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Israel nuking/genociding Gaza would effectively be the end of the Zionist experiment. It would be internationally condemned, and trigger a larger war that would

Israel nuking/genociding Gaza would effectively be the end of the Zionist experiment. It would be internationally condemned, and trigger a larger war that would certainly bring in Hezb/Iran. IDF can’t win that war, and the US doesn’t want to fight it. It’s easy to demonize your enemy and say they would commit atrocities and use that as justification to commit your own.

slibhb 3y ago
Israel should try harder to avoid killing civilians. But to act like they don't try at all (which you did) is objectively wrong. Moving onto hypotheticals, international condemnations don't mean a whole lot. At any rate, I expect that Israel would win a war against Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Or perhaps that war would be indecisive, but Israel wouldn't lose. Finally, it's very clear that Hamas actively wants to kill Israeli civilians. Israel's behavior is not beyond reproach but they aren't going through Palestinian towns and shooting old people and children.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  > Finally, it's very clear that Hamas actively wants to kill Israeli civilians. Israel's behavior is not beyond reproach but they aren't going through Palestinian towns and shooting old people and children. While I agree that Hamas has made it very clear that they are explicitly targeting Israeli civilians, which is an obvious war crime and abhorrent, I see no proof whatsoever that the Israeli military isn't doing the same. The scale of destruction and murder in the current incursion speaks for itself. Sure, they don't intend to literally murder all of Gaza's population. But it's very hard to believe that they don't intend to kill some specific number. They have already killed more civilians in Gaza than Russia killed in the first months in Ukraine.
  - slibhb 3y ago
    If Israel wanted to kill civilians, why order evacuations? Why let aid trucks in? Israel is willing to kill a lot of civilians in order to destroy Hamas. But I've seen no evidence that Israel wants to kill civilians. Individual Israelis, sure, but as a policy? No, it would be counterproductive.
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      The question can be asked the other way - if they didn't want to kill civilians, why attack refugee camps? Why invade the Al Sheefa hospital? Why level entire neighborhoods? Sure, we can't know for sure what the intentions were, what legitimate targets may have been there or not etc. All we can say for sure is that they have killed a huge number of civilians, so it's illogical to assume that this could not have been at least part of their intention.
      - vladgur 3y ago
        There has been plenty of historical and present proof including video and photo evidence, that Hamas operates from within or near civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and residential buildings. Given that, do you deny possibility that some residential infrastructure targeted by Israel including that hospital could have been used militarily by Hamas as they have done in the past?
        tsimionescu 3y ago
        > Given that, do you deny possibility that some residential infrastructure targeted by Israel In principle, no. However, the IDF has failed to provide convincing evidence in many cases, especially in the case of the Al Shifa hospital. Doubly so when their most spectacular piece of evidence - the tunnel found underneath the hospital - was casually revealed by Ehud Barak in a CNN interview to have been an old Israeli construction from the time of the military occupation (taking Christiane Amanpour aback live on air) [0]. Do I think that some of the apparently civilian infrastructure they destroyed was legitimate targets? Yes, absolutely. But given the scale of the destruction and the scantness of evidence, I do not at all believe that all of it was. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/20/exp-amanpour-israel-gaza-ehud-barak-fst11201pseg1-cnni-world.cnn https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/20/exp-amanpour...
        underdeserver 3y ago
        Israel built bunkers, not tunnels, and evidence of tunnels was presented. Consider that releasing information jeopardizes its source, both in the physical sense (a person giving information will be executed), and in the intelligence sense - the source will go dead and Israel will have worse intelligence. That's why Israel can't release information for each and every single target. For Al-Shifa, ample evidence was produced. Whether or not it is convincing is subjective, and your opinion is not more valuable than mine or the IDF's. The only way to get an objective judgement of the legitimacy of a given attack is to have a neutral third party actively collect intelligence and present their findings, but that's not going to happen.
vladgur 3y ago
Calling an internationally recognized state that has given the world so many amazing people and technologies “the Zionist Experiment” is precisely the demonization that you speak of
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  This is ridiculous speech policing. If some Israeli calls it that, how would you react? It’s not disparaging like “Zionist entity”
  - vladgur 3y ago
    I do not have power to police speech on hacker news, I only have an ability to critique what I found to be a very intentionally demeaning term for a Israel. I dont think that "Zionist entity" sounds worse than "Zionist Experiment" TBH. Ask yourself, why not simply call "Zionist Entity" or "Zionist Experiment" Israel? Its simple - the word "Zionist" has been hijacked by anti-Israel movement to mean "Jewish". To the rest of us, modern-day Zionism means "Israel has the right to exist"

slibhb 3y ago

Israel should try harder to avoid killing civilians. But to act like they don't try at all (which you did) is objectively wrong. Moving onto hypotheticals, international condemnations don't mean a whole lot. At any rate, I expect that Israel would win a war against Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Or perhaps that war would be indecisive, but Israel wouldn't lose. Finally, it's very clear that Hamas actively wants to kill Israeli civilians. Israel's behavior is not beyond reproach but they aren't going through Palestinian towns and shooting old people and children.

tsimionescu 3y ago
> Finally, it's very clear that Hamas actively wants to kill Israeli civilians. Israel's behavior is not beyond reproach but they aren't going through Palestinian towns and shooting old people and children. While I agree that Hamas has made it very clear that they are explicitly targeting Israeli civilians, which is an obvious war crime and abhorrent, I see no proof whatsoever that the Israeli military isn't doing the same. The scale of destruction and murder in the current incursion speaks for itself. Sure, they don't intend to literally murder all of Gaza's population. But it's very hard to believe that they don't intend to kill some specific number. They have already killed more civilians in Gaza than Russia killed in the first months in Ukraine.
- slibhb 3y ago
  If Israel wanted to kill civilians, why order evacuations? Why let aid trucks in? Israel is willing to kill a lot of civilians in order to destroy Hamas. But I've seen no evidence that Israel wants to kill civilians. Individual Israelis, sure, but as a policy? No, it would be counterproductive.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    The question can be asked the other way - if they didn't want to kill civilians, why attack refugee camps? Why invade the Al Sheefa hospital? Why level entire neighborhoods? Sure, we can't know for sure what the intentions were, what legitimate targets may have been there or not etc. All we can say for sure is that they have killed a huge number of civilians, so it's illogical to assume that this could not have been at least part of their intention.
    - vladgur 3y ago
      There has been plenty of historical and present proof including video and photo evidence, that Hamas operates from within or near civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and residential buildings. Given that, do you deny possibility that some residential infrastructure targeted by Israel including that hospital could have been used militarily by Hamas as they have done in the past?
      - tsimionescu 3y ago
        > Given that, do you deny possibility that some residential infrastructure targeted by Israel In principle, no. However, the IDF has failed to provide convincing evidence in many cases, especially in the case of the Al Shifa hospital. Doubly so when their most spectacular piece of evidence - the tunnel found underneath the hospital - was casually revealed by Ehud Barak in a CNN interview to have been an old Israeli construction from the time of the military occupation (taking Christiane Amanpour aback live on air) [0]. Do I think that some of the apparently civilian infrastructure they destroyed was legitimate targets? Yes, absolutely. But given the scale of the destruction and the scantness of evidence, I do not at all believe that all of it was. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/20/exp-amanpour-israel-gaza-ehud-barak-fst11201pseg1-cnni-world.cnn https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/20/exp-amanpour...
        underdeserver 3y ago
        Israel built bunkers, not tunnels, and evidence of tunnels was presented. Consider that releasing information jeopardizes its source, both in the physical sense (a person giving information will be executed), and in the intelligence sense - the source will go dead and Israel will have worse intelligence. That's why Israel can't release information for each and every single target. For Al-Shifa, ample evidence was produced. Whether or not it is convincing is subjective, and your opinion is not more valuable than mine or the IDF's. The only way to get an objective judgement of the legitimacy of a given attack is to have a neutral third party actively collect intelligence and present their findings, but that's not going to happen.

vladgur 3y ago

Calling an internationally recognized state that has given the world so many amazing people and technologies “the Zionist Experiment” is precisely the demonization that you speak of

selimthegrim 3y ago
This is ridiculous speech policing. If some Israeli calls it that, how would you react? It’s not disparaging like “Zionist entity”
- vladgur 3y ago
  I do not have power to police speech on hacker news, I only have an ability to critique what I found to be a very intentionally demeaning term for a Israel. I dont think that "Zionist entity" sounds worse than "Zionist Experiment" TBH. Ask yourself, why not simply call "Zionist Entity" or "Zionist Experiment" Israel? Its simple - the word "Zionist" has been hijacked by anti-Israel movement to mean "Jewish". To the rest of us, modern-day Zionism means "Israel has the right to exist"