A very depressing video from Gaza

[Meadmaker]

I guess i'd have to disagree then, if there are only two choices. I think there might be more choices. Removing Bibi would be a good start. He's already pledged to continue the slaughter after this brief repose. Some compromise might be an answer; possibly more digestible now for Hamas. Like, maybe stop with the expansion? Do you think that what Hamas did was fairly inevitable, given their circumstance? That it might have been preventable with gestures of common decency? What would the Jews have done if roles were reversed? What does anyone do when put in a cage? Try to get out.

Ever heard Gaddafi's only speech at the U.N.? It's worth a listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3nVBTT ... %C3%87enet

I think the general tone of the above is, "Let's make the world perfect and then we wouldn't even have to ask the questions." It's not that I think you are wrong, as such, but it's just not the world we live in right now. There is a thing happening right here, right now, that must be acted upon.

To pick apart details:

Removing Bibi would be a good start.

I can't disagree with that, but it's just not an option.

Like, maybe stop with the expansion?

It's not an option for the here and now, but I do agree that there are gigantic, underlying, problems that are hard to solve because people are so incredibly stupid. Both sides have in their corners a significant fraction of people who think that the land was given to them by God.

Do you think that what Hamas did was fairly inevitable, given their circumstance?

No. I think it was barbaric. Disgusting. Criminal. Inexcusable

War is inevitable. Sending paragliders into a dance party on a spree of rape and murder is not inevitable. Sending military personnel into a residential neighborhood (i.e. a kibbutz) to do house by house searches, killing everyone they find, sometimes, but not always, sparing the children? That was not inevitable.

What would the Jews have done if roles were reversed?

The Jews? The Jews? Who the hell are the Jews?

Do you mean the government of Israel? No. I do not think they would have done it. Just as the government in the West Bank has not done it. Just as I do not believe that the next government in the Gaza Strip will do it. This government, Hamas, did it, and they must be removed from power so that they cannot do it again.

[stanky]

not to defend Hamas, but their brutality is a sign of their poverty. They can't drop bombs from planes, like we do. That kind of murder is tidier. Still, the kids die. Israel's response wasn't exactly 'non-brutal. They can't really claim a moral high ground, can they?

Maybe you're right, and once again leadership must be changed...violently. It's the double standard that chews at me. Such power structures inevitably brew resentment on a deep level.

[arthwollipot]

Oh, come now. Make an effort. You found a wikipeida article that uses those words in a sentence. Bravo.

Oh get stuffed. I linked to a Wikipedia article that lists all of the war crimes committed by Allied forces during WW2. It describes them explicitly as war crimes, thus disproving your claim that nobody considers anything the Allied forces did in WW2 as war crimes.

[Meadmaker]

Oh, come now. Make an effort. You found a wikipeida article that uses those words in a sentence. Bravo.

Oh get stuffed. I linked to a Wikipedia article that lists all of the war crimes committed by Allied forces during WW2. It describes them explicitly as war crimes, thus disproving your claim that nobody considers anything the Allied forces did in WW2 as war crimes.

(emphasis added)
There is nothing, nothign at all, that could be interpreted that way.


Well, I suppose that's wrong. Any statement can be misinterpreted. People can come up with all sorts of bizarre interpretations that aren't there.

The point was that high body counts, including civilian body counts, do not necessarily mean war crimes. I used, as an example, the allied bombing campaigns of WWII. I later added the German Blitz as another example. Brutal. High civilian body count. Not a war crime.

There were plenty of other war crimes committed during world war II by all sorts of people, but you can't look at the body count in order to determine which acts were ordinary war, and which ones were war crimes. I will reiterate as well, in slightly different words than before, collective suffering is not the same thing as collective punishment.

When asked what the IDF was doing that counted as "atrocities", you cited an article that gave body counts. I did, and still do, reject that as evidence of atrocities, for all the reasons stated. There may be, and probably are, atrocities going on in Gaza, but the count of civilian dead is not evidence of such.

[Meadmaker]

not to defend Hamas, but their brutality is a sign of their poverty. They can't drop bombs from planes, like we do. That kind of murder is tidier. Still, the kids die. Israel's response wasn't exactly 'non-brutal. They can't really claim a moral high ground, can they?

Compared to Hamas, I think they can.

But that's a low bar to clear. For years, I've thought that "better than their neighbors" is something that could be said about Israel, but it's intended to be damning with faint praise.

Maybe you're right, and once again leadership must be changed...violently. It's the double standard that chews at me. Such power structures inevitably brew resentment on a deep level.

Indeed. As The Atheist.....errr...Admin....noted from the beginning, the Israeli response is in some sense playing into Hamas' hands. Even if Hamas is destroyed as an organization, it's like destroying hydra heads. Two new ones will take its place.


Some day, that cycle really will stop, but I don't know how to get there from here. I've made an observation that anger over historical events will always linger at least as long as there are people around whose grandfather's grandfather was part of it. That's at least 150 years. By 2098, there might be people in the middle east ready to find a peaceful solution.

[Admin]

If you agree, then what do you think Israel should do differently than what it is doing now?

If they hadn't immediately made the knee-jerk reaction they were always going to there were a number of options they could have done which would have preserved lives while attaining the goal of removing Hamas.

For fuck's sake the total area of Gaza is 3% the size of Sydney or Auckland. It would have been ridiculously easy to evacuate the innocent civilians.

[Meadmaker]

If you agree, then what do you think Israel should do differently than what it is doing now?

If they hadn't immediately made the knee-jerk reaction they were always going to there were a number of options they could have done which would have preserved lives while attaining the goal of removing Hamas.

For fuck's sake the total area of Gaza is 3% the size of Sydney or Auckland. It would have been ridiculously easy to evacuate the innocent civilians.

I'm not so sure about that evacuation thing, for a couple of reasons. One of the complaints against Israel is that they warned the citizens to evacuate, but that there was no place to go. In the video that started this thread, the person talking was describing the horrible conditions for those who did evacuate. For another thing, Hamas demanded that the citizens not evacuate, and shot some of the people who did.

I think the Israelis did not make the lives of the Palestinian civilians a high priority, and I think they can be fairly criticized for that, but I don't think they have any "ridiculously easy" options. Temporary living quarters for two million people isn't something that just happens. It would be somewhat easier if people stopped shooting at the IDF, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

The media also seems to have lost that thread lately. I haven't seen any stories focused on refugees for a while. For the last couple of weeks, al-Shifa has dominated the stories, and the question of whather or not there are tunnels under it. Well, duh. Of course there are. There are tunnels everywhere in Gaza city.

[Admin]

I'm not so sure about that evacuation thing, for a couple of reasons. One of the complaints against Israel is that they warned the citizens to evacuate, but that there was no place to go.

Israel would have set up proper camps for them to go to. Telling them to evacuate when there's nowhere to go is a joke.

In the video that started this thread, the person talking was describing the horrible conditions for those who did evacuate. For another thing, Hamas demanded that the citizens not evacuate, and shot some of the people who did.

Which isn't something that could have been laid at the feet of the Israelis and even Hamas would recognise very quickly that shooting their own civilians isn't going to garner them international support.

I think the Israelis did not make the lives of the Palestinian civilians a high priority, and I think they can be fairly criticized for that, but I don't think they have any "ridiculously easy" options. Temporary living quarters for two million people isn't something that just happens. It would be somewhat easier if people stopped shooting at the IDF, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

I wouldn't need to do a very detailed analysis of the cost/benefits of setting up camp for 2M people to show that it's a far cheaper and better option than bombing the shit out of the place. UNICEF, Oxfam, STC and every aid agency would have been jumping at the chance to be safely involved.

There are tunnels everywhere in Gaza city.

Exactly

[Meadmaker]

I wouldn't need to do a very detailed analysis of the cost/benefits of setting up camp for 2M people to show that it's a far cheaper and better option than bombing the shit out of the place. UNICEF, Oxfam, STC and every aid agency would have been jumping at the chance to be safely involved.

.I'm not sure. If you do something, but it's not enough, you will probably get more criticisn than if you do nothing and blame someone else.



Of course, that takes it as a given that the decision makers, i.e. Netanyahu and friends, don't really think of the civilians as real people, but only as pawns in a game.

What you described is obviously the right thing to do. To the extent possible, civilians should have been cared for.


We have been talking about war crimes, and I don't think that the evacuations and failure to provide basic needs is a war crime, but there's a level between "decent folk" and "war crimes". I don't think Netanyahu et. al. have achieved "decent folk" status.

On the plus side, I went to Al Jazeera's home page today and they list the death toll among Palestinians as 15,000 or so, which is only slightly worse than it was a week ago. So, assuming they have decent, relatively up to date, information, Palestinians aren't dying at a tremendous rate due to the terrible conditions. I wish there was a bit of media attention on the plight of people made homeless by war, but I really have seen very little about it recently.

[Meadmaker]

I've been searching for more information about the current state of the refugee camps in Gaza. I came across this:

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-774874

It's Netanyahu saying that the UN should get in there to do something to help the displaced Palesinians, but the UN, and the aid agencies, won't do it.


Well now what the Hell is up with that? What reason do they give?

Aid trucks are going to cross the border today, according to several sources, now that a cease fire is in place. Was that it? Because there was military activity going on, they didn't consider it safe to go in?

Well.....these are safe zones designated by Israel. Israel isn't attacking in those places, I assume. So, who are they afraid of?

The article, nor any other article I found, gives no comment from either the UN or aid agencies on why they wouldn't go in. Apparently, though, they are, in fact, going in now that there's a cease fire. I don't get the whole thing. If anyone has sources that shed some light, please post them.