Israel/Palestine thread

Snubbing Bibi is not the same as completely turning her back on Israel, which was never realistic to begin with, not to mention extremely short sighted.

All but two of those points are before Israel's bombing resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

In any sane world Israel retaining control of the border between Egypt and Gaza seems like a no brainer. Between many segments of the Egyptian regime openly supporting Hamas, on top of the non ideological rampant corruption that is endemic in Egypt; there should be no expectation that Israel giving back the border would result in anything but smuggling operations to feed the Hamas war machine to resume full throttle.

Of course the antisemite pro Hamas pro 10/7 faction of the UN (which is A LOT of it) is really desperate to get the border back into Hamas friendly hands, and will be supporting Hamas holding out agreeing to a ceasefire without the border being given back; so who knows what will happen.

Unlike past conflicts, Israel does not seem as inclined to just give in and appease the terror supporters in the Western world this go around. But unfortunately, Harris and a lot of Democrats openly snubbing Israel is probably just going to strengthen the resolve of Hamas not to ceasefire, assuming western pressure will eventually force Israel to accede to their maximalist demands and unilaterally give concessions.

Can you also agree though that there were equal numbers of militant/terrorists deaths as well?

The IDF has identified roughly 17k militants they've eliminated. They know this because each attack is targeted so they have a decent idea of the figures as they have been eliminating all but two brigades of Hamas in Gaza.

We dont know the total deaths though because its too hard to estimate collateral damage from these targeted attacks on militants. Because of this we must use the Gaza Health Ministries numbers. Their death toll is 40,000. They dont differentiate between militant or civilian, and they consider a child anyone under 20, despite many militants are radicalized teens with RPG's. However a few months ago this 40k death toll was potentially reduced by 10,000 pending identification.

This was long suspected by us Israelis as Hamas has been grossly inaccurate in all previous conflicts with counting the death toll. They're incentivized to inflate their civilian population as it gets them more aid/money, and to also inflate death tolls bc of the international outcry over it. Many of us feel the death toll is even less than this, but out of respect we prefer to wait until after the conflict so like in previous conflicts we will be able to get accurate numbers.

So with that in mind I am willing to use the Gaza health ministries highest estimate of 40,000 Palestinians(any person of any age or military involvement).
Now considering the IDF is quite confident its not far off with the 17,000 militants dead that would mean 23k civilian to 17k militant to equal the 40,000.
The UN reports that in urban warfare the civilian to militant death ratio is on average 9 civilians for every 1 militant(source below).
When the US was in Iraq it was 8 to 1.

With that in mind the fact the IDF has 17k militant to 23k civilian , or a 1.26:1 civilian to militant death toll that is phenomenal. Like this is a feat that should be praised as an amazing achievement in urban warfare against an entity that has fully embed itself into civilian infrastructure.

The problem is everyone is watching this war thru a microscope and being appalled that war is brutal and cruel. But thats war. Its awful. Id suggest not watching it so intently but if you do, it is irresponsible to do so without the understanding that this is a war and in war unfortunately civilians end up dying and its awful.

Also at the end of the day, what would you have done differently? It doesnt matter if its Bibi calling the shots or anyone else in the knesset, Israel was going to respond to being invaded, 1200 killed and hundreds of hostages taken. Bibi was actually one of the cooler heads as he wanted to wait until US was on board and a thorough plan was developed. He tried to evac all women and children and Hamas wouldnt let them. So they did roof knocks which is truly a kindness that no other army does. Bibi also wanted to set up a refugee camp in Egypt, and Egypt said no and threatened to end the peace deal with Israel if they let any Palestinian into Egypt. We still facilitated a mass evac to safe zones. This stuff isnt our responsibility, its supposed to be Hamas but Hamas as their government doesnt care about the people at all.

I hope you read this with an open mind as Im someone who has lived this conflict throughout my entire life. I have family who have died from being wrong place wrong time during the 2nd intifada and a suicide bomber came into the market. I have lived in Israel and experienced needing to go into bomb shelters often from rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel aiming for civilian targets. I have had so many friends who have suffered tragic losses due to violence by Palestinians going back decades. Im not saying they are all bad. But people completely ignore that Israel has been under constant attack and threat for decades and have tried very hard to facilitate peace, and its truly a one sided affair. Now is Israel perfect? Of course not. Do checkpoints and restrictions exist? Of course. But these werent initially in place, each additional checkpoint or restriction was the result of an action by a Palestinian against Israel. And since implemented the suicide bombers are not coming in.

Im sorry for rambling on. This issue has consumed me for 10 months as Ive been in shock at the world coming to learn about our conflict in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in our history, and then I watched a lot of my peers,"allies" , and some ppl across the world side with the perpetrators of the attack that they just learned of, and not the victim.

They have gaslit you all.
Shalom

Deutschland is Rocking and Rolling... Proactive

Shooting kids in the head twice just to make sure = "sheesh war, isn't it just awful?"

Its not 100's of thousands. That was an opinion piece as a letter to the editor. They took the last reported death toll by Gaza ministry for health(has never put out reliable figures in any prior conflict) and they simply multiplied it by 4 bc of the time since the last death toll was released. The problem with this is the war shifted greatly in past few months and there have been significantly less casualties than at the start of the war (when the death toll being reported was statistically impossible to begin with, but I digress).

The civilian to militant death toll is the lowest of any urban warfare. If there wasnt such a strong bias against Israel due to longstanding hatred of Jews and the Islamists going on a media/propaganda campaign like no one has seen before that was quite successful , without any of that and Israel was like any other country they would be getting worldwide praise for how good of a job theyve done minimizing civilian death and the humanity of taking care of the civilians population that is governed by the enemy.

Standard,

Most of the active posers in this thread are trolls that assert Hamas were the good guys, 10/7 was justified resistance, minimal to no atrocities occurred on 10/7, and (((Zionists))) are literally the worst human beings to ever exist.

Just wanted to give you a heads up what you were getting into if you choose to post here.

Enjoy.

its probably a lot higher than the 100s of thousands from the report.

Ill tell you about a time where the civilian death toll rate was a lot lower: Oct 7 even with the IDF intentionally shooting at their own people for hours.

Haha wow, tfg.

This is not true.

In fact, one of my oldest friends is an organizer of one chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace, and she is very much a REAL Jew.

Progressive Jews are real Jews, whether you like it or not.

Since said people were never bothered in the slightest by IS and Putin-backed Assadist attacks on Palestinians at Yarmouk, the possibility of knee-jerk anti-Semitism, normal on the Left, does arise.

of all the antisemitic claims in this thread that one takes the cake.

So much lol here. Please don't do Hamas propaganda any favors and use their inflated death toll numbers. 40k being such an outrageous number, what is the Israel accurate estimate? 30,000 and 17,000 being terrorists?
Have your seen the pictures of the place? 1:1.26 ratio with a serious face? The Kool aid hits different in the levant.

I came very close to marrying a Jewish girl, I don't think I'm the least bit antisemitic but the question that came up a lot early in this thread is why do people care so much about this conflict over others? I've never been able to come up with a concrete answer and can't say I've seen one conveyed. Because my tax dollars is a popular one but SA was pummeling and blockading Yemen so badly, with mostly American weapons, it was either Trump or Biden had to take the houthis off the terrorist list so the country could receive aid and avoid mass starvation going into the millions. I'm not saying you didn't care but where were the protests then? Where was the international outcry? What's so different here? Strictly because Israel is the colonizers? Can't say I blame people for thinking there is some antisemitic motivations behind the reporting/promoting of the war even if they don't realize it.

I personally routinely brought up the Yemen thing during the invasion of Ukraine and asked why were so many American liberals absolutely apoplectic over Russian aggression but did not say a thing about the mass death in Yemen. this was deemed "whataboutism".

regardless, to address your main point, I think that in this particular instance it is primarily due to the horror show that we stream every day and the blatant targeting of civilians in a clear extermination campaign. like, how many dead kids before breakfast today?

https://indi.ca/dead-kids-before-breakfast/

indi.ca

How Many Dead Kids Before Breakfast

and historically, I think there is something to the Palestinian diaspora and culture of resistance and organization and education/literacy.

defering to old school antisemitism seems a stretch with no real basis.

Academies and militaries are probably going to study this conflict in the future to best learn how to fight an effective and moral urban war. The IDF continuously proves to be one of the most highly trained and professional militaries in the world.

Tax dollars is part of it but the U.S. also makes a much bigger show of its support for Israel than it does for Saudi Arabia. Its foreign policy was obviously much more public with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria than with SA/Yemen as well. Public discussion and blowback was also far greater than with SA/Yemen. This conflict with Israel now takes place after people have seen what a waste of life and money that was. No wonder the benefit of the doubt is all dried up.

I think there’s also an element of contempt for perceived hypocrisy much as there is with the U.S. Both do a a lot of chest beating about democracy, freedom, and peace all while killing and maiming thousands and thousands of innocent people very publicly and very shamelessly.

Joining Jewish Voice for Peace is not a progressive act. They are a fringe group being manipulated to act as token Jews to be pointed at and used for propaganda. Useful idiots.

If any are the useful idiots, it's otherwise decent people supporting netanyahu

anyone have the poling on this? idk about the uk, but a couple months back i remember seeing something about how ~70%(?) of jewish americans were against this genocide, so it seems impossible that 80% would consider themselves zionists.

You can be a zionist and opposed to netanyahu

I think you got the numbers backwards and 70% support this crap

you can oppose Netanyahu and support this plausible genocide. what do you think Benny Gantz is gonna do?

a lot of ppl tell themselves that, yeah