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On July 10 2025 05:03 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 04:45 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 23:21 Magic Powers wrote:On July 09 2025 22:18 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 18:32 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 12:58 RJGooner wrote:
Always with the both sides trying to put Hamas and the IDF on some kind of a similar moral plane. So sick and tired of this.
Have to agree with you there, this moral equivalence is disgusting since the IDF is much worse. Bonkers if you believe this. No, it is not "bonkers". You can disagree without calling it that. For example in terms of total casualties, the IDF has more than surpassed Hamas. In that sense the IDF would be objectively much worse. Total casualties has Ukraine as worse then Russian. There are ways to make many argument but that does not make them good ways. These two wars are based on entirely different premises. Ukraine is not in a position to end the war with Russia, only Russia is in such a position. Russia is the one continuing the war until Ukraine falls. Ukraine would end the war immediately if Russia withdrew to the border. If Israel stopped fighting, they'd just be withdrawing from Gaza. They wouldn't be surrendering anything. If Ukraine stopped fighting, they'd be surrendering their country to Putin's Russia. This is why Palestinian casualties are such a big deal. The Israel-Gaza war is completely and utterly pointless from both perspectives. Neither Palestinians nor Israelis stand to gain anything from its continuation. Meanwhile Ukrainians stand to gain everything if Russia surrenders, and they stand to lose everything if Ukraine surrenders.
I'm not making equivalencies I'm pointing out that casualties is not a good measure.
The rest is one side of the argument, but the other side is that Hamas has nothing to gain for the Palestinians to be continuing this war. They could have and still can simply give up the hostages and power and the war would end. But at the end of the day Israel decided it did not care of the cost they were not going to let a proxy army of extremists who's sole goal was to kill as many of them as possible hopefully every last one live and operate just outside their boarders . And Hamas decided that killing even a few Israelis was worth destroying the lives of everyone living in Gaza.
It is strange to paint Hamas without any agency. They started this and they could finish it as well. What there goals were in starting it, I guess is up for some debate, but no one here will even take a stab at anything other than killing as many innocents as they could to enrage Israelis. This attack had absolutely nothing to do with freedom or any benefit at all to the Gazans.
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On July 09 2025 22:18 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2025 18:32 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 12:58 RJGooner wrote:
Always with the both sides trying to put Hamas and the IDF on some kind of a similar moral plane. So sick and tired of this.
Have to agree with you there, this moral equivalence is disgusting since the IDF is much worse. Bonkers if you believe this.
Why?
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Norway28662 Posts
RJGooner, what if the reason why Israel does all the 'vaccinates palestinian children, lets some aid get through, occasionally avoids killing civilians' precisely because they're skirting the line of what behavior people will accept? Like if their goal is to take control of Gaza and remove every palestinian living there, they realize that 'well, if we just kill everybody, we're gonna look pretty bad and we might actually lose western support', so they do the bare minimum to ensure that they still have sufficient western support (and I guess internal support, apparently only 47% agreed with the statement asking whether the Israeli army, in conquering a city, should act like Joshua did at Jericho—“killing all its inhabitants”) while also trying to make life so bad for the palestinians living in Gaza + shoot at journalists so there's less coverage + actively settle the territory so the palestinians remaining have an even smaller area and eventually a refugee camp in Sudan ends up actually looking like the less bad option?
Like I'm not saying that Israel wants every palestinian dead, but I think the current political leadership and a large segment (82% supported expelling everyone from Gaza) of the population want all of them gone, and for the area that currently makes up Israel+Palestine to only be Israel. With that in mind, I think the way they are going about it has a lot better chance at giving them that outcome 40 years from now than just massacring everybody in Gaza would, because even if I could see the current american leadership be okay with that, it would probably lose them the bipartisan support they've had.
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On July 10 2025 05:30 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2025 22:18 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 18:32 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 12:58 RJGooner wrote:
Always with the both sides trying to put Hamas and the IDF on some kind of a similar moral plane. So sick and tired of this.
Have to agree with you there, this moral equivalence is disgusting since the IDF is much worse. Bonkers if you believe this. Why?
Because Hamas is clearly way worse and not the other way around.
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On July 10 2025 05:40 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 05:30 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 22:18 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 18:32 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 12:58 RJGooner wrote:
Always with the both sides trying to put Hamas and the IDF on some kind of a similar moral plane. So sick and tired of this.
Have to agree with you there, this moral equivalence is disgusting since the IDF is much worse. Bonkers if you believe this. Why? Because Hamas is clearly way worse and not the other way around.
I disagree.
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On July 10 2025 05:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:
RJGooner, what if the reason why Israel does all the 'vaccinates palestinian children, lets some aid get through, occasionally avoids killing civilians' precisely because they're skirting the line of what behavior people will accept? Like if their goal is to take control of Gaza and remove every palestinian living there, they realize that 'well, if we just kill everybody, we're gonna look pretty bad and we might actually lose western support', so they do the bare minimum to ensure that they still have sufficient western support (and I guess internal support, apparently only 47% agreed with the statement asking whether the Israeli army, in conquering a city, should act like Joshua did at Jericho—“killing all its inhabitants”) while also trying to make life so bad for the palestinians living in Gaza + shoot at journalists so there's less coverage + actively settle the territory so the palestinians remaining have an even smaller area and eventually a refugee camp in Sudan ends up actually looking like the less bad option?
Like I'm not saying that Israel wants every palestinian dead, but I think the current political leadership and a large segment (82% supported expelling everyone from Gaza) of the population want all of them gone, and for the area that currently makes up Israel+Palestine to only be Israel. With that in mind, I think the way they are going about it has a lot better chance at giving them that outcome 40 years from now than just massacring everybody in Gaza would, because even if I could see the current american leadership be okay with that, it would probably lose them the bipartisan support they've had.
It is strange to me that so many people believe as fact that the deep state is Israel has these grand plans, where they are both so powerful they do whatever they want, but also need to tow a line to keep support. It could be true, just like a lot of MAGA theories could be right. Or they could be doing exactly what they said they are doing and doing everything in there power to remove Hamas and Iran's influence from their boarders.
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No, I'm just interested in good faith argumentation. That is how it works when you argue in good faith. You allow the opposing argument room for validity, i.e. if a person can substantiate their argument then it should be considered to be within the realm of reason and not dismissed out of hand.
This is 100% a bad faith argument on your part. I'm not "pivoting". What I'm doing is allowing room for a range of possibilities outside of strictly genocide. And I allow this because I'm open-minded, not because I realize that I'm wrong and am unwilling to admit it.
I firmly stand by the accusation of genocide. However, my goal isn't to make everybody around me adopt the same terminology as mine. My goal is to present arguments in such a manner that people can agree that this war is A) a genocide or B) being fought in such a manner that the accusation of genocide is plausible.
OK, but you're not really interested in good-faith argumentation are you? When I made substantive points about why your use of the term genocide was absolutely not applicable you just responded with "well there's mountains of evidence that Israel is committing mass murder and if you don't agree you're in an echo chamber." Aside from the fact that there isn't such evidence - you didn't even make an attempt to defend your claim. How on earth can you say that your goal is to establish that the claim of genocide is within reason when you can't even defend it?
What it sounds like to me is: "Well, I think it's genocide but hey - I'm open to the idea that it could any of (insert horrible crimes here) to describe what is going on." That way you never have to be pinned down on anything when someone pushes back on you.
As for the reputable people who have come to this conclusion - I can also cite the fact that the governments of Germany, France, the UK, and the US don't believe it's genocide. I certainly consider them more reliable on this issue than Amnesty and HRW which have a well-documented bias against the state of Israel. But again, not really interesting - what is more interesting is how that claim measures up to what the law is and what the facts are on the ground.
The facts and context on the ground are more than 60 000 dead Palestinians, the vast majority of them innocent people. There have been plenty of reports of Israel destroying buildings and compounds in which no members of Hamas were found, attacking sites and vehicles that are under protection for humanitarian purposes, etc.
Aside from the fact that a significant portion of that number is Hamas militants - you like others have misplaced the blame for these deaths. Hamas launched this war in the first place. They routinely hide behind civilians. They don't wear uniforms. They booby trap houses and compounds. Israel absolutely has a right to prosecute its war against Hamas. That civilians die from collateral damage is tragic and I want it to stop as soon as possible. Hamas has the power to stop it right now - they choose not to. I don't know why Israel gets blamed for that.
Amnesty International has investigated a number of attacks and come to a clear conclusion of war crimes being committed.
Starting with the obvious: war crimes and genocide are not the same thing. That aside, the Amnesty report has several flaws. To name a few: that it relies very heavily on local authorities in Gaza and the that it deliberately minimizes Israeli actions to try to protect civilians, that it basically ignores Hamas' actions that deliberately put Gaza's in harms way, and that it tries to stretch the definition of genocide.
The other big problem is this: Amnesty International is not in any kind of position whatsoever to make judgments about whether these attacks can be considered war crimes or not. They don't know what intelligence was behind them, they don't know what kind of analysis went into what kind of munition was used. They are not in position to make a good judgement of whether the strikes were compliant with international law.
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On July 10 2025 05:40 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 05:30 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 22:18 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 18:32 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 12:58 RJGooner wrote:
Always with the both sides trying to put Hamas and the IDF on some kind of a similar moral plane. So sick and tired of this.
Have to agree with you there, this moral equivalence is disgusting since the IDF is much worse. Bonkers if you believe this. Why? Because Hamas is clearly way worse and not the other way around.
I would imagine that we could agree that killing innocent people is pretty much the worst thing you can do, right?
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Norway28662 Posts
When 82% of people in Israel answer that they would like to expel everyone from Gaza in a poll, it would almost be more weird if it wasn't the desired policy of the government, too. (I believe this is the original publishing of this poll, but you can find it many other places if you search for pennsylvania state poll israel gaza or something to that effect)
This is the same poll that shows that 'A majority of 56 percent of Jews supported the "transfer (forced expulsion) of Arab citizens of Israel to other countries', and - indeed - explicitly genocidal and not just ethnic cleansy - 'when asked directly whether they agreed with the position that the IDF, "when conquering an enemy city, should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites acted when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, namely, to kill all its inhabitants?" nearly half, 47 percent, agreed.'
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On July 10 2025 05:21 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 05:03 Magic Powers wrote:On July 10 2025 04:45 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 23:21 Magic Powers wrote:On July 09 2025 22:18 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 18:32 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 12:58 RJGooner wrote:
Always with the both sides trying to put Hamas and the IDF on some kind of a similar moral plane. So sick and tired of this.
Have to agree with you there, this moral equivalence is disgusting since the IDF is much worse. Bonkers if you believe this. No, it is not "bonkers". You can disagree without calling it that. For example in terms of total casualties, the IDF has more than surpassed Hamas. In that sense the IDF would be objectively much worse. Total casualties has Ukraine as worse then Russian. There are ways to make many argument but that does not make them good ways. These two wars are based on entirely different premises. Ukraine is not in a position to end the war with Russia, only Russia is in such a position. Russia is the one continuing the war until Ukraine falls. Ukraine would end the war immediately if Russia withdrew to the border. If Israel stopped fighting, they'd just be withdrawing from Gaza. They wouldn't be surrendering anything. If Ukraine stopped fighting, they'd be surrendering their country to Putin's Russia. This is why Palestinian casualties are such a big deal. The Israel-Gaza war is completely and utterly pointless from both perspectives. Neither Palestinians nor Israelis stand to gain anything from its continuation. Meanwhile Ukrainians stand to gain everything if Russia surrenders, and they stand to lose everything if Ukraine surrenders. I'm not making equivalencies I'm pointing out that casualties is not a good measure. The rest is one side of the argument, but the other side is that Hamas has nothing to gain for the Palestinians to be continuing this war. They could have and still can simply give up the hostages and power and the war would end. But at the end of the day Israel decided it did not care of the cost they were not going to let a proxy army of extremists who's sole goal was to kill as many of them as possible hopefully every last one live and operate just outside their boarders . And Hamas decided that killing even a few Israelis was worth destroying the lives of everyone living in Gaza. It is strange to paint Hamas without any agency. They started this and they could finish it as well. What there goals were in starting it, I guess is up for some debate, but no one here will even take a stab at anything other than killing as many innocents as they could to enrage Israelis. This attack had absolutely nothing to do with freedom or any benefit at all to the Gazans.
Since when are casualties not a good measure?
Also, I'm not painting Hamas without agency at all? I've called them out dozens of times in this thread alone. Why do you keep presenting my position on Hamas the way you do? It's incredibly irritating. No, it's more than irritating, at this point I have to call it bad faith argumentation. If you read my posts about Hamas, you know exactly that I consider them worthless scum and evil to the bone. And WITH agency, not without.
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@RJGooner
If you reject Amnesty International, you can just as well reject every piece of evidence that has ever existed. Rejecting their evidence demonstrates an extreme level of partisanship. You cannot reject them and consider yourself credible.
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On July 10 2025 06:11 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 05:40 Billyboy wrote:On July 10 2025 05:30 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 22:18 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 18:32 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 12:58 RJGooner wrote:
Always with the both sides trying to put Hamas and the IDF on some kind of a similar moral plane. So sick and tired of this.
Have to agree with you there, this moral equivalence is disgusting since the IDF is much worse. Bonkers if you believe this. Why? Because Hamas is clearly way worse and not the other way around. I would imagine that we could agree that killing innocent people is pretty much the worst thing you can do, right?
It is up there for sure and intent is also an important factor.
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United States42638 Posts
Amnesty International are not the ultimate arbiters of truth that you seem to have them confused with. They rely upon fallible humans with agendas. They have a number of high profile errors.
Saying that you do not trust Amnesty International to perfectly collect, vet, compile, and interpret evidence is not declaring a general disbelief in the very concept of evidence.
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On July 10 2025 06:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:When 82% of people in Israel answer that they would like to expel everyone from Gaza in a poll, it would almost be more weird if it wasn't the desired policy of the government, too. ( I believe this is the original publishing of this poll, but you can find it many other places if you search for pennsylvania state poll israel gaza or something to that effect)This is the same poll that shows that 'A majority of 56 percent of Jews supported the "transfer (forced expulsion) of Arab citizens of Israel to other countries', and - indeed - explicitly genocidal and not just ethnic cleansy - 'when asked directly whether they agreed with the position that the IDF, "when conquering an enemy city, should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites acted when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, namely, to kill all its inhabitants?" nearly half, 47 percent, agreed.'
If Afghanistan bordered on the USA what do you think a poll would have looked like after 9/11?
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On July 10 2025 06:32 KwarK wrote:
Amnesty International are not the ultimate arbiters of truth that you seem to have them confused with. They rely upon fallible humans with agendas. They have a number of high profile errors.
Saying that you do not trust Amnesty International to perfectly collect, vet, compile, and interpret evidence is not declaring a general disbelief in the very concept of evidence.
Out of the following three, who do you trust the most?
A) RJGooner
B) Magic Powers
C) Amnesty International
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On July 10 2025 06:13 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 05:21 Billyboy wrote:On July 10 2025 05:03 Magic Powers wrote:On July 10 2025 04:45 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 23:21 Magic Powers wrote:On July 09 2025 22:18 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 18:32 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 12:58 RJGooner wrote:
Always with the both sides trying to put Hamas and the IDF on some kind of a similar moral plane. So sick and tired of this.
Have to agree with you there, this moral equivalence is disgusting since the IDF is much worse. Bonkers if you believe this. No, it is not "bonkers". You can disagree without calling it that. For example in terms of total casualties, the IDF has more than surpassed Hamas. In that sense the IDF would be objectively much worse. Total casualties has Ukraine as worse then Russian. There are ways to make many argument but that does not make them good ways. These two wars are based on entirely different premises. Ukraine is not in a position to end the war with Russia, only Russia is in such a position. Russia is the one continuing the war until Ukraine falls. Ukraine would end the war immediately if Russia withdrew to the border. If Israel stopped fighting, they'd just be withdrawing from Gaza. They wouldn't be surrendering anything. If Ukraine stopped fighting, they'd be surrendering their country to Putin's Russia. This is why Palestinian casualties are such a big deal. The Israel-Gaza war is completely and utterly pointless from both perspectives. Neither Palestinians nor Israelis stand to gain anything from its continuation. Meanwhile Ukrainians stand to gain everything if Russia surrenders, and they stand to lose everything if Ukraine surrenders. I'm not making equivalencies I'm pointing out that casualties is not a good measure. The rest is one side of the argument, but the other side is that Hamas has nothing to gain for the Palestinians to be continuing this war. They could have and still can simply give up the hostages and power and the war would end. But at the end of the day Israel decided it did not care of the cost they were not going to let a proxy army of extremists who's sole goal was to kill as many of them as possible hopefully every last one live and operate just outside their boarders . And Hamas decided that killing even a few Israelis was worth destroying the lives of everyone living in Gaza. It is strange to paint Hamas without any agency. They started this and they could finish it as well. What there goals were in starting it, I guess is up for some debate, but no one here will even take a stab at anything other than killing as many innocents as they could to enrage Israelis. This attack had absolutely nothing to do with freedom or any benefit at all to the Gazans. Since when are casualties not a good measure? Also, I'm not painting Hamas without agency at all? I've called them out dozens of times in this thread alone. Why do you keep presenting my position on Hamas the way you do? It's incredibly irritating. No, it's more than irritating, at this point I have to call it bad faith argumentation. If you read my posts about Hamas, you know exactly that I consider them worthless scum and evil to the bone. And WITH agency, not without.
I just gave an example of why casualties are not good. You explained how Israel could end the conflict and I explained how Hamas could. I agree with you on how Israel can, you don't seem to think Hamas could. This is what is meant with agency.
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On July 10 2025 06:34 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 06:13 Magic Powers wrote:On July 10 2025 05:21 Billyboy wrote:On July 10 2025 05:03 Magic Powers wrote:On July 10 2025 04:45 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 23:21 Magic Powers wrote:On July 09 2025 22:18 Billyboy wrote:On July 09 2025 18:32 Nebuchad wrote:On July 09 2025 12:58 RJGooner wrote:
Always with the both sides trying to put Hamas and the IDF on some kind of a similar moral plane. So sick and tired of this.
Have to agree with you there, this moral equivalence is disgusting since the IDF is much worse. Bonkers if you believe this. No, it is not "bonkers". You can disagree without calling it that. For example in terms of total casualties, the IDF has more than surpassed Hamas. In that sense the IDF would be objectively much worse. Total casualties has Ukraine as worse then Russian. There are ways to make many argument but that does not make them good ways. These two wars are based on entirely different premises. Ukraine is not in a position to end the war with Russia, only Russia is in such a position. Russia is the one continuing the war until Ukraine falls. Ukraine would end the war immediately if Russia withdrew to the border. If Israel stopped fighting, they'd just be withdrawing from Gaza. They wouldn't be surrendering anything. If Ukraine stopped fighting, they'd be surrendering their country to Putin's Russia. This is why Palestinian casualties are such a big deal. The Israel-Gaza war is completely and utterly pointless from both perspectives. Neither Palestinians nor Israelis stand to gain anything from its continuation. Meanwhile Ukrainians stand to gain everything if Russia surrenders, and they stand to lose everything if Ukraine surrenders. I'm not making equivalencies I'm pointing out that casualties is not a good measure. The rest is one side of the argument, but the other side is that Hamas has nothing to gain for the Palestinians to be continuing this war. They could have and still can simply give up the hostages and power and the war would end. But at the end of the day Israel decided it did not care of the cost they were not going to let a proxy army of extremists who's sole goal was to kill as many of them as possible hopefully every last one live and operate just outside their boarders . And Hamas decided that killing even a few Israelis was worth destroying the lives of everyone living in Gaza. It is strange to paint Hamas without any agency. They started this and they could finish it as well. What there goals were in starting it, I guess is up for some debate, but no one here will even take a stab at anything other than killing as many innocents as they could to enrage Israelis. This attack had absolutely nothing to do with freedom or any benefit at all to the Gazans. Since when are casualties not a good measure? Also, I'm not painting Hamas without agency at all? I've called them out dozens of times in this thread alone. Why do you keep presenting my position on Hamas the way you do? It's incredibly irritating. No, it's more than irritating, at this point I have to call it bad faith argumentation. If you read my posts about Hamas, you know exactly that I consider them worthless scum and evil to the bone. And WITH agency, not without. I just gave an example of why casualties are not good. You explained how Israel could end the conflict and I explained how Hamas could. I agree with you on how Israel can, you don't seem to think Hamas could. This is what is meant with agency.
Dude. I said many times before that Hamas could end the conflict on their own terms. MANY times.
The reason why I didn't say it in THAT particular comment is because that was not part of the argument.
To return back to the argument: number of casualties IS in fact a good measure. It's one of the best ways to measure how bad one or both sides of a conflict are. It's not the only way, but it's one of the best ways. Literally the whole reason for this conflict is the fact that 1200 Israelis died. It was THE REASON for the entire conflict. Number of casualties is a big deal.
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Norway28662 Posts
On July 10 2025 06:33 Billyboy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 06:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:When 82% of people in Israel answer that they would like to expel everyone from Gaza in a poll, it would almost be more weird if it wasn't the desired policy of the government, too. ( I believe this is the original publishing of this poll, but you can find it many other places if you search for pennsylvania state poll israel gaza or something to that effect)This is the same poll that shows that 'A majority of 56 percent of Jews supported the "transfer (forced expulsion) of Arab citizens of Israel to other countries', and - indeed - explicitly genocidal and not just ethnic cleansy - 'when asked directly whether they agreed with the position that the IDF, "when conquering an enemy city, should act in a manner similar to the way the Israelites acted when they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, namely, to kill all its inhabitants?" nearly half, 47 percent, agreed.' If Afghanistan bordered on the USA what do you think a poll would have looked like after 9/11?
Numbers have changed somewhat since october 7th, but 48% agreed and 46% disagreed that Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel even back in 2016. This question got support from 56% of the respondends in Sorek's poll -indicating that yes, there's a change, and regarding Gaza in particular I'm guessing the change is bigger, but the idea that Israel should be for Jews and all of Palestine should ideally be Israel isn't like, a new sentiment within the Israeli population.
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On July 10 2025 05:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:
RJGooner, what if the reason why Israel does all the 'vaccinates palestinian children, lets some aid get through, occasionally avoids killing civilians' precisely because they're skirting the line of what behavior people will accept? Like if their goal is to take control of Gaza and remove every palestinian living there, they realize that 'well, if we just kill everybody, we're gonna look pretty bad and we might actually lose western support', so they do the bare minimum to ensure that they still have sufficient western support (and I guess internal support, apparently only 47% agreed with the statement asking whether the Israeli army, in conquering a city, should act like Joshua did at Jericho—“killing all its inhabitants”) while also trying to make life so bad for the palestinians living in Gaza + shoot at journalists so there's less coverage + actively settle the territory so the palestinians remaining have an even smaller area and eventually a refugee camp in Sudan ends up actually looking like the less bad option?
Like I'm not saying that Israel wants every palestinian dead, but I think the current political leadership and a large segment (82% supported expelling everyone from Gaza) of the population want all of them gone, and for the area that currently makes up Israel+Palestine to only be Israel. With that in mind, I think the way they are going about it has a lot better chance at giving them that outcome 40 years from now than just massacring everybody in Gaza would, because even if I could see the current american leadership be okay with that, it would probably lose them the bipartisan support they've had.
It's certainly possible that you are right. I'm not privy to the inner workings of Israeli government policy. If that is indeed their end goal then I'll be the first one to come back to this thread with a mea culpa and I know I'll be lobbying my own government to cut off any and all support unless the decision is reversed.
I have a few issues with the way you framed it and here's why I'm not where you are:
1. I don't agree that Israel is just doing the bare minimum. Israel is fighting in an immensely tough urban environment against an enemy that uses its own civilians as human shields and has built 500 miles of tunnels under pretty much every conceivable civilian structure. No other military that has fought in similar environments has shown nearly the capacity to be as targeted as IDF. And find me another conflict where one of the warring parties has done as much to facilitate aid to the opposing population as Israel has.
2. You are referencing a poll from Haaretz with those figures on Israeli population attitudes. A follow-up from researchers at Tel-Aviv University points out a number of issues with that poll (www.haaretz.com). I'm not convinced by the 82% number and polls that I have seen show only ~20% of Israelis actually support re-establishing settlements there. There is no denying that people like Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and a significant part of the Israeli public would like to see the Gazans gone. That's horrible - and I don't support it. But I don't believe that is reflected in the actual prosecution of the war in my view.
3. If this was indeed the grand plan of Israeli government policy - then they had ample time and ample excuses to do it before and they didn't. This isn't the first time Netanyahu has been in power with the support of right-wing politicians. Operation Protective Edge (the last big incursion into Gaza) could have easily been the pre-text to launch a broader war and try to achieve the expulsion you speak of.
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On July 10 2025 06:50 RJGooner wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 05:36 Liquid`Drone wrote:
RJGooner, what if the reason why Israel does all the 'vaccinates palestinian children, lets some aid get through, occasionally avoids killing civilians' precisely because they're skirting the line of what behavior people will accept? Like if their goal is to take control of Gaza and remove every palestinian living there, they realize that 'well, if we just kill everybody, we're gonna look pretty bad and we might actually lose western support', so they do the bare minimum to ensure that they still have sufficient western support (and I guess internal support, apparently only 47% agreed with the statement asking whether the Israeli army, in conquering a city, should act like Joshua did at Jericho—“killing all its inhabitants”) while also trying to make life so bad for the palestinians living in Gaza + shoot at journalists so there's less coverage + actively settle the territory so the palestinians remaining have an even smaller area and eventually a refugee camp in Sudan ends up actually looking like the less bad option?
Like I'm not saying that Israel wants every palestinian dead, but I think the current political leadership and a large segment (82% supported expelling everyone from Gaza) of the population want all of them gone, and for the area that currently makes up Israel+Palestine to only be Israel. With that in mind, I think the way they are going about it has a lot better chance at giving them that outcome 40 years from now than just massacring everybody in Gaza would, because even if I could see the current american leadership be okay with that, it would probably lose them the bipartisan support they've had. It's certainly possible that you are right. I'm not privy to the inner workings of Israeli government policy. If that is indeed their end goal then I'll be the first one to come back to this thread with a mea culpa and I know I'll be lobbying my own government to cut off any and all support unless the decision is reversed. I have a few issues with the way you framed it and here's why I'm not where you are: 1. I don't agree that Israel is just doing the bare minimum. Israel is fighting in an immensely tough urban environment against an enemy that uses its own civilians as human shields and has built 500 miles of tunnels under pretty much every conceivable civilian structure. No other military that has fought in similar environments has shown nearly the capacity to be as targeted as IDF. And find me another conflict where one of the warring parties has done as much to facilitate aid to the opposing population as Israel has. 2. You are referencing a poll from Haaretz with those figures on Israeli population attitudes. A follow-up from researchers at Tel-Aviv University points out a number of issues with that poll ( www.haaretz.com). I'm not convinced by the 82% number and polls that I have seen show only ~20% of Israelis actually support re-establishing settlements there. There is no denying that people like Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and a significant part of the Israeli public would like to see the Gazans gone. That's horrible - and I don't support it. But I don't believe that is reflected in the actual prosecution of the war in my view. 3. If this was indeed the grand plan of Israeli government policy - then they had ample time and ample excuses to do it before and they didn't. This isn't the first time Netanyahu has been in power with the support of right-wing politicians. Operation Protective Edge (the last big incursion into Gaza) could have easily been the pre-text to launch a broader war and try to achieve the expulsion you speak of.
It was reported front and center how Israel had blocked large numbers of aid trucks. Biden reprimanded Netanyahu, who in return openly mocked Biden. Biden demanded that aid trucks will be allowed to pass, and Israel's administration ignored the demand, and then Biden did nothing to sanction Israel's inaction. He did literally nothing, and Israel never since picked up the pace to match the demand.
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