EPTThings Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine - Page 210
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Nebuchad
Switzerland11808 Posts
On February 05 2024 08:17 JimmiC wrote: Again you disagreed with a strawman, I didn't say it was your shittiest. I agree that you have made worse. Okay Jimmi I apologize for this awful strawman | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States22407 Posts
On February 05 2024 07:39 Cerebrate1 wrote: Eh, the Ukrainians care about their own civilians so they don't build all their military bases into civilian infrastructure. Ukrainian trenches are in fields, so if Russia wants to win the war, they shoot at those fields. Israel would love it if Hamas moved all their fighting out into fields and Israel could hit military targets without all the collateral damage. No, not all of it. Ukrainian forces have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals, + Show Spoiler + as they repelled the Russian invasion that began in February, Amnesty International said today. “We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General. “Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law.” Throughout these investigations, researchers found evidence of Ukrainian forces launching strikes from within populated residential areas as well as basing themselves in civilian buildings in 19 towns and villages in the regions. The organization’s Crisis Evidence Lab has analyzed satellite imagery to further corroborate some of these incidents. Most residential areas where soldiers located themselves were kilometres away from front lines. Viable alternatives were available that would not endanger civilians – such as military bases or densely wooded areas nearby, or other structures further away from residential areas. Amnesty International researchers witnessed Ukrainian forces using hospitals as de facto military bases in five locations. In two towns, dozens of soldiers were resting, milling about, and eating meals in hospitals. In another town, soldiers were firing from near the hospital. A Russian air strike on 28 April injured two employees at a medical laboratory in a suburb of Kharkiv after Ukrainian forces had set up a base in the compound. Survivors and witnesses of Russian strikes in the Donbas, Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions told Amnesty International researchers that the Ukrainian military had been operating near their homes around the time of the strikes, exposing the areas to retaliatory fire from Russian forces. Amnesty International researchers witnessed such conduct in numerous locations. Mykola, who lives in a tower block in a neighbourhood of Lysychansk (Donbas) that was repeatedly struck by Russian attacks which killed at least one older man, told Amnesty International: “I don’t understand why our military is firing from the cities and not from the field.” Another resident, a 50-year-old man, said: “There is definitely military activity in the neighbourhood. When there is outgoing fire, we hear incoming fire afterwards.” Amnesty International researchers witnessed soldiers using a residential building some 20 metres from the entrance of the underground shelter used by the residents where the older man was killed. www.amnesty.org I think this is going to trend into more frequent rather than less until/unless the US provides a new aid/weapons package, but that's a topic for another thread. | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2471 Posts
On February 05 2024 07:39 Cerebrate1 wrote: Eh, the Ukrainians care about their own civilians so they don't build all their military bases into civilian infrastructure. Ukrainian trenches are in fields, so if Russia wants to win the war, they shoot at those fields. Israel would love it if Hamas moved all their fighting out into fields and Israel could hit military targets without all the collateral damage. I agree! The numbers aren't comparable because the situations are very far from similar. I wasn't the one who brought the comparison, I was just trying to illustrate it was a silly comparison. Different wars, different scales, different goals. Shoot, it was YOUR whataboutism, I hoped you would know what it hoped to prove. I guess we'll just have to wonder. | ||
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Dan HH
Romania8979 Posts
On February 05 2024 07:32 Cerebrate1 wrote: A lot of the bigger demolition projects are blowing up the length of a full tunnel, not just an entrance. It's better militarily because Hamas can't just clear the entrance out and get right back in. The problem is, the tunnels affect the support of all the buildings above them. So clearing one tunnel can also knock out a whole row of buildings atop it. There are a number of videos of Israel doing demolitions like this, and you can often see the indents in the ground after where everything fell into the gap that was left from the tunnels. Not all of the damage has been from this of course. Most of the early bombing had more to do with buildings storing rockets or being garrisoned by militants. If a single building went down from an air strike, it was more likely one of the latter cases. If a whole block went down at once, it was probably a tunnel demolition. Of course, there is also the problem of debris. If you blow up one building, you will certainly also damage most of the other surrounding buildings as well. The surrounding buildings may still be standing, but they also lose enough glass to be included in the damaged count. Digging tunnels is ancient tech, we're not talking about dismantled nuclear weapons here. There's no permanence, this is at most a medium setback. Other tunnels can be dug. The only way the IDF can prevent that is by not leaving, and if they didn't plan to leave there was no point in levelling the place. The idea that Israel is destroying 100,000 buildings all teary-eyed as unfortunate collateral damage in order to temporarily deprive Hamas of the all-important tunnels is completly irrational. As far as preventing future attacks goes, weighing "Hamas being deprived of tunnels for a while" vs "Israel increasing demand for terrorism against itself a hundred fold by levelling entire cities" is an incredibly easy calculus. Israel isn't acting in its best interest right now, this is short-sighted revenge just to show their own people on TV that they've turned the place of their attacker to dust. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23342 Posts
On February 05 2024 07:32 Cerebrate1 wrote: A lot of the bigger demolition projects are blowing up the length of a full tunnel, not just an entrance. It's better militarily because Hamas can't just clear the entrance out and get right back in. The problem is, the tunnels affect the support of all the buildings above them. So clearing one tunnel can also knock out a whole row of buildings atop it. There are a number of videos of Israel doing demolitions like this, and you can often see the indents in the ground after where everything fell into the gap that was left from the tunnels. Not all of the damage has been from this of course. Most of the early bombing had more to do with buildings storing rockets or being garrisoned by militants. If a single building went down from an air strike, it was more likely one of the latter cases. If a whole block went down at once, it was probably a tunnel demolition. Of course, there is also the problem of debris. If you blow up one building, you will certainly also damage most of the other surrounding buildings as well. The surrounding buildings may still be standing, but they also lose enough glass to be included in the damaged count. What’s the proportion of targeted demolition efforts versus that from air strikes? Also to flex my (32 years later) ability to sleep through almost anything, as a youngling I managed to sleep through an IRA bomb blowing our windows in. But yeah I mean not all damage is created equal, a shockwave blowing your windows in is pretty small fry compared to bigger structural damage, so I can see some inflation but the stat of buildings deemed ‘destroyed’ seems rather damning. You’ve more of an ear to the ground in terms of sentiment, how has that fluctuated in the time since? It feels to me as an outsider that, whatever the rights or the wrongs of attitudes, October 7th pushed the needle far enough that properly dealing with Hamas became more palatable, or at least semi-permanently crippling their infrastructure. But to me such an effort would necessitate much more of an old-fashioned boots on the ground push than we’ve seen. I’m less of a military nerd than some in here and especially in the Ukraine/Russia thread, but I just don’t get how you would go about dismantling this tunnel network to a major degree without a presence sweeping, mapping, demolishing and confirming said demolition. Instead we’ve seen an almost worst of all worlds approach of a hell of a lot of bombing, so much so that it seems dubious that all of those air strikes are accompanied by solid intel. The human cost is horrendous, as is the property cost. And such an approach will radicalise the next generation of Hamas so it’s not conducive to that aim. In addition, even historic allies internationally have their issues with this approach. Added to my aforementioned criticisms earlier. I’m sure there’s a fair split but what’s Israeli opinion on this? If you’re not as privy as I assumed no worries! In the worst way pretty much possible it feels the right -leaning elements of Israeli society got handed a gift to justify all sorts, and IMO this has been rather squandered. Perhaps a cruel choice of words, not my intent just struggling to think of better. If you want to completely cripple Hamas, in the aftermath of a large scale terror atrocity is the time. From this outside view it feels the wider Palestinian populace is the punching bag, due to a reluctance to do certain things. I.e. escalating basically to air strikes, but more, rather than to other methods. What’s the feeling on these kind of issues over there? | ||
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Cerebrate1
265 Posts
On February 05 2024 05:29 Liquid`Drone wrote: K/D ratios aren't really morally relevant when comparing armies, but absolutely relevant when looking at civilian casualties. This is the foundation for stuff like considering all males above 18 (or 15-16) combatants, whether done by Israel when fighting in Gaza or by the US when drone striking a wedding, as reducing the civilian casualty number IS important to maintain any semblance of moral justification. This is why Israel's retaliation in the view of an increasing amount of people has gone far beyond the pale: If you kill 30000 people where most are civilians (mid january seems the number was 23k according to UNOCHA) to retaliate against having 1200 people (where I'm actually seeing that fewer than 800 were civilians) then at some point you've lost the moral high ground. If Israel had killed 30k hamas soldiers and 500 civilians, then people would overwhelmingly feel entirely differently about the whole operation. But I care just as much about the 6 year old palestinian girl who loses her parents or dies in terror and darkness being trapped underneath rubble for two days as I care about the Israeli teenager who gets raped to death, and at some point, seeing far more examples of the former than the latter ends up affecting my sympathies. World war 2 analogies are pretty poor for multiple reasons - but Germany/Japan are not primarily considered villains in that conflict because their armies were efficient and had a 2:1 K/D ratio in army vs army battles. They're considered villains because a) they were aggressors and b) they had a 15:1 K/D ratio in terms of civilians. People still debate whether Hiroshima/Nagasaki were justified, and the firebombing of Dresden is generally condemned - but these incidents are entirely dwarfed by the atrocities committed by the axis countries, and this is part of why ww2 is one of few conflicts where there's some degree of a 'good vs evil' narrative going on. If Japan's population of 72 million people had been exterminated at the end of ww2 rather than 'only' 130k-230k, or if the rape of berlin was done by american rather than soviet soldiers, the idea that the US represented 'good' in this conflict would have a much harder time propagating. I hear where you are coming from. But still, American civilian casualties in WW2 was around 12k vs German civilian casualties somewhere between 350k to 500k. So even if you limit your count to civilians, the K/D ratio alone is not a good indicator of moral righteousness. Your actual explanations of what made the Axis villains makes more sense. a) they were aggressors Starting a war does usually make you the bad guy unless you have some serious moral high ground of why it's necessary to begin the mutual bloodbath that war is. b) they had a 15:1 K/D ratio in terms of civilians Based on your examples, I don't even think you mean K/D ratio here. Russia lost more civilians than anyone in WW2 (~19 million), yet you are critical of the Rape of Berlin, so it's clear you don't think K/D ratio is the actual moral rationale. I think a better indicator of what you are getting at though is they directly targeted civilians in a way that wasn't necessary to the war effort. Things like the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking are what make the Axis evil. And no one ever says "the Holocaust was bad because only 350k to 500k German civilians died in WW2." The Holocaust was bad because they directly slaughtered millions of civilians as an end in and of itself, full stop. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are looked at as better because the goal was to end the war (and prevent worse alternatives). You dislike Dresden because the strategic rationale was flimsy and it was effectively just bombing civilians. If more Englishmen had died though, I don't think you would suddenly give Dresden the green light. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43582 Posts
On February 05 2024 11:00 JimmiC wrote: The senate released the money for Ukraine and Israel. https://ca.yahoo.com/news/senators-release-118-billion-package-235642780.html That article says that the bill provides both military aid to Israel and humanitarian aid to Gaza. Isn't the latter necessary because of the former, though? | ||
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Cerebrate1
265 Posts
On February 05 2024 10:20 WombaT wrote: What’s the proportion of targeted demolition efforts versus that from air strikes? Also to flex my (32 years later) ability to sleep through almost anything, as a youngling I managed to sleep through an IRA bomb blowing our windows in. But yeah I mean not all damage is created equal, a shockwave blowing your windows in is pretty small fry compared to bigger structural damage, so I can see some inflation but the stat of buildings deemed ‘destroyed’ seems rather damning. You’ve more of an ear to the ground in terms of sentiment, how has that fluctuated in the time since? It feels to me as an outsider that, whatever the rights or the wrongs of attitudes, October 7th pushed the needle far enough that properly dealing with Hamas became more palatable, or at least semi-permanently crippling their infrastructure. But to me such an effort would necessitate much more of an old-fashioned boots on the ground push than we’ve seen. I’m less of a military nerd than some in here and especially in the Ukraine/Russia thread, but I just don’t get how you would go about dismantling this tunnel network to a major degree without a presence sweeping, mapping, demolishing and confirming said demolition. Instead we’ve seen an almost worst of all worlds approach of a hell of a lot of bombing, so much so that it seems dubious that all of those air strikes are accompanied by solid intel. The human cost is horrendous, as is the property cost. And such an approach will radicalise the next generation of Hamas so it’s not conducive to that aim. In addition, even historic allies internationally have their issues with this approach. Added to my aforementioned criticisms earlier. I’m sure there’s a fair split but what’s Israeli opinion on this? If you’re not as privy as I assumed no worries! In the worst way pretty much possible it feels the right -leaning elements of Israeli society got handed a gift to justify all sorts, and IMO this has been rather squandered. Perhaps a cruel choice of words, not my intent just struggling to think of better. If you want to completely cripple Hamas, in the aftermath of a large scale terror atrocity is the time. From this outside view it feels the wider Palestinian populace is the punching bag, due to a reluctance to do certain things. I.e. escalating basically to air strikes, but more, rather than to other methods. What’s the feeling on these kind of issues over there? Just to clarify, there are boots on the ground. Lots of them. Israel mobilized some 300k soldiers, and the vast majority of those are not their small number of highly trained air force pilots. They've marched into Gaza with tanks and infantry and currently control most of the territory in the strip directly [interactive map]. (A lot of those reservists have actually gone home at this point since they need less troops to hold it than take it.) Those troops are unlikely to leave until someone can be found to take the reigns of power in Gaza who won't allow terrorism to foment the moment they leave. That's one of the sticking points of the ceasefire negotiations right now, because Hamas can't just take the place back over so long as that is true. This is far worse for Hamas than any of the previous wars that didn't include a ground invasion because it may actually be the end of them instead of just a recruitment drive. Israeli intelligence about tunnels etc is good and getting better every day. You've seen some of the pictures of the hundreds of captured Hamas militants? Not all of those guys is as religiously devoted to their cause as others. They can be bribed with exemption from punishment for past crimes, visas to other countries along with an alibi that they died (think witness protection programs), or even just cash. They are getting lots of tunnel locations and other intel from those guys. Most of the recent demolitions that I've seen have been done by engineers on the ground rather than bombs from the sky. Once they've cleared an area, they can do a more targeted job in person. Air drops are for places that are still contested, like Khan Yunis (towards the south of the strip). If Hamas is removed as the government, new tunnels won't be built after, but old tunnels would still be breeding grounds for insurgents, so it's a good time to remove them now before the rebuilding of Gaza. As for the average Israeli, I feel like there are two main political thrusts from the populace that are affecting the decisions of the War Cabinet: 1. People who want the hostages back at any cost. Redeeming captives is a very strongly held Jewish ideal. There is a long tradition of banding together as a community and giving anything necessary to get our community members back. Add to that that Jewish mothers will personally break down the Prime Ministers door if it means getting their child back. These factors contributed to the famous Gilad Shalit deal some years back where over 1,000 Palestinian inmates were traded for a single Israeli hostage. Now, especially given the psychological and physical conditions of the hostages that have already been freed, there is an added time pressure where many are pressuring the government to give up every other military gain in exchange for the immediate safe return of the hostages. 2. People who don't want all of this to be for naught. Anyone who lives anywhere near Gaza. Anyone who put their life on the line in this war. Anyone with a family member who was injured or killed in the fighting. None of these people want us to return to the status quo of Oct 6 where Hamas is in charge and is just waiting to break the ceasefire at the time of their choosing. Those people are pressuring the government to keep the troops in place until a better long term solution can be achieved (i.e. Hamas can be replaced by a friendlier government). Because if not, all the death and destruction of this war will have been for nothing. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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RenSC2
United States1022 Posts
On February 02 2024 20:14 Nebuchad wrote: So, I wouldn't associate with this exact language. Hamas is still a far right organization, if it achieves all of its goals Palestinians would still be oppressed, just not by Israel. The parallel is (I've written this before but it was in a post to JimmiC, it makes sense that absolutely no one read it) with the talibans. Are the talibans fighting for freedom? Well no, we can see that once the US is gone, they've implemented a rigid hierarchical system, because of course they have. But that doesn't change the fact that in the context of the US vs Afghanistan war, if you're a young kid living in a valley and you want the US out of that valley, what you do is you join the taliban. There isn't going to be another force that's only fighting for freedom and doesn't have the baggage. Let's start with this one as it's quite easy. If you're in Afghanistan and you want the US gone, you become a farmer. Or you become a construction worker or a businessman or just about any fucking job that a normal human being would have. Despite moronic claims on the internet, the US is not imperialistic. The US doesn't take land. 1) It removes the bad leadership, 2) it installs new leadership picked by the local people from local people, and 3) then it tries to build a mutually prosperous alliance. On the first point of removing leadership, the US didn't even care about the damn Taliban initially. They just wanted to go after Al Qaeda for hopefully obvious reasons and the Taliban got in their way. So the US threw them out of power. The US then handed the country over to the Afghani people. It trained their military (seemingly poorly, but that's for another discussion). It provided supplies to help get them off the ground and improve quality of life. It tried (and failed) to turn Afghanistan into a prosperous country. The only reason for the US to remain in Afghanistan was the presence of the Taliban threatening to tear down everything they built. If the Taliban was gone sooner, the US would have left sooner. So that kid in the valley who wants the US gone should have simply told the Taliban to fuck off and gone to school or into a trade. Unfortunately, the US eventually got bored and left without finishing the job, so the country goes right back to being a shit hole. On February 02 2024 19:20 Nebuchad wrote: So Ren, I'm a 19-year-old Palestinian in Gaza, I really want Palestinians to be free from Israel and I'm willing to use violence to reach this goal. What organization should I join? This one is a bit more complicated because Israel is right on Gaza's doorstep and there is some signs that it is willing to take land. Except, up until Oct 7th, the issue had been about settlers taking land in the west bank and Israel turning a blind eye to it. Gaza itself hadn't been touched. So if you're a 19 year old in Gaza until Oct 7th, congrats, your land hasn't been touched. It's ruled by Hamas, which sucks, but you get to live a pretty normal middle eastern life. You even have the US pouring in billions of dollars in aid to your area. If you want to improve your situation, you should probably go to school. Biggest impact would be to become a lawyer while also learning public speaking and English. Understanding the law and the ability to communicate with the English speaking world (which includes Israel) is a great way to help humanize Gazans and help put more international pressure on Israel to grant Gaza more freedom. Instead, a bunch of those 19 year old Palestinians joined Hamas and went on a murder spree. What we've seen in Gaza since then is a direct result of that murder spree. I don't need a wall full of yarn connecting some vast conspiracy. It's a very straight line. Hamas attacked, Israel attacked back and will keep it up until Hamas can no longer hold power. Those 19 year old assholes created this mess. If they wanted freedom for Gaza from Israel, they did the exact wrong thing. If a kid wants freedom, the worst thing he could do now is join Hamas. Unlike in Afghanistan, Israel is much less likely than the US to get bored. For an Israeli, what happens with Hamas is a matter of life and death. His best bet right now is to keep his head down, try to avoid the conflict and avoid getting forcibly recruited. If he really wants to make a difference, he should be an informant for the IDF against Hamas, but that's extremely risky and I wouldn't recommend it. The faster Hamas goes away, the faster Gaza goes into rebuilding mode. At that point, there should be plenty of opportunities working in construction. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland11808 Posts
On February 05 2024 17:22 RenSC2 wrote: [way too many words] I agree with you that there are no untainted options for Palestinian resistance. This is a very human thing to be happening, when a group is threatened internal differences between the members of the group tend to take second stage, and as such the people who have the most forceful ideology will dominate. This has happened and will continue to happen. This is also what's happening with Israel, of course, and is the reason why they willingly vote fascists in. I assume the bit about them becoming lawyers and farmers was sarcastical? Uncalled for in my opinion, but I don't think I'll bite today | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23342 Posts
On February 05 2024 18:29 Nebuchad wrote: I agree with you that there are no untainted options for Palestinian resistance. This is a very human thing to be happening, when a group is threatened internal differences between the members of the group tend to take second stage, and as such the people who have the most forceful ideology will dominate. This has happened and will continue to happen. This is also what's happening with Israel, of course, and is the reason why they willingly vote fascists in. I assume the bit about them becoming lawyers and farmers was sarcastical? Uncalled for in my opinion, but I don't think I'll bite today Said post seems to presuppose that Israel is solely secured with security, with no elements of expansion. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3547 Posts
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Acrofales
Spain17743 Posts
On February 05 2024 17:22 RenSC2 wrote: Sorry for late reply. Let's start with this one as it's quite easy. If you're in Afghanistan and you want the US gone, you become a farmer. Or you become a construction worker or a businessman or just about any fucking job that a normal human being would have. Despite moronic claims on the internet, the US is not imperialistic. The US doesn't take land. 1) It removes the bad leadership, 2) it installs new leadership picked by the local people from local people, and 3) then it tries to build a mutually prosperous alliance. On the first point of removing leadership, the US didn't even care about the damn Taliban initially. They just wanted to go after Al Qaeda for hopefully obvious reasons and the Taliban got in their way. So the US threw them out of power. The US then handed the country over to the Afghani people. It trained their military (seemingly poorly, but that's for another discussion). It provided supplies to help get them off the ground and improve quality of life. It tried (and failed) to turn Afghanistan into a prosperous country. The only reason for the US to remain in Afghanistan was the presence of the Taliban threatening to tear down everything they built. If the Taliban was gone sooner, the US would have left sooner. So that kid in the valley who wants the US gone should have simply told the Taliban to fuck off and gone to school or into a trade. Unfortunately, the US eventually got bored and left without finishing the job, so the country goes right back to being a shit hole. This one is a bit more complicated because Israel is right on Gaza's doorstep and there is some signs that it is willing to take land. Except, up until Oct 7th, the issue had been about settlers taking land in the west bank and Israel turning a blind eye to it. Gaza itself hadn't been touched. So if you're a 19 year old in Gaza until Oct 7th, congrats, your land hasn't been touched. It's ruled by Hamas, which sucks, but you get to live a pretty normal middle eastern life. You even have the US pouring in billions of dollars in aid to your area. If you want to improve your situation, you should probably go to school. Biggest impact would be to become a lawyer while also learning public speaking and English. Understanding the law and the ability to communicate with the English speaking world (which includes Israel) is a great way to help humanize Gazans and help put more international pressure on Israel to grant Gaza more freedom. Instead, a bunch of those 19 year old Palestinians joined Hamas and went on a murder spree. What we've seen in Gaza since then is a direct result of that murder spree. I don't need a wall full of yarn connecting some vast conspiracy. It's a very straight line. Hamas attacked, Israel attacked back and will keep it up until Hamas can no longer hold power. Those 19 year old assholes created this mess. If they wanted freedom for Gaza from Israel, they did the exact wrong thing. If a kid wants freedom, the worst thing he could do now is join Hamas. Unlike in Afghanistan, Israel is much less likely than the US to get bored. For an Israeli, what happens with Hamas is a matter of life and death. His best bet right now is to keep his head down, try to avoid the conflict and avoid getting forcibly recruited. If he really wants to make a difference, he should be an informant for the IDF against Hamas, but that's extremely risky and I wouldn't recommend it. The faster Hamas goes away, the faster Gaza goes into rebuilding mode. At that point, there should be plenty of opportunities working in construction. While I absolutely agree with you, because at heart I am also a pacifist, I think it's fair to say there are situations where pacifism just gets stomped on. For instance, you might say that the best way to get Russia out of Ukraine is to just roll over and let them roll their tanks up to Kyiv, depose Zelensky and install their puppet. If Ukrainians had done that 2 years ago, then the Russian army would be back home again! Why wouldn't you pick that option if you want Russians out of your country, rather than pick up arms to battle them every step of the way and throw them out forcefully? Surely the former would have been faster and have led to less bloodshed? In this case it's fairly clear: Russia installs a puppet government, ensures they get all the economic benefits of Ukraine and self-determination is out the window. I am guessing Afghani resistance against US occupation was somewhat similar: they saw the US as an oppressive force that had removed the kind of government they wanted (regardless of how backward and repressive that kind of government is... it seems to have a reasonable amount of popular support all over the region). So rather than learning how to be a plumber and waiting patiently for the US army to leave, they picked up an AK47 and a home-built IED to fight the US army, even if the overall effect was prolongation of the US' mission in Afghanistan. The same obviously goes for 14-year-old Palestinians in Gaza. I find it quite remarkable that you think Israel wasn't an oppressor in Gaza before October 7. Sure, Hamas was the government, but Israel blockaded the port and airport, and any land traffic in/out of the strip. Gaza had no self-determination whatsoever in international trade/diplomacy. You can't call it self-determination if you can't determine what ships enter or exit the country. So the status quo from 2009ish until now was one of Israeli repression of Gaza, even if they let Hamas "decide" within Gaza. It's similar to how Bantustans in South Africa were "autonomous". While I fully agree with you that if more Gazans focused on building diplomatic routes to a two-state solution and real autonomy by working with Israel, that would probably be a better and more viable route to changing the status quo. But I also understand that after Netanyahu utter disdain for any kind of rapprochement since 2017, some people decided that the only real way to change the status quo was by killing Israelis until they also reject that status quo. | ||
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manglee
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23342 Posts
On February 05 2024 21:37 JimmiC wrote: I think you should read more carefully. Jimmy I’m not going to be lectured by you of all people when it comes to the topic of accurately reading posts. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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