I knew this was coming. We saw it before with 9/11, when any criticism of American policy in the Middle East caused an instant knee-jerk response: you’re siding with the terrorists! You must hate America!
You all remember the madness, which is still ongoing.
Now we have a new horrendous terrorism event that will be used to polarize people and trigger more extremism, the terror attack by Hamas in Israel several days ago. There is no doubt that this was terrorist extremism, unjustifiable and vile. Unfortunately, it’s already become a tool to excuse all of the horrors perpetrated by Israel. You know you can condemn both sides, right? Some people seem to think you’re either good or evil, with nothing in between.
Case in point: this comment on a post I made in which I condemned the violence on both sides. I guess you aren’t allowed to do that.
Any re-think of the verging on Jew-hatred comments here now?
Not that the disgusting Old Testament “eye for an eye” murdering Israel is and will do is in any way justified, not American support for it.
Hamas was never an organization worthy of any respect or trust: terrorists only interested in murder and revenge. oppressor of their own people as well, Muslim extremists of the most intolerant type and motivated by hatred,
Except for ISIL, there the worst of the worst. That’s what they’ve been and what they are.
I really do want to hear what you have to say about this now, PZ. You have more facts and have had time to cool down and evaluate it. The Gurdian certainly isn’t pro-Likud, or even pro-Israel.
Certainly, I’ll never associate with anyone who excuses this ever again.
Fingers crossed in hope.
There was no “Jew-hatred”. The political state of Israel is not synonymous with Judaism, but this is the most common criticism I see: if you dare to oppose the military actions of the Israeli state then you are anti-Semitic. It’s a disgusting tactic.
No one here has offered any “respect or trust” for Hamas. Hamas is not synonymous with the Palestinian people. Standing with the Palestinian people in their demands for autonomy is not excusing the terror attack. Opposing genocide is not making excuses for terrorists.
There certainly are people who excuse it, but not me, and not the majority of commenters here.
As a humanist, I do evaluate my choices in light of my principles, and those principles tell me that all people, Palestinian and Israeli alike, have the right to life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. Anyone who tries to deprive others of that right is in the wrong. At least I’m consistent in that belief, are the apologists for Israeli atrocities?
The Israeli state, headed by the corrupt transnational crime lord Netanjahu, is committing war crimes against Palestinians now, and it may get much worse in the days ahead. But somehow governments and media orgs around the world consider Israel exempt from the war crimes convention. The language used is telling too, Israelis are killed, Palestinians died.
It’s all messed up.
Writing in for the first time to thank you, PZ Myers, for standing up for the Palestinians.
Hamas do not stand for me as a (cultural) Muslim, nor do the Palestinians, as they’re more interested in power and violence, than actually guaranteeing the safety of the people they’re supposed to represent.
It’s really rare and difficult to find other atheists such as Myers who openly defend the humanity of the Palestinians. All I can keep coming across are a series of Israel apologism by the likes of Sam Harris or Destiny, of all people.
It is possible to condemn the violence of Hamas while defending the Palestinians’ right to life. It also possible to criticise Israeli govt, especially Netanyahu, and not be an antisemitic dick.
No civilian, neither Palestinian nor Israeli, deserve this level of violence; as with the Jewish community nor the Muslims nor any brown person who looked Muslim or Arab.
Anyway, could you please recommend more atheists who defend Palestinian rights?
…people tend to forget that Hamas do not ask the common people in Gaza what to do, any more than Putin asks the Russians for permission.
If anything, the dictatorship in Gaza is much more brutal.
A personal response as a post.
What a sad honor that is.
I evidently did not make it clear enough that you, PZ, were NOT doing this in any way (nor “a majority of comments,” whatever that means) but several comments edged far too closely, especially those immediately denying the initial horrors (because of their linked sources).
Several of those I obviously thought were VERY dirty.
I’m very aware of your humanism and sense of justice, Mr Myers. This is the very first time I’ve even been surprised being disturbed by the slant and tone you used.
And more than a few of the comments made this worse.
That I’ve made you angry enough to shame me for questioning you is frankly shocking.
I am no supporter of the Israeli government at all. I am a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause – short of violence and murder (and if Hamas can be said to have ever been better than now, I’ve missed it.)
American support of Israel is as dirty as that of anything it now does – and that’s the Democrats!
That Israeli government, with the support of most of its citizens, will certainly commit war crimes with impunity – they’ve already responded to the Hamas kidnappings by effectively taking the entire population hostage and denying it food, medicine, water….
If I’ve misread your first post, I can’t see it. It seems furious with (I’m sorry to use this word, but it seems to fit) “both sides!”
“Israel does not need more money, arms, and encouragement to continue their oppression of the Palestinian people. It is inarguably horrible and criminal that Hamas militants murdered civilians, and I cannot excuse that; but neither can I excuse the decades of brutal oppression of Palestinians by Israel. These are criminal acts all around, and none can be forgiven.
The only reasonable answer, though, is to give Palestinians greater freedom and autonomy. They’re turning to violent assholes in Hamas because there is no alternative, and because Israel has become increasingly tyrannical. The US ought to be working to moderate the relationship, not giving Israel the tools and the encouragement to commit genocide. That’s all the current pattern of behavior can end in, in the violent, bloody destruction of an entire people.
Current US policy is enabling that genocide.”
There’s reasonable stuff in there, and I agree with all of that. And still…
It’s not an honor to have so angered you, and to have been so personally vilified here.
On the real issues here, I don’t see that we disagree at all.
PS – I won’t be bothering to reply to any other comments piling on. Why bother when I won’t even have my words reaad?
@Thornapple and everyone who might be interested – there is a UKnian independent news outlet called Novara Media (1hr news live 5 nights a week) that has good analysis/explanation both of the news itself and of the failures of mainstream/”big name” coverage. They put the focus on civilians’ lives and suffering, and on historical/political context of occupation, without ever excusing action against civililans. They are particularly scathing about the misrepresentation we have seen so much of (not to mention the unprofessionalism of major news figures throwing out all journalistic standards and not even bothering with verification; one high-profile veteran UKnian news presenter, Kay Burley, outright lied repeatedly about something the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, had said, and then pretended to be paraphrasing; Novara Media was – afaik – the only/the first news outlet to call this out)
In this thread or maybe over at Mano Singham, someone mentioned how the Israeli far right train sympathisers in the US to attack critics on social media – there is a term for it that I forgot.
They see it as a religious/ political duty to suppress dissent. Not a new thing, but these days if you criticize Netanyahu you are automatically Hitler.
.
We have seen what this did in Britain when both the conservatives and the Starmer / Blair wing of labour launched a campaign tagging Jeremy Corbin’s wing as anti-semites…
including any Corbynite Jews in labour.
Statistically, the risk of being expelled from labour for anti-semitism now radically increases if you are a Jew!
This shameless campaign has made “anti-semitism” lose meaning.
Reading this post a second time, you’ve read A LOT into my comment that plainly isn’t there. I can only guess that using the expression “Jew-hatred” set you off – and it didn’t even say that! “…the verging on Jew-hatred comments…” — I didn’t in any way say you yourself hinted at that. And I never thought that for a second.
Some comments did “verge” in that direction, however. Especially those responding to those awful anti-Palestinian comments.
Do you still think I have misread you. PZ? I can admit I am wrong if shown why. I’m wrong very often.
An attempt at an overview of the situation.
Hamas (who was deliberately encouraged to become a rival to Fatah by Israeli politicians 40 years ago, really smart move) will not change.
The killing in and around Gaza will continue until Hamas has been physically thrown out.
This will require a major military operation- at least a thousand Israeli soldiers will die, 10-20,000 Hamas militiamen will die, god knows how many civilians will die.
The alternative is the cycle of raids and retaliatory bombing of a densely populated city with 700-lb bombs decade after decade.
For the civilian victims it is irrelevant wether they are shot by hooligans or blasted to atoms by bombs.
The politicians in DC can be trusted to do nothing that may seem ‘controversial’ to affect the situation.
NB
David Grossman from Israel has written a very insightful article about the chrisis, but I only have the Swedish translation.
Instead of writing a substandard ‘double’ translation, I hope his text is available in some English-language media (very likely, he is a major media character) – in which case if one of you can find it and post a link I think many would appreciate it.
And worse still, that anybody who opposes whatever they have determined is “evil” is automatically “good”, and vice-versa.
@birgerjohansson,
I assume this is David Grossman’s article you mean, translated today in the Financial Times:
https://www.ft.com/content/50f33279-d637-426c-bb8b-3ce3965c14f3
@opposablethumbs Thanks for the recommendation!!
And thank you, again, PZ Myers, for the coverage of Palestinians.
Hope to find more atheists & skeptics who understands their plight & humanity!!
@9 — This just appeared on Financial Times in English translation: https://www.ft.com/content/50f33279-d637-426c-bb8b-3ce3965c14f3
Is this the piece you were referring to?
Some of those were children although the numbers aren’t clear right now.
The claims of 40 babies with their heads cut off, widely reported on Fox NoNews, are “unconfirmed by the Israeli Defense Forces, their military.
If anyone wants to call the Israeli Defense Forces antisemitic bigots, fine, go ahead.
As of now, 1,354 Palestians have been killed by Israel. Half the population of Gaza are children. Around a quarter of those dead are children, so 400 or so dead children.
As of now, Hamas and Israel are about even on the body counts of dead civilians.
Israel is just getting started though and usually ends up with a 5:1 to 10:1 ratio of dead civilians.
So, what is the difference between an Israeli child killed by a Hamas bullet or rocket and a Palestinian child killed by an Israeli bomb or bullet?
There are a lot of people who completely ignore one group of dead children and use the other group as an example of terrorism.
They are both atrocities.
@PZ,
You’re right. Full stop.
Israel has the right to self defense and they are going to have to do something to prevent Hamas from massacring more of their citizens.
I have no good ideas for what they could do though.
They don’t have any either.
It’s basically going to be more violence, invade Gaza and kill all the Hamas terrorists.
Who will all be hiding or have fled to Egypt or somewhere else.
Their plan to “smash Hamas” might not work even if they invade Gaza again.
Ironically, Israel got Gaza as a war trophy during the 1967 war from Egypt.
Some trophy. They pulled out in 2005 because their trophy turned out to be more problems than it was worth.
I don’t see why they don’t just give it back to Egypt.
That way the Gaza people aren’t bottled up in their open air prison and free to get out of there and go somewhere else. Plus have a normal life as citizens of at least a functioning nation, i.e. Egypt.
The only problem I see here is that Egypt might not want them either.
It’s a small amount of land and 2.3 million people they have to deal with and integrate into their country.
I don’t know, maybe the world could pay Egypt a few billions of dollars to take Gaza.
@7: Reading this post a second time, you’ve read A LOT into my comment that plainly isn’t there…
A major part of the problem here is that your comments are kind of incoherent. You should try working on that.
“terrorists only interested in murder and revenge.”
An endless cycle, thousands of years of revenge, revenge, revenge.
The first statement from Netanyahu vowed “vengeance.”
It will never end so long as groups of people worship rocks and dirt more than humanity.
Chrislawson @ 13
Yes. Thank you.
Vilbäck @ 11
Yes. Thank you.
Imback @ 11- sorry, my spell check garbled your name and turned it Into a Swedish place name… one of the few things in this thread I can smile at.
.
DocBill @ 18
“Vengeance” … yeah, those V-weapons totally helped WWII get more pleasant.
It is antisemitic to equate being critical of the Israeli government with being critical of all Jewish people. Some of the strongest voices critical of the Israeli government are Israeli Jewish citizens and members of the wider Jewish diaspora around the world. This is especially the case given that Hamas is an organization that only flourished because of the far right Israeli government, in much the same way that Al-Qaeda flourished because of the far right United States government. Turns out a lot of Jewish Israeli citizens don’t like being the collateral damage of attacks from a terrorist organization that their own government created and now uses as the reason to justify ethnic cleansing.
The genocidal white supremacists championing Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, though, want to keep pushing the narrative that criticism of Israel is criticism of all Jewish people because that narrative serves only to protect the white supremacists from being accurately described as white supremacists.
It’s contagious: NYPD investigating multiple hate crimes sparked by Israel-Hamas war.
@birgerjohansson:
Everyone agrees that Hamas needs to go but I don’t see how military solution is supposed to work. We have seen this in US’s “war on terror” and we have also seen Israel do the same thing. I don’t see how terrorism has a military solution. Are there any instances where it actually works? What seems to work in my opinion is having a strong well-functioning central government which Gaza lacks.
raven @16
Giving Gaza back to Egypt is an interesting idea, but with the downside of ignoring the self-determination or national aspirations of Palestinians. Israel might part with it but it may not make Palestinians very happy to be subjects or citizens of an Egyptian government. Raging Bee had suggested ceding the West Bank to Jordan, but that may ignore Palestinian aspirations, plus Israel has deep seated historic claims to that area, so they won’t be on board at all. Would Jordan still want the West Bank? I dunno.
If all of Cisjordan had been handed to Abdullah back in the day I don’t know how that would have turned out in the long run for Jews or Palestianian Arabs. The emergence of Israel resulted in much reactionary strife and Jews in Arab lands wound up having to migrate to Israel. But how much democratic freedom would Jews have enjoyed under Hashemite rule (none?) in an alternative scenario and how would they have been treated by other Jordanian who were Muslim or Christian?
On a different notion, Raging Bee on the previous thread said something apt and thoughtful:
“Both sides are not just utterly wrong morally, they are wrong strategically, unless the goal is simply to prolong the hate and destruction. Nothing justifies the acts taken. Knowing the history and the constant tension might explain the actions, but it does not make them defensible.”
I had said elsewhere… If you want a pure binary opposition there’s Hamas and Likud for sure. Fuck Bibi. But reality is far more complicated and includes the innocent festival attending victims brutalized by Hamas and the innocent Palestinian victims of Israeli military reprisals avenging their “9-11”. In the deeper readings I conducted into the Israeli-Palestinian issue years ago I came away with one word…intractable. Or was it intransigence? Something like that.
someone mentioned how the Israeli far right train sympathisers in the US to attack critics on social media – there is a term for it that I forgot.
Hasbara. If you want to see something really interesting check out act.il and their app – a system for coordinating what I can only call “astroturfing” responses. I signed up for a while so I could see how it works and it’s pretty slick: you get a message that so-and-so’s blog is calling Israel an apatheid nation, then you can go and zergrush their comment section, or complain to their hosting service, or whatever. Remember when we used to pharygulate polls? Same idea only less honest.
Oops I see act.il was shut down (but encouraged its members to stay active)
There is a post on [stderr] about astroturfing apps.
Pogroms evolve from something. Now planned textual harassment campaigns are more explicitly helped by aps. Remember 4chan and the slymepit? I stored data.
I’m not sure how reliable my memory is and my recollection of the surveys, but large majority of the normal people from the population on both sides are utterly unwilling to make the necessary compromises and sacrifices to reach a stable long term solution. The feasible and fair long-term solutions are also obvious, namely: either the religiously-neutral one-state solution or the two-state solution where Israel dismantles illegal settlements and gives back a lot of land to allow for a Palestinian state that can control its own borders.
Given that a very large majority of the populations on both sides are unwilling to accept either of these two plans, then as I’ve said many times, fuck them. We should leave, stop offering any support, and just let them kill each other, until at least one side is willing to accept one of the obvious, feasible long-term peace solutions.
Couple comments:
1. Much like 9/11 in the US was used as an excuse for horrible acts by the US (torture, assassinations, extradition, illegal wars, etc.). The same is being used to embolden the worst inclinations of the Israeli government. The worst actions by the US created future enemies and a weakening of our country and culture with side effects for the world, the same will happen in the current situation. One of the worst effects of terrorism is how it emboldens the worst aspects of society, resulting in more fear and violence…
2. The comments that Israel has a right to defend itself are true, but calling the terrorist attack by Hamas an invasion seems incorrect. It was a violent and abominable prison break and since Israel controls Gaza, they also have responsibility for the folks living there. I am not seeing much mentioned about the responsibility Israel has for the residents of Gaza.
Some things to remember about the region:
• Jerusalem is a “holy city” for three extant major religions (the Abrahamic ones — in descending order of “age,” Islam, Christianity, and Judiaism) and on top of/adjacent to “holy sites” for at least two no-longer-extant religions. So, congratulations: There’s built-in conflict so long as excluding those “not of the same faith” is treated as legitimate instead of as a teaching/learning/potential-conversion opportunity, instead of as a low-self-confidence vulnerability to criticism. We’ll leave aside “the whole bloody city” (purposely using an expletive that will not be caught in any filter but that nonetheless has a religious/sectarian basis) as a “holy site,” else we’d have trouble with all of the chemical plants we’ve put in Cahokia.
• The vast majority of the population consists of displaced persons (and their defendants) essentially exiled there by “their own” governments in the last century and a quarter — regardless of claims to “return.” This is emphatically not the fault of those persons or their ancestors. The governments of (in particular, and naming them as named at the time of the exile) France, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Ottoman Empire, Jordan, Egypt (and the United Arab Republic), Syria, Lebanon… and that’s just the obvious miscreants with clear policy imperatives for displacement, rather than practical/individual responses to local bigotry.
• The various populations and subgroups in the area have an appalling history of bigotry themselves. “Good Samaritan,” anyone? How about any of the other conquests in the Old Testament that get no attention concerning their conduct? And that’s just a few of the examples actually extolled as virtuous in various of the religious and nonreligious “cultural artifact” texts. The modern pop-psychological aphorism (which has some support in the literature, presuming that “in the literature” in the mislabelled behavioral sciences isn’t somewhat disreputable in itself) that “children of abusers turn out to be abusers themselves” bears some consideration — but not as an excuse, only as an explanation.
• Governments are all too often not coextensive with those they govern, and especially so regarding theocracies. Any examination of the period of the Crusades — regarding any of the governmental participants — should rather rapidly refute “religious leaders truly represent their populations” as having any validity whatsoever. So, too, should the Ottoman Empire’s history in the region, or the history of the Druse, or…
Conclusion: It’s a 300km-diameter pool of petroleum byproducts sort of centered on Jerusalem just waiting for some asshole with a book of matches. Are we really surprised? Outraged, perhaps; but surprise is not justified. It’s sad that both Einstein and Alcoholics Anonymous correctly identified the problem: The irrational expectation that repeating past actions will have a different result, and the “past actions” in the Levant go back at least 2500 years in attempting to impose religious and political uniformity/conformity on the region by force.
PS:
You do know that much (most?) of the Old Testament is fictional and didn’t really happen, right?
We will get to a very high number of Palestinians killed. There will be no brakes put on Israel.
@30 whywhywhy:
Calling Gaza a prison is absolutely accurate. This is e.g., on CNN: https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-news-hamas-war-10-12-23/h_d19cf51dd373bbdadb39cc94890784b7
Gaza is literally a prison.
Marcus Ranum @ 26
Thank you.
Lotharloo @ 24
Maybe it would work to give Gaza to Egypt, but apart from taking away Palestinian sovereignty, I am concerned about the level of brutality the Egyptian army would unleash while evicting Hamas – would it make a difference if Gaza is turned to rubble by Egyptian artillery instead of Israeli artillery?
And after the army the Egyptian secret police with their torture and the dead bodies dumped in the streets.
On a different notion, Raging Bee on the previous thread said something apt and thoughtful…
Um, thanks for the compliment, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a comment of mine. I certainly agree with it and maybe quoted it, but I don’t remember writing it myself.
Giving Gaza back to Egypt is an interesting idea, but with the downside of ignoring the self-determination or national aspirations of Palestinians.
I’m not against anyone’s national aspirations, but we have to ask whether a particular group in particular circumstances can really have what they aspire for with what their neighbors have been persuaded to give them. Could Gaza ever be a viable self-governing state as it is? Or would they be significantly better off as part of a larger political-economic entity?
Good point.
There is that.
We are so used to thinking of Palestinians as political footballs that we forget they have their own ideas.
Still, Gaza is small and poor.
There aren’t very many examples of viable city-states in the world today.
Singapore. Hong Kong was but not any more. Same for Macau.
If you look at the Gazian’s current conditions which are very bad, it seems that being a normal city in a normal country would be a vast improvement.
Egypt is similar after all, Muslim and Arabic speaking.
Obviously, there would have to be a vote on it by the people of Gaza itself.
@32: For some value of fictional (notwithstanding that (a) there’s at least some anthropological evidence for many of them, and (b) there’s little counterevidence for most of the instances otherwise, and always allowing for creative recharacterization in service of the underlying meme — something in with the Old Testament hews quite well to every other religious-doctrine text) that is treated as fact by all of the significant actors.
@36: A nontrivial proportion of residents of Gaza are/descend from “displaced persons” from Egypt. So this gets into circular reasoning all too common in Middle Eastern politics… which is not to object that “no kind of plebiscite is appropriate,” just to note a bit of the irony thereof. After all, the “Egypt” of today is not the “United Arab Republic” of Nasser, or his predecessors, or his successors… Grand Unification Theories regarding people seldom are as either grand or as unified as their proponents (or even those who grimly adhere to them as a least-bad alternative) believe.
Egypt doesn’t want the Gaza strip. ‘Giving’ it to them is a non-starter.
@16 “Israel has the right to self defense”
Not against people they occupy they don’t. An occupation is an act of aggression against the occupied people, by the occupying power. You cannot claim to be “defending yourself” while you are the aggressor. As the occupying power Israel does in fact have the right (obligation, actually) to enforce civil laws via policing and courts – an obligation it has egregiously violated in Palestinian Gaza, both by neglect and by using military force against those it occupies (which is simply put a war crime all the way through.)
“I don’t see why they don’t just give it back to Egypt.”
Because it’s not and never has been Egyptian territory. It is an integral part of Palestine. Egypt has no more legal claim to it than Israel ever has. It administered the territory starting in 1949, but that does not make it a territorial acquisition (sort of like how Palestine was never “British Territory” in the first place…)
“That way the Gaza people aren’t bottled up in their open air prison and free to get out of there and go somewhere else. Plus have a normal life as citizens of at least a functioning nation, i.e. Egypt.”
Well there’s also the issue that according to the terms of the Camp David Accords, Israel has effective veto power over whatever Egypt wants to do in the Sinai, up to and including the Gaza border. It’s why Egypt couldn’t mobilize its armed forces against ISIL in Sinai, because Israel threatened to attack Egypt for “violating the peace treaty” if they did. It’s why the Egyptians can’t actually just throw the Rafah crossing wide open to allow free movement of Palestinians between the two countries, because Israel will phone up Cairo and tell them to close the border “or else.”
“The only problem I see here is that Egypt might not want them either.
It’s a small amount of land and 2.3 million people they have to deal with and integrate into their country.
I don’t know, maybe the world could pay Egypt a few billions of dollars to take Gaza.”
Why not just end the damned occupation, and Israel return to the borders it declared to the world in 1948? You know, it’s legal international boundaries that it has been in egregious violation of for 75 years?
@Raging Bee
Instead of insulting, you could ask for clarification, of course.
Instead. you seem to be evading my quite detailed response, which may be good debate technique but seems dishonest.
Again, I not only can be wrong but AM wrong, regularly. But not always.
Show me up.
Oh, and since it’s the favorite choice of selective deafness, I (for the 3rd? 4th? time here) in no way equate criticism of the Israeli government (which, i yet again say I despise as corrupt, largely racist and pretty much everything bad any fairly democratic nation can produce) with the Israeli people as a whole, much less with all Jews.
The people here who keep hinting at that are simply consciously dishonest.
Raging Bee @
Oops, sorry about the misattributed quote. It was from Paul K instead.
Can we please stop with that USAian ‘pursuit of happiness’ bullshit?
Evidently some people find happiness in the massacre of innocent festival goers (children included), and others find happiness besieging a captive territory, starving its innocent residents of water, food, and energy, at the same time as indiscriminately bombing them in their homes. Some find bliss in the sexual abuse of children, or torturing caged animals, deliberately starting devastating wildfires, exterminating indigenous peoples and stealing the land they have occupied for millennia, the destruction of the biosphere, disseminating misinformation for the cynical control of their meat puppets,…bla bla bla.
I would find happiness in happiness for its own sake no longer being a goal. Happiness for happiness’ sake can fuck right off.
I have no love for Israel or Hamas. Israel is the product of bigotry, hatred and violence inflicted on European Jews. Israel is a state founded by terrorists. The crimes and atrocities of Irgun and the Stern Gang are well documented. Hamas is the inevitable product of 75 years of bigotry, hatred and violence meted out to Palestinians by Israel. Both entities are terrorists in the truest sense of the word. As horrific as Hamas brutality in the recent attack was Israel’s response is no less horrific. The aftermath of leveling entire apartment blocks using the most powerful non-nuclear bombs in America’s arsenal, (yes they were supplied as military aid), is just as barbaric but a compliant right wing media sanitises that. You don’t see the bloodied bodies and mothers weeping over their dead children unless of course you watch stories produced by the journalists that Israel targets for assassination. Even those risking their lives trying to bring food and medical relief to Gazans affected by Israel’s campaign of death and destruction are not exempt. The head of one of the large charitable aid agencies in Gaza had his house flattened by one of those American supplied bombs. But all of that is OK Hamas are sub-human animals so by default all Palestinians are sub-human animals. how else can you justify the mass murder of civilians by a state acting in the ultimate oxymoron of “self defence”.
Wrong.
You really expect Israelis to sit quietly while Hamas slaughters a thousand or so people. Who BTW were civilians.
Humans don’t work that way.
You are delusional.
Incapable of reading or using Google.
Read comment #16.
Egypt inherited it from the British in 1948 and it was Egyptian territory until 1967.
When was the last time Palestine was its own state?
Just about never. Gaza BTW, wasn’t even Canaanite or Jewish. It was settled by the Philistines and before that it was occupied by the ancient Egyptians.
This is irrelevant anyway.
Territory and borders change all the time de facto by wars and conquest.
Parts of Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Hungary etc.. have all been exchanged for centuries depending on who won which war. The last border adustments were after WW II.
My old friend was a German born in Konigsberg. Konigsberg is now Russian Kaliningrad and he was deported to Poland and then Germany at age 7.
New Mexico and California were not so long ago, part of Mexico.
Because some of us live in the real world.
It isn’t going to happen and no one can make it happen.
Israel has at least a 100 advanced nuclear weapons by now and no one pushes a nuclear weapon state very far.
Indeed its a perspective shift.
Instead of Israel vs Hamas its the Israeli people and Palestinian people vs the Israel Government and Hamas.
I haven’t discussed or hinted at this before, but I’ll expressly object to this idea now. The Israeli people, a majority of them, have been voting for governments to enforce Apartheid and slow-roll ethnic cleansing for decades. They are far from completely innocent. I don’t think this means Hamas is justified to kill random voters, but the Israeli voting public got what they voted for. Bibi is power. Again. Who do you blame for that?
…
This is also kinda a lie. The USA, for example, has humiliatingly lost many wars. Please don’t spread such misinfo because it makes us less likely to provide the necessary military support to Ukraine.
This is not a fight for the existence of Israel in any material sense. It is in some dogmatic religious sense, but no one here is suggesting that Israel must be dismantled. Instead, it ambitions to conquer its neighbors and steal their land must be stopped, just like Russia’s same desires, regardless of their stockpile of nuclear weapons.
PS:
I agree with much of what Raven said for my own reasons. My own reasons are: Reparations are not typically justified for wrongs committed to a (long dead) ancestor. It would result in obscene and horrible outcomes to try to decide land ownership issues and national boundaries solely by looking at who controlled them at some point in the past. Instead, we need to recognize the situation on the ground, and try to find the best way forward. There will be some amount of backwards-looking to determine the fair path going forward, but we should focus on the now and on the future, and not on harms committed to people that are already dead. And we shouldn’t base our policy on the pernicious idea that we should allocate land ownership to particular ethnic or religious tribes.
The situation on the ground has changed a lot in 70 years. Blindly calling for a return to the exact the border of 70 years ago, with no regard for who lives there today, is IMAO extremely foolish. — I do think we should dismantle recent illegal Israeli settlements.
garydargan @43
Can we really reduce Israel to Irgun and Stern? I am woefully rusty on this stuff but those were Revisionist Zionist groups according to the wiki:
“Revisionist Zionism had its own paramilitary group called the Irgun, out of which another organization known as the Stern Gang emerged. Both the Irgun and the Stern Gang were responsible for several attacks against the British to try to expel them from Palestine.[3]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_Zionism
Zionism cannot be reduced to Revisionism IMO though it is a significant strand.
Propagandists on the Israeli side, when they aren’t using Mark Twain as an expert demographer for sparsity of inhabitants when he was there are also reducing Palestinians to Haj Amin al-Husseini because the Hitler meeting.
Israel also has the leftish kibbutzniks. Not to be confused with Likudniks. Oh hells no. Don’t do that.
They also have Neturei Karta who are a bit batshit anti-Zionist IMO: https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/neturei-karta
And more general Orthodox shirkers who annoy the shit out of many secular Jews.
Should we forget the recent protests against POS Bibi and the whole “judicial reform” thing? Why he still sits as PM I dunno. Weird parliamentary horse trading?
I feel for Israeli Jews who despise Bibi and are scared shitless by the recent Hamas led atrocities. I also feel for the beset Palestinians under the heel of Hamas and Israeli siege mentality.
That’s all I got right now.
Giving Gaza back to Egypt is an interesting idea
Egypt: “ok and what will you give us in return?”
@44 “Wrong.
You really expect Israelis to sit quietly while Hamas slaughters a thousand or so people. Who BTW were civilians.
Humans don’t work that way.
You are delusional.”
No, in fact, I am correct. There is no “right to self-defense” for the aggressor in a conflict. Unless you want to tell me Russia has a right to protect itself from the Ukrainians who keep shooting at them?
I expect Israel to follow the laws and treaties to which they are party. Humans the world over manage this all the time.
“Incapable of reading or using Google.
Read comment #16.
Egypt inherited it from the British in 1948 and it was Egyptian territory until 1967.”
Nope, on both counts. For starters, it was never British territory to begin with. The UK governed it as a mandate – basically “in trust” for the people who lived there. Sort of like how the US put Paul Bremer in charge of Iraq as the “interim governor.” What this means is that the UK had no territorial rights to Pandatory Palestine, and so couldn’t divide or transfer or otherwise cede any of the territory (at least, not legally; France did so illegally with its Syrian mandate, twice!)
Egypt then occupied and administered the territory of Gaza after the 1949 Armistice; in hte same vein as the British Mandate, this was not an acquisition of territory for Egypt, it was just “Someone has to manage the area.”
“When was the last time Palestine was its own state?
Just about never. Gaza BTW, wasn’t even Canaanite or Jewish. It was settled by the Philistines and before that it was occupied by the ancient Egyptians.”
Since when was Kosovo or South Sudan or Canada a state? States don’t exist until they do. However, the absence of an organized state does not mean a lack of territorial rights. This is the case for Palestine and Western Sahara, as well as a number of indigenous and tribal peoples around the world.
There is no actual right to go out and kill and conquer and take from these people, no matter how much one’s settler-colonial mindset says it’s okay.
“Territory and borders change all the time de facto by wars and conquest.
Parts of Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Hungary etc.. have all been exchanged for centuries depending on who won which war. The last border adustments were after WW II.
My old friend was a German born in Konigsberg. Konigsberg is now Russian Kaliningrad and he was deported to Poland and then Germany at age 7.
New Mexico and California were not so long ago, part of Mexico.”
All of those territorial transfers occurred as the result of a treaty that ceded land among the belligerents. Konigsberg became Kaliningrad as a result of the 1947 Paris Peace treaties that carved up German and Italian holdings, and was further reinforced and finalized in the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. New Mexico and California were acquired through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (and expanded with the peacetime Gadsten Purchase.)
No one has ever ceded land to Israel in this way. meaning, Israel’s legal borders are, at maximum, exactly what it declared them to be in May of 1948.
“Israel has at least a 100 advanced nuclear weapons by now and no one pushes a nuclear weapon state very far.”
The threat of nuclear genocide just to maintain an illegal status over someone else’s land sure is a play. You sure you’re down for that? Sounds absolutely psychotic to me.
Rusty @50:
A couple of minor corrections, just because they’re going to develop lives of their own otherwise:
• The British treated the Palestine Mandate as “British territory” in the same way that they treated Burma. Just ask their Foreign Office! Or better yet, don’t, because one won’t get a straight answer (as to Burma, that was part of Mr Blair’s objection to his service as a policeman in Burma, years before he became known as Mr Orwell). Part of the confusion no doubt comes from all of the different levels of independence accorded various colonies, and the fact that the Palestine Mandate had never been a British colony. It was nonetheless treated as British territory, specifically including the right of domestic English police to travel to the Mandate to make arrests without any need for an international warrant or clearance (which they could not do in, for example, the Dominion of Canada due to its quasiindependence).
• Land certainly has been “ceded to” Israel since 1947. The Camp David Accords ceded Gaza from Egypt to Israel de jure, although it had been de facto under Israel’s control since 1967. The West Bank is much more complicated, but Israel’s legal right to include it within its boundaries has been recognized repeatedly, not least by a proclamation by King Hussein of Jordan. The Golan Heights are much more complicated still. All of these areas are outside the 1947 boundaries. Now admittedly, each of these areas has been the subject of conquest before any international (or even losing-party) recognition, so it doesn’t look like “ceded” entirely peacefully… any more than was the Philippines in 1898.
Jaws @ 51
OT
“the Philippines in 1898”
That is yet another can of worms. The US invasion and colonial war that followed after Spain pulled out is an ugly chapter I bet no school children in Florida get to read about.
That’s a gross over-simplification, at the very least, of the Camp David Accords. The provisions of those accords relating to Gaza and the West Bank have never been implemented, and were in any case declared invalid by the UN. As for the Golan Heights, the land Israel conquered there in 1967 has never been conceded in any way by Syria.
Rusty, I can see that we live in different worlds.
What color is the sky on your planet?
As one example, I don’t control and run Israel!!! The Israeli government never asks me what they should do.
Because I mentioned a fact in reality doesn’t mean I support it or want to see it happen.
Oh, an insult. That didn’t take long. Two comments.
You come across as delusional and could well be the psychotic one.
I’m not going to waste any more time on someone who simply makes statements that have nothing to do with reality.
This is why there will never be peace in the Middle East.
I proposed a solution that is at least feasible for Gaza.
Not long ago, Gaza was part of Egypt and was taken by Israel in the 1967 war.
It could be again. Israel doesn’t want Gaza and withdrew in 2005.
This solution doesn’t involve tens of thousands of dead bodies.
Since then, numerous people have pointed out that it will never work.
Well sure, who in our world of 8 billion people has ever came up with a peace plan for Gaza that has worked?
It’s not like I’m going to be the first one.
As long as everyone rejects every single peace plan that anyone comes up with, there will be… no peace.
Instead of pointing out that a peace plan won’t work, there needs to be a change to…”here is a peace plan, let’s make it work.”
Yeah, not going to happen.
So, we will watch in the next few weeks as Israel invades Gaza and kills another 10,000 people to accomplish maybe, not much.
Off topic.
Actually on topic but this thread has been derailed by many people.
This isn’t going to happen.
These people are very poor and they can’t just get in their cars and go.
They don’t have cars. They are lucky if they get enough to eat every day.
This is not going to end well.
Remind me again, how is this better than just having Gaza join Egypt?
true or not the none extant god gave the land to the jews and that is at the root, everyone today in every place on earth can trace their ancestors from some other place to the one they are now inhabiting.
when god is invoked as justification there is little compromise possible, war is just a long funeral, and in this case the birth of one more reason for another reprisal for each side in what looks like an endless chain of pointless death
raven: When the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge for a couple years, they opened up the border crossings. But otherwise, autocratic Egypt has been an active partner with Israel regarding the blockade of Gaza. Egypt has shown precisely no interest in controlling Gaza.
Remind me again, how is this better than just having Gaza join Egypt?
Israel wants the land.
The long term strategy has always been to take over “greater Israel” and every excuse they get, they advance that agenda.
It would also be better to send in a million flying unicorns to airlift the Gazans out of the way of the coming Israeli invasion. Or to place an impenetrable magic wall between Israel and Gaza, which also exudes water, food, fuel and power from its Gazan side. I could come up with dozens of similar solutions, which are just as useful as yours.
If Gaza became incorporated into Egypt there would still be unhappy Palestinians targeting their ire at Israel from that new part of Egypt. Any military response by Israel would then be launched at part of Egypt which would possibly be considered an act of war.
I think this article delineates the difficulties of the situation for Israel. It’s not that easy to attack Hamas and spare innocent people . I’m-possible it seems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/opinion/israel-hamas-isis-gaza.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
If Gaza became incorporated into Egypt there would still be unhappy Palestinians targeting their ire at Israel from that new part of Egypt. Any military response by Israel would then be launched at part of Egypt which would possibly be considered an act of war.
All of which means Egypt would have both the legal obligation and the incentive to police their own borders and forcibly prevent anyone in Egypt from launching any sort of attacks against Israel from Egyptian soil.
@54 I’m not sure that, under its own charter, the UN has the authority to declare a bilateral, negotiated agreement between nations regarding their own borders invalid. (This was a matter of professional attention for me in my first career, and I’ve heard both sides.) But that’s beside the point: Whether or not fully implemented, whether or not later declared “invalid” through a rather smoky-back-room process by someone not at all involved, the Camp David Accords did cede territory, which was my point.
Can we all at least agree that we’re dealing with (in technical terms) a whole bunch of failed states in the region, and that redrawing a map is neither the territory nor the people who live there? The current government of Israel is just as theocratic as any of its neighbors (and not-so-neighbors like Iran). They’re all acting like playground bullies and bigots. Naturally, it’s not the members of the various governments and power structures who are in immediate peril…
Probably.
However, you could say the same thing about Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon and Jordan.
There is cross border violence but it is far less and far less lethal than the violence from Gaza with Hamas.
Hamas is organized and they have lots of resources since they control an entire city.
Once people have options for their lives that don’t involve living in a prison camp, most of them lose interest in having short lives as terrorists killing random strangers.
AFAICT, the main obstacle is that Egypt has no interest in getting Gaza back.
It would just be a whole lot of problems for them to deal with.
I approve of the idea of the US saying to the Palestinians, Israelis, and the other folks living in the area that if they want out of the endless cycle of revenge and despair they can come live in the United States. Some people who want out of the cycle will still want to stay and try to make peace, but I imagine there are a lot of people who just want out of the mess.
profpedant
Yes. This. Leave them to kill each other but also offer sanctuary to anyone who wants out of the hellhole. That’s my preferred policy until at least one side supports a fair long-term peace, e.g. a religiously neutral one state solution, or a two state solution where Palestine gets back a lot of land to have contiguous borders that it could control, or other variations on these themes like this interesting but probably equally politically infeasible idea of absorbing Palestinian territories into Egypt and Jordan.
I’m on board with profpedant’s idea @67, as long as no country gives any visas to either suspected terrorists or suspected Likudniks.
The problem with that limitation is in defining who is a ‘suspected terrorist or likudnik’….some people have some pretty loose definitions for those terms. I would go with admitting anyone who is willing to live in peace from the moment they board a ship or plane that takes them to the United States. I might socially shun someone whom I suspect of past bad behavior (as I do with racists in the US), but if they are willing to live in peace they can live in peace no matter how much I feel I Am Correct To Shun Them.
Still waiting for those Hamas-seeking smart bombs, or the name tags the Hamas terrorists will wear to be conveniently identified by the Israeli soldiers during the coming ground invasion.
It’s as if everyone, especially in the media, has lost their mind.
Joe Biden is being Joe Biden.
Huff Post:
‘U.S. diplomats advised not to call for “de-escalation” in Gaza’.
The US administration will not bother to rein in Netanyahu. It is going to be a bloodbath.
I’m with Rusty. Nice to see some truth.
Israel has an ethical obligation to return to 1948 borders, or it should be declared a terrorist state.
Israel has an ethical obligation to return to 1948 borders, or it should be declared a terrorist state.
There is no such thing, or process to declare it. The UN, I suppose, could adopt a resolution saying Israel should stick to the ’48 borders, but that was what the ’48 borders are, in the first place. Besides the US, which gave itself a veto on the security council, would certainly veto it. There is no Leviathan that can or will enforce international law. Effectively the US has placed Israel above the law.
After reading the section on the 2005 Gaza Disengagement in Avi Shlaim’s more recent edition of The Iron Wall, Jerry Coyne’s: “Israel voluntarily gave up Gaza in 2005 and evicted Israelis there, all in the interest of making a gesture of peace and trying to create an enclave for Palestinians that would promote peace. (Does anybody remember Israeli’s voluntary relinquishing of Gaza?)”
Sounds even more like a festering pile of bullshit. Does Coyne actually remember it correctly?
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/10/08/the-nyts-distortions-about-israel/
Sharon was merely downscaling Greater Israel by pivoting toward the West Bank. The unilateralism froze the Palestinians out and it sidestepped the road map supported by the Quartet. And…well…it sidestepped the demographic time bomb of the Palestinian womb.
In the comments here he adds: “They returned [Gaza] as a gesture of goodwill, as I said yesterday, and in hope that it would foster peace. It didn’t.”
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/10/09/celebrations-of-hamass-slaughter/
Ahem:
“…[Sharon] “wanted to pull out of the cauldron in Gaza to gain the freedom to consolidate Israel’s grip on the West Bank” … “Moreover, unilateral disengagement from Gaza fitted well with his plan of weakening the Palestinians by separating Gaza from the West Bank and by dividing up the West Bank into a series of enclaves without territorial contiguity.”
[…]
“Weissglas flattered Sharon by telling him that he was the only statesman capable of settling Israel’s borders and shaping its destiny. He also developed the theory that disengagement from Gaza, with American agreement and wide popular support, would reduce the pressure on Israel to move forward toward a permanent peace settlement with the Palestinians for many years to come.”
[…]
“Brushing aside Palestinian protests, Sharon and his aides promoted the plan as a contribution to the building of peace based on a two-state solution. But to his right-wing supporters he said privately, “My plan is difficult for the Palestinians, a fatal blow. There’s no Palestinian state in a unilateral move.” In an interview to Ha’aretz he elaborated, “The Arabs are fearful of this plan and everywhere they try to act against it. Disengagement is good for Israel and they too understand this. Carrying out the plan is a mortal blow to the Palestinians and their dreams.”
And so on and so forth…
Quoted from The Iron Wall by Avi Shlaim
So much for “good will” sensu Coyne. Ha!
rorschach: it’s super easy to make Hamas-seeking bombs.
Take any bomb. Drop it on people. Declare the people it hit are Hamas. QED.
Marcus Ranum: if Israel really wanted Gaza they’d have kept it already. They left it more than 15 years ago. The issue from Israel’s perspective (or at least its government’s) is that there are people in Gaza, and those people aren’t Jewish.
numerobis @78
I still can’t help thinking that in part Netanyahu is while moving on Gaza wrestling with the ghost of Ariel Sharon. That 2005 pullout kinda led to the rift in Revisionist Zionism resulting in Sharon’s formation of Kadima. They were not fond of one another. I had a more positive view of Sharon for that moderate shifting until recent reading made me realize the dark realpolitik that went behind the Disengagement. I still think Netanyahu is worse. Sharon was more a pragmatist, where Netanyahu is far more ideological.
One interesting fun fact about Kadima is that Israel had a Muslim president briefly, a Druze: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majalli_Wahabi
Also I read this recently about the third party shenanigans behind the power struggle between Fatah and Hamas not long after the Disengagement:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/04/gaza200804
Israel has always rejected the two states solution (did not even show up to discuss it).
Why bother when you can simply take it all, while we look on and let it happen.
I am sure more people would at the very least shed a few tears if only Palestinians were all blonde & blue eyed. Think of the inspiring comment of one of your American ministers (I don’t remember his name), who said (referring to Ukrainians): They look like us; we have to help them!
Anyone who thinks criticism of Israel is “Jew-hate”, know that there are many Jewish people, including Israelis who are appalled at the oppression of Palestinians.
The guy being interviewed in this video couldn’t have more impeccable Israeli credentials. His granddad signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His dad was a General in the IDF. He has family that were killed in Israel by Palestinian suicide bombers. He lives in the US now, but has lots of family back home in Jerusalem.
I know it’s a big ask when some random guy on the internet says, “watch this video”. But seriously. Give it just 10 minutes. 10 minutes from where I’ve cued it up. Then tell me this guy is anti-Semitic. :-/
(Ignore the clickbaity allcaps title – that’s not his fault. The whole interview is worth watching.)
Miko Peled On Israel’s GENOCIDAL War On Gaza
There are Israelis who see very clearly the injustice being done to Palestine.
Reading more discussion of the 2005 Disengagement in the book Cursed Victory by Ahron Bregman merely complements that of Avi Shlaim above, putting more nails in the coffin of “goodwill” actions by Israel or especially Sharon. It may have been portrayed that way for popular consumption, but quite naive to believe that gesturing was sincere:
“[Sharon] calculated that by setting up a new agenda, at the heart of which was an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip, which he would depict as ultimately serving the peace process, he could receive new support both internationally and domestically; in the meantime, the Palestinians would have to struggle to bring some order to the miserable enclave that Israel would leave behind. More importantly, a withdrawal would be so unexpected – nothing short of revolutionary coming from the hardline Sharon – that it would derail the Quartet, the joint diplomatic initiative of the US, EU, Russia and the UN, from pushing ahead with the aforementioned roadmap; Sharon loathed the roadmap, as it would require him to compromise on issues of great sensitivity, including ownership of East Jerusalem, control of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and, most threatening of all, the claims of 4.8 million Palestinian refugees to return to Israel.”
[…]
“Sharon’s unilateral disengagement turned out to be a mixed bag for Israel, and, indeed, for the Palestinians too. The most immediate and short-term outcome was an unparalleled round of applause from a usually sceptical international community, which seemed willing to accept Sharon’s line that his withdrawal would ultimately promote a two-state solution. Sharon’s bold move clearly relieved pressure on Israel and, as he expected, though never actually admitted in public, it undermined the Quartet’s roadmap that had up till the evacuation been at the heart of the peace process, and which could have forced Israel to compromise on issues of great sensitivity. Sharon’s right-hand man, Dov Weisglass, the brains behind the Disengagement Plan, alluded to the merit of unilateral disengagement as a way of pushing aside the less favoured roadmap when, in a frank interview, he said that disengagement would act as ‘formaldehyde’ on the roadmap. He explained:
“The significance [of the unilateral withdrawal] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders, and Jerusalem [all of which are at the heart of the roadmap]. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestine state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda … and all this with authority and permission. All with a [US] presidential blessing … and we taught the world … that there is no one to talk to [on the Palestinian side]. And we received a no-one-to-talk-to certificate. It a certificate that says: 1. There’s no one to talk to … 2. As long as there’s no one to talk to the geographic status quo remains intact. 3. The certificate will be revoked only when this-and-this happens – when Palestine becomes Finland. 4. See you then and Shalom.”
Formaldehyde on the roadmap then? Sounds pretty messed up to me. That’s a legacy now of Arik and Bibi is currently at work on his own perhaps haunted by the memory of his Likudnik nemesis as Halloween approaches.
Article on huffpo titled: “Israeli President Says There Are No Innocent Civilians In Gaza”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-gaza-isaac-herzog_n_65295ee8e4b03ea0c004e2a8
Someone should tell him he’s making it too obvious.
Equally: They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a war.
Oh wait. They did. Repeatedly.
Hamas’s support in Gaza isn’t all that high.
Less than half of Gazans want them in power.
The invasion wasn’t that popular either.
This poll is from October 10, 2023.
…the majority of Gazans (70%) supported a proposal of the PA sending “officials and security officers to Gaza to take over the administration there, with Hamas giving up separate armed units,”
Hamas isn’t ruling by a democratic election.
There haven’t been elections in Gaza since 2006 or so.
They are ruling because they have the guns and the fighters to use them.
They are very unpopular in some key Arab countries that once supported them such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Someone said the first casualty of war is the truth.
Herzog just proved it.
.1. Half the population of Gaza are children, a fact that he absolutely knows well.
.2. Support for Hamas in Gaza isn’t all that high.
Most opposed the invasion as a bad idea.
No, they couldn’t.
Hamas has ca. 20,000 heavily armed fighters.
They have most of the military force in Gaza and they rule based on that fact.
Unarmed civilians who rose up would be slaughtered and that would be the end of it.
Herzog knows this too.
So, how many men does Hama have anyway?
This is a key question if Israel is going to smash Hamas as they claim.
This source claims 40,000.
The BBC said 15,000 to 20,000.
I have no idea which number is correct.
The “source close to Hamas” is pretty dubious though. It’s likely they would inflate the numbers.
I don’t see how Israel is going to round up 20,000 Hamas men. These are guerrilla warfare fighters.
They are just going to hide, flee, and blend in with the civilian population.
Israel has invaded Gaza twice before and it never accomplished much.
hemidactyluss@79,
The Druze are not Muslims.
KG @88
Thanks for clearing up my misconception on that.
Re:lotharloo 83
Hitler attitude detected.
In the Israeli president to be specific.
Jaws@65,
To say the least, the right of Egypt and Jordan to cede Gaza and the West Bank respectively is extremely dubious; and in fact, with the exception of East Jerusalem, Israel does not (yet) claim them as its sovereign territory.
Gaza:
West Bank:
And on the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994:
So both Egypt and Jordan annexed the respective areas Gaza and the West Bank, but in neither case did they have the right to do so under international law, or any treaty (and hence could not legally cede them). And as noted before, the Golan Heights, which Israel has formally annexed, have never been conceded to it in any way by Syria.
hemidactylus @ 76, I remember it well. It only happened on paper.
They talked up a good game, then settlers violently occupied wherever they damned well pleased. Paper initiatives typically are just a game to buy strategic repositioning time.
Silentbob @ 81, I know for a fact that I could go to the house of worship next door and get similar opinions and hear people brand the entire group “Jew haters”, which would be a fascinating experience, given that it’s a synagogue.
Brony, Social Justice Cenobite @ 90, ironic, given the IDF is using some of the very same tactics used against Jews during the holocaust.
Another winning stratagem used by the Israeli government and one our resident “very stable genius” promoted, the infallible technology of perfect protection, a great big fucking wall. Worked great, obviously. Nearly as effective as was a massive fortification works in France some decades back.
Frankly, I think that the only thing that could break up the hostilities now is if there was a great big asteroid strike right in between them.
Yeah, a lot of people noticed that.
The Israelis spent over $1 billion on the Gaza wall and thought it was going to protect them.
One thing many have noticed and it hasn’t been discussed here, is the massive incompetence and failure of the Netanyahu government.
.1. They were repeatedly warned recently by Egypt and the US government that Hamas was planning something big and ugly. And, totally ignored it.
.2. They drastically underestimated Hamas.
.3. The Gaza Wall was a joke.
It barely slowed Hamas down.
A wall like that only works with humans backing it up.
They needed to have human patrols and a large armed force nearby on standby.
And a plan for a Hamas breakout.
None of which they had. It took hours to organize an IDF response while 1,000 Israeli civilians were killed.
.4. Their own spy agencies, once considered competent, this time completely dropped the ball. Mossad is a paper tiger these days.
.5. Not emphasized but a lot of Israelis don’t support the Netanyahu government.
In fact, they consider themselves another class of victims.
Israel is a very fractured society.
Among the many factions, the pro-democracy seculars are being oppressed by the religious fascists.
I read an interview with a secular IDF reservist.
He said basically, “Why should I go shoot Palestinian kids for Netanyahu, the settlers, and the fascists? While they turn Israel into an authoritarian fascist state.” The current Israeli government may hate the Gazans, but they also don’t much like the secular, educated class.
It was worse than I thought.
This article below from The Times of Israel explains how Hamas got out of Gaza.
They didn’t just knock down the wall, they cut it in 30 different places.
There wasn’t much backup.
A small army base nearby.
Which was overrun by Hamas.
It was a whole lot of Israeli failures like a line of dominoes falling down.
I’m not going to copy the whole article which isn’t too long.
Read it yourself if you want to know more.
True (although he’s won several elections) but if you look at the results of the 2022 general election, and then at the policies of the leading parties, it becomes obvious that only a small minority of Jewish Israelis support peace with the Palestinians on any basis other their continued subordination.
I will thank some of the above posters for their information on Hamas and it’s inept / brutal goverance of the Gaza Strip.
Since it appears that Hamas launched this vicious brutal attack in the face of declining support outside the Gazo Strip and little support within the Gaza Strip It looks to me that Hamas launched this attack in a truly cynical attempt to provoke a violent Israeli rsponse and for that response to shore up their declining support within the Gaza Strip and in the Arab World. The Israelis are responding has Hamas expected in a very, very brutal fashion.
The attack also has the “benefit” from Hamas’ point of view of shoring up the current corupt and anti-Palestinian Israeli government and thus indirectly shoring Hamas up also.
I think I am going to be sick.