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There is an ocean of injustice in the world and this one issue causes more anger than many that are equally abhorrent.

TillE 3y ago
It's one of very very few issues where America and most of the west have stood firmly in support of violence and oppression for decades, even on issues like settlements where the US formally acknowledges the illegality and takes no action. Of course people care primarily about the actions of their own democratically elected government, that's the whole point. There's no need to protest when people agree with their government.
- sabarn01 3y ago
  Settlements are of course wrong, but I don't really see any concrete action that Israel could take other than removing settlements. Even if they did that the fundamental facts on the ground wouldn't change. I don't see how they lift the blockade and any 2 state solution seems a nonstarter.
  - thelock85 3y ago
    The Israeli govt can and should halt establishing new settlements or expanding existing settlements, especially when expansion is zero-sum with further displacement (e.g. Hebron). It can also enforce the criminality of extrajudicial settler violence. Agreed any real solutions are a nonstarter in current situation, but a lack of imagination or will about how to move forward just further normalizes the illegality of it all.
  - instaeloq 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - sabarn01 3y ago
      If I'm Israel as long as Hamas controls Gaza I would support a blockade. If Hamas formally accepts a 2 state solution then I would change my opinion, but as it stands now the Israeli government has a responsibility to protect its citizen which to mean means limiting the ability of Hamas to acquire weapons.
      - Qwertious 3y ago
        If I'm Hamas I see zero incentive to concede anything when Fatah has been infinitely more diplomatic and in return has received squat. Israel's policies caused Hamas, they have plenty of options that don't involve a giant starving ghetto but they choose not to exercise them. In particular: negotiate a resolution with Fatah, then provide Fatah with military support in ousting Hamas from Gaza (e.g. providing them with guns and access to the Gaza strip in the first place). Israel starving Gaza and keeping their economy permanently dead will only feed Hamas's victim narrative and enrage off Gaza's population more.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Settlements are of course wrong, but I don't really see any concrete action that Israel could take other than removing settlements. It could do a lot in the West Bank (where the fully or partially PA administered territory is divided into 166 non-contiguous regions), and anything there xould be done in a way that it looks like a win for the Fatah-led PA, weakening the perception that Hamas and its violence is the only entity capable of delivering for the Palestinian people, undermining Hamas politically. OTOH, the whole reason Israel fostered Hamas during the direct occupation of Gaza was to create an Islamist competitor for the more secular and sympathetic to non-Muslim states PLO, and the reason they've (and government ministers have said this explicitly) continued to support them in between periods of active conflict is to deflect pressure for peace and a two-state solution, so there’s zero chance of the Netanyahu government doing this.
    - sabarn01 3y ago
      I think I agree with that. Which is the PA should be boosted and rewarded with increased freedom and autonomy as a counter example to Gaza. As it stands right now Israel is almost rewarding being more intransigent.
      - FireBeyond 3y ago
        > As it stands right now Israel is almost rewarding being more intransigent. Not almost. The far right Israel factions (Netanyahu, Likud, etc.) have actually repeatedly encouraged and cultivated Hamas. They benefit far more from the polarization that Hamas brings than a mild and moderate PA who is willing to work diplomatically, because then that increases pressure on those far right Israelis to also be more temperate, which goes against their goals.
      - sillystuff 3y ago
        The PA have no legitimacy with the majority of Palestinians especially in Gaza. Israel tried to ignore the vote that brought Hamas's political wing into power in Democratic elections in Gaza, and supported what was essentially a coup by the PA. But, the Palestinians rose up against the PA and its Israeli backers and reclaimed control of Gaza. Funny since Israel originally supported (including arming) Hamas* hoping the religious Hamas would split the populations support for more secular nationalist movements in Palestine. But, you can be both religious and nationalist. *Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood; Hamas grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood.
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      Apparently I should explain my opinion more clearly. You are all through this thread. You have detailed opinions of the history of the area, and you are clearly aware that the ground reality is that Israel makes and enforces the laws in the West Bank, and that the Israeli military has supported Israeli people in driving the existing Palestinian residents off their land, and either destroying existing Palestinian homes and infrastructure then building their own homes, or simply moving into the forcibly confiscated homes. It is extraordinarily misleading to pretend a) that you believe that the actual law in the West Bank is that of the Ottoman Empire that no longer exists or b) that you believe Israeli settlers being friendly locals who are simply following Ottoman law and developing empty land. You also, with your demonstrated familiarity with the history of the area, must be aware of the military-enforced eviction from and demolition of Palestinian homes and farms, and the restrictions on Palestinian people preventing them from moving out of the occupied West Bank. There is no person on earth who knows this history, is capable of arguing on Hacker News, and also needs an explanation of why forcibly driving people from their homes under military occupation in order to replace them with people of a different religion/ethnicity/nation is bad. There are, unfortunately, a number of people who simply disagree with this moral position - and it appears you are one of them, and that you are attempting to convince other less informed people that this is not what is happening by lying about it.
      - dotancohen 3y ago
        > Israel makes and enforces the laws in the West Bank, and that the Israeli military has supported Israeli people in driving the existing Palestinian residents off their land, and either destroying existing Palestinian homes and infrastructure then building their own homes, or simply moving into the forcibly confiscated homes. I understand that there is a very prominent lobby to present property disputes as Jews stealing Palestinian homes. I'm willing to discuss this. Present to me each case of "Jews stealing Palestinian homes" and I will do my best to research the circumstances of each one individually. I'll invest the time in that, and maybe I'll learn something. But from what I've seen, each property dispute as an individual dispute could be debated either way. I will admit that there does exist inconsistencies in rulings regarding property disputes between Jews and Arabs. But I do not think that those inconsistencies are any more prominent than judicial inconsistencies in other areas without regard to the nationality of the parties. > It is extraordinarily misleading to pretend a) that you believe that the actual law in the West Bank is that of the Ottoman Empire that no longer exists or Actually, yes, I do believe that the basis of the laws in the West Bank are Ottoman. That was even explained to me by an anti-settler movement whose tours to the West Bank I took a few times to learn about the West Bank. The organization is called Breaking the Silence, I encourage you to take their tour and learn about the area. > b) that you believe Israeli settlers being friendly locals who are simply following Ottoman law and developing empty land. No, I do not think that Israeli settlers are just friendly locals. They are, for the most part, following Ottoman law where applicable and developing by and large mostly empty land. But yes, without a doubt some settlers do encroach on Arab villages. I won't deny that, I won't lie. But the media attempts to portray that as being the 99% case when it's far closer to the 1% case if that. For what it's worth, the Breaking the Silence group made me aware of some areas, such as near Hebron, where Arabs are encroaching on Jewish settlements. And the Arabs are far, far more violent than the Jews - even the Arabs will tell you this. Settler violence exists, but Arab violence against the settlers is far far more common. Don't take my word for it, ask any Arab that lives in the West Bank. I have asked, and I continue to talk with them despite the events of the past two months.
- hackerlight 3y ago
  > There's no need to protest when people agree with their government. Yet there's large protests in countries that aren't allied with the US or Israel, when no such protests were forthcoming in other analogous scenarios. And there were scarce protests in the US against Saudi Arabia's campaign in Yemen despite US alliance. I do agree that your thesis is a partial explanation, but it is far from a full explanation. There's two other things going on. Among Western leftists and minority groups, Israel is a symbol. It's perceived as the last vestige of Western/White colonialism. A symbol of someone with white skin punching down on brown skinned people. It harkens back to the reason that your ancestor was forced (either literally or by material circumstance) into the US in the first place, and why you are living today under systemic racism. Defeating this placeholder is therefore an important milestone in restoring their sense of historical justice. Needless to say this is oversimplified given how many Israeli Jews are indigenous to I/P or were ethnically cleansed from the surrounding MENA area and forced into the I/P area, but people do legitimately hold that dichotomous oppressor/oppressed worldview. Among Muslim countries, this is an ethnoreligious blood feud. Assad killing Muslims doesn't cause the same anger because it's within the same identity group. So it's a classic case of identity divisions leading to disparate anger. I'm massively oversimplifying here, there are many other factors, but it's part of what's behind the energy.
mandmandam 3y ago
Are there actually many equally abhorrent issues right now? I can think of like, 2, and they're both involving the exact same actors. Doctors were forced at gunpoint to leave premature babies to rot at Al Nasr hospital. And you're surprised that the world is horrified?! Journalists and healthcare staff and schools have been targeted at a shocking rate. Civil infrastructure and historic churches blown up without the thinnest veil of a reason. More UN staff killed than any 'conflict' in history. Human rights groups and genocide experts are calling this genocide, ethnic cleansing, and worse. And this wasn't done by some poor, decimated, tin pot dictatorship. This was done by a nuclear power, and it was supported by England and American politicians against the express wishes of a large majority of their populations. There's no gain; none. No conceivable good can come from this. Believing that such acts will end Hamas/terror is profoundly delusional.
- sabarn01 3y ago
  South Sudan, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine/Russia There is no end to this confit regardless. It will go on as you have 2 groups with claims on the same land. Wars are won when the loser accepts defeat I don't see that ever happening. There have been multiple attempts at a negotiated solution like the Peel commision, the 1948 UN partition, or the oslo accords. All have been rejected.
- dralley 3y ago
  This comes off as ignorant of events happening elsewhere. Approximately 600,000 people died in the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia in the two years from November 2020 to November 2022. 40% of the Ethiopian population is children. The Yemeni civil war (2016-present) had killed at least 377,000 people, as of two years ago. By now, many more than that. There are mass graves in Mali and Sudan where hundreds of bodies are just piled up on top of each other, visible from space, thanks to collaboration between Wagner Group and the local regime. Syria is bombing their own population once again at this very moment, in continuation of their 10 year civil war which has killed at least 300,000. Notably, many, many images from the Syrian civil war have been recycled as supposed footage from Gaza (https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/12/08/images-of-syrian-civil-war-take-on-a-second-life-in-gaza-conflict/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/12/08/images-of-syrian-...) for propaganda purposes - not that there isn't plenty of legitimate horrible footage from Gaza too.
DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
Right now, there is nowhere else in the world where so many civilians are being killed. Nothing else even comes close. 20k deaths in just two months is a massive death toll for such a short conflict. For comparison, it's more than the civilian death toll in the nearly 2-year-old war in Ukraine. The other thing is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on for decades, and many people have formed strong opinions on it. The United States is deeply involved in the conflict, as it is Israel's major international backer. There are both Palestinian and Jewish diasporas all around the world that care deeply about the issue. There are many reasons why this conflict captures so many people's attention.
- bushbaba 3y ago
  20k deaths includes Hamas militants. So far the militant to civilian casualty ratio is actually lower than most other modern urban conflicts. Some being as high as 10 civilians for every 1 militant death.
  - squidbeak 3y ago
    Where does your militant data come from? And does it differentiate between fighters active before the invasion and those after? Because large numbers of formerly peaceful men will now be engaged in the fight, either from grief at losing their families, or the natural instinct to resist an invader.
    - rendall 3y ago
      It comes from the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is Hamas. They assert that no one at all who has died in Gaza whatsoever was in the military. All civilians.
    - sillystuff 3y ago
      Israel is claiming that any male is a combatant. But, even if you accept such an insane definition of combatant, the majority of the casualties have been women and children. The GP is just spreading falsehoods to justify genocide. There is a huge ops campaign by Israel and pro-Zionist organizations within the US. They are doxing, getting people fired, anything to scare people into self-censoring their critiques of Israeli genocide of Palestinian civilians. There are no doubt some useful idiots parroting Zionist propaganda, and also Zionists themselves spreading it in this discussion forum. But, no serious person can believe that over 10,000 women and children (including literal babies in incubators) murdered by Israel in this latest of many massacres, are "combatants". (the US also used such a definition in Afghanistan to fake its civilian casualty numbers-- any male that appears 14yrs old and over was the American's definition of "combatant")
cies 3y ago
> equally abohorrent Comparing it to the Ukraine's invasion and we can see this is so much more "invasive". There's a literal wall around 2M ppl with little agency, while most of them are refugees from the other side of the wall. To methis is one of the most abohorrent conflicts in earth in this day and age. Given South Africa is no longer segregated, and Rwanda reconciled. I'd be interested to hear what's equally abhorrent in your view.
- bushbaba 3y ago
  The wall wasn’t always there. Just like how the wall trump put between US and Mexico wasn’t always there. Actions have consequences and the West Bank situation regressed from continued suicide bombing and terrorist attackers.
  - the-dude 3y ago
    Afaik there was already a wall pre-Trump
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    Actions certainly do have consequences, like roughly forty years prior to the wall's construction, arbitrary "military orders" that post-occupation immediately granted the military total authority over every aspect of Palestinian life, declared all water to be the property of Israel, and that land could be seized for any reason - and more which have since made it illegal to do nearly anything without the authorization of the military, which includes everything from planting flowers to doing anything related to water to groups larger than 10 people assembling to attending school to operating a tractor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Order
- dijit 3y ago
  Gaza borders Egypt and the West Bank borders Jordan. If they are blockaded by the country that they cant get along with then it is at least partially on Egypt and Jordan that they are given no way out.
makapuf 3y ago
I don't know if this is really the right word being non native but this seems like whataboutism. Sorry if it is a too loaded term, but it does seem to fit. The fact that there are many other injustice does not make it less of it.
kmeisthax 3y ago
Every injustice is homomorphic to the Israel-Palestine crisis. Ergo, people will use their opinion about the crisis as a proxy for their own politics. In much of the west[0], you're pro-Israel because fuck Nazis - NEVER AGAIN. In America, you're pro-Israel if you're Republican, pro-Palestine if you're Democrat, or pro-Israel if you're Democrat. If you're anti-colonial, you're pro-Palestine. In Ireland, you're pro-Palestine because fuck England, or you're pro-Israel because fuck Irish nationalism. If you're Muslim, you're pro-Palestine because Zionism is an existential threat to you[1]. If you're an Islamofascist you're very pro-Palestine, if you're a Christofascist you're very pro-Israel. They're just labels you stick on yourself to signal virtue. This is, of course, terrible for actually discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict, because anything you say about it gets a bunch of mutually contradictory political positions tacked onto it. It's especially difficult to delivering nuanced takes like "Israel and Palestine both have a lot to answer for and we'd be way closer to an actual peace agreement if every politician in both countries dropped dead tomorrow[2]", because I just stepped on like five different rhetorical landmines with that one sentence. The homomorphism is also bijective: those political labels you're being slapped with get colored with the side of the conflict they're associated with. The most obvious example being Nazi Germany, whose war crimes and crimes against humanity are viewed through the pro-Israel lens. We talk a lot of the 6 million dead Jews but not so much of Hitler's political opponents, Soviet PoWs, black people, gay people, the Roma[3], Jehovah's Witnesses[4], Freemasons, ethnic Poles, Slovenis, and Slavs, and the mentally ill[5]. That's another 11 million victims that we just... don't even think of as victims of the Holocaust. That's how much we link everything to this one crisis. [0] Japan inclusive [1] Or at least this was the case in the 1970s [2] Ok, maybe this doesn't sound nuanced to you. That's the standard of debate here... :/ [3] In America we still use "gypsy", which is terribly offensive in Europe [4] Which itself has inspired a meme among JWs that lying to protect the faith is A-OK, which is really strange. [5] This includes autistic kids, who were sent off to Hans Asperger - YES WE NAMED THE DIAGNOSIS AFTER A NAZI WAR CRIMINAL BECAUSE WE LEARNED NOTHING
- rendall 3y ago
  I listened to one guy fresh off the boat from Korea who would not hear a good word about Israel. Absolutely refused to hear any nuance or mitigation. His reason? Because his country had been invaded and occupied by Japan and his homomorph was Japan=Israel and Palestine=Korea.

It's one of very very few issues where America and most of the west have stood firmly in support of violence and oppression for decades, even on issues like settlements where the US formally acknowledges the illegality and takes no action. Of course people care primarily about the actions of their own democratically elected government, that's the whole point. There's no need to protest when people agree with their government.

sabarn01 3y ago
Settlements are of course wrong, but I don't really see any concrete action that Israel could take other than removing settlements. Even if they did that the fundamental facts on the ground wouldn't change. I don't see how they lift the blockade and any 2 state solution seems a nonstarter.
- thelock85 3y ago
  The Israeli govt can and should halt establishing new settlements or expanding existing settlements, especially when expansion is zero-sum with further displacement (e.g. Hebron). It can also enforce the criminality of extrajudicial settler violence. Agreed any real solutions are a nonstarter in current situation, but a lack of imagination or will about how to move forward just further normalizes the illegality of it all.
- instaeloq 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - sabarn01 3y ago
    If I'm Israel as long as Hamas controls Gaza I would support a blockade. If Hamas formally accepts a 2 state solution then I would change my opinion, but as it stands now the Israeli government has a responsibility to protect its citizen which to mean means limiting the ability of Hamas to acquire weapons.
    - Qwertious 3y ago
      If I'm Hamas I see zero incentive to concede anything when Fatah has been infinitely more diplomatic and in return has received squat. Israel's policies caused Hamas, they have plenty of options that don't involve a giant starving ghetto but they choose not to exercise them. In particular: negotiate a resolution with Fatah, then provide Fatah with military support in ousting Hamas from Gaza (e.g. providing them with guns and access to the Gaza strip in the first place). Israel starving Gaza and keeping their economy permanently dead will only feed Hamas's victim narrative and enrage off Gaza's population more.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Settlements are of course wrong, but I don't really see any concrete action that Israel could take other than removing settlements. It could do a lot in the West Bank (where the fully or partially PA administered territory is divided into 166 non-contiguous regions), and anything there xould be done in a way that it looks like a win for the Fatah-led PA, weakening the perception that Hamas and its violence is the only entity capable of delivering for the Palestinian people, undermining Hamas politically. OTOH, the whole reason Israel fostered Hamas during the direct occupation of Gaza was to create an Islamist competitor for the more secular and sympathetic to non-Muslim states PLO, and the reason they've (and government ministers have said this explicitly) continued to support them in between periods of active conflict is to deflect pressure for peace and a two-state solution, so there’s zero chance of the Netanyahu government doing this.
  - sabarn01 3y ago
    I think I agree with that. Which is the PA should be boosted and rewarded with increased freedom and autonomy as a counter example to Gaza. As it stands right now Israel is almost rewarding being more intransigent.
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      > As it stands right now Israel is almost rewarding being more intransigent. Not almost. The far right Israel factions (Netanyahu, Likud, etc.) have actually repeatedly encouraged and cultivated Hamas. They benefit far more from the polarization that Hamas brings than a mild and moderate PA who is willing to work diplomatically, because then that increases pressure on those far right Israelis to also be more temperate, which goes against their goals.
    - sillystuff 3y ago
      The PA have no legitimacy with the majority of Palestinians especially in Gaza. Israel tried to ignore the vote that brought Hamas's political wing into power in Democratic elections in Gaza, and supported what was essentially a coup by the PA. But, the Palestinians rose up against the PA and its Israeli backers and reclaimed control of Gaza. Funny since Israel originally supported (including arming) Hamas* hoping the religious Hamas would split the populations support for more secular nationalist movements in Palestine. But, you can be both religious and nationalist. *Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood; Hamas grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    Apparently I should explain my opinion more clearly. You are all through this thread. You have detailed opinions of the history of the area, and you are clearly aware that the ground reality is that Israel makes and enforces the laws in the West Bank, and that the Israeli military has supported Israeli people in driving the existing Palestinian residents off their land, and either destroying existing Palestinian homes and infrastructure then building their own homes, or simply moving into the forcibly confiscated homes. It is extraordinarily misleading to pretend a) that you believe that the actual law in the West Bank is that of the Ottoman Empire that no longer exists or b) that you believe Israeli settlers being friendly locals who are simply following Ottoman law and developing empty land. You also, with your demonstrated familiarity with the history of the area, must be aware of the military-enforced eviction from and demolition of Palestinian homes and farms, and the restrictions on Palestinian people preventing them from moving out of the occupied West Bank. There is no person on earth who knows this history, is capable of arguing on Hacker News, and also needs an explanation of why forcibly driving people from their homes under military occupation in order to replace them with people of a different religion/ethnicity/nation is bad. There are, unfortunately, a number of people who simply disagree with this moral position - and it appears you are one of them, and that you are attempting to convince other less informed people that this is not what is happening by lying about it.
    - dotancohen 3y ago
      > Israel makes and enforces the laws in the West Bank, and that the Israeli military has supported Israeli people in driving the existing Palestinian residents off their land, and either destroying existing Palestinian homes and infrastructure then building their own homes, or simply moving into the forcibly confiscated homes. I understand that there is a very prominent lobby to present property disputes as Jews stealing Palestinian homes. I'm willing to discuss this. Present to me each case of "Jews stealing Palestinian homes" and I will do my best to research the circumstances of each one individually. I'll invest the time in that, and maybe I'll learn something. But from what I've seen, each property dispute as an individual dispute could be debated either way. I will admit that there does exist inconsistencies in rulings regarding property disputes between Jews and Arabs. But I do not think that those inconsistencies are any more prominent than judicial inconsistencies in other areas without regard to the nationality of the parties. > It is extraordinarily misleading to pretend a) that you believe that the actual law in the West Bank is that of the Ottoman Empire that no longer exists or Actually, yes, I do believe that the basis of the laws in the West Bank are Ottoman. That was even explained to me by an anti-settler movement whose tours to the West Bank I took a few times to learn about the West Bank. The organization is called Breaking the Silence, I encourage you to take their tour and learn about the area. > b) that you believe Israeli settlers being friendly locals who are simply following Ottoman law and developing empty land. No, I do not think that Israeli settlers are just friendly locals. They are, for the most part, following Ottoman law where applicable and developing by and large mostly empty land. But yes, without a doubt some settlers do encroach on Arab villages. I won't deny that, I won't lie. But the media attempts to portray that as being the 99% case when it's far closer to the 1% case if that. For what it's worth, the Breaking the Silence group made me aware of some areas, such as near Hebron, where Arabs are encroaching on Jewish settlements. And the Arabs are far, far more violent than the Jews - even the Arabs will tell you this. Settler violence exists, but Arab violence against the settlers is far far more common. Don't take my word for it, ask any Arab that lives in the West Bank. I have asked, and I continue to talk with them despite the events of the past two months.
hackerlight 3y ago
> There's no need to protest when people agree with their government. Yet there's large protests in countries that aren't allied with the US or Israel, when no such protests were forthcoming in other analogous scenarios. And there were scarce protests in the US against Saudi Arabia's campaign in Yemen despite US alliance. I do agree that your thesis is a partial explanation, but it is far from a full explanation. There's two other things going on. Among Western leftists and minority groups, Israel is a symbol. It's perceived as the last vestige of Western/White colonialism. A symbol of someone with white skin punching down on brown skinned people. It harkens back to the reason that your ancestor was forced (either literally or by material circumstance) into the US in the first place, and why you are living today under systemic racism. Defeating this placeholder is therefore an important milestone in restoring their sense of historical justice. Needless to say this is oversimplified given how many Israeli Jews are indigenous to I/P or were ethnically cleansed from the surrounding MENA area and forced into the I/P area, but people do legitimately hold that dichotomous oppressor/oppressed worldview. Among Muslim countries, this is an ethnoreligious blood feud. Assad killing Muslims doesn't cause the same anger because it's within the same identity group. So it's a classic case of identity divisions leading to disparate anger. I'm massively oversimplifying here, there are many other factors, but it's part of what's behind the energy.

mandmandam 3y ago

Are there actually many equally abhorrent issues right now? I can think of like, 2, and they're both involving the exact same actors. Doctors were forced at gunpoint to leave premature babies to rot at Al Nasr hospital. And you're surprised that the world is horrified?! Journalists and healthcare staff and schools have been targeted at a shocking rate. Civil infrastructure and historic churches blown up without the thinnest veil of a reason. More UN staff killed than any 'conflict' in history. Human rights groups and genocide experts are calling this genocide, ethnic cleansing, and worse. And this wasn't done by some poor, decimated, tin pot dictatorship. This was done by a nuclear power, and it was supported by England and American politicians against the express wishes of a large majority of their populations. There's no gain; none. No conceivable good can come from this. Believing that such acts will end Hamas/terror is profoundly delusional.

sabarn01 3y ago
South Sudan, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine/Russia There is no end to this confit regardless. It will go on as you have 2 groups with claims on the same land. Wars are won when the loser accepts defeat I don't see that ever happening. There have been multiple attempts at a negotiated solution like the Peel commision, the 1948 UN partition, or the oslo accords. All have been rejected.
dralley 3y ago
This comes off as ignorant of events happening elsewhere. Approximately 600,000 people died in the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia in the two years from November 2020 to November 2022. 40% of the Ethiopian population is children. The Yemeni civil war (2016-present) had killed at least 377,000 people, as of two years ago. By now, many more than that. There are mass graves in Mali and Sudan where hundreds of bodies are just piled up on top of each other, visible from space, thanks to collaboration between Wagner Group and the local regime. Syria is bombing their own population once again at this very moment, in continuation of their 10 year civil war which has killed at least 300,000. Notably, many, many images from the Syrian civil war have been recycled as supposed footage from Gaza (https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/12/08/images-of-syrian-civil-war-take-on-a-second-life-in-gaza-conflict/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/12/08/images-of-syrian-...) for propaganda purposes - not that there isn't plenty of legitimate horrible footage from Gaza too.

DiogenesKynikos 3y ago

Right now, there is nowhere else in the world where so many civilians are being killed. Nothing else even comes close. 20k deaths in just two months is a massive death toll for such a short conflict. For comparison, it's more than the civilian death toll in the nearly 2-year-old war in Ukraine. The other thing is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on for decades, and many people have formed strong opinions on it. The United States is deeply involved in the conflict, as it is Israel's major international backer. There are both Palestinian and Jewish diasporas all around the world that care deeply about the issue. There are many reasons why this conflict captures so many people's attention.

bushbaba 3y ago
20k deaths includes Hamas militants. So far the militant to civilian casualty ratio is actually lower than most other modern urban conflicts. Some being as high as 10 civilians for every 1 militant death.
- squidbeak 3y ago
  Where does your militant data come from? And does it differentiate between fighters active before the invasion and those after? Because large numbers of formerly peaceful men will now be engaged in the fight, either from grief at losing their families, or the natural instinct to resist an invader.
  - rendall 3y ago
    It comes from the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is Hamas. They assert that no one at all who has died in Gaza whatsoever was in the military. All civilians.
  - sillystuff 3y ago
    Israel is claiming that any male is a combatant. But, even if you accept such an insane definition of combatant, the majority of the casualties have been women and children. The GP is just spreading falsehoods to justify genocide. There is a huge ops campaign by Israel and pro-Zionist organizations within the US. They are doxing, getting people fired, anything to scare people into self-censoring their critiques of Israeli genocide of Palestinian civilians. There are no doubt some useful idiots parroting Zionist propaganda, and also Zionists themselves spreading it in this discussion forum. But, no serious person can believe that over 10,000 women and children (including literal babies in incubators) murdered by Israel in this latest of many massacres, are "combatants". (the US also used such a definition in Afghanistan to fake its civilian casualty numbers-- any male that appears 14yrs old and over was the American's definition of "combatant")

cies 3y ago

> equally abohorrent Comparing it to the Ukraine's invasion and we can see this is so much more "invasive". There's a literal wall around 2M ppl with little agency, while most of them are refugees from the other side of the wall. To methis is one of the most abohorrent conflicts in earth in this day and age. Given South Africa is no longer segregated, and Rwanda reconciled. I'd be interested to hear what's equally abhorrent in your view.

bushbaba 3y ago
The wall wasn’t always there. Just like how the wall trump put between US and Mexico wasn’t always there. Actions have consequences and the West Bank situation regressed from continued suicide bombing and terrorist attackers.
- the-dude 3y ago
  Afaik there was already a wall pre-Trump
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  Actions certainly do have consequences, like roughly forty years prior to the wall's construction, arbitrary "military orders" that post-occupation immediately granted the military total authority over every aspect of Palestinian life, declared all water to be the property of Israel, and that land could be seized for any reason - and more which have since made it illegal to do nearly anything without the authorization of the military, which includes everything from planting flowers to doing anything related to water to groups larger than 10 people assembling to attending school to operating a tractor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Order
dijit 3y ago
Gaza borders Egypt and the West Bank borders Jordan. If they are blockaded by the country that they cant get along with then it is at least partially on Egypt and Jordan that they are given no way out.

makapuf 3y ago

I don't know if this is really the right word being non native but this seems like whataboutism. Sorry if it is a too loaded term, but it does seem to fit. The fact that there are many other injustice does not make it less of it.

kmeisthax 3y ago

Every injustice is homomorphic to the Israel-Palestine crisis. Ergo, people will use their opinion about the crisis as a proxy for their own politics. In much of the west[0], you're pro-Israel because fuck Nazis - NEVER AGAIN. In America, you're pro-Israel if you're Republican, pro-Palestine if you're Democrat, or pro-Israel if you're Democrat. If you're anti-colonial, you're pro-Palestine. In Ireland, you're pro-Palestine because fuck England, or you're pro-Israel because fuck Irish nationalism. If you're Muslim, you're pro-Palestine because Zionism is an existential threat to you[1]. If you're an Islamofascist you're very pro-Palestine, if you're a Christofascist you're very pro-Israel. They're just labels you stick on yourself to signal virtue. This is, of course, terrible for actually discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict, because anything you say about it gets a bunch of mutually contradictory political positions tacked onto it. It's especially difficult to delivering nuanced takes like "Israel and Palestine both have a lot to answer for and we'd be way closer to an actual peace agreement if every politician in both countries dropped dead tomorrow[2]", because I just stepped on like five different rhetorical landmines with that one sentence. The homomorphism is also bijective: those political labels you're being slapped with get colored with the side of the conflict they're associated with. The most obvious example being Nazi Germany, whose war crimes and crimes against humanity are viewed through the pro-Israel lens. We talk a lot of the 6 million dead Jews but not so much of Hitler's political opponents, Soviet PoWs, black people, gay people, the Roma[3], Jehovah's Witnesses[4], Freemasons, ethnic Poles, Slovenis, and Slavs, and the mentally ill[5]. That's another 11 million victims that we just... don't even think of as victims of the Holocaust. That's how much we link everything to this one crisis. [0] Japan inclusive [1] Or at least this was the case in the 1970s [2] Ok, maybe this doesn't sound nuanced to you. That's the standard of debate here... :/ [3] In America we still use "gypsy", which is terribly offensive in Europe [4] Which itself has inspired a meme among JWs that lying to protect the faith is A-OK, which is really strange. [5] This includes autistic kids, who were sent off to Hans Asperger - YES WE NAMED THE DIAGNOSIS AFTER A NAZI WAR CRIMINAL BECAUSE WE LEARNED NOTHING

rendall 3y ago
I listened to one guy fresh off the boat from Korea who would not hear a good word about Israel. Absolutely refused to hear any nuance or mitigation. His reason? Because his country had been invaded and occupied by Japan and his homomorph was Japan=Israel and Palestine=Korea.