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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.
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.
A population-wide survey, statements from national politicians, and some members of the judiciary have advocated for genocide according to mainstream definitions. The population-wide survey I posted in my OP shows that many Israelis desire genocide even in the most extreme conceptualization of killing every Gazan. Israel’s inability to carry this out because of near-unanimous disapproval does not indicate a lack of genocidal or intent, only a basic level of foresight in securing self-interest. Does this clarify things?
It’s literally posted in my OP, but for other claims I’m happy to provide a source; you can look at the testimony of British doctors, or watch the recently published video of a team of medical workers being killed. The judiciary and public opinion are literally quoted in my OP, so I don’t know why squinting would be required unless these facts are seen as so brightly illuminating that they burn your eyes. From a leading Israeli politician and minister,
https://www.newsweek.com/worst-man-israel-makes-moral-argument-genocide-opinion-1936211
Do you want more examples?
I think you'd find similar results in any survey of a country at war. "Should we exterminate every last man, woman and child?" A non-trivial fraction of the population will say "Yes." That survey is very strangely constructed, phrasing everything in Old Testament terms ("Should we treat them like the Ameleks?") which I think is a lot less straightforward than asking "Should we genocide Gaza?" I am sure you are aware that how you word a survey has a huge impact on the answers you get, such that you can ask questions that mean the same thing and get different answers.
Are there Israelis who'd be perfectly happy to kill every last Palestinian? No doubt. How are they different from Russians or Ukrainians or Somalis or Americans? You love finding these cherry-picked examples framed in careful and very specific ways, omitting crucial details or comparators, to imply Jews are uniquely evil and genocidal, but you haven't shown anything but that Israelis are reacting like most people would when they believe themselves to be literally under siege by people who, unambiguously, really do want to genocide them. (Does that mean I think Israelis would be justified in wiping out the Palestinians? No, but I think surveys showing a large number of them at this point are saying "Fuck it, why not?" are not saying anything special about Jews.)
From the survey —
This isn't just asking, "do you affirm stories from sacred scripture", it's specifying that it would involve "killing all inhabitants" of a conquered city. Israelis, being familiar with the story of Jericho, would know that this involve killing everyone:
Israeli politicians have brought up the Book of Joshua before in their treatment of Gazans. And this shift precedes the war by many years. From 2017: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2017-05-16/ty-article/.premium/why-religious-zionism-is-growing-darker/0000017f-e13a-d804-ad7f-f1faf5f90000
The polling may suggest upon the public a religious connection to the act of genocide, but so have influential Israeli ministers.
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Americans are generally concerned that drone strikes could inadvertently harm civilians. In the polling I posted in a comment above, WWII soldiers who fought the Nazis largely didn’t hate them, despite many of the soldiers polled losing half their company or more. Americans have been greatly concerned about civilian casualties since Vietnam.
You haven't actually rebutted anything, just repeated a claim that religious rhetoric implies something genocidal about Israelis.
American soldiers in WWII hated their enemies as much as any other soldiers do (read contemporaneous accounts of their attitude towards Germans and Japanese), but the political hatred of Nazis as an entity wasn't what it is now.
We have polling done on actual American soldiers in the middle of the war. Only 25% hated German soldiers. [I may have written “Nazis” above but the prompt says German soldiers.] Only 29% wanted to restrict aid, mid-war. I don’t know why this wouldn’t constitute a disproof. Would everyone say the same as Israelis? American soldiers fighting actual Nazis did not say the same things about German soldiers, let alone civilians.
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