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(Full disclaimer: I have no personal ties to the conflict and I get the largest part of my information about it from Haaretz, Wikipedia and Al Jazeera. So I def
by xg15 2y ago
(Full disclaimer: I have no personal ties to the conflict and I get the largest part of my information about it from Haaretz, Wikipedia and Al Jazeera. So I definitely have a bias)
> "I support Israel's right to exist but Netanyahu belongs at the Hague" is a pretty common position.
I think Netanyahu (and Smotrich, Ben Gvir, etc) are a big part of the problem, but it's too simple to blame everything on them. The differences to the other political parties seem to be mostly in details that seem relatively irrelevant for non-Israelis: Basically whether to conduct the occupation and settlement with a good or a bad conscience and whether in service of a religious destiny or for mundane security reasons. But no one has any plan to end the occupation or even just to clear the settlements. The recent bill to reject any Palestinian state was voted in across almost all parties.
> But that doesn't mean it shouldn't respond to full-scale military attacks from neighboring near-peer militaries.
I think tallying up the morals of each side of this conflict is really unproductive, but in the spirit of just digging into the details here, I feel like it's worth pointing out that the details on Hezbollah's side of the scale are grim. Not in its conflict with Israel, but with the broader region, where it has killed civilians with great gusto.
Yeah, I don't want to exonerate Hezbollah (or Hamas for that matter). It's just that in this conflict, Hezbollah so far behaved entirely rational and predictable. Their attacks were calibrated to put pressure on Israel but nothing more - and their objective was clear to see. Israel could have easily achieved its objective of bringing back the inhabitants of the north by agreeing to one of the US-brokered ceasefire deals.
It is relatively obvious that Netanyahu wants to continue the war in Gaza at all costs and is rather starting another war than to hold the attacks.
The other reason is that with Israeli military operations, self-defense and conquest seem always be intertwined. I find it uncanny how quickly settlement movements for Gaza and Lebanon pop up during something that is ostensibly a war of self-defense. (Not even starting with the extremely dehumanizing "proposals" what to do with Gaza's population that are apparently freely discussed in Israel's civil society, such as the recent "General's plan")
I'd be more on board if the fight against Hezbollah and Hamas was conducted by an international force with UN mandate than by the IDF alone - and if at the same time we put some actual pressure on Israel to end the occupation, so there is an actual alternative for Palestinians to the terror groups.
- tptacek 2y agoNo, Hezbollah has not behaved "entirely rational and predictable". They have indiscriminately fired rockets at civilian populations in northern Israel, often over a hundred in a single day, averaging dozens every day continuously for almost a year, killing principally (as you'd expect) civilians (ironically, many of them not Israeli Jewish citizens), in one case including half a youth football team.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y agoIf "team A did bad thing X" is an argument for anything, could I counter that team B did X too, and more? You're complaining that Hezbollah kills civilians... So does the IDF. Now if you tell me that one is intentional and the other one isn't the I know you're not being honest, because there's plenty of evidence that the IDF is really casual about collateral damage.
- tptacek 2y agoThat's not the argument. I stated it plainly upthread.
- edanm 2y ago> Now if you tell me that one is intentional and the other one isn't the I know you're not being honest, because there's plenty of evidence that the IDF is really casual about collateral damage. Casual about collateral damage and purposefully targeting civilians are different things.
- hmcq6 2y agoRemember when Israel shot at that car with a family in it? Hind Rajab. Or when they sniped that journalist and attacked her funeral, Shireen Abu Aqleh? Or when they bombed the AP building in 2021 with no evidence. Or when the IOF threw a baby in an oven in front of the father during the Deir Yassin massacre? Hussein al-Shareef and Abdul Rauf Or when they bombed refugee camps? Or when they told people to evacuate south and then bombed the Rafah border crossing so they couldn't escape? Or the Goldstone Report where the UN found that the IOF was forcing Palestinians at gun point to enter buildings first to make sure they're clear? https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g09/158/66/pdf/g0915866.pdf https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g09/158/66/pdf/g09158... Page 22 Very demure, very mindful