtually meaningless. (One of the problems with the term is it's grammatically odd. A homicide is a completed murder. Attempted murder is different. A genocide, completed, is an extermination or annihilation. But we give the ongoing project the same grammar as, in other cases, an act.)
Which is why zero armenians remain after the armenian genocide
oh wait no nevermind, your definition is just bullshit. Only one set of people define what is or isn't a genocide: historians. The ICC only covers crimes against humanity. Historians are also in wide agreement (except for the Israel aligned ones) that it is a genocide in Gaza.
The legal definition of genocide is precise and includes an element that is often hard to prove: "intent."
Determining whether a situation constitutes genocide is factually and legally complex. It should only be made following a careful and detailed examination of the facts against relevant legislation.
This examination is carried out to establish State responsibility or individual criminal responsibility for the crime of genocide. It must be done by a competent international or national court with jurisdiction to try such cases, after an investigation that meets appropriate due process standards.
As for whats happening, the over represented proportion of male combatant age deaths, the well below average ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in complex urban warfare, the war being in response to an atrocious attack on civilians, stopping for polio vaccines, population numbers remaining stable etc puts a question on the "Only Reasonable Inference" standard.
What would you consider a proportionate response given Hamas's initial charter, the rockets fired over the years, the IRCG commanders statements about a co-ordinated attack from Gaza, southern Lebanon and the West Bank and the abhorrent attack of October 7th?
Major General Gholam Ali Rashid—commander of the Khatam ol Anbia Central Headquarters, which is the highest Iranian operational command level and responsible for all joint operations— expanded on this concept in a May 2024 interview and demonstrated how Iran is continuing to learn from Hamas. Rashid argued that the Hamas attack into Israel in October 2023 highlighted how effective and valuable ground attacks could be.[iii] Hamas’ attack demonstrated, Rashid said, that the Axis of Resistance could destroy the Israeli state by launching surprise attacks from Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank simultaneously—echoing Salami’s comments. Rashid stated that such an attack would need 10,000 fighters from Lebanon, 10,000 fighters from the Gaza Strip, and 2,000-3,000 from the West Bank. Rashid’s interview is particularly noteworthy given his importance in Iranian military decision-making and planning as Khatam ol Anbia Central Headquarters commander.
> the well below average ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in complex urban warfare
Ah, yes, the very urban warfare art of bombing hospitals and refugee camps. Very urban. Much warfare. And you also get to claim that the civilians didn't die from the fighting, merely from the starvation!
>the war being in response to an atrocious attack on civilians
Yep. Nothing happened before October 7. 1947 ? Doesn't exist. Nakba? Probably some arab term that means nothing. Close to a century of warfare, torture, humiliation and putting Gazawis into concentration camps ? Naaaah. Hamas is responsible. Bad Hamas.
> population numbers remaining stable
There has been no accurate population counts for three years. But thank you for being so generous and letting palestinians reproduce while you park them in camps. Very kosher <3
>Hamas's initial charter
No shit, the armed resistance group that was formed to resist with arms against an attacker wants the attacker gone ? Silly Hamas. They should have done like Bibi and kept the actual plan quiet in cabinet meetings.
Hint: armed resistance against an occupier is legal and encouraged under international law.
>the rockets fired over the years
Yep. Israel did nothing. Didn't shoot children in the head, didn't regularly murder palestinians in prisons, didn't conduct raids on Palestinian territories or encourage settlers to colonize more. Poor little Israel.
>the IRCG commanders statements about a co-ordinated attack from Gaza, southern Lebanon and the West Bank
You regularly bomb another country, and you think that the other country is in the wrong for finding literally any way to make you eat shit ?
> the abhorrent attack of October 7th
A regrettable event and a needless loss of life. I'm not fully sure it justifies a retaliation that causes fifty times more death, destruction and horror, nor will the tribunal that will judge you for your crimes against humanity.
I did not. I lamented (it was not a question) that we’re nitpicking (it’s not a debate) the definition, especially when the person in question suggested an alternative which is not defined.
I do wonder if you’d care about this conversation if you and your family were the ones being killed. If one of those people were in front of you crying for their home and life and asked for your compassion and help in fleeing the genocide, would you turn to them and say “ackchyually, someone on Hacker News said this is merely an ethnic cleansing, you’re on your own”?
No. At that point, whether it's a genocide or not is kind of irrelevant. They're being killed. War doesn't need extra bits attached to it to be horrible.
> would you turn to them and say “ackchyually
What is this.
Right. So what I’m saying is let’s have some empathy and compassion for other people. Let’s focus on how horrible it is and what we can do, the same way we would hope others would do for us if we were the ones in that situation.
"Ya know what, everybody already has us marked as commiting genocide, so why don't we just actually do it?"
The civilian population of Palestinians has shrunk ~1% since the war started, despite Israel have the weapons to actually just kill everyone.
I'm not a genocide scholar, so may be way off the mark here, but imagine a language that only has a few 100 native speakers left. There's one person who really hates them, writes in his diary about how he longs for that culture to cease, and then he murders the only remaining historian or language teacher of that group. Is that attempted genocide? A little bit?
My point isn't "yeah it is" because I don't know, but I'm very certain that I'm still closer to whatever the heart of it is, than sheer "kill volume". We already have a word for massacres and mass murder, and genocide usually comes hand in hand with those and many other crimes, but it's not those crimes.
(a) Killing members of the group; (check)
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (check)
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (check)
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (check)
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.[8] (check)
Not that that was in question. HN is, after all, in too large a part a reflection of the greedy US tech industry. It has shown time and again that it’s selfishly OK with human exploitation and supremely susceptible to being manipulated by the right amount of technicality while simultaneously arrogantly believing it is immune to being influenced.
Some days I’m truly ashamed of this community and find myself incapable of defending it against the mockery and contempt it receives from the rest of the internet.
My colleagues have seen these tunnels. At least ore 2023. Israel has denied them entry since then.
The tunnel entrances and exits are tremendously hard to find. Some of them were located in private residences.
But Israel has an oil & gas industry. They have equipment that can look underneath a quiet city. If tunnel elimination were truly the goal, temporarily displacing the population while clearing operations took place should have been sufficient. As it stands, simply bulldozing over the entrances probably doesn't actually destroy the tunnels. It just hides their entrances.
Robots. These things can be cleared. Particularly if the population isn't there.
Not if the trigger is based on detecting body heat. And you can't really clear more than the ground floor either, we don't have bipedal robots yet.
To be clear. There are cases where civilian property damage is a war crime. And we do need to evaluate that. But ethnic cleansing is something else. If there are good military reasons to destroy said property then it's also not a war crime.
When the members of the biggest coalition in the Knesset say openly and proudly that they are doing ethnic cleansing what exactly are you pretending to defend?
> There is no evidence right now the displacement is permanent.
All of the allies of Likud and the settler movement wants Palestinians expelled.
> Israel says it will not withdraw until Hamas disarms is where things stand now.
They used to say they would withdraw when the hostages were returned. The goalposts were moved, as is typical.
> But ethnic cleansing is something else. If there are good military reasons to destroy said property then it's also not a war crime.
At this point there are literally hundreds of accounts of IDF members who were given told quite explicitly that it was an open field for killing with no consequences.
Come on.
You can go look at Basra right here:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Basrah,+Basra+Governorate,...
Over a million people live here. The estimate was that "448 to 593 civilians were killed due to coalition military operations", orders of magnitude less than Israel has killed. Basra was not wiped off the map or seized and annexed by coalition forces while the population was herded into a concentration camp.
It is simply slander against the US military to suggest they have in the 21st century done anything like what the IDF has done in this genocide.
Here's historical satellite imagery. Go to 2017-08. You can see Mosul airport and surrounding facilities leveled, immediately adjacent to a city that is obviously a city and not 1) flattened Mosul airport or 2) similar in any way to the Rafah imagery above.
If you are describing Mosul as "leveled" then what adjective do you use to describe Rafah? It cannot possibly be also "leveled" given that vast areas of Rafah are actually a flat pile of rubble and Mosul is clearly a city with a destroyed airport, even in late 2017.
https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#mapCenter=43.12003%2...
NYT - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/15/world/middlee...
and AP drone imagry https://apimagesblog.com/blog/2017/7/14/mosul-drone-footage-...
From your linked AP article:
"Nearly a third of the Old City [a specific neighborhood] was damaged or destroyed in the final three weeks of bombardment up to July 8, according to a survey by U.N. Habitat using satellite imagery"
From MSF re Rafah:
"Over 15 months of all-out war on Gaza have left 92 percent of housing units and about 70 percent of all structures destroyed or damaged."
So we have 1/3rd of a particularly hard-hit neighborhood destroyed in Mosul versus 70% of the entire city of Rafah.
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/destruction-hom...
This is very obviously a completely different scale and comprehensiveness of destruction.
That Israel kept looking for tunnels and destroying empty buildings for strategic reasons after the battle was over and Rafah was mostly abandoned is not relevant to evaluating the main battle.
That MSF statement is not specifically about Rafah in your link either. It's about the entire Gaza strip. And just like Rafah a lot of the destruction happened in evacuated areas for tactical reasons, searching for tunnels, preventing guerrilla attacks, dealing with booby traps etc. We can argue about the necessity and legality of those but they are a different kind of discussion vs. the main battle portion.
Mosul had 1.5 million people at the time of the battle and ~10-20k civilian casualties + ~10-20k combatants.
Hard to do direct comparisons and all the numbers are obviously squishy, but your claim that Israel's war results in significantly fewer casualties seems... dubious at best.
And in any case, we actually know for a fact that Israel's non-combatant casualty cut-off value (NCV) -- i.e. their accepted rate in decision-making -- is several multiples higher than the coalition forces were.
> Peter Gersten, former deputy commander of operations and intelligence for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, states that “[w]ith Osama Bin Laden, you’d have an NCV value of 30, but if you had a low-level commander, his NCV was typically zero. We ran zero for the longest time.” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, when he was head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) during the war against ISIS, would personally be called to authorize an operation with a “high” NCV of 14 or 15.
Re the Jabalia Camp attack:
> Satellite visual analysis of the attack site shows at least five large craters, including two approximately 40 feet wide, consistent with the impact of 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions. The attack destroyed not just one residential apartment building, but a whole block.
> Even without specific further intelligence, on the basis of this information Israel’s CDE must have resulted in a very high estimate for civilian casualties. Given the location, population spread, and choice of weapons, the actual toll of hundreds of civilians killed or wounded would have been a reasonable expectation.
Like when packaged food gets potentially contaminated, you don't test each package for bacteria. You throw away the whole lot.
Or, if you are not a genocidal terror group, you actually go house-to-house and check. Difficult, dangerous, but not a war crime. That's why Mosul isn't a pile of rubble, even though ISIS was more than willing to use booby traps!
---
"We are demolishing more and more homes, they have nowhere to return. The only obvious result will be the desire of the Gazans to emigrate outside the Strip. Our main problem is in the receiving countries."
—Benjamin Netanyahu, 2025
If Hamas cared about Palestinians, they could just use military buildings for that.
Not even egypt allows ghazans in- 10.000 euros for one passport is insane. And all those walls and checkpoints. And egypt is pretty islamist itself, so natural ally to hamas and the like.. but they know had that brush with the mb
https://original.antiwar.com/scott/2023/10/27/netanyahus-sup...
What is true is that Egypt doesn't want to take in 2 million poor, underfed, sick, homeless Gazans & have to care for them.
You're comparing wiping out tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian people's lives... to disinfection.
Like yeah, there's plenty of examples of israel's current leaders calling the Palestinian race sub-human, vermin, animal, saying it should be wiped off the earth, etc, but I didn't expect it on HN, JFC.
This is true. Their crime is not having been born a Jew. According to the Torah, the Talmud and the Talakha, shkotzim and shiksim like us must be slaughtered as is the right and the duty of the Chosen Ones to honor G-d.
The babies and young children in Gaza are as innocent as they are everywhere else in the world. If you can’t see that, you should reexamine the lens you use to look at the world, it’s distorting things massively.
This is despicable, inhumane. It is generational trauma that started with the Nazis, now propagated to the poor souls around the new western colony of Israel.
Israel left Gaza back in 2005 after forcibly expelling all Jews and only later on only blockaded Gaza due to weapons being smuggled in, so they tried that and it clearly didn't work. It seems unilateral disengagement is simply not a strategy that can be succesful here.
It is clear that Israel is the source of violence. Which makes sense, as it is a new Western colony occupying (and constantly expanding) land where people lived for thousands of years, under the justification THAT IT'S IN THE BIBLE.
A religious fundamentalist colony, funded and armed by the west.
It is unjustifiable. It is vile.
The blockade only started after Hamas was elected into power, to reduce their access to more missiles and weapons. The money from Qatar was still allowed in for humanitarian reasons. But no matter what Israel does it is accused of being evil - both allowing the money through and blocking it would be considered wrong by the haters.
> a new Western colony occupying (and constantly expanding) land
The total land under control by Israel has shrunk by more than 50% over the past 50 years (with the return of Sinai to Egypt in exchange for peace).
Millions of Arabs have migrated to the West, but only when Jews migrate East are they “vile colonizers”.
Israel has been restricting Gaza's economic viability since the 90s, much before the official blockade. (source: UN, wikileaks about Gaza economic policy)
> The money from Qatar was still allowed in for humanitarian reasons
Is this a joke ? The humanitarian Israel that does not let international flotillas with aid reach Gaza ? Or the humanitarian Israel that kills children ?
> The total land under control by Israel has shrunk by more than 50% over the past 50 years
The spin of the century. They gave back uninhabitable desert, while continuing expansion all over Palestine.
> Millions of Arabs have migrated to the West, but only when Jews migrate East are they “vile colonizers”.
Firstly, it has nothing to do with religion. Secondly, migration is quite different than a formation of a military state that constantly occupies land and expands, attacking its neighbours that has been there for millennia.
You are spewing propaganda.
Israel is currently allowing in thousands of truckloads carrying 35,000 metric tons of aid per month, according to the UN: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/ocha-newsitem-7aug26/
What they blocked was a sailboat carrying a bag of oranges and anti-Israel activists trying to carry out a media stunt for attention and virtue-signalling.
You obviously have an agenda here and are being disingenuous. I will disengage and leave you spewing your lies.
How noble and humanitarian of the state of Israel.
Please do disengage, you refuted none of my statements while continuing to spread propaganda from your 3 hour old account.
And guess what ? Someone can be both against unconstrained migration, colonialism, zionism and apartheid states.
Weak hasbara, try with a new throwaway account
Mass migration generally does more harm than good and should be reserved for very exceptional cases like natural disasters.
> you don’t oppose ethno-states when they are Arab states that have cleansed all their Jews
Such as Saudi Arabia? Seeing it (starting to) fall apart is my favorite thing about 2026 lmao.
> and you don’t give a shit about actual genocides.
I do care about them all but it makes sense to focus especially on the one being carried out with my tax money.
—Benjamin Netanyahu, 2025
The Biden administration paused diplomatic relations, put out public states condemning it, and more.
In fact, Azerbaijan came out and complained about the US's "biased" stance against it.
https://asbarez.com/aliyev-criticizes-biden-for-biased-towar...
To take this example, the Azerbaijani president didn't talk the American one into a major shit show of a war; one that is materially harming American lives. The Azerbaijani government doesn't run a major political influence operation in the US, spending 10s of millions of dollars against candidates for the sin of mildly criticizing them. The Azerbaijani government doesn't receive anything close to the level of military, diplomatic, and financial support from the US that Israel gets. The Azerbaijani prime minister didn't give an address to the US Congress to undermine a major foreign policy agreement, one which has only looked better in hindsight.
So no, it's not at all weird that the citizens of the US care more about Israeli committed atrocities than Azerbaijani ones. The US is far more involved with Israel's actions and has far more influence over them, influence that has so far not been used to try and alleviate the suffering in Gaza.
Save it.
What an argument.
1. https://www.google.com/maps/@31.2963743,34.2449952,1665m
2. https://maps.apple.com/frame?map=satellite¢er=31.296508%...
https://earth.google.com/web/search/31%2e297226,+34%2e243649... - then click "show historical imagery" next to the search box.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/15/world/middlee...
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/middle-east/2016/11/01/battl...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mosul-satellite_n_596d34a3e4b...
The Nazis are not infamous for the demolition of houses. What they did in Warsaw was kill 90% of the Jewish population. No one cares about the buildings (many of which were actually demolished by the Soviets after the war, to make place for apartment buildings).
I know there’s an attempt by some to simultaneously downplay what the Nazis did while exaggerating the evils of Israel, but no - Rafah is not “just like the Nazis”.
A closer comparison would be the Egyptian demolition of Rafah on its side of the border in 2013. Both were done after the population had been evacuated, and to create a buffer zone along the border.
Houses are often demolished by force, to build freeways or for housing projects. It’s not a nice thing to do, but it’s not “like the Nazis”.
Not true at all. Buildings are where culture happens. Systematically destroying them is a mechanism of genocide because it erases the memory in addition to the people. And yes this was a deliberate process by the Nazis [1].
> It’s not “like the Nazis”.
Actually, if the Nazis did something and then somebody else did it too, it's exactly like the Nazis.
You can't be serious. This is not a demolition of houses, this is the demolition of an entire city. Not for a housing project, but to erase the traces of the life human beings had there, all their collective and personal history. This- despite being far from the levels of human life destruction perpetrated by the Nazis- is genocidal in intent. When you roam around a city emptied by the war and coldly, methodically try to make it vanish from the face of the earth as if it never existed, house by house, you are not far in spirit from what the Nazis did to Warsaw.
Rafah has been demolished to create a buffer zone near the border (after the population had been evacuated). Egypt likewise has demolished Rafah on its side of the border in 2013 to create a security zone.
Just translating what accepting that "demolished to create a buffer zone" is a reasonable justification for levelling Rafah (and a lot of the rest of Gaza) means. Those peoples lives, homes and businesses are expected to just be subject to the whims and desires of the Israeli government all while they allow(ed) the blockage of aid going into the territory and fired on the camps they drove people into.
Most of us here in the US don't have to worry about threats of terrorism like this. It doesn't excuse Israel's (many) war crimes but often we don't acknowledge the horror of Hamas on Israel and Palestinians when talking about this conflict.
Think about how the PLO was a KGB linked terrorist organizations.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
I've started to think this worry about a particular nation's right to exist is really a great rhetorical trick: nobody is particularly upset the nation of east Germany ceased to exist, and you don't hear Erdogan opposing Kurdish independence with "Doesn't the Turkie have a right to exist?"
There is a basic human right of self determination, but if you think what follows is that you should get your own nation then look at how the soviet policies of providing exactly that worked out. They even created a the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the far east!
The one difference is that Israel always had been able to control the situation for decades to its liking, while Hamas had been passively reaping the hatred that Israel had sown -- only until October 7.
So, Israelis fearing Hamas? That's a horror they created through their democracy, purely by abusing powerless people. Total hypocrisy.
The ALLEGED offer was to release hostages under 18 and over 50 IN EXCHANGE of stopping the ground incursions and changes to Al-aqsa mosk access
Was it a reasonable offer ? Should they have accepted it ? I don't care, I just care that you get your (alleged) facts right.
You don't give a shit about truth
You could argue that Israel is doing this because Hamas is so bad, but then you look at what Israel is doing in the other part of palestine not controlled by Hamas? Daily pogroms and violent ethnic oppression of all kinds.
The problem is that Israel is based on ethnic supremacy. The way the victims (the palestinians) react is not relevant.
Often we don't acknowledge the horror of Israel's multi-decade siege on Gaza¹ and occupation of Palestinians when talking about this conflict.
There, I fixed it for you.
[1] As early as 1967, U.S. Senator Albert Gore Sr. called Gaza “a vast concentration camp on the sand”.
The level of violence is set by the occupier. Would there be pearl-clutching about the Warsaw Uprising, John Brown or Nat Turner? What about resistance to British occupation of Ireland (or India or any number of other British colonial projects)? The ANC in South Africa was incredibly violent in its resistance to apartheid. Resistance movements in occupied Europe were also incredibly violent (eg killing collaborators).
What you seem to have fallen for is tone policing a 78 year long resistance. A lot of people (generally, not you specifically) have this belief that things began on Oct 7. You will get questions of "why can't they resist peacefully?" Well, they have. Multiple times. Most recently with the March of Return several years earlier. Many don't know about it because it was barely reported on. What happened? For the "crime" of standing within a few hundred yards of the fence, the IOF used protestors as target practice. 500+ dead, 8000+ wounded. "Wounded" here is doing a lot of heavy lifting too because it included deliberately and permanently maiming people by blowing their legs off deliberately [1].
"Terrorism" is a political designation. And the US doesn't face such threats? Really? The police kill over 1000 people every single year. Mass shootings? Why isn't that seen as terrorism? Or the violence committed by ICE against random US citizens or detainees?
I'll leave you with this quote from JFK [2]:
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable
[2]: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/978019...
Internationally Israel is probably positioned weaker than before and there is a fissure running through liberal societies from Ireland to France, from Portugal to Germany and probably similar in the US.
This is conflict polarizes. A good example is the recent election in Berlin, which was focused on the housing crisis but now devolved into name calling based on how people think of Israel. A minority might have voted “pro Palestine” but most people wanted affordable flats.
Sowing dissent among your adversaries is very effective.
Yes it is, and some countries have become very good at doing that
Except that people doing that lost. Very very clearly, it is not sufficient at all. And people who won loved to frame themselves as rational, open to ideas, even wrote essays and pretended good faith.
So did Netanyahu. His far-right policies require an eternal enemy to distract the people and blame for everything going wrong. The October 7 attack definitely didn't hurt his position in national politics.
I mean come on... Hamas were seen practising flying hang gliders around the strip and one of the most paranoid states in the world didn't think that merited some investigation?
And everyone just happened to not be at their posts?
Is wrong. It is kind of you to show you don't know what you are talking about.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
But again does that make sense given how the Israeli elites feel about Palestinians? Just assume because it's a Jewish holiday Hamas will also take the day off?
Because if that is stupidity then yes, it is very stupid
> But again does that make sense given how the Israeli elites feel about Palestinians? Just assume because it's a Jewish holiday Hamas will also take the day off?
No, if they did they wouldn't have anyone on the border.
Dear reader, notice how they shifted their claim from "And everyone just happened to not be at their posts" to the official story (wink wink although I offered no real evidence) is that the border was lightly manned.
I'm Israel's enemy and still had no idea about that. Beyond stupid if true.
“You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet” and all that.
It's a bit too 4D chess for my liking but would also explain some things that otherwise don't add up
Regardless of the facts in this specific event, you can make much the same argument about many of the major 21st century terror attacks - there were multiple warnings leading up to 9/11, and the FBI and CIA had eyes on several of the perpetrators before the attacks. They didn't "choose not to act" in so much as institutional disfunction prevented the dots from being connected or any preemptive action being taken, but from the outside it looks pretty much the same.
I'm open minded, could see it either way
That's what the sad thing is?
> A minority might have voted “pro Palestine” but most people wanted affordable flats.
Interesting interpretation.
The Israeli Shekel is so strong against the dollar it is causing issues with exports.
Israel has signed major missile defense deals with many European countries and just signed a major new one with Greece.
Gaza is in near complete ruins, the tunnel infrastructure Hamas spent the past 2 decades building is being destroyed.
Nasrallah was killed and Hezbollah is severely diminished militarily and politically in Lebanon.
Iran’s nuclear weapons program and ballistic missile capabilities have been severely damaged and no longer pose an existential threat, at least for the time being.
Israel is doing very well since October 7 whereas Hamas and Gaza is not.
Is that the same program that was compeletly damages last year?
The flip side of your statement is that more nations than before decided to recognize a Palestine state and that it seems for the first time in decades US support for Israel is waning.
Israel is military and economically strong. It’s also a small country in a difficult region that needs trade partners and international connections, probably more so in a future full of climate change.
sounds like the terrorists did indeed win
For example the Bibas children and their mother were kidnapped by Palestinian civilians and sold to a Salafi terrorist organization within Gaza, they weren’t taken by Hamas. This is why the mother and children were strangled to death instead of being held as leverage and there were issues recovering their bodies for the hostage exchanges.
They were kidnapped by Palestinian civilians unaffiliated with Hamas and handed over to a different terrorist organization which had different priorities than Hamas.
So yes it is appropriate to use the term Palestinians here. It wasn't just Hamas and it wasn’t just “Gaza”, it was the Palestinian civilians too.
Killing babies...Babies can never be guilty of anything.
Theres a big difference between a few civilians and the entire population.
Its hardly justice of any kind to destroy an entire city and kill tens of thousands because of the crimes of a few hundred.
Some people have no shame.
I don’t know what metrics you would consider non-psychopathic.
Getting married, having children, being materially successful, destroying your enemies. These are good things.
This is psychopathic.
Just look at history, another way to judge a leader is to look at how much effort they put into protecting themselves from their loving countrymen.
How many body guards did Churchill have ? How many body soldiers were allocated to guarding Hitler ? Why did the Kings of Europe all build castles ?
Iran's nuclear program has hardly been destroyed long term and there is almost no chance a durable nuclear agreement comes out of this war. It will almost certainly be a vague memorandum where Iran pinky swears to never build a nuke and then starts building one as soon as the fighting stops. America isn't going to start endless wars to prevent that and Israel can't do it alone. The long term future looks grim for the Middle East, especially for Israel.
Meanwhile, most of the voter base (perhaps understandably) cares more about domestic issues than they do about the plight of people on the other side of the world who they are killing and exploiting with their tax dollars.
Given all this, I don't know how you can be so certain that anything will change with a new administration, even with polling demonstrating that voters do disapprove of support for Israel now. Most of the people who disapprove of funding Israel don't care about it strongly enough for it to be a significant factor in their engagement with electoral politics (which for most people is also just limited to voting once every 2 to 4 years)
The US congress and senate get their laws and edicts directly from the top brass of the IDF.
Every single head of state in the Eurozone (bar Perro Sanxe, who is controlled by Morocco instead) and every single bureaucrat have to follow the rules set down by Israel, lest the union collapse.
They're everywhere you look. You don't have to fall for Hasbara or Unit 8200 propaganda about how this totally means you're an irredeemable monster, they are the ones who are pushing this.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Jewish_conspirac...
Look at your own link. Feel free to go through my comment history. White genocide? Don't make me laugh. Cultural Marxism? I sure hope so! I'm an ultra-progressive extreme leftist.
But that doesn't mean I'm blind, or that I'm willing to ignore the truth that is staring me right in the face. Class analysis can't explain this slavish attitude that nearly every world leader has to Israel. There's no intra-class conflict in Israel, all disagreements vanish into the ether and they close ranks as soon as they smell the opportunity to rid the world of what they view as the filthy, of the sheqetsim, of the abominable.
I will not willingly ignore the fact that I'm considered nothing more than cattle fit for slaughter to the chosen ones, nor to everything that they have done with their power in my country.
Even if it puts me at odds with my ideological cohort, I only hope that they are able to fully open their eyes too, soon.
There are many beliefs that posit an international Jewish conspiracy, obviously not all of those may by applicable to you.
> I'm an ultra-progressive extreme leftist.
Antisemitism often exists in both left wing and right wing extremists groups, the international Jewish conspiracy beliefs likewise do as well.
> Class analysis can't explain this slavish attitude that nearly every world leader has to Israel.
It seems the opposite is true overall.[0]
> There's no intra-class conflict in Israel, all disagreements vanish into the ether and they close ranks as soon as they smell the opportunity to rid the world of what they view as the filthy, of the sheqetsim, of the abominable.
There are deep divisions within factions in Israel, to claim otherwise is to ignore reality.
[0] https://unwatch.org/2025-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-...
surely the one creating such destructions and deaths no?
As the saying goes "war is terrorism with a bigger budget".
In your own words, what is the issue in the Middle East?
I wish I was eloquent and knowledgeable enough to write it, I'd probably write a book.
In 1948 a colonial mission from West Europe invaded Palestine. This has made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Another is: an indigenous people with a continuous presence in the land, joined by mostly legal immigrants (and later by refugees fleeing pogroms and the Holocaust with literally nowhere else to go) built towns, farms and infrastructure, drained swamps and developed an economy that also attracted some Arab immigration and created Arab employment.
This happened under the colonial rule of the Ottomans. Then later under the colonial rule of the British. Finally in 1948, colonial rule ended, much to the dismay of Arab colonialists.
South Africa is a meme analogy which doesn’t fit the history. If you’d like a better analogy (though there are no good ones) I’d look at India and Pakistan in the 1940s.
I also happen to know the history of my own country, Australia, and when I try to draw parallels between Australian history and Israeli history, I see that the excuses we give for continuing our presence here are weaker in every way. So it would be hypocritical for me to holier-than-thou the decision of Jews to declare a homeland where a non-trivial portion of their global population have always lived.
It's going to affect everyone, and I don't think you can stop Western voters noticing that the price of fuel has gone up. Then they're going to start sharing the blame around: Iran, yes, but also Trump and Netenyahu.
https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/the-lebanese-civil-war-in-... (article is rather more favourable to them than I would be, but it describes the basic history)
Germans believed they did
Imagine the death and destruction caused by the hands of Israel.
Realize that this reaction wasn't necessary. Those who run Israel are adults. They could have chosen a path with much less deaths. They were not forced to commit a genocide, they chose it.
Realize that when people see such pictures, of entire cities completely leveled to the ground, that people get extremely upset. Imagine the place you live reduced to rubble and how atrocious you would find this. The inhabitants of Gaza are humans just like you and the world is justified in their disdain.
Itamar Ben-Gvir (National Security Minister) has repeatedly called for the "voluntary emigration" or forced removal of Gazan residents and urged the permanent resettlement of Israelis inside the Gaza Strip.
But they also don't want it to get too big or powerful. Israel calls it "mowing the lawn"[1]. You want to have grass on the lawn, but not too much, so you periodically cut off the excess grass.
By who?
Accountability isn’t achievable, as far as I can tell. Especially when there’s some lucrative real estate deals for Gaza land on the table. IDF brings bulldozers as part of their attacks on other countries for a reason.
How easy do you think it would be for anyone close to Putin to slip him some poison or just stab him with a knife? To prevent that happening, a whole lot of stuff has to be kept oriented towards him remaining the president.
One of Bibi's support pillars is the perpetual threat of Israel's destruction. He positions himself as standing between Israel and destruction, so replacing him would be dangerous.
Some of the people contributing here were born after the "war on terror" started.
North America of course, but Africa is an overlapping series of successful genocides, Argentina's "Conquest of the Desert", Qing conquest of the Dzungar, Russia's conquest of the Circassians, Athens and Melos 416 BCE, Rome and Carthage, Rome and lots, Mongolians and whew even more than that -- all of them victories but also a "Where are the Khazars?" sort of event. They're just gone. Violence will forever be Mankind's one true Universal Language -- easier to learn than Esperanto.
Post-Trinity, the thermonuclear deterrent has put the kibosh on genocide as a working tactic. For a bit. The evolution post Cold-War might well turn out to be that genocide is back, baby, as long as the genocidee doesn't have a nuclear deterrent. It's cosmically fitting that the great genocidal wars of the 20th century birthed the final perfected weapon for doing genocides.
You can't look at this, at reports coming out of Gaza and the West Bank, at Israel's own government officials' statements, and not, at minimum, believe that brutal war crimes were committed on a massive basis here. Whether it's "Holocaust level" or "genocide" is a red herring. It needs universal condemnation, it needs to stop, and the people who did it need to be held accountable.
It did stop. When the hostages were freed and Hamas gave up. Which they could have done at any point. Or you know, they could not have started the war too.
The ICC is trying to do that, but is being impeded by the US.
Rightful people supports the week. Only the depraved laughs when a person without power is being abused.
There is no justification for their actions. There is no justification for the greater Israel project they are pushing. There is no justification for them to be taking a leadership role in the global security technology industry. The whole thing is just absolutely Fkd and I find any person trying to contort the argument in a way to justify this shit to be evil themselves.
The fact that this comment is being upvoted as much as down shows me that evil exists here too.
Never mind that it's also a Palestinian homeland and Muslim homeland. Those ones don't count because uh, we said so.
Poes law or something.
I agree with your position, but it didn't read as sarcasm to me.
wasn't a dead giveaway?
I get that in this case the rest of the comment was short and the obvious indicator of sarcasm came quickly, but it's all too common for this to devolve into paragraphs of repetitive, uncreative slopaganda, which has resulted in many who disagree just tuning out early.
This is just factually inaccurate, Mizrahi Jews in Israel today outnumber the Ashkenazi.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#Jews
Many Jews lost their land.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_...
From a psychological point of view, watching what is happening in Israel right now could really help understand human behavior in previous historical events involving genocide and mass killings.
Look at the current physical state of the city, the raw sight of it -- no amount of fair punishment can justify this scale of pure, one-sided destruction of lives, daily-lives, and futures. This is directed violence, clearly beyond practical necessity -- unless practicality is defined in terms of ethnic cleansing.
Any logic that jumps through the hoops of background material (history, religion, beliefs, politics, and so on) is mere mind tricks, designed to draw your eyes away from reality -- the horrific nature of the Israeli genocide.
(EDIT: grammar check)
2) Accusations of genocide, whether they stand up or not, are great fodder for whataboutism discussions. Let's say the world's two largest economies, the US and China, decided to start sanctioning Israel for what's happening in Gaza. You could expect other countries to start threatening actions against the US and China over their previous or current genocidal behaviors. These are obviously not things that the US and China want to deal with.
I won't go into details that support or refute this claim, but that is what the parent poster likely meant.
The idea that a nation-state was/is running a child sex trafficking ring, and we're *not* turning over heaven and earth to investigate that so that country faces unprecedented consequences...I don't even know what to say
I thought this was interesting, from Al Jazeera to boot:
Political Reactions: While critics and unverified intelligence memos pointed to the deep relationship as a sign of state ties, current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly dismissed the notion, stating on social media that Epstein's close ties to Barak (a political opponent of Netanyahu) actually "proves the opposite" of Epstein working for the Israeli state.
Who's this "we" who dealt with the SA apartheid state?
The international pressure on SA did absolutely nothing to change their mind (I'm old enough to have seen PW Botha's Rubicon speech live on TV). The NP (political party in charge) was slowly and carefully convinced to push out the hardliners.
The people left, like FW De Clerk, actually did the dismantling - unbanned the ANC, released Mandfela from prison, switched to allowing black voters, etc.
The rest of the world's pressure had absolutely no effect on the leadership. Change only came when leadership started changing.
See this for more background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiations_to_end_apartheid_...
This could hopefully happen somewhat faster with Israel, given that the government isn't a literal Nazi remnant, as the South African government was. (Though, ironically, the main arms supplier to South Africa during the arms embargo was Israel, often reselling weapons from the United States. Sigh.)
"By the late 1980s, the South African state was in profound crisis, crippled by international sanctions, a stagnant economy, and widespread resistance. Recognizing the unsustainable nature of the perpetual conflict, the government under P.W. Botha began tentative, secret contact with the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and the exiled African National Congress (ANC) leaders."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Africa_(1948%...
Literally on Oct 7, Hamas tried to return civilian hostages, who the IDF killed. This is why Hamas changed policies to only give up hostages through 3rd parties. They reached out to israel to try and return hostages and were ignored. They reached out to the US to return hostages and were ignored. [1]
So for starters, the US could have pressured Israel to negotiate with Hamas to return the hostages.
As Israel started to show genocidal intent (for example, killing aide workers multiple times). The US could have at a minimum threaten to withhold aide. In fact, there are laws on the books that a country such as Israel committing war crimes is ineligible for aide.
Finally, the UN should have deployed peace keepers to gaza specifically to stop the genocide.
Actions could have been taken, but they weren't because our politicians are so bribed by Israeli lobby money as to turn a complete blind eye to it's misdeeds.
[1] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-politics/2026-09-...
The peaceful route didn't work. Only idiots will think continuing with the status quo will result in anything different.
UN has no such power. I am still amazed how people do not get this.
Members need to vote for such things to happen. It wouldn't, not in this climate.
> What do you think world leaders should've done differently?
Members should have voted in the UN to deploy peace keeping troops. The UN does have that power if it's voted for. This isn't a question of the current realities but a question of what the right actions are.
Like it would've been a nice idea, until you realize that Hamas is heavily backed by Iran, Iran is helping Russia, Russia is invading Ukraine, and it starts to look like that level of intervention is a step towards a world war.
Then you notice world energy markets are going to be effected by a massive conflict etc.
If the UN went into Gaza, got attacked by Iran, then had to respond, next minute they're attacking a close Russian ally, and maybe even China might have to get involved in that.
What would've been good is if October 7 didn't happen, and that goes for both sides.
> Iran is helping Russia
lol, no, other way around. Though the Russia hasn't really been involved with Iran since Ukraine started. It's actually China that's the biggest Iranian trade partner.
The only party that'd be upset over UN peace keepers in Gaza is Israel.
(I have read it before)
Also, Hamas literally operated the 'March of Return' (demanding the 'right of return') that year. The best implication of that 'accepting borders with Palestinian majority on both sides on them', which is just a funny way of taking all the land.
> They never cancelled their original charter
Wikipedia [0]:
This document [the 2017 charter] reflects our position for now (...) The old charter was a product of its era, 30 years ago. We live in a different world today.
> Also, Hamas literally operated the 'March of Return' (demanding the 'right of return') that year.
Wikipedia [1]:
The first demonstrations were organized by independent activists, but the initiative was soon endorsed by Hamas, the governing party of Gaza, as well as other major factions in Gaza.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Hamas_charter#Since_2017 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_...
UN cannot allow UNRWA - since any actual operation would require Israeli cooperation given Israel is the only open border to Gaza - and Israel will not allow what it considers to be an extremist front.
UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have proven to be unable to restrain terrorist attacks, and proven to be unable to restrain the Israeli response.
How is my "should have" happened not a direct answer to the question?
I wasn't engaging in what's likely, just what should be. Biden and Trump should have been on board with deploying peace keepers. They were not.
This is literally terrorist propaganda, they tried to offer a return of a subset of the hostages in exchange for Israel not invading and dealing with the Hamas security threat. Obviously Israel was not going to leave such a severe security threat like Hamas intact.
Also, blockade Israel proportionally to the Gaza blockades. I doubt they would have kept murdering red cross members in Gaza once the supermarkets started running out of food.
As for Israel, as I understand it, the next election will mean domestic jail time for the incumbents unless the polls are wildly wrong.
At that point, it would be easy for Israel to start climbing out of lawlessness too.
need to make public statements that are not hypocritical
Sure, but are we going to ignore about the US having to rely on its "helpless" allies to provide staging points and cannon fodder for its illegal imperialistic wars? How much of a superpower would it be without its overseas bases?
Same reason blatantly anti Nazi sources have a higher chance of staying up compared to pro nazi sources. I'll let you process that one.
I would like to know how would anyone give a positive spin to genocide and civilian displacement
Well... what did Hamas expect after Oct 7th, other than the IDF riding into Gaza and cleaning shop for good?
As for the genocide claim... we're seeing average casualty and collateral damage reports for highly urban warfare. Hard to make a credible claim of genocide.
You people keep saying this is what Hamas wants. I've read the original scary charter everyone keeps pointing at. They never say to murder Jews. They do say to dismantle the apartheid state and replace it with a justice oriented one. That doesn't require marching 7 million Israelis into the sea, it just requires a regime change.
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/google-maps-...
Most people in Israel have not, and probably will not see this - any “support” for Palestinians is seen as a very far-left idea after Oct 7. There are still many here who oppose the extent of the war - I see regular demonstrations in Tel Aviv calling for peace. I will note that there seems to be fairly universal agreement that _something_ needed to be done after Oct 7. If you want to understand the Israeli perspective (doesn’t seem like most commenters do, but I’m not writing this for them), you have to look at how Oct 7 shaped Israeli society these last 3 years.
But anyways, don’t take my word for anything, pay attention to our upcoming elections. We will see how big the tents are then.
Wishing for peace, for saner voices to rise, and for an end to this cycle of violence.
But we weren't trying to wage war against the entire civilian populations as revenge. That's an entirely different category of crime.
And the destruction of Fallujah from Phantom Fury ended up only marginally better than what happened to Rafah (destroyed about a quarter of the buildings in Fallujah and damaged another quarter).
When it came out that Israel was systematically sodomizing detainees with nightsticks, they had protestors come out in favor of the guards. It's still ongoing, all charges have been dropped. Nobody is scandalized by it.
Even ignoring the fact that protests do not imply popular support, there is no comparison as 9/11 did not include widespread sexual violence and ongoing hostage rape was still going on at the time this happened.
So even if this seemed terrible to most Israelis, it was hard to find someone who will publicly defend a rapist from rape in jail
And that's from a human rights body, and from its representative to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict
I did a study abroad in Israel in 2005 (not jewish, just for middle eastern studies) when Israel pulled out of Gaza and did essentially that. They forcibly removed settlers and left Gaza. As I recall most Israeli's thought it'd be good step toward peace.
Unfortunately Hamas took over Gaza shortly after and shot some 12k+ rockets into southern Israel over the next 20 years, and then launched Oct 7.
Unfortunately now there seems to be far less interest in Israel now in restricting settlers in the West Bank. I also feel for the Palestinians, particularly the Arab Christian communities, however extremists on both sides don't want peace.
Sure, if you ignore the part where they kept bombing Gaza, assassinated political leaders, did ground incursions, and blocked it by land, sea, and air.
If Israel wanted a peaceful two-state solution, why did they keep occupying Gaza by turning it into an open-air prison?
The answer is in the post you replied to.
>> Unfortunately Hamas took over Gaza shortly after and shot some 12k+ rockets into southern Israel
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/egypt-court-seeks-deat... https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/the-egyptian-armys-c...
It's more complicated of course:
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2024/02/27/why-e...
“Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas,” said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting in 2019. “This is part of our strategy, to divide the Palestinians between those in Gaza and those in Judea and Samaria.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/the-netanyahu-...
I'm a Zionist only in the sense that I believe both the Jews and Arabs (Palestinians) have/had a right to states in their respective majority areas because of secular reasons after studying the history of both sides; not on religious or theological grounds.
It's partly what led me to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy which doesn't believe in "Christian Zionism" as a form of end-of-days prophecy. The level of crazy I saw in Evangelical churches and groups during my time there could become absurd.
They also happen to be caught between a rock and a hard place where both the Israelis and the Muslim Palestinians both oppress them. Quoting from [1]:
I am a Christian by religion, born in Nazareth, Israel to
Arabic-speaking Christian parents and brought up in Kufur Yasief,
the hiding place of Josephus Flavius
Persecution for Christians in Israel and Palestine is not on the
scale it is in Egypt, but it is there nonetheless. It must be added
that there is a growing number of Jewish-background, and Russian
Christians in Israel, who suffer more persecution from the
Jewish state and people.
...
Christian Arabs in Israel/Palestine live in a climate of fear
and therefore hypocrisy. Pressure on Arabic-speaking Christians
to tow the Muslim Arab nationalist line is so great, that we are even
afraid of complaining about injustices against us.
We suffer:
• At the hands of Jews, because we are seen as:
o Arabs: and so enemies, and primitive.
o Christian: and so gentiles. WE are often blamed, by association,
for the European holocaust.
• At the hands of Muslims because we are Christian, and "infidels."
We are often punished for “western” bias towards Israel.
One thing you will find across the board is that nobody is willing to compromise on security. Most voters today remember the second intifada. There is no serious political position where Israel fully withdraws from the wb. But there’s a big difference between “massively expanse settlements” and “phase out settlements and make room for the possibility of a future Palestinian state”.
The words “Palestinian state” are usually political suicide here in Israel, but the fact that Palestine is recognized to various extent by many countries in the world means that eventually these two realities are going to have to clash.
comment said: "rejecting two state solution". poll numbers I see is around half rejects it, not 80%.
comment said: "killing or expelling all people in former palestine". there is no poll numbers for that specifically and the closest numbers for expelling people I see online is less than half, not 80%.
now you say "Palestinian eradication". OK, show the polls about 80-90% of israel supporting "Palestinian eradication".
* Well, implied, by "Israel" I mean the state, the government.
Yes, that's how i understood it in my reply to you. It was the follow up who moved goalposts
Isn't the humane solution to move the troops back out, instead? Of course the aggressors in a war will never do so, they will only press forward.
also they did it in entire Gaza, unilateral disengagement
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67082047
This article is from a few days after that, but I remember that there were confirmations already during the day.
It is outside their zone of interest.
Counterpoint, a more passive turn of phrase is more fitting: How Israeli society was shaped around oct 7.
The event doesn't shape society by itself, political and media response/interest shape the society.
Or is there some other perspective, other than what Israelis can be observed as doing? I assume what I've seen is what Israel is like.
“Anyone who wants to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas,” said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting in 2019. “This is part of our strategy, to divide the Palestinians between those in Gaza and those in Judea and Samaria.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/the-netanyahu-...
Except for Palestinians of course, who suffer a terror attack every day, and are expected to remain peaceful afterwards, or they will be punished with another terror attack.
The only reasonable conclusion from the Gaza experiment of giving control to the Palestinians is that they will only use that to attack Israel. The mistake of the disengagement will not be repeated.
Nobody in Israel is willing to give Palestinians control anymore. We've tried that and we see how it went completely wrong. Thank god it was just Gaza because if 7th october attacks came from the west bank, Israel would be gone.
The most peace that can be achieved is sadly in the current situation where Israel maintains control of the Palestinians and they don't get a chance to organize another 7th of October from the west bank, which is just few kilometers from Tel Aviv.
The Palestinians authority can't even win elections and they have stopped doing elections. If they were to resume elections, presumably Hamas would also take control of the west bank too. The majority of Palestinians would support 7th of October attacks on the rest of Israel. Which is an existential threat to Israel.
It's worth noting that the whole notion of having Palestinian "democratic" regime alongside Israel is as far from arabic culture as possible. There are no arabic democracies. Even after the arabic spring, none of the arabic countries developed a functioning democracy. So the current situation of the Palestinians not having a "fully democratic" regime is actually the norm in all arabic countries. The most democracy that Palestinians could hope for is the current situation under Israeli control. If the entirety of Israel vanished tommorow, and the Palestinians were given democratic elections, they would immediately devolve into an Islamic state with Sharia law where the average Palestinian has less freedom than today.
So anyone judging Israel for the continued control over the Palestinians needs to remember both what would happen to Israel without this control (genocide) and what would have happened to the Palestinians themselves (Sharia theocracy with less rights).
There might be some Tel-Aviv detached people who support the Palestinians, but I guaranty you there are no Palestinian supporters in the Gaza adjacent zones which were hit in the 7th of October.
This is why we can't have nice things.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/pm-said-to-tell...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/warning-of-kidn...