What is Israel's end goal of its current actions? It has ensured there can be no continuation of the Hamas atrocity and it's upped the protection of its borders.
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Ed General Israel/Palestine discussion thread - Part 3
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Beelzebuddy
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In 2018-2019, Hamas led a weekly nonviolent protest demanding a right to return to Israel as full citizens. A bunch of other crap too, but the sticking point was "let us peacefully join your nation." Israel rejected talks out of concern for losing their Jewish majority, and shot a couple thousand of them with live ammunition. Neither side wants actual peace, just a quiet elimination of the other. It's racists being racist to racists all the way down.
Come on guys, stop making me defend these ****heads. They do enough bad stuff without making them out to be worse than they are.
gnome
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Kind of speculating here, but past behavior shows that the reprisals will be brutal, drawing international criticism, for some weeks. Then they will "bow to international pressure" and trail it off.
As far as goal, I think the idea might be to deter future attacks by disproportionate response. If their allies have to stop them, it also implies bad things if they were ever fully isolated from those allies.
More cynically, which is not exclusive to the previous goal, they know they can weather the criticism and then normalize relations when they back off.
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No. But I can tell you about my personal experience in the past few days:
- The union to which I belonged and whose messages I still receive keeps inviting people to pro-Palestinian anti-Israel demonstrations; they take place with rather significant numbers of participants (don’t know how many, but certainly more than just couple of dozen)
- It issued numerous statements expressing great sympathy for the ‘Palestinian cause’ without expressing slightest sympathy for the Israelis who were killed or are kept as hostages
- It asked the departments to issue similar statements (hasn’t happened yet, but probably will)
- All people on the mailing list agree with these feelings (or are afraid to say otherwise)
- I keep being bombarded by similar messages from various other organizations
- All synagogues in the are where I live are on the highest level of alert and have increased security; mosques operate as usual.
- My neighbour’s children who attend a Jewish school were advised to stay at home.
- Facebook posts with Israeli flags are followed by thousands (literally: thousands!) of comments saying ‘We’ll kill all the Jews’ or something like that. I saw them with my own eyes on the first couple of days after the attack (then, I think, Facebook removed most of them).
This is just what I personally witnessed. You can read about other things in open sources.
Nobody is making you. You are choosing to.
gnome
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I think "nonviolent" needs an asterisk there.
It's fair to question that Israeli forces failed to sufficiently distinguish between violent and nonviolent groups. I think they should have to answer to that. But I don't think it's as simple as Israelis just mowing down peaceful protestors while under no threat themselves.
Beelzebuddy
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The UN decided it was that simple: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoIOPT/A_HRC_40_74.pdf
Refer to section G, statistics. Final score was 4 Israelis injured by rocks, nearly 200 Gazans dead and over 6000 shot. Mostly in the knees.
Fair enough. I suppose when I see people working each other up into justifying genocide I feel compelled to piss in the punch bowl. Hate them for all they've done to deserve it, but Hamas has made overtures of peace that are at least as ingenuous as Israel's olive branches. They are monsters to be rooted out, not monsters to be eliminated at all cost, especially when that cost is seen by the people eager to do the elimination as a desirable bonus.
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The Great Zaganza
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thanks for the reply, with so many data points.
you might see that nearly all of them are messages, not actions of any kind.
and there is a lot more precedent for synagogues being attacked, mostly by right-wingers, than mosques.
And, of course, not all Muslims are Palestinians (hardly any are), but all born Jews have a right to citizenship to Israel.
So it's very much apples vs. some-not-fruit comparison here.
Because there's 1 country for Jews and like a dozen for Muslims just in the same general area. So yet again I fail to get why "The one country set aside for Jews isn't making enough space to share with Muslims" is the problem we're supposed to be solving.
"Without Israel where exactly are Jews supposed to go?" is not an idle question. The goddamn universe has just decided Jews are going so suck up all the "Nimby" energy in the world, don't ask me to explain it.
(And again since this is a "Every statement must start at first principles" discussion this is all based on whether or not you find "A Country but for only people of this religion" a valid thing or not.)
"Without Israel where exactly are Jews supposed to go?" is not an idle question. The goddamn universe has just decided Jews are going so suck up all the "Nimby" energy in the world, don't ask me to explain it.
(And again since this is a "Every statement must start at first principles" discussion this is all based on whether or not you find "A Country but for only people of this religion" a valid thing or not.)
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The Great Zaganza
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why can't we focus on the issue at hand without have to solve the entire Middle East conflict?
All I'm looking for is a way to make slow progress, start rebuild trust from a level of less than zero.
And yes, Israel will need strong security guarantees every step of the way; that 's because of its size, it doesn't have the luxury to wage a purely defensive war.
but we are already at a point where most Arab nations are trying to normalize relations with Tel Aviv, and are not looking for a conflict. Israel The State is probably saver now than it has every been in its existence.
All I'm looking for is a way to make slow progress, start rebuild trust from a level of less than zero.
And yes, Israel will need strong security guarantees every step of the way; that 's because of its size, it doesn't have the luxury to wage a purely defensive war.
but we are already at a point where most Arab nations are trying to normalize relations with Tel Aviv, and are not looking for a conflict. Israel The State is probably saver now than it has every been in its existence.
"Who lives where" IS the issue at hand. Pretending otherwise is naive.
If you think for a second that the Muslim countries of the Middle East still accept the existence of a Jewish state and wouldn't use the absolute first excuse to wipe it off the map I simply do not know what to tell you or how to even start a discussion with you.
But this is a discussion where we have to pretend Hamas doesn't want every Jew dead so...
The Great Zaganza
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and do you think Hamas could do that?
wanting is one thing, having the means is another.
That is why Bibi didn't really care about Hamas, but was worried about Iran getting nukes.
seriously, Hamas is not an existential threat, or Israel wouldn't have let it run Gaza.
You asked about 'Western sympathizers' and that's what I tried to describe. Actions mostly happen elsewhere (for now, at least)
*Very slowly* Hamas is not. Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria absolutely are.
Also "But come on it's not like Hamas could really kill all the Jews" is your answer? You had that thought, your brain formed that argument, your fingers typed it out, you hit post and no point do you think how that sounded?
The Great Zaganza
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yes, and you mentioned exactly 1 source : your union.
that is not "numerous" by any definition.
That is availability bias at work.
and the fact that synagogues get protection and mosques don't is a data point against your claim, not for it.
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Beelzebuddy
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But Mooooooom! All the other countries get to be hateful bigots, how come I can't be a hateful bigot too!?
Sweetie, those other countries get US sanctions, not US weapons systems. Except Lil' Saud, because his dad is rich so he gets to run around being a little bastard, but that's a diff-
But I wanna! I wanna I wanna I WANNA!
Again I don't see you calling on those countries to make special enclaves for Jews to live in. The Muslim countries are not being asked to share.
Again "Only people of this religion get to live here" is only a problem for you when the Jews do it.
TragicMonkey
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I dimly recall hearing something in the news recently about Hamas maybe having done something unpleasant to Israel. Can't remember what it was, but Israel seemed a little annoyed by it. Perhaps Israel might even reconsider the matter on whether Hamas is or isn't a threat.
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