Israel: When the Drums of War Have Reached a Fever Pitch

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

I don't think anyone (here) disagrees that disproportionate buildup for purposes of defence is bad (well, maybe one person). It's using that disproportion to exact disproportionate retribution that everyone is currently having a problem with.

I mean, I know you know this and have voiced your criticism of Netenyahu multiple times here and elsewhere, I just feel the need to throw that clarification of where (I think) we all stand out there before someone slides in with 'see! Tywin supports apartheid and genocide!!!' again on the back of that line.

PM seen and no worries, but to the bold, when the people attacking you say it's easier to attack Israeli cities than to drink water, do you respond lightly? 

It's important to again point out that Hamas largely thinks the Nazis didn't go far enough. 

[TrueMetis]

42 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

PM seen and no worries, but to the bold, when the people attacking you say it's easier to attack Israeli cities than to drink water, do you respond lightly?

I feel like if someone says something like that it's more a comment on the fact they don't have water. Might want to start with getting them enough water and see where that goes first?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

I feel like if someone says something like that it's more a comment on the fact they don't have water. Might want to start with getting them enough water and see where that goes first?

Or maybe read it in the context of people who think every Jew in Israel needs to die, and that the decision to kill them comes easier than doing the most essential thing in life.

From the Jewish perspective, it’s amazing how people always downplay or flat out ignore this. Neo-Nazis matching in the U.S. chanting “Jews will not replace us” is horrible anti-Semitism, but Hamas saying every day death to Israel and death to Jews? Meh, just ignore that, it doesn’t fit the narrative that Israel is evil.

[Bael's Bastard]

8 hours ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

hahaa.Really? character assassination and slander? That's the classic Israeli playbook.If non-Jewish call critic anti-semite and and holocaust denier.If critic is Jewish, also add 'self-hating Jew'.

Professor Finkelstein's scholarly work on the Israel-Palestine conflict is well researched and thorough.His work has been praised both by non-Jewish and Jewish scholars as well.

Finkelstein has zero credibility among Jews. He has been tokenized by gentile Jew-haters because he spreads Jew-hate and they think it gives them a cover to spread it. It doesn't.

[TrueMetis]

30 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Or maybe read it in the context of people who think every Jew in Israel needs to die, and that the decision to kill them comes easier than doing the most essential thing in life.

From the Jewish perspective, it’s amazing how people always downplay or flat out ignore this. Neo-Nazis matching in the U.S. chanting “Jews will not replace us” is horrible anti-Semitism, but Hamas saying every day death to Israel and death to Jews? Meh, just ignore that, it doesn’t fit the narrative that Israel is evil.

Right, I didn't really connect the two lines you wrote since I was thinking about how Israel has policies that deliberately take water from Palestine.

[Arakan]

6 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Right, I didn't really connect the two lines you wrote since I was thinking about how Israel has policies that deliberately take water from Palestine.

A truly evil genius way of getting rid of the Palestinians. It has been criticized multiple times from EU officials but nothing ever happens. Let’s remind ourselves we are speaking of mostly a desert/semi-desert landscape. Water is life. Without water no agriculture, no way to feed the family, ergo in the end forced to leave. 

And then apologists will throw their arms in the air and say: see! All is totally voluntary! Nothing to see here. 

All of this is well-documented in independent reports. 

@Tywin et al. do you agree with EU sitreps that Israel enforces an Apartheid policy in the Westbank? What do you think about the IDF deserters who simply cannot support the inhumane treatment of the Palestinians anymore? What do you think of their verified reports of the daily humiliations and racism the Palestinians have to suffer? 

[Toth]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

From the Jewish perspective, it’s amazing how people always downplay or flat out ignore this. Neo-Nazis matching in the U.S. chanting “Jews will not replace us” is horrible anti-Semitism, but Hamas saying every day death to Israel and death to Jews? Meh, just ignore that, it doesn’t fit the narrative that Israel is evil.

Let's not jump the gun here. I haven't seen anyone here framing the Hamas as the good guys by any stretch of imagination. Pointing out that Israel's current current leadership has a history of pouring gasoline onto the embers of conflict isn't excusing terrorism. It's just acknowledging that it isn't helpful to act like a hostile occupant arbitrarily kicking civilians off their property in order to colonize it. Shit like this makes the terrorists look like they've got a point when they promise that this injustice will stop if Israel (and the jews...) disappear. It's the reason why such sayings as the one you quoted keep getting traction.

And similarly as you are frustrated by people like in the post above mine questioning your stance on Nethanyahu whenever you haven't actively distanced yourself from his policies in a post, it is helpful if you don't turn around and accuse people of downplaying the ideology of the Hamas when they haven't actively distanced themselves from them in their posts criticizing Israel's policies.

@ everyone: Antisemitism and antisemitism justifying itself by pointing at Israel is bad. The existence of Israel is non-negotiable. Terrorism is just as obviously bad. Yet similarly policies that disenfranchise people, further fuel the conflict and carry us farther away from solutions are also bad and should be stopped. I think that's the bare minimum of a consent we all here can agree on, can we? I'm writing that so that we can stop tip-toeing each other and warily suspect each other of opinions that nobody has.

[IFR]

What is it about the political structures of Israel and among the Palestinian people that enables the hard-liners to wield such power in the conversation? Is the hard-line position the majority voice, or are there other nuances at play?

[DanteGabriel]

3 minutes ago, IFR said:

What is it about the political structures of Israel and among the Palestinian people that enables the hard-liners to wield such power in the conversation? Is the hard-line position the majority voice, or are there other nuances at play?

This is a great question, because I keep hearing about how most Israelis do not support what the government is doing but Netanyahu is still in office despite being under indictment for public corruption.

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, IFR said:

What is it about the political structures of Israel and among the Palestinian people that enables the hard-liners to wield such power in the conversation? Is the hard-line position the majority voice, or are there other nuances at play?

Its the majority voice or at least one that holds major weight, it is the best at courting the power of the orthodox strict jews which has a lot of power by itself and is very good at voting as a bloc, and Israel along with the rest of the world has been going more right wing and more isolationist for the last 20 years. 

[Fez]

6 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

This is a great question, because I keep hearing about how most Israelis do not support what the government is doing but Netanyahu is still in office despite being under indictment for public corruption.

If the violence hadn't broken out, Netanyahu would no longer be in office starting either yesterday or today. Which is why there's an excellent chance he is deliberately provoking things right now. Ra'am, one of the Arab Israeli parties, pulled out of coalition talks with the anti-Netanyahu Jewish Israeli parties until the violence is over.

But anyway, 42.1% of Israeli voters went for Likud or other parties that said they would coalition with Netanyahu. If you want to include Yamina, since they really wanted to coalition with Netanyahu if they could've, you get to 48.3%. High, but still not a majority (though if you only look at Jewish voters, it is a majority). However, turnout was at 67.4%, and you can't say that the other third of the eligible voter population actually supports the government.

Also, within Netanyahu's block are the 12.8% that went for the religious hyper conservative parties (as opposed to the secular hyper conservative parties). It's hard to say (at least for an outsider like me) how much they care about the Palestinian issue at all, versus wanting to continue to entrench their control over Israeli civilian life. As well as wanting to protect all their legal exemptions. One of the things the religious conservatives care about the most is that one of the secular conservative parties, which is in the anti-Netanyahu block, wants to end the military draft exemption that Yeshiva students have. And almost every hassidic Jew goes to Yeshiva to avoid the draft right now.

Things are complicated in Israel.

[polishgenius]

 

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

when the people attacking you say it's easier to attack Israeli cities than to drink water, do you respond lightly? 

 

I think the problem I, and most people, are having is that it's not the people who say that or doing the firing who are dying in the response. I know that's the reason Hamas fire from civilian centers and schools, and that the choice is between either this, feet-on-the-ground military incursion which would have whole other ramifications and still have a big chance of civilians dying, or espionage which does nothing to stop immediate attacks, is uncertain, and doesn't really work as a deterrent since it's low-visibilty, but I have a hard time accepting that any response in which it's known ahead of time that the probability is that children will die is proportional. Which is what happens when missiles hit population centers.



And yeah, I do think us non-Jewish folk talking about this need to be careful to make sure we acknowledge Hamas are also using evil to get their way (I had a word with my brother about this in a twitter argument he was having, didn't necessarily carry it into this topic...) but as Toth said I don't think anyone's arguing for, or secretly supporting, Hamas. I think the reason for that for the most part is that in the spaces we're having these conversations and indeed in the West in general, there's no debate about whether Hamas is bad, so no-one feels the urgency to clarify we think they are. But you are right, if we are gonna take part in the conversation we do need to make sure to acknowledge that, coz not here necessarily but in the wider space that lack can and does encourage actual anti-semites to make their views more plausible and thus spreadable.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

53 minutes ago, Arakan said:

 

@Tywin et al. do you agree with EU sitreps that Israel enforces an Apartheid policy in the Westbank? What do you think about the IDF deserters who simply cannot support the inhumane treatment of the Palestinians anymore? What do you think of their verified reports of the daily humiliations and racism the Palestinians have to suffer? 

I have said multiple times Israel is an Apartheid state. I even had to explain to you that a Jewish person saying that is the ultimate repudiation of the current Israeli government.

But if you’re going to sit here and just repeat “Israel is bad” over and over again without recognizing that on the other side there’s a faction that thinks the Nazis didn’t go far enough then there’s nothing to talk about.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@Toth and @polishgenius,

I am not saying people here or in the West generally support Hamas, but you can’t gloss over the issue either. Just like you can’t gloss over that many Palestinians wish they would go away and many right wing Israelis actually like that they exist because they can use them to justify the heavy handed actions of the Israeli military.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

I feel like if someone says something like that it's more a comment on the fact they don't have water. Might want to start with getting them enough water and see where that goes first?

One common complaint that's been voiced a lot is that the military equipment Hamas and other militant groups have access to is, although risible by Israeli military standards, not exactly cheap and for the cost of acquiring that equipment they could have poured money into the development of the Gaza Strip. There are limits to that (as Israel has the Strip under effective siege) but they could have done more to secure medical equipment, schools, food, water and so on rather than spending money on missiles, launchers and mortars.

[mormont]

2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

One common complaint that's been voiced a lot is that the military equipment Hamas and other militant groups have access to is, although risible by Israeli military standards, not exactly cheap and for the cost of acquiring that equipment they could have poured money into the development of the Gaza Strip. There are limits to that (as Israel has the Strip under effective siege) but they could have done more to secure medical equipment, schools, food, water and so on rather than spending money on missiles, launchers and mortars.

That doesn't address the water question, though. The water issue is that Israel is in effective control of water supplies in the West Bank and Gaza.

[Bael's Bastard]

44 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

This is a great question, because I keep hearing about how most Israelis do not support what the government is doing but Netanyahu is still in office despite being under indictment for public corruption.

Because Israel has a parliamentary system where you need at least 61 out of 120 seats. So Israelis elect parties and the party with most seats gets first chance to try to form a government. Likud won 30, 36, 32, 35, 30, 31, and 27 since 2009. Other parties led by Tzipi Livni and Benny Gantz technically received the most seats in some of those, but ultimately were unable to form coalitions to put a new PM in power in large part because of Yair Lapid alienating non-Zionist religious parties. It is getting increasingly more difficult for anyone, even Bibi, to form a majority coalition. Not sure if anything will change. 

[Zorral]

7 hours ago, IFR said:

What is it about the political structures of Israel and among the Palestinian people that enables the hard-liners to wield such power in the conversation? Is the hard-line position the majority voice, or are there other nuances at play?

Crony corruption, massive crony corruption. Which Israeli rank-and-file majority are more than well aware of, and oppose. But still haven't been able to oust them, partially due to the pandering to the ultra-Orthodox.  This is how an old friend, grand-daughter of Moshe Dyan, has spoken to us about the current conditions in Israel.

I know less about what the situations are with the Palestinians politically, far far far less, than the utterly horrific treatment 24/7 they suffer, both in the Strip and ever increasing over the years in Jerusalem.

 

[TrueMetis]

6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

One common complaint that's been voiced a lot is that the military equipment Hamas and other militant groups have access to is, although risible by Israeli military standards, not exactly cheap and for the cost of acquiring that equipment they could have poured money into the development of the Gaza Strip. There are limits to that (as Israel has the Strip under effective siege) but they could have done more to secure medical equipment, schools, food, water and so on rather than spending money on missiles, launchers and mortars.

Sure they could buy certain supplies, though I would expect most of it would end up seized or destroyed anyway. But that doesn't change the fact that Israel will not let them create the necessary infrastructure to alleviate those problems long term. Like Israel won't let them drill new wells or expand old ones, and even stops them from using the ones that already exist. So no they really can't put money into developing the Strip, because if they do Israel will just destroy it on whatever flimsy justification they can.

[Arakan]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I have said multiple times Israel is an Apartheid state. I even had to explain to you that a Jewish person saying that is the ultimate repudiation of the current Israeli government.

But if you’re going to sit here and just repeat “Israel is bad” over and over again without recognizing that on the other side there’s a faction that thinks the Nazis didn’t go far enough then there’s nothing to talk about.

Stop this. I do not defend Hamas, yes they are bad!
So you admit that the Westbank is under a de facto Arpartheid Regime. Then look up South Africa at the end of the 80s. In such a Situation resistance is the only way something will change. Has it to be armed resistance? That depends on many variables. 

Honestly, I don’t get it with the Americans in this regard. Your whole founding myth is based on armed resistance against a perceived „tyranny“ which in objective history simply meant that a small wealthy elite did not want to pay increased taxes. 

Again, Hamas are bad but Hamas is the reaction, not the cause. Hamas didn’t force Israel to build illegal settlement after illegal settlement in the last 20 years. Which basically made a two-state solution impossible as the most realistic possible Palestinian rump state is not close to be sustainable.