alas, TGL is correct... i am not a part of the sacred wolf web old guard. ill see myself out.

but first id like to point out only a dumb liberal jew hating motherfucker would think offensive chanting deserves to be hunted down, beaten, and compared to cancer (gee that sounds familiar).

totally a normal reaction.

11/12/2024 5:44:04 PM

Quote :

"I suggest we start in the mid-19th century and work our way forward from there"

this channel does a very good job of walking through the history.

can start with the experience of european jews



through the dreyfus affair



and how this history led to zionism, which I know it's a spooky boogeyman word for some people, but it really just means "jews have been a minority in all these different societies and we keep getting blamed for everything and then murdered en masse for it, so I guess we need to find a way to protect ourselves from all that and what better way than to join the burgeoning 20th century world of nationalism" and I don't see how there's anything wrong with that.




[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 5:58 PM. Reason : "sacred wolf web old guard" is dumb. let's not do that, we're in our 40s]

11/12/2024 5:55:40 PM

not gonna watch; has more than 42500 subscribers

11/12/2024 6:05:22 PM

Quote :

"ethnic cleansing is a biased characterization of what is happening in Israel/Palestine. when you see people say this, you should think "these people either have no idea what words means, or they do know and they're lying anyways""

Ethnic cleansing is the literal fucking definition if what is going on in Israel and Palestine. You couldn't get a more clearcut form of it than what has happened there in the last 70 years. Get the fuck out of here with that nonsense

11/12/2024 6:34:09 PM

how many Jews and non-Jews lived in Mandatory Palestine in 1940
how many Jews and non-Jews live in Israel today?
how many Jews and non-Jews live in the West Bank today? In Hebron. In Nablus. In Jenin. In Ramallah.
how many Jews and non-Jews live in Gaza today?
how many Jews and non-Jews lived in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran? and how many today?

I think if you actually look at the numbers, it's clear who has been trying to ethnically cleanse who.



[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 7:39 PM. Reason : pro-palestinians who use words like genocide, ethnically cleanse and apartheid are marks.]

11/12/2024 7:38:15 PM

I'm not even going to get into this with you, because you are clearly so radicalized by whatever the hell you have been reading, that discussing it is fruitless. I'd have an easier time discussing the merits of Hillary Clinton with MAGA hats than getting through to you. This simply isn't debatable. The UN, itself, has declared this ethnic cleansing. But I guess even the UN is just Jew-hating

Quote :

"The Nakba is described as ethnic cleansing by many scholars, including Palestinian scholars such as Saleh Abd al-Jawad, Beshara Doumani, Rashid Khalidi, Adel Manna, Nur Masalha, Nadim Rouhana, Ahmad H. Sa'di, and Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, Israeli scholars such as Alon Confino, Amos Goldberg, Baruch Kimmerling, Ronit Lentin, Ilan Pappé, and Yehouda Shenhav, and foreign scholars such as Abigail Bakan, Elias Khoury, Mark Levene, Derek Penslar, and Patrick Wolfe, among other scholars."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba#Long-term_implications_and_%22ongoing_Nakba%22
I guess the Israeli scholars are Jew-haters, too

[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 7:56 PM. Reason : ]

11/12/2024 7:49:16 PM

sounds more like you just don't have any basis on which to dispute the numbers, and the historical narrative that underly those numbers. i'm a numbers guy. i'm looking dispassionately at numbers. doing the #MATH. the numbers tell me that non-Jewish populations have grown in Israel over the last 75 years and that Jewish populations have been nearly eliminated in all those other places.

did ukraine ethnically cleanse 700,000 russians who have died in the current war? nope. ukraine is just defending their territory. it's a war. not an ethnic cleansing.
did israel ethnically cleanse 40,000 gazans in the current war? nope. israel is just defending their territory and demanding the hostages be returned. it's a war. that hamas started. and hezbollah started. and iran started. and before that fatah and arafat. and before that jordan and egypt and syria and iraq and lebanon. not an ethnic cleansing. a war. it's a war. people die in wars. it's terrible. that's why we don't start wars.


we can talk about the naqba separately. but what's been happening ever since, and certainly over the last year, is NOT ethnic cleansing.

[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 9:49 PM. Reason : .]

11/12/2024 7:56:54 PM

Or I know better than to argue with a zealot who denies objective reality. You are defending crimes against humanity using the same rhetorical devices that salisburyboy used to suggest 9/11 was an inside job by ThE jEwS. Everyone else knows what happened. You are stuck in the rabbit hole, and there's no use trying to pull you out. Get fucked.

11/12/2024 8:17:20 PM

there's the burro i know. lot of bluster, not much for brainpower.

[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 8:20 PM. Reason : objective reality = numbers. look at the fucking numbers and tell me who is ethnically cleansing who]

11/12/2024 8:19:51 PM

I wish I knew where the ken I knew went. Cause this one is batshit insane. PoIsOnInG wElLs Is Ok

11/12/2024 8:21:09 PM

please link me to where i said anything about poisoning wells.

[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 8:25 PM. Reason : ken tells idiots when they're being idiots now bc i'm sick of seeing the world turn to mush]

Quote :

"You are defending crimes against humanity"

the crimes against humanity i'm (most) concerned with are the people who START wars, and less so the people who have to fight wars they didn't want. and in this particular case, it was not the jews who started any of these wars over the last 100 years. until we can all agree on this fact, there isn't going to be much to move forward on.

[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 8:32 PM. Reason : it's early. let's meet at mitch's and solve world peace]

11/12/2024 8:24:38 PM

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/nearly-70-gaza-war-dead-women-children-un-rights-office-says-2024-11-08/

Quote :

" Gaza women, children are nearly 70% of verified war dead, UN rights office says"

11/12/2024 8:57:33 PM

again, you're parroting headlines instead of looking at the full complexity of reality.

11/12/2024 9:08:59 PM

Quote :

"non-Jewish populations have grown in Israel over the last 75 years and that Jewish populations have been nearly eliminated in all those other places"

I'll fully acknowledge I might be missing something, making this an ignorant comment, but: Is it possible those numbers simply reflect people moving from one place to the other, and are therefore irrelevant to demonstrating genocide on either side?

11/12/2024 9:23:53 PM

^^ the realty sure seems to be that 70% of those dead in Gaza are women and children

11/12/2024 9:31:23 PM

Quote :

"I'll fully acknowledge I might be missing something, making this an ignorant comment"

that's the spirit! let's all just embrace our ignorance, and cure it with curiosity by doing our best to figure out what's true and what's not.

and you're right, many of the jewish populations in those middle eastern and north african countries did move (mostly to israel). but why did so many move, especially to the point that the jewish population in those countries are almost gone? persecution is part of the story for sure.

Quote :

"the realty sure seems to be that 70% of those dead in Gaza are women and children"

i don't know what number "nearly 70%" is, but let's say it is 70%

Quote :

"The 8,119 victims verified is a much lower number than the toll of more than 43,000 provided by Palestinian health authorities for the 13-month-old war."

so 70% of 8,119 is 5,683.

out of 43,000.

so 5683 / 43000 is 13%

so The U.N. Human Rights Office has confirmed that "nearly" 13% of casualties are women and children.

but the headline sounds a lot juicier (jewcier?) if you say 70% cus people will read that and FEEL a certain way about it.

[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 9:38 PM. Reason : .]

11/12/2024 9:32:56 PM

Quote :

"that's the spirit! let's all just embrace our ignorance"

Thanks, but how did you get that out of my post? I said I was ignorant and asked a question to cure my ignorance. How the fuck that embraces ignorance is beyond me.

11/12/2024 9:39:27 PM

i mean as in let's all just acknowledge (better word than embrace, my bad) that none of us know everything. we are all ignorant. but we can learn from other people who do know. and from multiple people, as there are usually multiple legitimate perspectives on any topic.

i would LOVE to be proven wrong on this topic. it would make my personal life a hell of a lot easier. but for all the seeking and learning i have done over the last year+, I can't just stick my head in the sand and say that the distortions I see in the media and repeated by people I care about (plus millions of strangers) are ok and to jump on the bandwagon with them.

[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 9:47 PM. Reason : .]

11/12/2024 9:44:43 PM

Oh, okay! Sorry for the confusion; I genuinely was ignorant on whether people moving around was a factor in that, so I wanted to bring it up to see if that was relevant or not. Thanks again!

11/12/2024 9:56:05 PM

^^^^

43000, 8000, or 5000 people dead, thousands more injured or displaced, their towns destroyed, because some people on “their side” committed a terrorist attack is morally wrong

You can argue in the speculative grand scheme of things that maybe this is the best outcome, but in the here and now, in the philosophy of doing the right thing and solving any problems it might create, I don’t see how we all shouldn’t oppose this

11/12/2024 10:40:37 PM

it is 100% unequivocally a tragedy. i am not denying that whatsoever. and that's why i am pushing on this so much. because if we want it to stop, we have to understand this thing for what it actually is.

but let's step back for a minute. conflicts and war and death have been part of human history for as long as we've been around. and every one of those conflicts and deaths could have been avoided if...whoever started the war had instead decided NOT to start a war. and when people do decide to start wars, they only end when people decide they're no longer interested in war and death.

that is what I'm getting at. SOMEBODY started the war here, SOMEBODY has continued the war decade after decade, and if we truly, actually, genuinely want this war and the deaths it brings to stop, we MUST understand this conflict for what it in fact is and how we got here, and not be fooled by those who want to manipulate the masses for their own interests.

there are literally dozens of conflicts and wars happening all over the planet, year after year, hundreds of thousands of people killed, and there is barely a peep from the media and therefore any of y'all. why is there SO much attention on israel? people put 100x much attention (and blame) on the war where the jews have to keep trying to defend themselves from their neighbors. that doesn't make anybody think to themselves "why is there such strong media attention on THIS particular war"?? you care about THIS war, mostly because you're told to care about it.

[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 10:58 PM. Reason : .]

11/12/2024 10:57:27 PM

i could have sworn ive literally seen heads of state and major generals call for ethnically cleansing jews. perhaps im wrong or perhaps they are simply terrorists too.

[Edited on November 13, 2024 at 7:44 AM. Reason : .]

11/13/2024 7:44:21 AM

Quote :

"that is what I'm getting at. SOMEBODY started the war here"

What you're getting at is that you are convinced Palestinians started the war. They would disagree, and I'd argue there's a solid (if not irrefutable) case to be made that they're right. That's why focusing on "who started it" is such a childish waste of time, especially since it is invariably a path to "manipulate the masses."

Quote :

"why is there SO much attention on israel? people put 100x much attention (and blame) on the war where the jews have to keep trying to defend themselves from their neighbors."

1) Israeli Jews have strong cultural and family ties to Jews in the United States and Europe, who understandably are more concerned about them than they are with, say, the Myanmar insurgency.
2) Israel supports a substantial lobbying operation in the United States because they want our attention - when it comes in the form of handouts and UN support. Rebel groups in the DRC don't have that.
3) Israel is right next to where all the oil comes from.
4) Israelis are "white," or at least white-adjacent, in the European/American mind. This also plays a role in why we care about Ukraine.
5) Both sides in the conflict are committing obvious war crimes, which does tend to draw a certain amount of attention (at least when nobody involved is black, because the world is fucking awful)

I could go on, but that right there is plenty to answer your question without resorting to some shadowy cabal of anti-semites.

11/13/2024 8:56:47 AM

ok so petition the UN to uncreate israel or issue a statement about it being a mistake.

or allow the only borders israel can "defend" which are 1967 minus sinai.

palestinians go to jordan.

11/13/2024 9:01:49 AM

Quote :

"What you're getting at is that you are convinced Palestinians started the war. They would disagree, and I'd argue there's a solid (if not irrefutable) case to be made that they're right."

ok let's see it.

11/13/2024 9:03:21 AM

Definitely a lot of mind-boggling bias in here

11/13/2024 9:16:23 AM

aren't you the guy who posts a wral article every day about jews bad?

11/13/2024 10:37:16 AM

Although I could post a different article every day, I might have posted 3 or 4 articles in the last couple weeks about dozens more women and children being blown to smithereens.

The fact that you interpret that as me saying "jews bad" says a lot.

11/13/2024 10:41:15 AM

you said there's bias, right? but have you considered the possibility that YOU are biased??

cus I only see you have something to say about the conflict when you can point to Israel conducting a war that they didn't ask for. nothing to say about the hostages. nothing to say about hezbollah firing thousands of rockets into israeli towns. nothing to say about Iran chanting "death to Israel" for the last 50 years. it's only jew bad.

11/13/2024 10:48:04 AM

1948, 1967 and 1973 were also jews bad

[Edited on November 13, 2024 at 11:21 AM. Reason : .]

11/13/2024 11:21:13 AM

This thread is turning liberals against liberals.

Why is it so hard to acknowledge, on both sides, that yes, there are probably some Israeli soldiers that have committed war crimes. At the same time however, you can guarandamntee that those terrorists are hunkering down in hospitals, schools, and any other public place to make the Israelis look as horrible as possible.

11/13/2024 11:50:16 AM

^^^not talking to me but I personally tried to explain (poorly maybe?) why I have that pattern and the response was more pretty inflammatory attacks as we see here, categorizing anything criticizing Israeli military as "jew bad".

For the record, from earlier, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran's leadership and plenty of other groups would love to ethnically cleanse the middle east, or the whole world. They probably would if the power balance was different. This is vile they are vile. However this truth alone does not preclude Netanyahu’s government to want to do the same in reverse, they just have (had? Pre Trump election?) to pretend to have some care for human rights in public.

But how about, true or not, we just say bullet/i have some bias against saying Arabs did something bad and you have some bias against saying Israelis did something bad, we're all too biased for this argument, let's just lock the threads and move on.

[Edited on November 13, 2024 at 11:54 AM. Reason : Regardless I will again try to step back ]

[Edited on November 13, 2024 at 11:55 AM. Reason : I think I understand the reason for your bias btw ]

11/13/2024 11:53:09 AM

Quote :

"Why is it so hard to acknowledge, on both sides, that yes, there are probably some Israeli soldiers that have committed war crimes. At the same time however, you can guarandamntee that those terrorists are hunkering down in hospitals, schools, and any other public place to make the Israelis look as horrible as possible."

i agree!! there ARE terrible things being done by individuals on both sides.

BUT. it sure doesn't help to focus ONLY on the crimes (and just because a war is being fought does not mean every single act of violence in that war is a crime) of one side. that is my main reaction to all this. nobody wants to look at the situation as a WHOLE and try to understand the history of how we got here. it's all just reactionary and tribalistic noise.

I just want to have and see a serious discussion of this topic. It does exist, I've seen it!

Quote :

"For the record, from earlier, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran's leadership and plenty of other groups would love to ethnically cleanse the middle east, or the whole world. They probably would if the power balance was different. This is vile they are vile."

i agree!! and frankly, this IS the root of the problem. i know everybody wants to tiptoe around accusations of islamophobia, but the religious doctrines underlying these groups opposition to ANY Jewish state has to be reckoned with, and nobody wants to face reality that this is why this war has persisted as long as it has. we all recognize the threat of christian nationalism in the US, but don't take seriously the role of islamic theocracies across the world.

Quote :

"However this truth alone does not preclude Netanyahu’s government to want to do the same in reverse, they just have (had? Pre Trump election?) to pretend to have some care for human rights in public."

i agree!! but at least they "pretend" if that's how you interpret Israeli motivations when they tell palestinian civilians in advance to evacuate certain areas, or drop leaflets, or make phone calls, or provide humanitarian aid.
i don't see any palestinian leaders ever saying "we only conduct military operations against IDF soldiers" but I sure do see a lot of "this is our land and only our land and we will drive the Jews into the sea as the quran instructs us to" and tens of thousands of rockets launched into civilian areas, and suicide bombings on buses and cafes, and random stabbings and indoctrinating their children to hate Jews.

Quote :

"But how about, true or not, we just say bullet/i have some bias against saying Arabs did something bad and you have some bias against saying Israelis did something bad"

I don't have a bias against saying Israelis have done bad things. (I can provide links to many such comments I have made on tww and twitter over the years. I've attended pro-palestinian rallies for god sake)

And you just demonstrated that you don't have a bias against saying Israel's adversaries have done bad things.

that's a great starting point. grounded in reality. not taking sides. just stating things that are true.

Quote :

"we're all too biased for this argument, let's just lock the threads and move on."

I don't blame anybody for bailing out of this conversation. I stayed mostly quiet myself over the last year.

Quote :

"i haven't spoken on it much here or elsewhere, mostly because I feel like it is fruitless to try to discuss this topic with some people because they are so self-righteous in their belief that they are one of the "good guys" and they're on the right "team" and are nowhere near willing enough to critically evaluate whether or not they may be wrong, or at the least may have a distorted view on this issue."

but at this point (maybe it's post-election frustration) I feel like it does more harm than good to just sit idly by and let "my people" persist in their mistakes. i'm willing to sacrifice a little of my agreeable reputation if that's what it takes to at least attempt to shine a light on the distortions that I see.

I don't want anybody to step back. I want people to step forward. these issues are not going anywhere. so let's shed whatever amount of bullshit has accumulated on all of our approaches to this topic, and look at it for what it is. there is a ground truth, however complex it might be.

[Edited on November 13, 2024 at 12:54 PM. Reason : tldr religion sucks]

11/13/2024 12:16:49 PM

Thumbs up, in a non sarcastic way

11/13/2024 12:38:51 PM

So much I want to address, but I don't have the time. And yeah, feels like trying to talk to one of my MAGA family members. You're so entrenched in your beliefs there's no way to have a rational conversation.

But real quickly

Quote :

"you said there's bias, right? but have you considered the possibility that YOU are biased?? I only see you have something to say about the conflict when you can point to Israel conducting a war that they didn't ask for. nothing to say about the hostages. nothing to say about hezbollah firing thousands of rockets into israeli towns. nothing to say about Iran chanting "death to Israel" for the last 50 years. it's only jew bad.."

Seems silly to have to preface my posting of articles about dozens of people getting blown-up on a daily basis with "hamas bad", but of course I think what Hamas did was did was wrong and a war crime. Of course the taking of innocent hostages was a terrible thing and they should be returned. The hurting/killing of all innocents is a bad thing. I really feel that this goes without saying. But there you go.


Kidnapping and killing innocent people is bad. Hamas is bad. Islamic theocracies are bad.. Islam is bad, in general. Religion, in general, is bad.

And I've never said anything close to "jew bad", which you keep repeating over and over in response to any perceived criticism about the State of Israel's actions (or of racist Jewish hooligans). In fact, the few times I've posted in this thread, it's been a reminder that being anti-Netanyahu or anti-IDF is not the same as anti-Semitic. Seriously, I don't even care that one-side is Jewish. I just see one side dropping bombs on hospitals and schools, leveling entire city blocks and killing dozens and dozens of innocent women and children on a daily basis. It just so happens that it's the IDF that's doing it. And it just so happens that it's mostly innocent Palestinians that are bearing the brunt. If the two situations were reversed, I'd probably be posting articles about Palestinians blowing apart 10s of 1000s of innocent Israelis.

Quote :

"This thread is turning liberals against liberals."

Because "liberals" aren't the monolith your right-wing media has led you to believe.

Quote :

"Why is it so hard to acknowledge, on both sides,..."

It's not. Both sides are doing heinous things. Both sides are killing innocent people. But if you look at the numbers, one side has much more resources and is doing it on an exponentially larger scale.

[Edited on November 13, 2024 at 1:21 PM. Reason : ]

11/13/2024 1:13:54 PM

Quote :

"And I've never said anything close to "jew bad", which you keep repeating over and over in response to any perceived criticism about the State of Israel's actions"

RIGHT?

Quote :

"It's not. Both sides are doing heinous things. Both sides are killing innocent people. But if you look at the numbers, one side has much more resources and is doing it on an exponentially larger scale."

Not just that, but that one side also claims to follow human rights and democracy and all that jazz. We should expect more of them than a group that openly says they just wanna kill all teh jewz

11/13/2024 3:09:14 PM

Quote :

"You're so entrenched in your beliefs"

what do you think my beliefs are??

Quote :

"Seems silly to have to preface my posting of articles about dozens of people getting blown-up on a daily basis with "hamas bad""

Quote :

"The hurting/killing of all innocents is a bad thing. I really feel that this goes without saying."

then why keep posting ONLY about Israel's actions? why is THAT your focus, and not on the people who started the wars in the first place??

Quote :

"I just see one side dropping bombs"

correct. you JUST see one side. wral shoves a fresh new article in your face about it every day and you and everybody else thinks that's the whole story, while Khamenei laughs at how easily we are manipulated.

Quote :

"it just so happens that it's mostly innocent Palestinians that are bearing the brunt"

CORRECT! wouldn't it be great if Palestinian leaders stopped attacking Israel, so that its people could live in peace? that's what I want to see.

Quote :

"But if you look at the numbers, one side has much more resources and is doing it on an exponentially larger scale."

irrelevant. if there's a just cause for war, there's a just cause for war. i understand it FEELS unfair to see the "power imbalance", but what actual legal/military doctrine should be invoked when a foreign military invades and murders 1000+ of your people and takes hostages? oh and it's the umpteenth time they've attacked you. at a certain point you've got to say fuck this and just win the war for once and for all. or would you prefer we make sure we keep things equitable between Israel/Hamas and we all just go another 100 years of this?

Quote :

"And I've never said anything close to "jew bad""

Quote :

"RIGHT?"

yeah ok i get it. i was being a bit hyperbolic to make my point. i understand that nobody here (afaik) is an actual jew-hater. but if you don't think the EXCESSIVE anti-israel rhetoric which has turned into anti-zionist rhetoric isn't just a few more articles away from turning into anti-jew, then you're fooling yourself. the hysteria IS radicalizing people.

Quote :

"We should expect more of them than a group that openly says they just wanna kill all teh jewz"

agreed. but when the israelis get zero credit for at least attempting to wage a more moral war, you can understand how they end up saying fuck it we're on our own the world hates us (as usual) we can only rely on ourselves to protect our people so watch out hamas/hezbollah/iran we're not messing around anymore.

[Edited on November 13, 2024 at 3:28 PM. Reason : .]

11/13/2024 3:21:32 PM

Quote :

"then why keep posting ONLY about Israel's actions? why is THAT your focus, and not on the people who started the wars in the first place??"

Because Israel is doing the vast majority of the action at this point, and every day dozens/hundreds more innocents die because of Israel's actions. I'm posting about what's happening right now. Would you be happy if I kept posting articles about October 7th? This seems like a silly question.

Quote :

"irrelevant."

While it's apparent that you think so, I completely disagree.

Sorry, it's quite obvious that you're extremely passionate about this, and it's impossible to have anything resembling a rational conversation with you. So I'll see my way out. Peace.

[Edited on November 13, 2024 at 3:33 PM. Reason : ]

11/13/2024 3:30:44 PM

11/13/2024 3:35:43 PM

I'll go on record as calling for a cooling off period in this thread.

I hope that in time we can work toward the Brent Road Accords.

11/13/2024 5:22:23 PM

Brent Road Beer Summit

11/13/2024 5:32:07 PM

DUTCH POLITICIAN CONDEMNS MACCABI HOOLIGAN VIOLENCE IN AMSTERDAM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwobmhPNu2g

11/14/2024 1:25:41 AM

Great video for all the Dutch speakers on TWW.

[Edited on November 14, 2024 at 6:13 AM. Reason : Oh, when you go fullscreen the subtitles are visible. Oops!]

11/14/2024 6:11:48 AM

Quote :

"tldr religion sucks"

this is a great channel if you've not seen it.



[Edited on November 14, 2024 at 9:05 AM. Reason : MEE on the other hand is not.]

11/14/2024 9:04:08 AM

Quote :

"at a certain point you've got to say fuck this and just win the war for once and for all."

There's no "winning" this conflict. If Israel managed to kill every member of Hamas tomorrow, a new organization would rise to take its place. A new generation of people who hate Israel and are willing to die attacking it has been born out of this war. There's no stopping it now, short of killing every man, woman, and child in Gaza. That's the only victory that can be achieved on the battlefield at this point.

But maybe Israel could take over Gaza, hold it down, prevent them from being able to build up any kind of organization and apparatus like they used on October 7. Right? Sure worked out great last time. Just think of all the successful occupations that have been had in the 21st century.

So there's no victory to be had short of genocide, which we agree is bad, so the best thing Israel can hope for is a peace they can live with that keeps the lid on Palestinian rage.

Quote :

"then why keep posting ONLY about Israel's actions?"

With regards to Gaza specifically, because they're the only ones doing any actions. Whoever started this round of fighting, they're now the only ones with the power to stop it.

As far as their response to Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis, you won't hear a ton of complaint out of me, as those actions have been a lot more measured, targeted, and at this point, justified.

11/14/2024 4:28:31 PM

Quote :

"If Israel managed to kill every member of Hamas tomorrow, a new organization would rise to take its place."

And Hamas knows this too. They aren't just thinking in terms of whether Hamas survives or Gazans survive, they see things in terms of how to bring about a future where Israel no longer exists and the Jews are exterminated. And if Hamas no longer exists but a new organization takes its place, they see that as just part of the process of achieving their overall goal (which remember, is synonymous in their mind as Allah's will, so however many years, decades or centuries it takes, onward they will go).

Quote :

"So there's no victory to be had short of genocide, which we agree is bad, so the best thing Israel can hope for is a peace they can live with that keeps the lid on Palestinian rage."

hope? they've been hoping. it has not worked. how can there be any peace when Palestinian society is run by people whose entire purpose is to eliminate the Jewish state.

Quote :

"With regards to Gaza specifically, because they're the only ones doing any actions. Whoever started this round of fighting, they're now the only ones with the power to stop it."

this is the thing where you dehumanize Palestinians by dismissing THEIR agency. Hamas militants are still fighting IDF in Gaza. Hamas militants are still holding Israeli citizens hostage. Those are actions too. If they stopped attacking IDF and released the hostages, that's THEIR power to stop this war. but they don't because they have seen the western reaction to israel over the last year and have calculated that while they might not be militarily winning the war, they CAN still get PR victories by continuing the war, which diminishes Israel's ability to fight not only Hamas, but all their other adversaries. That's a win for Hamas, so they keep going. They don't want the war to stop. Otherwise they would stop.


let me put it another way. we can all agree October 7 was terrible, right? the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. no nation would tolerate such a thing. but somehow the world forgets about it before the sun even rose on October 8. the anti-Israeli protests were already happening.

so what should Israel have done instead? what action to 1) secure the return of the hostages and 2) prevent any future attacks, could Israel have taken that would sufficiently rise to the occasion? or are they expected to just say goodbye to the hostages, sit on their hands and wait for the next time Hamas attacks?


[Edited on November 14, 2024 at 5:57 PM. Reason : .]

11/14/2024 5:51:04 PM

Quote :

"hope? they've been hoping. it has not worked."

Well, I've laid out the alternative, which I had thought everyone here agreed was unacceptable. Perhaps I was mistaken.

Quote :

"If they stopped attacking IDF and released the hostages, that's THEIR power to stop this war."

It's childish to expect them to stop fighting in their own territory (this is the same thing Putinites like to say about Ukraine: "Well the war would stop if they'd just stop resisting the invasion!") And it's just dumb to think they're keeping the hostages primarily as a PR ploy. They're keeping the hostages because that's their only bargaining chip. Taking hostages is, of course, a war crime and a regular crime; I don't dispute that. But from the perspective of an organization that wants to survive intact - and in spite of your tossing out of "Allah's will" earlier, Hamas does want that - it makes total sense.

I also don't believe for a second that releasing the hostages would end the war, because Netanyahu has made it very clear he will accept nothing less than the annihilation of Hamas as a victory condition.

Quote :

"so what should Israel have done instead?"

Probably "focus on watching the border with Gaza instead of using the troops to quell domestic unrest caused by your quasi-dictatorial government, or using them to prop up illegal settlements in the West Bank." That would have prevented all of this. But Netanyahu was deeply unserious about security and missed a lot of warning signs.

Or, if you want to go back further, they could have tried "Don't cram a few million people into a hellhole and then keep it as hellish as possible while occasionally bombing/occupying/shooting them." Also could have prevented this.

Quote :

"what action to 1) secure the return of the hostages and 2) prevent any future attacks"

Well, the action they've taken has killed a bunch of the hostages and returned very few of them. And there is no action they can do to prevent future attacks, short of killing every person in Gaza and the West Bank. That's it. Anything else will leave open the possibility of conflict in the future.

So accept the fact that perpetual perfect peace ain't in the cards, no matter what Israel does. So I'd change the question:

What action that will minimize backlash against Israel and Jews globally?

Israel has demonstrated that it has the capacity to seriously erode a terrorist group's abilities without flattening an entire country. The operations against Hezbollah and Iran have shown that. They had that option against Hamas. It might have required the tiniest amount of patience, and wouldn't have prevented all civilian harm, but they'd be better off for it.

11/14/2024 7:51:33 PM

just popping in to recommend the book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

learned a lot while reading it

11/14/2024 9:31:06 PM

you may also want to check out the book Jews Don't Count.

Quote :

"How identity politics failed one particular identity. Jews Don’t Count is a book for people who consider themselves on the right side of history. People fighting the good fight against homophobia, disablism, transphobia and, particularly, racism. People, possibly, like you. It is the comedian and writer David Baddiel’s contention that one type of racism has been left out of this fight. In his unique combination of close reasoning, polemic, personal experience and jokes, Baddiel argues that those who think of themselves as on the right side of history have often ignored the history of anti-Semitism. He outlines why and how, in a time of intensely heightened awareness of minorities, Jews don’t count as a real minority: and why they should."

11/15/2024 6:59:31 AM

Thanks for the recommendations, but I only want to read things that confirm my existing set of beliefs.

11/15/2024 8:20:44 AM