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The big trend with the GWB was the abolishment of the rules of war. There were no prisoners of war, only terrorists who can be tortured in any which way. There can be no negotiation because the enemy are terrorists and are just fundamentally evil. Pashtuns can't have any reason to oppose the Afghan government.
Palestinians are completely justified in having armed resistance and participating in an armed conflict. They are not terrorists, they are armed combatants participating in an armed conflict. There is no special terrorist clause in the Geneva convention.
Israel is an occupying force and is responsible for the people they are occupying. Israel is clearly trying to depopulate Gaza in order to steal the land.
From actual Israeli supporters to transparent pro-Israel astroturfing, the insistence on the 'terrorist' angle is striking. Does this really resonate with American normies?
I would think 'terrorism' a discredited label, counterproductive in most cases, especially in the context of distant desert squabbles. Is it not the 'common sense', dominant narrative in the US that the 2000's were a mistake born out of lies and a hysteria? Of course the actual costs to the Americans were miniscule, practically irrelevant, so I don't expect emotional investment, just disinterest and cautious 'this will not work on me twice' attitude.
Terrorism still probably has purchase among boomers who are Israel's biggest fans in the west anyways. But everyone else can just read about what Israelis say amongst themselves and realize that the distinction is meaningless at this point.
“You entered Gaza (after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught) to take revenge — as much as possible. [Against] women, children — everyone you saw. As much as possible. That’s what you wanted,” said Uriah Ben-Natan, the brother of 22-year-old Sgt. First Class (res.) Shuvael Ben-Natan, from the northern West Bank settlement of Rehelim.
Gee, it's almost like the Israelis were angry or something after over a thousand of their countrymen were killed or abducted. Next you're going to tell us U.S. Marines landing on Okinawa had some off-color things to say about Japanese people.
If this is a justification, why does the same reasoning not work to justify the Palestinian Oct 7 attack? There is an obviously truthful reading of the situation, which is that Israelis and Palestinians are locked into a multigenerational civil war/blood feud that can only end by one side being wiped out or someone stronger swooping in and separating the combatants, and then there are the two competing narratives that aim to marshal support for one of the sides by selectively word-gaming away the justifications that the other side invokes when turning the ratchet.
What was the inciting incident demanding recompense on the scale of kidnapping, raping, and murdering partiers at a disco festival?
Israel has offered peace multiple times, and when its offers were accepted it honored those agreements. Meanwhile the Palestinians continue to refuse to take "yes" for an answer and insist on further fighting. That's not the recipe for "a pox on both their houses."
Settlement expansion, supported by the Israeli state, is essentially enough for me to conclude Israelis were never serious about peace with Palestinians.
Goal always the same - dispossession and/or expulsion. Slowly with settlements, domestic opposition mostly unserious - happy with the end result, only preferring the optics of serious concern and stalwart disapproval. Faster with aerial bombing campaigns.
So the Palestinians get to demand to live in a judenrein society? When did that become a reasonable demand?
This is in transparently bad faith and you're not even making a pretence of trying to argue to understand rather than win. As an honest question, do you actually think that's what mildly_benis was trying to say? That the Palestinians are just antisemites who want to live in a jew-free society, and THAT is the main reason for their opposition to Israeli settlers coming in and settling on their property without compensation?
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