Israel/Palestine thread

You can’t name a single person in this thread that has advocated for the extermination of all Palestinians. Saying that Israel has a right to defend itself by eliminating Hamas is not a Nazi argument.

Printable versions will be available either targeted or swarms (or crawling). Dont need to use bullets or anyhting that could be a giveaway. Small single payload to kill/maim/start a fire.

The two defenses are a) political solutions so countries are working to defend rather than sponsor and b) defense tech

Despite what we can clearly see as the beginning of this new era of war/terror, people are still clinging to their denial.

It's not all negative. The future for those who make it is going to be awesome. War as it often does will speed up the tech advances dramatically

Here.

A more common approach is to pretend blowing up hospitals, executing six year olds and killing thousands upon thousands of civilians is "defending yourself against Hamas."

Well, Israel is being simultaneously attacked on 5 fronts with no end in sight, and no one doubts if the situation lasted indefinitely with Israel holding back and not fighting to win, it will eventually be destroyed; so clearly you are severely misrepresenting the situation.

So the only question is whether you are clueless of reality; or you actually would prefer a sequence that would assure Israel fails. If you want Israel to fail that is your prerogative, but you have to also accept Israelis themselves dont prefer this outcome, and are going to act accordingly.

I am fairly confident that Israel doing the exact opposite of what someone with your worldview would recommend is in its best interests.

As I said before, the pre 10/7 status quo there was a strong incentive structure for the IRI and associated proxies to continually threaten and attack Israel. This was especially true for Palestinian Islamist groups, that have been given tremendous wealth and resources by IRI, Qatar and corrupt UN agencies to fight Israel. And accordingly they have been doing so.

However, post 10/7 and IRI proxies opening up so many fronts at once against Israel, Israel has decided that this incentive structure cannot remain. So they are aggressively killing leaders of Islamist groups and destroying infrastructure and resources. So we will see how this alters the landscape. Israel will fight to survive, and Islamist groups will take tremendous damage; so now knowing this they will have to decide if the juice is still worth the squeeze.

“It is better to be feared than to be loved, if one cannot be both.” -Machiavelli

Israel tried to be loved. It lost against the terror of Hamas and Iran.

Pacifism without power and willingness to eliminate and deter those who would use violence is just sophistry.

Put differently, you cannot win the hearts and minds of your enemies until you make them stop beating you first.

Such simplistic ideas are a very poor defense of so much death and destruction. The idea the dangers are going away because of fear is so tenuous.

I dont see many arguing pacifism.

This is just a version of the RW coward who always has a gun and thinks he should be able to shoot a scary looking black guy for walking in his direction cuz maybe he might be about to be victimized. And thinks he's a tough guy.

Isreal has been at odds with the Arabs the whole way, with many terrible crimes from both parties. They have only gained territory.

You don't have any kind of argument as to how Isreal would cease to exist if they don't do ethnic cleansing. They have strong defenses and have done fine so far.

The Blacks didn't murder all the whites in SA. England pretty well patched it up with Ireland without exterminating the population. The KKK is mostly gone and we didn't bomb a single hospital. And AAs were WAY more vulnerable than are Isrealis.

"We will be wiped out if we don't shoot little kids and rape prisoners!"

Nah, they'll probably be fine. By doing those things, they just turn opinion against themselves and provide fodder to antisemitism. Which is absolutely exploding. I grew up in pretty Jewish area and you had some soft bigotry. But the idea that the Jews control the world or something was literally a joke. You might hear some skin head on Geraldo say that, but no normal people. Zero.

Now:

MMA guy Jake Shields is another example and there are plenty.

It sells a lot better when we are funding guys from The Jewish Power party who say Arabs are animals, or guys who say the Goyim were created by God to be their subhuman servants, as they blow up hospitals.

Is there SOME chance Isreal could face a disaster in the future? Sure. And that black guy might mug you. But you can't let selfish little cowards go around killing everyone to make themselves feel safe.

And, it's also possible that their crimes are their undoing. Governments less corrupt than the US are starting to turn away. And here, the media is starting to report on the atrocities. If you don't kill em all, some will grow up having seen Isreal murder dozens of friends and family, with no concern other than revenge.

If you exterminate the Palestinians, then what? The Lebanese. Then what?

It's not as if nobody has thought about this stuff before. Only a certain type of person lands on "if we just kill enough people, we'll be safe."

ES2, I have a legitimate question: what do you think should happen to Israel? Do you think that there should be a one state solution, two state solution, something else? It’s easy to point blame at the Israelis for having hateful people in their country and in their government, but I truly think that on the whole the Israelis have been more willing to negotiate in good faith towards a mutual position of respect than their Palestinian counterparts.

To be clear, I hate all supremacist ideology, but I don’t think Israel on the whole represents that. Even if you want to say this war is unjust and has been handling horribly, I don’t think you simultaneously think that means Israel should just unilaterally disarm and allow themselves to be attacked on all fronts. So what do you think the solution is?

dont lose sight of the fact that ethnic cleansing and extermination of the palestinians is not israel's objective and isnt happening

be careful not to get too lost in your curated twitter feed, which as we know is designed to activate the primal parts of your brain

"Al-Qaeda: Abu Walid al-Masri, an advisor to Saif al-Adel, Al-Qaeda's current de-facto lr, hailed Sinwar on his death and urged Hamas to release Israeli hostages, stating that the focus on their recovery was overshadowing the plight of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and emphasized that the hostage issue should be "closed" to avoid further consequences."

damn when al qseda are the sensible voices of the anti-israel movement you know **** has gone ****ing haywire

I really hope that Sinwar was the one being the ideologue and that whatever is left are people that just want to be powerful and don’t care about the conditions on which they end up in power.

Actually having people left that are only concerned with keeping power would be the best thing for Palestine, because peace with your powerful neighbor is a great way to stay rich and powerful.

I'm not knowledge enough to map out a future for the region. Even experts would be heavily speculating.

Generally, I like the truth and reconciliation model, used in SA and some parts of Latin America. At a certain point, so much horrible stuff has happened that punishing every wrong doer is not feasible and you just have to let a lot of them off the hook, but provide a careful account of what happened. This applies to Jews and Arabs in the region.

In the short term, I would suggest something broadly like, Isreal has retaliated many times over and it's time to stop. They maintain a robust military and there is little to no chance of them being actually invaded and over run.

Acts of violence will erupt on both sides, I suppose, as happened with Ireland and England (I'm even less knowledgeable on that one). We still have racial violence in the US as well. You can't have the standard of "no bad actors can exist, or we have total war." The North didn't send Sherman back every time there was a lynching. Such an unreasonable standard is just a pretext for more violence.

I'm normally very hard core on free speech, but in these extreme cases you might need to outlaw some things like supremacist political parties. Isreal, to their credit, has done so in the past. Netanyahu's henchman from the Jewish Power party has been jailed before fore inciting racism and for terrorism. That shows Isreal can take the high road. But, a guy like that should have no path back to power.

The Arab world has not done right by the Palestinians either, often using them as pawns, according to my limited understanding. Perhaps it is time for them to step up there. The US could bribe them to do so, if need be.

Other countries as well could aid the Palestinians in rebuilding, with strings attached about similar goals, perhaps outlawing antisemitic literature and preaching.

Again, I do know some about the region but am miles from expertise. Those are some fairly naive ideas about the general direction. We could look to successful cases like Ireland and SA and others as models.

For Victor

Firstly, Dun is arguing in favor if ethnic cleansing, whether Isreal is doing that or not.

I don't think the terminology is all that important. We are seeing incredible amounts of civilian death and suffering.

You can't blow up every hospital in a region, even if ammunition is stored there, which I'm not convinced of.

To add to many counter examples, if we were to use these tactics with the aim of eliminating Mexican cartels: which are unfathomably horrible, 1) our leaders would deserve life in prison 2) I don't think it would work.

Ok, I can appreciate a lot of this approach. As you said you were mostly giving general ideas some of which I think are great. If this stuff was possible I would be all for it.

It’s a really complicated issue though. I’m not trying to put you on the spot but on the spectrum of ideas yours would actually fall close in line with respecting Israel’s sovereignty but putting them on line with the expectations of Western countries. I’m really on board with that. One of my big issues with Israel is how much support for settlements there are, especially in the West Bank. I also think it’s unfair how much Israel ends up trying to undermine the authority of the PA. And of course there’s no place for any supremacism in any society, Arab, Israeli, or otherwise.

One of the big sticking points for peace as I see it is this pervasiveness of a right to return. I just don’t see how this could ever be a solution that involves people moving back to historical homes. Land for peace? Absolutely. But not moving out individual Israelis and replacing them with refugees who have been displaced for a generation+. There have been many peace deals in place between Palestinians and Israelis possible that have always been prevented from being ratified due to some disagreement about land. Reparations are way more feasible than right of return in my opinion.

I also would say that while I agree I think that some amount of self-reflection would be really good for both sides, what scares Israelis about the South Africa comparison is this idea that Israel should have to make people citizens that would cause there to be a Jewish minority inside of Israel. Remember, Jews are not a racial group proper. There are plenty of ethnic groups of Jews inside Israel, including Ethiopian Jews and North African Jews and Middle Eastern Jews. And the way Arabs are treated inside Israel is not as second class citizens. But to force Israel to join with the West Bank and Gaza is not a smart idea for either side. It’s just not feasible, and the people proposing that are just supporting the most extreme Palestinian ideology.

1) dun isn't saying that

2) it is a plain fact that hamas are using civilian infrastructure as military infrastructure. there was a six day battle at one point with hamas firing hundreds of rockets out of the windows of the oncology department.

i blame hamas for putting their **** in schools and hospitals, a cruel policy designed to maximise civilian suffering in case of war for PR purposes, and i double blame them for ensuring that such a war was inevitable through their actions on 7 oct

3) if the mexican cartels came over the border in large numbers, raped and murdered thousands of american citizens, and took another few hundred hostage, usa's response would make palestine look like a soft play area

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/20/world/middleeast/israel-saudi-arabia-iran-gulf.html

nytimes

A Mideast Shift Is Underway, Without Israel

A Mideast Shift Is Underway, Without Israel

by Bluegrassplayer k

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/20/world/middleeast/israel-saudi-arabia-iran-gulf.html

nytimes

A Mideast Shift Is Underway, Without Israel

A Mideast Shift Is Underway, Without Israel

I dont have access to the article, so just going off the caption.

That being said, now that Israel has done the dirty work and killed most of the leaders that rejected everything the Saudis are suggesting, and have weakened the IRI and its proxies that those leaders were leaning on for support; sure someone else could potentially fill the power void and turn the Palestinian people towards peace. In which case I believe a future Israeli govt would go with a genuine good faith effort by the Palestinian leadership.

But it would have to be good faith, and such leadership would need to have the ability and will to stop militant groups from attacking Israel, something that Arab central authorities tend to be very bad at. Nothing like Arafat or Abbas cynicism. Another Arafat would lead to more failure.

But in a world with Nasrallah, Sinwar, Haniyeh et. al., nothing the Saudis propose would have been workable in any way. And the Saudis know this. Israel's actions in the last year are the only reason things could potentially get better moving forward.

This is the complete collapse of your argument, and was right at the start. So I'm ignoring everything after this to address this point.

For starters, they aren't performing ethnic cleansing. You refuse to accept the realities of the field of battle in this case (density, proximity of armed militants to public, etc). I can't change your mind, so be it. They are in a war.

But beyond that, the existential threat to Israel is REAL, and the defence apparatus is well aware (and you can read a lot of studies that have been published here). Their job is to look at the weapons coming. And not just that, but the effects on the country after 10-15 years of what could look like non-stop drone attacks (add 5 years of tech to drone attacks using AI....exactly).

Then there's the degradation to the mental health and safety of all your citizens (who all have missile shelters at home, wtf). That's not the threat of total annihilation in that one specific case, but again it's mental torture. And it's the slow bleed of your best and brightest to places abroad, population decline, potentially economic woes. In the North of Israel certainly, sitting and waiting wasn't possible anymore. Not with 80k evacuated still at the start of this campaign.

Sitting defensively won't work for Israel, Iran has figured this out. But Israel has now too. the IDF as a concept was never built optimally for wars longer than 3-6 months. Their enemies know this. What's more, the price of an interceptor missile (and the speed of their production) compared to the production of cheap drones, are totally asymmetrical.

Israel has to go on offence because the defensive version looks catastrophic over enough time. And that was always Iran's playbook.

Netenyahu have made that impossibe

Anyone who could emerge as leader would have to say or have said things that would get them murdered by israel. 'porof' of good faith in advance is nonsense

Killing Haniyeh was a major step back in efforts towards a moving forward. Stuff like this will hurt any attempts at moving forward too:

It doesn't matter if this number turns out to be grossly exaggerated, Israel's image is horrible and they've dragged USA's through the mud too. This was predicted a long time ago, it's no surprise. Israel has been hurting its future prospects for a long time.

I've never commented on it on 2p2 I think ever, so yeah, I guess I under-emphasize it, but no one has asked and I haven't denied outside influence from Iran (I don't know about Qatar and I think your "corrupt UN agencies" is 99% nonsense).

Iran's main adversary in the region is Saudi Arabia. I've said this in the opposite direction many times. It's true going both ways. The main cause of conflict in the region is oil. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States generally are aligned with the West and Western Oil companies and Israel is part of securing that oil interest. SA used to be more opposed to Israel, but that has changed. They work with Israel now. Like 25% of Israeli arms exports go to the gulf. Israel and the UAE manufacture weapons jointly. This all does not happen because of the Gulf States love for freedom and democracy. Israel's military helps keep oil wealth concentrated in the hands of Western oil companies and the small ruling class in the Gulf.

Why does Iran give a **** about Hamas? There's really not much connection. Hamas are Sunni and Iran is Shia. Yes, there are religious commonalities (Jerusalem), but that's not it. That's what you say to motivate people who don't get a taste of the money. It's a matter of oil interests and currently the division in the region is most clearly represented by Iran vs SA. It's why Iran is also the main supporter of the Houthi, whose main opponent is Saudi Arabia.

Ok, and I don't think you have an unlimited right to kill adults who want you dead and don't appear to have the means. It's just like real life. War doesn't change the ethics here. The question in a court case about self-defense is something like "would a reasonable person have had fear for their safety". That's fuzzy, it's why there's a jury, and it has to be looked at on a case by case basis. I said "children" because it's just more clear and easier to discuss.

why is this number possibly "grossly exaggerated"? they leveled 6 apartment buildings in one of the densest areas.