9 ms·

> I really don't think moral struggles or the definition of "terrorism" is at all illuminating in this conflict Yes, I fully agree. To be blunt, it's boring se

by arp242 2y ago

> I really don't think moral struggles or the definition of "terrorism" is at all illuminating in this conflict Yes, I fully agree. To be blunt, it's boring semantic wank. No one is here is an angel. Everyone has serious legitimate grievances and no one is smelling of roses. This should be obvious to anyone who isn't a hyper-partisan. But that doesn't mean we can't say all of this could have been avoided if Israel hadn't continued their settlement policy with no hint or perspective or any compromise. Remember the constitutional changes and protests over them? That was mostly over the the far-right wanting to expand the settlement policy even further. Even before Oct 7 several government ministers seemed to support the outright ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Gaza. Fun people. This is not just "fanning the flames", it's the root of the conflict. That was really my main point; I don't think you can just talk about number of civilian casualties without also recognizing that Israel's policies are the fuel on which the entire thing burns. That is: at its core it's a conflict of Israel's choosing. Without it you might have the small terror group or lone nutjob, but nothing like we see today. It doesn't help that Israel gets a huge amount of military support, to the point where it can just do anything without significant cost in lives or material. Look at the casualty ratios – "military peers" is rather a stretch IMHO.

tptacek 2y ago
It just doesn't mean anything. I disagree with you about Hezbollah's motives, but that's besides the point. No country in the world could ignore militarily what Hezbollah has done over the last year. To call the missile attacks an act of war would be to understate dramatically the campaign they've undertaken. You can believe Hezbollah's motives were pure and their campaign fully justified. Israel was still going to shoot back; after almost a full year of large scale rocket attacks, it was starting to look weird that they hadn't already. Hezbollah presumably just expected them to shoot back less effectively.
- hmcq6 2y ago
  > No country in the world could ignore militarily what Hezbollah has done over the last year. You realize Israel has been invading Lebanon since the 60's right? Lebanon has the right to fight back against a sovereign nation who is occupying their land. General Assembly resolution A/RES/38/17 (22/11/1983)
  - tptacek 2y ago
    I don't care about the moralizing in either direction. I don't care that Israel believes Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, I don't care that Hezbollah believes Israel is an illegitimate occupier. I don't care if Hezbollah felt justified in indiscriminately lobbing rockets at northern Israel. I don't care because it doesn't matter. They struck, Israel responded; they are near-peer military adversaries, and they are at war. This to me just illustrates the futility of advocating for a "right to fight back" or a "right to resist". There is no such thing as a right to military strikes without counterattacks. Wouldn't it be wild if there were? If some adjudicator could just decide, you're in the right, they're in the wrong, you can fire thousands of rockets, they just have to sit there and take it? In reality, however, if you launch a large scale military offensive at a capable adversary, you're going to get hit back.
    - hmcq6 2y ago
      > There is no such thing as a right to military strikes without counterattacks. I'm not "moralizing" I'm citing the UN, and nobody is saying that ^ Israel is a colonist apartheid. It doesn't have a right to occupy Palestine and Palestine does have the right to fight back. It's not that Palestine can bomb and Israel can't, it's that Israel must dissolve. Israel has neither the right to bomb nor the right to exist. Palestine shouldn't use violence to make Israel dissolve but they have the right to.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        Israel is not going to dissolve. They're 9 million people with a hypercapable, nuclear-armed military.
        runarberg 2y ago
        History disagrees with you. Apartheid states—even nuclear armed ones—have in the past dissolved into a one democratic state of all their peoples.
        2y ago
- runarberg 2y ago
  > No country in the world could ignore militarily what Hezbollah has done over the last year. Only Israel reacts to terrorism with a genocidal rampage. No other country behaves like this. And it only behaves like this because it has been enabled by their allies, and the international community, who consistently let their crimes go unpunished, including but not limited to their settlement policy. On the flip side, no colonized people in the world (except maybe Tibet) would ignore what Israel has done over the last decades. Decades of colonial occupation usually results in resistance and that resistance usually includes terrorism. Israel’s behavior is not normal, by any measure, Hezbollah or Hamas’ behavior on the other hand is consistent with resistance group of colonized peoples.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Once again: Hezbollah occupies Lebanon. It is not a resistance movement. A majority of Lebanese (which is not majority Shia) loathes it. It's primary military engagements over the last decade --- even after including the casualties it incurred by opening a front with Israel over the last year --- have been in Syria, where it has been gleefully (and I use that word advisedly; look up the details, they've been making videos --- Madaya; Homs; Idlib) murdering children and civilians. You give the game away a bit when you equate Hezbollah with Hamas. They are radically different organizations. Both are terrible, but they are terrible in their own distinct ways. I understand why people have a problem with Israel. It makes a lot of sense. But you cannot simply assume any declared military enemy of Israel is a resistance organization. We went through this with Ansar Allah in Yemen, which is literally a racialist fascist dictatorship representing single-digit percentages of the population, also managed by the IRGC QF, and also killing civilians by the tens of thousands.
    - dtornabene 2y ago
      In no way does Hezbollah "occupy" Lebanon. It is drawn entirely from Lebanese society. Truly a bizarre thing to keep repeating so stridently! Its also absurd to deny the literal origins of the group, as a militia that was attempting to defend southern Lebanon from an actual occupation? This isn't hidden, there are shelves of books in english on the origins of Hezbollah? The first sentence of the second paragraph of the wikipedia article on them, just to show what level of consensus there is, states the fact of its origins as a response to an Israeli invasion, and its source for this is....wait for it....the BBC.
jjfoooo4 2y ago
Is there really cause to believe a peaceful compromise would have been possible even without the settlements? Has there been any period where the borders between Israel and its neighbors have been peacefully respected by both sides?
- tptacek 2y ago
  Israel's two largest borders are with Egypt and Jordan, both of which it has shared peaceful relations with for decades. It shares a complicated border with Syria, where it has for more decades held a salient into Syrian sovereign territory (the Golan), but until recently there has been little military activity involving it. It's the Lebanese border where all the action is at.
  - edanm 2y ago
    (And the "border" with the West Bank and Gaza.)
- hmcq6 2y ago
  > Has there been any period where the borders between Israel and its neighbors have been peacefully respected by both sides? The Oslo Accords, but right wing Israelis assassinated their own PM to prevent a peace deal. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo#:~:text=Worried%20that%20the%20peace%20process,of%20Hebron%20to%20Palestinian%20control https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo#:~:text=....
  - edanm 2y ago
    That's a misleadingly small part of the story of why there's no peace today. Israeli went on to elect multiple other PMs to continue working towards a peace deal. Rabin was assassinated in 1995, but Barak met with Araft in 2000, 2001, Olmert was trying to make a deal all the way up to 2007. And in the meantime, famous military hawk Sharon actually withdrew all settlements and military presence from Gaza, supposedly giving them what they wanted - no more settlements. What actually happened is that a result of the Oslo accords, while yes, one right-wing extremist killed Rabin (and another right-wing extremist committed a disgusting terror attack on Palestinians) - the Palestinians started a massive wave of terror attacks, probably spearheaded by Hamas with the express purpose of scuttling the peace process.
neodymiumphish 2y ago
I’ve heard constant talk about there being a UN resolution that’s gone completely unenforced, which involved UN occupation in southern Lebanon to ensure protection from Hezbollah control and attacks targeting Israel. Is there any validity to that? If such a large policy isn’t being enforced to support Israel, does that not somewhat validate most of Israel’s seemingly-aggressive actions in Lebanon, since the area isn’t being protected as expected?
- tptacek 2y ago
  I think just about everybody intimately acquainted with UNIFIL believes that UNIFIL serves mostly to put soldiers from other countries in harm's way as a performative gesture by the UN (it has a long history). UNIFIL was chartered to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining the position it has today, and later to prevent the militarization of southern Lebanon. It has failed comprehensively. Both Hezbollah and the IDF are actively hostile towards it. The UN should withdraw from Lebanon.

by arp242 2y ago

tptacek 2y ago

It just doesn't mean anything. I disagree with you about Hezbollah's motives, but that's besides the point. No country in the world could ignore militarily what Hezbollah has done over the last year. To call the missile attacks an act of war would be to understate dramatically the campaign they've undertaken. You can believe Hezbollah's motives were pure and their campaign fully justified. Israel was still going to shoot back; after almost a full year of large scale rocket attacks, it was starting to look weird that they hadn't already. Hezbollah presumably just expected them to shoot back less effectively.

hmcq6 2y ago
> No country in the world could ignore militarily what Hezbollah has done over the last year. You realize Israel has been invading Lebanon since the 60's right? Lebanon has the right to fight back against a sovereign nation who is occupying their land. General Assembly resolution A/RES/38/17 (22/11/1983)
- tptacek 2y ago
  I don't care about the moralizing in either direction. I don't care that Israel believes Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, I don't care that Hezbollah believes Israel is an illegitimate occupier. I don't care if Hezbollah felt justified in indiscriminately lobbing rockets at northern Israel. I don't care because it doesn't matter. They struck, Israel responded; they are near-peer military adversaries, and they are at war. This to me just illustrates the futility of advocating for a "right to fight back" or a "right to resist". There is no such thing as a right to military strikes without counterattacks. Wouldn't it be wild if there were? If some adjudicator could just decide, you're in the right, they're in the wrong, you can fire thousands of rockets, they just have to sit there and take it? In reality, however, if you launch a large scale military offensive at a capable adversary, you're going to get hit back.
  - hmcq6 2y ago
    > There is no such thing as a right to military strikes without counterattacks. I'm not "moralizing" I'm citing the UN, and nobody is saying that ^ Israel is a colonist apartheid. It doesn't have a right to occupy Palestine and Palestine does have the right to fight back. It's not that Palestine can bomb and Israel can't, it's that Israel must dissolve. Israel has neither the right to bomb nor the right to exist. Palestine shouldn't use violence to make Israel dissolve but they have the right to.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      Israel is not going to dissolve. They're 9 million people with a hypercapable, nuclear-armed military.
      - runarberg 2y ago
        History disagrees with you. Apartheid states—even nuclear armed ones—have in the past dissolved into a one democratic state of all their peoples.
        2y ago
runarberg 2y ago
> No country in the world could ignore militarily what Hezbollah has done over the last year. Only Israel reacts to terrorism with a genocidal rampage. No other country behaves like this. And it only behaves like this because it has been enabled by their allies, and the international community, who consistently let their crimes go unpunished, including but not limited to their settlement policy. On the flip side, no colonized people in the world (except maybe Tibet) would ignore what Israel has done over the last decades. Decades of colonial occupation usually results in resistance and that resistance usually includes terrorism. Israel’s behavior is not normal, by any measure, Hezbollah or Hamas’ behavior on the other hand is consistent with resistance group of colonized peoples.
- tptacek 2y ago
  Once again: Hezbollah occupies Lebanon. It is not a resistance movement. A majority of Lebanese (which is not majority Shia) loathes it. It's primary military engagements over the last decade --- even after including the casualties it incurred by opening a front with Israel over the last year --- have been in Syria, where it has been gleefully (and I use that word advisedly; look up the details, they've been making videos --- Madaya; Homs; Idlib) murdering children and civilians. You give the game away a bit when you equate Hezbollah with Hamas. They are radically different organizations. Both are terrible, but they are terrible in their own distinct ways. I understand why people have a problem with Israel. It makes a lot of sense. But you cannot simply assume any declared military enemy of Israel is a resistance organization. We went through this with Ansar Allah in Yemen, which is literally a racialist fascist dictatorship representing single-digit percentages of the population, also managed by the IRGC QF, and also killing civilians by the tens of thousands.
  - dtornabene 2y ago
    In no way does Hezbollah "occupy" Lebanon. It is drawn entirely from Lebanese society. Truly a bizarre thing to keep repeating so stridently! Its also absurd to deny the literal origins of the group, as a militia that was attempting to defend southern Lebanon from an actual occupation? This isn't hidden, there are shelves of books in english on the origins of Hezbollah? The first sentence of the second paragraph of the wikipedia article on them, just to show what level of consensus there is, states the fact of its origins as a response to an Israeli invasion, and its source for this is....wait for it....the BBC.

jjfoooo4 2y ago

Is there really cause to believe a peaceful compromise would have been possible even without the settlements? Has there been any period where the borders between Israel and its neighbors have been peacefully respected by both sides?

tptacek 2y ago
Israel's two largest borders are with Egypt and Jordan, both of which it has shared peaceful relations with for decades. It shares a complicated border with Syria, where it has for more decades held a salient into Syrian sovereign territory (the Golan), but until recently there has been little military activity involving it. It's the Lebanese border where all the action is at.
- edanm 2y ago
  (And the "border" with the West Bank and Gaza.)
hmcq6 2y ago
> Has there been any period where the borders between Israel and its neighbors have been peacefully respected by both sides? The Oslo Accords, but right wing Israelis assassinated their own PM to prevent a peace deal. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo#:~:text=Worried%20that%20the%20peace%20process,of%20Hebron%20to%20Palestinian%20control https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo#:~:text=....
- edanm 2y ago
  That's a misleadingly small part of the story of why there's no peace today. Israeli went on to elect multiple other PMs to continue working towards a peace deal. Rabin was assassinated in 1995, but Barak met with Araft in 2000, 2001, Olmert was trying to make a deal all the way up to 2007. And in the meantime, famous military hawk Sharon actually withdrew all settlements and military presence from Gaza, supposedly giving them what they wanted - no more settlements. What actually happened is that a result of the Oslo accords, while yes, one right-wing extremist killed Rabin (and another right-wing extremist committed a disgusting terror attack on Palestinians) - the Palestinians started a massive wave of terror attacks, probably spearheaded by Hamas with the express purpose of scuttling the peace process.

neodymiumphish 2y ago

I’ve heard constant talk about there being a UN resolution that’s gone completely unenforced, which involved UN occupation in southern Lebanon to ensure protection from Hezbollah control and attacks targeting Israel. Is there any validity to that? If such a large policy isn’t being enforced to support Israel, does that not somewhat validate most of Israel’s seemingly-aggressive actions in Lebanon, since the area isn’t being protected as expected?

tptacek 2y ago
I think just about everybody intimately acquainted with UNIFIL believes that UNIFIL serves mostly to put soldiers from other countries in harm's way as a performative gesture by the UN (it has a long history). UNIFIL was chartered to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining the position it has today, and later to prevent the militarization of southern Lebanon. It has failed comprehensively. Both Hezbollah and the IDF are actively hostile towards it. The UN should withdraw from Lebanon.