|
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. |
On September 20 2024 07:10 Oldwiseman44 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 06:59 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:56 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:49 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:46 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:37 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:25 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 04:43 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 04:35 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 04:16 Nebuchad wrote:
[quote]
Well if you're not claiming genocide/ethnic cleansing then you shouldn't offer these as a response when I ask you when Russia has removed a people and replaced it with Russians. You should say "There are no such situations". Then we can continue the conversation, and I tell you that even with power imbalance it is very hard in the current day to remove a people from a place, much harder than to just rule over them and generally treat them like shit. This is true for Russia and it's true for Israel, and it's actually even more true for Israel than it is for Russia because Israel is dependant on other countries in a much more direct way than Russia is.
So the goal of Israel, which is not to rule over Palestinians but to remove them, is much harder to accomplish, which is why they're not doing it fast. We've solved that issue. Why would I say there are not such situations when there were. Had you said current I would have went there, and you can see this pattern in Chechnya, Georgia, their involvement in Syria, their support of every current army/ government committing genocide in Africa and when their current actions are considered genocidal more universally their Israel? As a person who is certain Israel is committing genocide, why do you think this is the only genocide Russia is against? Iran's proxy armies are also blatantly geocidal both in rhetoric and actions, so I'm not sure even what your point is. How would Iran be Ukraine? lets not forget for a long time Russia "wasn't fighting in Ukraine" that was the various peoples republics. I agree that Israel is dependent on democracies and there for has to follow rules that their leader and Russia do not. Would you agree that Iran is support Russian Genocide? And would you say they are supporting Hamas and Hezbollah's genocidal intentions? If not why? Do you agree that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are proxy armies for Iran? If not why? You're saying that Israel can't be Russia in the analogy because if Israel was Russia there would be no Palestine, because when Russia wants to crush a group that it has a power imbalance over that happens quickly and as such Palestine would already be gone. None of the places and/or people you're offering as examples of Russia doing it quickly are gone. So clearly, when Russia is Russia, it doesn't happen quickly. What happens quickly is ruling over the people of a place, not removing the people from the place. Your counterargument fails. That's all. I don't see how this is arguable, this seems just objectively true. Which probably explains why you're trying to talk about other things. No I did not say your strawman. When I said no Palestine I meant the way there is no Chechnya any more and the way Donbas is now a "independent" republic. Which Israel could do as easy as Russia if they wanted to. It would not lead to the end of their existence as a Jewish state. Israel being a democracy with a relatively small population, if they give citizen status to the Palestinians like Russia does with Chechnya, this will lead to an equal number of Arabs and Jews with voting rights (7.2 million Jews for 6.7 million Arabs, and this doesn't account for the right to return of palestinian refugees). There is no shot that those populations vote to maintain a Jewish State, not every Israeli Jew agrees with the far right. If you plan to not give them full citizenship, then congratulations, the thing that you're saying ought to be happening is already happening, as the West Bank currently does live under military occupation of Israel, and unless there's a drastic change in world politics ("unless" not being the greatest word here as I think a change is quite likely to happen), Gaza will be too in the near future. Did you give up on your last strawman so you are coming up with another? When did I say what Israel should do in any of my posts? Did Russia do the exact same thing in each area? Is what they did in Donbas something Israel could do if they wanted too? This is non responsive. Stick to the point please. The irony is thick when you cut the point from my response and only respond to that. Which was off the point but so have all of your responses. So you know walk your own talk. But we both know this is just a dodge of the tough questions. You made an argument that doesn't work objectively, like it's not that I have a different opinion you're just very clearly wrong. Why would I want to discuss other topics with you when you can't acknowledge that. If you remember to a couple of hours ago you responded to a post not intended for you and asked me questions. This is why I responded to you and asked you questions. The big difference being is I am acting in good faith and responding to your actual questions and you are not. At no point have I made any of the arguments you are even mad about. If my initial post is objectively wrong, go through it and explain. I'd be interested as likely would be others. But please stick to my words and not whatever presumptions you have created.
No problem. As already stated multiple times, you argued in your first post that Manitou's point was not internally consistent because he wouldn't say the same thing about Ukraine vs Russia that he does about Israel vs Palestine. I pointed out that this wasn't proof that he was being inconsistent, as if we're doing the analogy Israel is like Russia and Palestine is like Ukraine, so it makes sense to not say the same thing about Ukraine and about Israel. You argued that I was wrong and that Israel was, in fact, like Ukraine, because if Israel was like Russia then there wouldn't be a Palestine anymore. Then you changed your mind a few times about what "no Palestine" means but none of those explanations worked:
- If it means crushing it with a military presence then Israel is currently doing that in the West Bank, so it's not true that Russia is doing something different
- If it means annexing it as part of Russia then we have explained why Israel can't do that with all of Palestine under the current circumstances
- If it means ethnic cleansing we have established that Russia hasn't done that quickly anywhere in recent times, so the fact that Israel isn't doing it quickly doesn't make Israel different from Russia.
As such, your argument for saying that Israel is not like Russia in the analogy doesn't work.
|
On September 20 2024 05:17 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 05:02 RvB wrote:On September 20 2024 01:58 Magic Powers wrote:On September 20 2024 01:46 RvB wrote:On September 20 2024 00:23 Magic Powers wrote:On September 20 2024 00:13 RvB wrote:On September 19 2024 21:39 Jockmcplop wrote:On September 19 2024 21:31 Magic Powers wrote:On September 19 2024 21:25 Manit0u wrote:On September 19 2024 21:19 Jockmcplop wrote:
[quote]
At least the population of Lebanon now knows what happens to enemies of Israel. They're probably too terrified to join Hezbollah now.
Almost like that was the entire reason for the attack. To spread fear among the civilian population. If anything this only creates more people who'll join their ranks. They love their martyrs after all and civilians getting hurt in the process only makes it so they'd be even more willing to go against Israel now. If you want to stop terrorists you can't go directly against them because that's mostly futile exercise as history shows. You need to figure out a way to get on the good side with the general populace so that terrorists lose their support. I suspect Jock was being sarcastic and playing the role of pro-Israel propagandists. It's been well established that this kind of attack does not cause a terrorist organization to shrink. I wasn't being sarcastic per se. I genuinely think that this was the objective for Israel. I can't think what else it could be. Blowing up the pagers to 'cripple infrastructure' seems like a weak excuse more than an actual reason to do this. Obviously its not going to do anything to the ability of Hezbollah to fight. Why else do it? They attacked one of Hezbollahs main communication devices. The military benefits are quite obvious. It destroys their ability to communicate effectively directly and indirectly. Directly because the pagers are destroyed and indirectly because they don't know what method they can trust. It's also a precise way to target members of Hezbollah because nobody else uses pagers anymore. Furthermore it sows doubt about other technology and weapons they've imported. What other supply chains are compromised? The reason you propose seems much more unlikely to me. Who even uses pagers nowadays? Regular people don't use them anymore but Hezbollah does. Nasrallah thought them a safe alternative to mobile phones since you can't track them. Then how is blowing them up going to put fear into citizens if they're not the ones with the exploding devices. If Israel wants to do such a thing they have much better tools at their disposal. Plenty of people who don't even live in anywhere near Lebanon are already expressing their fear of using electronic devices unrelated to this attack. This has definitely terrorized the Lebanese population and anyone arguing otherwise is just being willfully ignorant. That it has made some civilians in Lebanon afraid to use electronical devices does not mean that it was the objective. If your objective is to terrorize civilians you rig a device that civilians use like a mobile phone. Not walky talkies and pagers that were ordered by Hezbollah. As to the deaths caused by the attack it seems to be mostly members of Hezbollah: At least 38 Hezbollah members have been killed since Tuesday afternoon, the group says, the deadliest period for the group since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.
The Iran-backed militants did not provide details on the specific circumstances of the deaths or whether they were caused by the communication device explosions or occurred on the battlefield.
But given Lebanon’s health ministry has announced five battlefield deaths since Tuesday – unrelated to the wireless device attacks and normally indicating the death of Hezbollah fighters — that points to a total of 33 Hezbollah fighters being killed in the attacks targeting wireless devices.
There has been no official confirmation of the number of Hezbollah fighters killed in the explosions, which hit pagers and walkie-talkies.
Lebanon’s health ministry has said 37 people were killed in the attacks, and does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. www.cnn.com I don't care what the objective is. Israel has stated the objective to destroy Hamas, and yet they've killed many civilians. Intent and actions don't always match. This pager attack has factually, objectively terrorized the Lebanese population. That's the point I'm making. I also don't care if most of the fatalities are Hezbollah. An attack has to be justified, and in my book this one isn't an example of a justified attack. It did not stifle Hezbollah's military capability. Especially their leadership is said to be largely unaffected, because they apparently used older devices that weren't tampered with. I was responding to Jocks post where he asks what other objective there could be. If you don't care then fine by me but don't respond to me. Your point is also trash. If you look at it that way every military attack is a terrorist attack. Or do you think artillery fire, machine gun fire, and bombs dropped by planes don't terrorize civilians? I also don't care if most of the fatalities are Hezbollah. An attack has to be justified, and in my book this one isn't an example of a justified attack. It did not stifle Hezbollah's military capability. Especially their leadership is said to be largely unaffected, because they apparently used older devices that weren't tampered with. The amount of civilians is one of the main critiques on Israels conduct in Gaza. Yet now suddenly you don't care. An attack has to be justified but the amount of civilian casualties play a huge role in determining if it is. That should not be controversial. That it did not stifle Hezbollah's military capability is patently false. Nasrallah called it a major blow in his speech. That's consistent with other reports we get from the media. In a televised public address, Nasrallah blamed Israel for the pager and walkie-talkie attacks of Tuesday and Wednesday, which he said constituted “an unprecedented massacre.”
“There is no doubt that we have been subjected to a major security and military blow that is unprecedented in the history of the resistance and unprecedented in the history of Lebanon,” Nasrallah said in his address, filmed at an undisclosed location. www.timesofisrael.comEngaging in a discussion with you was a mistake so this will be my last response to you. Military action obviously does not constitute a terrorist attack. Blowing up thousands of devices in the middle of the population on the other hand would be immediately declared a terrorist attafck if it happened in Israel. Yet we're all required to hold our breath when it's done by Israel in Lebanon. This is a double standard that I'm participating in right now because it effectively holds a mirror to apologists of Netanyahu's criminal administration. You're not seeing the hyprocisy? That's not my problem. I'm just pointing it out, so try not to shoot the messenger so readily. "The amount of civilians is one of the main critiques on Israels conduct in Gaza. Yet now suddenly you don't care. An attack has to be justified but the amount of civilian casualties play a huge role in determining if it is. That should not be controversial. That it did not stifle Hezbollah's military capability is patently false. Nasrallah called it a major blow in his speech. That's consistent with other reports we get from the media." Two things. Firstly, I don't know what you're referring to. I always argued that every innocent death is too much. Other people see it differently, but I'm not other people. My position has always been the same. Secondly, Nasrallah explicitly stated that this is not a major blow to them. He said it's unprecedented, but he also said that this won't stop their activities in a meaningful capacity. You misinterpreted his words because you left out relevant context. We can just think this problem through ourselves. Can a communication system be fixed? Yes. Are the fatalities a significant blow to Hezbollah? No. There you go, answered it. Hezbollah will be doing just fine after this attack, nothing of significance was accomplished. Instead now there's even more ammunition that can be used against Israel. Now people call them a terrorist state, it's all over the left-wing media. Nice job Netanyahu. Burn every bridge won't ya?
He literally said it was a major blow, RvB didn't misinterpret his words. Major blow doesn't mean completely neutered their capacity and will to fight. Ukraine blowing up the ammo depot in Toropets was a major blow to Russia, but it didn't neuter them. The result of long conflicts is determined by the sum of the operations in them rather than a single act.
So often your posts read more as an exercise in doubling down with preposterous semantic derailments rather than a sincere argument. No one would think any less of you if you sometimes stop replying or say "you're right, my bad", quite the opposite. Suggesting that by not immediately waving the white flag Hezbollah are wrong to consider this a major blow to themselves is absurd.
|
On September 20 2024 07:28 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 07:10 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:59 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:56 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:49 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:46 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:37 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:25 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 04:43 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 04:35 Oldwiseman44 wrote:
[quote]
Why would I say there are not such situations when there were. Had you said current I would have went there, and you can see this pattern in Chechnya, Georgia, their involvement in Syria, their support of every current army/ government committing genocide in Africa and when their current actions are considered genocidal more universally their Israel? As a person who is certain Israel is committing genocide, why do you think this is the only genocide Russia is against?
Iran's proxy armies are also blatantly geocidal both in rhetoric and actions, so I'm not sure even what your point is. How would Iran be Ukraine? lets not forget for a long time Russia "wasn't fighting in Ukraine" that was the various peoples republics.
I agree that Israel is dependent on democracies and there for has to follow rules that their leader and Russia do not. Would you agree that Iran is support Russian Genocide? And would you say they are supporting Hamas and Hezbollah's genocidal intentions? If not why?
Do you agree that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are proxy armies for Iran? If not why? You're saying that Israel can't be Russia in the analogy because if Israel was Russia there would be no Palestine, because when Russia wants to crush a group that it has a power imbalance over that happens quickly and as such Palestine would already be gone. None of the places and/or people you're offering as examples of Russia doing it quickly are gone. So clearly, when Russia is Russia, it doesn't happen quickly. What happens quickly is ruling over the people of a place, not removing the people from the place. Your counterargument fails. That's all. I don't see how this is arguable, this seems just objectively true. Which probably explains why you're trying to talk about other things. No I did not say your strawman. When I said no Palestine I meant the way there is no Chechnya any more and the way Donbas is now a "independent" republic. Which Israel could do as easy as Russia if they wanted to. It would not lead to the end of their existence as a Jewish state. Israel being a democracy with a relatively small population, if they give citizen status to the Palestinians like Russia does with Chechnya, this will lead to an equal number of Arabs and Jews with voting rights (7.2 million Jews for 6.7 million Arabs, and this doesn't account for the right to return of palestinian refugees). There is no shot that those populations vote to maintain a Jewish State, not every Israeli Jew agrees with the far right. If you plan to not give them full citizenship, then congratulations, the thing that you're saying ought to be happening is already happening, as the West Bank currently does live under military occupation of Israel, and unless there's a drastic change in world politics ("unless" not being the greatest word here as I think a change is quite likely to happen), Gaza will be too in the near future. Did you give up on your last strawman so you are coming up with another? When did I say what Israel should do in any of my posts? Did Russia do the exact same thing in each area? Is what they did in Donbas something Israel could do if they wanted too? This is non responsive. Stick to the point please. The irony is thick when you cut the point from my response and only respond to that. Which was off the point but so have all of your responses. So you know walk your own talk. But we both know this is just a dodge of the tough questions. You made an argument that doesn't work objectively, like it's not that I have a different opinion you're just very clearly wrong. Why would I want to discuss other topics with you when you can't acknowledge that. If you remember to a couple of hours ago you responded to a post not intended for you and asked me questions. This is why I responded to you and asked you questions. The big difference being is I am acting in good faith and responding to your actual questions and you are not. At no point have I made any of the arguments you are even mad about. If my initial post is objectively wrong, go through it and explain. I'd be interested as likely would be others. But please stick to my words and not whatever presumptions you have created. No problem. As already stated multiple times, you argued in your first post that Manitou's point was not internally consistent because he wouldn't say the same thing about Ukraine vs Russia that he does about Israel vs Palestine. I pointed out that this wasn't proof that he was being inconsistent, as if we're doing the analogy Israel is like Russia and Palestine is like Ukraine, so it makes sense to not say the same thing about Ukraine and about Israel. You argued that I was wrong and that Israel was, in fact, like Ukraine, because if Israel was like Russia then there wouldn't be a Palestine anymore. Then you changed your mind a few times about what "no Palestine" means but none of those explanations worked: - If it means crushing it with a military presence then Israel is currently doing that in the West Bank, so it's not true that Russia is doing something different - If it means annexing it as part of Russia then we have explained why Israel can't do that with all of Palestine under the current circumstances - If it means ethnic cleansing we have established that Russia hasn't done that quickly anywhere in recent times, so the fact that Israel isn't doing it quickly doesn't make Israel different from Russia. As such, your argument for saying that Israel is not like Russia in the analogy doesn't work.
In theory you could draw some parallels. Both Israel and Russia are pretty much fascist states. They're both also trying to annex other territories. Russia did it's puppet-state republics as a pretext to enter Ukraine while Israel is using the settlements in the west bank.
In any case, my stance on both of those conflicts will be different because Ukraine vs Russia is an actual war where two military forces are fighting whereas what's happening in the Middle East is some weird form of asymmetric warfare that's been going on for the past 76 years.
|
On September 20 2024 07:28 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 07:10 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:59 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:56 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:49 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:46 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:37 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:25 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 04:43 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 04:35 Oldwiseman44 wrote:
[quote]
Why would I say there are not such situations when there were. Had you said current I would have went there, and you can see this pattern in Chechnya, Georgia, their involvement in Syria, their support of every current army/ government committing genocide in Africa and when their current actions are considered genocidal more universally their Israel? As a person who is certain Israel is committing genocide, why do you think this is the only genocide Russia is against?
Iran's proxy armies are also blatantly geocidal both in rhetoric and actions, so I'm not sure even what your point is. How would Iran be Ukraine? lets not forget for a long time Russia "wasn't fighting in Ukraine" that was the various peoples republics.
I agree that Israel is dependent on democracies and there for has to follow rules that their leader and Russia do not. Would you agree that Iran is support Russian Genocide? And would you say they are supporting Hamas and Hezbollah's genocidal intentions? If not why?
Do you agree that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are proxy armies for Iran? If not why? You're saying that Israel can't be Russia in the analogy because if Israel was Russia there would be no Palestine, because when Russia wants to crush a group that it has a power imbalance over that happens quickly and as such Palestine would already be gone. None of the places and/or people you're offering as examples of Russia doing it quickly are gone. So clearly, when Russia is Russia, it doesn't happen quickly. What happens quickly is ruling over the people of a place, not removing the people from the place. Your counterargument fails. That's all. I don't see how this is arguable, this seems just objectively true. Which probably explains why you're trying to talk about other things. No I did not say your strawman. When I said no Palestine I meant the way there is no Chechnya any more and the way Donbas is now a "independent" republic. Which Israel could do as easy as Russia if they wanted to. It would not lead to the end of their existence as a Jewish state. Israel being a democracy with a relatively small population, if they give citizen status to the Palestinians like Russia does with Chechnya, this will lead to an equal number of Arabs and Jews with voting rights (7.2 million Jews for 6.7 million Arabs, and this doesn't account for the right to return of palestinian refugees). There is no shot that those populations vote to maintain a Jewish State, not every Israeli Jew agrees with the far right. If you plan to not give them full citizenship, then congratulations, the thing that you're saying ought to be happening is already happening, as the West Bank currently does live under military occupation of Israel, and unless there's a drastic change in world politics ("unless" not being the greatest word here as I think a change is quite likely to happen), Gaza will be too in the near future. Did you give up on your last strawman so you are coming up with another? When did I say what Israel should do in any of my posts? Did Russia do the exact same thing in each area? Is what they did in Donbas something Israel could do if they wanted too? This is non responsive. Stick to the point please. The irony is thick when you cut the point from my response and only respond to that. Which was off the point but so have all of your responses. So you know walk your own talk. But we both know this is just a dodge of the tough questions. You made an argument that doesn't work objectively, like it's not that I have a different opinion you're just very clearly wrong. Why would I want to discuss other topics with you when you can't acknowledge that. If you remember to a couple of hours ago you responded to a post not intended for you and asked me questions. This is why I responded to you and asked you questions. The big difference being is I am acting in good faith and responding to your actual questions and you are not. At no point have I made any of the arguments you are even mad about. If my initial post is objectively wrong, go through it and explain. I'd be interested as likely would be others. But please stick to my words and not whatever presumptions you have created. No problem. As already stated multiple times, you argued in your first post that Manitou's point was not internally consistent because he wouldn't say the same thing about Ukraine vs Russia that he does about Israel vs Palestine. I pointed out that this wasn't proof that he was being inconsistent, as if we're doing the analogy Israel is like Russia and Palestine is like Ukraine, so it makes sense to not say the same thing about Ukraine and about Israel. You argued that I was wrong and that Israel was, in fact, like Ukraine, because if Israel was like Russia then there wouldn't be a Palestine anymore. Then you changed your mind a few times about what "no Palestine" means but none of those explanations worked: - If it means crushing it with a military presence then Israel is currently doing that in the West Bank, so it's not true that Russia is doing something different - If it means annexing it as part of Russia then we have explained why Israel can't do that with all of Palestine under the current circumstances - If it means ethnic cleansing we have established that Russia hasn't done that quickly anywhere in recent times, so the fact that Israel isn't doing it quickly doesn't make Israel different from Russia. As such, your argument for saying that Israel is not like Russia in the analogy doesn't work.
Much better, but no that was not my argument so go re-read it. For example I point out the massive power difference.
Do you agree that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are proxy armies for Iran? If not why?
And now I have a further question to why won't you answer this simple question? Does admitting this obvious truth somehow impact your interpretation?
And unrelated to my larger point but I'm shocked you don't think that Russia is engaged in current ethnics cleansing and genocide. But they are and basically everyone other than Russia, Iran, NK and China agree that they are.
|
On September 20 2024 07:28 Dan HH wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 05:17 Magic Powers wrote:On September 20 2024 05:02 RvB wrote:On September 20 2024 01:58 Magic Powers wrote:On September 20 2024 01:46 RvB wrote:On September 20 2024 00:23 Magic Powers wrote:On September 20 2024 00:13 RvB wrote:On September 19 2024 21:39 Jockmcplop wrote:On September 19 2024 21:31 Magic Powers wrote:On September 19 2024 21:25 Manit0u wrote:
[quote]
If anything this only creates more people who'll join their ranks. They love their martyrs after all and civilians getting hurt in the process only makes it so they'd be even more willing to go against Israel now.
If you want to stop terrorists you can't go directly against them because that's mostly futile exercise as history shows. You need to figure out a way to get on the good side with the general populace so that terrorists lose their support. I suspect Jock was being sarcastic and playing the role of pro-Israel propagandists. It's been well established that this kind of attack does not cause a terrorist organization to shrink. I wasn't being sarcastic per se. I genuinely think that this was the objective for Israel. I can't think what else it could be. Blowing up the pagers to 'cripple infrastructure' seems like a weak excuse more than an actual reason to do this. Obviously its not going to do anything to the ability of Hezbollah to fight. Why else do it? They attacked one of Hezbollahs main communication devices. The military benefits are quite obvious. It destroys their ability to communicate effectively directly and indirectly. Directly because the pagers are destroyed and indirectly because they don't know what method they can trust. It's also a precise way to target members of Hezbollah because nobody else uses pagers anymore. Furthermore it sows doubt about other technology and weapons they've imported. What other supply chains are compromised? The reason you propose seems much more unlikely to me. Who even uses pagers nowadays? Regular people don't use them anymore but Hezbollah does. Nasrallah thought them a safe alternative to mobile phones since you can't track them. Then how is blowing them up going to put fear into citizens if they're not the ones with the exploding devices. If Israel wants to do such a thing they have much better tools at their disposal. Plenty of people who don't even live in anywhere near Lebanon are already expressing their fear of using electronic devices unrelated to this attack. This has definitely terrorized the Lebanese population and anyone arguing otherwise is just being willfully ignorant. That it has made some civilians in Lebanon afraid to use electronical devices does not mean that it was the objective. If your objective is to terrorize civilians you rig a device that civilians use like a mobile phone. Not walky talkies and pagers that were ordered by Hezbollah. As to the deaths caused by the attack it seems to be mostly members of Hezbollah: At least 38 Hezbollah members have been killed since Tuesday afternoon, the group says, the deadliest period for the group since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.
The Iran-backed militants did not provide details on the specific circumstances of the deaths or whether they were caused by the communication device explosions or occurred on the battlefield.
But given Lebanon’s health ministry has announced five battlefield deaths since Tuesday – unrelated to the wireless device attacks and normally indicating the death of Hezbollah fighters — that points to a total of 33 Hezbollah fighters being killed in the attacks targeting wireless devices.
There has been no official confirmation of the number of Hezbollah fighters killed in the explosions, which hit pagers and walkie-talkies.
Lebanon’s health ministry has said 37 people were killed in the attacks, and does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. www.cnn.com I don't care what the objective is. Israel has stated the objective to destroy Hamas, and yet they've killed many civilians. Intent and actions don't always match. This pager attack has factually, objectively terrorized the Lebanese population. That's the point I'm making. I also don't care if most of the fatalities are Hezbollah. An attack has to be justified, and in my book this one isn't an example of a justified attack. It did not stifle Hezbollah's military capability. Especially their leadership is said to be largely unaffected, because they apparently used older devices that weren't tampered with. I was responding to Jocks post where he asks what other objective there could be. If you don't care then fine by me but don't respond to me. Your point is also trash. If you look at it that way every military attack is a terrorist attack. Or do you think artillery fire, machine gun fire, and bombs dropped by planes don't terrorize civilians? I also don't care if most of the fatalities are Hezbollah. An attack has to be justified, and in my book this one isn't an example of a justified attack. It did not stifle Hezbollah's military capability. Especially their leadership is said to be largely unaffected, because they apparently used older devices that weren't tampered with. The amount of civilians is one of the main critiques on Israels conduct in Gaza. Yet now suddenly you don't care. An attack has to be justified but the amount of civilian casualties play a huge role in determining if it is. That should not be controversial. That it did not stifle Hezbollah's military capability is patently false. Nasrallah called it a major blow in his speech. That's consistent with other reports we get from the media. In a televised public address, Nasrallah blamed Israel for the pager and walkie-talkie attacks of Tuesday and Wednesday, which he said constituted “an unprecedented massacre.”
“There is no doubt that we have been subjected to a major security and military blow that is unprecedented in the history of the resistance and unprecedented in the history of Lebanon,” Nasrallah said in his address, filmed at an undisclosed location. www.timesofisrael.comEngaging in a discussion with you was a mistake so this will be my last response to you. Military action obviously does not constitute a terrorist attack. Blowing up thousands of devices in the middle of the population on the other hand would be immediately declared a terrorist attafck if it happened in Israel. Yet we're all required to hold our breath when it's done by Israel in Lebanon. This is a double standard that I'm participating in right now because it effectively holds a mirror to apologists of Netanyahu's criminal administration. You're not seeing the hyprocisy? That's not my problem. I'm just pointing it out, so try not to shoot the messenger so readily. "The amount of civilians is one of the main critiques on Israels conduct in Gaza. Yet now suddenly you don't care. An attack has to be justified but the amount of civilian casualties play a huge role in determining if it is. That should not be controversial. That it did not stifle Hezbollah's military capability is patently false. Nasrallah called it a major blow in his speech. That's consistent with other reports we get from the media." Two things. Firstly, I don't know what you're referring to. I always argued that every innocent death is too much. Other people see it differently, but I'm not other people. My position has always been the same. Secondly, Nasrallah explicitly stated that this is not a major blow to them. He said it's unprecedented, but he also said that this won't stop their activities in a meaningful capacity. You misinterpreted his words because you left out relevant context. We can just think this problem through ourselves. Can a communication system be fixed? Yes. Are the fatalities a significant blow to Hezbollah? No. There you go, answered it. Hezbollah will be doing just fine after this attack, nothing of significance was accomplished. Instead now there's even more ammunition that can be used against Israel. Now people call them a terrorist state, it's all over the left-wing media. Nice job Netanyahu. Burn every bridge won't ya? He literally said it was a major blow, RvB didn't misinterpret his words. Major blow doesn't mean completely neutered their capacity and will to fight. Ukraine blowing up the ammo depot in Toropets was a major blow to Russia, but it didn't neuter them. The result of long conflicts is determined by the sum of the operations in them rather than a single act. So often your posts read more as an exercise in doubling down with preposterous semantic derailments rather than a sincere argument. No one would think any less of you if you sometimes stop replying or say "you're right, my bad", quite the opposite. Suggesting that by not immediately waving the white flag Hezbollah are wrong to consider this a major blow to themselves is absurd.
The "major blow" quote is in reference to the significance of the attack, not the ability of Hezbollah to continue operations. There's no mention of Hezbollah's capabilities. It's like whenever Israel acknowledges that a successful terrorist strike occured.
Nasrallah is phrasing things this way not because Hezbollah can no longer attack Israel as they did before, but because he wants to garner support. Do you think he would ever admit to weakness? He's a terrorist leader. No matter how much this attack hurts the group, he's always going to act like this doesn't stop them.
If you want to argue that Hezbollah is significantly weakened, you'll have to provide objective evidence for that claim, not the words of one of their leaders. As I said, their communication will be restored. And then what? Back to business.
This is why I'm arguing that Israel shot itself in the foot with this. The Lebanese population has been terrorized for what? Are missiles gonna stop flying? Certainly not. As long as the border area isn't secure, you can't possibly tell me Israel has accomplished anything meaningful. That would be an objective argument. Show me that Israel's population is no longer afraid of Hezbollah, then I'll take the idea seriously that these terrorists are under better control than before.
|
On September 20 2024 07:47 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 07:28 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 07:10 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:59 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:56 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:49 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:46 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:37 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:25 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 04:43 Nebuchad wrote:
[quote]
You're saying that Israel can't be Russia in the analogy because if Israel was Russia there would be no Palestine, because when Russia wants to crush a group that it has a power imbalance over that happens quickly and as such Palestine would already be gone. None of the places and/or people you're offering as examples of Russia doing it quickly are gone. So clearly, when Russia is Russia, it doesn't happen quickly. What happens quickly is ruling over the people of a place, not removing the people from the place. Your counterargument fails. That's all.
I don't see how this is arguable, this seems just objectively true. Which probably explains why you're trying to talk about other things. No I did not say your strawman. When I said no Palestine I meant the way there is no Chechnya any more and the way Donbas is now a "independent" republic. Which Israel could do as easy as Russia if they wanted to. It would not lead to the end of their existence as a Jewish state. Israel being a democracy with a relatively small population, if they give citizen status to the Palestinians like Russia does with Chechnya, this will lead to an equal number of Arabs and Jews with voting rights (7.2 million Jews for 6.7 million Arabs, and this doesn't account for the right to return of palestinian refugees). There is no shot that those populations vote to maintain a Jewish State, not every Israeli Jew agrees with the far right. If you plan to not give them full citizenship, then congratulations, the thing that you're saying ought to be happening is already happening, as the West Bank currently does live under military occupation of Israel, and unless there's a drastic change in world politics ("unless" not being the greatest word here as I think a change is quite likely to happen), Gaza will be too in the near future. Did you give up on your last strawman so you are coming up with another? When did I say what Israel should do in any of my posts? Did Russia do the exact same thing in each area? Is what they did in Donbas something Israel could do if they wanted too? This is non responsive. Stick to the point please. The irony is thick when you cut the point from my response and only respond to that. Which was off the point but so have all of your responses. So you know walk your own talk. But we both know this is just a dodge of the tough questions. You made an argument that doesn't work objectively, like it's not that I have a different opinion you're just very clearly wrong. Why would I want to discuss other topics with you when you can't acknowledge that. If you remember to a couple of hours ago you responded to a post not intended for you and asked me questions. This is why I responded to you and asked you questions. The big difference being is I am acting in good faith and responding to your actual questions and you are not. At no point have I made any of the arguments you are even mad about. If my initial post is objectively wrong, go through it and explain. I'd be interested as likely would be others. But please stick to my words and not whatever presumptions you have created. No problem. As already stated multiple times, you argued in your first post that Manitou's point was not internally consistent because he wouldn't say the same thing about Ukraine vs Russia that he does about Israel vs Palestine. I pointed out that this wasn't proof that he was being inconsistent, as if we're doing the analogy Israel is like Russia and Palestine is like Ukraine, so it makes sense to not say the same thing about Ukraine and about Israel. You argued that I was wrong and that Israel was, in fact, like Ukraine, because if Israel was like Russia then there wouldn't be a Palestine anymore. Then you changed your mind a few times about what "no Palestine" means but none of those explanations worked: - If it means crushing it with a military presence then Israel is currently doing that in the West Bank, so it's not true that Russia is doing something different - If it means annexing it as part of Russia then we have explained why Israel can't do that with all of Palestine under the current circumstances - If it means ethnic cleansing we have established that Russia hasn't done that quickly anywhere in recent times, so the fact that Israel isn't doing it quickly doesn't make Israel different from Russia. As such, your argument for saying that Israel is not like Russia in the analogy doesn't work. In theory you could draw some parallels. Both Israel and Russia are pretty much fascist states. They're both also trying to annex other territories. Russia did it's puppet-state republics as a pretext to enter Ukraine while Israel is using the settlements in the west bank. In any case, my stance on both of those conflicts will be different because Ukraine vs Russia is an actual war where two military forces are fighting whereas what's happening in the Middle East is some weird form of asymmetric warfare that's been going on for the past 76 years.
Do you disagree with all the parallels I brought up?
I agree that the conflict is very different and also in the specific way you describe, asymmetric vs "traditional".
And while I agree Israel is annexing portions of the Westbank, they are not using the conflict or their army to do it, so it is not very comparable and the reasons are also very different. For example there is no valuable minerals, grain production, ship yards, military bases and so on in Palestine. Russia's war is about conquest, Israel's war with Iran happening in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen is not.
|
On September 20 2024 07:49 Oldwiseman44 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 07:28 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 07:10 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:59 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:56 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:49 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:46 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:37 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:25 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 04:43 Nebuchad wrote:
[quote]
You're saying that Israel can't be Russia in the analogy because if Israel was Russia there would be no Palestine, because when Russia wants to crush a group that it has a power imbalance over that happens quickly and as such Palestine would already be gone. None of the places and/or people you're offering as examples of Russia doing it quickly are gone. So clearly, when Russia is Russia, it doesn't happen quickly. What happens quickly is ruling over the people of a place, not removing the people from the place. Your counterargument fails. That's all.
I don't see how this is arguable, this seems just objectively true. Which probably explains why you're trying to talk about other things. No I did not say your strawman. When I said no Palestine I meant the way there is no Chechnya any more and the way Donbas is now a "independent" republic. Which Israel could do as easy as Russia if they wanted to. It would not lead to the end of their existence as a Jewish state. Israel being a democracy with a relatively small population, if they give citizen status to the Palestinians like Russia does with Chechnya, this will lead to an equal number of Arabs and Jews with voting rights (7.2 million Jews for 6.7 million Arabs, and this doesn't account for the right to return of palestinian refugees). There is no shot that those populations vote to maintain a Jewish State, not every Israeli Jew agrees with the far right. If you plan to not give them full citizenship, then congratulations, the thing that you're saying ought to be happening is already happening, as the West Bank currently does live under military occupation of Israel, and unless there's a drastic change in world politics ("unless" not being the greatest word here as I think a change is quite likely to happen), Gaza will be too in the near future. Did you give up on your last strawman so you are coming up with another? When did I say what Israel should do in any of my posts? Did Russia do the exact same thing in each area? Is what they did in Donbas something Israel could do if they wanted too? This is non responsive. Stick to the point please. The irony is thick when you cut the point from my response and only respond to that. Which was off the point but so have all of your responses. So you know walk your own talk. But we both know this is just a dodge of the tough questions. You made an argument that doesn't work objectively, like it's not that I have a different opinion you're just very clearly wrong. Why would I want to discuss other topics with you when you can't acknowledge that. If you remember to a couple of hours ago you responded to a post not intended for you and asked me questions. This is why I responded to you and asked you questions. The big difference being is I am acting in good faith and responding to your actual questions and you are not. At no point have I made any of the arguments you are even mad about. If my initial post is objectively wrong, go through it and explain. I'd be interested as likely would be others. But please stick to my words and not whatever presumptions you have created. No problem. As already stated multiple times, you argued in your first post that Manitou's point was not internally consistent because he wouldn't say the same thing about Ukraine vs Russia that he does about Israel vs Palestine. I pointed out that this wasn't proof that he was being inconsistent, as if we're doing the analogy Israel is like Russia and Palestine is like Ukraine, so it makes sense to not say the same thing about Ukraine and about Israel. You argued that I was wrong and that Israel was, in fact, like Ukraine, because if Israel was like Russia then there wouldn't be a Palestine anymore. Then you changed your mind a few times about what "no Palestine" means but none of those explanations worked: - If it means crushing it with a military presence then Israel is currently doing that in the West Bank, so it's not true that Russia is doing something different - If it means annexing it as part of Russia then we have explained why Israel can't do that with all of Palestine under the current circumstances - If it means ethnic cleansing we have established that Russia hasn't done that quickly anywhere in recent times, so the fact that Israel isn't doing it quickly doesn't make Israel different from Russia. As such, your argument for saying that Israel is not like Russia in the analogy doesn't work. Much better, but no that was not my argument so go re-read it. For example I point out the massive power difference.
The massive power difference is something that you brought up later, in your initial argument you didn't mention it. Nevertheless, and more importantly, it doesn't bring anything new to this conversation. The argument is refuted in the same three ways.
On September 20 2024 07:47 Manit0u wrote:
In theory you could draw some parallels. Both Israel and Russia are pretty much fascist states. They're both also trying to annex other territories. Russia did it's puppet-state republics as a pretext to enter Ukraine while Israel is using the settlements in the west bank.
In any case, my stance on both of those conflicts will be different because Ukraine vs Russia is an actual war where two military forces are fighting whereas what's happening in the Middle East is some weird form of asymmetric warfare that's been going on for the past 76 years.
I didn't see that post my bad, for sure yeah I agree with all of this. I'm only speaking in the context of the analogy, of course in real world terms the two conflicts are very different.
|
United States42827 Posts
On September 20 2024 06:58 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 06:54 KwarK wrote:On September 20 2024 06:45 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:40 KwarK wrote:
Egypt has a huge population, Gazans wouldn’t be a huge change in voting bloc power, and they also don’t want anything to do with annexing Gaza. It’s been on offer. The population of Gaza is a poison pill to any state that takes them in.
The reluctance to add Gazans to your population has absolutely nothing to do with voting blocs. Would they be a poison pill to the state of Palestine? Yes. 100%. Eh, to be fair that's a distinct possibility, but I don't think it's 100%. More like 40 to 60% or something like this. Quite likely but not a certainty either. If humanity has taught me anything, it's that they can easily forget the past when things are going better now. Although this is a particularly long "past" to forget, so it might take longer.
On August 26 2024 04:25 KwarK wrote:
Also why on earth would Israel want to administer Gaza? Gaza is an unfixable catastrophe. No Arab nation is willing to touch it with a barge pole. Half the population are children who have never known a working society, the other half is young adults who have also never known a working society, the intergenerational trauma is off the fucking charts, the population is deeply propagandized and radicalized, the main religion is a misogynistic homophobic fringe death cult offshoot of Islam that most other Islamic states actively fight against, they have no education, there is no economic infrastructure, there is no land to feed the people, no jobs, no nothing.
Everyone in the region has already recognized the reality of Gaza being a write off. Gaza is not getting better. Gaza is getting worse every year. Nobody wants to fucking touch Gaza, least of all Israel. There will never be a one state solution that covers Gaza. Gaza is poisoned beyond redemption, nobody wants to swallow it.
|
On September 20 2024 08:06 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 06:58 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:54 KwarK wrote:On September 20 2024 06:45 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:40 KwarK wrote:
Egypt has a huge population, Gazans wouldn’t be a huge change in voting bloc power, and they also don’t want anything to do with annexing Gaza. It’s been on offer. The population of Gaza is a poison pill to any state that takes them in.
The reluctance to add Gazans to your population has absolutely nothing to do with voting blocs. Would they be a poison pill to the state of Palestine? Yes. 100%. Eh, to be fair that's a distinct possibility, but I don't think it's 100%. More like 40 to 60% or something like this. Quite likely but not a certainty either. If humanity has taught me anything, it's that they can easily forget the past when things are going better now. Although this is a particularly long "past" to forget, so it might take longer. Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 04:25 KwarK wrote:
Also why on earth would Israel want to administer Gaza? Gaza is an unfixable catastrophe. No Arab nation is willing to touch it with a barge pole. Half the population are children who have never known a working society, the other half is young adults who have also never known a working society, the intergenerational trauma is off the fucking charts, the population is deeply propagandized and radicalized, the main religion is a misogynistic homophobic fringe death cult offshoot of Islam that most other Islamic states actively fight against, they have no education, there is no economic infrastructure, there is no land to feed the people, no jobs, no nothing.
Everyone in the region has already recognized the reality of Gaza being a write off. Gaza is not getting better. Gaza is getting worse every year. Nobody wants to fucking touch Gaza, least of all Israel. There will never be a one state solution that covers Gaza. Gaza is poisoned beyond redemption, nobody wants to swallow it.
Sure, I've read this before. I have no real problem with your position on the conflict, I've read all of it before and it is internally consistent and as far as I can see in line with reality. It doesn't sit right with my morality but I don't care about that and I don't think you should care either.
I do find it tedious that you're being a contrarian for no reason these days instead of being a good poster like you used to be, but again I'll get over it.
|
Northern Ireland25510 Posts
On September 20 2024 05:42 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 05:32 Elroi wrote:
Why do you think this wasn't a meaningful strike? Israel targeted their communications systems. They were already reduced to using pagers. What should they do now to organize their attacks? Telegraphs? Imagine the disarray in the organization when they can't trust any of their equipment. Israel also neutralized a great number of Hizbollah fighters. Even though most of them aren't dead, I think Hizbollah as a whole was significantly neutered in this attack. I need to see proof that this will stop Hezbollah from killing Israelis in a meaningful way. How exactly is that gonna happen? Are Israelis being told to return to their homes? Not that I know. Doesn't seem safer than before. So what exactly was accomplished? If you think blown up pagers are going to change anything about that, you're not giving these terrorists much credit. They're intelligent human beings like you and I. They work closely together with other terrorist groups. They have states funding them. This problem will be solved, and their attacks won't stop, especially the missile attacks - which don't require a paging system. Does that surprise anyone? Since when do we assume terrorist groups are incompetent? They'll replace their equipment, trace back the origin of the tampered pagers and continue on with their regular activities. The number of terrorists being killed is completely insignificant, this is just a small dent. They're assumed to be at least 20-40k strong with several tens of thousands of reservists ready.
It seems an area to me where proof is quite thin on the ground. One has to go with informed intuition, extrapolation and interpretation.
Where’s the proof that if Israel curtailed settlements and treated Gazans better, that it would cut violence towards Israel from Gazans? It doesn’t exist, because it hasn’t happened. Doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea or can’t be cogently argued for, hell it’s my personal position but you can’t prove it.
I wouldn’t underestimate the James Bond gadget element here. It’s one thing to kill x amount of folks or cripple them, numerically it’s nothing crazy versus other methods. But doing it via their own equipment, equipment they adopted in the first place to avoid compromise such is the esteem your intelligence is held in, hey that’d put the fear of God into me anyway. But how does one measure that?
We’re talking different levels of scale here, the entities aren’t fully comparable but the IRA was operationally crippled in ways by two things. British intelligence infiltration, but also the perception of that infiltration. Clandestine organisations can struggle and be impacted just as much by the latter as the former, you have to second guess everything, you have to limit who knows what and that adds up to limit your operational effectiveness.
Israel, rightly got a lot of condemnation for less than targeted reprisals against Hamas in Gaza, this is about as targeted as you can reasonably achieve. Aside from just leaving Hezbollah to do their thing
I’m plenty critical of Israel in other domains but what is the expectation of what they should do, or why is that the expectation?
Are they just meant to do nothing or what? I’m not convinced that if we had a magic wand and the Palestine question was solved that Iran would cease being an antagonistic actor, and by extension Hezbollah
Of all the nations on Earth it seems to me only Israel is expected to just suck it up and not react to things like consistent rocket attacks into their territory.
I can’t stress enough that I find many elements of their policies morally repugnant, but in this area?
|
United States42827 Posts
On September 20 2024 08:11 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 08:06 KwarK wrote:On September 20 2024 06:58 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:54 KwarK wrote:On September 20 2024 06:45 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:40 KwarK wrote:
Egypt has a huge population, Gazans wouldn’t be a huge change in voting bloc power, and they also don’t want anything to do with annexing Gaza. It’s been on offer. The population of Gaza is a poison pill to any state that takes them in.
The reluctance to add Gazans to your population has absolutely nothing to do with voting blocs. Would they be a poison pill to the state of Palestine? Yes. 100%. Eh, to be fair that's a distinct possibility, but I don't think it's 100%. More like 40 to 60% or something like this. Quite likely but not a certainty either. If humanity has taught me anything, it's that they can easily forget the past when things are going better now. Although this is a particularly long "past" to forget, so it might take longer. On August 26 2024 04:25 KwarK wrote:
Also why on earth would Israel want to administer Gaza? Gaza is an unfixable catastrophe. No Arab nation is willing to touch it with a barge pole. Half the population are children who have never known a working society, the other half is young adults who have also never known a working society, the intergenerational trauma is off the fucking charts, the population is deeply propagandized and radicalized, the main religion is a misogynistic homophobic fringe death cult offshoot of Islam that most other Islamic states actively fight against, they have no education, there is no economic infrastructure, there is no land to feed the people, no jobs, no nothing.
Everyone in the region has already recognized the reality of Gaza being a write off. Gaza is not getting better. Gaza is getting worse every year. Nobody wants to fucking touch Gaza, least of all Israel. There will never be a one state solution that covers Gaza. Gaza is poisoned beyond redemption, nobody wants to swallow it. Sure, I've read this before. I have no real problem with your position on the conflict, I've read all of it before and it is internally consistent and as far as I can see in line with reality. It doesn't sit right with my morality but I don't care about that and I don't think you should care either. I do find it tedious that you're being a contrarian for no reason these days instead of being a good poster like you used to be, but again I'll get over it.
I'm not being contrarian, I really do believe that the stance that Israel is pursuing a policy of eradication of Gazans due to some racially exclusionary national policy to be contrary to reality. I don't like Israel but that doesn't mean I have to make things up about it. You don't need to make up weird lies about Israel to criticize it and this is a weird lie.
On September 20 2024 04:16 Nebuchad wrote:
So the goal of Israel, which is not to rule over Palestinians but to remove them
The goal of Israel doesn't have anything to do with Palestinians.
|
On September 20 2024 08:12 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 05:42 Magic Powers wrote:On September 20 2024 05:32 Elroi wrote:
Why do you think this wasn't a meaningful strike? Israel targeted their communications systems. They were already reduced to using pagers. What should they do now to organize their attacks? Telegraphs? Imagine the disarray in the organization when they can't trust any of their equipment. Israel also neutralized a great number of Hizbollah fighters. Even though most of them aren't dead, I think Hizbollah as a whole was significantly neutered in this attack. I need to see proof that this will stop Hezbollah from killing Israelis in a meaningful way. How exactly is that gonna happen? Are Israelis being told to return to their homes? Not that I know. Doesn't seem safer than before. So what exactly was accomplished? If you think blown up pagers are going to change anything about that, you're not giving these terrorists much credit. They're intelligent human beings like you and I. They work closely together with other terrorist groups. They have states funding them. This problem will be solved, and their attacks won't stop, especially the missile attacks - which don't require a paging system. Does that surprise anyone? Since when do we assume terrorist groups are incompetent? They'll replace their equipment, trace back the origin of the tampered pagers and continue on with their regular activities. The number of terrorists being killed is completely insignificant, this is just a small dent. They're assumed to be at least 20-40k strong with several tens of thousands of reservists ready. It seems an area to me where proof is quite thin on the ground. One has to go with informed intuition, extrapolation and interpretation. Where’s the proof that if Israel curtailed settlements and treated Gazans better, that it would cut violence towards Israel from Gazans? It doesn’t exist, because it hasn’t happened. Doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea or can’t be cogently argued for, hell it’s my personal position but you can’t prove it. I wouldn’t underestimate the James Bond gadget element here. It’s one thing to kill x amount of folks or cripple them, numerically it’s nothing crazy versus other methods. But doing it via their own equipment, equipment they adopted in the first place to avoid compromise such is the esteem your intelligence is held in, hey that’d put the fear of God into me anyway. But how does one measure that? We’re talking different levels of scale here, the entities aren’t fully comparable but the IRA was operationally crippled in ways by two things. British intelligence infiltration, but also the perception of that infiltration. Clandestine organisations can struggle and be impacted just as much by the latter as the former, you have to second guess everything, you have to limit who knows what and that adds up to limit your operational effectiveness. Israel, rightly got a lot of condemnation for less than targeted reprisals against Hamas in Gaza, this is about as targeted as you can reasonably achieve. Aside from just leaving Hezbollah to do their thing I’m plenty critical of Israel in other domains but what is the expectation of what they should do, or why is that the expectation? Are they just meant to do nothing or what? I’m not convinced that if we had a magic wand and the Palestine question was solved that Iran would cease being an antagonistic actor, and by extension Hezbollah Of all the nations on Earth it seems to me only Israel is expected to just suck it up and not react to things like consistent rocket attacks into their territory. I can’t stress enough that I find many elements of their policies morally repugnant, but in this area?
If I would hypothetically harshly condemn Israel's enemies for doing something that in reality I am seeing Israel do to their enemies, then I will condemn Israel. It's not that complicated really. Hezbollah has no right to strike into Israel the way Israel just attacked inside Lebanon. It'd be completely unacceptable. So why should I not condemn Israel in this case? I need a strong argument and I haven't seen one yet.
|
Northern Ireland25510 Posts
On September 20 2024 08:11 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 08:06 KwarK wrote:On September 20 2024 06:58 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:54 KwarK wrote:On September 20 2024 06:45 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:40 KwarK wrote:
Egypt has a huge population, Gazans wouldn’t be a huge change in voting bloc power, and they also don’t want anything to do with annexing Gaza. It’s been on offer. The population of Gaza is a poison pill to any state that takes them in.
The reluctance to add Gazans to your population has absolutely nothing to do with voting blocs. Would they be a poison pill to the state of Palestine? Yes. 100%. Eh, to be fair that's a distinct possibility, but I don't think it's 100%. More like 40 to 60% or something like this. Quite likely but not a certainty either. If humanity has taught me anything, it's that they can easily forget the past when things are going better now. Although this is a particularly long "past" to forget, so it might take longer. On August 26 2024 04:25 KwarK wrote:
Also why on earth would Israel want to administer Gaza? Gaza is an unfixable catastrophe. No Arab nation is willing to touch it with a barge pole. Half the population are children who have never known a working society, the other half is young adults who have also never known a working society, the intergenerational trauma is off the fucking charts, the population is deeply propagandized and radicalized, the main religion is a misogynistic homophobic fringe death cult offshoot of Islam that most other Islamic states actively fight against, they have no education, there is no economic infrastructure, there is no land to feed the people, no jobs, no nothing.
Everyone in the region has already recognized the reality of Gaza being a write off. Gaza is not getting better. Gaza is getting worse every year. Nobody wants to fucking touch Gaza, least of all Israel. There will never be a one state solution that covers Gaza. Gaza is poisoned beyond redemption, nobody wants to swallow it. Sure, I've read this before. I have no real problem with your position on the conflict, I've read all of it before and it is internally consistent and as far as I can see in line with reality. It doesn't sit right with my morality but I don't care about that and I don't think you should care either. I do find it tedious that you're being a contrarian for no reason these days instead of being a good poster like you used to be, but again I'll get over it.
He’s not wrong on the points he was making though, I wouldn’t tag those observations with the contrarian label.
My native land has outlier levels of mental health problems, suicide especially, as do areas like the former Yugoslavia, economic underperformance etc are also observed. It seems a growth industry in academia is studying inter-generational trauma and how long that persists. Interesting, much of what I seen is pretty compellingly argued, depressing to consider but it does seem a legitimate phenomenon. An interesting contrast to inter-state wars, no matter how brutal which PTSD aside tend to bounce back to normality quite quickly versus protracted civil kind of conflicts which linger.
Gaza is that, but on crack cocaine, how does anyone assimilate a populace that have never known a functioning state?
|
On September 20 2024 08:12 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 05:42 Magic Powers wrote:On September 20 2024 05:32 Elroi wrote:
Why do you think this wasn't a meaningful strike? Israel targeted their communications systems. They were already reduced to using pagers. What should they do now to organize their attacks? Telegraphs? Imagine the disarray in the organization when they can't trust any of their equipment. Israel also neutralized a great number of Hizbollah fighters. Even though most of them aren't dead, I think Hizbollah as a whole was significantly neutered in this attack. I need to see proof that this will stop Hezbollah from killing Israelis in a meaningful way. How exactly is that gonna happen? Are Israelis being told to return to their homes? Not that I know. Doesn't seem safer than before. So what exactly was accomplished? If you think blown up pagers are going to change anything about that, you're not giving these terrorists much credit. They're intelligent human beings like you and I. They work closely together with other terrorist groups. They have states funding them. This problem will be solved, and their attacks won't stop, especially the missile attacks - which don't require a paging system. Does that surprise anyone? Since when do we assume terrorist groups are incompetent? They'll replace their equipment, trace back the origin of the tampered pagers and continue on with their regular activities. The number of terrorists being killed is completely insignificant, this is just a small dent. They're assumed to be at least 20-40k strong with several tens of thousands of reservists ready. It seems an area to me where proof is quite thin on the ground. One has to go with informed intuition, extrapolation and interpretation. Where’s the proof that if Israel curtailed settlements and treated Gazans better, that it would cut violence towards Israel from Gazans? It doesn’t exist, because it hasn’t happened. Doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea or can’t be cogently argued for, hell it’s my personal position but you can’t prove it. I wouldn’t underestimate the James Bond gadget element here. It’s one thing to kill x amount of folks or cripple them, numerically it’s nothing crazy versus other methods. But doing it via their own equipment, equipment they adopted in the first place to avoid compromise such is the esteem your intelligence is held in, hey that’d put the fear of God into me anyway. But how does one measure that? We’re talking different levels of scale here, the entities aren’t fully comparable but the IRA was operationally crippled in ways by two things. British intelligence infiltration, but also the perception of that infiltration. Clandestine organisations can struggle and be impacted just as much by the latter as the former, you have to second guess everything, you have to limit who knows what and that adds up to limit your operational effectiveness. Israel, rightly got a lot of condemnation for less than targeted reprisals against Hamas in Gaza, this is about as targeted as you can reasonably achieve. Aside from just leaving Hezbollah to do their thing I’m plenty critical of Israel in other domains but what is the expectation of what they should do, or why is that the expectation? Are they just meant to do nothing or what? I’m not convinced that if we had a magic wand and the Palestine question was solved that Iran would cease being an antagonistic actor, and by extension Hezbollah Of all the nations on Earth it seems to me only Israel is expected to just suck it up and not react to things like consistent rocket attacks into their territory. I can’t stress enough that I find many elements of their policies morally repugnant, but in this area?
I thought that Salazarz's answer to you on this question was pretty good, didn't you like it?
Doing nothing would be better than doing this, yes, but of course I don't expect them to do nothing, and as far as the things they've done this is much better than bombing neighborhoods.
To me this is similar to talking about rockets and October 7th. Is October 7th worse than throwing rockets? Yeah, sure. Is throwing rockets at military places better than throwing rockets at civilians? Yeah, sure. But doing nothing would be better than doing any of this.
|
On September 20 2024 07:56 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 07:49 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 07:28 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 07:10 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:59 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:56 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:49 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:46 Oldwiseman44 wrote:On September 20 2024 06:37 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 06:25 Oldwiseman44 wrote:
[quote]
No I did not say your strawman. When I said no Palestine I meant the way there is no Chechnya any more and the way Donbas is now a "independent" republic. Which Israel could do as easy as Russia if they wanted to. It would not lead to the end of their existence as a Jewish state.
Israel being a democracy with a relatively small population, if they give citizen status to the Palestinians like Russia does with Chechnya, this will lead to an equal number of Arabs and Jews with voting rights (7.2 million Jews for 6.7 million Arabs, and this doesn't account for the right to return of palestinian refugees). There is no shot that those populations vote to maintain a Jewish State, not every Israeli Jew agrees with the far right. If you plan to not give them full citizenship, then congratulations, the thing that you're saying ought to be happening is already happening, as the West Bank currently does live under military occupation of Israel, and unless there's a drastic change in world politics ("unless" not being the greatest word here as I think a change is quite likely to happen), Gaza will be too in the near future. Did you give up on your last strawman so you are coming up with another? When did I say what Israel should do in any of my posts? Did Russia do the exact same thing in each area? Is what they did in Donbas something Israel could do if they wanted too? This is non responsive. Stick to the point please. The irony is thick when you cut the point from my response and only respond to that. Which was off the point but so have all of your responses. So you know walk your own talk. But we both know this is just a dodge of the tough questions. You made an argument that doesn't work objectively, like it's not that I have a different opinion you're just very clearly wrong. Why would I want to discuss other topics with you when you can't acknowledge that. If you remember to a couple of hours ago you responded to a post not intended for you and asked me questions. This is why I responded to you and asked you questions. The big difference being is I am acting in good faith and responding to your actual questions and you are not. At no point have I made any of the arguments you are even mad about. If my initial post is objectively wrong, go through it and explain. I'd be interested as likely would be others. But please stick to my words and not whatever presumptions you have created. No problem. As already stated multiple times, you argued in your first post that Manitou's point was not internally consistent because he wouldn't say the same thing about Ukraine vs Russia that he does about Israel vs Palestine. I pointed out that this wasn't proof that he was being inconsistent, as if we're doing the analogy Israel is like Russia and Palestine is like Ukraine, so it makes sense to not say the same thing about Ukraine and about Israel. You argued that I was wrong and that Israel was, in fact, like Ukraine, because if Israel was like Russia then there wouldn't be a Palestine anymore. Then you changed your mind a few times about what "no Palestine" means but none of those explanations worked: - If it means crushing it with a military presence then Israel is currently doing that in the West Bank, so it's not true that Russia is doing something different - If it means annexing it as part of Russia then we have explained why Israel can't do that with all of Palestine under the current circumstances - If it means ethnic cleansing we have established that Russia hasn't done that quickly anywhere in recent times, so the fact that Israel isn't doing it quickly doesn't make Israel different from Russia. As such, your argument for saying that Israel is not like Russia in the analogy doesn't work. Much better, but no that was not my argument so go re-read it. For example I point out the massive power difference. The massive power difference is something that you brought up later, in your initial argument you didn't mention it. Nevertheless, and more importantly, it doesn't bring anything new to this conversation. The argument is refuted in the same three ways. Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 07:47 Manit0u wrote:
In theory you could draw some parallels. Both Israel and Russia are pretty much fascist states. They're both also trying to annex other territories. Russia did it's puppet-state republics as a pretext to enter Ukraine while Israel is using the settlements in the west bank.
In any case, my stance on both of those conflicts will be different because Ukraine vs Russia is an actual war where two military forces are fighting whereas what's happening in the Middle East is some weird form of asymmetric warfare that's been going on for the past 76 years. I didn't see that post my bad, for sure yeah I agree with all of this. I'm only speaking in the context of the analogy, of course in real world terms the two conflicts are very different.
So we agree that they are proxy armies of Iran.
Obviously you are against the full ground assault into Palestine. It sounds like you are against the pager attack.
How would you deal with the Iranian proxy armies and Iran itself?
What is your logic based on that Iran proxy armies have the best interest of Palestinians in mind with their actions?
|
On September 20 2024 08:27 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 08:12 WombaT wrote:On September 20 2024 05:42 Magic Powers wrote:On September 20 2024 05:32 Elroi wrote:
Why do you think this wasn't a meaningful strike? Israel targeted their communications systems. They were already reduced to using pagers. What should they do now to organize their attacks? Telegraphs? Imagine the disarray in the organization when they can't trust any of their equipment. Israel also neutralized a great number of Hizbollah fighters. Even though most of them aren't dead, I think Hizbollah as a whole was significantly neutered in this attack. I need to see proof that this will stop Hezbollah from killing Israelis in a meaningful way. How exactly is that gonna happen? Are Israelis being told to return to their homes? Not that I know. Doesn't seem safer than before. So what exactly was accomplished? If you think blown up pagers are going to change anything about that, you're not giving these terrorists much credit. They're intelligent human beings like you and I. They work closely together with other terrorist groups. They have states funding them. This problem will be solved, and their attacks won't stop, especially the missile attacks - which don't require a paging system. Does that surprise anyone? Since when do we assume terrorist groups are incompetent? They'll replace their equipment, trace back the origin of the tampered pagers and continue on with their regular activities. The number of terrorists being killed is completely insignificant, this is just a small dent. They're assumed to be at least 20-40k strong with several tens of thousands of reservists ready. It seems an area to me where proof is quite thin on the ground. One has to go with informed intuition, extrapolation and interpretation. Where’s the proof that if Israel curtailed settlements and treated Gazans better, that it would cut violence towards Israel from Gazans? It doesn’t exist, because it hasn’t happened. Doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea or can’t be cogently argued for, hell it’s my personal position but you can’t prove it. I wouldn’t underestimate the James Bond gadget element here. It’s one thing to kill x amount of folks or cripple them, numerically it’s nothing crazy versus other methods. But doing it via their own equipment, equipment they adopted in the first place to avoid compromise such is the esteem your intelligence is held in, hey that’d put the fear of God into me anyway. But how does one measure that? We’re talking different levels of scale here, the entities aren’t fully comparable but the IRA was operationally crippled in ways by two things. British intelligence infiltration, but also the perception of that infiltration. Clandestine organisations can struggle and be impacted just as much by the latter as the former, you have to second guess everything, you have to limit who knows what and that adds up to limit your operational effectiveness. Israel, rightly got a lot of condemnation for less than targeted reprisals against Hamas in Gaza, this is about as targeted as you can reasonably achieve. Aside from just leaving Hezbollah to do their thing I’m plenty critical of Israel in other domains but what is the expectation of what they should do, or why is that the expectation? Are they just meant to do nothing or what? I’m not convinced that if we had a magic wand and the Palestine question was solved that Iran would cease being an antagonistic actor, and by extension Hezbollah Of all the nations on Earth it seems to me only Israel is expected to just suck it up and not react to things like consistent rocket attacks into their territory. I can’t stress enough that I find many elements of their policies morally repugnant, but in this area? I thought that Salazarz's answer to you on this question was pretty good, didn't you like it? Doing nothing would be better than doing this, yes, but of course I don't expect them to do nothing, and as far as the things they've done this is much better than bombing neighborhoods. To me this is similar to talking about rockets and October 7th. Is October 7th worse than throwing rockets? Yeah, sure. Is throwing rockets at military places better than throwing rockets at civilians? Yeah, sure. But doing nothing would be better than doing any of this.
Agreed everyone should do nothing and we should have world peace. In fact I think everyone would agree with this.
Is it your position that everyone should turn the other cheek and do nothing no matter what? Or at what point should a nation fight back and how should they do that?
|
Northern Ireland25510 Posts
On September 20 2024 08:27 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 08:12 WombaT wrote:On September 20 2024 05:42 Magic Powers wrote:On September 20 2024 05:32 Elroi wrote:
Why do you think this wasn't a meaningful strike? Israel targeted their communications systems. They were already reduced to using pagers. What should they do now to organize their attacks? Telegraphs? Imagine the disarray in the organization when they can't trust any of their equipment. Israel also neutralized a great number of Hizbollah fighters. Even though most of them aren't dead, I think Hizbollah as a whole was significantly neutered in this attack. I need to see proof that this will stop Hezbollah from killing Israelis in a meaningful way. How exactly is that gonna happen? Are Israelis being told to return to their homes? Not that I know. Doesn't seem safer than before. So what exactly was accomplished? If you think blown up pagers are going to change anything about that, you're not giving these terrorists much credit. They're intelligent human beings like you and I. They work closely together with other terrorist groups. They have states funding them. This problem will be solved, and their attacks won't stop, especially the missile attacks - which don't require a paging system. Does that surprise anyone? Since when do we assume terrorist groups are incompetent? They'll replace their equipment, trace back the origin of the tampered pagers and continue on with their regular activities. The number of terrorists being killed is completely insignificant, this is just a small dent. They're assumed to be at least 20-40k strong with several tens of thousands of reservists ready. It seems an area to me where proof is quite thin on the ground. One has to go with informed intuition, extrapolation and interpretation. Where’s the proof that if Israel curtailed settlements and treated Gazans better, that it would cut violence towards Israel from Gazans? It doesn’t exist, because it hasn’t happened. Doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea or can’t be cogently argued for, hell it’s my personal position but you can’t prove it. I wouldn’t underestimate the James Bond gadget element here. It’s one thing to kill x amount of folks or cripple them, numerically it’s nothing crazy versus other methods. But doing it via their own equipment, equipment they adopted in the first place to avoid compromise such is the esteem your intelligence is held in, hey that’d put the fear of God into me anyway. But how does one measure that? We’re talking different levels of scale here, the entities aren’t fully comparable but the IRA was operationally crippled in ways by two things. British intelligence infiltration, but also the perception of that infiltration. Clandestine organisations can struggle and be impacted just as much by the latter as the former, you have to second guess everything, you have to limit who knows what and that adds up to limit your operational effectiveness. Israel, rightly got a lot of condemnation for less than targeted reprisals against Hamas in Gaza, this is about as targeted as you can reasonably achieve. Aside from just leaving Hezbollah to do their thing I’m plenty critical of Israel in other domains but what is the expectation of what they should do, or why is that the expectation? Are they just meant to do nothing or what? I’m not convinced that if we had a magic wand and the Palestine question was solved that Iran would cease being an antagonistic actor, and by extension Hezbollah Of all the nations on Earth it seems to me only Israel is expected to just suck it up and not react to things like consistent rocket attacks into their territory. I can’t stress enough that I find many elements of their policies morally repugnant, but in this area? I thought that Salazarz's answer to you on this question was pretty good, didn't you like it? Doing nothing would be better than doing this, yes, but of course I don't expect them to do nothing, and as far as the things they've done this is much better than bombing neighborhoods. To me this is similar to talking about rockets and October 7th. Is October 7th worse than throwing rockets? Yeah, sure. Is throwing rockets at military places better than throwing rockets at civilians? Yeah, sure. But doing nothing would be better than doing any of this.
Aye it was a fine riposte. In the abstract sure, absolutely. Folks shouldn’t be killing other folks under the auspices of national identities. I’d prefer that world, it’s just not the one we inhabit, unfortunately
I think it’s a perfectly reasonable position, but if one wants to adopt it it should be across the board.
|
On September 20 2024 08:22 KwarK wrote:
I'm not being contrarian, I really do believe that the stance that Israel is pursuing a policy of eradication of Gazans due to some racially exclusionary national policy to be contrary to reality. I don't like Israel but that doesn't mean I have to make things up about it. You don't need to make up weird lies about Israel to criticize it and this is a weird lie.
The reason why Israel wants the land is colonial in nature, with a religious fascism component attached to it. If Israel wasn't a democratic system you could achieve those goals without moving the Palestinians, you would just annex their land and then rule them, that would be okay. Of course in the current day there are many other factors that make this annexation impossible, and those are the reasons that jump at you over the democracy blocs reason. I think the democracy blocs reason is more important than those other factors because it's a systemic reason, it's mechanical. Even if we "fix" all of the other factors that appear more damaging in the current situation, it would still be impossible for Israel to make Palestinians citizens of Israel. And they don't plan to.
On September 20 2024 08:22 KwarK wrote:
The goal of Israel doesn't have anything to do with Palestinians.
On November 03 2023 02:25 KwarK wrote:
Israel just leaked an official government policy document that advocated for the forced relocation of the Palestinians to Sinai. It’s not a good look if anyone wants to argue they’d not really do ethnic cleansing. There are clearly individuals within the Israeli state that not only would ethically cleanse Palestine but are actively shaping policy in that direction. That leaves us in the undesirable position of hoping that more reasonable politicians overrule them, in the Netanyahu government.
|
On September 20 2024 08:34 Oldwiseman44 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 08:27 Nebuchad wrote:On September 20 2024 08:12 WombaT wrote:On September 20 2024 05:42 Magic Powers wrote:On September 20 2024 05:32 Elroi wrote:
Why do you think this wasn't a meaningful strike? Israel targeted their communications systems. They were already reduced to using pagers. What should they do now to organize their attacks? Telegraphs? Imagine the disarray in the organization when they can't trust any of their equipment. Israel also neutralized a great number of Hizbollah fighters. Even though most of them aren't dead, I think Hizbollah as a whole was significantly neutered in this attack. I need to see proof that this will stop Hezbollah from killing Israelis in a meaningful way. How exactly is that gonna happen? Are Israelis being told to return to their homes? Not that I know. Doesn't seem safer than before. So what exactly was accomplished? If you think blown up pagers are going to change anything about that, you're not giving these terrorists much credit. They're intelligent human beings like you and I. They work closely together with other terrorist groups. They have states funding them. This problem will be solved, and their attacks won't stop, especially the missile attacks - which don't require a paging system. Does that surprise anyone? Since when do we assume terrorist groups are incompetent? They'll replace their equipment, trace back the origin of the tampered pagers and continue on with their regular activities. The number of terrorists being killed is completely insignificant, this is just a small dent. They're assumed to be at least 20-40k strong with several tens of thousands of reservists ready. It seems an area to me where proof is quite thin on the ground. One has to go with informed intuition, extrapolation and interpretation. Where’s the proof that if Israel curtailed settlements and treated Gazans better, that it would cut violence towards Israel from Gazans? It doesn’t exist, because it hasn’t happened. Doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea or can’t be cogently argued for, hell it’s my personal position but you can’t prove it. I wouldn’t underestimate the James Bond gadget element here. It’s one thing to kill x amount of folks or cripple them, numerically it’s nothing crazy versus other methods. But doing it via their own equipment, equipment they adopted in the first place to avoid compromise such is the esteem your intelligence is held in, hey that’d put the fear of God into me anyway. But how does one measure that? We’re talking different levels of scale here, the entities aren’t fully comparable but the IRA was operationally crippled in ways by two things. British intelligence infiltration, but also the perception of that infiltration. Clandestine organisations can struggle and be impacted just as much by the latter as the former, you have to second guess everything, you have to limit who knows what and that adds up to limit your operational effectiveness. Israel, rightly got a lot of condemnation for less than targeted reprisals against Hamas in Gaza, this is about as targeted as you can reasonably achieve. Aside from just leaving Hezbollah to do their thing I’m plenty critical of Israel in other domains but what is the expectation of what they should do, or why is that the expectation? Are they just meant to do nothing or what? I’m not convinced that if we had a magic wand and the Palestine question was solved that Iran would cease being an antagonistic actor, and by extension Hezbollah Of all the nations on Earth it seems to me only Israel is expected to just suck it up and not react to things like consistent rocket attacks into their territory. I can’t stress enough that I find many elements of their policies morally repugnant, but in this area? I thought that Salazarz's answer to you on this question was pretty good, didn't you like it? Doing nothing would be better than doing this, yes, but of course I don't expect them to do nothing, and as far as the things they've done this is much better than bombing neighborhoods. To me this is similar to talking about rockets and October 7th. Is October 7th worse than throwing rockets? Yeah, sure. Is throwing rockets at military places better than throwing rockets at civilians? Yeah, sure. But doing nothing would be better than doing any of this. Agreed everyone should do nothing and we should have world peace. In fact I think everyone would agree with this. Is it your position that everyone should turn the other cheek and do nothing no matter what? Or at what point should a nation fight back and how should they do that?
I disagree that Israel is the first cheek. I think Israel is smacking the cheek of Palestine with its military occupation, blockade, and settling. And then I think Palestine is not turning the other cheek.
|
United States42827 Posts
On September 20 2024 08:36 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 08:22 KwarK wrote:
I'm not being contrarian, I really do believe that the stance that Israel is pursuing a policy of eradication of Gazans due to some racially exclusionary national policy to be contrary to reality. I don't like Israel but that doesn't mean I have to make things up about it. You don't need to make up weird lies about Israel to criticize it and this is a weird lie. The reason why Israel wants the land is colonial in nature, with a religious fascism component attached to it. If Israel wasn't a democratic system you could achieve those goals without moving the Palestinians, you would just annex their land and then rule them, that would be okay. Of course in the current day there are many other factors that make this annexation impossible, and those are the reasons that jump at you over the democracy blocs reason. I think the democracy blocs reason is more important than those other factors because it's a systemic reason, it's mechanical. Even if we "fix" all of the other factors that appear more damaging in the current situation, it would still be impossible for Israel to make Palestinians citizens of Israel. And they don't plan to. Show nested quote +On September 20 2024 08:22 KwarK wrote:
The goal of Israel doesn't have anything to do with Palestinians. Show nested quote +On November 03 2023 02:25 KwarK wrote:
Israel just leaked an official government policy document that advocated for the forced relocation of the Palestinians to Sinai. It’s not a good look if anyone wants to argue they’d not really do ethnic cleansing. There are clearly individuals within the Israeli state that not only would ethically cleanse Palestine but are actively shaping policy in that direction. That leaves us in the undesirable position of hoping that more reasonable politicians overrule them, in the Netanyahu government.
A minority position advocated for unsuccessfully by a minority within a hard right government that I am not a fan of. Not the literal goal of the state of Israel. That would be a gross misrepresentation of it. Again, it's bad enough that there are people like that within the government, you don't need to take it further and claim that it's the purpose of the nation.
Also it's a position that exists within a context of the failed state on their borders. I've argued that the situation would get better with population controls imposed upon Gaza and I'm not trying to steal all their land for farms. The motivation behind the proposal is to try to move the dumpster fire from their back yard to Egypt's because it's a catastrophe that injures everyone nearby.
They're not saying "wouldn't things be better if there were no Jordanians nearby" or "wouldn't things be better if there were no Egyptians nearby". They're good with the millions of Palestinian Arabs living peacefully within their borders. It's the failed state that fires missiles at them that they're upset by.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
