Alon (they/them): No, because Hamas is not giving the hostages to anyone it doesn't absolutely trust, because anyone who isn't in on the program can rat them out to the IDF; Hamas is not popular among Gazan civilians, and Israel has a track record of remunerating individual collaborators.

Deleted.

They know it wasn't on accident and they don't care. These people don't see Palestinians as human and actively enjoy hearing about their deaths.

It's always comprehensive and unilateral, too. Anything done by any Palestinian is justification to do anything to any number of Palestinians. At the same time, no transgression (no matter how flagrant) by Likud forces can ever justify any response. It's a universal one-way adapter for genocide.

They love it

Islamophobia is a powerful drug.

Israel has Muslim citizens, whose political opinions on the war are "bring the hostages home" and "why the fuck is the state not protecting Bedouin communities with Iron Dome?" and not what the international Palestine movement wants; Ahmed Tibi called one of the latter's viral tweets anti-Semitic.

I think the answer to the second question might not suggest zero Islamophobia on the part of the Israeli government. But either way, I was talking about the way Islamophobia feeds into the lack of compassion many Americans have for Palestinians.

Oh, there's tons of racism in Israel (I hesitate to call it Islamophobia - I'd call it anti-Arab racism; there's sometimes a mentality that Arab Christians are the good ones, but it's inconsistent and mostly they're excluded like the rest). It's just, rather like domestic racism in the US or Europe.

Anti-racist, joint Jewish-Arab politics in Israel opposes the war, but doesn't say shit like "7.10 was resistance" or "genocide," and has politics that are similar to those of Bernie Sanders; the BDS movement is boycotting Standing Together, which is escorting aid to Gaza, on bullshit grounds.

When members of the Israeli government have gone on record in favor of the "total annihilation" of Gaza, it's pretty hard to believably deny that the goal isn't genocide or at least a thorough ethnic cleansing. But Arab citizens in an apartheid state mightn't feel real comfortable saying so.

They haven't... the line that was quoted in the ICJ lawsuit was "we will destroy it all," meaning Hamas, and not Gaza. And re ethnic cleansing: the main target of the pro-ethnic cleansing extremists, Gush Katif, wasn't even under IDF control during the op, that's how little the IDF cares for them.

Look, "all the Gazans need to be destroyed" is pretty darn unequivocal.

He's a backbencher. The Israeli government hands out ministerial positions like candy - if I'm counting right there are 34 ministers out of 64 coalition MKs, and he doesn't have a ministry. House members have said this kind of shit in American wars before. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_S...

Moshe Saada - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Stop trying to shift the goal posts. My point stands. If members of the government are saying this shit OUT LOUD, it's a pretty good bet that others are both thinking it and sympathizing with it.

And regardless of what they say out loud, the Israeli govt's interpretation of the death toll in Gaza betrays their intentions. Specifically, they claim virtually every adult male killed so far is a member of Hamas. By extension, all adult males are members of Hamas and they mean to kill them all.

They don't; they claim the combatant death toll as the adult male *surplus* over adult women, plus a small share of children (essentially, the surplus of male late-teens) and a very small share of women.

Netanyahu says 15k of 31k casualties were combatants. The UN's verified stats show 40% of casualties are men, 32% children, 20% women, 8% elderly. If that ratio is accurate, the only way the math works is if Netanyahu is claiming every man and 8% of the children, women, and elderly are combatants.

Netanyahu always lies. The US and IDF figures are out 15/31, they're around 12/37.

Netanyahu lies, but he's definitely NOT committing genocide because he says he's not. Do you hear yourself?

Netanyahu lies, and the judge Israel sent to represent it in the Hague to argue that it's not committing genocide, Aharon Barak, was a frequent target for incitement by Netanyahu when he was the president of the supreme court.

I'm pretty sure you mean indictment not incitement, but so what? You seem to be suggesting that as long as someone Netanyahu dislikes ALSO doesn't think Israel isn't committing genocide, it means they can't possibly be committing genocide.

No, I mean incitement. Netanyahu called him an unelected tyrant and all the other stuff right-wingers say when liberal judges strike their racist policies down.

I still don't know what you mean by "target for incitement." It's a bizarre construction. And still doesn't obviate my point. Israel sent someone to DEFEND them. How much Netanyahu dislikes that person proves nothing about Israel's guilt or innocence.

I mean Bibi and allies were portraying the courts, and Aharon Barak in particular, as a left-wing conspiracy to suppress the rule of the people. This included threats of violence - not as acute as with Rabin, but also not nothing.

And this means what to you, vis-a-vis whether the Israeli government is committing genocide?

It means that "Israel is not committing genocide" is not a Bibist position.

I never said it was. Every country in the world that's ever committed a genocide didn't think it was doing so at the time. "The majority of the population is cool with eradicating X minority group" isn't a defense against a charge of genocide.

Yes, but every country that *isn't* committing genocide thinks it's not committing genocide. That's where it becomes important to look at the death toll, the rules of engagement, the actions taken by the military, etc. The warnings to evacuate buildings, for example, showcase non-genocidal intent.

The country accused of committing a genocide is never and can never be the arbiter of whether it's committing a genocide. That's snakes and chicken eggs. The "rules of engagement" here seem to be "We bomb the crap out of you and if you retaliate in any way, we bomb you more."

And every evacuation Israel has issued has been followed up by them bombing the places they've told people to go to be safe. These orders are nothing but great ways to rob people of their homes and further concentrate them where they can be controlled. Sound familiar?

Yeah, it's called refugee camps. At the end of the day, the proportion of Palestinians who have been killed is something like one third the proportion of Iraqis who have been killed in the Iraq War, despite all this destruction of buildings. Think why.

The Iraq War was, in my view, a war crime (and possibly even rose to the level of genocide) and should have been prosecuted as such. Same with Afghanistan. I think you'll find I'm pretty consistent on this. The US just has too much power to ever be held accountable for its bullshit, more's the pity.

But also, the Iraq War lasted 8 years. Israel has only been at this for 215 days. Think how many more Palestinians they can kill if they go on another 7+ years!

Do you think Palestine has a right to exist? Do you think Palestinians have a right to defend themselves from attack?

7.10 was not self-defense. Neither are the rocket attacks now; the #1 Israeli city that Hamas targets, Ashkelon, doesn't even have any military bases in it. And okay, you think Iraq should have been prosecuted. But you still rely on anti-war American sources on it, I imagine.

I'm not asking about Oct 7. I'm asking about NOW. Do Palestinians have a right to defend themselves from the ongoing attacks from Israel? Does Palestine have a right to exist as a fully recognized state independent of Israel and with its own defenses?

Hamas is not Palestine, is the issue. It's an extremist militia that only attacks civilians.

Isn't it interesting how you are projecting, because I deliberately used "Palestinians" and not "Hamas." And yet you inserted "Hamas" as if that was what I wrote. I am asking about the Palestinian people. Do they have a right to defend themselves from Israeli bombs?

They do. But nothing Hamas - the polity governing Gaza, which Israel is at war with - has ever done is defense from Israeli bombs. Hamas terrorists, unlike the National Liberation Front, have never tried to put themselves between noncombatant and harm's way.

So Palestinian civilians have a right to do whatever it takes to stop Israel from murdering them as collateral in their war with Hamas? Yes or no?

No, because civilians are by definition noncombatants, and any combat action by them endangers other civilians nearby.

So let's get this straight: Israel has the right to "defend itself" by bombing mostly defenseless people out of their homes, hospitals, and schools but those people have no right to do anything in their own defense because they're civilians? Come on. You must see how absurd that is.

Civilians can become combatants - for example, by guarding hostages - but then they lose non-combatant protections. The upshot is that Hamas front Euro-Med Monitor's outrage story of how the IDF shot at the guards of the hostages was about the IDF killing Hamas combatants.

Hm, what if they are forced to guard the hostages because they themselves are hostages? They are still non-combatants. Israel didn't even try to check. That's evil. Killing 200+ of the "wrong kind" of hostages (according to Bibi) to get four of the "right ones" is unconscionable.

No, because Hamas is not giving the hostages to anyone it doesn't absolutely trust, because anyone who isn't in on the program can rat them out to the IDF; Hamas is not popular among Gazan civilians, and Israel has a track record of remunerating individual collaborators.

Unless things have changed pretty dramatically in 3 mos., Hamas is still pretty popular among Gazans. Which makes sense. Hamas isn't the one dropping bombs on them. This doesn't mean all Gazans belong to Hamas but the idea that Gazans are eager to sell out to Israel seems weak.

Hamas is losing support in Gaza over this, and quite a lot of people would sell them out. (I suspect this is what happened leading up to the rescue - someone sent over a tip.) www.pcpsr.org/en/node/969

Press Release: Public Opinion Poll No (91) | PCPSRwww.pcpsr.org

Did you even read the link? Support for Hamas has gone UP in the Gaza Strip since December. I mean, I wish it hadn't because I think Hamas are terrible actors and harming the Gazan people immensely, but the data you just shared don't match your claim.

Hamas was up in December but according to AP in May it's gone down. But that could have changed - it's hard getting good Intel.

I mean, I hope that's true and it should be, because Hamas has put Gaza in a right pickle. Notwithstanding, the link Alon shared was of a poll done in March compared to December and it didn't show a diminution in support for Hamas in Gaza.

Ah, I was referring to this. But the numbers you have appear to be more accurate on closer look: www.nbcnews.com/news/world/g...

Gazans increasingly back a two-state solution, as support for Hamas dropswww.nbcnews.com Support for a two-state solution nearly doubled in Gaza, as fewer back “armed struggle” for an independent Palestinian state.

Maybe they did. Now they sure won't ever do it again given the civilian death toll. Do you think anyone wants to live with the knowledge they killed 200+ people by calling the IDF?

Also, the last legit number I saw was 34% drop in public support for Hamas in Gaza from around May. But digging into that data shows people blame Israel for the deaths and genocide, and the drop in support for Hamas is cuz they are terrified being in a war and want either/both to end it NOW.

Given how the majority of the 200+ are Hamas? Yes.

That is not entirely correct and also ignores the main point: Palestinians are unwilling (unable to change regimes by nonviolent means) citizens of a government headed by a terror group then they are hostages of Hamas too, which means Israel is bombing non-combatants that deserve protection.

Sure they say in surveys they sre for Hamas but cmon. There's easily a dozen reasons for Palestinians in Gaza to show support for Hamas that completely excludes the possibility that they are Hamas or approve of Hamas as a terror group. Israel has a moral imperative to act as if they aren't Hamas.

Correct, and it does, which is where it gets civilians to evacuate areas it's about to invade, destroying infrastructure extensively but killing limited numbers of people.

Yes and then it bombs the place they sent the people to, killing even more. That's well documented.

No, they bomb other places; those "they bomb the place they sent the people to" stories aren't actually in the safe zones - the complaints instead are that the safe zones shift a lot.

Ah, I see that you're at the stage of denying known reality. It's a fact they are creating kill zones in this way, it's documented and verified independently.

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