Israel-Gaza war

[Devout Centrist]

There can never be a justification for murdering civilians. Never. Let’s pray this is resolved swiftly and Hamas ceases to function permanently.

[Devout Centrist]

Ethnic cleansing is never, ever the solution. My god.

[Devout Centrist]

Yes, I'd rather see a whole lot of people have to move across the border than see a whole lot of people get raped, murdered and killed.  If you're a decent person, you would as well.

Shockingly naïve take. Do you think the Egyptians *want* 2 million people predisposed to political Islam within their borders? There are far better solutions than whatever Risk strategy you've cooked up in your head.

[Devout Centrist]

https://twitter.com/GoodGrimey/status/1711041078663524736?t=0ieMrYjpVOSjOoxAmdMr...
https://twitter.com/quendergeer/status/1711345809856340397?s=20
https://twitter.com/tompars/status/1711347609799991402?s=20
Israel benefits quite a bit from the fact that most people don't know Hebrew.

Yeah, these sentiments are evil. How does this justify Hamas murdering civilians?

[Devout Centrist]

Again--what does my condemnation of Hamas do for Israelis, Palestinians, or anyone else? They're reactionary Islamists whose presence at the forefront of the Palestinian movement is both shameful and a direct consequence of Shamir's own propping-up of them against a PLO which has since recognized Israel and gotten nothing for it.

Twofold answer here:

1. You have been more than happy to offer strong condemnations of both the Israeli state (justifiable) and Israeli citizens (rather suspect amidst a genuinely horrific terrorist attack). “What does my condemnation of Hamas do for Israelis and Palestinians” is a complete non sequitur - we both understand that many Israelis are deeply racist against Palestinians, but the way you frame it here takes you genuinely close to apologizing for the massacres of attempting to redirect the conversation.

2. There is definitely blame for the Israeli Right and Far Right here, particularly in propping up Hamas to support their political goals. However, it should be noted that Hamas is not merely a product of outside circumstances and reflects a worrying trend of extreme political actors seizing power for their own personal gain at the expense of the Palestinian Authority.

[Devout Centrist]

Every single one of you would have bought WMDs in Iraq hook, line, and sinker. Some of you would have been among the Good Liberals who called for glassing the entire Middle East, I'm sure.

You understand there’s a difference between professional skepticism and insisting that everyone is lying, yes? “Eventually we’ll know what was and wasn’t atrocity propaganda” is an insane thing to say when *1200 people*, mostly civilians, were already confirmed dead.

[Devout Centrist]

Every single one of you would have bought WMDs in Iraq hook, line, and sinker. Some of you would have been among the Good Liberals who called for glassing the entire Middle East, I'm sure.

You understand there’s a difference between professional skepticism and insisting that everyone is lying, yes? “Eventually we’ll know what was and wasn’t atrocity propaganda” is an insane thing to say when *1200 people*, mostly civilians, were already confirmed dead.

A number already passed in Gaza, excluding the Hamas fighters who were killed inside Israel.

That is just as much a tragedy as what happened across the border a few days ago! I certainly don’t support air strikes on civilians or leveling wholesale apartment complexes. One Palestinian man on Twitter reported seeing several children’s heads gashed open near an apartment bombed by the IDF and I believe him!

Atrocity propaganda generally doesn't mean "X didn't happen", merely exaggeration in service of a cause (justifying the other side and its war crimes). The Rape of Belgium happened and Imperial Germany acted in a criminal manner but many of the most lurid claims were British fabrications.

Again, you weighed in early on that these claims were likely false or else gross exaggerations. You have an unfortunate tendency to minimize atrocity when it’s inconvenient for your argument.

[Devout Centrist]

I don’t think the IDF’s bombing campaign will be particularly effective, apart from maiming civilians and bystanders. It may even benefit Hamas fighters by making urban combat more difficult during the ground invasion. My guess is, Bibi and co. feel the need to make a statement in order to salvage their political careers.

[Devout Centrist]

That's 24 hours more than their government gave Israeli citizens.

It's morally wrong to use the evil that others commit to justify yet more violence against unarmed civilians.

[Devout Centrist]

...why? Every other nationalist movement has accepted that conquest is wrong. Nobody thinks that convincing Russians to leave Ukraine can only be done by killing every Russian. Similarly Nazism died without killing every German. What, in your estimation, makes the Palestinians so uniquely evil that they cannot be convinced to abandon Palestinian liberationism?

When did you completely lose the plot?

[Devout Centrist]

My take is Netanyahu is just using maximum leverage to drive a hard bargain. We'll see if it pans out for him.

Very interesting stuff. Very interesting. Good thing we didn’t give Israel a ton of military aid with no strings attached. Now Blinken and Biden can force Netanyahu to back down and act with more restraint

[Devout Centrist]

Netanhayu has made it pretty clear from day 1 that the only choices in the negotiations are either Gaza gets leveled now or it gets leveled after the hostages are released. Meanwhile, Hamas has said with slightly less force that any negotiations must leave them in power or at least safe after hostages are released.

This is why I dont put much faith in any of the negotiations that we keep hearing about.

Rafah is only a small area of Gaza.  It's like the size of JFK Airport.  Even if Israel has to raze it to the ground, it's only like 10% of Gaza. 

Yeah, Israel hasn't razed the rest of Gaza so it's cool.

[Devout Centrist]

You guys talk a big game about how much you care about Palestine, but also claim that the Palestinians are oppressed hostages of a tyrannical Hamas dictatorship.  So you should be upset about this!  You should want the Palestinian people liberated and Hamas expelled!  But instead you carry water for Hamas by lending credence to their malarkey claims of "Israel rejected the cease fire we graciously offered."

This quote only makes sense if:

1. The IDF can wipe out Hamas and the other militant outfits like PIJ without killing many, many more civilians.
2. Israel somehow helps the Palestinian Authority gain and cement its administration of Gaza.

This won’t happen for obvious reasons (the entire point of Netanyahu and Likud cynically propping up Hamas was to weaken the Palestinian Authority and the liberation movement itself). The IDF can’t or won’t be able to liberate Gazans from Hamas.

[Devout Centrist]

Whether you agree with the IJC or not, this is little more than silly virtue signaling that will ultimately end up making them look impotent when Israel tells them to go piss up a rope and they’re powerless to enforce their ruling beyond a bunch of useless whining.  

It’s cute that they think they get to dictate Israel or any other country’s wartime military strategy, but unfortunately for them, we live in a world of sovereign nations rather than some one world government bureaucratic hellscape.  They have no more say in Israeli military policy than they do in American military policy nor should they.  And I say this as someone who strongly believes that Israel should withdraw from Rafah.

And if the U.N. tries to enforce any of this by force, of course the US will veto it.  Not even a close call.

Biden said that his redline is Rafah.

Is he going to use the US's seat on the UN Security Council to veto his own redline?

Yes. He is.

And even if he took leave of his senses and escalated with Israel like Obama did on his way out the door, it still wouldn't stop Israel from doing what needs to be done. Nothing will.

You make an excellent argument for an immediate severing of American-Israeli relations.

[Devout Centrist]

Israeli military recovers the bodies of 3 more hotages killed on Oct. 7 from Gaza

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israeli-military-recovers-bodies-3-hostages-killed-oct-7-gaza-hamas-rcna153869

"Hanan Yablonka, Michel Nisenbaum, and Orion Hernandez were killed on Oct. 7 at the Mefalsim Intersection and their bodies were taken into Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Friday morning, citing intelligence."

R.I.P. Brothers.

The Palestinians are storing dead bodies now?

Keeping them in a fridge. Storage locker? How do you keep 3 dead bodies for 229 days? There is something fundamentally corrupt in stealing dead bodies and storing them.

It should be noted that both the Israeli government and various Palestinian groups do this and have been doing it for a while.

[Devout Centrist]

Israeli military recovers the bodies of 3 more hotages killed on Oct. 7 from Gaza

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israeli-military-recovers-bodies-3-hostages-killed-oct-7-gaza-hamas-rcna153869

"Hanan Yablonka, Michel Nisenbaum, and Orion Hernandez were killed on Oct. 7 at the Mefalsim Intersection and their bodies were taken into Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Friday morning, citing intelligence."

R.I.P. Brothers.

The Palestinians are storing dead bodies now?

Keeping them in a fridge. Storage locker? How do you keep 3 dead bodies for 229 days? There is something fundamentally corrupt in stealing dead bodies and storing them.

It should be noted that both the Israeli government and various Palestinian groups do this and have been doing it for a while.

Brah, the Palestinians are keeping the decapitated heads of victims in their fridge/freezer.

In their homes.

Equivalency?

You misunderstand. Both sides negotiate for the return of the bodies of their deceased, whether they die in custody or were killed by the enemy. Such is the nature of this conflict.

[Devout Centrist]

Glad you finally just came clean about the end game. You danced around it for months. Why is it that Israel gets eliminated but other countries like the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania don't? Couldn't at all be because of the country's Jewish majority? There is no minority rule because the West Bank and Gaza are to be part of a Palestinian state*, not Israel.

*At an unspecified future date, once Hamas is “eliminated,” subject to the unilateral veto of an Israeli right that doesn’t want a Palestinian state, all as settlement of the West Bank ramps up and potential settlement of Gaza is on the horizon…

Shall I go on? Israel is closer to a de facto apartheid state today than at any other point since its founding.