521 karma · joined October 21, 2017
I mean, that's what it is from the looks of it. Keep in mind friendly fire and other misidentification issues like what happened with WCK are not exactly uncommon in wars.
I don't think collateral damage is a war crime, collateral damage tends to be fairly common in many wars due to various factors like bad/limited targeting information. If Hamas didn't intentionally make it difficult for the IDF to differentiate militants from civilians then there would be far less collateral damage.
I have "Send as" accounts that have this configuration:
Mail is sent through: smtp.gmail.com
However the actual email addresses are often custom domains with say both google and cloudflare sfp records with cloudflare handling the incoming emails and forwarding them to gmail with gmail handling outgoing via google's own smtp server directly.
They aren't remotely clear if this use case is considered a third-party, non-Google email account or a Google-hosted identity since the outgoing smtp server being used is still a google server.
It's crazy that they don't actually explain what "any Google-hosted identities" means.
The quote as a whole.
> There do in fact exist jews which consider themselves the chosen people, and who want to dominate Palestine Lebanon Iran Syria etc, and who consider themselves superior to others (e.g. saying Palestinians aren't even people), including many in israel's current government.
She's painting Jews/Israeli Jews with a very broad antisemitic brush in the quote. I would agree Israel like most countries has extremists, but she doesn't appear to be talking about just them.
> Indeed, many of their words and actions are evidence for an ongoing international case against israel for genocide. I guess there's a globe-wide conspiracy theory against israel for doing nothing wrong?
The reason the world has double standards when it comes to Israel is largely rooted in antisemitism, and it's certainly a big problem in many countries in the world. It's especially a problem in the middle east.
> Given that proper context, the quote reads to me as defending jews like me against the condemnation that israel regularly rightly receives for its behavior.
The way the quote is worded I don't consider that to be a reasonable interpretation.
> When you take a criticism of the behavior of a limited group of people, and try to extrapolate it to all jews based on their identity, you are propagating a common antisemetic trope, and engaging in collective blame spreading, which is hurtful. Jewish people have agency, we don't just do whatever israel tells us to do.
She's the one extrapolating and applying the antisemitic world domination trope. She's making it out as if most/many Jews are involved in world domination.
There's a lot of competing narratives so it's clearly quite tricky, keep in mind the prevalence of conspiracy theories in the middle east is even worse than the west, especially when it comes to anything involving Jews. So one needs to be extra careful to not conflate widely accepted beliefs/narratives coming out of the middle east as fact.
I mean, there's plenty of reports by journalists confirming Hamas restricts access/press freedom, often using threats.[0]
> Okay, so whose statements are you trusting more on what's going on with the Ughurs? <The Chinese government> or <anyone who is not the Chinese government>.
Probably those that are not the Chinese government, but one would still take into account information the Chinese government puts out as well while factoring in their obvious bias.
> I think it's fairly apparent that you aren't British (except by passport)
I mean, having a British passport means you are British by definition I think.
> it's likely you are digesting largely US news sources.
I try to get my news from a diverse range of sources.
> When you said you were British, I assumed you were claiming that what you identified as
I mean, the reason I have multiple passports is because my family background is very diverse, one of my parents was born in the UK but that parent also had one of their parents born in a different country as well, so likewise my own identity has a high level of diversity.
> but perhaps that itself is a British colloquialism.
Yeah, technically my other passports are from countries that were historically controlled by the British at some points in time, although that's probably a fairly large percentage of the countries in the world.
[0] https://cpj.org/2025/05/gaza-journalists-speak-out-about-ham...
Considering their actions/tactics, it seems quite unlikely in this case.
> I'm pretty sure all terrorism happens for reasons which can be served up as a justification.
I'm not saying it was justified, but it was at least understandable given the context. I also understand why the Palestinians use terrorism as well, likewise I don't consider it justified either.
Isn't this just common sense?
> Why don't you research this question yourself, and see where Gaza pops up in the list.
No country AFAIU allows entirely unimpeded access to war zones for international observers/journalists.
> Based on your reasoning, I'm guessing you're satisfied with everything China has to say about the situation of the Uyghars and how it treats them.
No, I'm just saying you can't always expect using international observers/journalists to get to the truth to be a realistic strategy depending on the situation. OSINT and other reporting is also useful.
> But the way, the British spell words you've used like "analyzing", "organization" and "de-radicalizing" with an 's' not a 'z'. But you know this because, as you claimed, you are British, right?
I said I was a British citizen among a couple others, I did not grow up in the UK, I grew up in the US. I am also not a citizen of the country I was born in either.
I guess my point was more just that one should be careful with these sort of comparisons, because even if you have accurate data you can still be simply measuring the wrong thing entirely. Raw death counts can be useful as part of the analysis, but they also don't tell the entire story.
> In terms of my statement about intenational observers / journalists- I don't think it's contentious to suggest that the overwhelming reason they can't operate in Gaza is because Israel won't allow them into Gaza.
It's kind of a moot point regardless because even if Israel didn't impede international observers/journalists from operating in Gaza, they still couldn't operate freely due to Hamas.
> If Israel let them in and they were impeded or detained or killed by Hamas, then those would be possible outcomes.
Outcomes that Israel would probably get blamed for even if the fault was entirely due to Hamas. It's a no-win scenario.
Keep in mind I'm not neccesarially saying Israel's making the best decisions here, I'm just pointing out that allowing international observers isn't some magic bullet for getting to the truth.
> The list of countries that grant chaperoned journalistic access to places includes: North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Myanmar, Eritrea for starters.
What countries allow reporters unimpeded/uncontrolled access to war zones? I don't think Ukraine does and I don't think any of the gulf coast countries attacked by Iran were allowing free reporting either. I would think it's not very many as the security reasons alone are highly problematic.
Sure, I don't disagree there, but this probably has more to do with Israel going to extreme efforts to protect the lives of their citizens as opposed to Hamas which goes to extreme efforts to put their civilian population in harms way.
> Add to that the stress and perceived safety of these two groups on a day to day basis couldn't be more different: One lives in a war zone without security of the basics of existence and the other lives in a nice western country where atheists can happily go out for a meal, then watch some football then go clubbing.
I don't disagree that the conditions are different between the sides however Israelis also live in fear, especially due to their history and enemies that openly call for their destruction.
> Look at the way Israel reacted after the terror attack, it was hardly calm and measured, it acted a lot more like Hamas - and that was a one-off shock event. That's not a coincidence. People are people.
I would expect most countries to respond extremely aggressively to a large terror attack like October 7th so I don't view Israel's response as being unusually harsh, given the severity of the attack it seems to be reasonably measured. When the US was attacked it invaded 2 countries(one of which wasn't even involved in the attacks).
> Now Palestinians are people who, from their perspective, are being asked to negotiate with the people who not only killed/injured these people, but also who took their homes and land in the first place.
Yes, because you don't negotiate peace deals with allies, you negotiate them with enemies. Unfortunately it's very difficult to negotiate with Jihadis in general. It's also very difficult to deter them. I understand why they don't want to negotiate in good faith, it's because they believe that they will obtain their goals by continuing to fight.
> They haven't been offered a negotiation in good faith. You basically conceded this earlier. I think even if they were offered a negotiation that looked to be in good faith its likely it wouldn't actually be in good faith because some significant proportion of actors in the Israeli administration would prevent it. This is putting aside the issue of non administration actions (like presidential assassinations).
Historically the Israelis at a few points in time did try to negotiate a two state solution in good faith, unfortunately the Palestinian leadership was not negotiating in good faith. The current right wing government came to power due to the failure of those negotiations and the subsequent Second Intifada. This hardened Israeli's into thinking the Palestinians simply will never agree to a final peace deal. Hence you now have the current Israeli government that is not particularly willing to try and negotiate a peace deal due to the widespread view that any attempt would be futile at this stage.
> I think it's questionable whether "Russia" is even trying to take Ukraine at this point. The Kremlin/putin is probably just trying to break Ukraine away from the Russian diaspora.
They still probably want to take Ukraine, which explains why they have refused to negotiate terms in good faith.
> You can't have a free, rich successful country next to Russia, which Russians have connections to and can see is a much better place to live and expect to maintain a dictatorship on the same terms you have to date in the long term.
I think it's more a spheres of influence/imperialism sort of thing than anything to do with economics.
> And Ukrainians have an even longer history with the Russ, well before the Holdomor. It's not exactly a surprise they continue to resist.
There's a very good reason all the post-soviet countries begged to join NATO, they recognize who their long term enemy is. Unfortunately Ukraine didn't take measures to deal with that threat quickly enough like other post-soviet countries did.
> They kind of tried that?
I mean the Gaza disengagement was a concession made by Israel, it was made unilaterally however which is the big reason it ultimately failed catastrophically.
> Anyone that cannot walk in the shoes of a normal Palestinian has zero chance of resolving this. I don't think Israel can continue to obscure and cover up the reality of the lives Palestinians actually live in the long term, so this looks life a zero-sum game to me, at present.
I'm not denying the Palestinians in Gaza live in a very bad situation, however that situation is at least in part due to their own bad decisions. Palestinians have agency and need to understand that they also need to take steps to make their lives better.
> Look, it's always good to talk, but I don't think we are getting anywhere at this point.
Maybe not but talking can help understand the perspective of the other side as well, I try to understand both sides as best I can so that I can look for areas of potential agreement and viable paths to peace.
> I just would prefer to stop seeing so many kids dying and Jews outside Israel (who are hugely opposed to Israels actions) ironically having to suffer biogtry by association.
I think most Israelis also want to stop seeing so many kids dying as well, I certainly do, but Israelis also don't want to sacrifice the lives of their own children to an enemy that clearly wants their destruction.
Yeah, I'm not sure how credible it is, I only pointed that one out since you were comparing generally upper range estimates with other upper range estimates.
> I can't see how you could possibly get anywhere near any meaningful figure for 'combatant to civilian death ratios' in Iraq.
I mean, it's the figure that I think matters the most. I agree it's probably also one of the most difficult figures to accurately determine.
> Add to that the issue that, in Gaza, Israel has completely sealed off the area from international observers, so credible data on "combatant to civilian death ratios" just won't exist.
International observers can't operate in Gaza without what is effectively the consent of Hamas. Hamas deliberately doesn't properly differentiate civilian deaths from combatant deaths so it seems not particularly likely that international observers could get accurate data on combatant to civilian death ratios if they are being watched by Hamas.
> All I can say is that based on the data, the claim made is absolutely not supported by the evidence. [Edit - even if the million figure were credible, it's still at least double, and actually indicating the opposite of what was claimed]
Overall deaths is not really the figure I would focus on regardless.
My point I guess is mostly that Israeli's need to be convinced that the Palestinians actually want to end the war and make a peace deal, but to do that you probably need to first convince the Palestinians that it's in their best interest to end the war and make a final peace deal. Obviously none of this is likely to be all that quick.
> Now you are asking the group that lost everything, and is living under constant stress with no prospects, and with no power, to engage with another group that holds all the power and won't create a good faith environment for any negotiation.
So this idea is really emblematic of my main issue with how the Palestinian leadership has approached the entire conflict, rather than even attempt good faith negotiations they turn to terrorism in some futile attempt to destroy Israel. Palestinians have agency, there are different paths they can go down and Israel has a history of making peace deals with Arabs. What happened in Gaza is the result of years of terrible choices made by groups like Hamas with Israel responding how one would expect many countries to respond so similar threats/attacks.
The side that isn't ready for a peace deal yet is the side that refuses to negotiate in good faith, Russia follows that same pattern with Ukraine because like the Palestinians they think they need to continue the fight to get a better outcome.
> The side that holds the power breaks extremism by clearing its own side of the house and by making concessions that clearly demonstrate good will, repeatedly, over a long period of time.
Well, they kind of tried that in Gaza with the unilateral disengagement in 2005 and it completely backfired. Similar situation with Lebanon as well, the territories where Israel is being attacked from are all where they tried the strategy of unilateral disengagement, while the West Bank has less issues because they never disengaged. It would be great if things would play out that way but it doesn't look likely to me. That's why negotiation of a peace deal is so important.
> Regarding your second point, Israel isn't closest to my actual ethical beliefs in practice. It's an expansionist ethnostate that hugely intefers in Western politics and the information space. You don't advance ethics by surrendering your ethics.
I mean, you can say the same about most countries in that region which have far worse ethical issues in general.
Some groups do put the figures above 1 million.[0]
> I think the estimates for Gaza, with a population of about 2.2 million, are between 70 to 75,000.
Keep in mind these figures are not civilian casualty figures, they are overall casualty figures.
Data quality issues do make comparisons rather tricky. Generally you would also want to compare against similar battles that have mainly urban conflict rather than a war in a large country where the amount of fighting varied much more.
In any case looking at raw casualty numbers doesn't really give one the best picture by itself, analyzing combatant to civilian death ratios is probably better than population death ratios as that gives you a better idea at how careful parties are at reducing civilian casualties. Unfortunately Hamas also uses tactics that are designed to increase civilian casualties as well which further complicates comparative analysis.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualt...
Israeli radicalization in that sense is mostly reactionary, the second intifada is what really moved Israel far to the right and subsequent events didn't help either. Israelis largely still want to live in peace with Palestinians, but Israeli's do not think Palestinians want to live in peace with Israelis. Not once has Palestinian leadership so much as proposed a concrete peace deal that they would accept.
> My ethics aren't fungible based on the tribe someone belongs to...
My point was that out of all countries in the middle east, it's almost certainly Israel that is closest to behaving according to your actual ethical beliefs in practice. Advocating for policies that would ultimately result in some Islamic dictatorship or other bad outcome in Israel/Palestine is rather counterproductive if you want to advance western ethics.
Potential, sure.
> without gargantuan shifts in numerous things
Obviously any solution will require gargantuan shifts in numerous things given where things are currently.
> I'm inclined to think that's largely true about the past too, although there was a point around 2000 where it wasn't fantasy.
I would agree around 2000 it was potentially feasible on the Israeli side, both population wise and leadership had reasonable levels of support. The 2nd intifada pushed things really far in the wrong direction. Unfortunately the Palestinian leaders walked away without so much as even proposing any concrete settlement terms that they would accept.
> But given settlement activity continued over this time, it's hardly a realistic basis on which to form agreement.
I agree settlement activity is an issue, but I would disagree it is what broke the peace process.
> Why negotiate the borders of a Palestinian state while the territory you're negotiating over is continuing to be settled?
You sue for peace to make the best of a bad situation...and to stop the situation from getting worse, that's a pretty common way for armed conflicts to end.
> Israel is a very sophisticated political actor (that holds nearly all the power), it's a complex mix of political opinions (which don't align) but whatever those are, the state itself in terms of how it acts in the world looks a lot like Russia in the information space.
There are many that try to paint Israel to look like Russia...but in reality there is not much in common with how they operate. Russia will sometimes use similar justifications(i.e. security threats) but with Russia it's usually just a cover for more imperialistic end goals.
> That's partly a function of the particular position Israel is in, and in the same way that Palestinian authority is mostly politically unsophisticated isn't surprising.
Palestinians historically have had absolutely terrible leadership, there's really only so much Israel can do when the other side doesn't have the political will to come to a final peace deal.
> That should affects the way we account for information surrounding Israel-Palestine, like when for the thousandth time an Israeli spokesman appears on the BBC to very reasonably tell us about the strong ethical rules that govern the IDF, and that this particular incident was just a terrible accident.
You need to be careful with misinformation in general, there is one group that quite openly states they want more civilian casualties, and that is Hamas.
> The hardline elements within Israel ultimately win
That tends to be what happens when terrorist attacks are successful.
> which is not particularly surprising given the history of some of the characters involved (and that deep rooted mindset) over the years (Irgun etc)
The history there is much more complicated, the IDF in 1948 dissolved the Irgun by force[0]. Much later it was also the former Irgun leader[1] that ultimately made peace with Egypt[2] by giving back the Sinai.
> who were also very happy to carry out terrorism on British targets alongside their list of other atrocities.
To be fair they didn't do that for entirely no reason either, Britain prevented Jewish refugees from entering mandatory Palestine while the Nazi's were genociding them in Europe. History is messy after all. Benny Morris has some good material on the history.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altalena_Affair
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Begin
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt%E2%80%93Israel_peace_tre...
Are you claiming no Jews had to leave their homes? That's just not factually accurate.
> 80 years of ethnic cleansing is genocide.
Ethnic cleansing does not turn into genocide just because some years have passed.
I think my positions/views are fairly middle of the road/moderate when it comes to the conflict.
I mean, it comes down somewhat to definitions of war I guess.
> Northern Ireland was/is part of the UK, so civil war I could probably agree with.
Maybe an irregular civil war or something like that? Maybe a low level insurgency? There's a few ways to describe that conflict.
I probably should know more about the troubles since I lived in southern Ireland for 3 semesters of college, but that was over 10 years ago.
> The reason I mentioned religion was nothing to do with the requirements it places on how things should happen, but rather about the entitlement and infallibility that a belief that god has decreed something can grant people's mindset and outlook.
Sure, religion does make solving these problems more difficult. I know at least Israeli Jews are often relatively secular statistically at least, although there are those that are more religious as well(which tend to cause more issues).
Different religions have different doctrines as well which play into the conflict in various ways. All religions will generally have problematic teachings but some will cause a lot more real world issues than others, Islamic teachings around Jihad and Martyrdom tend to be especially problematic.
When Israelis see they are surrounded by groups that openly call for their destruction then it's not surprising that Israelis believe those threats due to the history of those groups acting on those threats. Then there's the issue that historically whenever Israel would move in the direction of peace with the Palestinians things would backfire(i.e. Second Intifada).
I'm not really sure what the best solution is but I think some Palestinian de-radicalization will be a prerequisite, but I also don't really know how that could be done in practice.
> And I'm an atheist.
If you had to choose somewhere in the middle east to live where would it be? I presume it would be Israel as that's basically the only country in the middle east where being an atheist is acceptable in the society.
According the laws of war military infrastructure(i.e. tunnels) is a valid reason.
> Let's arm both sides equally if you want to talk about a war.
Nobody at war wants the fight to be fair, they will always want to be on the winning side.
> What would happen in a equal fight, do you think?
If a fight were truly equal then neither side would win, so I guess if it were equal then the conflict would be even more endless since neither side would win.
Sure, but it wasn't just one side losing homes.
> the killing never stopped
There never was a final peace deal and only Israel ever made concrete final settlement offers.
Not formally.
> I've come to believe that it's pretty impossible to understand Israel-Palestine without the lens of religion.
From my understanding according to common Islamic teachings non-Muslims are supposed to be Dhimmi's[0](i.e. second class citizens) and be ruled over by Muslim's. So I think this is probably the source of a lot of the issues with the Israel-Palestine conflict, although there are other factors in play as well.
I'm arguing that the genocidal intent is really the crux of the issue and that the genocidal intent needs especially strong evidence in a war.
Legitimate war goals existing for a conflict generally raise the evidentiary bar for something to be considered a genocide as they tend to serve as the plausible alternate non-genocidal intent.
It's a war, military strategy doesn't tend to put much emphasis on making wars a fair fight. Israel isn't under any obligation to go out of their way to preserve structures built on top of military infrastructure(i.e. tunnels). There were certainly not tunnel networks in Iraq like there were in Gaza.
Why not? That's what typically happens when one side loses a war, I'm not sure how prolonging the conflict is helpful.
> And I'm an atheist.
So am I.
> I'm also British.
Funny enough I am as well(in addition to a couple others). History is full of people losing their homes and becoming refugees like some of my ancestors did, that's often much better than the alternative of staying to fight and die. I am certainly not trying to get their homes back as that is long settled history.
Hamas is the democratically elected government of Gaza and retains a high level of support amongst the population. The population could put more pressure on Hamas to disarm but so far it has been fairly minimal.
> Israel's main strategy until recently appeared to be to maximise suffering to force displacement.
Israel's strategy before October 7th was one of containment, but that clearly failed so they switched to a strategy of proactive threat management.
Israel probably should just fully occupy the territories in the short term and make a more serious attempt at Palestinian de-radicalization so that hopefully some sort of two state solution eventually becomes viable. Occupation with de-radicalization worked with the Nazi's and Imperial Japan at the end of WW2 but Israeli's just really don't want to have to fully occupy Gaza so that's going to be politically problematic.
> I don't really see a realistic peaceful strategy for Gazans based on decades of history, they have little power.
They had opportunities for peace, Palestinian leadership ultimately threw those opportunities away by refusing to even so much as propose a concrete peace deal that would be acceptable.
The Nakba is not genocide, it might be considered ethnic cleansing but that's not remotely the same as genocide. It also wasn't just one side doing ethnic cleansing either, Israel has a large Arab minority population with full citizenship while the same is not true for Jews in other Arab countries or Palestinian controlled territories(i.e. Area A in the west bank).
Massive amounts of Jews were driven from their homes around the same time as the Nakba throughout the middle east and they are not fighting to take back their original homes. This idea that everyone can somehow go back to their original homes or ancestors homes only serves to perpetuate the conflict.
People flee from wars, sometimes that's simply the least bad option, I have ancestors that have lost their homes due to their home country losing a war of aggression but I am certainly not about to go fight to try and take back my ancestors homes. That's all settled history at this point.
> Anyone who's familiar with the history of Palestine will understand why they fight for their homelands and families
There's much more to it than just the Nakba, it's also the many years of Palestinians being used as a tool by Arab countries to fight Israel.
Keep in mind the UNRWA(UN agency which is in charge of Palestinian refugees) unlike the UNHCR(UN agency in charge of non-Palestinian refugees) does not have a mandate to resettle refugees which deliberately perpetuates the conflict. Arab countries also coordinated a refusal to grant Palestinian refugees or their descendants citizenship as a way to perpetuate the conflict.
Then there's the coordinated antisemitic terrorist propaganda taught to Palestinian children as well.
Just as an example hypothetical, if there were evidence that the Israeli government was implementing as a clear matter of top down government policy the deliberate extermination/targeting of Palestinian civilians with no plausible military/security justification then that would probably be considered genocidal intent by a state. I think such a policy would also then have to be successfully implemented for it to be considered an actual genocide.
Merely being say careless when it comes to civilian casualties in a war would not reach the bar of genocide by itself(although that could still be a war crime). The evidence I've seen so far indicates Israel operates with reasonable care to avoid civilian casualties where feasible(similar if not better than United States when say the United States fought ISIS).
Genocide in international law is an extremely high bar. Wars(even ones with many war crimes) generally do not reach that threshold.
AFAIU per international law either war crimes or crimes against humanity do not by themselves mean there is a genocide. Almost all wars will see these crimes in isolated instances at a minimum, but that doesn't translate to genocide without the dolus specialis(special intent) factor as a deliberate policy(i.e. Nazi's implementing the Holocaust as policy).