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I don't think we need to take it into conspiracy theory territory.
I do believe in some conspiracies, but my default position is Hanlan's razor: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
Now, maybe, for some in Mosad and even Nethyanahu himself letting October 7th happen in the way it did was beneficial, maybe they knew something is coming and choose to ignore it, but it's hard for me to believe that most of the people in Israeli government and security services would be on board.
There is enough evidence of both gross incompetence, hubris and prioritizing security of settlers and border with Lebanon, as well as ignoring of warnings from Egypt and their own soldiers manning the listening and observation posts along the fence for me to be extremely suspicious, but I'm really not ready to say that October 7th was planned or sanctioned by Israelis.
Re-colonizers. I don't know, I lived in Netherlands with a huge immigrant population, I have many friends I visited in Germany with the same and I know enough Americans to be able to reach a conclusion that there is no apartheid politics in Netherlands and Germany, US, eh, the illegal / legal status and what is going on with ICE now is getting close to it, but I haven't heard any rumblings of similar situations in Germany or Netherlands.
What Israel has been doing for decades now and the moves they have been making since October 7th are unprecedented, this starvation situation just emphasizes it and hopefully gets enough people to pay attention to the rest of their policies to open their eyes enough to see that there has to be pressure put on Israel to change course.
Just like everyone likes to say "if Hamas put down their weapons the war would be over" I say "If Israeli kicked out Nethyanahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir, had elections and a pro-two state party was in power the war would be over".
Of course, just like the first one the second one is also a hypothetical, but that kind of government in Israel would get a lot of good will from neighboring states and the international community, enough to start making the two-state solution into something that might actually work.
To bad that anyone calling for it is painted as helping Hamas.
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What Israel has been doing for decades now and the moves they have been making since October 7th are unprecedented, this starvation situation just emphasizes it and hopefully gets enough people to pay attention to the rest of their policies to open their eyes enough to see that there has to be pressure put on Israel to change course.
And by "doing for decades now" I presume you mean offering the Palestinians a state on multiple occasions, only for the Palestinians to reject it and launch mass terror attacks? Or do you mean removing settlers from Gaza in 2005 and handing it over to the Palestinians only for them to elect Hamas, start firing rockets, and use international money to build 500km of terror tunnels?
As far as the conduct of this war, again, Israel has conducted itself as well or better in many cases than many western militaries would in similar conditions. The strategy with humanitarian aid was a massive strategic blunder that Israel is now trying to correct (again, because they're the only party in this war that gives a shit about the Gazans).
Just like everyone likes to say "if Hamas put down their weapons the war would be over" I say "If Israeli kicked out Nethyanahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir, had elections and a pro-two state party was in power the war would be over".
There used to be strong support for a two-state solution in Israel. That has effectively collapsed even among left-wing Israelis, for obvious reasons. Nobody trusts the Palestinians anymore. The main obstacle to peace, as it always has been, is Palestinian radicalism and rejection of Israel's right to exist.
If Hamas decided to demilitarize and hand over the hostages the war would, in fact, be over. Until then there will continue to be conflict. Maybe there will be a ceasefire soon, who knows, but as long as Hamas has control over Gaza there will never be a lasting peace. Israelis are tired of living next to states run by terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.
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On August 02 2025 11:04 Counc1l1 wrote:
What I don't understand is if Israel has no compunction about starving and massacring Gazans now, what makes people think they acted any different just a year ago?
Israel isn't intentionally starving or massacring Gazans. Let's start with that. That's a false talking point. Many of the "massacres" supposedly happening by the IDF are unproven and the casualty numbers are put out by Hamas which lies constantly because they know the western media will uncritically repeat the lie.
Not even true. You can look on the COGAT website to see the actual amount of trucks that entered Gaza in August 2024 (https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/main/) it was more than the 69 per day cited in the article. Of course the same number of trucks isn't going to come in per day in a war zone. Israel has facilitated 1.8M tons of aid in trucks over the course of the war - this idea that they ever wanted to starve the Palestinians is not true.
The excuse supporters of Israel usually made for this destruction was that Hamas embeds itself in civilian infrastructure and uses human shields. To my mind, what they could not seem to convincingly explain is whether such practices by Hamas were prevalent enough to actually explain this level of destruction, and whether targetting places like hospitals is proportionate compared to their military objectives. For example, IDF claimed Hamas had a command center under Al-Shifa hospital, but whether a command center actually existed under the hospital still seems to be a matter of dispute. Nevertheless, the hospital was attacked and mass graves were found nearby, according to the BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511k1nqx81o.
The IDF has a robust military advocate general that examines things like proportionality and distinction when it comes to making airstrikes and conducting operations. Hence, why the civilian to militant casualty ratio has been relatively low despite the difficulty of urban combat and the fact that Hamas routinely violates international law by not wearing uniforms and embedding themselves in the civilian population.
Even in your own article about Al-Shifa it's mentioned how there were terrorists in the hospital and Hamas military commanders. In Rafah, Hamas left booby traps all over the place in civilian homes and buildings. It's really not that hard to understand why so many buildings have been destroyed.
At that point, these arguments about how the damage Israel is causing is because of Hamas seemed like a cynical excuse used to justify nearly infinite destruction. I recently posted in this thread an article from Ground News that essentially said (according to analysis by USAID) that there is little to no evidence of systematic stealing of food aid in Gaza (the excuse Israel uses for providing disastrously insufficient aid to Gazans). Link: https://ground.news/article/no-evidence-of-massive-hamas-theft-of-gaza-aid
They seemed like a cynical excuse if you had no idea what was happening on the ground, sure. Never understood this urge from people living half a world away to backseat drive a war that they know absolutely nothing about. But anyway, do tell us how the war to dismantle Hamas could have been conducted better.
The study you cite by USAID is extremely flawed (https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-862210#google_vignette). USAID couldn't independently verify aid recipients, it had no on the ground intelligence, and it relied on on-the-ground organizations which are at best unreliable. From the study itself:
Of the 156 incidents of loss or theft reported, 63 were attributed to unknown perpetrators, 35 to armed actors, 25 to unarmed people, 11 directly to Israeli military action, 11 to corrupt subcontractors, five to aid group personnel “engaging in corrupt activities,” and six to “others," a category that accounted for “commodities stolen in unknown circumstances,” according to the slide presentation.
So who are these "unknown actors"? Well the report doesn't know. To ignore evidence that Hamas is stealing aid is so nonsensical when even their own website says that many trucks have been intercepted. There's plenty of evidence of it.
The GHF shootings by US contractors and IDF were initially blamed on Hamas, until whistle blowers admitted that IDF officers were commanding soldiers to kill as they pleased. The fact that Hamas keeps being used as a convenient excuse to justify the atrocities happening seems all too convenient, and when we realize that Hamas might not fully explain such atrocities, people seem to just move on to the next topic.
"Commanding soldiers to kill as they pleased" - inflammatory statement that has never been proven. One Haaretz article - the IDF is investigating and no video evidence. I have no doubt that some Gazans have been killed by the IDF and if those soldiers did that either deliberately or because of poor training then they should be prosecuted. But this "kill as they pleased line" is nonsense. As far as the other whistleblowers I assume you mean the GHF contractor. He's a disgruntled employee mad because he lost his job. He never witnessed any of the things that he claims and was begging GHF to get his job back. Not a credible source in the slightest.
And even in 2024, we already saw signs of such dehumanization when NYT and other news sources reported IDF soldiers shooting little children in their heads (single bullet wounds to the head), or a British doctor who testified to hearing reports from chlidren of drones patrolling Gazan ruins to shoot them (Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7893vpy2gqo ). Journalists & aid workers were also being murdered in record numbers in Gaza, or blocked from entering altogether. Soldiers who committed war crimes in Gaza were not punished either. All of that was happening even before Trump became president.
More propaganda. You can be truthful and say that people (yes, in some cases, journalists and aid workers) have been killed without repeating non-credible hearsay reports that have no evidence for them. The "shooting little children in the head claim" apart from now being questioned by actual experts (https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2024/10/the-weaponization-of-medical-misinformation-and-the-war-in-gaza/) has no evidence behind it. The British doctor's claim is based on reports that he heard from other people. Not things he ever actually witnessed.
International law scholars are not uniform on this question. Sure, Omer Bartov has his view. In my opinion his view is both illogical and not backed up by the evidence on the ground.
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A growing number of the world’s leading genocide scholars believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, according to an investigation by Dutch newspaper NRC.
The paper interviewed seven renowned genocide and Holocaust researchers* from six countries - including Israel - all of whom described the Israeli campaign in Gaza as genocidal. Many said their peers in the field share this assessment.
"Can I name someone whose work I respect who does not think it is genocide? No, there is no counterargument that takes into account all the evidence," Israeli researcher Raz Segal told NRC.
Professor Ugur Umit Ungor of the University of Amsterdam and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies said that while there are certainly researchers who say it is not genocide, "I don't know them".
The Dutch paper reviewed 25 recent academic articles published in the Journal of Genocide Research, the field’s leading journal, and found that “all eight academics from the field of genocide studies see genocide or at least genocidal violence in Gaza”.
“And that is remarkable for a field in which there is no clarity about what genocide itself exactly is,” it noted.
Unfortunately the Guardian appears to be paywalled if you click on it a few too many times, so we are now unable to quote the article that talks about how 400 genocide scholars have joined a crisis network demanding the end of the genocide in Gaza. We also googled how many genocide scholars there are, in total, in the world and were unable to find a material answer.
As a reputable newspaper however, we have a duty to be nuanced and balanced, so we now turn to a dissenting opinion by RJGooner, some guy online, who said that "Omer Bartov has his view. In my opinion his view is both illogical and not backed up by the evidence on the ground."
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I don't like Netanyahu, and I am tired of "genocide Experts" and "International Law Experts".
"Our study found, that starving a population in a killbox you also throw bombs in daily can be accounted for as genocide, especially if you do it for 70 years"
Wow. Such brilliance. Now we are talking. Solution must be near, the experts are speaking in unison!
YIKES.
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Austria4112 Posts
On August 05 2025 05:44 Nebuchad wrote:
A growing number of the world’s leading genocide scholars believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, according to an investigation by Dutch newspaper NRC.
The paper interviewed seven renowned genocide and Holocaust researchers* from six countries - including Israel - all of whom described the Israeli campaign in Gaza as genocidal. Many said their peers in the field share this assessment.
"Can I name someone whose work I respect who does not think it is genocide? No, there is no counterargument that takes into account all the evidence," Israeli researcher Raz Segal told NRC.
Professor Ugur Umit Ungor of the University of Amsterdam and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies said that while there are certainly researchers who say it is not genocide, "I don't know them".
The Dutch paper reviewed 25 recent academic articles published in the Journal of Genocide Research, the field’s leading journal, and found that “all eight academics from the field of genocide studies see genocide or at least genocidal violence in Gaza”.
“And that is remarkable for a field in which there is no clarity about what genocide itself exactly is,” it noted.
Unfortunately the Guardian appears to be paywalled if you click on it a few too many times, so we are now unable to quote the article that talks about how 400 genocide scholars have joined a crisis network demanding the end of the genocide in Gaza. We also googled how many genocide scholars there are, in total, in the world and were unable to find a material answer.
As a reputable newspaper however, we have a duty to be nuanced and balanced, so we now turn to a dissenting opinion by RJGooner, some guy online, who said that "Omer Bartov has his view. In my opinion his view is both illogical and not backed up by the evidence on the ground."
But a court hasn't yet found the ongoing genocide to be a genocide, so it's not a genocide until it goes to court and we have a verdict. We can't just go by the opinion of experts or our own informed opinions, we can only trust courts because we can't decide anything in life without courts. Isn't that right, ya'll?
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Waiting for courts to make a decision is so vile, as courts can only judge things that have already happened. If they say something is genocide, then genocide has already happened. Also, it does not mean that it is not still going on. Waiting for courts also goes great with the Never Again slogan established after the holocaust. Of course, there have been other genocides afterwards, but still.
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On August 05 2025 05:01 RJGooner wrote:On August 02 2025 11:04 Counc1l1 wrote:Show nested quote +What I don't understand is if Israel has no compunction about starving and massacring Gazans now, what makes people think they acted any different just a year ago? Israel isn't intentionally starving or massacring Gazans. Let's start with that. That's a false talking point. Many of the "massacres" supposedly happening by the IDF are unproven and the casualty numbers are put out by Hamas which lies constantly because they know the western media will uncritically repeat the lie. Not even true. You can look on the COGAT website to see the actual amount of trucks that entered Gaza in August 2024 (https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/main/) it was more than the 69 per day cited in the article. Of course the same number of trucks isn't going to come in per day in a war zone. Israel has facilitated 1.8M tons of aid in trucks over the course of the war - this idea that they ever wanted to starve the Palestinians is not true. Show nested quote +The excuse supporters of Israel usually made for this destruction was that Hamas embeds itself in civilian infrastructure and uses human shields. To my mind, what they could not seem to convincingly explain is whether such practices by Hamas were prevalent enough to actually explain this level of destruction, and whether targetting places like hospitals is proportionate compared to their military objectives. For example, IDF claimed Hamas had a command center under Al-Shifa hospital, but whether a command center actually existed under the hospital still seems to be a matter of dispute. Nevertheless, the hospital was attacked and mass graves were found nearby, according to the BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511k1nqx81o. The IDF has a robust military advocate general that examines things like proportionality and distinction when it comes to making airstrikes and conducting operations. Hence, why the civilian to militant casualty ratio has been relatively low despite the difficulty of urban combat and the fact that Hamas routinely violates international law by not wearing uniforms and embedding themselves in the civilian population. Even in your own article about Al-Shifa it's mentioned how there were terrorists in the hospital and Hamas military commanders. In Rafah, Hamas left booby traps all over the place in civilian homes and buildings. It's really not that hard to understand why so many buildings have been destroyed. Show nested quote +At that point, these arguments about how the damage Israel is causing is because of Hamas seemed like a cynical excuse used to justify nearly infinite destruction. I recently posted in this thread an article from Ground News that essentially said (according to analysis by USAID) that there is little to no evidence of systematic stealing of food aid in Gaza (the excuse Israel uses for providing disastrously insufficient aid to Gazans). Link: https://ground.news/article/no-evidence-of-massive-hamas-theft-of-gaza-aid They seemed like a cynical excuse if you had no idea what was happening on the ground, sure. Never understood this urge from people living half a world away to backseat drive a war that they know absolutely nothing about. But anyway, do tell us how the war to dismantle Hamas could have been conducted better. The study you cite by USAID is extremely flawed (https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-862210#google_vignette). USAID couldn't independently verify aid recipients, it had no on the ground intelligence, and it relied on on-the-ground organizations which are at best unreliable. From the study itself: Of the 156 incidents of loss or theft reported, 63 were attributed to unknown perpetrators, 35 to armed actors, 25 to unarmed people, 11 directly to Israeli military action, 11 to corrupt subcontractors, five to aid group personnel “engaging in corrupt activities,” and six to “others," a category that accounted for “commodities stolen in unknown circumstances,” according to the slide presentation. So who are these "unknown actors"? Well the report doesn't know. To ignore evidence that Hamas is stealing aid is so nonsensical when even their own website says that many trucks have been intercepted. There's plenty of evidence of it. Show nested quote +The GHF shootings by US contractors and IDF were initially blamed on Hamas, until whistle blowers admitted that IDF officers were commanding soldiers to kill as they pleased. The fact that Hamas keeps being used as a convenient excuse to justify the atrocities happening seems all too convenient, and when we realize that Hamas might not fully explain such atrocities, people seem to just move on to the next topic. "Commanding soldiers to kill as they pleased" - inflammatory statement that has never been proven. One Haaretz article - the IDF is investigating and no video evidence. I have no doubt that some Gazans have been killed by the IDF and if those soldiers did that either deliberately or because of poor training then they should be prosecuted. But this "kill as they pleased line" is nonsense. As far as the other whistleblowers I assume you mean the GHF contractor. He's a disgruntled employee mad because he lost his job. He never witnessed any of the things that he claims and was begging GHF to get his job back. Not a credible source in the slightest. Show nested quote +And even in 2024, we already saw signs of such dehumanization when NYT and other news sources reported IDF soldiers shooting little children in their heads (single bullet wounds to the head), or a British doctor who testified to hearing reports from chlidren of drones patrolling Gazan ruins to shoot them (Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7893vpy2gqo ). Journalists & aid workers were also being murdered in record numbers in Gaza, or blocked from entering altogether. Soldiers who committed war crimes in Gaza were not punished either. All of that was happening even before Trump became president. More propaganda. You can be truthful and say that people (yes, in some cases, journalists and aid workers) have been killed without repeating non-credible hearsay reports that have no evidence for them. The "shooting little children in the head claim" apart from now being questioned by actual experts (https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2024/10/the-weaponization-of-medical-misinformation-and-the-war-in-gaza/) has no evidence behind it. The British doctor's claim is based on reports that he heard from other people. Not things he ever actually witnessed. International law scholars are not uniform on this question. Sure, Omer Bartov has his view. In my opinion his view is both illogical and not backed up by the evidence on the ground.
It would take an even longer response to get through everything about your comment that I disagree with, so I'll try to address the main points.
Professor Michael Spagat wrote an article on AOAV challenging the claim about Israel having a "relatively low" civilian-casualty death ratio even in an urban environment. https://aoav.org.uk/2024/netanyahu-got-it-wrong-before-the-us-congress-idfs-clean-performance-in-gaza-is-a-lie/.
Edit: Also, your point that Hamas makes up casualty statistics and deceives the west has no basis. Nearly all studies attempting to estimate casualties of the war believe the Gaza health ministry death toll is an undercount. Just because Hamas is incentivized to inflate casualty figures does not mean it does so. Article discussing the story where Gaza ministry of health "suspiciously" removed thousands of child deaths https://aoav.org.uk/2025/the-vanishing-children-the-gaza-health-ministrys-quiet-retraction-of-thousands-of-deaths-fuelled-doubt-but-the-data-suggests-something-far-darker-than-deception/. All evidence points to the health ministry trying to count the deaths as accurately and meticulously as it can. You cannot argue that this is false simply because you think they wouldn't be incentivized to do so.
To your point about the USAID study, it says that there isn't evidence to conclude that Hamas is systematically stealing food aid. The passage you quoted does not contradict this. You think it is very suspicious and the "unknown" contribution must be basically all Hamas, but you have no actual basis for this belief. The burden is on Israel to prove that Hamas stealing of food aid is serious enough that it justifies preventing all other organizations from providing aid besides GHF (which is exacerbating the current starvation crisis). Also, even if Hamas did steal a lot of aid and sold it, it seems like it'd make more sense to flood Gaza with aid to decrease the value to Hamas of selling that aid. It would also avoid the current hunger crisis. Furthermore, Israel claims Hamas may be stealing just 25% of the aid- far from making the provision of that aid ineffective. That seems like no reason to me to force hundreds of thousands of Gazans to starve.
I don't think your comment has succeeded in discrediting either whistle-blower, so I think people should continue to take their claims seriously. It's also very hard to find this "on-the-ground" information that you speak of when a record number of journalists have been killed in Gaza, many of whom are starving as we speak. I took a look at the Haaretz article again and I really don't see how what I said about IDF soldiers being able to kill anyone they want is inconsistent with what the whistle-blower said. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-ordered-to-shoot-deliberately-at-unarmed-gazans-waiting-for-humanitarian-aid/00000197-ad8e-de01-a39f-ffbe33780000
And we have evidence that the IDF misidentifies people it kills as Hamas, quite deliberately in all likelihood. A flagrant example of this is when 15 aid workers were killed and the IDF simply lied that there were members of Hamas among them and emergency lights on vehicles were off until this was disproved by a phone recording of one of the workers who were killed. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/aid-workers-gaza-1.7503942. You speak of believing that the IDF has some bad eggs who do commit war crimes and should be punished. Do you actually know of any IDF soldier who has been punished for committing war crimes in this war? Perhaps the fact that there's so few such cases is intentional on Israel's part.
Your claim that the interpretation of children being shot in the head is disputed by the "actual" experts is frankly silly. I guess the over 40 doctors who stated they saw children with bullet wounds to the chest and/or head all cannot be trusted. https://aoav.org.uk/2025/shot-in-the-head-american-doctors-bear-witness-to-the-atrocities-committed-by-the-idf-against-gazas-children/ I read the article you linked and they seem to be mainly critical of the x-rays being possibly manipulated. But NYT also received actual images of the children's injuries that they decided not to share.
Furthermore, the Guardian actually had articles containing images of children with bullet wounds to the head. There's obvious evidence that these shots to the head occurred. Perhaps there is some difficulty in establishing the intentionality of these shootings in each case, although the sheer improbability of seeing child patients daily with single bullet wounds to the head or chest is quite damning.
If "hearsay reports" from doctors, journalists, gazan children, whistle-blowers, etc. are considered "no evidence" to you, then I think your picture of how the current conflict is unfolding is probably very inaccurate.
I could produce lots of articles of respected genocide historians (including ones from Israel) describing the current war as genocidal. Usually, these genocide historians make those assertions based on a similar impression of the state of affairs as the one I'm trying to paint in these comments. I promise you that you do not know more than them, even if you think that you do. As genocide historians whose opinion carries a lot of weight, do you really think they just carelessly study this topic before discussing their point of view in interviews and with news media?
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It simply doesn't matter what the experts and (most) courts (in the world) say.
America kills. Russia kills. Israel kills. Hamas kills.
And for my lifetime.. no amount of expert opinion made that go away.
Learn from "Southpark" "The only superpower in the world, is violence and the threat of violence".
IDF can make a lot of violence happen, Hamas won't give up their violence until they are all dead.
So it just plays out.
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On August 05 2025 16:52 KT_Elwood wrote:
It simply doesn't matter what the experts and (most) courts (in the world) say.
America kills. Russia kills. Israel kills. Hamas kills.
And for my lifetime.. no amount of expert opinion made that go away.
Learn from "Southpark" "The only superpower in the world, is violence and the threat of violence".
IDF can make a lot of violence happen, Hamas won't give up their violence until they are all dead.
So it just plays out.
Well, usually a lot of people and governments get pretty mad when somebody else tries to acquire or use that power. Even suggesting such action gets you easily labelled as a dangerous extremist. Also, there is a big divide in who is seen as an acceptable user of the power and when.
I doubt that people actually want that to be the lesson to learn from this situation and to apply it elsewhere. However, I would be interested to see more talk about doing so and what applications could be. I somewhat believe that feeling sick of their own actions could help people to change their behaviour. Things could, of course, get much worse, but I think it has been found acceptable already.
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https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-reportedly-looking-to-order-full-takeover-of-gaza-despite-idf-qualms/
Oh, look, it seems like the hostages don't really matter and Israel wants to do a full occupation with no end in sight. I guess they reverted from their insane policy of aid distribution, let the countries and UN who they were preventing from distributing it to do it just long enough so they can avoid a bad starvation news cycle and now the war can march on, in an even more escalatory direction.
Can't wait for RJ to explain how justified this is. I mean, I don't even need it, its going to be "this is exactly what their war goals are, exterminate Hamas and poor Bibi is left without a choice, they have to fully and permanently occupy all of Gaza".
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There is no need to justify, it's what Netanyahu, clearly reaching EOL at least political, wanted to achieve for his personal ego.
Gaza occupied and Palestinians displaced is the right-wing hardliners giving up their pet-terrorist breeding grounds.
The old faithful "Bulldoze/Guidebomb a house with people in it, and a bus stop with poor israelis will get blown up by a mentally disabled kid with a bomb vest, so everybody is going to run to us for safety next elections!"
Finally gets retired, because Netanyahu is getting retired.
My best outcome: Gazanians get re-education and a israeli passport, with a flaming fuck you of netanyahu towards his more and more and more racsist orthodox enablers.
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On August 05 2025 19:22 Jankisa wrote:https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-reportedly-looking-to-order-full-takeover-of-gaza-despite-idf-qualms/Oh, look, it seems like the hostages don't really matter and Israel wants to do a full occupation with no end in sight. I guess they reverted from their insane policy of aid distribution, let the countries and UN who they were preventing from distributing it to do it just long enough so they can avoid a bad starvation news cycle and now the war can march on, in an even more escalatory direction.
Bibi made claims like this before and they never came true.
He could be serious about attempting it this time, but by all account IDF doesn't have enough manpower to effectively occupy Gaza.
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On August 05 2025 19:22 Jankisa wrote:https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-reportedly-looking-to-order-full-takeover-of-gaza-despite-idf-qualms/Oh, look, it seems like the hostages don't really matter and Israel wants to do a full occupation with no end in sight. I guess they reverted from their insane policy of aid distribution, let the countries and UN who they were preventing from distributing it to do it just long enough so they can avoid a bad starvation news cycle and now the war can march on, in an even more escalatory direction. Can't wait for RJ to explain how justified this is. I mean, I don't even need it, its going to be "this is exactly what their war goals are, exterminate Hamas and poor Bibi is left without a choice, they have to fully and permanently occupy all of Gaza".
Who says it is going to be permanent? I haven't read that. If it is, I would be against that and most Israelis would be too. I also completely oppose any partial annexation of Gaza which I hear getting tossed around.
I think the decision to occupy the strip is a bad idea, actually, and so do many within the Israeli cabinet as well as the IDF Chief of Staff. Not that there are many good options given that Hamas has basically left the table and taken to posting horrific photos of the remaining hostages.
It's clear (maybe not to you) that Hamas cannot be allowed to remain in control of Gaza, but there are still hostages there and no country apparently wants to accept any Palestinians as refugees. I hope there is more out-of-the-box thinking left in Israeli military leadership because I can't see a good way forward.
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Northern Ireland25393 Posts
On August 05 2025 05:01 RJGooner wrote:On August 02 2025 11:04 Counc1l1 wrote:Show nested quote +What I don't understand is if Israel has no compunction about starving and massacring Gazans now, what makes people think they acted any different just a year ago? Israel isn't intentionally starving or massacring Gazans. Let's start with that. That's a false talking point. Many of the "massacres" supposedly happening by the IDF are unproven and the casualty numbers are put out by Hamas which lies constantly because they know the western media will uncritically repeat the lie. Not even true. You can look on the COGAT website to see the actual amount of trucks that entered Gaza in August 2024 (https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/main/) it was more than the 69 per day cited in the article. Of course the same number of trucks isn't going to come in per day in a war zone. Israel has facilitated 1.8M tons of aid in trucks over the course of the war - this idea that they ever wanted to starve the Palestinians is not true. Show nested quote +The excuse supporters of Israel usually made for this destruction was that Hamas embeds itself in civilian infrastructure and uses human shields. To my mind, what they could not seem to convincingly explain is whether such practices by Hamas were prevalent enough to actually explain this level of destruction, and whether targetting places like hospitals is proportionate compared to their military objectives. For example, IDF claimed Hamas had a command center under Al-Shifa hospital, but whether a command center actually existed under the hospital still seems to be a matter of dispute. Nevertheless, the hospital was attacked and mass graves were found nearby, according to the BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511k1nqx81o. The IDF has a robust military advocate general that examines things like proportionality and distinction when it comes to making airstrikes and conducting operations. Hence, why the civilian to militant casualty ratio has been relatively low despite the difficulty of urban combat and the fact that Hamas routinely violates international law by not wearing uniforms and embedding themselves in the civilian population. Even in your own article about Al-Shifa it's mentioned how there were terrorists in the hospital and Hamas military commanders. In Rafah, Hamas left booby traps all over the place in civilian homes and buildings. It's really not that hard to understand why so many buildings have been destroyed. Show nested quote +At that point, these arguments about how the damage Israel is causing is because of Hamas seemed like a cynical excuse used to justify nearly infinite destruction. I recently posted in this thread an article from Ground News that essentially said (according to analysis by USAID) that there is little to no evidence of systematic stealing of food aid in Gaza (the excuse Israel uses for providing disastrously insufficient aid to Gazans). Link: https://ground.news/article/no-evidence-of-massive-hamas-theft-of-gaza-aid They seemed like a cynical excuse if you had no idea what was happening on the ground, sure. Never understood this urge from people living half a world away to backseat drive a war that they know absolutely nothing about. But anyway, do tell us how the war to dismantle Hamas could have been conducted better. The study you cite by USAID is extremely flawed (https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-862210#google_vignette). USAID couldn't independently verify aid recipients, it had no on the ground intelligence, and it relied on on-the-ground organizations which are at best unreliable. From the study itself: Of the 156 incidents of loss or theft reported, 63 were attributed to unknown perpetrators, 35 to armed actors, 25 to unarmed people, 11 directly to Israeli military action, 11 to corrupt subcontractors, five to aid group personnel “engaging in corrupt activities,” and six to “others," a category that accounted for “commodities stolen in unknown circumstances,” according to the slide presentation. So who are these "unknown actors"? Well the report doesn't know. To ignore evidence that Hamas is stealing aid is so nonsensical when even their own website says that many trucks have been intercepted. There's plenty of evidence of it. Show nested quote +The GHF shootings by US contractors and IDF were initially blamed on Hamas, until whistle blowers admitted that IDF officers were commanding soldiers to kill as they pleased. The fact that Hamas keeps being used as a convenient excuse to justify the atrocities happening seems all too convenient, and when we realize that Hamas might not fully explain such atrocities, people seem to just move on to the next topic. "Commanding soldiers to kill as they pleased" - inflammatory statement that has never been proven. One Haaretz article - the IDF is investigating and no video evidence. I have no doubt that some Gazans have been killed by the IDF and if those soldiers did that either deliberately or because of poor training then they should be prosecuted. But this "kill as they pleased line" is nonsense. As far as the other whistleblowers I assume you mean the GHF contractor. He's a disgruntled employee mad because he lost his job. He never witnessed any of the things that he claims and was begging GHF to get his job back. Not a credible source in the slightest. Show nested quote +And even in 2024, we already saw signs of such dehumanization when NYT and other news sources reported IDF soldiers shooting little children in their heads (single bullet wounds to the head), or a British doctor who testified to hearing reports from chlidren of drones patrolling Gazan ruins to shoot them (Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7893vpy2gqo ). Journalists & aid workers were also being murdered in record numbers in Gaza, or blocked from entering altogether. Soldiers who committed war crimes in Gaza were not punished either. All of that was happening even before Trump became president. More propaganda. You can be truthful and say that people (yes, in some cases, journalists and aid workers) have been killed without repeating non-credible hearsay reports that have no evidence for them. The "shooting little children in the head claim" apart from now being questioned by actual experts (https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2024/10/the-weaponization-of-medical-misinformation-and-the-war-in-gaza/) has no evidence behind it. The British doctor's claim is based on reports that he heard from other people. Not things he ever actually witnessed. International law scholars are not uniform on this question. Sure, Omer Bartov has his view. In my opinion his view is both illogical and not backed up by the evidence on the ground.
If you don’t have relatively neutral third parties on the ground in sufficient numbers, that’s going to be a natural consequence.
I don’t remotely trust Hamas on face value, equally I’ve very little reason to trust the Israeli side of the ledger either.
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On August 06 2025 03:41 RJGooner wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2025 19:22 Jankisa wrote:https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-reportedly-looking-to-order-full-takeover-of-gaza-despite-idf-qualms/Oh, look, it seems like the hostages don't really matter and Israel wants to do a full occupation with no end in sight. I guess they reverted from their insane policy of aid distribution, let the countries and UN who they were preventing from distributing it to do it just long enough so they can avoid a bad starvation news cycle and now the war can march on, in an even more escalatory direction. Can't wait for RJ to explain how justified this is. I mean, I don't even need it, its going to be "this is exactly what their war goals are, exterminate Hamas and poor Bibi is left without a choice, they have to fully and permanently occupy all of Gaza". Who says it is going to be permanent? I haven't read that. If it is, I would be against that and most Israelis would be too. I also completely oppose any partial annexation of Gaza which I hear getting tossed around. I think the decision to occupy the strip is a bad idea, actually, and so do many within the Israeli cabinet as well as the IDF Chief of Staff. Not that there are many good options given that Hamas has basically left the table and taken to posting horrific photos of the remaining hostages. It's clear (maybe not to you) that Hamas cannot be allowed to remain in control of Gaza, but there are still hostages there and no country apparently wants to accept any Palestinians as refugees. I hope there is more out-of-the-box thinking left in Israeli military leadership because I can't see a good way forward.
It's fascinating that you think (and that this is a very common argument) that some or more hypothetical countries should want to take in 2+ million of refugees that Israel has been brutalizing for 20 + years.
Here's an out of the box idea, Israel leaves, humanitarian organizations come back in, people get fed, Israel finances rebuilding of Gaza and + a peacekeeping mission mostly composing of Arab country UN troops makes sure that free and fair elections are done while Israel deals with war crime tribunals in order to illustrate to Gazans that some semblance of justice can happen in the world so their faith in democracy is restored.
Unfortunately, Israel would never allow this, so they will go with a full occupation at the cost of many more lives.
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Austria4112 Posts
The longer Hamas "can't be allowed to have control over Gaza", the more tens of thousands of innocent Gazans are going to be slaughtered. People should very carefully imagine the unfathomable growth of the mountain of human corpses before they readily nod and agree that Hamas should be wiped out uncompromisingly. If anybody thinks the optics or the ethics of this idea put them in a good light, they're mistaken.
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On August 06 2025 06:49 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2025 03:41 RJGooner wrote:On August 05 2025 19:22 Jankisa wrote:https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-reportedly-looking-to-order-full-takeover-of-gaza-despite-idf-qualms/Oh, look, it seems like the hostages don't really matter and Israel wants to do a full occupation with no end in sight. I guess they reverted from their insane policy of aid distribution, let the countries and UN who they were preventing from distributing it to do it just long enough so they can avoid a bad starvation news cycle and now the war can march on, in an even more escalatory direction. Can't wait for RJ to explain how justified this is. I mean, I don't even need it, its going to be "this is exactly what their war goals are, exterminate Hamas and poor Bibi is left without a choice, they have to fully and permanently occupy all of Gaza". Who says it is going to be permanent? I haven't read that. If it is, I would be against that and most Israelis would be too. I also completely oppose any partial annexation of Gaza which I hear getting tossed around. I think the decision to occupy the strip is a bad idea, actually, and so do many within the Israeli cabinet as well as the IDF Chief of Staff. Not that there are many good options given that Hamas has basically left the table and taken to posting horrific photos of the remaining hostages. It's clear (maybe not to you) that Hamas cannot be allowed to remain in control of Gaza, but there are still hostages there and no country apparently wants to accept any Palestinians as refugees. I hope there is more out-of-the-box thinking left in Israeli military leadership because I can't see a good way forward. It's fascinating that you think (and that this is a very common argument) that some or more hypothetical countries should want to take in 2+ million of refugees that Israel has been brutalizing for 20 + years. Here's an out of the box idea, Israel leaves, humanitarian organizations come back in, people get fed, Israel finances rebuilding of Gaza and + a peacekeeping mission mostly composing of Arab country UN troops makes sure that free and fair elections are done while Israel deals with war crime tribunals in order to illustrate to Gazans that some semblance of justice can happen in the world so their faith in democracy is restored. Unfortunately, Israel would never allow this, so they will go with a full occupation at the cost of many more lives.
"Brutalizing for 20+ years" yea sure ok. They haven't been "brutalized" for one and you speak as if the Palestinians have absolutely no agency. Stop your nonsense. The Palestinians had multiple attempts at getting their own state, they rejected it. When Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005 and evicted the settlers living there they got rewarded with 20 years of rocket fire culminating in 10/7.
If the Palestinians accepted the idea of living next to Israel in peace then the violence would stop. It happened with Egypt and Jordan and it can happen in Palestine if they actually get political leadership that disavows terrorism and stops teaching the population to hate Jews.
So no other country should take in refugees from Gaza, even though they are legally obligated not to turn away refugees fleeing a war zone. It's ok that these civilians have to live in a war zone because... why? I thought there was a genocide going on? You do realize how ridiculous this argument is right?
Goes without saying that humanitarian organizations and peacekeeping missions are not going to come back to Gaza if Hamas controls it. There will be no rebuilding Gaza if Hamas controls it. There will be no free and fair elections if Hamas controls it.
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United States42706 Posts
On August 06 2025 06:49 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2025 03:41 RJGooner wrote:On August 05 2025 19:22 Jankisa wrote:https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-reportedly-looking-to-order-full-takeover-of-gaza-despite-idf-qualms/Oh, look, it seems like the hostages don't really matter and Israel wants to do a full occupation with no end in sight. I guess they reverted from their insane policy of aid distribution, let the countries and UN who they were preventing from distributing it to do it just long enough so they can avoid a bad starvation news cycle and now the war can march on, in an even more escalatory direction. Can't wait for RJ to explain how justified this is. I mean, I don't even need it, its going to be "this is exactly what their war goals are, exterminate Hamas and poor Bibi is left without a choice, they have to fully and permanently occupy all of Gaza". Who says it is going to be permanent? I haven't read that. If it is, I would be against that and most Israelis would be too. I also completely oppose any partial annexation of Gaza which I hear getting tossed around. I think the decision to occupy the strip is a bad idea, actually, and so do many within the Israeli cabinet as well as the IDF Chief of Staff. Not that there are many good options given that Hamas has basically left the table and taken to posting horrific photos of the remaining hostages. It's clear (maybe not to you) that Hamas cannot be allowed to remain in control of Gaza, but there are still hostages there and no country apparently wants to accept any Palestinians as refugees. I hope there is more out-of-the-box thinking left in Israeli military leadership because I can't see a good way forward. It's fascinating that you think (and that this is a very common argument) that some or more hypothetical countries should want to take in 2+ million of refugees that Israel has been brutalizing for 20 + years. Here's an out of the box idea, Israel leaves, humanitarian organizations come back in, people get fed, Israel finances rebuilding of Gaza and + a peacekeeping mission mostly composing of Arab country UN troops makes sure that free and fair elections are done while Israel deals with war crime tribunals in order to illustrate to Gazans that some semblance of justice can happen in the world so their faith in democracy is restored. Unfortunately, Israel would never allow this, so they will go with a full occupation at the cost of many more lives.
What will you do when Hamas wins the election and declares war on Israel?
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Austria4112 Posts
On August 06 2025 09:26 RJGooner wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2025 06:49 Jankisa wrote:On August 06 2025 03:41 RJGooner wrote:On August 05 2025 19:22 Jankisa wrote:https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-reportedly-looking-to-order-full-takeover-of-gaza-despite-idf-qualms/Oh, look, it seems like the hostages don't really matter and Israel wants to do a full occupation with no end in sight. I guess they reverted from their insane policy of aid distribution, let the countries and UN who they were preventing from distributing it to do it just long enough so they can avoid a bad starvation news cycle and now the war can march on, in an even more escalatory direction. Can't wait for RJ to explain how justified this is. I mean, I don't even need it, its going to be "this is exactly what their war goals are, exterminate Hamas and poor Bibi is left without a choice, they have to fully and permanently occupy all of Gaza". Who says it is going to be permanent? I haven't read that. If it is, I would be against that and most Israelis would be too. I also completely oppose any partial annexation of Gaza which I hear getting tossed around. I think the decision to occupy the strip is a bad idea, actually, and so do many within the Israeli cabinet as well as the IDF Chief of Staff. Not that there are many good options given that Hamas has basically left the table and taken to posting horrific photos of the remaining hostages. It's clear (maybe not to you) that Hamas cannot be allowed to remain in control of Gaza, but there are still hostages there and no country apparently wants to accept any Palestinians as refugees. I hope there is more out-of-the-box thinking left in Israeli military leadership because I can't see a good way forward. It's fascinating that you think (and that this is a very common argument) that some or more hypothetical countries should want to take in 2+ million of refugees that Israel has been brutalizing for 20 + years. Here's an out of the box idea, Israel leaves, humanitarian organizations come back in, people get fed, Israel finances rebuilding of Gaza and + a peacekeeping mission mostly composing of Arab country UN troops makes sure that free and fair elections are done while Israel deals with war crime tribunals in order to illustrate to Gazans that some semblance of justice can happen in the world so their faith in democracy is restored. Unfortunately, Israel would never allow this, so they will go with a full occupation at the cost of many more lives. "Brutalizing for 20+ years" yea sure ok. They haven't been "brutalized" for one and you speak as if the Palestinians have absolutely no agency. Stop your nonsense. The Palestinians had multiple attempts at getting their own state, they rejected it. When Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005 and evicted the settlers living there they got rewarded with 20 years of rocket fire culminating in 10/7. If the Palestinians accepted the idea of living next to Israel in peace then the violence would stop. It happened with Egypt and Jordan and it can happen in Palestine if they actually get political leadership that disavows terrorism and stops teaching the population to hate Jews. So no other country should take in refugees from Gaza, even though they are legally obligated not to turn away refugees fleeing a war zone. It's ok that these civilians have to live in a war zone because... why? I thought there was a genocide going on? You do realize how ridiculous this argument is right? Goes without saying that humanitarian organizations and peacekeeping missions are not going to come back to Gaza if Hamas controls it. There will be no rebuilding Gaza if Hamas controls it. There will be no free and fair elections if Hamas controls it.
There are no serious "state offers" by Israel.
The most recent example was the 2000 Camp David Summit, which failed due to territorial disputes such as dividing up the Palestinian territory into approximately three disconnected sections. The negotiations were chaotic and Palestinians rejected the offer.
In my book a fairly understandable rejection. It wasn't a serious offer by Israel/US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit
This is generally how the "state offers" have gone. Israel makes an unserious offer that can only be rejected. Palestinians obviously have to reject it. Israel then says Palestinians can't be reasoned with. People abroad fall for this lie because they're biased in favor of Israel. People falsely assume that any "state offer" is a serious offer. But it was never serious.
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EPT
