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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."
Isn't this just dodging the point that I made? I don't want to be sucked into a tedious litigation of this or that example. The central point for me is that, regardless of whatever moral judgement you choose to make overall, Israel has been aggressive, both militarily and diplomatically.
I could pick some examples, but I suspect that is an attempt to lure me into a tedious back-and-forth, and I don't think you can refute a general point by zooming in on whatever the weakest of my three examples is and quibbling a detail until I get tired. I'm guessing that you follow the Gaza conflict and Israel's wars significantly more closely than I do. Suffice to say that I believe there are plenty of examples of Israel behaving brutally, that if I googled 'Israeli atrocities of the 2020s' I would find plenty (indeed I do), that you know this, and that you are prepared to nitpick any example I give until the cows come home. None of it would be germane to the general point.
Well, let's assume for the moment that (1) Israel's aggression, such as it is, is entirely defensive; (2) Israel's aggression, such as it is, is more restrained than one would expect from most other countries; and (3) contra your claim, Israel has not been behaving "very badly."
Earlier, you said this:
Wouldn't you agree that the added context -- that Israel's aggression is restrained, defensive, and reasonable -- is also something which should be considered in evaluating Iran's aggressive behavior?
It's an attempt to scrutinize your claim that Israel has been behaving "very badly."
No, that won't suffice. Because I don't know what you mean by "brutally" and you haven't actually offered any examples to be scrutinized.
If by "nitick," you mean "scrutinize," then yes, of course. For example, if Israel attacks a hospital, it's hardly nitpicking to point out that the hospital was being used as a base of operations for militants. If Israel mounts a ground invasion of Lebanon, it's hardly nitpicking to point out that Lebanon was being used to stage terror attacks against Israel.
Are you prepared to concede for the sake of argument, then, that Israel has, in fact, NOT been behaving "very badly."?
Certainly it's possible to morally evaluate Israeli and Iranian attacks - bluntly, if I zoom out and look at them in a bigger context, I find plenty sympathetic in both cases. Israeli fear of attack is an understandable reaction to having been surrounded by states determined to destroy it. Iranian hatred of America, going back decades, is an understandable response to unilateral Western and later American aggression against them. There's a sense in which I think Israel is right to oppose its neighbouring Arab states, much less Iran, and in which I think Iran is right to oppose America.
In this case specifically, I just don't want to waste your or my time scrutinising this or that specific claim about an Israeli action. Take, say, Gaza. If we trust wiki around 73k Palestinians have been killed, of which 80% are civilians, so let's say 58k civilian casualties. Let's also for the sake of argument assume that figure is heavily inflated, so let's cut it in half and suppose there are 29k real casualties. Let's also be maximally generous to Israel and cut it down again, since maybe a lot of that number is Hamas human shields or somesuch. So let's suppose that Israel has killed 15k or so innocent people in Gaza.
Is that enough to count as 'behaving badly'? Let's compare this to some other conflicts. The Azerbaijanis took Artsakh and killed a few hundred people. The recent South Yemen offensive seems to have also killed something in the range of hundreds. Those are significantly less. Wiki gives post-2024 casualties in Syria as around 10k overall, which is comparable to our minimal guess at Gaza - am I allowed to say that any of these groups are behaving badly? When the Russians fought that insurgency in Chechnya, they killed a few thousand people - can I say that the Russians behaved badly? How many dead civilians are necessary? I think my threshold is set at a pretty reasonable level.
I think that Israel is behaving more-or-less comparably to its neighbours in similar situations. I don't think it's behaving uniquely badly, but I do think it's fair to say that, overall, it is killing enough civilians that the word "bad" is merited.
If (1) you refuse to back up your claim that Israel has been behaving "very badly,"; and (2) you refuse to concede, for the sake of argument that Israel has NOT been behaving "very badly," then there is nothing more to discuss. All I can tell you is that you are wrong.
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