naraburns nihil supernum
6mo ago
(text post)
28878 thread views
Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
No electricity, water, or fuel for Gaza until hostages freed - Israel
Israel's Energy Minister Israel Katz says the siege of Gaza will not end until Israeli hostages are released.
In a social media post, Israel Katz said no "electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter" until the "abductees" are free.
I think this is a smart move. Even if the hostages being released remains very unlikely, it puts more of the moral burden for the siege on the Gazans, who do (broadly) support Hamas.
Btw - I think this is absolutely legal. Because usually the only water you are obligated to provide is river one. I don't think that there is any obligation to supply electricity and water and other goods to territories you don't occupy or administer. And whatever government contracts they have probably have clause of - don't attack us.
At this point the optics don't matter. I genuinely believe that Israel could detonate some tactical nuclear weapons in Gaza, killing everybody there, including the prisoners, and would suffer almost no negative consequences for it.
Israel, and by extension the Jewish diaspora, has an absolute grasp on western media and government. During the American house speaker recall debate, one of the congresswomen gave a speech explaining that we should keep McCarthy as speaker because he has done the most to bring other congressmen to Israel. Major American policy debates center around support for Israel, a small foreign country.[1]
The Palestinian terror attacks were a type of brutality I don't think anybody in the modern western world has ever seen before. They were uniquely horrific, and I think this will be remembered as a turning point in modern history the same way that 9/11 was.
Israel is out for blood, and nobody in the west with any real power is going to stop them.
And by the way: good for them. I, a Catholic American, am jealous (although jealous is the wrong word since that sortof implies an animosity, which I have none of) of the power that the Jewish people have. Much of my criticism of The Church centers around not behaving more like The Jews. Why no Catholic equivalent to "Birthright Israel"? Why not make Catholics learn latin anymore? These are good things that people should do.
(Although I don't think they should be nuking Palestine.)
I genuinely believe that Israel could detonate some tactical nuclear weapons in Gaza, killing everybody there, including the prisoners, and would suffer almost no negative consequences for it.
Really? You really genuinely believe that Israel could break that many taboos at once and suffer "almost no consequences"? Is the "almost" poised to do very much work? Are we to read this as a literal statement of fact about your most deeply-held beliefs, or is there at least a moderate amount of hyperbole at work here?
Why are you asking me to restate this? Yes: I think Israel could do almost anything at this point, up to a tactical nuke, and would suffer almost no repercussions for it.
Being "slightly hyperbolic" amounts to "everything I say that someone calls me on, is hyperbolic. Everything I say that nobody calls me on, well, I got away with it". It's like "comedians" acting as serious political commentators right up until someone finds a hole in their story, which they then say was just part of the comedy.
I don’t think a debate about whether or not hyperbole is a useful rhetorical tool is something we’re going to solve on themotte.
What do you think would happen if Israel detonated a low yield nuclear weapon in Gaza? Let’s set up the scenario: they detonate a small yield tactical nuke inside of one of the Hamas tunnels? I’ve linked elsewhere in this thread to descriptions of the tunnels, but some of them could be pretty deep underground.
This would have the result of almost no civilian casualties, would collapse the tunnels, and would have no significant fallout.
Israel/IDF can get on the TV and explain that they assessed the situation and determined that conventional weapons wouldn’t work, and that the tunnels are an existential threat to Israel. They could explain that the yield wasn’t much higher than the MOAB, but that they needed that level of power in a small package that could fit in a tunnel. They would explain that this was done to minimize civilian deaths and that this was the surgical way of detonating the tunnels. Lindsay Graham would be on Fox News within the day defending it. The words “Israel has a right to exist” would be thrown around a lot. We’d hear about how dedicated Israel is to minimizing collateral damage despite Hamas using human shields and how this was the only option and also the most humanitarian option. Israel would take the moral high ground and people would fall in line supporting that idea.
Etc. etc. etc. We could go through these scenarios all day long and come up with ways in which Israel could probably get away with using a tactical nuke on Gaza. It’s very unlikely, but that is the point of hyperbole; taking the point to its furthest conclusion and exploring the territory out there. I think you’re getting into some pretty bad faith discussion by pretending that this is something else, which also has the effect of derailing the discussion. If you want to have a discussion about if hyperbole is a valid rhetorical tool, please do so in the small question Sunday thread.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
firmamenti 6mo ago
And by the way: good for them. I, a Catholic American, am jealous (although jealous is the wrong word since that sortof implies an animosity, which I have none of) of the power that the Jewish people have.
I'm not the first to notice that the way American neocons seem to revel in Israeli nationalism seems like a bit of a proxy for their repressed desire to express some sort of nationalism while still getting GoodBoyPoints.
Ukraine too. We're not allowed to have pride in our country generally, but it's okay so long as it's only to stomp the face of the Russians. It's sickening how much cheering happens over the bodies of dead Russian conscripts.
The Palestinian terror attacks were a type of brutality I don't think anybody in the modern western world has ever seen before.
Baffling statement as far as I am concerned. Nothing I've seen so far made we wince the way some videos from Ukraine do. Then there are cartel videos, and minor events like, for example, that tourist woman getting beheaded in Morocco (?). This is of course just the tip of the brutality iceberg that's easy to access.
I've seen some videos of Israelis getting shot, some dead women, some captive scared women. Stuff that, to me, does not feel out of place in Israel, considering the unresolved conflict. Is there any actually gruesome stuff out there?
I think the Hamas videos have mostly hit that sweet spot of "bad enough to be shocking, tame enough that people will watch it" that have allowed them to go viral. A lot of people have seen the German girl in the back of the truck getting spat on or the dead Israeli soldier getting stomped on, but not so many have watched the one where Hamas is trying to decapitate the Filipino guy with a garden hoe. That's just too much.
Right exactly, like you have to be an extreme degenerate to watch some of the worse cartel videos, they’re truly scarring. The Israel ones are shocking but the descriptions lead people who would never click on ‘NSFL Cartel Execution’ to watch them.
f3zinker
Its A/B testing all the way down
2rafa 6mo ago
I guess I'm an extreme degenerate then. But I'm a strong believer in diving first swimming later. You don't grasp the true weight of the situation if you don't see the worst of it.
Am I scarred? No. If anything I'm better off. No matter how bad things get, at least I didn't piss off the zetas. The cartel videos gave me a new scale of how bad things truly can get.
What videos from Ukraine are you referring to? I have seen a lot of videos with brutal combat footage or savage treatment of POWs, but I have not seen any comparable videos featuring civilians — worst ones are just civilians getting blown up by munitions hitting civilian areas, nothing comparable to Hamas.
I am primarily referring to 'brutal combat footage or savage treatment of POWs', yes. If the question is the emotional, subjective impact (what I meant by 'wince') of an individual video, I think it does not matter who the victim is, it all comes down to either extreme cruelty in full display or detail. There is a well known trench combat video when one of the surprised soldiers gets shot, you begin to hear him scream in fear and agony, and barely a second later his is shot again and silent - I mean this sort of detail. Meanwhile photos from Bucha mentioned below did nothing of the sort for me, as bad as murder is.
Photos that came out of Bucha is going to be the default answer. Incidental and collateral causalities don't typically have their hands tied. Of course, we live in an age of information warfare and PR so consume and verify according to your preferences.
I know about these, but I can hardly believe that these static photos of the aftermath made the original poster “wince”, compared to the videos of Hamas attack. I assumed that he referred to something else.
I haven't really seen it either, and that's despite a recent dip in the /pol pool -- it does seem to be very much what Current Thingers want everyone to believe though.
And by the way: good for them. I, a Catholic American, am jealous (although jealous is the wrong word since that sortof implies an animosity, which I have none of) of the power that the Jewish people have.
For this, you would need to invent some "secular Catholic" identity and community, where someone who never went to Church, who does not obey and does not care about any of Catholic religious laws, someone who does not know transubstantiation from transmission, someone whose only connection to Catholicism is that some of his ancestors were sprinkled with water by priest hundreds years ago, would still identify as proud Catholic.
Aren't there some lingering-even-now vestiges of the Reformation that resemble this description? Ireland is the example that comes to mind, although I can't speak to church attendance among the parties in the Troubles. In the US, sentiment against Italian and Irish (and more recently, Latin American) immigrants was at least partly driven by the Catholic-Protestant divide. I think the history of the Dutch Flemish-speaking parts of Belgium would suggest that distinction is similar vis-a-vis The Netherlands.
Some Cajuns still disown for apostasy from the catholic faith(and I myself have a cousin we do not speak to). IRA members don’t go to church, and didn’t when irelands church attendance rate was extremely high either.
Among the eastern rites, Maronite and Ukrainian Catholics are known for their obsession with their catholic status even when it doesn’t entail waking up early enough on Sundays to actually make it to mass very often, and St Thomas Christians have the st Thomas Christian identity regardless of how well they actually adhere to the faith.
Ireland is the example that comes to mind, although I can't speak to church attendance among the parties in the Troubles.
It depends.
The Unionists took their religion seriously, with leaders like Ian Paisley.
The Republicans (IRA and various splinter groups of splinter groups) were "catholic" only in the sense that "I never go to church, and the church I do not go to is Catholic church).
It is no accident that the Irish Republicans gained sympathy and support worldwide while the Unionists had no allies, even in mainland Britain few were sympathetic to their struggle, most Brits saw Northern Ireland as nothing than millstone on their neck they should be better off without.
No. This is borderline not being Catholic yourself especially how others are expressing it in the comments.
Catholicism is NOT an ethnicity. It’s not nationalism. It should never be an ethnicity or a nation. It’s about following Christ of which includes following the Church as the representative of Christ on earth.
I want nothing to do with people who want a culture Catholic ethnicity.
As brutal as the Spanish were there is a reason why Mayans and Aztecs today are mostly all Catholic. They were still viewed as brothers capable of embracing Christ.
Christ himself was pretty clearly against this notion. Matt 10:34-39
[34] Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
[35] For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
[36] And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
[37] He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
[38] And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
[39] He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.
I was confused at first but then saw the edit. Like I said I’m not in communion currently with the Church. I don’t like your quote (34) and think it’s lacking context. But a lot of your quotes are why I fell away from the Church because I’m not actually willing to do those things. I don’t believe the Evangelicals that you just need to believe. But that you actually need to act.
I do feel like I understand what he’s looking for. I’ve seen videos of Jews coming together now. And I do think having a community like that is a good thing.
In all of that you never once mention Christ. It makes me feel like an Evangelical. You mention beliefs like being anti-abortion. The reason we believe those things is because the Church at its core is to foster a personal relationship with Christ.
Michael Corleone was Catholic but I don’t think he was Christian. People can do all the things you say but I don’t think that’s what the religion is about.
Man I feel like you are going pretty far out of your way to misinterpret what I’m saying. Am I just missing the point you’re trying to make? This is starting to border on the sort of “Catholics aren’t really Christians since they follow the church and not Christ!” arguments that mega church pastors make before asking for money and telling you about the Ferris wheel.
Anyway I think I’ve made my point. I think people should be Catholic. No I don’t think there is any reasonable interpretation of what I’ve said and clarified that leads to Michael Corleone embodying anything I’m supporting. I also don’t think we are going to sit here and re-derive the entirely of Catholic theology and philosophy in some text posts back and forth.
If you want to be Christ-like and follow Christs teachings (which I think you should do) then being Catholic is good. Anything you’re trying to torture out of what I’ve said beyond that is a misinterpretation by you and I think I’ve done enough clarification at this point.
No. This is borderline not being Catholic yourself especially how others are expressing it in the comments.
An absurd statement. I want my literal sisters, my literal mother and father, and some of my friends, who have fallen off of the faith, to remember that they are still baptized, confirmed catholics and should return to Church with me every Sunday when I invite them to mass with me.
I'm not describing diluting the faith. I'm advocating for a more traditional interpretation of it where people assign more importance and value to it.
I feel like I have to have back @sliders1234 on this one. If those who have left the faith choose to return I believe they should be welcomed with open arms, but in the meantime...
he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
Okay I think I understand what you guys are saying, and I think we're getting in a bit of a semantics trap here.
I'm saying: a person who was raised catholic, and who went through confirmation, should still consider themselves associated with The Church. When they hopefully decide to go back to church, it shouldn't be a question of which church they go to, since they are...Catholic.
Contrast this with an atheist, or somebody finding faith for the first time. Catholicism might be an option for them, but wouldn't be the default since they have no connection to Catholicism.
It's the difference between returning to something, and finding something for the first time.
I'm not saying that people who aren't going to church and aren't living a Catholic lifestyle should still refer to themselves as "Catholics". I think I'm actually saying the opposite of that. I can see where the confusion came from, though, since this is how many Jews approach their religion.
When I say be more like the Jews, it's probably based on a misunderstanding. What I actually mean is:
Send your kids to Catholic school
Marry other Catholics
Be friends with other Catholics
Make Catholicism a central part of your life (Many devout Catholics I know are extremely charitable, for instance)
Be assertively Catholic. Be unapologetically anti abortion, anti-degeneracy etc. Be proud of the makeup of the supreme court. Pray before meals, etc.
Maybe this is based on my interactions with Jewish friends, who all seem to be a lot more devout and dedicated to their religion than a lot of my Catholic friends. I don't think I have ever had a person reveal to me that they are Jewish, and have it be a surprise since they are all somewhat vocal about it. I have had the opposite reaction from friends who tell me that they're Catholic, and it be a surprise to me because they don't...seem very Catholic.
Consider Ben Shapiro: what does him being Jewish have to do with his talk show or whatever? But is there any question about his religious affiliation?
To my comment about Latin: the fact that many jews speak Hebrew creates a sense of belonging and camaraderie that I wish existed with Catholics. I hear my Jewish friends rattle stuff off in Hebrew all the time (although it's mostly references to practices, or holidays) - I think that being a Jew and having a language that unites you with other Jews probably does a lot to create a sense of cohesion, and I suspect also keeps people in the faith (not just the language, but all of the things like that).
So again I'm not saying to water the faith down and just let anybody say they're Catholic without really having that mean anything. I'm saying the opposite of that: make saying "I'm Catholic" really mean something.
I think that this stuff will make it harder to leave The Church, and easier to return if you do, since it is more of a central part of your identity than just something you do every Sunday for an hour.
What would be nice is if there was a religion that was more or less born and adapted to a modern, industrial context in which germ theory was a thing and there was essentially no threat of literally starving to death.
I can't speak for @sliders1234, but for my part...
I think I'm actually saying the opposite of that. I can see where the confusion came from, though, since this is how many Jews approach their religion.
...clears a lot up because, yes, the latter part is what I thought you ment and at the risk of proffering aid and comfort to the enemy by agreeing with our local neo-nazis I think this is an instance where the claim that there is a cabal of Jewish intellectuals trying to undermine the west is actually true. The idea that religious/ethnic identity is a matter of blood rather than one of cultural practice/affiliation is a distinctively Jewish one. Even the Jihadis for all their barbarism are welcoming of converts and on occasion respectful towards those they view as useful allies/worthy opponents.
I guess I think the goal of a Catholic is to live as how Christ lived (I’ve failed and am not in communion with the church presently).
Of course we all will fail at that. The sacraments when we try to accomplish that in good faith are there to give us forgiveness. And to believe that Jesus Christ the son God came to this earth to experience our experience and die for our sins to give us a path.
A more traditional interpretation of the faith would be the apostles and the saints. You don’t really get to have preferences for friends and family though it’s very human. The mission is to care for all the same and bring all into the faith. It’s one reason why Priest don’t have family’s so they don’t have biases versus caring for the whole community. Now not all are called to be Priest and Saints and you probably do have some special caring for family.
But using Jews specifically as an example Catholicism is not an ethnic community. We aren’t a chosen people. It gets a little dangerous to look at how Jews a religion by birth and apply their way of doing things to a universal church. Jews are in someways a blood cult. Catholics are not.
You've completely lost me here. I think Catholics should learn latin and should consider their faith a central part of their life and their family's life.
Anything else you're reading here you're misunderstanding.
And I’m saying that’s not the message of Catholicism or Christianity. Other than consider faith a central part of their life. That’s emphasizing tradition and well not the core messages of Christianity.
An emphasis on Latin especially. While that’s can be a fun tradition and a part it’s also exclusionary and Catholicism is a universal church for all which implies most would need their mother tongue. It’s the message that matters not the language.
Secular Jewish identity is not Baal teshuva movement, it is not run by Orthodox rabbis.
You need Catholic identity for people who do not ever want to obey any Catholic laws, who do not care about any priests, who cannot return to church because they had never been there, and do not want to go there for the first time under any circumstances, but still want to identify and feel as proud Catholics.
So you mean like very public proud Catholics who are deniedcommunion over publicly disagreeing with core Church teachings and actively working against those same?
And by the way: good for them. I, a Catholic American, am jealous (although jealous is the wrong word since that sortof implies an animosity, which I have none of) of the power that the Jewish people have.
Hm, I'm wondering if there's a term for that, jealousy without animosity. Would "admiration" capture the meaning?
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
07mk 6mo ago
Perhaps envy? Checking myself on perceived connotation, this blog post says:
Many people interchange the words envy and jealousy without causing much confusion. You can say Joshua is envious or Joshua is jealous, and your audience will most likely understand the message you’re trying to convey. However, these two words have different meanings. Read on if you want to use these words precisely, and make your friends envious that you know the difference.
Envy is the longing to have what someone else has, whether it be attributes or possessions. Envy requires only two parties—you and someone else. For example, you may envy another student because they got a good grade on the exam, but you didn’t.
To feel jealous means “to feel threatened, insecure, or protective of something you already have (especially in a romantic sense).” Whereas envy requires two parties, jealousy requires three. For example, you might feel jealous of your best friend’s new friend because you feel as if you might get replaced.
So perhaps @firmamenti isn't jealous of Israel, as he doesn't hold a grudge against them or the Jewish diaspora, but he is envious of their ability to wield religious identity as both a shield and a weapon.
But the moral burden question is going to depend purely on how effective the Gazans are at broadcasting images to the outside world.
I'm just some asshole in America who has never even been to the region, so I'm not assessing credibility. But reports online have it that hospitals are running out of generators/fuel, that at this point "triage" is taking the form of deprioritizing limbs crushed by falling buildings and only treating life threatening injuries.
Which should still be blamed on Hamas, but the images will be powerful. The human suffering that will be inflicted on the people of Gaza is going to take a lot of stomach to justify for people who don't hate Arabs on a visceral pre-existing level. It's highly likely that different media bubbles (Arab vs American news; Twitter vs Telegram; Red vs Blue tribe at some level) will give different answers.
Right, the imagery available will impact how people think about it, regardless of the underlying moral logic. Personally, I find saying, "they prioritize keeping hostages over treating their own people" as an accurate and revelatory framing of the situation, but quite a few people make it no further than "people not being treated is bad".
Or they'll make it all the way to "Killing 10,000 or maiming 300,000 to save 1,000 is unjust; punishing civilians for not overthrowing their evil government is unjust" as a just and revelatory framing for their worldview.
A mass scale war crime to block food and water to 2.3 million people. Using war crimes to punish a population is an excellent way to get the world to hate you and the victims to never forget.
Does "the world" or its hate matter? US is firmly on-side and the brief mainstreaming of pro-Palestinian sentiments in the Democratic Party seems to have been reversed. Starmer is defending them right now I saw. Egypt's noises amount to refusing to take refugees.
The nations that matter are either on-side or cowed. "The world" will do what it does: nothing. The world doesn't act, nations do. And some matter more than others
I wish you were right about the importance of world opinion, but I strongly suspect you are not. It seems like something people mainly bring up when convenient.
The rest of the world is 75% of GDP and 85% of the global GDP ppp. If the US wants to become genocidal and increase its reputation as extremely aggressive it will accelerate the shift away from the US globally. Most middle eastern countries trade more with China as they haven't invaded middle eastern countries.
Besides the point made below, not everything is about trade. That is what the situations in Ukraine & Israel prove. That's an assumption from happier times.
Israel and the US could avoid trading entirely, but having a carrier strike group show up to remind everyone to "be careful" has value beyond mere economics.
Tomorrow Kenya could throw mountains of cash at Israel, but it wouldn't replace that sort of support when the chips are down.
Most Middle Eastern countries trade more with China because it's a manufacturing powerhouse that gives them a lot of money in exchange for their resources, which it is relatively lacking in compared to the USA. Not invading Middle Eastern countries barely plays a role in it.
Taking civilian hostages is also a war crime. As is murdering civilians, and raping them. All of which Hamas, the legitimate government of Gaza, did to kick off this little war. Exactly what remedy would you propose for these war crimes?
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
JulianRota 6mo ago
both nations
Does Israel even recognize Palestine, let alone Hamas-led Gaza strip, as a nation? I've thought their stance was more of "there's this piece of land that we might have a claim on, but it has a lot of squatters on it. We don't know where they came from, but we're kind-hearted enough to not kick them out and will let them stay as guests as long as they behave"
Gaza used to have their own water, and EU/USA etc donate materials for water pipes and so on, but then Hamas started digging up the pipes to use for rocket making.
I also read something about the underground reservoir being polluted which is why they now rely in water from Israel but not sure.
Egypt can always open their border and help Gaza with those things too!
I also read something about the underground reservoir being polluted which is why they now rely in water from Israel but not sure.
2.3 million people in a tiny strip of desert are going to need to import water. It is the US and Israel that forces Egypt to police imports to Gaza. If it was up to Egypt they would allow more trade.
It is the US and Israel that forces Egypt to police imports to Gaza.
You're going to have to substantiate this because it disagrees with basically everything I can find. Israel helped facilitate Gaza building a desal plant, for instance.
Do you have a citation for that? It wouldn't surprise me, but when I went to look for details it seemed like there were dozens of articles about EU assistance and nothing about Israeli assistance.
Except that Gaza is under a naval blockade and have been for a long time. Israel is illegally imposing a blockade on Gaza that is destroying Gaza's economy.
People casually throw out accusations that Israel is acting "illegally". Like their "illegal" use of cluster bombs. But they (and the US) refused to sign and ratify that cluster bomb treaty. A bunch of countries that already didn't have cluster bombs signed an agreement to continue not using weapons they don't have. And then Israel and the US "illegally" go against a treaty they are not parties to.
Does Israel have an obligation to send water or electricity to Gaza? Let’s start there. Are you saying Israel has an obligation before we move on to any blockade.
You are asking a disingenuous question based on a highly dishonest and propagandized conception of the situation. Thought in short, yes, kind of.
You are speaking as if Gaza and Israel are two sovereign states. Gaza, the state, attacked a bunch of civilians in an act of war against the other state, and Israel provides electricity, water, food out of humanitarian kindness despite all this antagonism. Talk about stupid and evil, huh? Really biting the hand that feeds.
Israel has been economically sieging Gaza well before any of this started. They don't easily allow in concrete, medical supplies, whatever into a one of the most densely populated areas in the world that's about half the size of New York City. They violently refuse to allow Gaza/Palestine right to self determination and occasionally bomb the place in flower wars. Gaza has never been allowed to have their own power generation, water, economy for trade, food, etc. Pragmatically, Israel has had to be involved with Gaza's infrastructure if they are not committing to full public ethnic cleansing/genocide. It's a bit amazing they have functional infrastructure as it is, and anyway this makes it a unique situation since there's not a lot of world places I can think of like this. West Berlin during the Cold War is one of the only things I can think of.
An analogy would be more like a bank robber that took control of food, water, and potty breaks for the hostages. And then the bank robber expects praise for "providing" like he's doing a favor. He's not killing, probably, because the police outside will get angry - not out of altruism. Now the robber is denying food unless the hostages complies with the heist.
Of course, this all ignores what happened prior to this. Including Hamas dismantling systems to attack Israel. Your history starts too late. Gaza has been and continues to be the shittier party in this play.
But of course my statement wasn’t dishonest. I was breaking it down into bite size pieces. I was saying “first start with X.” Was then going to move onto the next.
From what I understand from the news, they don't have an obligation to send food, water, or electricity but they do have an obligation under international law to allow for a humanitarian corridor. Willing to cede the floor to anyone who understands international law better than I do.
The humanitarian corridor is Gaza’s border with Egypt, and it’s not Israel’s fault that Egypt doesn’t want the entirety of Gaza’s supply situation running through their territory.
Yes Israel has an obligation not to commit war crimes on a mountainous scale.
This was in response to the question:
Does Israel have an obligation to send water or electricity to Gaza?
This seems to imply that Israel not sending water or electricity to Gaza is the committing of war crimes on a mountainous scale. Could you clarify what the connection is here? I'm not that familiar with actual war crimes (i.e. in the sense of actual treaties and laws around what nations are allowed to do to each other's combatants and such), so I'm guessing there must be some international treaty that gives Israel that obligation to send water or electricity to Gaza, and I'm wondering what that is.
This is literally insane. You are claiming that if side A attacks side B, that side B is required to continue to provide services to side A. Since that has never been required in the history of war I’ll suggest that it is not customary international law.
Blockading food and water to civilians is a war crime. Also Israel's illegal blockade along with their recent attacks provide Hamas with more than enough justification for fighting back.
Blockading food and water to civilians is a war crime.
"civilians" is important part.
AFAIK only when it can be assured that it will go toward civilians rather than enemy soldiers. Sieging starving enemy who refuses to surrender is AFAIK not a war crime.
Did you know there's a big aquifer for the Levant that unfortunately, for Israel, heavily falls into West Bank territory? What Israel does is just station wells and military in the West Bank to suck it up anyway. In return they provide what is needed by the Palestinian Authority in good faith, supposedly.
Now I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of every single peace deal and have no desire to learn. But water rights is one example of something I don't think Israel has every budged much on that doesn't get talked about much in public. Why would they give sovereign rights to water in the Middle East to their sworn racial enemies? I wouldn't take any deal that had the Israelis feeding and watering me if I were Palestinian, in turn.
I really wish I shared your optimism that would end the conflict. Unfortunately I think the reality is that Palestinian state would declare war on Israel in very short order, with the goal of reclaiming the entirety of what they consider to be their land.
What happens if the new state keeps shooting rockets at Israel and periodically sends death squads into Israeli territory to kill as many people as possible?
Why is it a war crime to demand the hostages before opening the border? Hamas isn’t a random terrorist group, they are the government of the Gaza Strip. They are in possession of the hostages.
Because it is instrumentalizing the suffering of the population to pressure the government. Terrorism at its most basic definition.
...and what was shooting up the music festival?
Near as I can tell, most of the arguments against turning the Gaza strip into a parking lot boil down to "the Jews are a bunch meanies for not allowing themselves to be driven into the sea in 1948"
Most people (worldwide) who are using these arguments are just using them as a stick to beat Israel with. But there's also a very conservative line of thought which holds ones friends and allies to higher standards than one's enemies. Hamas are a bunch of vicious terrorists, no one expects better from them, but Israel is a member of the community of nations and must be expected to do better. Of course this is all very high sounding in the abstract, but when the rubber hits the road it's "cooperating with defectbot" or "allowing oneself to be slaughtered".
TBH I kinda wonder if the real point isn't the pressure, but to degrade fighting capacity for when they go in. Urban warfare sucks at the best of times, I doubt you could do it very well if you haven't had a drink of water in a week.
Pretty much, yeah, though the level of "terror" inflicted by reducing consumer access to high tech goods is obviously so thoroughly different from food and water and basic medical needs that it's a difference in kind.
Right. This would arguably be worse than the holocaust. The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands. But this atrocity would take place after the moral lesson of the holocaust, by a people who were victims of the event, and when Israel is facing zero threat to its continued existence and territorial sovereignty.
Well I guess this is totally like the Holocaust except for the fact Hamas could turn over the hostages to end this particular embargo while Jews in occupied countries couldn’t do anything to end the Holocaust.
The same thing I expect all 14 year olds to do re: governance?
That’s a total non-sequitur.
Hamas could end this particular blockade tomorrow given they govern Gaza - your case that there are a lot of children affected is a strong one for why giving up a few hostages in order to save the lives of children would be the right thing to do!
On the other hand during the Holocaust there was no “Government of the Jews” holding land that the Nazis were fighting and there was no demands by the Nazi government re: Jews except for dying or escaping if lucky.
What is the non-sequitur of holding one million children hostage until an independent terrorist group releases their hostages? Think about how this rule could be extrapolated. What would Afghanis not have been justified in doing to America to free the 150 innocent men who were literally tortured in Guantanamo Bay for years? Or consider that the Nazis infamously blamed all Jews on the few thousand or ten thousand Jews who were involved in the Soviet Revolution and the failed November revolution. This moral rule blows. How about we just don’t threaten to starve (or “thirst out” or whatever) one million children.
Do you believe that Hamas doesn’t rule Gaza? Otherwise I’m not sure how your argument makes sense.
If the Taliban were the rulers of Afghanistan at the time Afghanis were in Guantanamo they would have been well within their rights to embargo America.
Again - in order to compare this to the Holocaust, what demands did the Nazis make of a “Jewish government” that was completely sovereign in the territory it controlled that the “Jewish government” had within its power to do to end the Holocaust? Frankly if this hypothetical “Jewish government” was privileging the lives of 100 German hostages or some failed Bolshevik revolutionaries over the lives of 6 million Jews I would think they were pretty evil!
Hamas as the ruling entity of Gaza could release these hostages today if they wanted to end the embargo of the territory they exclusively control!
Hamas isn’t independent, that’s the point. It’s not like Al Qaeda was to Saudi or even to Taliban Afghanistan, Hamas is literally the government of this territory and has per polling the support of the vast majority of the people.
Zero threat to their continued existence? Besides occasional raids like the one we’ve seen I’m not even sure how to model cheap drone tech and what it could do to Israel with a neighboring populace that wants to kill all of you.
The entirety of Israel existence depends on them finding new technological solutions to new warfare options. If they fail once it’s game over.
You can say that about any country in the drone age, or even the nuclear age, or even just the high-flying bomber age. Hamas was able to find a zero-day vulnerability in Israel’s defenses which led to 1200 deaths at around 0.01% of their population (which has a TFR of around 3.0). There is no risk at all to their continued existence from this attack.
The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands.
What are you talking about? What does this have to do with anything? Are you counting soviet civilians as subjects of germany, and german soldiers as tragic passive victims 'being killed' through no fault of their own? It sounds like those germans were having a real hard time in this war that came out of nowhere, and then decided a bit of jew-killing would help.
Germans had rationing, but they were not starving during the holocaust, every other population they controlled was. I think there was a Hitler quote about that - apparently traumatized by the WWI blockade, he swore that every european would starve before a single german, or something to that effect. Plus the more intentional starving of 'zig millionen' slavs in the hungerplan.
I wonder if @coffee_enjoyer made the same mistake or if he had the cynicism to imply the intentional starving of slavs by germans was a hardship borne by the german people.
Not defending it in any way, more a data point in the stupid = evil argument, but I think nazi leaders really believed germans would starve if they did not secure arable land. I found TiK’s argument on shrinking markets really illuminating on this. I can’t believe anyone could do such a thing without an ‘either them or us’ frame.
Anyway, one more reason why I dislike pessimistic arguments - zero-sum, de-growth, peak resources, third world exploitation, starving proletariat, inevitable civil war, demographic collapse, climate & AI apocalypse type stuff – it gets easier to support horrible measures if you already think the future will be horrible. The cure is usually far worse than the disease.
How can it be a war crime to not feed the people trying to kill you? Was it a warcrime to blockade Germany during WW1? Are our sanctions on North Korea a war crime? Is cutting off Russia from US trade a warcrime?
The people of Gaza have agency. They chose to forgo all the necessities of civilization in favor of killing Jews with literally every resource at their disposal.
Hamas is a single issue party, and that single issue is genocide of the jews. Every mouth you feed in Gaza is a person who will grow up and try to kill you. Let them feed themselves.
is there evidence that they're using european donated pipelines to make rockets, instead of older lines? just send PVC pipe if you're worried about that.
Isn't this a bit like the "US government money going to Planned Parenthood/Christian charities but that money doesn't fund abortions/Christian ceremonies" situation? Pipelines aren't fungible like money, but if getting PVC pipe allows them to dig up existing non-PVC pipes, that's close enough to fungible, and so they're using European-donated pipelines to make rockets regardless. It's just that the European-donated pipelines aren't being used to build the body of the rockets; rather, the European-donated pipelines are being used to substitute the existing pipelines for their water-carrying use while those existing pipelines get used as the rocket frame.
That's a fair point, the effective fungibility breaks down at some point. Of course, it's also the case that at some point they should run out of Israelis to blow up, but I think it's most likely that that point is far beyond the point after which they run out of metal pipes, so that's not really a limiting factor.
no argument from me that hamas doesn't care about improving palestinian lives. just questioning the telegraph article saying european donations are being used to build qassams.
The usuals amongst my friends are already talking about how it's a war crime to shut off the water (that Israel desalinates...), so I don't expect this to change the moral responsibility assessment in most people.
The Israeli’s need to act as if the hostages are already dead. The moral play here is correct and it’s about the only play they have here to have a chance at getting the hostages back. It’s a bit of a Russian play of escalating to deescalate.
That being said I thought people die after 3 days of no water so it’s a bit scary to shut it off.
Palestinian dead are fairly easy to put in Hamas and IDF equally. It’s a bit like MAD doctrine where if group A does X you know that group B will do Y. The entire security framework in place to keep the peace requires group B to commit to doing Y to prevent group A from doing X. If Israel isn’t brutal now then in an future short term peace group A would now know they can do X because group B is morally uncomfortable with doing Y.
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Notes -
No electricity, water, or fuel for Gaza until hostages freed - Israel
[From the BBC news live tracker]
I think this is a smart move. Even if the hostages being released remains very unlikely, it puts more of the moral burden for the siege on the Gazans, who do (broadly) support Hamas.
Btw - I think this is absolutely legal. Because usually the only water you are obligated to provide is river one. I don't think that there is any obligation to supply electricity and water and other goods to territories you don't occupy or administer. And whatever government contracts they have probably have clause of - don't attack us.
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At this point the optics don't matter. I genuinely believe that Israel could detonate some tactical nuclear weapons in Gaza, killing everybody there, including the prisoners, and would suffer almost no negative consequences for it.
Israel, and by extension the Jewish diaspora, has an absolute grasp on western media and government. During the American house speaker recall debate, one of the congresswomen gave a speech explaining that we should keep McCarthy as speaker because he has done the most to bring other congressmen to Israel. Major American policy debates center around support for Israel, a small foreign country.[1]
The Palestinian terror attacks were a type of brutality I don't think anybody in the modern western world has ever seen before. They were uniquely horrific, and I think this will be remembered as a turning point in modern history the same way that 9/11 was.
Israel is out for blood, and nobody in the west with any real power is going to stop them.
And by the way: good for them. I, a Catholic American, am jealous (although jealous is the wrong word since that sortof implies an animosity, which I have none of) of the power that the Jewish people have. Much of my criticism of The Church centers around not behaving more like The Jews. Why no Catholic equivalent to "Birthright Israel"? Why not make Catholics learn latin anymore? These are good things that people should do.
(Although I don't think they should be nuking Palestine.)
Really? You really genuinely believe that Israel could break that many taboos at once and suffer "almost no consequences"? Is the "almost" poised to do very much work? Are we to read this as a literal statement of fact about your most deeply-held beliefs, or is there at least a moderate amount of hyperbole at work here?
IDF just said that Gazans have about 12 more hours to evacuate about 1M people before they start their invasion. How do you interpret that?
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/13/israel-gaza-hamas-evacuate-un-ground-operation
As a far cry from literally nuking the place, and, without intending offense, as you dodging the question.
Why are you asking me to restate this? Yes: I think Israel could do almost anything at this point, up to a tactical nuke, and would suffer almost no repercussions for it.
Yes I am being slightly hyperbolic.
Being "slightly hyperbolic" amounts to "everything I say that someone calls me on, is hyperbolic. Everything I say that nobody calls me on, well, I got away with it". It's like "comedians" acting as serious political commentators right up until someone finds a hole in their story, which they then say was just part of the comedy.
I don’t think a debate about whether or not hyperbole is a useful rhetorical tool is something we’re going to solve on themotte.
What do you think would happen if Israel detonated a low yield nuclear weapon in Gaza? Let’s set up the scenario: they detonate a small yield tactical nuke inside of one of the Hamas tunnels? I’ve linked elsewhere in this thread to descriptions of the tunnels, but some of them could be pretty deep underground.
This would have the result of almost no civilian casualties, would collapse the tunnels, and would have no significant fallout.
Israel/IDF can get on the TV and explain that they assessed the situation and determined that conventional weapons wouldn’t work, and that the tunnels are an existential threat to Israel. They could explain that the yield wasn’t much higher than the MOAB, but that they needed that level of power in a small package that could fit in a tunnel. They would explain that this was done to minimize civilian deaths and that this was the surgical way of detonating the tunnels. Lindsay Graham would be on Fox News within the day defending it. The words “Israel has a right to exist” would be thrown around a lot. We’d hear about how dedicated Israel is to minimizing collateral damage despite Hamas using human shields and how this was the only option and also the most humanitarian option. Israel would take the moral high ground and people would fall in line supporting that idea.
Etc. etc. etc. We could go through these scenarios all day long and come up with ways in which Israel could probably get away with using a tactical nuke on Gaza. It’s very unlikely, but that is the point of hyperbole; taking the point to its furthest conclusion and exploring the territory out there. I think you’re getting into some pretty bad faith discussion by pretending that this is something else, which also has the effect of derailing the discussion. If you want to have a discussion about if hyperbole is a valid rhetorical tool, please do so in the small question Sunday thread.
Hey, thanks for explaining yourself in such detail. That's a lot more reasonable than how I read it originally.
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I'm not the first to notice that the way American neocons seem to revel in Israeli nationalism seems like a bit of a proxy for their repressed desire to express some sort of nationalism while still getting GoodBoyPoints.
Ukraine too. We're not allowed to have pride in our country generally, but it's okay so long as it's only to stomp the face of the Russians. It's sickening how much cheering happens over the bodies of dead Russian conscripts.
Speak for yourself.
Oh, he's speaking for Germany, too, intentionally or not.
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Baffling statement as far as I am concerned. Nothing I've seen so far made we wince the way some videos from Ukraine do. Then there are cartel videos, and minor events like, for example, that tourist woman getting beheaded in Morocco (?). This is of course just the tip of the brutality iceberg that's easy to access.
I've seen some videos of Israelis getting shot, some dead women, some captive scared women. Stuff that, to me, does not feel out of place in Israel, considering the unresolved conflict. Is there any actually gruesome stuff out there?
I think the Hamas videos have mostly hit that sweet spot of "bad enough to be shocking, tame enough that people will watch it" that have allowed them to go viral. A lot of people have seen the German girl in the back of the truck getting spat on or the dead Israeli soldier getting stomped on, but not so many have watched the one where Hamas is trying to decapitate the Filipino guy with a garden hoe. That's just too much.
Right exactly, like you have to be an extreme degenerate to watch some of the worse cartel videos, they’re truly scarring. The Israel ones are shocking but the descriptions lead people who would never click on ‘NSFL Cartel Execution’ to watch them.
I guess I'm an extreme degenerate then. But I'm a strong believer in diving first swimming later. You don't grasp the true weight of the situation if you don't see the worst of it.
Am I scarred? No. If anything I'm better off. No matter how bad things get, at least I didn't piss off the zetas. The cartel videos gave me a new scale of how bad things truly can get.
Yeah. Pissing off the Zetas is suicide, if you do it it's best to always have bombs or grenades on you...
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What videos from Ukraine are you referring to? I have seen a lot of videos with brutal combat footage or savage treatment of POWs, but I have not seen any comparable videos featuring civilians — worst ones are just civilians getting blown up by munitions hitting civilian areas, nothing comparable to Hamas.
I am primarily referring to 'brutal combat footage or savage treatment of POWs', yes. If the question is the emotional, subjective impact (what I meant by 'wince') of an individual video, I think it does not matter who the victim is, it all comes down to either extreme cruelty in full display or detail. There is a well known trench combat video when one of the surprised soldiers gets shot, you begin to hear him scream in fear and agony, and barely a second later his is shot again and silent - I mean this sort of detail. Meanwhile photos from Bucha mentioned below did nothing of the sort for me, as bad as murder is.
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Photos that came out of Bucha is going to be the default answer. Incidental and collateral causalities don't typically have their hands tied. Of course, we live in an age of information warfare and PR so consume and verify according to your preferences.
I know about these, but I can hardly believe that these static photos of the aftermath made the original poster “wince”, compared to the videos of Hamas attack. I assumed that he referred to something else.
There were videos of Russian at checkpoint shooting civilian cars (and murdering whoever was also inside and dragging their corpses into wood).
And some recording from Mariupol (including some captured over several days by teenagers and younger).
But nothing significantly worse than what Hamas proudly published.
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I haven't really seen it either, and that's despite a recent dip in the /pol pool -- it does seem to be very much what Current Thingers want everyone to believe though.
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For this, you would need to invent some "secular Catholic" identity and community, where someone who never went to Church, who does not obey and does not care about any of Catholic religious laws, someone who does not know transubstantiation from transmission, someone whose only connection to Catholicism is that some of his ancestors were sprinkled with water by priest hundreds years ago, would still identify as proud Catholic.
Aren't there some lingering-even-now vestiges of the Reformation that resemble this description? Ireland is the example that comes to mind, although I can't speak to church attendance among the parties in the Troubles. In the US, sentiment against Italian and Irish (and more recently, Latin American) immigrants was at least partly driven by the Catholic-Protestant divide. I think the history of the
DutchFlemish-speaking parts of Belgium would suggest that distinction is similar vis-a-vis The Netherlands.Some Cajuns still disown for apostasy from the catholic faith(and I myself have a cousin we do not speak to). IRA members don’t go to church, and didn’t when irelands church attendance rate was extremely high either.
Among the eastern rites, Maronite and Ukrainian Catholics are known for their obsession with their catholic status even when it doesn’t entail waking up early enough on Sundays to actually make it to mass very often, and St Thomas Christians have the st Thomas Christian identity regardless of how well they actually adhere to the faith.
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It depends.
The Unionists took their religion seriously, with leaders like Ian Paisley.
The Republicans (IRA and various splinter groups of splinter groups) were "catholic" only in the sense that "I never go to church, and the church I do not go to is Catholic church).
It is no accident that the Irish Republicans gained sympathy and support worldwide while the Unionists had no allies, even in mainland Britain few were sympathetic to their struggle, most Brits saw Northern Ireland as nothing than millstone on their neck they should be better off without.
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Yes exactly. I think that would be a good thing because it would be easier for lapsed adult Catholics to return to The Church.
No. This is borderline not being Catholic yourself especially how others are expressing it in the comments.
Catholicism is NOT an ethnicity. It’s not nationalism. It should never be an ethnicity or a nation. It’s about following Christ of which includes following the Church as the representative of Christ on earth.
I want nothing to do with people who want a culture Catholic ethnicity.
As brutal as the Spanish were there is a reason why Mayans and Aztecs today are mostly all Catholic. They were still viewed as brothers capable of embracing Christ.
Christ himself was pretty clearly against this notion. Matt 10:34-39
Emphasis mine.
EDIT: sorry meant to reply to @firmamenti
I was confused at first but then saw the edit. Like I said I’m not in communion currently with the Church. I don’t like your quote (34) and think it’s lacking context. But a lot of your quotes are why I fell away from the Church because I’m not actually willing to do those things. I don’t believe the Evangelicals that you just need to believe. But that you actually need to act.
I do feel like I understand what he’s looking for. I’ve seen videos of Jews coming together now. And I do think having a community like that is a good thing.
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See my reply here: https://www.themotte.org/post/705/israelgaza-megathread-1/148332?context=8#context
In all of that you never once mention Christ. It makes me feel like an Evangelical. You mention beliefs like being anti-abortion. The reason we believe those things is because the Church at its core is to foster a personal relationship with Christ.
Michael Corleone was Catholic but I don’t think he was Christian. People can do all the things you say but I don’t think that’s what the religion is about.
Man I feel like you are going pretty far out of your way to misinterpret what I’m saying. Am I just missing the point you’re trying to make? This is starting to border on the sort of “Catholics aren’t really Christians since they follow the church and not Christ!” arguments that mega church pastors make before asking for money and telling you about the Ferris wheel.
Anyway I think I’ve made my point. I think people should be Catholic. No I don’t think there is any reasonable interpretation of what I’ve said and clarified that leads to Michael Corleone embodying anything I’m supporting. I also don’t think we are going to sit here and re-derive the entirely of Catholic theology and philosophy in some text posts back and forth.
If you want to be Christ-like and follow Christs teachings (which I think you should do) then being Catholic is good. Anything you’re trying to torture out of what I’ve said beyond that is a misinterpretation by you and I think I’ve done enough clarification at this point.
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An absurd statement. I want my literal sisters, my literal mother and father, and some of my friends, who have fallen off of the faith, to remember that they are still baptized, confirmed catholics and should return to Church with me every Sunday when I invite them to mass with me.
I'm not describing diluting the faith. I'm advocating for a more traditional interpretation of it where people assign more importance and value to it.
I feel like I have to have back @sliders1234 on this one. If those who have left the faith choose to return I believe they should be welcomed with open arms, but in the meantime...
Okay I think I understand what you guys are saying, and I think we're getting in a bit of a semantics trap here.
I'm saying: a person who was raised catholic, and who went through confirmation, should still consider themselves associated with The Church. When they hopefully decide to go back to church, it shouldn't be a question of which church they go to, since they are...Catholic.
Contrast this with an atheist, or somebody finding faith for the first time. Catholicism might be an option for them, but wouldn't be the default since they have no connection to Catholicism.
It's the difference between returning to something, and finding something for the first time.
I'm not saying that people who aren't going to church and aren't living a Catholic lifestyle should still refer to themselves as "Catholics". I think I'm actually saying the opposite of that. I can see where the confusion came from, though, since this is how many Jews approach their religion.
When I say be more like the Jews, it's probably based on a misunderstanding. What I actually mean is:
Send your kids to Catholic school
Marry other Catholics
Be friends with other Catholics
Make Catholicism a central part of your life (Many devout Catholics I know are extremely charitable, for instance)
Be assertively Catholic. Be unapologetically anti abortion, anti-degeneracy etc. Be proud of the makeup of the supreme court. Pray before meals, etc.
Maybe this is based on my interactions with Jewish friends, who all seem to be a lot more devout and dedicated to their religion than a lot of my Catholic friends. I don't think I have ever had a person reveal to me that they are Jewish, and have it be a surprise since they are all somewhat vocal about it. I have had the opposite reaction from friends who tell me that they're Catholic, and it be a surprise to me because they don't...seem very Catholic.
Consider Ben Shapiro: what does him being Jewish have to do with his talk show or whatever? But is there any question about his religious affiliation?
To my comment about Latin: the fact that many jews speak Hebrew creates a sense of belonging and camaraderie that I wish existed with Catholics. I hear my Jewish friends rattle stuff off in Hebrew all the time (although it's mostly references to practices, or holidays) - I think that being a Jew and having a language that unites you with other Jews probably does a lot to create a sense of cohesion, and I suspect also keeps people in the faith (not just the language, but all of the things like that).
So again I'm not saying to water the faith down and just let anybody say they're Catholic without really having that mean anything. I'm saying the opposite of that: make saying "I'm Catholic" really mean something.
I think that this stuff will make it harder to leave The Church, and easier to return if you do, since it is more of a central part of your identity than just something you do every Sunday for an hour.
What would be nice is if there was a religion that was more or less born and adapted to a modern, industrial context in which germ theory was a thing and there was essentially no threat of literally starving to death.
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I can't speak for @sliders1234, but for my part...
...clears a lot up because, yes, the latter part is what I thought you ment and at the risk of proffering aid and comfort to the enemy by agreeing with our local neo-nazis I think this is an instance where the claim that there is a cabal of Jewish intellectuals trying to undermine the west is actually true. The idea that religious/ethnic identity is a matter of blood rather than one of cultural practice/affiliation is a distinctively Jewish one. Even the Jihadis for all their barbarism are welcoming of converts and on occasion respectful towards those they view as useful allies/worthy opponents.
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I guess I think the goal of a Catholic is to live as how Christ lived (I’ve failed and am not in communion with the church presently).
Of course we all will fail at that. The sacraments when we try to accomplish that in good faith are there to give us forgiveness. And to believe that Jesus Christ the son God came to this earth to experience our experience and die for our sins to give us a path.
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A more traditional interpretation of the faith would be the apostles and the saints. You don’t really get to have preferences for friends and family though it’s very human. The mission is to care for all the same and bring all into the faith. It’s one reason why Priest don’t have family’s so they don’t have biases versus caring for the whole community. Now not all are called to be Priest and Saints and you probably do have some special caring for family.
But using Jews specifically as an example Catholicism is not an ethnic community. We aren’t a chosen people. It gets a little dangerous to look at how Jews a religion by birth and apply their way of doing things to a universal church. Jews are in someways a blood cult. Catholics are not.
You've completely lost me here. I think Catholics should learn latin and should consider their faith a central part of their life and their family's life.
Anything else you're reading here you're misunderstanding.
And I’m saying that’s not the message of Catholicism or Christianity. Other than consider faith a central part of their life. That’s emphasizing tradition and well not the core messages of Christianity.
An emphasis on Latin especially. While that’s can be a fun tradition and a part it’s also exclusionary and Catholicism is a universal church for all which implies most would need their mother tongue. It’s the message that matters not the language.
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Exactly NO. NO. NO.
Secular Jewish identity is not Baal teshuva movement, it is not run by Orthodox rabbis.
You need Catholic identity for people who do not ever want to obey any Catholic laws, who do not care about any priests, who cannot return to church because they had never been there, and do not want to go there for the first time under any circumstances, but still want to identify and feel as proud Catholics.
So Catholics for choice?
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So you mean like very public proud Catholics who are denied communion over publicly disagreeing with core Church teachings and actively working against those same?
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Hm, I'm wondering if there's a term for that, jealousy without animosity. Would "admiration" capture the meaning?
Perhaps envy? Checking myself on perceived connotation, this blog post says:
So perhaps @firmamenti isn't jealous of Israel, as he doesn't hold a grudge against them or the Jewish diaspora, but he is envious of their ability to wield religious identity as both a shield and a weapon.
The way I understand the words, envy is when you want what others have and jealousy is when you don't want others to have what you have.
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Yeah admiration is close. But it’s like admiration but also some form of sadness or sense of failing for not having the same thing.
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The move is smart, and I'm not sure it's wrong.
But the moral burden question is going to depend purely on how effective the Gazans are at broadcasting images to the outside world.
I'm just some asshole in America who has never even been to the region, so I'm not assessing credibility. But reports online have it that hospitals are running out of generators/fuel, that at this point "triage" is taking the form of deprioritizing limbs crushed by falling buildings and only treating life threatening injuries.
Which should still be blamed on Hamas, but the images will be powerful. The human suffering that will be inflicted on the people of Gaza is going to take a lot of stomach to justify for people who don't hate Arabs on a visceral pre-existing level. It's highly likely that different media bubbles (Arab vs American news; Twitter vs Telegram; Red vs Blue tribe at some level) will give different answers.
Right, the imagery available will impact how people think about it, regardless of the underlying moral logic. Personally, I find saying, "they prioritize keeping hostages over treating their own people" as an accurate and revelatory framing of the situation, but quite a few people make it no further than "people not being treated is bad".
Or they'll make it all the way to "Killing 10,000 or maiming 300,000 to save 1,000 is unjust; punishing civilians for not overthrowing their evil government is unjust" as a just and revelatory framing for their worldview.
This is not a morally clear and simple situation.
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A mass scale war crime to block food and water to 2.3 million people. Using war crimes to punish a population is an excellent way to get the world to hate you and the victims to never forget.
Yes, but, we're far past that. Too late to worry about long-term animosity from Gazans at this point.
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Does "the world" or its hate matter? US is firmly on-side and the brief mainstreaming of pro-Palestinian sentiments in the Democratic Party seems to have been reversed. Starmer is defending them right now I saw. Egypt's noises amount to refusing to take refugees.
The nations that matter are either on-side or cowed. "The world" will do what it does: nothing. The world doesn't act, nations do. And some matter more than others
I wish you were right about the importance of world opinion, but I strongly suspect you are not. It seems like something people mainly bring up when convenient.
The rest of the world is 75% of GDP and 85% of the global GDP ppp. If the US wants to become genocidal and increase its reputation as extremely aggressive it will accelerate the shift away from the US globally. Most middle eastern countries trade more with China as they haven't invaded middle eastern countries.
Besides the point made below, not everything is about trade. That is what the situations in Ukraine & Israel prove. That's an assumption from happier times.
Israel and the US could avoid trading entirely, but having a carrier strike group show up to remind everyone to "be careful" has value beyond mere economics.
Tomorrow Kenya could throw mountains of cash at Israel, but it wouldn't replace that sort of support when the chips are down.
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Most Middle Eastern countries trade more with China because it's a manufacturing powerhouse that gives them a lot of money in exchange for their resources, which it is relatively lacking in compared to the USA. Not invading Middle Eastern countries barely plays a role in it.
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Taking civilian hostages is also a war crime. As is murdering civilians, and raping them. All of which Hamas, the legitimate government of Gaza, did to kick off this little war. Exactly what remedy would you propose for these war crimes?
Also note that the Geneva conventions explicitly do not apply unless both nations either have signed them or have agreed to abide by them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions#Common_Article_2_relating_to_international_armed_conflict_(IAC)
Does Israel even recognize Palestine, let alone Hamas-led Gaza strip, as a nation? I've thought their stance was more of "there's this piece of land that we might have a claim on, but it has a lot of squatters on it. We don't know where they came from, but we're kind-hearted enough to not kick them out and will let them stay as guests as long as they behave"
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Gaza used to have their own water, and EU/USA etc donate materials for water pipes and so on, but then Hamas started digging up the pipes to use for rocket making.
I also read something about the underground reservoir being polluted which is why they now rely in water from Israel but not sure.
Egypt can always open their border and help Gaza with those things too!
2.3 million people in a tiny strip of desert are going to need to import water. It is the US and Israel that forces Egypt to police imports to Gaza. If it was up to Egypt they would allow more trade.
You're going to have to substantiate this because it disagrees with basically everything I can find. Israel helped facilitate Gaza building a desal plant, for instance.
Do you have a citation for that? It wouldn't surprise me, but when I went to look for details it seemed like there were dozens of articles about EU assistance and nothing about Israeli assistance.
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No one is blocking food and water - everyone is free to ship them trough the mediterranean.
Except that Gaza is under a naval blockade and have been for a long time. Israel is illegally imposing a blockade on Gaza that is destroying Gaza's economy.
Which government made this law and enforces it?
People casually throw out accusations that Israel is acting "illegally". Like their "illegal" use of cluster bombs. But they (and the US) refused to sign and ratify that cluster bomb treaty. A bunch of countries that already didn't have cluster bombs signed an agreement to continue not using weapons they don't have. And then Israel and the US "illegally" go against a treaty they are not parties to.
It's been a pet peeve of mine since college when people declare the US and Israel to be acting "illegally". We are not subject to private agreements between European counties.
Of course we stockpile cluster bombs and there's no such thing as a law to tell us otherwise.
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https://youtube.com/watch?v=N6rogaLYRGQ?si=MKMD3TKxLO4ydjEC
About that.
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Does Israel have an obligation to send water or electricity to Gaza? Let’s start there. Are you saying Israel has an obligation before we move on to any blockade.
You are asking a disingenuous question based on a highly dishonest and propagandized conception of the situation. Thought in short, yes, kind of.
You are speaking as if Gaza and Israel are two sovereign states. Gaza, the state, attacked a bunch of civilians in an act of war against the other state, and Israel provides electricity, water, food out of humanitarian kindness despite all this antagonism. Talk about stupid and evil, huh? Really biting the hand that feeds.
Israel has been economically sieging Gaza well before any of this started. They don't easily allow in concrete, medical supplies, whatever into a one of the most densely populated areas in the world that's about half the size of New York City. They violently refuse to allow Gaza/Palestine right to self determination and occasionally bomb the place in flower wars. Gaza has never been allowed to have their own power generation, water, economy for trade, food, etc. Pragmatically, Israel has had to be involved with Gaza's infrastructure if they are not committing to full public ethnic cleansing/genocide. It's a bit amazing they have functional infrastructure as it is, and anyway this makes it a unique situation since there's not a lot of world places I can think of like this. West Berlin during the Cold War is one of the only things I can think of.
An analogy would be more like a bank robber that took control of food, water, and potty breaks for the hostages. And then the bank robber expects praise for "providing" like he's doing a favor. He's not killing, probably, because the police outside will get angry - not out of altruism. Now the robber is denying food unless the hostages complies with the heist.
Of course, this all ignores what happened prior to this. Including Hamas dismantling systems to attack Israel. Your history starts too late. Gaza has been and continues to be the shittier party in this play.
But of course my statement wasn’t dishonest. I was breaking it down into bite size pieces. I was saying “first start with X.” Was then going to move onto the next.
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From what I understand from the news, they don't have an obligation to send food, water, or electricity but they do have an obligation under international law to allow for a humanitarian corridor. Willing to cede the floor to anyone who understands international law better than I do.
There is a lengthy discussion here, and the same author opining re Gaza specifically here
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The humanitarian corridor is Gaza’s border with Egypt, and it’s not Israel’s fault that Egypt doesn’t want the entirety of Gaza’s supply situation running through their territory.
considering that egypt has had to ask israel to stop airstriking the crossing, it sounds like israel does have some part to play.
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Yes Israel has an obligation not to commit war crimes on a mountainous scale.
This was in response to the question:
This seems to imply that Israel not sending water or electricity to Gaza is the committing of war crimes on a mountainous scale. Could you clarify what the connection is here? I'm not that familiar with actual war crimes (i.e. in the sense of actual treaties and laws around what nations are allowed to do to each other's combatants and such), so I'm guessing there must be some international treaty that gives Israel that obligation to send water or electricity to Gaza, and I'm wondering what that is.
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This is literally insane. You are claiming that if side A attacks side B, that side B is required to continue to provide services to side A. Since that has never been required in the history of war I’ll suggest that it is not customary international law.
Blockading food and water to civilians is a war crime. Also Israel's illegal blockade along with their recent attacks provide Hamas with more than enough justification for fighting back.
https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/water-and-armed-conflicts
"civilians" is important part.
AFAIK only when it can be assured that it will go toward civilians rather than enemy soldiers. Sieging starving enemy who refuses to surrender is AFAIK not a war crime.
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I said we needed to go step by step. So do you still maintain Israel is obligated to provide resources to Hamas before we get to blockade issue.
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What is illegal about the blockade as it existed since 2007?
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What's the peaceful resolution that's available?
Israel gives its settlements back and Palestinians can form their own state.
Wasn’t that basically what happened back in the mid 2000s followed by Hamas fucking it up?
Did you know there's a big aquifer for the Levant that unfortunately, for Israel, heavily falls into West Bank territory? What Israel does is just station wells and military in the West Bank to suck it up anyway. In return they provide what is needed by the Palestinian Authority in good faith, supposedly.
Now I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of every single peace deal and have no desire to learn. But water rights is one example of something I don't think Israel has every budged much on that doesn't get talked about much in public. Why would they give sovereign rights to water in the Middle East to their sworn racial enemies? I wouldn't take any deal that had the Israelis feeding and watering me if I were Palestinian, in turn.
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I really wish I shared your optimism that would end the conflict. Unfortunately I think the reality is that Palestinian state would declare war on Israel in very short order, with the goal of reclaiming the entirety of what they consider to be their land.
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What happens if the new state keeps shooting rockets at Israel and periodically sends death squads into Israeli territory to kill as many people as possible?
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Why is it a war crime to demand the hostages before opening the border? Hamas isn’t a random terrorist group, they are the government of the Gaza Strip. They are in possession of the hostages.
Because it is instrumentalizing the suffering of the population to pressure the government. Terrorism at its most basic definition.
...and what was shooting up the music festival?
Near as I can tell, most of the arguments against turning the Gaza strip into a parking lot boil down to "the Jews are a bunch meanies for not allowing themselves to be driven into the sea in 1948"
I mean God forbid that tit be met with tat
Terrorism. I'm not sure what your point is.
If you want to say that terrorism is ok as long as the other guy did it first, just say that. But it doesn't make something not what it is.
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Most people (worldwide) who are using these arguments are just using them as a stick to beat Israel with. But there's also a very conservative line of thought which holds ones friends and allies to higher standards than one's enemies. Hamas are a bunch of vicious terrorists, no one expects better from them, but Israel is a member of the community of nations and must be expected to do better. Of course this is all very high sounding in the abstract, but when the rubber hits the road it's "cooperating with defectbot" or "allowing oneself to be slaughtered".
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TBH I kinda wonder if the real point isn't the pressure, but to degrade fighting capacity for when they go in. Urban warfare sucks at the best of times, I doubt you could do it very well if you haven't had a drink of water in a week.
Unlikely as the fighters will get absolute priority and they likely have enough in the tunnels for the soldiers stockpiled for a siege.
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Are all economic sanctions terrorism then?
Yep.
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Pretty much, yeah, though the level of "terror" inflicted by reducing consumer access to high tech goods is obviously so thoroughly different from food and water and basic medical needs that it's a difference in kind.
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Right. This would arguably be worse than the holocaust. The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands. But this atrocity would take place after the moral lesson of the holocaust, by a people who were victims of the event, and when Israel is facing zero threat to its continued existence and territorial sovereignty.
Interesting type of Holocaust denial. I have no idea where you got your information.
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The Wannasee Conference was January of 1942. German armies were still besieging Stalingrad a year later.
Apologists for genocide and other mass atrocities always claim that they are necessary for self-preservation. That doesn't mean anyone has to believe it.
Wannsee.
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Well I guess this is totally like the Holocaust except for the fact Hamas could turn over the hostages to end this particular embargo while Jews in occupied countries couldn’t do anything to end the Holocaust.
What do you expect the average citizen of Gaza, who is about 14 years old, to do about Hamas?
The same thing I expect all 14 year olds to do re: governance?
That’s a total non-sequitur.
Hamas could end this particular blockade tomorrow given they govern Gaza - your case that there are a lot of children affected is a strong one for why giving up a few hostages in order to save the lives of children would be the right thing to do!
On the other hand during the Holocaust there was no “Government of the Jews” holding land that the Nazis were fighting and there was no demands by the Nazi government re: Jews except for dying or escaping if lucky.
What is the non-sequitur of holding one million children hostage until an independent terrorist group releases their hostages? Think about how this rule could be extrapolated. What would Afghanis not have been justified in doing to America to free the 150 innocent men who were literally tortured in Guantanamo Bay for years? Or consider that the Nazis infamously blamed all Jews on the few thousand or ten thousand Jews who were involved in the Soviet Revolution and the failed November revolution. This moral rule blows. How about we just don’t threaten to starve (or “thirst out” or whatever) one million children.
It seems like all of these arguments boils down to “we will let Hamas utilize their population to protect Hamas.”
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Do you believe that Hamas doesn’t rule Gaza? Otherwise I’m not sure how your argument makes sense.
If the Taliban were the rulers of Afghanistan at the time Afghanis were in Guantanamo they would have been well within their rights to embargo America.
Again - in order to compare this to the Holocaust, what demands did the Nazis make of a “Jewish government” that was completely sovereign in the territory it controlled that the “Jewish government” had within its power to do to end the Holocaust? Frankly if this hypothetical “Jewish government” was privileging the lives of 100 German hostages or some failed Bolshevik revolutionaries over the lives of 6 million Jews I would think they were pretty evil!
Hamas as the ruling entity of Gaza could release these hostages today if they wanted to end the embargo of the territory they exclusively control!
I had understood that their military branch is independent of their ruling branch for op sec reasons
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Hamas isn’t independent, that’s the point. It’s not like Al Qaeda was to Saudi or even to Taliban Afghanistan, Hamas is literally the government of this territory and has per polling the support of the vast majority of the people.
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Zero threat to their continued existence? Besides occasional raids like the one we’ve seen I’m not even sure how to model cheap drone tech and what it could do to Israel with a neighboring populace that wants to kill all of you.
The entirety of Israel existence depends on them finding new technological solutions to new warfare options. If they fail once it’s game over.
You can say that about any country in the drone age, or even the nuclear age, or even just the high-flying bomber age. Hamas was able to find a zero-day vulnerability in Israel’s defenses which led to 1200 deaths at around 0.01% of their population (which has a TFR of around 3.0). There is no risk at all to their continued existence from this attack.
Yes you can. But France doesn’t declare its purpose to murder Germans when presented with the opportunity.
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What are you talking about? What does this have to do with anything? Are you counting soviet civilians as subjects of germany, and german soldiers as tragic passive victims 'being killed' through no fault of their own? It sounds like those germans were having a real hard time in this war that came out of nowhere, and then decided a bit of jew-killing would help.
Germans had rationing, but they were not starving during the holocaust, every other population they controlled was. I think there was a Hitler quote about that - apparently traumatized by the WWI blockade, he swore that every european would starve before a single german, or something to that effect. Plus the more intentional starving of 'zig millionen' slavs in the hungerplan.
I was sure the Germans were starving, too, but I guess I was thinking of the Steckrübenwinter late in WWI.
The Hungerplan was unambiguously, cartoonishly evil.
I wonder if @coffee_enjoyer made the same mistake or if he had the cynicism to imply the intentional starving of slavs by germans was a hardship borne by the german people.
Not defending it in any way, more a data point in the stupid = evil argument, but I think nazi leaders really believed germans would starve if they did not secure arable land. I found TiK’s argument on shrinking markets really illuminating on this. I can’t believe anyone could do such a thing without an ‘either them or us’ frame.
Anyway, one more reason why I dislike pessimistic arguments - zero-sum, de-growth, peak resources, third world exploitation, starving proletariat, inevitable civil war, demographic collapse, climate & AI apocalypse type stuff – it gets easier to support horrible measures if you already think the future will be horrible. The cure is usually far worse than the disease.
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How can it be a war crime to not feed the people trying to kill you? Was it a warcrime to blockade Germany during WW1? Are our sanctions on North Korea a war crime? Is cutting off Russia from US trade a warcrime?
The people of Gaza have agency. They chose to forgo all the necessities of civilization in favor of killing Jews with literally every resource at their disposal.
Hamas is a single issue party, and that single issue is genocide of the jews. Every mouth you feed in Gaza is a person who will grow up and try to kill you. Let them feed themselves.
is there evidence that they're using european donated pipelines to make rockets, instead of older lines? just send PVC pipe if you're worried about that.
PVC pipes work for your sprinklers and your drains, they wouldn't work at all for the high pressures needed in a municipal water system.
There's a lot of PVC used in muncipal water systems.
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Isn't this a bit like the "US government money going to Planned Parenthood/Christian charities but that money doesn't fund abortions/Christian ceremonies" situation? Pipelines aren't fungible like money, but if getting PVC pipe allows them to dig up existing non-PVC pipes, that's close enough to fungible, and so they're using European-donated pipelines to make rockets regardless. It's just that the European-donated pipelines aren't being used to build the body of the rockets; rather, the European-donated pipelines are being used to substitute the existing pipelines for their water-carrying use while those existing pipelines get used as the rocket frame.
Well, at some point they should run out of metal pipes to repurpose if all the replacements are polymer pipes.
That's a fair point, the effective fungibility breaks down at some point. Of course, it's also the case that at some point they should run out of Israelis to blow up, but I think it's most likely that that point is far beyond the point after which they run out of metal pipes, so that's not really a limiting factor.
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Well, here is a Hamas produced video showing their valorous efforts to scrap vital infrastructure to build rockets to kill with so...
I get that this is a den of contrarians. But when people tell you, unambiguously, who they are, believe them.
no argument from me that hamas doesn't care about improving palestinian lives. just questioning the telegraph article saying european donations are being used to build qassams.
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The usuals amongst my friends are already talking about how it's a war crime to shut off the water (that Israel desalinates...), so I don't expect this to change the moral responsibility assessment in most people.
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Good framing from Israel but I half expect Hamas to retaliate by killing hostages until the siege is lifted.
The Israeli’s need to act as if the hostages are already dead. The moral play here is correct and it’s about the only play they have here to have a chance at getting the hostages back. It’s a bit of a Russian play of escalating to deescalate.
That being said I thought people die after 3 days of no water so it’s a bit scary to shut it off.
Palestinian dead are fairly easy to put in Hamas and IDF equally. It’s a bit like MAD doctrine where if group A does X you know that group B will do Y. The entire security framework in place to keep the peace requires group B to commit to doing Y to prevent group A from doing X. If Israel isn’t brutal now then in an future short term peace group A would now know they can do X because group B is morally uncomfortable with doing Y.
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