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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30565 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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Hamas are deep inside thousands of tunnels and tightly embedded among civilians, counting on Israel (who are being held to first world standards) to value Palestinian childrens' lives higher than Hamas does. They have solid intel on Israel and their capabilities and prepared for just such a war for decades. Why are you ignoring that?

I'm ignoring that because it's not true. The Israeli military has been eager to bomb and wreck Gaza and they've worked hard to limit and constrain food and medical supplies coming in, despite pressure from the US and EU. The ethos is not 'first world standards' but 'the bare minimum that can be dubiously defended as first world standards'.

Since when did first world countries routinely shoot children trying to collect food? Or claim just about every UN/human rights NGO is biased against them? Even Israeli sources have been going 'what is the point of this, what are we trying to achieve by setting these arbitrary lines and shooting people who try to cross them':

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-ordered-to-shoot-deliberately-at-unarmed-gazans-waiting-for-humanitarian-aid/00000197-ad8e-de01-a39f-ffbe33780000

It's definitely true that they prepared for decades against the war that Israel would wage, with thousands of tunnels and human shields. An air war would not succeed, because Hamas made sure of that.

Could you quantify these "first world standards"? Because from where I'm sitting, the Israelis killed more Gazans in the average day prior to the "ceasefire" than the Iranians killed protesters even using the highest death projections despite the Iranian population sitting between 50x and 100x that of Gaza.

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