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I haven't been following a blow-by-blow of Gaza, so I'm going to decline to research that specifically. As far as I'm aware the IDF have blown up hospitals (and you added in the 'not being used against Israel' condition yourself), but if you want to litigate that one, I'll concede.
I do think that FirmWeird is correct in his larger claim. What I said myself was that he's correct on the issue, and that Israel is a very aggressive nation. I will thus refrain from quibbling details and defend that claim specifically. FirmWeird said that Israel "is currently invading Lebanon" and "launched the first strike on Iran".
Do you want citations for the fact that Israel is currently invading Lebanon, or that it launched the first strike on Iran? Do I even need to go any further than Wikipedia for those?
Please note that I have not made any claim about moral justification here. You can believe that Israel invading Lebanon and bombing Iran were good and necessary moves in order to ensure Israel's security in the face of unjustified aggression. I'm not making a value judgement. What I'm saying is that Israel is behaving in a militarily aggressive way, and that this aggression is necessary context for evaluating Iran's behaviour as well. You can think Israel are the good guys, you can think Iran are the good guys, I don't care. What I think is that any reasonable assessment of the conflict between Iran and Israel needs to bear in mind aggressive activity by each party.
Thanks. In my view, it's rather dishonest to use Israel destroying hospitals as evidence of Israeli aggression without mentioning the critical fact that Israel's enemies use hospitals as military bases.
It depends.
(1) Are you denying that before the current invasion of Lebanon, Lebanese territory was used as a staging ground for attacks against Israel?
(2) By "first strike on Iran," are you denying that for years, Iran has been attacking Israel by means of proxies such as Hezbollah?
The facts you are stating here are evocative of the lie @FirmWeird told about hospitals and such by omitting very important context.
Well, if "aggressive" includes "aggressive defense in the fact of hostile attacks," an argument can certainly be made that Israel is aggressive. Although it's worth noting that Israel's self-defense has been far far less aggressive than what most other countries would do given the provocation involved.
But for purposes of your point, there's an important difference between justifiable, defensive aggression such as that of Israel and non-justifiable offensive aggression such as that of Iran. Because you said this:
At any time between 1979 and today, Iran could have easily avoided the Israeli aggression you point to simply by asking for basically the same deal that Jordan, Egypt, and the UAE have: An uneasy peace. I mean, you say that Israel is an aggressive nation but somehow Israel has been able to restrain itself from blowing stuff up in Jordan, Egypt, and the UAE.
Any criticism of Iran for being aggressive needs to take this into account.
Certainly, I think, Israel is occupied in a kind of proactive defense.
My sense, at least from a distance, is that Israel's calculation is that the rest of the Middle East being in chaos is good for Israel. I suspect the Israeli position here is just that if a country like Iran is in collapse, that benefits them overall.
I think that from a wholly amoral perspective, Israel is probably right. I'm also conscious than Iran is nine times the size of Israel, and that hurling Iran into chaos in order to establish Israel's security is a terrible bargain from any utilitarian standpoint. There is a somewhat reasonable argument to the effect that Iran's longstanding and open hostility to Israel means that it shouldn't be treated as an innocent bystander here - this is clearly a complicated situation that goes back to at least the 1950s and probably centuries, particularly insofar as Israel is a client state of the United States, and Iran has been in conflict with the West since at least 1979 and probably since 1953.
My overall opinion, if I zoom out, is that 1) Israel is behaving ruthlessly and inhumanely, yet also for logical strategic objectives, 2) Iran is vengeful but also very much understandable in its opposition to the West, 3) the United States is behaving like an incompetent thug, and 4) we (that is, Australia) ought to have nothing to do with any of this, since none of this is on us, and yet we are paying the cost anyway. I have sympathy for both Israel and Iran, both of which I think are behaving inhumanely and yet also sensibly, in the context of a terrible strategic situation; frustration for the US, which seems to mostly be making an awful situation worse; and even more frustration for ourselves, who have to put up with all of this.
I mean neither to excuse nor to justify Israel. I think that over the last five years Israel has behaved very badly, and yet in a way that is, sadly, par for the course for the region. Iran has hardly behaved any better, and yet, par for the course. I am disappointed but unsurprised.
Would you care to give three examples from the past 5 years of Israel behaving "very badly" and "ruthlessly"? Because I strongly suspect that you have no idea what you are talking about, but then again, I don't know what you mean by "very bad" and "ruthless."
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