Israel-Hamas war 3

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Bael's Bastard said:

Antisemitism is so baked into European and MENA cultures that many don't even realize when they are engaging in it. It's why less than 1.5 million Jews remain in Europe and MENA combined with the exception of Israel.

There were almost a million jews in MENA alone in 1948. Many willingly emigrated to Israel... but others were expelled. In Iraq in particular, Jews were allowed to emigrate only if they gave up their citizenship and property.

In other, also sad news, the Belgium-Sweden match in Brussels has been called off after two Swedish fans were shot dead outside of the stadium. The alleged shooter boasted about being an ISIS member on Facebook.

 

[Dofs]

38 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The Canaanites, the Phoenicians ,archeology etc. may have some words on this statement.  

BTW, why are people ignoring the fact that a very large and significant population in Israel are adamantly against this policy of Bibi and his Likud and other cohorts?

Jews are the last remaining Canaanites though. Hebrew is a very close language to the ancient Phoenician.

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

With nukes, the only kind of assurance that merits any attention is a policy of no first use. 

Anything else is somewhat ludicrous to parade around as moral superiority.

I don't believe Israelis as a majority want to eliminate all Palestinians. But if you're going to argue that the current leadership in Israel doesn't have extremists who are circling the language of wanton destruction and revenge, I don't know what to say.

I'm sure they do. But the Israeli government as a whole does not, and more importantly it is not the stated goal of Israel to wipe out all Palestinians. Not only is it not their stated goal they clearly are not going after it, either, at least not on the regular. 

I'll be very much the first person to be on board the train of saying whether or not Israel did do that, and I think my track record in these threads is quite clear - I'm very much afraid that Israel is on a path to crimes against humanity and I believe Netanyahu would be totally fine with that course of action (whether he wants to or not I don't know, but I think he'd shrug and say fine). But that is STILL not close to what Hamas is about. 

9 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

And, in terms of solutions, just as we should accord Israeli's the freedom of kicking out Netanyahu and his buddies when they want to, so should we allow Palestinians the chance to show Hamas the door. Which requires them to have freedom, an actual state, and assurances that their choice isn't constrained by what another country will find convenient. 

In such an election, I do see Hamas losing. In the success of such an elected government, I do so see Hamas losing influence and power. 

I don't know honestly why elections have not been held, but I'm assuming that that is largely at the hands of Hamas themselves. That said I'm not super excited about having elections that legitimize terrorist organizations. If you want to go that route I think you need to set up some constitutional rules on what is and is not allowed for a government as a whole. 

Anyway, much like a lot of the things going on a lot of this is not up to Israel to decide - it was up to Hamas. Going forward I would say that Israel should make it the case that Hamas is no longer part of the decision making process. 

[Craving Peaches]

With regards to nukes, there appears to have been at least one Israeli politician calling for nukes to be used on Gaza.

https://www.businessinsider.com/israeli-lawmaker-urged-government-to-use-nuclear-weapons-against-hamas-2023-10?amp

Luckily, it is, as far as I can tell, just this one person. Such a move would backfire in so many ways, of course.

[Ran]

This past June, polling showed Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would elect  Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh over Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority. This is more an indictment of Abbas and Fatah than it is support for Hamas, but still.

 

[fionwe1987]

3 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

I'm sure they do. But the Israeli government as a whole does not,

And it will not, no matter what happens, say, when they send in ground troops?

3 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

and more importantly it is not the stated goal of Israel to wipe out all Palestinians. Not only is it not their stated goal they clearly are not going after it, either, at least not on the regular. 

And neither is Hamas going after it, because they don't have the power to.

But in the counterfactual where they did have military power to "destroy all Israelis/Jews", you are certain they would? You are certain that all of the members of this expanded Hamas would be uniformly frothing in the mouth for the genocide of Jews in the Levant?

I don't personally think so. I think terrorist groups are able to hold on to such views only because they are (relatively speaking) disempowered, in the minority, and mostly air their views and act on them in closed information loops. 

Such awful genocidal views are most contained not when a more powerful nation prevents such views from being held, but by the democratic process. Israel itself is an example of this, though it is also an example of the limits of democracy to curtail such views.

So we are back again to the point that Palestinian statehood and Palestinian democracy is the best way to end Hamas. And yet, we keep being told that that must wait for some military solution that will apparently awaken Hamas, except all you will do by putting this off is allow Hamas to say "see? What other choice do you have. Join us".

Granted, this view is primarily informed by my view of the situation in Kashmir, which I'm familiar with in greater detail than the situation in Israel, but I'm reasonably confident that holds true for all places where terrorism flourishes. If you just blame the terrorists and refuse to examine the state actors and accord them special status, you will arrive at no kind of solution. You can spend 20 years and trillions of dollars, but that if that narrative guides your strategy, you will fail, whether you're America or India or Israel. 

3 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

I'll be very much the first person to be on board the train of saying whether or not Israel did do that, and I think my track record in these threads is quite clear - I'm very much afraid that Israel is on a path to crimes against humanity and I believe Netanyahu would be totally fine with that course of action (whether he wants to or not I don't know, but I think he'd shrug and say fine). But that is STILL not close to what Hamas is about. 

So you're saying stated goals trump actual actions? All Hamas needs to do is have ChatGPT take their marketing copy, and make it sound more reasonable, and then we're good?

If not, then why the fuck does it matter that the Israeli government's stated intention isn't to commit atrocities?

3 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

I don't know honestly why elections have not been held, but I'm assuming that that is largely at the hands of Hamas themselves. That said I'm not super excited about having elections that legitimize terrorist organizations. If you want to go that route I think you need to set up some constitutional rules on what is and is not allowed for a government as a whole. 

And how do you do that? Do you know of a modern democracy that is proof to fascist viewpoints gaining currency and success? If not, seems rather absurd to make it a requirement for Palestinians to get this sorted out before they get to choose their own future. 

3 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Anyway, much like a lot of the things going on a lot of this is not up to Israel to decide - it was up to Hamas. Going forward I would say that Israel should make it the case that Hamas is no longer part of the decision making process. 

No, that really isn't true. Israel isn't a sea cucumber that just responds to its surroundings. It is a thriving democracy with options. Which ones it chooses have both moral bearing and strategic consequences, and the current government of Israel will have to navigate both. 

If not, if Hamas already dictates the terms, and the outcome is determined only by them, then what is the point of war? Spare us the deaths and just do what they want. 

[fionwe1987]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

This past June, polling showed Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would elect  Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh over Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority. This is more an indictment of Abbas and Fatah than it is support for Hamas, but still.

 

But still what? Obviously, I'll loathe such a decision, but if that's the choice the Palestinians had made, and then Hamas had done what it now did, this would be a different conversation with clearer next steps. 

I think the problem here is the belief that setting up a democracy such that only rulers who are amenable to Israel (or the West/America in other such cases) is an option at all. That is just not doable within the definition of a democracy, and attempts to do so only weaken the democracy being set up. We've seen this repeatedly, so I don't even know what we're waiting for to ditch this absurd notion. 

 

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

I think the problem here is the belief that setting up a democracy such that only rulers who are amenable to Israel 

They don't need to be amenable. They just have to accept the right of Israel to exist, otherwise the same shit will happen.

The charter of Hamas literally cites a hadith suggesting Judgment Day will not come until Muslims have killed all the Jews. It states there will never be a negotiated settlement, only jihad. It insists there can be only Palestine.

Edited October 16, 2023 by Ran

[mormont]

1 minute ago, fionwe1987 said:

So we are back again to the point that Palestinian statehood and Palestinian democracy is the best way to end Hamas.

But as I've noted before, these things don't seem likely to happen, as long as Israel believes they are worse than the continued existence of Hamas.

What Israel wants is peace on its own terms. Those terms include things like continued growth, maintaining or improving its current standard of living, security from attack, and maintaining its status as a majority Jewish nation. Most of those are not compatible with a viable Palestinian state as a neighbour. Even a peaceful Palestinian state would compete for scarce resources including water, would campaign to have Jewish settlements removed from its territory, would prevent further expansion into that territory, would stand up for the rights of its citizens who live and work in Israel. It would, in short, constrain Israel's freedom to act as it pleases in a way the status quo does not.

You'll have a hard time getting an Israeli politician to acknowledge this, but it's true.

[GrimTuesday]

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

They don't need to be amenable. They just have to accept the right of Israel to exist, otherwise the same shit will happen.

The charter of Hamas literally cites a hadithHadith suggesting Judgment Day will not come until Muslims have killed all the Jews.

You are aware that Hamas no long holds to that charter, right? They created a new one in 2017 that is significantly more moderate.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full

Not saying they're not antisemitic or anything like like, that, but if we're going to cite Hamas' charter, lets cite the one they currently claim to abide by.

Edited October 16, 2023 by GrimTuesday

[Ran]

It has moderate language but is the same thing: Palestine is from "the river to the sea", Israelis do not belong anywhere in that land. Pragmatically, they'll accept an independent Palestinian state... but also want refugees (multi generations of them) to have the right to return into Israel as well, _and_ this is all clearly intended to indicate that once they have that state they'll prosecute a war to get the rest of the land as soon as they think they are able.

Again, amenable, they don't need to be. But they can't claim that by rights all the land between the river and the sea belongs to the people of Palestine. It just sets in stone the same old conflict.

 

Edited October 16, 2023 by Ran

[Kalbear]

54 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

And it will not, no matter what happens, say, when they send in ground troops?

I'm comfortable saying that the government of Israel's stated policy won't change to say something like 'eliminate all Palestinians'. 

54 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

And neither is Hamas going after it, because they don't have the power to.

But in the counterfactual where they did have military power to "destroy all Israelis/Jews", you are certain they would? You are certain that all of the members of this expanded Hamas would be uniformly frothing in the mouth for the genocide of Jews in the Levant?

I don't personally think so. I think terrorist groups are able to hold on to such views only because they are (relatively speaking) disempowered, in the minority, and mostly air their views and act on them in closed information loops. 

I don't honestly know, but in general there's a rule of thumb with us Jews - when someone tells you who they are, believe them. (it was first said by Maya Angelou, but it's still a very good point). 

As to the counterfactual we literally have historical record of the Arab league attempting to do just that. Several times! The governments of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and several others were not disempowered or in the minority. This isn't a super fringy view!

54 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

So we are back again to the point that Palestinian statehood and Palestinian democracy is the best way to end Hamas. And yet, we keep being told that that must wait for some military solution that will apparently awaken Hamas, except all you will do by putting this off is allow Hamas to say "see? What other choice do you have. Join us".

Granted, this view is primarily informed by my view of the situation in Kashmir, which I'm familiar with in greater detail than the situation in Israel, but I'm reasonably confident that holds true for all places where terrorism flourishes. If you just blame the terrorists and refuse to examine the state actors and accord them special status, you will arrive at no kind of solution. You can spend 20 years and trillions of dollars, but that if that narrative guides your strategy, you will fail, whether you're America or India or Israel. 

I mean, I don't know who you're arguing with. I agree! I think that the best solution for Israel and for the region is to give Palestinians their own legitimate country. 

But you can't do that in any reasonable way to Israel with Hamas as the primary governmental actor. Maybe you can do it with some kind of Marshall plan (I'm very skeptical of that), maybe you can do it with a timetable and specific met goals to statehood, but there is no reasonable way that Israel is going to give a statehood to Palestine with Hamas under control of it - nor should they. Or...I mean, I guess they could, but all they would do is continue to blockade it, ruin it, and make people miserable and dead - and I don't think that's what you want, either. 

54 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

So you're saying stated goals trump actual actions? All Hamas needs to do is have ChatGPT take their marketing copy, and make it sound more reasonable, and then we're good?

If not, then why the fuck does it matter that the Israeli government's stated intention isn't to commit atrocities?

Because it's important? I don't know that it would just require their marketing to change, but it matters - and it especially matters when you're talking about a difference between a democratic country and an authoritarian one. It especially matters when you're allied with other democratic nations. I agree that Netanyahu's policy has been to basically boil the frog slowly and just try and get away with whatever he can - and that is horrible - but here's the thing - he doesn't have to be in charge. And that's not been the entire policy of Israel's history forever. 

I think we're both in agreement that what we need is regime change in both countries. The difference is that with Israel that can in theory happen with a vote. That isn't the case in Gaza with Hamas.

54 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

And how do you do that? Do you know of a modern democracy that is proof to fascist viewpoints gaining currency and success? If not, seems rather absurd to make it a requirement for Palestinians to get this sorted out before they get to choose their own future. 

I don't know why that's absurd; that's been a common behavior of many conquered nations in the past. It's what happened with Germany and Japan after WW2, it's what happened with Afghanistan and Iraq. You don't have to make it perfect, but having some rules of law to ensure that things don't revert so you don't have to go in there and blow shit up again should be something you actually would applaud, I'd think, if you want to avoid Palestinian and Israeli death.

Because the alternative to it is to just give them the ability to put into power anyone they want - and that may mean Hamas or something worse. Is that really what you want to give them the choice to make? 

54 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

No, that really isn't true. Israel isn't a sea cucumber that just responds to its surroundings. It is a thriving democracy with options. Which ones it chooses have both moral bearing and strategic consequences, and the current government of Israel will have to navigate both. 

If not, if Hamas already dictates the terms, and the outcome is determined only by them, then what is the point of war? Spare us the deaths and just do what they want. 

I didn't say that and I think you're deliberately misreading me. 

Hamas has the power in Gaza to decide on running elections or a democracy or whatever else they choose. I've said repeatedly that Israel is an occupying power in Gaza, but one of the things they have been hands off on is the means of government and leadership there. For the last 15 years Hamas could have had elections if they wanted to. They didn't. 

Now, I really want you to notice that I did not say that the Palestinians could have had elections. I don't think that's the case; from what I can tell Hamas locked the place down pretty well and ran things much like a gang. But the choice was on Hamas. 

Of course now it won't be. Hamas won't be permitted to control Gaza any more. It will be up to Israel to decide for Palestinians what the government looks like (or even if there will be one) and who will be in charge. 

Edited October 16, 2023 by Kalnak the Magnificent

[Kalbear]

27 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

But still what? Obviously, I'll loathe such a decision, but if that's the choice the Palestinians had made, and then Hamas had done what it now did, this would be a different conversation with clearer next steps. 

I think the problem here is the belief that setting up a democracy such that only rulers who are amenable to Israel (or the West/America in other such cases) is an option at all. That is just not doable within the definition of a democracy, and attempts to do so only weaken the democracy being set up. We've seen this repeatedly, so I don't even know what we're waiting for to ditch this absurd notion. 

 

I mean, that is the choice that Gazans made. It wasn't a great election but it was an election and Hamas won with a plurality at least. And then Hamas did what it did - then and now. 

With that out of the way what are the clearer next steps?

[fionwe1987]

14 minutes ago, Ran said:

They don't need to be amenable. They just have to accept the right of Israel to exist, otherwise the same shit will happen.

The charter of Hamas literally cites a hadith suggesting Judgment Day will not come until Muslims have killed all the Jews. It states there will never be a negotiated settlement, only jihad. It insists there can be only Palestine.

Look, the current Indian government also believes that Pakistan and Bangladesh should not exist, that Muslims do not belong in India, and while they're too clever to put their genocidal goals to their party platform directly, they fortunately aren't immune to their politicians baldly stating those genocidal intentions to the public.

Hamas is absolutely loathsome. But I'd be a lot less worried about it's stated intentions if it were democratically elected political party in power, because, so long as there's an election coming, those fantastical goals of a Jew-free world have to compete with other goals to keep power. 

Even if they were to somehow gain military and nuclear parity or even superiority over Israel, their ability to implement such noxious ideas is not uncurtailed.

There is no democracy in the world that doesn't have such lunatics. The oldest and the largest democracies of the world have such lunatics in power. 

I believe in the Palestinian people's ability to curtail such lunatics in a working democracy, as much as I believe in the ability of Indians, Americans and Israelis. Which is to say, not very much, but more than in any other political system I can imagine. 

13 minutes ago, mormont said:

But as I've noted before, these things don't seem likely to happen, as long as Israel believes they are worse than the continued existence of Hamas.

What Israel wants is peace on its own terms. Those terms include things like continued growth, maintaining or improving its current standard of living, security from attack, and maintaining its status as a majority Jewish nation. Most of those are not compatible with a viable Palestinian state as a neighbour. Even a peaceful Palestinian state would compete for scarce resources including water, would campaign to have Jewish settlements removed from its territory, would prevent further expansion into that territory, would stand up for the rights of its citizens who live and work in Israel. It would, in short, constrain Israel's freedom to act as it pleases in a way the status quo does not.

You'll have a hard time getting an Israeli politician to acknowledge this, but it's true.

Agree with you completely. But it isn't just Israeli politicians who don't acknowledge this. This use of formal language about states and governments, while ignoring the fundamental fact that Israel has an active role in maintaining Gaza in its current limbo, permeates this discussion. 

[GrimTuesday]

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

It has moderate language but is the same thing: Palestine is from "the river to the sea", Israelis do not belong anywhere in that land. Pragmatically, they'll accept an independent Palestinian state... but also want refugees (multi generations of them) to have the right to return into Israel as well, _and_ this is all clearly intended to indicate that once they have that state they'll prosecute a war to get the rest of the land as soon as they think they are able.

Again, amenable, they don't need. But they can't claim that by rights all the land between the river and the sea belongs to the people of Palestine. It just sets in stone the same old conflict.

 

Of course they clam the land between the river to the sea, that is the land that belonged to the people of Palestine. As for the right of return, Israel offers the right of return to people who, in most cases, have no ties to that land for centuries outside of a religious one. Meanwhile the Nakba was 75 years ago. The inception of the Israeli state is one of displacement, it is only justified that Palestinians be offered the opportunity to live in the lands they were driven out of within living human memory.

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

those fantastical goals of a Jew-free world have to compete with other goals to keep power. 

They won the legislative election in 2006 with their old charter in place, the virulently antisemitic one.
 

It seems a real simply ask of the people of Gaza to not give any consideration to jihadist parties. Islamist, fine. Angry at Israel, fine. Unwilling to work with Israel, fine. But literally denying the right of Israel to exist means that they will always come to blows with Israel. You may speak very lightly about "parity", but the hell Israel is going to let another October 7th happen just because, "Oh, well, they're nowhere near as strong as us."

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

In other, also sad news, the Belgium-Sweden match in Brussels has been called off after two Swedish fans were shot dead outside of the stadium. The alleged shooter boasted about being an ISIS member on Facebook.

In other also sad news, a landlord killed a Palestinian child, and its mother to the hospital, in Chicago.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/16/us/chicago-muslim-boy-stabbing-investigation/index.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67119183

Also sad news, there is no water available in Gaza.

 

[Kalbear]

19 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Of course they clam the land between the river to the sea, that is the land that belonged to the people of Palestine. As for the right of return, Israel offers the right of return to people who, in most cases, have no ties to that land for centuries outside of a religious one. Meanwhile the Nakba was 75 years ago. The inception of the Israeli state is one of displacement, it is only justified that Palestinians be offered the opportunity to live in the lands they were driven out of within living human memory.

They also specifically state that the existence of Israel is null and void, that none of the people that are existing there have any rights to that land, and they will take any and all means necessary to fulfill that goal.

I guess it's not quite the 'we are only going to be happy when all Jews are dead' but I don't see how Israel is going to be particularly happy with a country that has as its core viewpoint "Israel can never ever exist". More to the point, why would Israel accept that? 

[JGP]

3 minutes ago, Zorral said:

In other also sad news, a landlord killed a Palestinian child, and its mother to the hospital, in Chicago.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/16/us/chicago-muslim-boy-stabbing-investigation/index.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67119183

Also sad news, there is no water available in Gaza.

 

Saw something about this earlier. The 6 yo was stabbed 26 times according to the coverage I saw.

Hang him.

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

In other also sad news, a landlord killed a Palestinian child, and its mother to the hospital, in Chicago.

The killler of the Swedes allegedly cited his killing as being revenge for that particular child. Horrible stuff.