The New Israel/Palestine Conflict Thread: Read the OP Before Posting

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SunRaven01

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  • #1
    /// OFFICIAL MODERATION NOTICE ///

    As announced in the previous thread, this is the new thread for discussing the on-going conflict and hostilities in Israel and Gaza. This thread has several rails on the discussion above and beyond the Posting Guidelines and the Soap Box Rules of Engagement.

    Here are the additional rules for this thread:

    This is a zero-tolerance zone for violations of the Posting Guidelines.
    You will not be politely nudged, you will not be asked to get back on track, you will be summarily and permanently thread ejected and issued an Official Warning.

    You will not have arguments about whether or not it is actually genocide.
    Arguments about whether or not Israel's military actions in Gaza after the October 7 attack rise to the legal definition of genocide or not will not be permitted in this thread. This argument drags on for pages, drowning out any other discussion.

    No dehumanizing language will be tolerated.
    The subject matter is complicated, there's a lot of tragedy to pass around, and emotions run high in here. It is by nature going to be a contentious discussion. Language that advocates for wholesale dehumanization or calls for indiscriminate population genocide will result in permanent ejection from the thread.

    No posting videos of people being murdered.
    Please see Aurich's post.

    This thread has Happy Weekend rules.
    If this thread tries to get out of hand at any point from Friday-ish, US Eastern time zone, going forward through the weekend, it will be locked until some point the following Monday. No warning will be given. If you want to be able to continue to have a discussion in this thread on weekends without interruption, make sure you stay inside the Posting Guidelines.
     
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  • #2
    Because this is a new thread, the ejections from the previous thread do not carry over (as a function of the forum platform), which means effectively there's been a thread amnesty declared. That's fine -- you've read the opening post, you know what happens if you decide to ignore the rules.
     
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  • #4
    The ICC's chief prosecutor is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant over alleged war crimes. They're also seeking warrants against Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, the commander of Hamas' military wing.

    Israel just last week called the UN a terrorist organisation, with the Israeli ambassador shredding the UN charter in what can only be seen as incredibly ironic scenes. This will stoke those fires, with Israel no doubt leaning on the US for support in condemning the ICC and attempting to evade justice. The only outcomes I can see are Israel throwing Netanyahu and Gallant under the bus, the US letting Israel run itself over with the bus, or the UN losing whatever credibility it had left forever.

    Edit: beaten by @Stern
     
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    The US can't do much about the ICC on the ground, as taking it out with military action would 1) completely isolate the US internationally, and 2) require an intervention in a fellow NATO country (which would trip the NATO defence charter). At most they could enable sanctions against ICC personnel - which will also result in 1).

    Of course I expect the Republicans to have insufficient self-conscience to not take actions resulting in 1), nor threatening with 2)...

    Edit: fixed ICJ/ICC mix-up.
     
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    Aleamapper said:
    The only outcomes I can see are Israel throwing Netanyahu and Gallant under the bus,
    Click to expand...

    If it was just Netenyahu I could see that, because he's personally hugely unpopular and there's almost certainly enough loud enough people that would go along to make him work as a scapegoat, but Gallant isn't and his would need to be one of the hands pushing Netenyahu under that bus.
     
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  • #10
    The Aloof Alot said:
    Well, looks like the ICC announcement makes it really easy to sort between governments that condone war crimes if they get committed by parties they're friendly with and those that actually care about human rights consistently. By the looks of it, we have the Czech government in the first list, and Belgium in the second.
    Click to expand...
    You can add the UK to the first list, sadly.

    Edit: and the US...
    Al Jazeera said:
    Republican representative from Florida Brian Mast said in a post on X: “America doesn’t recognise the International Criminal Court, but the court sure as hell will recognize what happens when you target our allies.”
    Click to expand...
     
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  • #12
    Aleamapper said:
    You can add the UK to the first list, sadly.

    Edit: and the US...
    Click to expand...
    Austria's reaction seems to point out the problem: certain Western countries seem to believe that because they are democracies they cannot engage in war crimes.🤦‍♂️

    Time to remind them that Nazi Germany, too, was a democracy when the NSDAP came into power..

    As for Brian Mast, he wants to attack a fellow NATO country? The ICC is located in The Hague, The Netherlands...
     
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  • #13
    The Czech reply seems to echo what I see a lot; history started on October 7, 2023. That Israel didn't 'do' anything, and demonstrates a willful blindness to the simple fact that Israel's been a de facto apartheid state for generations and, as a corollary to that, has been oppressing the Palestinians in uncountable ways for said generations.

    Because I guess the Palestinians are just supposed to accept being an oppressed people who are steadily losing their lands to Israeli settlers forever?
     
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  • #14
    Citrine said:
    The Czech reply seems to echo what I see a lot; history started on October 7, 2023. That Israel didn't 'do' anything, and demonstrates a willful blindness to the simple fact that Israel's been a de facto apartheid state for generations and, as a corollary to that, has been oppressing the Palestinians in uncountable ways for said generations.

    Because I guess the Palestinians are just supposed to accept being an oppressed people who are steadily losing their lands to Israeli settlers forever?
    Click to expand...
    Technically not forever... there is only so much land to settle.
     
    Megalodon

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  • #15
    Citrine said:
    The Czech reply seems to echo what I see a lot; history started on October 7, 2023.
    Click to expand...
    I'm not clear on how that's a defense even if history did start on 10/7. People think it sounds like a defense, but I don't think you get from terrorist attack to starving children in a coherent way.
     
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  • #16
    Megalodon said:
    I'm not clear on how that's a defense even if history did start on 10/7. People think it sounds like a defense, but I don't think you get from terrorist attack to starving children in a coherent way.
    Click to expand...
    Because if you can blame Hamas for starting it, then you can easily shift moral culpability for all the horrors the Israelis are committing to Hamas. Because 'they started it'.

    As opposed to these were conscious decisions for how to conduct their war made by the Israelis weeks and months after the immediate events of 10/7. A lot of people don't want to engage with Israeli apartheid beyond vague 'well its bad but what are you gonna do' or 'well the Palestinians need to come to the negotiating table first'.

    This, I note, includes an awful lot of rich western governments. Including my own.
     
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  • #17
    Citrine said:
    Because if you can blame Hamas for starting it, then you can easily shift moral culpability for all the horrors the Israelis are committing to Hamas. Because 'they started it'.

    As opposed to these were conscious decisions for how to conduct their war made by the Israelis weeks and months after the immediate events of 10/7. A lot of people don't want to engage with Israeli apartheid beyond vague 'well its bad but what are you gonna do' or 'well the Palestinians need to come to the negotiating table first'.

    This, I note, includes an awful lot of rich western governments. Including my own.
    Click to expand...
    The problem with this line of thinking for governments is that the human tragedy of this conflict has been widely reported—so no longer can be hand-waved away. Attempts to control the narrative both in the conflict zone and at demonstrations elsewhere have only underscored that. At the scale of destruction witnessed, things can't go back to the way they were before the conflict started, no matter how much people may wish it to be.
     
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    Israel isn't even pretending to think about anything other than a forever war that returns the situation to the pre-10/7 baseline. That hasn't worked for decades now, and has only resulted in an endless cycle of violence on both sides. In addition, they have a vague but unrealistic war aim of destroying Hamas. How will they know when or if they achieve that goal? No one in Israel has even tried to answer that question with anything other than jingoistic hand-waving. If you set out war goals that cannot measure success or failure, you end up with an endless war. That certainly suits Netanyahu, who knows that as soon as the war is over, he will be thrown out of office, and be seeing the inside of a courtroom on his ongoing bribery charges. It also suit the far right, who seem to desire nothing more than the elimination of Palestinians, by means such as the voluntary relocation they have spoken of. The Israeli public in general, doesn't seem so sanguine about endless war, so there may be some political upheaval in the future. Until both sides base their future actions on reality rather than unobtainable goals, whether it is the destruction of Israel or the removal of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, this is going to continue to be a bloody lose-lose situation with no winners.
     
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  • #19
    The Republicans are trying to frame Hamas (and by extension the Palestinian people, probably) as "evil", as if that justifies Israel's actions and absolves them of responsibility, and the Biden government is trying to cast the ICC as the bad guys. Unfortunately for Biden, the ICC probably has got some well-researched reasoning for claiming jurisdiction, something that can't be said for the USA as it didn't sign the treaties establishing the ICC.

    The only image a large chunk of the Western world is currently projecting is one of arrogantly assuming somehow Western civilisation and man are superior to others, i.e. neo-colonialism at its purest.
     
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    Technarch

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  • #20
    Imbrium said:
    Israel isn't even pretending to think about anything other than a forever war that returns the situation to the pre-10/7 baseline. That hasn't worked for decades now, and has only resulted in an endless cycle of violence on both sides. In addition, they have a vague but unrealistic war aim of destroying Hamas. How will they know when or if they achieve that goal?
    Click to expand...

    They won't, and that's by design. In the other thread it was frequently observed that Israel is doing its level best to not destroy Hamas, by killing any discussion of a post-Hamas government and by employing a scorched earth strategy that will serve only to drive current and future Hamas recruitment. Israel is even failing to destroy Hamas on a purely tactical level, as Hamas has simply moved back into the "cleared" areas of north Gaza while the IDF rains bombs on Palestinian civilians in Rafah.
     
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  • #21
    Technarch said:
    They won't, and that's by design. In the other thread it was frequently observed that Israel is doing its level best to not destroy Hamas, by killing any discussion of a post-Hamas government and by employing a scorched earth strategy that will serve only to drive current and future Hamas recruitment.
    Click to expand...
    Also notable that there's instances of Israel pulling out of areas only for Hamas to return and those areas have to be cleared again. This is not the conduct of a military that's targeting clear and achievable aims, they are there to wreck stuff until the inhabitants leave or die.
     
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  • #22
    The Aloof Alot said:
    Austria's reaction seems to point out the problem: certain Western countries seem to believe that because they are democracies they cannot engage in war crimes.🤦‍♂️

    Time to remind them that Nazi Germany, too, was a democracy when the NSDAP came into power..

    As for Brian Mast, he wants to attack a fellow NATO country? The ICC is located in The Hague, The Netherlands...
    Click to expand...
    Reminds me of a comic strip (Boondocks, I believe) from way back at the beginning of the Iraq war. "People keep comparing Bush to Hitler, but that's completely unfair. Hitler was democratically elected."
     
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    Kyuu

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  • #23
    Happysin said:
    Reminds me of a comic strip (Boondocks, I believe) from way back at the beginning of the Iraq war. "People keep comparing Bush to Hitler, but that's completely unfair. Hitler was democratically elected."
    Click to expand...
    Umm. I may have to refresh my memory about that whole series of events but I don't think that's actually true?

    Edit: Yep, definitely not true.
     
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    Kyuu said:
    Umm. I may have to refresh my memory about that whole series of events but I don't think that's actually true?

    Edit: Yep, definitely not true.
    Click to expand...
    The part about Hitler being democratically elected isn't entirely true (he was appointed by someone who thought is was safe to appoint him), but the rise of the NSDAP was through legitimate elections:

    en.wikipedia.org

    Nazi Party - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

    Once Hitler was in the correct position, all bets were off.

    Obviously, Bush was also actually elected. That ain't the joke.

    Back on-topic, Bernie Sanders says the ICC did the right thing.
     
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  • #26
    Kyuu said:
    Umm. I may have to refresh my memory about that whole series of events but I don't think that's actually true?

    Edit: Yep, definitely not true.
    Click to expand...
    All Godwins aside, believe the comparison was to the 2000 election, where Bush lost the popular vote, but won via court rulings on the recount in Florida due to hanging chads. That court ruling sealed the Electoral College vote.
     
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  • #27
    Citrine said:
    Because if you can blame Hamas for starting it, then you can easily shift moral culpability for all the horrors the Israelis are committing to Hamas. Because 'they started it'.
    Click to expand...
    Disclaimer: I know you're not advocating this view, just echoing what you see to be someone else's view for the purpose of discussing it.

    The issue with this is that it regards genocide as a legitimate policy tool, in the sense that it is possible for someone to "start it" in such a way that genocide becomes permissible. In other words, it regards the death by starvation of a Palestinian toddler as justified because of actions they could not conceivably had any part in. And I think it becomes very difficult once you've done that to condemn the Uyghur genocide or others in terms other than "it's bad when they do it".

    Once you've argued yourself around to the view that genocide is a legitimate policy tool in some cases then it's going to be on the table in every other policy fight going forward, and if the US commits genocide on its own population that won't be the first time.
     
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  • #28
    karolus said:
    All Godwins aside, believe the comparison was to the 2000 election, where Bush lost the popular vote, but won via court rulings on the recount in Florida due to hanging chads. That court ruling sealed the Electoral College vote.
    Click to expand...

    I get ya, but Gore's campaign also deserves scorn for only contesting the counts in a couple of counties. There were enough votes elsewhere that could have swung the state to him.
     
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  • #29
    Megalodon said:
    Disclaimer: I know you're not advocating this view, just echoing what you see to be someone else's view for the purpose of discussing it.

    The issue with this is that it regards genocide as a legitimate policy tool, in the sense that it is possible for someone to "start it" in such a way that genocide becomes permissible. In other words, it regards the death by starvation of a Palestinian toddler as justified because of actions they could not conceivably had any part in. And I think it becomes very difficult once you've done that to condemn the Uyghur genocide or others in terms other than "it's bad when they do it".

    Once you've argued yourself around to the view that genocide is a legitimate policy tool in some cases then it's going to be on the table in every other policy fight going forward, and if the US commits genocide on its own population that won't be the first time.
    Click to expand...
    My, that's a dark and foreboding topic.

    With attitudes changing on what's acceptable in regards to human rights, a lot is currently in flux. This conflict is a prime example. As with police brutality in the USA, and the treatment of noncombatants in occupied areas in Ukraine, people are more aware of goings on, and forming opinions on it. What used to often be met with not more than a shrug is no longer. How politically palatable is it to be fomenting genocide in this climate—even for those who dare to consider using it? The long term costs of trying it may far outweigh any benefit.
     
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  • #30
    karolus said:
    With attitudes changing on what's acceptable in regards to human rights, a lot is currently in flux. This conflict is a prime example. As with police brutality in the USA, and the treatment of noncombatants in occupied areas in Ukraine, people are more aware of goings on, and forming opinions on it. What used to often be met with not more than a shrug is no longer. How politically palatable is it to be fomenting genocide in this climate—even for those who dare to consider using it? The long term costs of trying it may far outweigh any benefit.
    Click to expand...
    That is one of but not the only reason I'm willing to be uncompromising on this issue, even though it's a third rail. I don't think there's anything we are willing to accept in Gaza that we won't ultimately accept somewhere else, and that is a weapon that can be pointed elsewhere. Including at Jews in places like the US. I think this "Israel can do no wrong" stance does not oppose antisemitism, as it's little more than fetishization. Fetishization is not the opposite of hate, it is adjacent to hate. Which should be obvious given Jewish space laser types in the US are strong supporters of Israel. Lots of people that should know better are going along with this. But, like Israel's devil's bargain with Netanyahu, it's easy to start down that path, and easy to continue, and hard to quit once you've taken the first steps.
     
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    Wheels Of Confusion

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  • #31
    NPR's coverage of the reaction to the ICC warrant requests is all about how Israel and the Biden Administration are arguing against "comparing" Israel and Hamas. They are very loudly not addressing the underlying accusations and only going after a projected equivalence argument that nobody is making.
    In a statement, President Biden called the application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders "outrageous," saying, "And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security."

    [...]

    Although Israel's government does not recognize the ICC, responses to the prosecutor's move suggest an acknowledgment of its significance, and there is anger that Israel's democratically elected leadership had been placed on a par with Hamas officials.

    "There is no such comparison, we cannot accept it and it is unforgivable," said Yair Lapid, one of Netanyahu's most vocal critics and a major political opponent. He called the decision "a terrible political failure."
    Click to expand...
     
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  • #32
    Technarch said:
    They won't, and that's by design. In the other thread it was frequently observed that Israel is doing its level best to not destroy Hamas, by killing any discussion of a post-Hamas government and by employing a scorched earth strategy that will serve only to drive current and future Hamas recruitment. Israel is even failing to destroy Hamas on a purely tactical level, as Hamas has simply moved back into the "cleared" areas of north Gaza while the IDF rains bombs on Palestinian civilians in Rafah.
    Click to expand...
    Benny Gantz is threatening to upset that plan.

    We'll see, but he's given a near-term deadline.
     
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  • #33
    Wheels Of Confusion said:
    NPR's coverage of the reaction to the ICC warrant requests is all about how Israel and the Biden Administration are arguing against "comparing" Israel and Hamas. They are very loudly not addressing the underlying accusations and only going after a projected equivalence argument that nobody is making.
    Click to expand...
    Never mind one crime doesn't have to be equivalent to another crime to be a crime.
     
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  • #34
    Shavano said:
    Benny Gantz is threatening to upset that plan.

    We'll see, but he's given a near-term deadline.
    Click to expand...
    It bears mentioning upfront that his plan is basically to turn Gaza into a new foreign rule with other countries overseeing its "civil affairs." After "demilitarizing the territory" of course. Not a pathway to Palestinian statehood. And even this is being castigated by Netanyahu as a "defeat for Israel" and, of course, the dreaded establishment of a Palestinian state.
     
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  • #36
    Israeli and Palestinian peace activists are still trying to build bridges:

    www.theguardian.com

    ‘We all share the same pain’: can the Israeli-Palestinian peace movement rebuild after 7 October?

    As the conflict in Gaza continues, reconciliation may seem a distant dream, but on both sides there are those working for peace
    www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

    Maybe after Netanyahu is finally out of power, the peace movement will gain a little momentum. There are a lot of institutional pressures against it, but it's also become pretty difficult to advocate for a return to the pre Oct 7 status quo. The question is whether Israel will lurch even further right, or if the backlash against Netanyahu will move the country leftward, even a little.

    I have a lot of respect for anyone over there trying to do this work right now. It can't be easy.
     
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  • #37
    SunRaven01 said:
    Arguments about whether or not Israel's military actions in Gaza after the October 7 attack rise to the legal definition of genocide or not will not be permitted in this thread.
    Click to expand...
    I have a question; since this is not going to be discussed henceforth, does that mean there is a running concensus going forwards as to whether it is or not what is happening? Is it being taken as a 'fact-not-up-for-debate' or is it that we just aren't touching the issue itself at all (whether pro or con)? I missed out on what 'sparkling genocide' means as a phrase, so not entirely sure what is being said here.

    I am NOT! looking to argue here; literally just seeking clarity on what's been said and what it means.
     
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  • #40
    www.theguardian.com

    Israeli officials cancel decision to confiscate camera from US news agency

    Backtrack on Gaza live feed camera follows widespread condemnation from media groups and Israel’s closest ally, the US
    www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

    If a democracy enables laws that go against the precepts of a democratic approach, such as attempting to ban independent media, is it still a democracy? Also, brilliant move after yesterday's events...
     
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