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[MENA] The Middle East and North Africa
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Israel is not in fact required to commit genocide. Ever. Not even once.
Gonna have a pretty difficult time convincing me that someone with this on their feed isn't a gigantic piece of shit:
This - you guys don't have to make it worse than it already is, which is real fucking bad. Israel isn't just killing kids for funsies.
The reason Israel, the people of the nation, are going in there is explicitly Hamas. The support of the people of Israel is in getting retribution/vengeance against Hamas for what they did. There may be some of the extreme Zionists that Bibi put in power who couldn't care less about Hamas specifically, but that isn't the majority, or even a sizable minority, of why this is happening.
The real fucking rot is that a very large chunk of the population just doesn't care if entire cities get glassed to take Hamas out. That these actions to rid them of Hamas are justified, that Hamas would and has done the same to their innocents, so fuck 'em... and there is honestly nothing we can do in the moment to change their mind. We could make symbolic gestures or ask congress to cut off aid (note: they will not) - but even if so, Israel is set to defend themselves and continue their assault for years without anything new from us, so all that does is take us away from the table altogether.
It's all so very bad.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
All you're saying is that Israel feels they need to commit genocide. A thing they do not actually need to do. A thing their government clearly wants to do. Saying that Israel feels like they need to commit genocide to steal more land while ultimately creating more Hamas isn't an argument, it's just a statement.
What are you attempting to debate?
"This is a debate forum" "Okay what do you want to debate" "Man fuck you" is kind of bullshit.
I see you are apparently unfamiliar with Jewish-American political cartoonist Eli Valley, whose cartoons are well known for their blunt depictions of grotesqueries to reflect the moral rot and decay he sees in various political figures like Netanyahu.
Other than that, I don’t know what to tell you; Sheen is an established journalist with bylines all over the place including Israel’s oldest newspaper and lives in the country. I would suspect that’s enough to indicate that he can translate the officer in question fairly accurately
See for example his depiction of Trump’s cadre of horrors:
Or for example him directly linking Trump’s rhetoric to the Tree of Life shooting years ago:
Or his statement on his book collection Diaspora Boy, on his perspective of being a member, particularly a secular, non-nationalist one, and the frustrations of allowing the right wing to dictate the shape of Jewish identity:
With that in mind, which I feel should fairly establish Valley’s political ideology as a left wing Jewish American who sees the right wing as the primary and most direct instigators of anti-semitism and stochastic terrorist danger to Jewish Americans, what exactly is your feeling about Valley’s work that you feel somehow discounts, apparently, David Sheen’s entire career, Monwyn?
EDIT: digging further, what you’re also taking offense at, calling Sheen a “piece of shit” over is… this tweet, also by someone who says they’re Jewish:
Furthermore, to even read that comic from that retweeted tweet, you’d have had to go to the page it was hosted on, which already identifies Valley:
A page, I should note, run by +972. And who exactly is +972?
So then are these all gigantic pieces of shit? And if so, why are are they all gigantic pieces of shit, Monwyn?
Blowing up ambulances, water reservoirs, schools, universities, and refugee camps might not be "just for funsies" but its also not a goddamn thing to do with Hamas in any real way. And at best is a callous disregard of life to such a magnitude that even if they aren't explicitly having their genocide rage boners out to stroke while doing it, it doesn't stop that is 100% what they are doing.
And going with statements of people in charge, or recently in charge, talking about wanting to annex them, and forcing people off their homes and/or blowing it up, I'm not sure I don't believe they aren't getting an intense amount of joy from it.
ELM the actors have been very blatant about their motivations for two weeks now, hell even before the past two weeks of nightmares: they don’t believe Palestinians are a legitimate people who have a right to the same land and human rights as they do, that every Palestinian is culpable for the crimes of Hamas, and they want them driven into the Sinai desert. Or dead, they seem fine with either one of these outcomes.
They keep saying this! Over and over again! Several government and military officials! This isn’t some fringe minority, these are people with the power of the state and influence to direct policy, people Netanyahu willingly empowered to save his ass from his corruption scandals because he could give them the fascist ethnostate they’ve been dreaming about since Meir Kahane came on the scene decades ago!
You’re not looking for the motivations of the actors; they’ve already told you them. You’re looking for, even if you’re not consciously aware of it, the space to give you the smallest bit of comfort that there’s some rational, complex geopolitical rationale and logic that makes this inevitable so you can ultimately feel less conflicted about the nightmare unfolding before your eyes because the implications of what we’re all witnessing are that horrifying and upend so many of the political truths about the nature of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that we’ve been conditioned to believe for decades.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
This is a variation on the usual fascist imperialistic bullshit that occurs all over the world and throughout the ages, and pretty much everyone is part of a population that has done this in the past or is doing it right this minute. We are all unified in being in the same Venn diagrams as monsters.
There are Israeli citizens at this very moment putting themselves at risk to protest this horror, and Jewish people throughout the world doing the same, just as there are Palestinians who reject and resist Hamas.
They absolutely have a plan. It is clear and obvious. They have decided that enough is enough, and are going to drive the Palestinians off at least 1/3 of the Gaza strip, ideally the whole thing, and create so much pressure on the border that they poor into Egypt. They will then demolish every structure in the place, raze it completely flat and pretend noone ever lived there.
This will be an effective plan at preventing further terrorist attacks from Gaza. Palestinians will also be forced to move into the Sinai, which will make them Egypts problem as well. As they have relocated during a crisis, rather than in a managed fashion, Egypt will probably abuse them as well, which will create strife between the population and other Islamic countries.
The plan is now "drive you from your homes" and is horrible, but, there is every reason to believe it will be effective.
No, it’s because one of them is an ethnostate that literally drove thousands of people out of there homes in order to establish itself, is the controlling power of the territories they shoved the survivors into, and has continued to oppress them for decades instead of going “wait, maybe we should actually try to live together as equal people, with equal rights and equal access to the lands here.”
Like Coates said in that interview and speech that I posted here the other day: it’s not complicated in the way that is so commonly claimed. Yeah, there’s history, but the present is a fairly simple thing: one side is a segregationist apartheid state (redundant I know) that controls the lives of the Palestinian people and they have no control over it whatsoever, and must yield to its demands, move away, or die.
[once again stares at that “Greater Israel” map on Smotrich’s podium at that memorial service]
Edit: like that’s the frustration here! They’re not particularly subtle about this! They’re like three steps at most from being fucking cartoon supervillains about this shit!
smotrich had to offer an apology about this but fuck if it ever made it into US media!
I still think that what exists now is a bunch of people who hate each other because the mutual murders of their friends and family have turned their vision permanently red. That's fundamentally different to deal with than a person that just wants another people to clear off land that they want.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Paladin I am begging you to go back through this thread and please read the various accounts of Israeli government officials saying, in multiple different ways of expressing the sentiment, “I want to clear those Arabs off of our rightful land”
Because they’re doing that
The thing you said at the end
They are literally saying that’s what they want.
The people in charge of the government.
Hell, great segue back into the fucking 1970s. Tweet via Human Rights Watch’s Scott Long:
They’re ethnofascist nationalists, Paladin. they want the fuckin’ land.
It wouldn't make sense to say they don't want the land. That doesn't contradict what I supposed about the state of mind of the decisionmakers - people molded by outrage and personal trauma think differently.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Even assuming the best intentions out of this kind of post, you do of course realize that when a militarily superior force has shut off access to food, water, power and is indiscriminately bombing and killing thousands of children who can't even form letter sounds yet (and, thus presumably can't be remotely culpable for what Hamas did) worrying about understanding motivations is.... well it's a thing? It's beyond bizarre to see someone take people to task for wanting that kind of genocide, regardless of the reason that precipitated it, to stop above all other considerations.
I don't believe you think genocide is a good thing (or I fervently hope you don't), but I think you need to step back and look at what you are saying here.
The Palestinians hate Israel because Israel stole their land and treated them like subhuman animals. Israel has all the power and could have prevented Hamas from being a serious problem by treating human beings with dignity and equality.
They didn't, never wanted to, and are now using the excuse of extremist elements of a wounded people lashing out to commit genocide. Sort of a "final solution" to a problem of their own making.
Israel has no cause to hate, here. 10/7 was awful, for sure, but it only happened because they got complacent with their slow genocide with settlers and strangling resources. They fucked around, found out, and are now opting for fast genocide. Revenge is the pretext; it's the land and power that Bibi wants.
I think a lot of folks in our generations are still heavily conditioned to accept a reality of collateral damage in wartime, especially in the Middle East and most especially in respect to the Palestinians.
Some of us haven’t been shaken from the dream and into the nightmare yet, is honestly what it feels like.
"France shares responsibility for not opening the border"
Without the US as guarantor Israel would massively have to change it foreign policy or legitimately risk its long term safety. Despite the impressive weapons stock-pile and the fact it is a nuclear power Israel simply does not have the population or resources for sustained high intensity conflict.
Hence why people, especially Americans, have so long been annoyed with American administration's not using our enormous soft power over Israel to try and moderate or change Israeli policy, domestic and foreign. Given our relationship we might actually be able to do it, but there's no evidence we've tried.
People within the current Israeli Administration have obliquely or openly talked about collective punishment and retribution here. Hamas set this off and they are I think clearly conducting many strikes directly at Hamas. But there's also a lot going on that looks like it's just indiscriminate bombing with some vague goal like "giving Hamas nowhere to hide" or whatever and that is done with zero concern for civilian life. And then there's the smattering of pretty standard IDF strikes that target journalists or the like seemingly for shits and giggles.
But on the domestic front, politically, there is no incentive, and a functional house would have already given military support to Israel. Unless Democrats provide a true threat of primary to their reps (and they won’t) the US has no incentive to use their soft power.
I don't have the capacity to disagree with any of this, but I must point out that Israel is different from the Israeli people. A country is just land. It doesn't harbor emotional trauma affecting its judgment or understanding of morality. The Israeli people are a different story - they, as well as anyone else subject to violence, have been poisoned by it. Like the people of Hamas. Like the Palestinian people.
People bathed in outrage don't make the most rational decisions to the merit of their interests. They become self destructive and unable to see the bigger picture and work out mutually beneficial solutions. It's much, much harder to snap someone out of that mindset when it's fueled by deep seated hatred. You can't just ensure the consequences of their actions; you have to address the trauma.
Remember this when you talk with friends and family who are against you on this. Remember this when you write letters to people like Senator John Fetterman - you can't just appeal to reason and goodwill. You're going to have to pull some emotional labor or realize that it is beyond your power to address that part of their beliefs.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
We definitely could be doing much more to try to lobby Israel to lobby us to support them less.
Yeah, I was around for 9/11; I know that people dealing with grief, disbelief, and rage do insane things. I have plenty of Jewish relatives; the ones I care about are at least nominally on the right side of this, despite supporting Israel overall. The rest...I haven't even looked at their Facebook pages. I kinda don't want to know, for my own mental health.
US soft power over Israel is only theoretical. In that if the US electorate were different the US could theoretically have leverage over Israel. In reality though it basically goes the other way because the US electorate has for a long time been extremely supportive of Israel. To the point that Israeli politicians feel perfectly safe in sticking their fingers into US elections knowing they will not see any consequences for it. There's been some shift in this recently but it's only from the bottom up and only really on one side.
Also I think you generally underestimate Israel's strength compared to it's neighbors. Without US support Israel would have to change it's foreign policy but not in the way you are implying. There wouldn't be a more conciliatory stance towards any vaguely hostile forces in the region. It would be more based around overt deterrence. And if Israel felt isolated from it's main military ally and actually threatened, someone would get nuked.
What civilian multiplier of Palestinians vs Israelis does Israel get to hit before anyone gets to tell them it's time to stop blowing up refugee camps and ambulance convoys?
Come Overwatch with meeeee
There are two questions going on here. First, does Israel have the right to engage in military efforts to attack and dismantle Hamas? Second, are their current actions morally defensible and/or effective in doing that?
To the first question, the answer is yes. If Hamas is attacking Israeli civilians, Israel has a right to go after them. And not in the silly eye for an eye method Styro suggests, where if they kill X Israelis then Israel is allowed to kill X terrorists, or whatever. If Hamas continues to be a threat, and if Israel can reduce the threat with military action against legitimate terrorist targets, they can and should do so. What Styro seems to be suggesting with his posts on the number already killed is that Israel has exhausted its quota, so it doesn't matter if Hamas is still openly threatening and planning to murder more civilians, Israel needs to wait until the next hunting season when their permit gets renewed.
To the second question, I think the answer is clearly no - what Israel is doing right now is bad, both morally and strategically, and they should change their policy. To, for example, one of targeted and less indiscriminate attacks against Hamas along with vastly more aid. A change that Styro, by my reading, rejected in favor of just a complete cessation of military response.
I largely (clearly) agree with your second answer, so I'll largely leave it be, but I think you are doing Styro a disservice, by leaving out a lot of context. Styro is by no means suggesting an eye for an eye mechanism. What he was responding to is the idea that if Hamas is still reaching out and trying to Israel, Israel is justified in what it's doing. He is then challenging that by saying "ok, IF that's true, what ratio of civilian deaths satisfies Israel's right to defense". It's a silly setup because the concept he was responding to was insane to begin with.
The whole point of the ceasefire now is, let's stop the massacre of civilians, let's get them aid, and then for MOST of us, figure out a better solution to Hamas. Some of that could be happening now. The US and other allied countries could be putting pressure on Hamas forces/allies outside of Israel, including specific, targetted military action.
But if we're talking "what would be an optimal solution" I think that something like more thoughtful targeting to eliminate (to the extent possible) civilian casualties and gestures made to show support for non-terrorist Palestinians would be aces.
Honestly, I don't think Bibi is going to do either, but that's why this is "D&D" and not "Predict What Is Actually Likely To Happen."
An incredibly optimistic off-ramp to the current emergency if you can also apply pressure on Qatar to get a slow drip of hostages released.