Israel - Hamas war XIII

[Ran]

If the people of Gaza were given various choices about how to proceed towards peace, and voluntarily chose moving to an expanded West Bank that was ready and able to take them in, that's not "ethnic cleansing". If they choose to move, that's their choice.

But it won't happen, in large part because any such arrangement would mean that Palestine would be completely land-locked, and there's too much value in having access to the Mediterranean for economic reasons. 

[Kalbear]

Just now, Tywin et al. said:

Not when it's relocating people a few miles away with the promise of a sovereign state and already built infrastructure. That sure as shit sounds better than a lot of tent cities, which is probably what will end up happening. 

No, it is literally ethnic cleansing. When you are forcibly moving people who do not want to be moved based on their ethnicity - especially so that others not of their ethnicity can settle there - that's ethnic cleansing. The distance hardly matters - it was ethnic cleansing in Kosovo as well. It might even be peaceful ethnic cleansing like the recent neonazis advocated, but that's still the term.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

30 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I don’t know… First, I don’t know if sexual violence happened or not to the hostages; none of us do at this point. That said, we’ve seen inflammatory claims being made by the Israeli government that have not been corroborated or were disproved, like the “terrorist roster” that was actually a calendar. So even though I can’t be sure either way, atm I lean towards sexual violence not having been a major issue during the hostages’ captivity. If for no other reason b/c I don’t believe the Israeli government would refrain from trying to exploit it in an(other) attempt at garnering support - something they must understand they are quite short on right now. 

Both sides lack credibility. I think every reasonable person agrees on that point. That said we did hear some pretty horrific claims about sexual violence that happened and basically no one outside of Hamas and their supporters deny it. 

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

If the people of Gaza were given various choices about how to proceed towards peace, and voluntarily chose moving to an expanded West Bank that was ready and able to take them in, that's not "ethnic cleansing". If they choose to move, that's their choice.

As long as the ones who chose to not move didn't have to, sure! Maybe. It depends a lot on the choice given and how viable it is to stay where they are. If, hypothetically, someone salted the earth and poisoned the land so that the current land was not livable it really isn't a choice to leave that land. Similarly, if the choice is peace and move or stay and have war, that would also be ethnic cleansing.

1 minute ago, Ran said:

But it won't happen, in large part because any such arrangement would mean that Palestine would be completely land-locked, and there's too much value in having access to the Mediterranean for economic reasons. 

It also shouldn't happen for a variety of reasons, most notably because it doesn't need to in the slightest. 

[Zorral]

12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm still not sure they really want Gaza

They want the removal of Palestinians.  Making it inhabitable will work.  Still ethnic cleansing.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Sorry - your thesis is that we haven't heard the worst of it because we have heard so much, and your previous statement was that we haven't heard much? How do you keep that straight in your head?

When did I say we heard so much? We heard a lot about what happened on Oct 7th and not much after. Some stories have come out, but it's a fraction of what's happened since. 

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And it makes sense to you that the hostages would not be talking about the worst things that happened...why? 

Idk, maybe because they're in therapy, as the Israeli government said. Asking them to detail being hostages right after they were released is pretty morbid. 
 

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And I quoted you when you said otherwise. I'm sorry that you can't recall all the positions you've taken, but I appreciate when you're willing to admit that you're wrong.

I said exactly what you claimed I didn't, that Hamas was unwilling to release women of fighting age. Some reports say they will in exchange for a ton of their most valued prisoners held in Israel, but there are too many conflicting reports to know what the truth is. 

[TrueMetis]

I've heard this talk about voluntary ethnic cleansing before, a couple times actually, and if there's one thing I remember the people proposing it were definitely the good guys. /s

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

No, it is literally ethnic cleansing. When you are forcibly moving people who do not want to be moved based on their ethnicity - especially so that others not of their ethnicity can settle there - that's ethnic cleansing. The distance hardly matters - it was ethnic cleansing in Kosovo as well. It might even be peaceful ethnic cleansing like the recent neonazis advocated, but that's still the term.

Okay, if you want to take that strict meaning, do Palestinians also not want to ethnically cleanse Jews in Israel? Kind of sucks when you can say it about both people. The obvious answer is right there, and yes, it also requires Jews being forcibly removed from the WB too, so it's not a one sided approach. Calling what I said ethnic cleansing is misleading and it still doesn't address where people in Gaza should actually go in the short term, because it's going to be unlivable in many places for a long time and we have no idea what kind of outside aid will help rebuild it. 

16 minutes ago, Zorral said:

They want the removal of Palestinians.  Making it inhabitable will work.  Still ethnic cleansing.

See above. 

[kissdbyfire]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/return-to-gush-katif-determined-movement-emerges-to-resettle-israelis-in-gaza/

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Return to Gush Katif: A determined movement emerges to resettle Israelis in Gaza

 

 

[kissdbyfire]

43 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Both sides lack credibility. I think every reasonable person agrees on that point.

Agree wholeheartedly.

43 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

That said we did hear some pretty horrific claims about sexual violence that happened and basically no one outside of Hamas and their supporters deny it. 

We did, as horrific as can be and extremely disturbing. I can't even begin to imagine how the survivors felt and still feel, and this is not a topic with which I have no familiarity with. But did any come from  the released hostages? I ask b/c I've read about it but in relation to October 7, not the hostages. 

[Kalbear]

38 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Okay, if you want to take that strict meaning, do Palestinians also not want to ethnically cleanse Jews in Israel? Kind of sucks when you can say it about both people.

Some do support that! I ALSO do not support ethnic cleansing of the jews! It doesn't actually suck that much to say that both sides have extremist viewpoints like yours which support ethnic cleansing and I do not support either. I do imagine it must suck to be lumped in with the most right wing parts of the US and israel!

38 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The obvious answer is right there, and yes, it also requires Jews being forcibly removed from the WB too, so it's not a one sided approach. Israel!

Correcting illegal settlements is not an equivalence. Having thieves return your stuff isn't a transaction, it's a prerequisite to justice.

38 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Calling what I said ethnic cleansing is misleading and it still doesn't address where people in Gaza should actually go in the short term

They should go to Israel, the country that has the biggest motivation to ensure they don't stay long.

Also it is not misleading. Making a place unlivable so the people have to leave for somewhere else is again a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. Doing it with the threat of continued one-sided war is ethnic cleansing, and is almost verbatim what the US did to native Americans. It sucks that your obvious idea is also considered a crime against humanity, but that's usually the case for obvious solutions like this.

38 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

, because it's going to be unlivable in many places for a long time and we have no idea what kind of outside aid will help rebuild it. 

Real easy solution is that Israel is responsible for rebuilding it. 

Edited December 16, 2023 by Kalbear

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

See above. 

So many, most of us in fact, have provided links to real time speaking of Israelis and their objective to taking over the West Bank, to getting all the Palestinians out of Gaza -- and yet you are doing bothsidesism. You aren't helping the Israeli cause -- particularly after the documented decades of abuse, oppressions, downright theft of lands and homes, unjustified arrests and all the rest of it.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Some do support that! I ALSO do not support ethnic cleansing of the jews! It doesn't actually suck that much to say that both sides have extremist viewpoints like yours which support ethnic cleansing and I do not support either. I do imagine it must suck to be lumped in with the most right wing parts of the US and israel!

How is my viewpoint extreme? It's just rational and actually entirely what Israel doesn't want.

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Correcting illegal settlements is not an equivalence. Having thieves return your stuff isn't a transaction, it's a prerequisite to justice.

So no hostages, no ceasefire then, right? Same logic. 

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They should go to Israel, the country that has the biggest motivation to ensure they don't stay long.

Also it is not misleading. Making a place unlivable so the people have to leave for somewhere else is again a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. Doing it with the threat of continued one-sided war is ethnic cleansing, and is almost verbatim what the US did to native Americans. It sucks that your obvious idea is also considered a crime against humanity, but that's usually the case for obvious solutions like this.

And Palestinians also have the biggest motivation to not leave there of all places. 

The rest of your comment is just silly. 

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Real easy solution is that Israel is responsible for rebuilding it. 

Right, because they're going to rebuild it for Hamas. Give me a break. 

[Darzin]

Israel doesn't really want Gaza. Gaza wasn't part of historical Israel and doesn't have any settlements, there is no reason to move people out of Gaza. Israel doesn't want it and the people there don't want to go. 

[mormont]

13 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Some of this may have been posted before but I thought the overall article paints a fairly important picture: that IDF abuse from soldiers is widespread and systemic enough that it cannot be a 'bad apple' problem:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/15/middleeast/israeli-soldiers-burningfood-gaza-intl

When your soldiers are routinely filming themselves being unprofessional, abusive and doing human rights violations and putting them up on social media it's clear that you either do not care about discipline or you are not actually disciplining your soldiers. 

It does raise another point, which is that with Israel refusing to investigate friendly fire deaths because it would not be 'morally sound' to do so... well, if you're an IDF soldier and see your colleagues behaving badly, are you really likely to speak up?

[Ran]

18 minutes ago, mormont said:

It does raise another point, which is that with Israel refusing to investigate friendly fire deaths because it would not be 'morally sound' to do so... well, if you're an IDF soldier and see your colleagues behaving badly, are you really likely to speak up?

This was referring to "friendly fire" incidents on October 7th specifically, which was very chaotic.

All the post-invasion incidents are being reviewed and investigated, per the source Ynet article. The IDF is also investigating and reprimanding people for these videos.

You have a lot of young conscripts who've grown up on social media, you have reservists called up who haven't been in uniform in years, and there's obviously a great deal of anger towards Hamas among the ranks, many of whom likely knew people or know people who knew people who were killed on October 7th. It makes it very personal. It's a bad recipe, but hopefully the IDF can clamp down on this sort of unproductive behavior and enforce discipline. 

It's a professional army, and they need to make sure everyone acts like they're in a professional army.

 

[Proudfeet]

35 minutes ago, Ran said:

It's a professional army, and they need to make sure everyone acts like they're in a professional army.

Putting the IDF aside, I don't think being a "professional army" makes them particularly trustworthy. If I recall correctly, there are recent court cases in the AU/UK where their special forces in Afghanistan just executed people and planted evidence, and the military police who came to investigate just took their word for it. And them being military shields them from the regular court system as well.

[Ran]

Ugh, the IDF report is in on details of the three hostages killed, and the fuck up was way more egregious than I could possibly have imagined. Shooting on sight already violated protocol, but then the battalion commander ordered them to cease fire, and still a soldier opened fire? Huge lack of discipline. The whole unit needs to be pulled out of the combat zone.

Apparently the Bislamach Brigade is a training brigade for future squad commanders and platoon sergeants, that gets put up to fully operational status in war time. I can understand the IDF has limited manpower, but thinking this is probably not the brightest idea...

The IDF makes note of the fact that the only contact they had made with people at that stage were militants for several days, but still no excuse here. If the conditions are wearing down the troops that they start abandoning rules of engagement, they need to be cycled out.

ETA: Also, white flag? An actual war crime. I know these soldiers are being offered counseling now, but they need to be tried.

 

 

Edited December 16, 2023 by Ran

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

 

All the post-invasion incidents are being reviewed and investigated, per the source Ynet article. The IDF is also investigating and reprimanding people for these videos.

No. The IDF says they are doing so. The videos have not stopped. The behaviors and reported violations have not stopped. From the US point of view we are all too familiar with senior leaders of organizations saying they will discipline or investigate and nothing happening.

 

[Toth]

Just read "If the Hamas hadn't attacked, the hostages wouldn't have been in that situation to get shot in the first place!".

Now I'm sad...