Conflict between Palestine and Israel escalates

[Thaluikhain]

At this point the US is declaring their support for Israel, because it is easy to paint the Palestinians as led by Hamas and thus all terrorists.

The US is declaring support for Israel, yes, but that is not merely a matter of Hamas et al hitting the wrong targets. By comparison, the US invaded Iraq because they had WMDs, which was a lie, and were behind 9/11, which was a lie, and because it'd make things better for people in Iraq, which was a lie.

What if the Palestinians defied expectations, what if there weren't random rockets, but instead targeted attacks on Israeli military installations and soldiers?

That would mean that someone has followed Seanchaidh's suggestion and provided Hamas with modern weapons, instead of them building their own in their backyards.

Just look at the way US support dropped for the Vietnam war, that should be the goal of any Palestinian insurgent, the nations supporting Israel need to feel that such support is not only not worthwhile it is actually detrimental to their goals.

Palestinian insurgents have very little influence on the US's domestic politics or religion. US forces aren't casualties in the conflict to any large degree, and while it's costing the US taxpayer a lot, that money is going into the pockets of the US military/industrial complex, who would rather things continue as they are.

 

[dreng3]

The US is declaring support for Israel, yes, but that is not merely a matter of Hamas et al hitting the wrong targets. By comparison, the US invaded Iraq because they had WMDs, which was a lie, and were behind 9/11, which was a lie, and because it'd make things better for people in Iraq, which was a lie.


That would mean that someone has followed Seanchaidh's suggestion and provided Hamas with modern weapons, instead of them building their own in their backyards.


Palestinian insurgents have very little influence on the US's domestic politics or religion. US forces aren't casualties in the conflict to any large degree, and while it's costing the US taxpayer a lot, that money is going into the pockets of the US military/industrial complex, who would rather things continue as they are.

1. You kinda managed to nail what I wanted to point out here. The US did lie about Iraq and it came back to bit the US hard. That is the goal.

2. Hamas doesn't need weapons, instead a Palestinian group needs to specifically target installations or personel, it won't be easy, but during the years of RAF we saw vans filled with explosives driven into military installations and targeted killings. That is what would need to happen, because indiscriminate killings is bad PR, and PR is half the battle on the modern battlefield.

3. Make it clear that the US taxpayers are funding something wrong, it might be ok to give someone a missile to launch at terrorists targeting random civillians, but giving someone a missile to launch at a soldier fighting an occupation? Much harder. The cost for the US doesn't have to be human lives, targeting their credibility is enough.

 

[Thaluikhain]

1. You kinda managed to nail what I wanted to point out here. The US did lie about Iraq and it came back to bit the US hard. That is the goal.

2. Hamas doesn't need weapons, instead a Palestinian group needs to specifically target installations or personel, it won't be easy, but during the years of RAF we saw vans filled with explosives driven into military installations and targeted killings. That is what would need to happen, because indiscriminate killings is bad PR, and PR is half the battle on the modern battlefield.

3. Make it clear that the US taxpayers are funding something wrong, it might be ok to give someone a missile to launch at terrorists targeting random civillians, but giving someone a missile to launch at a soldier fighting an occupation? Much harder. The cost for the US doesn't have to be human lives, targeting their credibility is enough.

Targeting the credibility of the US (or US military or military/industrial complex) is enough? Yeah, historically, that hasn't been terribly effective.

Now, you mentioned Vietnam, but support for the war didn't falter, support for a long and costly war with no victory in sight faltered. This is not the case for this war, where victory is maintaining the status quo, and the cost isn't so keenly felt.

 

[dreng3]

Targeting the credibility of the US (or US military or military/industrial complex) is enough? Yeah, historically, that hasn't been terribly effective.

Now, you mentioned Vietnam, but support for the war didn't falter, support for a long and costly war with no victory in sight faltered. This is not the case for this war, where victory is maintaining the status quo, and the cost isn't so keenly felt.

Victory isn't just maintaining the status quo, victory is providing aid to the only democracy in the middle east while that groups is opposing terrorists that hide behind civilians. The US is very clear on values and identities, if you shift it from only democracy vs terrorists to military vs military (or even better occupied nation) you shift the narrative.

 

[Agema]

It is a very contentious topic, because after all, one side is literally lead by a terrorist organization...

...and the other is led by HAMAS.

 

[dreng3]

...and the other is led by HAMAS.

Having tried to study the entire conflict it isn't too much of a stretch.

One side is Israel, the other side is a group of muslim extremists/terrorists funded by Israel to oppose the secular groups in Gaza.

 

[Cheetodust]

You don't get to occupy someone else's land with one of the best funded militaries in the world and call the people fighting back terrorists.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Where's Pepsi when you need them.

 

[Buyetyen]

Imagine if Hamas started using Israel's excuses. "Yes, we bombed civilians, but only because the cowardly Israeli military keeps hiding behind them!"

 

[Gergar12]

Israel/Netanyahu is in the wrong. Basically, he couldn't form a coalition and so raided the Al-Aqsa mosque, and kicked Palestinians in the West Bank out of their homes to make way for Israeli settlers, and got 100 people injured including many people who had been blinded by rubber bullets.

So Hamas fired unguided rockets into Israel, and Israel decided to bomb the Gaza Strip including giving a one-hour notice before leveling a 13 story building. Also, more Palestinians have been injured and killed vs Israelis.

Netanyahu is no different in his thinking ironically than the Egyptians who decided to invade Israel during the Yom Kippur War, faced with declining approval levels the Egyptian head of state invaded first the Sinai with Syria, and then got pushed back.

 

[Buyetyen]

Netanyahu is no different in his thinking ironically than the Egyptians who decided to invade Israel during the Yom Kippur War, faced with declining approval levels the Egyptian head of state invaded first the Sinai with Syria, and then got pushed back.

Let's take it a step further. Forcibly relocating people into shitty land and housing. Denying them civil rights. Terroristic violence as an enforcement mechanism. Sounds an awful lot like Nazi Germany's relationship with the Jewish community, don't it?

Netanyahu is scum. The same crimes perpetrated against his ancestors, he is now repeating.

 

[meiam]

Hamas and Bibi need each others at this point, both are unpopular but use each others to help them stay in power, there won't be peace until both are removed, which probably won't happen since they're really good at using each others. Also worth mentioning that Abbas as been in office since 2005 and constantly push back any election using increasingly ridiculous reason, so he's probably going to use this as an excuse to not hold one this year and stay in office.

I don't see a way out of this but firing rocket at Isreal is only going to make any chance of resolution more remote and make Palestinian look bad on the international stage despite Israel being more in the wrong here.

 

[Agema]

Let's take it a step further. Forcibly relocating people into shitty land and housing. Denying them civil rights. Terroristic violence as an enforcement mechanism. Sounds an awful lot like Nazi Germany's relationship with the Jewish community, don't it?

It certainly stinks that apparently this neighbourhood is being handed over to Jews on the basis they were displaced back in the 1940s or so.

How much land and property has been restored to the descendants of Palestinians displaced in the 1940s? Hmm...

I'm sure it says somewhere in Israel's laws that Palestinians have the right to claim land if they can prove it was theirs. It's just awfully convenient that Ottoman and Mandate Palestine didn't have a land register to detail ownership, and in cases families may have had other documentation, it was almost certainly lost or destroyed in various evacuations and wars. Sounds to me like Israel trying to appear magnanimous, whilst in truth offering concessions it knows perfectly well no-one can collect on.

 

[stroopwafel]

Couldn't they have established Israel in like, a remote area of Russia or something? It's been non-stop conflict since it's inception. Not to say Israel hasn't been in the wrong many times with land annexations and disproportionate military retributions but the middle-east in general is a shithole. Maybe it's their religion, culture, the heat or whatever but it's impossible for them to peacefully co-exist. Israel is not wrong with the assumption that they only understand the iron fist. The Arabs absolutely will destroy Israel if they have the chance and they also have the 'advantage' of being a demographic time bomb. Speaking of Arabs, the finger pointing is always at Israel but no Arab country(their supposed 'brethren') want the Palestinians either. Not Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar etc. Anyone who thinks the Palestinian territories will become a peaceful, prosperous and human rights abiding nation with Israel gone lives in cuckoo land.

 

[dreng3]

Ok, I was originally aiming for impartiality when addressing an important international news story, but since I saw this I'm done. I will not in any way indulge the most moral army when a member posts shit like this. I think Palestinians should have sovereignty but I also considered that Israeli soldiers might have a better view of the bigger picture. But, unless someone comes out and condemns this shit and the person who posted it we're done.

Israeli soldier posts video of bound and blindfolded Palestinians on Instagram story, implies they're for sale

The alleged soldier is accused of shouting '2 for 100, 3 for 75.'

www.dailydot.com

 

[Revnak]

I’ve nothing but unconditional loathing for any modern apartheid state. Mandela was also a terrorist. I’ll happily argue terrorism is an ineffective and intolerable means of achieving political goals, but condemning such acts in the face of genocide is lecturing your child about why they shouldn’t have sworn at their bully while they were getting their leg broken. Further, the focus on that topic serves an important purpose of distracting from Israel’s crimes.

 

[Generals]

I’ve nothing but unconditional loathing for any modern apartheid state. Mandela was also a terrorist. I’ll happily argue terrorism is an ineffective and intolerable means of achieving political goals, but condemning such acts in the face of genocide is lecturing your child about why they shouldn’t have sworn at their bully while they were getting their leg broken. Further, the focus on that topic serves an important purpose of distracting from Israel’s crimes.

Genocide is not the appropriate term here. Israel is not slaughtering Palestinians en masse. This off course doesn't excuse the obvious cultural cleansing through mass expropriations to replace muslims with ultra orthodox zionist settlers. In the end I fear it is too late and the situation has become so toxic over the decades that peace can only come if either Israel or Palestine disappear. And as things stand the former will never happen. We can only hope the ultimate death toll won't be (too) high.

 

[Revnak]

Genocide is not the appropriate term here. Israel is not slaughtering Palestinians en masse. This off course doesn't excuse the obvious cultural cleansing through mass expropriations to replace muslims with ultra orthodox zionist settlers. In the end I fear it is too late and the situation has become so toxic over the decades that peace can only come if either Israel or Palestine disappear. And as things stand the former will never happen. We can only hope the ultimate death toll won't be (too) high.

If we’re gonna call Uighur work camps genocide (WHICH WE SHOULD) then how the fuck are we supposed to not call this genocide? Because they’re blanketing it in real estate lingo? What, and lebensraum isn’t?

 

[Generals]

If we’re gonna call Uighur work camps genocide (WHICH WE SHOULD) then how the fuck are we supposed to not call this genocide? Because they’re blanketing it in real estate lingo? What, and lebensraum isn’t?

I don't think the Uighur work camps themselves are genocidal. Unless they have been "upgraded" to extermination camps. However the Chinese policy of affecting fertility rates with the clear goal of ethnically cleansing the area is quite genocidal.
And despite Israel's policies being despicable in many ways it is far from China's genocidal ones. Unlike China they are not sterilizing anyone, they don't massively send Israeli Arabs to work camps nor are they asking foreign regimes to extradite palestinian refugees so they can send them to work camps and possibly sterilize them.

I am not going to defend Israel as I believe they have been in the wrong for decades but I don't see the point in making a false equivalency with the even worse Chinese policies towards the Uighur.

 

[Revnak]

I don't think the Uighur work camps themselves are genocidal. Unless they have been "upgraded" to extermination camps. However the Chinese policy of affecting fertility rates with the clear goal of ethnically cleansing the area is quite genocidal.
And despite Israel's policies being despicable in many ways it is far from China's genocidal ones. Unlike China they are not sterilizing anyone, they don't massively send Israeli Arabs to work camps nor are they asking foreign regimes to extradite palestinian refugees so they can send them to work camps and possibly sterilize them.

I am not going to defend Israel as I believe they have been in the wrong for decades but I don't see the point in making a false equivalency with the even worse Chinese policies towards the Uighur.

They maintain open air prisons for the population, control their ability to move and live, kill them arbitrarily, force them out of productive land, restrict or ban religious practices, indoctrinate to destroy existing cultural and religious practices, and systemically poison the population through limited food and water resources. I’ve little doubt when the books are opened we’ll find similar convoluted schemes to exterminate the Arabic population as we saw with SA, particularly given the close connection and exchange of intelligence and resources between the two states.

In any case, their listed, proven, and easily observable crimes of extended occupation leading to annexation and forced relocation of people already constitutes a genocide by conventional definitions because any forced relocation of people at scale is an act of genocide.