9 ms·

but if genocide was the goal, wouldn't Israel already be done? and isn't genocide the goal of the Palestinians (or Irans Government)?

deanCommie 2y ago
Thank you for this comment, I think you're asking important questions. First, let's acknowledge that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a terrible strategy. There are plenty of conflicts out there at every scale where neither side has the moral highground. It is entirely possible for both sides of a conflict to be complicit of crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. In this particular case it is absolutely the cause of Iran (and most likely Hamas, though this one has a bit more nuance) to "wipe Israel off the map", and if they could snap their fingers and kill every jew on the planet, they would. That doesn't make the force opposing them not themselves potentially culpable. We don't excuse the US firebombing hundreds of thousands of civilians in Tokyo, or the Soviet soldiers raping their way through Germany despite the horrors of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. ESPECIALLY if we deem one side our ally - they must be held to a higher standard than our enemy. Second, the intent of crimes, and the success of crimes are independent. Being BAD at crimes doesn't make them not crimes. See: Trump, Donald. Third, let's put this together. Israel is not bad Genocide. Israel is GOOD at Genocide because it knows that if it actually put all Palestinians into a Nazi-like concentration camp they would lose the support of the entire world. Which is why much as their other enemy Russia, they apply Salami Tactics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing_tactics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing_tactics) to gradually erode the civil rights of palestenians (especially in the West Bank) by making their life more and more unpalatable and not care what ultimately happens to them (so long as they don't strike out back at Israel; and in some cases even if they do because that allows them to go in and dramatically overreact) Remember, "Genocide" is not "Extermination of an entire ethnicity in a gas chamber", there are many sub-definitions of it. I'm not gonna get pedantic about it though. Israel is conducting a purposeful (via apathy/lack of care) massacre of Palestinian civilians under the guise of exterminating Hamas. That this is happening is not in dispute. The only thing that's in dispute among the mainstream is whether whether these costs to civilian lives are justified for the greater cause (much as people defend the WW2 concepts I mentioned above). And if the entire context was "In October, Hamas struck out at Israel killing thousands of Jewish civilians, so now Hamas must be removed no matter what the cost", I could at least conceive of an intellectual argument of how many dead Palestinians is fair to take reprisal for dead Jews. But that's not the start of this, and that's not the full context, and I hope at least everyone on hackernews reading this knows that.

deanCommie 2y ago

Thank you for this comment, I think you're asking important questions. First, let's acknowledge that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a terrible strategy. There are plenty of conflicts out there at every scale where neither side has the moral highground. It is entirely possible for both sides of a conflict to be complicit of crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. In this particular case it is absolutely the cause of Iran (and most likely Hamas, though this one has a bit more nuance) to "wipe Israel off the map", and if they could snap their fingers and kill every jew on the planet, they would. That doesn't make the force opposing them not themselves potentially culpable. We don't excuse the US firebombing hundreds of thousands of civilians in Tokyo, or the Soviet soldiers raping their way through Germany despite the horrors of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. ESPECIALLY if we deem one side our ally - they must be held to a higher standard than our enemy. Second, the intent of crimes, and the success of crimes are independent. Being BAD at crimes doesn't make them not crimes. See: Trump, Donald. Third, let's put this together. Israel is not bad Genocide. Israel is GOOD at Genocide because it knows that if it actually put all Palestinians into a Nazi-like concentration camp they would lose the support of the entire world. Which is why much as their other enemy Russia, they apply Salami Tactics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing_tactics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing_tactics) to gradually erode the civil rights of palestenians (especially in the West Bank) by making their life more and more unpalatable and not care what ultimately happens to them (so long as they don't strike out back at Israel; and in some cases even if they do because that allows them to go in and dramatically overreact) Remember, "Genocide" is not "Extermination of an entire ethnicity in a gas chamber", there are many sub-definitions of it. I'm not gonna get pedantic about it though. Israel is conducting a purposeful (via apathy/lack of care) massacre of Palestinian civilians under the guise of exterminating Hamas. That this is happening is not in dispute. The only thing that's in dispute among the mainstream is whether whether these costs to civilian lives are justified for the greater cause (much as people defend the WW2 concepts I mentioned above). And if the entire context was "In October, Hamas struck out at Israel killing thousands of Jewish civilians, so now Hamas must be removed no matter what the cost", I could at least conceive of an intellectual argument of how many dead Palestinians is fair to take reprisal for dead Jews. But that's not the start of this, and that's not the full context, and I hope at least everyone on hackernews reading this knows that.