5 ms·

Weird to see all these comments calling the army generous. They didn't have to bomb a civilian block at all.

by asddubs 3y ago

throwawaysleep 3y ago
[flagged]
- asddubs 3y ago
  Should your house be bombed if someone down the street is building a bomb in their garage?
  - throwawaysleep 3y ago
    I would absolutely expect my house to be bombed if my government was building bombs in the homes nearby. Heck in pretty much every other war, you could expect to be bombed in you worked in a factory building the bombs. On the other hand, I would not have voted for them in the first place. I also love my family, so when a military tells me to evacuate a city, I would be getting out of there no matter what.
    - asddubs 3y ago
      maybe Israel should bomb itself then? https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
    - defrost 3y ago
      The overwhelming majority of those being bombed were were not part of the 44.45% that voted for Hamas in the 2006 election. Certainly none of the ~ 3K children killed by the IDF in recent weeks voted.
      - candiodari 3y ago
        There's this video from a woman reporter in Gaza taking a video, and casually a rocket flies out from behind her. Either from her building directly, and if not the launch site must have been very close by. She turns around, say "oh that happens all the time", and goes on, as if nothing happened. I can't find the video of the Palestinian reporter actually laughing it off, but there's these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_fP6mlNSK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_fP6mlNSK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaqWqjb4w6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaqWqjb4w6s Obviously if this happens, you leave the area and don't come back. And if you don't leave, you don't complain about a rocket coming back. And of course, no explanation from anyone for the effects on the other side. Because everyone is saying "Israel stops most of these rockets and less people die there". And because of that, Israel should just tolerate this. People in Israel should just accept they live under constant rocket fire. THAT, is apparently not worth disturbing comfortable apartments of people in Gaza ... https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-01/ty-article/.premium/hospital-serving-israels-most-bombarded-city-operating-at-30-percent-capacity/0000018b-8887-dd28-a7df-9897d1dd0000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-01/ty-article/.p... How anyone can even suggest Gazans have any kind of moral high ground when they're not doing anything about this, how they expect to go about their lives undisturbed while their apartments are being used to kill people ...
        AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        In general a very good comment. But: > Obviously if this happens, you leave the area and don't come back. And if you don't leave, you don't complain about a rocket coming back. I suspect that for the average Gaza resident, there aren't many places they can go that aren't right next to somewhere that rockets come from.
        candiodari 3y ago
        More realistically: Hamas is actually trying to kill Palestinians, forcing people to stay under Israeli bombs, shooting them if they don't. It's not really a shortage of space. And yes, that would mean Israel is the biggest ally of Gazan civilians, despite the obvious.
dragonwriter 3y ago
Especially given the Israeli government's historical role in both initially fostering the development of Hamas and more recently continuing to work to strengthen it as a means of dividing Palestinians and having a less sympathetic enemy to, particularly, secular Western nations than the less-Islamist, more-secular-Arab-nationalist PLO and later Fatah and the Palestinian Authority to serve as a pretext to avoid pressure to make peace and accept the existence of a Palestinian state. [0] Nothing is "generous", at best it is extremely cynical PR gestures, to be seen as generous by people who only pay attention during the fighting, and not to the broader context in which Israel has spent literal decades deliberately engineering conditions to assure a continued excuse for it. [0] for the recent part see, e.g., https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up... Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015. According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
- eberkund 3y ago
  Would you have been against granting Israeli work permits to Palestinians or allowing funding to to enter Gaza? I read the article you shared and other than the unconfirmed paraphrasing of Netanyahu at the 2019 meeting, the actual policies come across as something that would work to improve relations. Work permits, more freedom, "turning a blind eye" to sustained rocket attacks.
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  All wars Israel has been involved in were started by its enemies. You can start an argument about settlements and there is some merit to that. But no honest discussion can be started from your position. If Israel didn't try to minimize civilian casualties, this would look very different. To say otherwise is not only cynical PR, it is actively malicious. Towards Israeli and Palestinians both.
orionsbelt 3y ago
You have no idea why they did it. Of course, neither do I. But I suspect they had good reason. Rockets also continue to be fired daily from civilian areas of Gaza into Israel. When the rockets stop — whether because Hamas surrenders, runs out of weapons, or otherwise — I’ll be more inclined to think a bombing is presumptively unnecessary.
- Jochim 3y ago
  Why do they deserve the benefit of the doubt? It's undeniable that Israel lies brazenly and repeatedly about it's attacks. See their murder of Shireen Abu Aqla last year for example. The time footage leaked of one of their gunboats shelling four children playing on a beach still stands out for me.
Jochim 3y ago
The number of people who unquestioningly believe Israel's propaganda is genuinely concerning. We have people referring to the kindness of a military that dropped more bombs in a week than were dropped the first year of the Iraq war. A military that openly targets children, journalists, and medical personnel. The unquestioning acceptance that every target struck is a Hamas militant/base. The leaders of Israel openly referring to all palestinians as non-human animals and invoking bible verses that openly call for their genocide. The generosity of the IDF was made plain when one of the hostages revealed that they shelled their own villages, killing both Israeli hostages and Hamas indiscriminately.
tomjen3 3y ago
Most of these posts are from bots (at least on Reddit). There is a propaganda war going on in cyberspace and Israel is trying to not lose it. Too bad, because every time I hear that countries name I think of screaming Palestinian children with limbs ripped off and then some guy in a fancy suit saying “of course we try to minimise civilian casualties, but under the law of war bla bla bla “. And you can kinda see how they can never win that.

Weird to see all these comments calling the army generous. They didn't have to bomb a civilian block at all.

throwawaysleep 3y ago

[flagged]

asddubs 3y ago
Should your house be bombed if someone down the street is building a bomb in their garage?
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  I would absolutely expect my house to be bombed if my government was building bombs in the homes nearby. Heck in pretty much every other war, you could expect to be bombed in you worked in a factory building the bombs. On the other hand, I would not have voted for them in the first place. I also love my family, so when a military tells me to evacuate a city, I would be getting out of there no matter what.
  - asddubs 3y ago
    maybe Israel should bomb itself then? https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
  - defrost 3y ago
    The overwhelming majority of those being bombed were were not part of the 44.45% that voted for Hamas in the 2006 election. Certainly none of the ~ 3K children killed by the IDF in recent weeks voted.
    - candiodari 3y ago
      There's this video from a woman reporter in Gaza taking a video, and casually a rocket flies out from behind her. Either from her building directly, and if not the launch site must have been very close by. She turns around, say "oh that happens all the time", and goes on, as if nothing happened. I can't find the video of the Palestinian reporter actually laughing it off, but there's these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_fP6mlNSK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_fP6mlNSK8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaqWqjb4w6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaqWqjb4w6s Obviously if this happens, you leave the area and don't come back. And if you don't leave, you don't complain about a rocket coming back. And of course, no explanation from anyone for the effects on the other side. Because everyone is saying "Israel stops most of these rockets and less people die there". And because of that, Israel should just tolerate this. People in Israel should just accept they live under constant rocket fire. THAT, is apparently not worth disturbing comfortable apartments of people in Gaza ... https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-01/ty-article/.premium/hospital-serving-israels-most-bombarded-city-operating-at-30-percent-capacity/0000018b-8887-dd28-a7df-9897d1dd0000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-01/ty-article/.p... How anyone can even suggest Gazans have any kind of moral high ground when they're not doing anything about this, how they expect to go about their lives undisturbed while their apartments are being used to kill people ...
      - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        In general a very good comment. But: > Obviously if this happens, you leave the area and don't come back. And if you don't leave, you don't complain about a rocket coming back. I suspect that for the average Gaza resident, there aren't many places they can go that aren't right next to somewhere that rockets come from.
        candiodari 3y ago
        More realistically: Hamas is actually trying to kill Palestinians, forcing people to stay under Israeli bombs, shooting them if they don't. It's not really a shortage of space. And yes, that would mean Israel is the biggest ally of Gazan civilians, despite the obvious.

dragonwriter 3y ago

Especially given the Israeli government's historical role in both initially fostering the development of Hamas and more recently continuing to work to strengthen it as a means of dividing Palestinians and having a less sympathetic enemy to, particularly, secular Western nations than the less-Islamist, more-secular-Arab-nationalist PLO and later Fatah and the Palestinian Authority to serve as a pretext to avoid pressure to make peace and accept the existence of a Palestinian state. [0] Nothing is "generous", at best it is extremely cynical PR gestures, to be seen as generous by people who only pay attention during the fighting, and not to the broader context in which Israel has spent literal decades deliberately engineering conditions to assure a continued excuse for it. [0] for the recent part see, e.g., https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up... Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015. According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

eberkund 3y ago
Would you have been against granting Israeli work permits to Palestinians or allowing funding to to enter Gaza? I read the article you shared and other than the unconfirmed paraphrasing of Netanyahu at the 2019 meeting, the actual policies come across as something that would work to improve relations. Work permits, more freedom, "turning a blind eye" to sustained rocket attacks.
raxxorraxor 3y ago
All wars Israel has been involved in were started by its enemies. You can start an argument about settlements and there is some merit to that. But no honest discussion can be started from your position. If Israel didn't try to minimize civilian casualties, this would look very different. To say otherwise is not only cynical PR, it is actively malicious. Towards Israeli and Palestinians both.

orionsbelt 3y ago

You have no idea why they did it. Of course, neither do I. But I suspect they had good reason. Rockets also continue to be fired daily from civilian areas of Gaza into Israel. When the rockets stop — whether because Hamas surrenders, runs out of weapons, or otherwise — I’ll be more inclined to think a bombing is presumptively unnecessary.

Jochim 3y ago
Why do they deserve the benefit of the doubt? It's undeniable that Israel lies brazenly and repeatedly about it's attacks. See their murder of Shireen Abu Aqla last year for example. The time footage leaked of one of their gunboats shelling four children playing on a beach still stands out for me.

Jochim 3y ago

The number of people who unquestioningly believe Israel's propaganda is genuinely concerning. We have people referring to the kindness of a military that dropped more bombs in a week than were dropped the first year of the Iraq war. A military that openly targets children, journalists, and medical personnel. The unquestioning acceptance that every target struck is a Hamas militant/base. The leaders of Israel openly referring to all palestinians as non-human animals and invoking bible verses that openly call for their genocide. The generosity of the IDF was made plain when one of the hostages revealed that they shelled their own villages, killing both Israeli hostages and Hamas indiscriminately.

tomjen3 3y ago

Most of these posts are from bots (at least on Reddit). There is a propaganda war going on in cyberspace and Israel is trying to not lose it. Too bad, because every time I hear that countries name I think of screaming Palestinian children with limbs ripped off and then some guy in a fancy suit saying “of course we try to minimise civilian casualties, but under the law of war bla bla bla “. And you can kinda see how they can never win that.