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During the Falklands War there were discussions in British political circles about what death toll would be unacceptable to liberate 1,800 people from Argentine

During the Falklands War there were discussions in British political circles about what death toll would be unacceptable to liberate 1,800 people from Argentine occupation and rule - a calculus on the value of human life vs geopolitical concerns, I guess. The global consensus seems to be that Israel’s current actions have become excessive - if that’s true, I wonder where the line between legitimate and illegitimate responses to being attacked by a semi-State actor like Hamas is? Genuine question - I don’t understand how a state would go about determining an ethical response in this circumstance (leaving aside wider positions on the nature of the I/P conflict itself).

tsimionescu 2y ago
This is a somewhat complex question to answer, and one that can't truly be untangled from the broader history of the I/P conflict. But the base idea is this: you can't fight terrorism with bombs. Israel's stated goals in this war don't make sense: even if they could eliminate every single Hamas (military) operative, the kind of assault they are perpetrating is obviously going to give rise to a new wave of militants, probably much more embittered than Hamas is today. So, Israel can only have two actual goals in this war: either they are seeking to purge Gaza of Palestinians, or they are seeking to punish Gazans in general for the actions of a few terrorists on October 7th, eye-for-an-eye style. There is no other reasonable interpretation of this war, and the vast majority of the world's countries see it this way (as seen by the overwhelming support for all pro-Gaza resolutions at the UN, typically 150+ to 10 or less). Now, if Israel actually wanted to eliminate the terrorist leadership that perpetrated the October 7th attack while not creating new generations of terrorists, they would have gone about this intervention in a completely different way. They would have had to work with the non-militant parts of Hamas leadership and the PLO of the West Bank and with neighboring Arab countries to bring these murderers to justice, along with sending the equivalent of police forces for taregtted operations. For an example of how this can work, you can look at how the UK dealt with the IRA in Northern Ireland, or Spain with the Basque Country separatists. They certainly didn't start bombing Belfast or Bilbao semi-indiscriminately to weed out the terrorists there. Of course, what I'm saying is laughably far from anything that was actually possible to imagine as an Israeli response, given the long history of repression and mutual hatred of those territories. The reality is that Israeli leadership, and a sizeable segment of the Israeli population, wants the territory of Israel to include Gaza and the West Bank, but without bringing in the huge Arab Muslim population there as full citizens with equal rights in Israel. They also want to avoid creating explicit laws officially recognizing them as the second-class citizens that they are. So, the goal of Israeli leadership is actually maintaining the status quo: people in Gaza and the West Bank (and East Jerusalem) are living as second class citizens, their land is slowly being encroached by more radical coloniats, and their anger is controlled by bombings and deprivation when needed.
- HL33tibCe7 2y ago
  > or they are seeking to punish Gazans in general for the actions of a few terrorists on October 7th, eye-for-an-eye style High-ranking Israeli officials have openly stated this at the start of the war and throughout.
  - seo-speedwagon 2y ago
    Israel’s minister of national security has explicitly said he wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza. https://x.com/NTarnopolsky/status/1792891809498022385 https://x.com/NTarnopolsky/status/1792891809498022385
    - gizmo686 2y ago
      He has also: * Been denied entry to the IDF/excused from mandatory conscription due to his extremist views * Been convicted (in an Israeli court) of supporting a terrorist organization. * Made a legal career out of defending alledged Jewish terrorists in Israeli courts. * Arguably contributed to the assassination Yitzhak Rabin and the collapse of the Oslo accords.
    - nolongerthere 2y ago
      Do you speak hebrew? I don't see subtitles to that video, where do you get that?
      - seo-speedwagon 2y ago
        Here’s a synopsis reported by the Times of Israel https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ben-gvir-says-he-would-be-happy-to-live-in-gaza-after-war-calls-for-mass-settlement/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ben-gvir-says-h...
        nolongerthere 2y ago
        The subtitled video doesn't say anything about ethnic cleansing, the minister says he would like to see those who were exiled from Gaza in 2005 returned and allow Jews to live there again. He makes no mention of displacing the current population.
HL33tibCe7 2y ago
During the Falklands War the discussion was around military deaths, not civilian deaths. The problem people have with Israel is not that they're killing Hamas fighters or that IDF soldiers are being killed. It's that they're killing civilians (amongst other war crimes and crimes against humanity). It's a completely different situation. Edit: just to flesh out my position here a bit. Civilian deaths are unavoidable in war. But the attacker _must_ take measures to prevent that as much as possible. Israel have not. In fact they've done the opposite.
- aen1 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
    Those warnings are rarely given, and also warning someone that you're about to bomb their home and store and hospital and aid and aid workers, doesn't justify the crime of doing those things. If all innocent civilians are equal, then it's not acceptable to kill 35,000 Palestinian ones to avenge <2,000 Israeli ones, or even to prevent another <2,000 future Israeli casualties. That math makes no sense from the outside perspective, unless one discriminates based on race, or otherwise believes Israel civilians are somehow more valuable than Palestinian civilians. As for "sympathizers": someone disagreeing with you doesn't justify exploding them, either.
    - dlubarov 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - runarberg 2y ago
        These allegations of Hamas violations of international humanitarian laws—even if true—does not devalue the lives of Palestinians, nor does it give Israel an excuse for further violations. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session55/advance-versions/a-hrc-55-73-auv.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies...
seo-speedwagon 2y ago
Genuine response: the “wider positions on the nature of the I/P conflict” are essential to informing the situation, and cannot be divorced from the discussion. Israel has no ethical response because there is no ethical means by which one can maintain apartheid. History did not start on Oct 7, 2023. It’s like pondering where the line is between legitimate and illegitimate responses to the Warsaw ghetto uprising, or to Haitian revolution.
- BunsanSpace 2y ago
  "History did not start on Oct 7, 2023" Where should we start? When the arabs colonized the levant? or the many massacres of native jews? The wars of aggression by arabs? This conflict is awfully messy and each side has a laundry list of legitimate grievances.
  - stanfordkid 2y ago
    Not really. It’s absurd to draw the line into ancient history of Arab’s colonizing the Levant. Early 1900s to 1948 are more reasonable given that people actually exist that lived in this time or at least meaningful records of history. The fact is the British/UN gave a bunch of land to people that wasn’t really theirs to give. Nakba happened (which is illegal to even talk about in Israel) which was already a mass genocide/forced displacement). People alive today saw this happen. Watch the documentary Tantura to see some of the horrors by early Israelis (rapes, torture, killing people and feeding them their own genitals). The point is: throughout most of modern history “Israel” has been invading Palestine. The fact that the UN recognized Israel in 1949 doesn’t matter… because that recognition required mass displacement and horrors to actually materialize. Arab wars etc are a consequence of this. Sure maybe Israel won some of those. But one has to accept that the very conceptualization of Israel is rooted in genocide and displacement from the start. Many (or maybe most) states throughout history were formed this way I guess … Israel had the bad luck of doing it during a time that the human rights and morality of modernity was beginning to fully form.
    - dlubarov 2y ago
surfingdino 2y ago
[flagged]
- runarberg 2y ago
  That is not a fallacy, it is in fact coded into international humanitarian law that a state actor must follow international humanitarian law under all circumstances. It is a fallacy to assume that governments are driven by hatred and are unable to control their state’s response to unethical acts.
  - candiodari 2y ago
    [flagged]
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  By this standard, the Oct 7th attack itself is justified by the litany of unethical acts committed against the people of Gaza before; and those are themselves justified by the unethical acts committed by Gazan terrorists, and on and on. In reality, everyone is responsible for their own unethical acts, and it's completely unethical to respond to an unethical act with an unethical act of your own.
- mardifoufs 2y ago
  Wait is that a statement in support of Hamas? Or is it just unethical actions from Palestinians that get that treatment? Otherwise wouldn't an occupation followed by a blockade count as an unethical action that doesn't merit an ethical response?
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    The day ICJ goes after the political and financial supporters of Hamas and orders Hamas to stop using the people of Palestine as live shields to bear the brunt of the Israeli wrath will be the day when I will agree with the ICJ.
    - 2y ago
davidguetta 2y ago
Its also simply becausz its not just about self defense. People would care less if israel was not actively supporting illegal settlers and that extremists killed ytzak rabin that was looking for peace. Or that netanyahu was on camera saying he wants to make palestinian civilians suffer as much as possible while he negociates in bad faith and doesnt respect the usa that are 'easy to manoeuver". Its not just about hamas
oliwarner 2y ago
The Falklands death toll was around 900 people, only three of whom were non-combatants. The situation with Gaza is very different. There aren't perfect answers, and fifty years of being kettled under military occupation has only made everyone involved hate each other that little bit more. Whatever the exact numbers are, it's clear that normal people have suffered unduly as a result of military action, in a way that has extended far past self defence, with documented actions that seem barely human. A comparison to the Falklands war —as unnecessary as that was— seems perverse.

tsimionescu 2y ago

This is a somewhat complex question to answer, and one that can't truly be untangled from the broader history of the I/P conflict. But the base idea is this: you can't fight terrorism with bombs. Israel's stated goals in this war don't make sense: even if they could eliminate every single Hamas (military) operative, the kind of assault they are perpetrating is obviously going to give rise to a new wave of militants, probably much more embittered than Hamas is today. So, Israel can only have two actual goals in this war: either they are seeking to purge Gaza of Palestinians, or they are seeking to punish Gazans in general for the actions of a few terrorists on October 7th, eye-for-an-eye style. There is no other reasonable interpretation of this war, and the vast majority of the world's countries see it this way (as seen by the overwhelming support for all pro-Gaza resolutions at the UN, typically 150+ to 10 or less). Now, if Israel actually wanted to eliminate the terrorist leadership that perpetrated the October 7th attack while not creating new generations of terrorists, they would have gone about this intervention in a completely different way. They would have had to work with the non-militant parts of Hamas leadership and the PLO of the West Bank and with neighboring Arab countries to bring these murderers to justice, along with sending the equivalent of police forces for taregtted operations. For an example of how this can work, you can look at how the UK dealt with the IRA in Northern Ireland, or Spain with the Basque Country separatists. They certainly didn't start bombing Belfast or Bilbao semi-indiscriminately to weed out the terrorists there. Of course, what I'm saying is laughably far from anything that was actually possible to imagine as an Israeli response, given the long history of repression and mutual hatred of those territories. The reality is that Israeli leadership, and a sizeable segment of the Israeli population, wants the territory of Israel to include Gaza and the West Bank, but without bringing in the huge Arab Muslim population there as full citizens with equal rights in Israel. They also want to avoid creating explicit laws officially recognizing them as the second-class citizens that they are. So, the goal of Israeli leadership is actually maintaining the status quo: people in Gaza and the West Bank (and East Jerusalem) are living as second class citizens, their land is slowly being encroached by more radical coloniats, and their anger is controlled by bombings and deprivation when needed.

HL33tibCe7 2y ago
> or they are seeking to punish Gazans in general for the actions of a few terrorists on October 7th, eye-for-an-eye style High-ranking Israeli officials have openly stated this at the start of the war and throughout.
- seo-speedwagon 2y ago
  Israel’s minister of national security has explicitly said he wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza. https://x.com/NTarnopolsky/status/1792891809498022385 https://x.com/NTarnopolsky/status/1792891809498022385
  - gizmo686 2y ago
    He has also: * Been denied entry to the IDF/excused from mandatory conscription due to his extremist views * Been convicted (in an Israeli court) of supporting a terrorist organization. * Made a legal career out of defending alledged Jewish terrorists in Israeli courts. * Arguably contributed to the assassination Yitzhak Rabin and the collapse of the Oslo accords.
  - nolongerthere 2y ago
    Do you speak hebrew? I don't see subtitles to that video, where do you get that?
    - seo-speedwagon 2y ago
      Here’s a synopsis reported by the Times of Israel https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ben-gvir-says-he-would-be-happy-to-live-in-gaza-after-war-calls-for-mass-settlement/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ben-gvir-says-h...
      - nolongerthere 2y ago
        The subtitled video doesn't say anything about ethnic cleansing, the minister says he would like to see those who were exiled from Gaza in 2005 returned and allow Jews to live there again. He makes no mention of displacing the current population.

HL33tibCe7 2y ago

During the Falklands War the discussion was around military deaths, not civilian deaths. The problem people have with Israel is not that they're killing Hamas fighters or that IDF soldiers are being killed. It's that they're killing civilians (amongst other war crimes and crimes against humanity). It's a completely different situation. Edit: just to flesh out my position here a bit. Civilian deaths are unavoidable in war. But the attacker _must_ take measures to prevent that as much as possible. Israel have not. In fact they've done the opposite.

aen1 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
  Those warnings are rarely given, and also warning someone that you're about to bomb their home and store and hospital and aid and aid workers, doesn't justify the crime of doing those things. If all innocent civilians are equal, then it's not acceptable to kill 35,000 Palestinian ones to avenge <2,000 Israeli ones, or even to prevent another <2,000 future Israeli casualties. That math makes no sense from the outside perspective, unless one discriminates based on race, or otherwise believes Israel civilians are somehow more valuable than Palestinian civilians. As for "sympathizers": someone disagreeing with you doesn't justify exploding them, either.
  - dlubarov 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - runarberg 2y ago
      These allegations of Hamas violations of international humanitarian laws—even if true—does not devalue the lives of Palestinians, nor does it give Israel an excuse for further violations. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session55/advance-versions/a-hrc-55-73-auv.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies...

seo-speedwagon 2y ago

Genuine response: the “wider positions on the nature of the I/P conflict” are essential to informing the situation, and cannot be divorced from the discussion. Israel has no ethical response because there is no ethical means by which one can maintain apartheid. History did not start on Oct 7, 2023. It’s like pondering where the line is between legitimate and illegitimate responses to the Warsaw ghetto uprising, or to Haitian revolution.

BunsanSpace 2y ago
"History did not start on Oct 7, 2023" Where should we start? When the arabs colonized the levant? or the many massacres of native jews? The wars of aggression by arabs? This conflict is awfully messy and each side has a laundry list of legitimate grievances.
- stanfordkid 2y ago
  Not really. It’s absurd to draw the line into ancient history of Arab’s colonizing the Levant. Early 1900s to 1948 are more reasonable given that people actually exist that lived in this time or at least meaningful records of history. The fact is the British/UN gave a bunch of land to people that wasn’t really theirs to give. Nakba happened (which is illegal to even talk about in Israel) which was already a mass genocide/forced displacement). People alive today saw this happen. Watch the documentary Tantura to see some of the horrors by early Israelis (rapes, torture, killing people and feeding them their own genitals). The point is: throughout most of modern history “Israel” has been invading Palestine. The fact that the UN recognized Israel in 1949 doesn’t matter… because that recognition required mass displacement and horrors to actually materialize. Arab wars etc are a consequence of this. Sure maybe Israel won some of those. But one has to accept that the very conceptualization of Israel is rooted in genocide and displacement from the start. Many (or maybe most) states throughout history were formed this way I guess … Israel had the bad luck of doing it during a time that the human rights and morality of modernity was beginning to fully form.
  - dlubarov 2y ago

surfingdino 2y ago

[flagged]

runarberg 2y ago
That is not a fallacy, it is in fact coded into international humanitarian law that a state actor must follow international humanitarian law under all circumstances. It is a fallacy to assume that governments are driven by hatred and are unable to control their state’s response to unethical acts.
- candiodari 2y ago
  [flagged]
tsimionescu 2y ago
By this standard, the Oct 7th attack itself is justified by the litany of unethical acts committed against the people of Gaza before; and those are themselves justified by the unethical acts committed by Gazan terrorists, and on and on. In reality, everyone is responsible for their own unethical acts, and it's completely unethical to respond to an unethical act with an unethical act of your own.
mardifoufs 2y ago
Wait is that a statement in support of Hamas? Or is it just unethical actions from Palestinians that get that treatment? Otherwise wouldn't an occupation followed by a blockade count as an unethical action that doesn't merit an ethical response?
- surfingdino 2y ago
  The day ICJ goes after the political and financial supporters of Hamas and orders Hamas to stop using the people of Palestine as live shields to bear the brunt of the Israeli wrath will be the day when I will agree with the ICJ.
  - 2y ago

davidguetta 2y ago

Its also simply becausz its not just about self defense. People would care less if israel was not actively supporting illegal settlers and that extremists killed ytzak rabin that was looking for peace. Or that netanyahu was on camera saying he wants to make palestinian civilians suffer as much as possible while he negociates in bad faith and doesnt respect the usa that are 'easy to manoeuver". Its not just about hamas

oliwarner 2y ago

The Falklands death toll was around 900 people, only three of whom were non-combatants. The situation with Gaza is very different. There aren't perfect answers, and fifty years of being kettled under military occupation has only made everyone involved hate each other that little bit more. Whatever the exact numbers are, it's clear that normal people have suffered unduly as a result of military action, in a way that has extended far past self defence, with documented actions that seem barely human. A comparison to the Falklands war —as unnecessary as that was— seems perverse.