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So a quarter of American soldiers - who had suffered zero effects back home, other than a bit of minor rationing - still "really hated" Nazis. And that wouod be, to my understanding, before really being too aware of the Holocaust. Imagine if the Nazis had committed the same atrocities to Americans on American soil as Hamas did on 10/7.
They had Pearl Harbor, but Americans didn’t hate the Japanese much either, from 1940s Gallop polls you can find online. Of course they did use nuclear weapons at the end, which would be a fair comparison.
Or we can just look at 9/11? America didn’t bomb every Iraqi dwelling until every member of the Taliban surrendered. That would be sociopathic. And this caused more casualties than in Israel.
In an alternative universe where Al Qaeda was the government of Iraq, and Iraq carried out an attack on the US that killed ~40,000 people (same proportion of population) then yes, the US would be quite willing to flatten Iraq. And if, in this alternative timeline, Iraq chose not to surrender even after an overwhelming military defeat, the US would continue the flattening until the surrendering improves.
I see, per capita deaths. You don’t see anything wrong with Israel killing, at minimum, 36,400,000 “Chinese civilians” worth of Gazans? I mean, as a per capita equivalent to Gaza. I think that if you’re continuing to kill so many innocent people when they pose zero continuing threat to you, that you are a sociopath. Especially when you were the ones whose oppression led to the attack. How many “Chinese citizen” per capita equivalents should Israel kill? All 1.4 billion?
They are willing to surrender, but Israel refused to accept conditions.
I believe the point is that if America did kill 36 million Chinese civilians, the Chinese would nuke Los Angeles and America would have only itself to blame.
The moral of the story is: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
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What conditions did they refuse to accept?
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If considering how a country might react to being attacked, scaling up the attack to match the scale of the country is useful for understanding effects. In New York after 9/11, it was often understood that everyone knew someone who knew someone who at least worked in the towers, if not was killed. In Israel, that instead applies to the entire country, something that might be the case in the US if an attack lead to the deaths of ~40,000 people.
The government of Gaza already maximally wants to kill Israelis. We don't need to debate the hypothetical of how their opinions might change if they took casualties equivalent to 36,400,000 Chinese civilians. Their answer to whether they want to wage unrestricted warfare against Israel on October 6 2023 is "yes" and their answer to that question on 24 May 2025 remains "yes".
In WW2, the US was quite happy to kill 2-3 million Japanese in retaliation for Japan killing 2,400 at Pearl Harbour. Japan could have suffered a lot less casualties by choosing to surrender on December 8, but decided instead to fight a war and lose.
An unconditional surrender is always an option.
The aerial campaign over Japan was because 100k died in the Pacific Theater and a ground invasion would have resulted in up to 1 million casualties.
Actually it’s not, because Israel would prop up their own proxy government who would immediately cede the land to Israel, dispelling the Palestinians to another country. This is the problem with fighting a genuinely genocidal country like Israel: you can never surrender because they admit they want to replace you on your land. Hamas is making the only decision available to them. But peace was possible through a mediation that allows continued self governance of Palestinians.
Is there a number that you would for pin for “maximum amount of casualties” permitted in response? What informs this number and how can we compare it to any previous conflict in Western history? For instance, when Zionists killed 100 British during the King David bombing, how many random civilians was Britain permitted to target in the 1940s as a punitive measure? Infinite?
If this were the case, Israel never would have unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, including demolishing Israeli settlements. Evicting Palestinians from Gaza has only become a serious option after the latest round of bear-poking.
Additionally, if Israel were actually trying to genocide the Palestinians in the motte version of the word- deaths or preventing reproduction- they've been doing a profoundly bad job of it given their available resources and means to do such. They would literally create more casualties if they were less accurate.
It's one of the reasons is why the 'Israel has dropped X bombs!' propaganda line was quietly retired into the first year. The numbers and amounts of bombs dropped versus the number of claimed civilian casualties- even before the UN does things like drastically reduce the estimate of women and children killed to under 5k and 8k respectively- was wildly out of whack. Especially for a 'priority' genocide demographic- if you're out to do genocide the children and women are the most important- the casualties were...
...well, pretty consistent of urban fighting against an urban insurgency that actively uses human shield strategies and casualty reports as a primary media weapon. The Gaza conflict is notable for its duration and international pressure on one of the combatants to not take full direct control of the terrain, but not really total casualties. In the 2017, something like 10,000 civilians were estimated to have died during the battle for Mosul against ISIS. That was less than a year, and against a roughly analogous population size (2 million).
The gazan conflict is tragic, but it's not really exceptional in terms of casualties. Only in terms of global attention. Even when Hamas claims north of 50,000 casualties since the war started, the Sudanese civil war is estimated to seen three times that number die, and that's only about 2,000km from gaza.
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Leaving aside the conflation of Iraq and Afghanistan, that’s a ridiculous comparison, because neither Iraq nor Japan nor Germany were entirely or mostly or even substantially urban.
In reality, footage of postwar Dresden, Berlin and Tokyo looks pretty similar to footage of urban Gaza today. 5% of Germany’s civilian population died in the war by most estimates, more in many major cities. Again the numbers in Gaza are similar (WW2 was longer, but the pitched phase of urban fighting that saw most of those casualties was actually much shorter). Iraq saw far fewer civilian casualties because the Baathist government was deeply unpopular, its military was a traditional uniformed military built on the failed Arab military model of the 1970s and the majority Shia population eagerly dismantled what remained of Hussein’s regime. Go back to America’s last genuinely major conflict in Vietnam (again, predominantly rural at the time of fighting which inherently means a much lower civilian casualty rate) and the civilian casualties spike accordingly, because the enemy had morale.
That is, by the way, what it takes to root out a highly entrenched urban guerilla force that doesn’t wear uniforms, has an extensive tunnel network and embraces hiding among the civilian population. The only alternative Israel’s detractors can offer to the way the war has already been prosecuted amounts to ‘just leave and negotiate from a distance’. That is a valid approach, and a fair argument (and one I agree with), but it is not and can never be a military strategy, only a diplomatic one. Militarily, strategists offer no alternative. If you were in charge of the IDF and were given the order to militarily destroy Hamas with the soldiers Israel has and the equipment it has, you could likely come up with no military strategy that had fewer civilian casualties than the current approach.
Falluja was fought against insurgents in Iraq. While 60% or more of the buildings in Gaza are destroyed, after this battle (the worst of the urban combat in Iraq) only 20% max were destroyed. Why didn’t America just bomb the city until everyone died? Al Qaeda was fought in the battle of Ramadi. Years long urban battle. Why didn’t America just blow up every single dwelling? Same for in Baghdad, over 2 years.
Comparing Hamas, with limited offensive capabilities, to Nazi Germany, doesn’t make much sense. They were compared in the above to show that even the comically worst enemy of history weren’t despised with genocidal intent as Israelis despise Palestinians. But you can’t compare Hamas and their kidnappings / killings to a Nazi invasion of continental Europe. The best comparison is our fight against Al Qaeda and insurgents. They launched an attack on American soil that killed twice the number as Oct 7. We went after Al Qaeda and Baathists as a result. We didn’t aim to starve them to death. This is the closest thing to a 1-to-1 comparison. Vietnam was a notably bad war, people still bring it up all the time as an example of what not to do.
This is unfalsifiable. The few accounts we get from the ground indicate little regard for human life. The recent video of the ambulance workers being killed is an example. You can do what Americans did in Iraq and go into Gaza on the ground. You can enter tunnels and raid homes like we did in Vietnam. If they are unwilling to do this out of fear, then Israel should give up and make compromises. I don’t think the answer is starvation and trying to destroy everything in Gaza.
If Israel was willing to bomb Gaza until everyone died, the war would be over by now because everyone in Gaza would be dead. Do you think this is what is looks like when a modern military power with total air superiority tries to obliterate a civilian center? It is not.
It is entirely within Israel's power to turn Gaza into a smoking pile of rubble. They are choosing not to do that.
If Israel were to do everything they could to kill as many Gazans as possible without losing what remains of international support, what would they do differently than what they are currently doing? They know they can’t actually bomb everyone immediately, all at once. But they can bomb as many as they can get away with, keeping everyone in semi-starvation, causing maximum trauma, destroying every dwelling, and so on. They can kill them all slowly in this way, to reduce international outrage.
If you define “as many as they can get away with” as “whatever they’re doing right now,” you’re just assuming the conclusion.
Surely Israel could drop a few more bombs without losing its core supporters. Or blockade a little more tightly. Or cut negotiations shorter.
What the influential Smotrich had to say just a few days ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=STymrqvry2k
You can plug this into a program that converts subtitles into text and then translate it
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See, now we've gone from talking about facts to reading minds. How do you distinguish someone who wants to kill as many Gazans as possible but is held back by the international community from someone who acts in line with the attitude of the international community because they're part of it? You're essentially blaming them for things they aren't doing, but which you assume they want to do.
I’m arguing against the notion that “Israel doesn’t want to kill all Gazans because they haven’t done that”. They appear to be doing what they can to accomplish this goal within the constraints placed on them externally. The reason that I think they show disregard for human life is because various international bodies, doctors on the ground, and the little available videographic evidence on the ground supports this. The reason I think they are genocidal is because the statements of their politicians suggest this. The Israel apologist is forced to deny the legitimacy of the statements which the politicians (and public) have made indicating their genocidal intent. But the apologies can’t argue, “if they wanted to they would”, because they risk becoming an actual pariah state if they did so, and may even see the deportation of Israelis abroad etc.
I’m honestly having a hard time finding the truth in your post here when it comes to the thoughts of others.
It seems like all the attributions you are giving to Israel (killing as many people as possible, the population wants to kill as many of them as possible, they’re only not due to reasons, the people on the ground say so) are just actually true about Hamas and Palestine whereas they could be true about Israel if you squinted hard enough and ignored the people doing the saying.
I don’t really see how I’m an Israeli apologists when I shrug my shoulders and go ‘ yea, they deserve this - that’s what happens in a war … this has happened tens of thousands of times before’ and this time it’s actually completely deserved.
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The battle of falluja was less than 2 months long and there weren't extensive tunnel networks dug out specifically to prevent the forces from being effectively routed. This is the type of war Hamas specifically prepared to fight and provoke. You need to deal with there being two agentic sides to this conflict.
This has a lot to do with holocaust justification for the war being post hoc and Americans just not really caring a much about a conflict half the world away as evidenced by the long resistance to entering it.
Afghanistan just isn't in any way comparable to Gaza.
A call for an alternative strategy is definitely falsifiable although it's a weird term to use. The relevant question is what do you actually do if you're Israel and recognize that your neighbor is lead by a death cult that legitimately will go to whatever ends are within their ability to kill as many of your people as possible and have extensive tunnel networks that make actually rooting them out nearly impossible. Your options are basically extreme violence, as we see now, or just enduring regular attacks.
Tunnels are not something that would prevent Israel from being on the ground, it would simply add to the casualties. If you think they should blow up and starve all of Gaza because they don’t want to take on-the-ground casualties, then you have to ask why America allowed any on-the-ground casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why not bomb and starve the countries entirely? There were two battles of Falluja separated by seven months — because there was always a sustained insurgent force among civilians. There was a sustained insurgent force through much of the Iraq war, with IED events getting worse as the war went on, peaking in 2007. The tunnel excuse is equivalent to destroying all of Iraq because you don’t want to take casualties from IEDs. Only ~400 soldiers killed in Gaza ground operations so far.
Nazis invaded countries and killed many millions of people. This was well known at the time. And there was a lot of war propaganda about rape and civilians being killed. The American soldiers just weren’t sociopaths. They didn’t want to genocide people for losing a war.
You can stop blockading the Gaza Strip and stealing land in the West Bank and illegally imprisoning Gazans, which were the ascribed motivations for the attack
You can not use the Hannibal Directive, which killed some unspecified % of the hostages and civilians (it’s crazy we still don’t know the extent of this)
You can implement the most asinine security measures to prevent any future attack, starting with a common sense “don’t throw raves right next to Gaza”
You can pursue diplomacy based on returning encroached land in the West Bank
blockading? Do you mean controlling what goes in to the territory where the governimg body uses the pipes meant for water supplies to make rockets? Yeah, no country is going to allow supplies in unexamined in that situation.
I agree, the settlements should not happen, but the Palestinians should have by now come up with state borders which would have prevented this rather than clinging to the delusion that they're going to retake Israel. We should have two people negotiate proper borders but the Palestinians are uninterested in this.
What percentage of the deaths on October 7th do you think died to Hannibal directive? The policy rescinded in 2016.
Do you attribute any agency at all to Gazans? Are they just animals incapable of higher reasoning in your estimation? They can't be expected to differentiate right from wrong?
Would hamas accept a two state solution on these borders?
This was debunked, I’m pretty sure.
That’s also false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_7_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel and there’s also a good TheGreyZone article on it.
Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if every non military age male was killed in the Hannibal Directive rather than by Hamas. Because I don’t think Hamas went in with the RPGs required to —
Though a video was “”released”” showing a militant with one, the original footage doesn’t show it. And by the time the IDF was firing at cars, each insurgent already had a car full of hostages. But Zionists wouldn’t stand 1000 hostages in Gaza and only militant-aged deaths, because this would mean that they would have to take their demands for freedom and justice seriously. This is my theory.
I think so, yes
I wish I shared your optimism....
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There's video of it happening and hamas claims it happens. The only thing really up for debate is if they use specifically EU funded pipes.
But more to the broader point you understand they still regularly lobbed rockets at Israel right? You can't just let your neighbor that's doing that get easy access to more serious weapons.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/10/eu-funded-water-pipelines-hamas-rockets/
Are you under the impression that most Israelis on October 7th died in cars on the way back to gaza? This is a totally unhinged thing to believe. There is footage, you can watch it. Should go without saying but very NSFW https://www.hamas-massacre.net/
I genuinely don't understand how you could convince yourself of this. Hamas leadership had been very consistent in denying this.
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Mysterious force of nature it seems.
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