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Notes -
I've actually already posted and discussed this particular story on the motte with multiple people - my apologies for assuming that this was just commonly accepted knowledge.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/21/middleeast/gaza-war-israeli-soldiers-ptsd-suicide-intl
Actually it doesn't make that clear at all - and if that's the case, then the IDF was actually just extremely incompetent, given that the tunnels are still there and they're making noises about how important it is that they be let in to clear out the tunnels. They've blown up the civilian infrastructure and all the hospitals, and there are more amputee children in Gaza than anywhere else in the world. If that was the goal then the IDF is incredibly incompetent - but they've demonstrated enough competence elsewhere that I just can't accept the claim that this was to destroy the tunnels.
Horrified? I'm not expecting that at all. You claimed that Israel was being restrained and fighting with one arm behind their back. But when I look at what's left of Gaza now the idea that this is Israel being restrained just makes me believe that they need to be stopped or denazified before they get the chance to do this to anyone else.
If you don't want your hospitals and civilian infrastructure blown up, don't use them as weapons caches in flagrant violation of the Geneva convention. I really don't see what's so complicated about this.
When did I say that?
How do you think Israel ought to have prosecuted a war against a combatant like Hamas? What would you have done differently?
They didn't. Israel lied and just blew them all up anyway - I haven't seen any confirmation that these hospitals were actually terror bases. Rather, I've seen evidence that the fancy visuals they used to tell people those hospitals were terror bases were largely manufactured out of videogame assets https://www.972mag.com/israeli-army-3d-propaganda-animations/
My apologies! My posts have been so popular and generated so many replies I didn't realise you weren't actually the person I was replying to.
Well, first of all, I simply wouldn't institute apartheid - I'd give the Palestinians equal rights and full franchise, giving them an actual path to peaceful and shared co-existence, giving them a stake in a shared society that could lead to mutual success. But assuming that's out of the question because my government coalition is full of bloodthirsty ethnonationalists and if I resign I'll just get killed... I'd either flee the country or kill myself rather than take part.
But if I had to prosecute it... I would implement incredibly rigorous conduct rules and make sure that the IDF became the most ethical and well-behaved army in the world. I'd make sure that there's zero opportunity for hostile propaganda, fill the waves with stories about our brave soldiers helping rescue people from dangerous conditions and improving their lives. Be as brutal as you want with the people actually taking up arms, deploy drones to the tunnels etc... but guerilla forces can only operate with the help and assistance of the people around them. Public perception and reputation is incredibly important to Israel and I don't think the country is sustainable without support from the west - so I'd make sure that whatever I did, there wouldn't be gigantic protest movements against my country all over the world.
Your phrasing is very telling. Whatever I did. Because I really do get the distinct impression that whatever Israel does, people will be condemning it.
The gigantic protest movements against the country in question had begun in earnest less than a week after October 7th, well before Israel even had the opportunity to commit any war crimes. In New York, there were protests and calls to "globalise the intifada" literally the day after. (The less said about the people at these protests chanting "Allahu akbar" and "gas the Jews", the better.)
Call me crazy, but it kind of seems like at least a significant proportion of these protests have nothing to do with how Israel's military conducts itself, and more to do with the fact that Israel exists at all.
Actually, you appear to have misinterpreted me - I said "Whatever I did" because I honestly don't know what actions I would take in that scenario. I already know enough about myself to know that I'd kill my commanding officer or myself if I was asked to administer a genocide/ethnic cleansing, and the difference between me as I am now and the person who would actually carry out those orders is large enough that I have a lot of trouble figuring out how this hypothetical me would actually do it.
And you're technically wrong - there are plenty of things Israel could do that wouldn't be condemned. If they dropped the arms and extended a sincere offer of peace and co-existence, the majority of that condemnation would vanish overnight. But at the same time, given the incentives and attitudes in place in the Israeli government, I don't think they're going to change course in any appreciable way. Of course whatever Israel does will be condemned - the specific acts they're taking to implement their ethnic cleansing plan are immaterial when what is being condemned are the goals they're trying to achieve in the first place.
Are you going to sit here and claim that Israel has never committed any war crimes prior to October 7th? I've been a committed antizionist since I had to do a study on the Arab-Israeli conflict for high-school. If you're unaware of Israel's earlier actions, please let me know - we have a lot of material to cover if you really want to understand why all these people have been protesting against Israel!
I'd rather not call you crazy, but as someone who has been to many of these protests that's really not the case. Many of the protestors point at specific actions and deeds - Hind Rajab being the most prominent for the shocking inhumanity on display. It also isn't necessarily the Israeli military either, because it isn't just the military that's involved in what's happening. There are a fair few people who protest against the fact that Israel exists at all, but those are usually the ultra orthodox jews who believe that the creation of the Israeli state is in violation of the Torah.
No, I know what you meant. But I think the way you phrased it was telling in a way you perhaps didn't consciously intend.
No, of course not.
The USA has also committed lots of war crimes. If, the morning after 9/11, a bunch of people staged protests against the US, it wouldn't be untrue for them to defend the decision to do so on the grounds that, while the US may have been the victim of a horrendous terror attack the day before, that doesn't negate the fact that they have committed war crimes in the past. And yet, I can't help but feel that the kinds of people who would protest against a country the morning after it has suffered a terrorist attack are motivated more by hatred of that country (and support for the people committing terror attacks against it) than by a desire to raise awareness of war crimes.
If this particular analogy doesn't achieve the desired effect - supposing the morning after the tsunami in Japan in 2011 in which thousands of Japanese people were killed, I immediately staged a protest against Japan in which I made repeated calls to "globalise the anti-Japan resistance". Somebody points out to me that this is a bit tasteless considering that this country has suffered a horrendous tragedy literally the day before. I defend myself by pointing out that Japan has committed war crimes in the past. This is unassailably true (Nanjing, Unit 731). And yet, wouldn't the timing rather suggest to you that I'm motivated more by hatred of Japanese people than by an innocent desire to raise awareness of Japanese atrocities?
I don't believe that the majority of people opposed to the very existence of Israel are Orthodox Jews. Moreover, I don't believe that you believe it either.
For example, an outright majority of young Britons think Israel should not exist. A different poll of the same age group found twenty-one percent say it does not have the right to exist. A majority of young Americans believe that Israel should be "ended" and given to the Palestinians. Combining half of young Britons and half of young Americans gives you 18 million people, which is already significantly more than the total population of Jews in the entire world (never mind the subset of those who are Orthodox). And that's just the young people in two countries. Do you really think that if I surveyed literally any Arab country "does Israel have a right to exist?", a majority of respondents would say yes?
If you're as committed an anti-Zionist as you say and you've been to as many of these protests as you claim, I'm extremely confident that you're familiar with the saying "Israel does not have a right to exist", or descriptions of Israel as an illegitimate "made-up" state and so on. I'm equally confident that when you heard people making such proclamations, 100% of the people who did so were not Orthodox Jews. I don't believe that you believe what you're claiming.
I disagree. Did you know what I mean? From what you've posted I honestly don't think so. I was under the impression that attempted psychoanalysis of other posters was frowned upon here, but you do you - my arguments aren't weak enough to need that kind of thing so I don't really do it myself.
Neither of these analogies work because the anti-Israel posters were already protesting against Israel and would have continued to do so even if October 7 didn't happen - not to mention that some of the casualties on October 7 were at the hands of the IDF, which means that those anti-Israel protestors were actually calling out some of the culprits. But if we leave that aside... The Japan analogy doesn't work, because there is no active anti-Japan resistance due to Japan having already made amends and settled the conflicts those crimes took place in. Japan isn't actively oppressing anyone or doing anything that requires a resistance movement against them - protesting against Japan wouldn't actually do anything to stop further crimes because those crimes weren't going to happen anyway. People wouldn't think you were in poor taste if you protested against Imperial Japan after the tsunami, they would think you were an insane person completely unmoored from reality.
But the USA analogy does in fact hold because the USA was and still is actively attacking others. I didn't attend any protests the day after because I was a small child... but I did actually go out and protest against the Iraq war which 9/11 was used to justify. I don't think that was insensitive in the slightest, and I stand by my pre-pubescent self's decision to attend the protest at the time. I still think the Iraq war was a terrible idea, and one of the reasons I didn't like Israel was Netanyahu doing his best to get it started and lying to the American government about the "positive reverberations" it would bring.
As for the protests on October 8? Israel was already hard at work committing more crimes against humanity. Thousands of Palestinian hostages were still being tortured in Israeli prisons (this isn't hyperbole, I can go and get the pictures of Palestinians with their eyes cut out or who were run over by tanks or who had limbs cut off etc). Hell, right now the Israeli government is proudly bragging about how they tortured Greta Thunberg (good luck winning the left back to the zionist cause when you're bragging about torturing a prominent young left wing activist by the way)! People were protesting against Israel because they believed that it could have an impact - that their governments would listen and that the consciences of the Israeli people would be stirred. 9/11 was still fresh in the world's memory when I protested against the US' attempt to go to war in Iraq, and October 7th was still fresh in the world's memory when I protested against the utterly disproportionate Israeli response - I don't feel bad at all about either of those decisions.
Oh, I don't believe that about the world in general - I believe that about the left wing protests I attended. You're entirely correct that the majority of people opposed to the existence of Israel are not orthodox jews, but most of the people I meet in the west who think Israel just needs to be destroyed tend to be on the right. The left is angry about Israel and wants them to change a lot, but they usually prefer a single or two state solution with peaceful co-existence. The State of Israel would still exist under a single state solution, it'd just have the name changed to Palestine and get the apartheid regime shut down.
Wow, what heartening news! Thanks for the pick-me up.
Absolutely not - but could you really expect anything else? You may as well ask jews in the 1940s if Nazi Germany has a right to exist.
Lies. Japan denies culpability for its assorted war crimes in the second world war to this day.
It's amazing to me that you consider this a relevant analogy. The entire reason the invasion of Iraq wasn't justified was because the Iraqis weren't responsible for 9/11. It was a ginned-up casus belli. The Palestinians were responsible for October 7th. Do you really not understand how these two situations are incomparable, or are you just pretending not to?
Dying to see a source on this one.
So you claim that your preferred solution is for a single-state solution in which Israel is renamed to Palestine. And yet, it cheers you up to learn that lots of people want the Israelis to pack up and move elsewhere. Why would that be the case, if it isn't your preferred solution? Dare I say you're not being entirely truthful about what your preferred solution is?
Of all the obnoxious rhetorical strategies pro-Palestine activists use, Holocaust appropriation must be the most distasteful. Other Arabs are a far bigger threat to Arabs than Israel has ever been.
But even leaving aside the relative death tolls, the reason this analogy doesn't work is because, prior to the Nazis, relations between Jews and Germans were fairly cordial, as evidenced by the fact that there were hundreds of thousands of Jews living inside Germany at the time. But Arabs hate Israelis now, and also hated them in 1948, before Israel had even been founded (back when they were just called "Jews"). You claim that Arabs hate Israelis as an inevitable consequence of decades of mistreatment, but they already hated them before any of this mistreatment. Am I supposed to pretend that this is just a coincidence? As ever, I find myself irresistibly drawn to the conclusion that this is an ethno-religious conflict dressed up as an anti-colonial one.
Hello! I've only recently returned from a holiday/retreat, where I wasn't able to access the Motte. I'm more than happy to continue this conversation but it has been a week, so I'd rather ask if you wanted to pick it back up first before I respond.
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