Innocent People in the Middle East, Victimized by Fascist Theocrats

[Subjective Effect]

And in all those examples the situation has been the same?

[demagogue]

Every situation is different from every other situation.

Look, there are 8 billion people on planet earth.
There are 5 million stateless people.
That's 0.0625% of the population.
You want to tell me that that 0.0625% is fundamentally different from 99.9375% of the rest of humanity?
No other ethnically-different population has ever been at war with its home state to which it now has citizenship in the history of mankind?
That's really the argument you want to go with?

Edit: Fine, you raise a valid point, trying to arrest Hamas would be operationally a challenge and hard to avoid some conflict, like it was for some of the other cases like Black South African militants under the apartheid regime or Northern Irish Catholic militants during the Troubles, etc. But they still managed to come to a political solution that didn't involve completely leveling 90% of every structure and cutting off the food and water supply. There's self-defense in terms of incapacitating the ability for Hamas to attack Israelis, which was a line crossed long ago. (The Israeli state was negligent in not preventing the attack to begin with.) But anyway they've gone way beyond the goal of self-defense at this point, and if you really want to get rid of Hamas for good, not even speaking of wokeness, just very realpolitik practically speaking, no state in history has ever gotten rid of a terrorist network until they've given civil and political rights to the population and their outlet for dispute is political and not through violence. The terrorist group just keeps coming back until you have that. Believe it or not I'm actually coming at this from the perspective of wanting to end Hamas, Hezbollah, and terrorism and political violence in the region altogether as one of my starting points.

[Subjective Effect]

Yes, but no other population in history has had an enemy next door launching 1000s of rockets at it every year without a definitive war following.

Hamas are not reasonable people. Their aims and methods are nothing like any other group you mentioned.

And the claim that Israel is killing civilians disproportionally is nonsense. In Gaza there's one if the lowest civilian to combatant ratios ever, but If you believe Hamas all it's fighters are civilians or "youth". They aren't honest. Come on.

There will be a political solution eventually - look at the situation for Israeli Arabs. But Israel has decided Hamas has to go, and who can blame them really?

[Jason Moyer]

1. Hamas goes
2. Hezbollah goes
3. Likud goes
4. ?????
5. Kumbaya

[Subjective Effect]

Something like that, yeah. We aren't getting anywhere with these nutters now so...

[Starker]

I mean, sure, if you just label civilians as combatants, then no civilians have died in Gaza and every single Hamas fighter has been wiped out by now. Twice.

I mean, that's the kind of conclusion you might come to, if you blindly believe crime minister Netanyahu, but as I've already demonstrated in this thread with hard facts and data, the reality doesn't correspond to his lies: https://aoav.org.uk/2024/netanyahu-g...gaza-is-a-lie/

[Starker]

As for Israel's regard for civilian life, here's one report (NSM-20) on a selection of incidents that brings it into serious question. If you want to get a clearer picture of what's happening, you would want to go over every one of them, but I'll just highlight one of them for the sake of brevity.

https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-cont...rt-_-Final.pdf

On 3 November 2023, around 4:30pm, an IDF airstrike hit a marked ambulance just outside of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital. Human Rights Watch reviewed video footage and photographs taken shortly after the strike and found at least 21 dead or injured people in the area surrounding the ambulance, including 5 children. An IDF spokesperson said in a televised interview that day that: “Our forces saw terrorists using ambulances as a vehicle to move around. They perceived a threat and accordingly we struck that ambulance.” Human Rights Watch found no evidence that the ambulance struck was being used for military purposes, but instead verified video showing a woman on a stretcher in the ambulance.

I would suggest that this is not, in fact, "fighting back". It's plainly and simply "fighting".

And also, this is one of the other ways Israel is fighting Palestinians in Gaza:

In general, the Israeli government has instituted practices that violate standards relevant to the delivery of humanitarian aid referenced in NSM-20. In addition to blanket bans and attacks on humanitarian aid convoys, Israel’s screening procedures for aid entering Gaza have imposed restrictions inconsistent with the above standards. Israeli authorities have prevented humanitarian goods including certain anesthetics, water purification tablets, and maternity kits from entering Gaza and turned back entire truckloads of aid due to the inclusion of such goods. Indeed, according to a USAID cable shared with HuffPost, health, sanitation, and hygiene items “are amongst the most rejected for import into Gaza.”

[Subjective Effect]

Human Rights Watch? Lol. You mean the organization that's been accused of bias against Israel, ignoring anti-semetism and being in the pocket of Arab nations? Ha ha.

Shall we defer to UNRWA next, or go straight to Hamas' Ministry of Truth, er I mean Propaganda, er I mean Health

[Nicker]

No, let's just take Likud's word for it.



Sunny day
Sweepin' the clouds away...

[RippedPhreak]

give Palestinians citizenship and a political say in the circumstances of their existence like any normal country, so disputes are handled through the political system and not terrorism.

If you reward mass slaughter attacks with political concessions, that will train them to murder more Jews to get more concessions.

[demagogue]

(1) Citizenship isn't a "concession". It's the foundation of all government and politics to begin with.
(2) That's why it's necessary that you criminally prosecute the people that commit mass slaughter.

[RippedPhreak]

This isn't a matter of police dropping by in a cruiser to knock on their doors and read them their rights. Hamas dresses just like everyone else and lives next to everyone else, so you don't know who they are unless they are a high-ranked leader. And the other Palestinians aren't going to tell you who is Hamas, because they are more scared of Hamas than of you.

Anyway, if the Palestinians murder ~1,300 people and you start giving them what they want, they will think "Wow, what will these soft fools give us if we kill 3,000 of them next time?"

[demagogue]

You're saying that police can't arrest murderers because they look like other people?
You know that's what police do.

But back up, the first problem is that there are no effective police, because there is no state apparatus.
That's my point. You're effectively arguing that making a state responsible for this population is absurd because there isn't a state that's responsible for them.
It's a circular argument that doesn't give you or anyone that thinks that way a way out of it.
What, are Palestinians going to be stateless, without police, without accountability, with a terrorist organization administering them forever?
That's the solution to the terrorism?

Never mind the implication of your argument that when Israel murders 45,000 civilians, the majority women and children, you give them what they want?* That's giving the right incentives?
*a situation where Hamas will never be prosecuted and exist forever due to the aforementioned reasons; some victory.

[RippedPhreak]

No, police cannot enter a neighborhood filled with hostile armed people that outnumber them, to make arrests. It would quickly become a free-fire war zone, so you might as well send in the military in the first place.

What, are Palestinians going to be stateless, without police, without accountability, with a terrorist organization administering them forever?

That is their problem. Israel asks nothing of them except "stay away from us, and don't kill us." Anything else is up to them to decide. I imagine the Palestinians could form a police force this very day if they wanted. What would happen when they tried to arrest a Hamas member I'll leave up to your imagination.

when Israel murders 45,000 civilians, the majority women and children, you give them what they want? That's giving the right incentives to the set of actors?

If it was up to me, Israel would not get one dime of US taxpayer money. Same as Ukraine. So I would not be "giving them" anything at all. Our beloved US leaders don't see it that way, apparently.

[Subjective Effect]

when Israel murders 45,000 civilians, the majority women and children

I really think you need to check these numbers. 45k isn't any figure reported at all. Maybe 41k. And you're saying they are all civilians? So who TF is firing rockets the other day? Civilians? Israel has missed ALL of Hamas? It's also not murder if it's during war, is it?

It's so bizarre with you people. Every single response is peppered to hell with errors. Some might call that lies, others - "propaganda". I try to be charitable with your motives though, so I must assume failure to pay attention or Long Covid of the brain, really.

[demagogue]

Israel has blockaded Gaza since 2005, which aside from having perpetually decimated its economy making it unviable as a political & economic entity, it's legally an act of war, and the West Bank is controlled by settlers and riddled with Israeli infrastructure which Palestinians can't access, and the Israeli government already openly calls the West Bank Israeli territory. You'll notice in all of Bibi's maps he loves to show off that the West Bank is integrated with Israel with no border shown. That doesn't sound like "leave us alone"; Israel isn't leaving them alone!

Palestinians live in Israeli controlled territory but have no rights with the authorities that administer their day to day life. Israelis are certainly free to leave the territory if they don't want to control the lives of Palestinians. I don't think they want to do that; and as the poll I gave above said, 3/4 of Palestinians aren't even asking Israelis to leave. So if they're not going to leave, that limits their options in dealing with the Palestinians.

The Israeli government is not free to ethnically cleanse their land of Palestinians though, nor is it legal for them to control their lives without giving them political representation and civil and political rights. There was a time when they could have negotiated for an independent Palestinian state, but the prospect for that being possible has long since passed if you look at the actual conditions on the ground & Israeli effective control over the land. It's just like the Bantustans or Sequoia, not a serious proposal for an independent state at all, very intentionally engineered to be so.

@SE, given the number of missing and scale of attacks, it's going to be much higher than the stated numbers to begin with. 41K is already an outdated number but the one they're still using, so you'd technically bump it consistent with the scale of attacks, and it's the vetted one. There's a problem with data collection in a time of war as you can imagine. There should be an independent and forensic process to account for it after the conflict in any event. If one wants to be objective about it, you defer to that process and give a rough justified estimate in the meantime. I'm happy to defer to that kind of process.

[Subjective Effect]

No, let's just take Likud's word for it.

A democratically elected government or a terrorist organisation that can't be voted out on pain of death? Yeah, I know which I'd choose.

Israel has blockaded Gaza since 2005, which aside from having perpetually decimated its economy making it unviable as a political & economic entity, it's legally an act of war

You are right. After Hamas started terrorist attacks in 2005 Israel shouldn't have blockaded the territory, instead allowing them to import all the weapons they want. Right?

What about the Egypt border? Oh aha aha they aren't Jews, sorry forget I mentioned it.

Palestinians live in Israeli controlled territory but have no rights with the authorities that administer their day to day life. Israelis are certainly free to leave the territory if they don't want to control the lives of Palestinians. I don't think they want to do that

So Hamas and Fatah have NO authority at all? What's the point of them then? Why are they clinging to power? When are the elections? Why do you never mention anything about Fatah being 19 years into their 4 year term?

Israel feels the need to control the population because of security concerns. And you know it.

[Starker]

You choose to believe that bombing a clearly marked ambulance is above the board and completely justified? Btw, bombing an ambulance is a crime even if it's used to transport an enemy combatant. Which, by all available evidence, it wasn't.

[SD]

It's something of an irony these days that the Palestinians are rapidly running out of allies in the Middle East as more and more Arab countries make peace with Israel; so much so that when Iran attacked Israel in April, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE participated in its defence. Such a thing would have been unthinkable not that long ago.

I used to be one of those Westerners like demagogue, labouring under the misapprehension that what Palestinians* most desperately want is their own state. Well, in a way they do, but what they actually want is no Jewish state. This much has been known since well before the reestablishment of Israel in 1948.

As British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin - who was very much not sympathetic to Jewish statehood - noted in 1947:

His Majesty's Government have thus been faced with an irreconcilable conflict of principles. There are in Palestine about 1,200,000 Arabs and 600,000 Jews. For the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish state. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.

How can you have any rapprochement with people who don't want you to coexist with them? The Jews have reluctantly accepted the existence of an Arab state alongside the Jewish one on multiple occasions. The reason their nation is called Israel in the first place is because they felt the Arabs would want to call theirs Palestine. At every juncture, the Arabs have rejected the chance for their own state, because they still cannot accept the existence of a Jewish state.

One can accept Palestinian grievances over settlements in the West Bank, if one can overlook the inherent insanity of international law demanding that places like Bethlehem be judenrein forever. But those are points for negotiation under any future agreement, which needs to begin with Palestinians not murdering Jews and accepting their right to inhabit their native lands in peace.

Remember that land for peace is an accepted principle with precedent. Israel has already given the Sinai peninsula, a region three times the size of Israel, back to Egypt, in exchange for nothing more than peace with its neighbour.

*I use the term hesitantly, because they've only called themselves that since the 1960s, and before that it always - always - referred to Jews. The slogan "Free Palestine" was originally a Zionist one**

**While we're on the subject of "Free Palestine", let's talk about the gaslighting in that "From the river to the sea..." chant. Stop telling us that it just means you want Palestinians to be free. For one thing, we've all seen what Hamas's idea of freedom means over the past two decades. For another, we know that what it really means is a Palestine free of Jews. It may be ambiguous enough in English to fool the useful idiots in Western campuses and city centres, but the original Arabic phrase - "From the water to the water, Palestine shall be Arab" - leaves no room for misunderstanding.

[SD]

Btw, bombing an ambulance is a crime even if it's used to transport an enemy combatant.

The Geneva Conventions are explicitly clear that ambulances being used for purposes outside their humanitarian function lose their legal protection. An ambulance transporting Hamas fighters is every bit as much a legitimate military target as a truck or armoured vehicle that does the same.

[Starker]

This is not true:

https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-cont...rt-_-Final.pdf

Hospitals, ambulances, and other medical units, convoys, and transports (‘medical units’) enjoy special protection under international humanitarian law.

Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes shall not be attacked, and must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their special protection only if they are currently being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy. Prior to attack, a warning must be issued setting a reasonable time-limit for the adversary to cease its use of the unit, and an attack can only take place after such warning remains unheeded.

Even if this special legal protection is lost, general rules of distinction, precautions, and proportionality continue to apply. These rules protect civilians and civilian objects (including medical equipment) in or near the medical unit.

Besides, an ambulance that is outside of a hospital is hardly out of place. An ambulance that is being used to transport a patient even less so.

[Nicker]

A democratically elected government...

That's a stretch. Run by a convicted criminal who emasculated the courts to protect himself from prosecution and prison. Sound familiar?

Not to mention he believes in an invisible being who divinely pre-approves his atrocities. Kind of the point of this thread.

It's not about who's to blame, because that game goes back 5,000 years or more. It's about who will accept responsibility and with lying, deluded, criminal shits on both sides, unfortunately there are no adults in the room. Universal problem it seems.

An ambulance transporting Hamas fighters is every bit as much a legitimate military target as a truck or armoured vehicle that does the same.

What the actual fuck? Are you saying that Likud bombs can tell the difference or are you saying you don't care?

For another, we know that what it really means is a Palestine free of Jews.

But the ONE STATE SOLUTION has no such implications on the flip side. Got it.

[Subjective Effect]

These are the fevered frothings of haters, really.

Of course the BOMBS don't know who is in the ambulances. It's the military that know. And it doesn't matter if an ambulance is outside a hospital!

Is there a protection spell on hospitals that causes the ejection of Hamas militants from ambulances that get near? Ffs what is wrong with you people? It's like you haven't been paying attention.

This is Hamas.

Do you have any idea who these people are? Did you not see the videos from Oct 7th. Would you like me to link to videos of them executing people, throwing grenades into rooms with children in them? Do you blank this stuff out? It's not beyond them to use anything and say anything to play the victim. They are known to have used ambulances as troop and weapon transport, hospitals as launch sites and hostage holding. You should remember the IDF strike team that dressed as hospital staff to enter and kill some Hamas members. You guys were probably in the group that were appalled the IDF dressed as medical staff and not appalled at the reason they needed to do that.

[SD]

This is not true

Er, even the source you've just cited says they lose their special protection if they are being used by the enemy outside their humanitarian function.

An ambulance is not a magic device that can shield terrorists using it from justice.

[Starker]

So there are reports of Hamas having used an ambulance as transport, therefore bomb all ambulances?

And again, no evidence whatsoever that the ambulance was used for combat purposes or that there was Hamas in it. Furthermore, there's video that shows there was a patient in it on a stretcher.

I mean, what a mighty convenient excuse. Hamas are said to have used hospitals, therefore bomb all hospitals. Likewise bomb all schools, all libraries, all archives, all museums, all bakeries, all convenience stores, all residential buildings, all mosques, all churches, all cemeteries, etc. You can always say later that there must have been Hamas inside it, at least at some point.

Do you have any idea who these people are? Did you not see the videos from Oct 7th. Would you like me to link to videos of them executing people, throwing grenades into rooms with children in them? Do you blank this stuff out?

I fully condemn Hamas's actions. I have no problem saying they are complete monsters who committed war crimes against Israeli civilians.

Though I have likewise no problem seeing that mass killing of children is an atrocity. Blowing a bunch of children up with a bomb is no less evil in my eyes than blowing them up with a grenade.