NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
As someone who has been attacked a shit-ton lot by the Anti-Israel-gang here for my views, I'd really like to hear about your opinion in regards to the complete blockade in terms of it being a war crime or not. Is it your position that enough food was stored up, so Israel knew/took the chance that the civilian population was not truly in danger?
That is my current understanding. When reading up about on-the-ground sentiment during this time (still speaking about March-April), I mostly see mentions of a looming danger and prices of food going up in the strip. By the time aid was resumed, it was in GHF's hands, and in my understanding - that's where things got really bad.
So if anything, I believe you could hold Israeli leadership accountable for their reckless disregard for the hunger situation in Gaza while the GHF was quite clearly failing at its mission. They even had a couple of months of grace because they were supposedly learning on the fly. But that doesn't cut it when so much human life is at stake.
Would that be a war crime? I tend to think so. But the crime would probably not be "starvation as a weapon of war". As you mentioned in your reply to Arcofales, intent matters. What I see is hubris and irresponsible disregard for the performance of GHF.
Who put GHF in that position in the first place?
A comparable amount of civilians have died at GHF administered aid points than died on October 7th at this stage. Still, to my knowledge lower, but not far off, and ever-increasing.
Who also doesn’t let other orgs do this, to stick GHF in the first place? Who also doesn’t let foreign journalists in to catalogue how it’s all working?
The more factors that point in a pretty damning direction, the more that implies intent. Especially given the lack of real corrective measures, and indeed at times doubling down.
If I was doing my best to be humane, had all sorts of complexity making my job tough, with sometimes tragic outcomes I’d actively welcome outsider eyes so I could show that was the case. But it’s basically omertà outside of pre-vetted fluff.
If we were talking some civil war in Africa or w/e and x despot leader was instituting these kind of policies and implementation of said policies, I somewhat doubt the benefit of the doubt would be extended.
I'm not sure where this is coming from. You are beating at an open door.
I don't think I've ever brought up GHF as a way to absolve Israel's conduct. In the very post you quoted I specifically said it could be considered a war crime to have kept GHF around despite the lackluster and deadly results.
And I also never claimed Israel is "doing its best to be humane", in fact I clearly laid out why I think Israel is attempting to satisfy the bare minimum under IHL. Whether you agree with that or not, I am quite clearly not saying what you are attributing to me.
To quote you, you said ‘What I see is hubris and irresponsible disregard for the performance of GHF.’
You do recognise the problem more broadly, you’re not handwaving it away or denying its existence.
I don’t think we massively disagree, merely your wording implies a lack of oversight, and incompetence being to blame for it. I don’t think that’s the case, I think it’s pretty intentional.
It’s not hubris, or a lack of oversight, what we’re seeing in recent times is the plan. And the plan is to do war crimes.
But perhaps I’ve misread you and I’m basically throwing your own positions back at you, and if so, apologies
I can live with that disagreement, sure. I was just confused at your assumptions about my position.
Just chiming in to agree with everyone else who has already stated that using civilian hunger as a pressure tactic is a doubleplusungood way to describe a war crime. There’s no act so fucked up that you couldn’t somehow describe it as a pressure tactic. We’re skinning kids in front of parents to place pressure on them to demand political reforms or whatever. There’s no legitimacy to be gained through that particular newspeak.
On October 23 2025 00:22 Jankisa wrote: Well, in the spirit of constructive criticism, I think, from my viewpoint, you, much like promo here, write these things out and then say "well, I wrote them but that doesn't mean I agree with them being justifications" even as you are using them to justify what happened in an ongoing discussion about exactly that.
Same with this GHF part, GHF is, to me, responsibility of Israel, they blocked the aid, they, with the Trump government planned and executed GHF's aid distribution.
To me, as another left of center person, it's incredibly perplexing how you can just simply dismiss this and apparently not really care about who is behind the organization and how it came in to being:
When I read that, see the names, the Evangelicals, CIA operatives, private military all with no experience, and then look at what happened during the execution with aid being distributed at 4 distribution points instead of nearly 200, I can't understand how that can be defended.
What I'm trying to say, is that I don't get why your approach is like this.
I mean I do, kind of, I come from a country that was relatively recently at war. I've heard arguments from both Croats and Serbs justifying various war crimes, even people I respect intellectually and morally, so I do understand, but what makes me sad is that you can't just say:
"well, fuck it man, we did some fucked up shit and we should be called out, Hamas is worse, of course, but our government, Nethyanahu and the war council did some inexcusable things, so fuck them".
Instead we'll have long posts about was it technically a pressure tactic or not, was it to appease the right wingers or not.
That's not constructive, that, to me, is just letting your biases cloud your ability to see the full picture.
In any case, I get it and I appreciate you engaging so far, I get if you aren't interested in doing it moving forward, none of this is easy or necessary, for anyone who watched it and especially for people like you who lived through it in a much more visceral way then any of us did.
Cheers!
Thanks, I appreciate it. Here is my perspective.
In this conversation I have, essentially: - Said fuck GHF - Said fuck Netanyahu - Said fuck the current Israeli government - Said Israel did some fucked up shit (up to and including war crimes)
When we are trying to assess whether a specific crime has been committed, it is sufficient for me to point out my assessment of the available evidence or lack thereof in order to make my point. If you then go and assume that I am simply doing so out of an attempt at being wholly protective of this government, and ascribe positions to me that I have not argued for - then I'm not sure any assessment short of my full agreement with you could be seen by you as reasonable, and that is precisely why I've chosen to step away.
Well, as usual, we do have quite different outlook on how stuff reads, and that's OK.
I'm glad that you are going to be voting for people who wouldn't do shit like this, and that's good enough for me.
On October 23 2025 00:48 KwarK wrote: Just chiming in to agree with everyone else who has already stated that using civilian hunger as a pressure tactic is a doubleplusungood way to describe a war crime. There’s no act so fucked up that you couldn’t somehow describe it as a pressure tactic. We’re skinning kids in front of parents to place pressure on them to demand political reforms or whatever. There’s no legitimacy to be gained through that particular newspeak.
On top of it being fucking disgusting it creates justification to hate Israel. Classic scenario of killing one enemy and creating four.
Enjoyed the conversation for as long as it lasted. Hopefully Mindjames will make future appearances, short bursts might be the best for keeping everyone calm and for his mental health. But good insights!
On October 23 2025 03:34 Billyboy wrote: Enjoyed the conversation for as long as it lasted. Hopefully Mindjames will make future appearances, short bursts might be the best for keeping everyone calm and for his mental health. But good insights!
It can be a bit frustrating to try and lay out my position at length and then have to try and respond to 6 different interpretations, rewordings of my comments, and imagined positions that I don't hold. And it certainly doesn't help when some of these are just off handed quippy remarks to try and dismiss my position without engaging directly and charitably.
I will just say, if someone basically agrees with 90-100% of your moral assessments to the point of condemning their own government, and you still feel the need to accuse them of essentially sweeping for war criminals because they don't agree that a certain scenario rises to the level of a specific war crime, perhaps you are more interested in the ability to scold somebody rather than genuinely find out what they think or why.
EDIT: I will be fair and say that at least two people have apologized and retracted their statements, so thank you. TL is not necessarily the worst place for discussion, it's just a very select audience, I guess.
On October 23 2025 03:34 Billyboy wrote: Enjoyed the conversation for as long as it lasted. Hopefully Mindjames will make future appearances, short bursts might be the best for keeping everyone calm and for his mental health. But good insights!
It can be a bit frustrating to try and lay out my position at length and then have to try and respond to 6 different interpretations, rewordings of my comments, and imagined positions that I don't hold. And it certainly doesn't help when some of these are just off handed quippy remarks to try and dismiss my position without engaging directly and charitably.
I will just say, if someone basically agrees with 90-100% of your moral assessments to the point of condemning their own government, and you still feel the need to accuse them of essentially sweeping for war criminals because they don't agree that a certain scenario rises to the level of a specific war crime, perhaps you are more interested in the ability to scold somebody rather than genuinely find out what they think or why.
EDIT: I will be fair and say that at least two people have apologized and retracted their statements, so thank you. TL is not necessarily the worst place for discussion, it's just a very select audience, I guess.
Given your location on this site is given as Israel, and most of us here are not so situated:
How are general attitudes, how are the internal debates within Israel and how does that manifest (or not) in terms of government policy as per this conflict?
What is your general sense or instinct on such things? I get the impression there’s some pretty forceful resistance to some things, but equally the general direction of travel moves things otherwise.
One can read as much as they want, sometimes it’s worth asking a native. My native Belfast has come along, but there’s definitely areas I’d absolutely push a tourist away from
On October 23 2025 03:34 Billyboy wrote: Enjoyed the conversation for as long as it lasted. Hopefully Mindjames will make future appearances, short bursts might be the best for keeping everyone calm and for his mental health. But good insights!
It can be a bit frustrating to try and lay out my position at length and then have to try and respond to 6 different interpretations, rewordings of my comments, and imagined positions that I don't hold. And it certainly doesn't help when some of these are just off handed quippy remarks to try and dismiss my position without engaging directly and charitably.
I will just say, if someone basically agrees with 90-100% of your moral assessments to the point of condemning their own government, and you still feel the need to accuse them of essentially sweeping for war criminals because they don't agree that a certain scenario rises to the level of a specific war crime, perhaps you are more interested in the ability to scold somebody rather than genuinely find out what they think or why.
EDIT: I will be fair and say that at least two people have apologized and retracted their statements, so thank you. TL is not necessarily the worst place for discussion, it's just a very select audience, I guess.
Given your location on this site is given as Israel, and most of us here are not so situated:
How are general attitudes, how are the internal debates within Israel and how does that manifest (or not) in terms of government policy as per this conflict?
What is your general sense or instinct on such things? I get the impression there’s some pretty forceful resistance to some things, but equally the general direction of travel moves things otherwise.
One can read as much as they want, sometimes it’s worth asking a native. My native Belfast has come along, but there’s definitely areas I’d absolutely push a tourist away from
Thanks for asking. Israel is looking more and more like the US in many ways, but I'll touch on media environment specifically. We now have a TV channel that is the equivalent of Fox News (Channel 14). That plus the increasing adoption of Twitter and Telegram among Israelis has basically turned public discourse into a pile of shit. Imagine having to deal with MAGA-level arguments while attempting to discuss matters pertaining to the middle east, in all its complexities. Yeah.
The way it manifests in policy is not quite as bad as it is with Trump, because our head of state, crooked and cynical as he may be, is not at all as stupid or politically clumsy. So on the one hand, we don't have policy passing on a whim; but there definitely seems to be an erosion of democratic guard rails over time; and we definitely have the orchestrated campaigns to "prepare" public opinion for sweeping legislation. Thankfully there is still a strong enough base out there that opposes these moves and actively protests them (if you've heard of Israel's judicial reform debacle, for example).
To make that more specific to the conflict, I was happy to see - for as long as it lasted - pretty firm opposition to Netanyahu in the former defense minister, former Shin Bet chief, and former IDF chief. The war cabinet has not seen a lot of consensus (still doesn't) and I believe that to be a restraining factor.
Israel's biggest internal problem in my opinion is how hard the Labour party crashed a few years ago, due to what I see as a pretty stupid political miscalculation. The left in Israel is essentially fragmented out the ass and there is no more a "pro-worker" type home party that can easily galvanize that crowd.
I am also having to rethink my positions on global isolation and sanctions lately, because from the inside, it seems to turn people to the right. It's difficult as a local to make sense of the absolute torrent of hate coming at both Israelis in general and Jews in particular, and so people gradually adopt the view that we are "alone" in this battle and must be resilient; it makes Netanyahu's messaging resonate much better.
You would think global isolation would cause locals to have an issue with the person in charge, and want to replace them... but if that leader is able to use this environment to their benefit, then the external push is essentially achieving the opposite of its intended effect. It's really worrying to think that our lives are gradually getting worse (without comparing to Gaza of course), but Netanyahu is somehow only strengthened by it.
On October 23 2025 05:17 mindjames wrote: Israel's biggest internal problem in my opinion is how hard the Labour party crashed a few years ago, due to what I see as a pretty stupid political miscalculation. The left in Israel is essentially fragmented out the ass and there is no more a "pro-worker" type home party that can easily galvanize that crowd.
I think that's very insightful. Politics are never static, there's always a main opposition, so every place where the left has either crashed out or decided to move to the center has caused that opposition to become center vs far right, and that's how you get to terrible situations because in those situations it's mechanically unreasonable to expect the far right to never win. A healthy society needs a healthy left.
On October 23 2025 03:34 Billyboy wrote: Enjoyed the conversation for as long as it lasted. Hopefully Mindjames will make future appearances, short bursts might be the best for keeping everyone calm and for his mental health. But good insights!
It can be a bit frustrating to try and lay out my position at length and then have to try and respond to 6 different interpretations, rewordings of my comments, and imagined positions that I don't hold. And it certainly doesn't help when some of these are just off handed quippy remarks to try and dismiss my position without engaging directly and charitably.
I will just say, if someone basically agrees with 90-100% of your moral assessments to the point of condemning their own government, and you still feel the need to accuse them of essentially sweeping for war criminals because they don't agree that a certain scenario rises to the level of a specific war crime, perhaps you are more interested in the ability to scold somebody rather than genuinely find out what they think or why.
EDIT: I will be fair and say that at least two people have apologized and retracted their statements, so thank you. TL is not necessarily the worst place for discussion, it's just a very select audience, I guess.
I feel you, you are doing a great job and your approach is leading to interesting conversations. If possible contribute as much as you can, as long as you can stay productive. What makes this site cool in the non SC related stuff (that is cool for different reasons) is hearing different (ideally) informed opinions from people with different perspectives, different knowledge and from different places.
Issues as emotional as this are super difficult to discuss unemotionally, but when it happens it can be pretty informative and cool.
The people discussing with you were doing their best as well which was nice. My advice, which is worth what you paid for it, is to pick one two people to chat with and ignore the rest. If you try to talk with everyone it just turns into a cluster where you are just playing non stop defense and fighting about things you never said. It is hard to ignore, both because of politeness and even more so when you are being misrepresented but I think it is the only way to keep it on track. That being said it is "do what I say not what I do" style advice.
On October 23 2025 10:14 Ze'ev wrote: What was the political miscalculation which caused the labour party to 'crash out' ?
Pre 2nd Intifada, demographic changes in the voter base let to substantial losses. More recently, instead of joining forces with other center-left or centrist parties to form a viable anti-Netanyahu bloc, Labor insisted on running independently. That decision split the oppositional vote and left Labor below/near the electoral threshold. Years of unclear ideological positioning, weak leadership and public association with Oslo - which is mostly unpopular in Israel in how it ended (the rise of Hamas) - didn't help either. They went from roughly a third of the overall 120 seats to 4 in the last election.
On October 23 2025 10:14 Ze'ev wrote: What was the political miscalculation which caused the labour party to 'crash out' ?
What PremoBeats wrote is the gradual change that happened, but I always point to a specific incident that was the nail in the coffin.
A couple of years after Isaac Herzog (who is now president, a mostly symbolic and powerless role) lost to Netanyahu in 2015, he was replaced by a guy named Avi Gabbay. Labour was still politically adjoined with another party ran by popular female politician Tzipi Livni, who famously "defected" from the right.
Apparently the two couldn't stand each other, and Gabbay basically fired her on live TV, with her standing in frame, in a press conference, clueless of what was happening. Gabbay told no one ahead of time.
The adjoined parties broke off, Livni basically withdrew from political life shortly after (which was a personal blow for me), and the left sank from that point to a fraction of what it was - with many of the votes going to various "flavor of the month" centrist parties, like @Nebuchad suspected.
On October 23 2025 03:34 Billyboy wrote: Enjoyed the conversation for as long as it lasted. Hopefully Mindjames will make future appearances, short bursts might be the best for keeping everyone calm and for his mental health. But good insights!
It can be a bit frustrating to try and lay out my position at length and then have to try and respond to 6 different interpretations, rewordings of my comments, and imagined positions that I don't hold. And it certainly doesn't help when some of these are just off handed quippy remarks to try and dismiss my position without engaging directly and charitably.
I will just say, if someone basically agrees with 90-100% of your moral assessments to the point of condemning their own government, and you still feel the need to accuse them of essentially sweeping for war criminals because they don't agree that a certain scenario rises to the level of a specific war crime, perhaps you are more interested in the ability to scold somebody rather than genuinely find out what they think or why.
EDIT: I will be fair and say that at least two people have apologized and retracted their statements, so thank you. TL is not necessarily the worst place for discussion, it's just a very select audience, I guess.
Given your location on this site is given as Israel, and most of us here are not so situated:
How are general attitudes, how are the internal debates within Israel and how does that manifest (or not) in terms of government policy as per this conflict?
What is your general sense or instinct on such things? I get the impression there’s some pretty forceful resistance to some things, but equally the general direction of travel moves things otherwise.
One can read as much as they want, sometimes it’s worth asking a native. My native Belfast has come along, but there’s definitely areas I’d absolutely push a tourist away from
Thanks for asking. Israel is looking more and more like the US in many ways, but I'll touch on media environment specifically. We now have a TV channel that is the equivalent of Fox News (Channel 14). That plus the increasing adoption of Twitter and Telegram among Israelis has basically turned public discourse into a pile of shit. Imagine having to deal with MAGA-level arguments while attempting to discuss matters pertaining to the middle east, in all its complexities. Yeah.
The way it manifests in policy is not quite as bad as it is with Trump, because our head of state, crooked and cynical as he may be, is not at all as stupid or politically clumsy. So on the one hand, we don't have policy passing on a whim; but there definitely seems to be an erosion of democratic guard rails over time; and we definitely have the orchestrated campaigns to "prepare" public opinion for sweeping legislation. Thankfully there is still a strong enough base out there that opposes these moves and actively protests them (if you've heard of Israel's judicial reform debacle, for example).
To make that more specific to the conflict, I was happy to see - for as long as it lasted - pretty firm opposition to Netanyahu in the former defense minister, former Shin Bet chief, and former IDF chief. The war cabinet has not seen a lot of consensus (still doesn't) and I believe that to be a restraining factor.
Israel's biggest internal problem in my opinion is how hard the Labour party crashed a few years ago, due to what I see as a pretty stupid political miscalculation. The left in Israel is essentially fragmented out the ass and there is no more a "pro-worker" type home party that can easily galvanize that crowd.
I am also having to rethink my positions on global isolation and sanctions lately, because from the inside, it seems to turn people to the right. It's difficult as a local to make sense of the absolute torrent of hate coming at both Israelis in general and Jews in particular, and so people gradually adopt the view that we are "alone" in this battle and must be resilient; it makes Netanyahu's messaging resonate much better.
You would think global isolation would cause locals to have an issue with the person in charge, and want to replace them... but if that leader is able to use this environment to their benefit, then the external push is essentially achieving the opposite of its intended effect. It's really worrying to think that our lives are gradually getting worse (without comparing to Gaza of course), but Netanyahu is somehow only strengthened by it.
Cheers for this, and indeed other responses. Informative stuff!
Indeed, it does seem almost a crapshoot as to whether isolation is effective or not, it seems just as liable to bring the defensive shields up as it is to prompt anger in the ‘right’ direction.
I think part of why it hit Apartheid South Africa in the desired way (and indeed, even that took some time) was because a lot of national prestige was wrapped up in sport. And indeed white prestige, given how segregated the sporting machine was. There were Saffer cricketers especially who, even now are considered hall of fame contenders who didn’t get to play much international cricket.
Perhaps there simply isn’t a comparable Israeli analogue that actually bites sufficiently? Hard to know
It's also worth noting that Israel really matters geo strategically to the west, and so isolation will never be nearly as total as South Africa. With the cold war winding down the apartheid regime was more of a liability than an asset; Israel is the opposite. Especially since they've dominated Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, Israel is stronger in a comparative sense than it ever has been. Normalization and a trade corridor with India isn't far from the horizon. Attempts at isolation will likely make Israelis mad but it won't force a change since they're actually in an ok long term position.
On October 21 2025 22:02 Jankisa wrote: I'm beginning to like the Chinese approach, at least their ethnic cleansing is more humane, their repression mechanisms more chill and their approach to territorial expansion more laid back.
What? How does "ethnic cleansing" and "humane" go together?
Well, I get what you are trying to say, neither are humane, but I'd much rather, as a human, be treated the way that China treats Uyghurs then how Israel treats Palestinians.
And not even Palestinians in Gaza, Uyghurs have way better lives and treatment then Palestinians in the West bank.
Do you even know what you're talking about?
The Chinese government has imprisoned more than one million Uyghurs since 2017 and subjected those not detained to intense surveillance, religious restrictions, forced labor, family separations, and forced sterilizations.
Their treatment of Uyghurs has been labeled as crimes against humanity and it's not much different from how Palestinians are being treated.
Might as well vote for Cthulhu, why choose a lesser evil?
It's a very simple proposition. Who would you rather be oppressed by, given current circumstances. Not all crimes against humanity are of the same severity, some are simply worse then others.
We can go over the numbers the other way around, but, to me, I'd much rather be subjected to everything listed then 2 years of relentless bombing in the case of Gaza, outside of that basically almost everything else listed is happening there except forced sterilizations. Add in blockade, famine conditions, 80 % of buildings razed, etc.
I'm in no way shape or form saying Chinese treatment of Uyghurs is anything other then monstrous and shouldn't be condemned, I just said if I had to choose between the two to me the choice would be easy.
Moved my the response here since it doesn't belong in the other thread. In the case of Gaza the armed Palestinian factions also bear a large part of the responsibility for what happened. Leaving that aside I agree that life in Gaza during the war was worse than in Xinjiang. On the other hand the situation in Xinjiang has lasted much longer with no end in sight. China has arbitrarily detained hundreds of thousands since 2017. The birth rate has more than halved preventing tens of thousands of new lives. It's not at all clear that one is worse than the other.
For the West Bank your proposition is preposterous. The PA has administrative control over area's A and B where most of the Palestinians live. There are no internment camps, there's no forced labour, no religious restrictions, etc. Jews aren't even allowed to come there. Xinjiang is many times worse than the West Bank.
There are many horror stories, including shooting kids who were "throwing stones", doing raids in the middle of the night, killing people in "self-defense", I guess for me, because that whole thing is literally "who and where would I rather be" it's a matter of do I want to be woken up in the middle of the night by paramilitary religious fanatics and randomly shoot or do I have to be a part of a systematically oppressed religious / ethnic group.
There are plenty of Palestinians and Uyghurs who live relatively normal lives. I wager that as an average Uyghur you have a higher chance of having a nicer and more stable life than an average Palestinian in the West Bank. This, of course, might be a part of my bias / informational bubble, but that's my opinion at the moment based on what I know about both situations.
On October 24 2025 17:30 RvB wrote: For the West Bank your proposition is preposterous. The PA has administrative control over area's A and B where most of the Palestinians live. There are no internment camps, there's no forced labour, no religious restrictions, etc. Jews aren't even allowed to come there. Xinjiang is many times worse than the West Bank.
For life in the West Bank I always like to come back to this depiction, which I find quite powerful. Are we taking this into account in our equation and still coming up with this answer? Or are we saying that he's lying?
On October 24 2025 17:30 RvB wrote: For the West Bank your proposition is preposterous. The PA has administrative control over area's A and B where most of the Palestinians live. There are no internment camps, there's no forced labour, no religious restrictions, etc. Jews aren't even allowed to come there. Xinjiang is many times worse than the West Bank.
For life in the West Bank I always like to come back to this depiction, which I find quite powerful. Are we taking this into account in our equation and still coming up with this answer? Or are we saying that he's lying?
Not to take away from your point, which I'm guessing is about the checkpoints being fucking awful - and they are.
This guy rubbed me the wrong way to the absolute max. Supposedly in a matter of what sounds like 30 minutes, he goes from full on yeshiva boy in a settlement, to sneaking into Ramallah (which btw is not as easy as he describes it but okay) on a whim (!) because he met a nice Palestinian guy who didn't immediately murder him, and on the bus it immediately strikes him that Israel is a settler-colonial genocide machine (the terms must've been divined upon him) and starts immediately fearing for his life from the very people he was among minutes ago... because he took his Kippah off.
EPT
