When Hating Israel is Your Priority

The loudest voices bemoaning Palestinian suffering decline to call on Hamas to release the hostages and surrender.

It's kind of horrifying that the loudest voices bemoaning Palestinian civilian suffering in Gaza will harshly criticize everyone and anyone--Israel, the US, the EU, the UN Security Council, American Jews, you name it--except for Hamas (and its allies like Iran), and the one thing they won't do is suggest Hamas surrender, even though that would immediately end the war, and also end Gazans being ruled by an oppressive medieval theocracy that steals aid money to build weapons and villas for its leaders.

In short, no matter how much they purport to care for Palestinians, their biggest priority is that Israel not emerge victorious over Hamas. I won't go so far as to claim that they don't care about the Palestinians. I will claim, strongly, that they hate Israel much more.

A perfectly good (but hardly the only) example is Karen Attiah, who has a sufficiently influential position as world opinion editor at the Washington Post that someone like her deciding that hey, maybe Hamas should just surrender and release the hostages could help move the needle, given that Hamas is counting on world opinion to stop Israel's offensive and keep it in power. Even if Hamas is beyond world opinion, its patrons and allies in Turkey, Qatar, and even Iran are not.

And the folks I'm referring to won't even suggest that they want Hamas to surrender for rhetorical purposes. Like, "Of course my preference would be for Hamas to surrender and release the hostages, but if that can't happen, and it looks like it can't, to end the civilian suffering Israel should cease fire." Nope, they won't even suggest that they would *prefer* Hamas to surrender. How twisted does your mind have to be to think Hamas is the relative good guy here? And that you won't even pretend you think otherwise just to help persuade, because you can't bring yourself to even do that?

Comments

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bernstein, is it okay if I just refrain from demanding that Israel surrender?

[Abdul Abulbul Amir]

No. You also have to demand that Israel pay reparations.

[Commenter_XY]

Let's remember one thing: Hamas currently holds six American hostages.

Bring them home!

[Frank Drackman]

You know they're already dead.
But aside from that, why isn't "Gaza Hostage Crisis Day, let's see, Oct 7th, would be Day 129" constantly being reported on by the Marxist Stream Media, which isn't fair, because Fox isn't reporting it either.
Next thing is the United Nations of Terrorists voting to condemn Israel for rescuing their own people.

Frank

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

How much is it worth to you?

Israel infamously pays a high price to obtain the release of Israeli hostages. Should the US try to pay even more than Israel?

[Truthfulness]

All lives matter. If putting an end to Hamas means no more American and Israeli hostages, it'll be worth the effort.

[Krayt]

I'm not sure the proportionality argument holds in war. You need to defeat the enemy, not just throw a tantrum and kill no more than Nx people compared to how many of yours were killed, for some low integer N.

Like it's a video game and you need to earn more chits by having more of your own killed, first.

[SimonP]

I do not "call upon" Hamas to give up the remaining hostages for the same reason that Netanyahu has not treated them as a priority. The war on Gaza is not about releasing the hostages, and releasing the hostages will not end Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing in the territory.

In contrast, Hamas has gone on record saying that they're willing to release all of the remaining hostages if Israel withdraws from Gaza. That is a non-starter for Netanyahu, obviously, but that's precisely my point. Netanyahu cares more about destroying Hamas than saving the hostages. Releasing the hostages doesn't move the needle, for him.

How do the Israeli apologists put it? The hostages are just "unfortunate victims" in a war between Hamas and Israel.

[Frank Drackman]

Sorry, you don't get to murder thousands of Israelis and just surrender when you want to. I hear Egypt is a Moose-lum-friendly Nation, I suggest Ham-ass relocate there, or learn to tread water.

Frank

[SimonP]

Christ, you're painfully stupid.

[rloquitur]

Maybe, but you're a shill.

[Ed Grinberg]

For the worst people around.

[SimonP]

I'm not shilling for anyone. I'm just not mouthing the empty pieties that people like David expect, in order to avoid charges of "antisemitism."

[Theendoftheleft]

Don't the Gazans have to actually have been cleansed before it can be called an ethnic cleansing? Isn't a wait-and-see policy warranted before such labels are appropriate?

By the by, what's wrong with ethnic cleansing? Pakistan's going to do it to 1.7 million Afghans now. Seems like a good idea from their perspective and long-term interests.

Don't the Arabs want to cleanse the Jews (and won't they do so, from Israel and Europe, once they get the power to do so)?

Doesn't South Africa really want to cleanse the Boers and other 'whites' out of the country? If they do so, will it be rationalized as decolonization and so somehow sufficiently different? So too in South America over the coming 30-50 years?

[Jacob Grimes]

Yes. He should care more about destroying Hamas than saving the hostages because Hamas did more than simply take hostages. They slaughtered 1200 people. They cannot be allowed to exist in Gaza after October 7.

[SimonP]

I'm glad we agree, then, that David's point is stupid.

[Truthfulness]

There's nothing stupid about wanting a terrorist group to surrender to end the conflict. Are you this much against the Jewish state that you're willing to go to illogical lengths to justify your absurd position? I'd say so.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Hamas has gone on record saying that they’re willing to release all of the remaining hostages if Israel withdraws from Gaza"

A lie.

[SimonP]

What is? I'm accurately relaying what Hamas's proposal for a ceasefire included. It included other non-starters for Israel, as well, and might be accurately characterized as offered in bad faith. But that's part of what they offered.

[Bob from Ohio]

"part of what they offered"

So it wasn't a 1 for 1 trade like you said.

"other non-starters "

Indeed. The latest "offer" from Hamas was like one Doenitz might have made after Hitler killed himself

[SimonP]

So it wasn’t a 1 for 1 trade like you said.

I didn't say it was a 1-for-1 trade. Anyway, there's no point in arguing. We both know what the deal was, you're just arguing over whether I'd accurately described it. We both know that Hamas has offered to release the hostages. We both know that Netanyahu turned down that deal.

Point remains that Netanyahu isn't nearly as focused on the hostages as David thinks Israel's critics should be.

[Bob from Ohio]

Phase release, immediate withdraw, release of thousands of terrorists, money to "rebuild" [am I forgetting any conditions?] were poison pills and you know it.

Hamas still thinks it is winning, or at least can convince the US etc, to save them. Until they think otherwise, no agreement is possible.

[SimonP]

Considering that Netanyahu's starting negotiating position is, "Destroy Hamas," there's unlikely to be much that wouldn't be a poison pill, in any offer by Hamas.

What's needed is an exit ramp to a cessation of hostilities. That will require Netanyahu's acknowledging that the only party capable of ceasing hostilities, and so capable of abiding by any agreement, cannot be "destroyed" as part of the agreement. You know, kind of like how Netanyahu viewed Hamas before October 7 - a useful foil and tool for managing the Gazan population.

[Commenter_XY]

What do you do when the leadership of hamas, meaning multiple leaders within the leadership cadre of hamas, publicly state multiple times that they will repeat the Simchat Torah pogrom until Israel is destroyed.

Where is the exit ramp?

[SimonP]

That's empty rhetoric, trying to project strength at a time of war.

Dialing down conflicts with insurgent groups happens all the time. You begin with trust-building exchanges and move to a stable framework for maintaining the peace. In this case, it starts with a ceasefire, release of hostages, and provision of aid. From there it can move to negotiating a post-war government, rebuilding, and clearly laying out a post-war arrangements where Gazans and Palestinians aren't doomed to a lifetime of poverty and repression.

Or it could, if Israel had any interest in living alongside Palestinians in peace. Of course, they have even less interest in that outcome than Hamas.

[Squirrelloid]

Did they not try that with the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza?

Hamas spent the intervening years building tunnels, stockpiling weapons, and planning an attack.

The trust building exercise abjectly failed.

[David Nieporent]

What’s needed is an exit ramp to a cessation of hostilities.

There is such an exit ramp. It's called "surrender."

[SimonP]

Let me know when you grow up.

[David Nieporent]

Right after you stop shilling for Hamas.

[zztop8970]

Worked for Germany.
But then again, if this was 1945, you'd be telling everyone to grow up and stop expecting the Nazis to surrender, that 5% of the pre-war German population has already been killed and that's a "genocide", and that the Allies' leaders and military commanders should be put on trial.

[Greg J]

I do not “call upon” Hamas to give up the remaining hostages because you are a Jew hating Nazi who wants to see genocide against Israel.

FIFY

[Greg J]

In contrast, Hamas has gone on record saying that they’re willing to release all of the remaining hostages if Israel withdraws from Gaza.

Israel DID withdraw from Gaza. So Hamas used it as a base to attack, rape, torture, and / or murder ovr 1200 Jews in ISrael, NOT in Gaza.

So obviously your goal is for Hamas to be able to do that again

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

True, but the (current) hostages would still be released.

[Truthfulness]

And then Hamas would take some more. Bad idea.

[David Nieporent]

God, how pathetic are you? "The kidnappers agreed to release their hostage if the ransom was paid, so therefore the kidnappers are reasonable, and the person who won't pay the ransom obviously isn't interested in freeing the hostage."

[SimonP]

Not so pathetic that I need to rely on strawmen to win a debate, Chip.

I never said that Hamas's offer was "reasonable" or that Hamas's taking of hostages was "reasonable." I'm just saying that I'm not going to engage in this virtue-signaling over Israeli hostages when Netanyahu has not treated them as a greater priority than "destroying Hamas" and destroying any path to Palestinian statehood.

The hostages are Hamas's only bargaining chip. I'm not saying that it's good that they have that bargaining chip, and I'm not calling for them to play it. I am saying that it is a bit juvenile, and in bad faith, to fault any particular commentator for not calling, in essence, for Hamas to consent to its own destruction by Israel. It makes as much sense as calling for Netanyahu to step down, so that a competent, non-corrupt Israeli politician can take over and achieve some kind of peace.

[Randal]

This is your best effort at grievance mongering? Opinion writers aren't signalling enough virtue for your tastes? Would you like some Freedom Fries with that white whine?

[Frank Drackman]

No thanks, don't want your Fum-unda Cheese either.

[David Bernstein]

Hamas can't defeat Israel militarily. In fact, it's quite close to defeat right now. The only thing it can hope for, and is counting on, is useful idiots in the West to pressure Israel, rather than them, to surrender. I'm sure they thank you for your service.

[Martinned]

Because Hamas famously listens to Western criticism?

[David Nieporent]

Yes. I mean, obviously Hamas does not care if the editorial page of the Washington Post criticizes them. But Hamas is not living in a hermetically sealed bubble unaffected by what happens in the outside world. Hamas needs outside support, both in material form (money and weapons and such) and also in the form of moral support. As to the latter, Hamas cannot beat Israel on the battlefield; it requires outside pressure on Israel.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

So, you mean Iran.

[Randal]

But that’s not what your post above is about. It’s about whether people who almost surely believe that it would be great for Hamas to surrender have to keep repeating the idea over and over as part of their criticisms of Israel as part of some virtue-signaling mandate. You even concede that doing so isn’t likely to influence Hamas. It’s just some sort of loyalty oath that you’re keen to demand of everyone... seemingly because of your hurt butt over the Israel criticisms.

[Dr. Ed 2]

NUKE GAZA!

The only solution is to convince the civilians that the IDF is a bigger threat than Hamas and hence to turn Hamas in.

[mydisplayname]

"The International Court of Justice will hold public hearings on the request for an advisory opinion in respect of the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, from Monday 19 to Monday 26 February 2024 at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the seat of the Court. Fifty-two States and three international organizations have expressed their intention to participate in the oral proceedings before the Court."
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240209-pre-01-00-en.pdf

One loud voice is significant. Should the ICJ find that the Nakba and subsequent violence by initiated Israelis was legally wrongful in addition to being morally wrongful, all Americans -- regardless of religion -- will be obliged by treaty to help right the wrong using any force necessary. Certainly, a finding by an impartial Court will be sufficient for every American, regardless of religion.

[Abdul Abulbul Amir]

“The International Court of Justice" were it true. Sigh.

[MollyGodiva]

Anyone who uses the word "Nakba" immediately loses any and all credibility. The "catastrophe" that word references to is that the Arab armies did not destroy Israel.

[Truthfulness]

You seem incapable of realizing that a word can have more than one meaning. Learn about that concept.

[David Bernstein]

"Impartial Court" LOL. That includes judges from authoritarian countries that are hostile to Israel. You think the Chinese judge, for example, is free to give his true opinion with no interference from his government?

[Martinned]

The Chinese ICJ judge is a woman.

https://www.icj-cij.org/current-members#:~:text=Image-,Judge%20XUE%20Hanqin,-China

Also, the vote typically comes out with large majorities, because the judges seek consensus amongst themselves. But if you want to abolish the system of P5 vetos in the Security Counsel that sits behind this, feel free to advocate for it.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Chinese ICJ judge is a woman."

Are you a biologist too?

"P5 vetos in the Security Counsel that sits behind this"

We should eliminate the ICJ by vetoing all future appointments.

[Martinned]

There is no P5 veto in elections for ICJ judges. Art 10(2) of the ICJ Statute

https://treaties.un.org/doc/source/docs/charter-all-lang.pdf#page=23

The reference to the P5 was to the customs that give the P5 disproportionate influence even over things like ICJ judgeships where they don't have a veto. (The UK currently doesn't have an ICJ judge. That is the first time a P5 country hasn't had a judge on the ICJ, if I'm not mistaken.)

[Bob from Ohio]

Who negotiated that treaty for us? Malpractice.

[Theendoftheleft]

How could the ICJ find that the UN-created Israel was legally wrongful, such that the Nakba was legally wrongful???

Doing so would entail that international law itself and the bodies that generate it are illegitimate.

If the ICJ nevertheless did so find, then Americans of all religious and political faiths would have to immediately stop propping up the UN, given that international law itself would then be correctly deemed–as well it ought–to be an imperialist tool of domination and control.

To be sure, that would be a wonderful development, and something that the Global South would get behind—and, indeed, literally is getting behind presently, under China’s leadership. (And if you watched the Tucker-Putin interview, you can see that that’s clearly Putin’s view regarding Ukraine and Russia’s borders.)

But that won’t help the Palestinians. Indeed, inquiries into ‘moral wrongs’, into morally unjust acquisitions, will work against their very identity AS Palestinians, not just their theft of Palestine. Further, the moral wrongs of sharia, which is an imperialist apartheid normative order, would also have to be called to account. (Deconstruction of ‘Islamophobia’ as a technique to cut off legit criticism and condemnation of Islam and sharia would, of course, have to follow suit.)

However, mere numbers looking to participate within the imperialist legal order won’t suffice to establish moral or political legitimacy, or legal validity. A textbook example is the OIC. Even Human Rights Watch has come out and admitted that that bloc routinely blocks human rights-based critiques, legal actions, and planned sanctions across the Ummah.

[SKofNJ]

The joke I’ve heard is: There aren’t enough buildings in Gaza to throw all of the “Queers for Palestine” off of.

[Nige]

If the Queers Of Palestine aren't all dead in the bombardment I'm sure the IDF don't need a tall building to finish them off.

[zztop8970]

It's “Queers for Palestine”, not 'Queers Of Palestine", and they're notable as useful Western idiots who'd be dead if they were actually IN Gaza

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think Israel should surrender.

But I don't think it's unreasonable to think Israel may be more amenable to public pressure than Hamas; this post sets up a false choice.

[Dilan Esper]

I actually don't think that is true. Hamas relies on a ton of outside support-- through outright military alliance (e.g., Iran), soft military alliance (Qatar), funding (the diversion of aid to Gaza), and propaganda (the worldwide pro-Palestinian movement).

I think a lot of people have this frankly racist and Islamophobic notion that Muslims are all jihadist crazies and will never listen to reason, and thus the only people we can protest and persuade are the Jews who listen to us. And I think a lot of people who are basically Hamas sympathizers (they think Israel is a settler colonialist ethnostate that should not exist and that Hamas is the legitimate Palestinian "resistance") hide behind that pose as well.

But there's no reason international pressure couldn't make things much more difficult for Palestinian militants (while also creating more space for Palestinian moderates). There's just a lot of people who want to destroy the Jewish state and therefore don't want that international pressure to happen.

[Martinned]

None of the outside support you listed is commonly included in "the West". In Europe, and in the other countries that Bernstein moans about, Hamas is designated as a terrorist organisation. Once you do that, you've pretty much accepted that the organisation isn't going to change its policies just because you ask nicely.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32024R0329

[Bob from Ohio]

"just because you ask nicely."

Agree, that is why you have to kill them all.

[Martinned]

Who's stopping you?

[Ed Grinberg]

Well, the Biden administration is currently trying to stop Israel from finishing the job. Shame on them!

[Dilan Esper]

Actually the propaganda wing of Hamas is really ALL in the West. And we have a ton of leverage over Qatar. Less over Iran, although I would note that this is a choice we make and we could actually offer diplomatic carrots to Iran if they cut off Hamas if we really wanted to.

And finally, we totally control the humanitarian aid going into Gaza and given what appear to be serious connections between NGO's and UN agencies and Hamas, we should probably think very carefully about exercising that lever more aggressively.

But all of this depends on us all agreeing that Hamas is wrong, that the Jewish state has a right to exist and is not an illegitimate settler colonialist ethnostate, and that the Palestinians do not have the right to violently resist Israel.

And a lot of people actually do not agree on those propositions.

[Aunt Teefah]

"what appear to be serious connections between NGO’s and UN agencies and Hamas"

Utter hokum that's going to get a whole bunch of people killed for no reason. Absolutely despicable to propagate this lie.

[Dilan Esper]

They literally just found Hamas tunnels with electrical connections in a UNRWA facility.

[Commenter_XY]

Don't confuse them with the facts.

[Aunt Teefah]

They (allegedly) found a tunnel that went under some land owned by UNRWA. No proof that UNRWA knew about it. No proof that it was even accessible from their facility. For this, clearly there is no choice but to shut down the single, solitary group keeping Gazans fed and alive.

[Dilan Esper]

If we're down to "we didn't realize they had a tunnel in our facility and tapped into our electricity", we're really stretching, aren't we?

[SimonP]

Are we? Israel has cited the presence of tunnels throughout the territory as justification for bombing large swaths of territory with huge bombs. Most of the civilian structures destroyed had no connection with any Hamas activity - they were just inconveniently in the way of collapsing the tunnels.

What you don't seem to recognize is that Israel is laying the groundwork for bombing UN facilities, an objective you are facilitating by misrepresenting what's actually been reported aand conflating it with generic and false assertions about "NGO" involvement with Hamas.

The piece the NYTimes published on this made clear how flimsy the propaganda effort by Israel is. You're demonstrating nicely for the present audience how easily people are misled by government propaganda.

[Truthfulness]

When the UN facilities are hijacked by Hamas as Dilan correctly states, then that is grounds of justification to go after such facilities.

UNRWA needs to be removed and replaced.

[grb]

Aunt Teefah : “No proof that it was even accessible from their facility”

It wasn’t, illustrating the level of Baghdad Bob-level propaganda we’re used to seeing on this issue. A Hamas tunnel runs 60ft below a UNRWA facility. There is no access to the tunnel from the UN facility. It continues on both before and after crossing under the UNRWA building. It crosses under other non-UNRWA structures along the way.

Per Dilan Esper that means intertwined collusion. Why? He doesn’t have a reason. He doesn’t have an argument. You can see how he cheats by saying “they had a tunnel in our facility”. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing; it’s just sleight-of-hand to cover up his remaining empty rhetoric.

The Israelis provided evidence 12 of 13,000 UNRWA employees had Hamas ties. Since then, we’ve seen no other proof of further connections. That’s suggestive, since I was certain they’d be able to produce another score or so names at least. But, nothing. That they’re reduced to hyping this tunnel is more suggestive still.

[grb]

You can see the tunnel (a long, long, way under the building), here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/10/world/middleeast/unrwa-hamas-gaza.html?searchResultPosition=1

[SimonP]

The smear campaign against UNRWA is illustrative of the fact that the war on Gaza has really nothing to do with Israeli security, and is all about achieving in the chaos a fundamental shift in the status quo that leaves Israel with more territory, less support for Palestine, and – most importantly – fewer Palestinians.

People within the Israeli military and government recognize that UNRWA is indispensable as a provider of aid to Palestinians in Gaza, and removing UNRWA won’t fundamentally address the issue of Hamas entwinement anyway, because any new organization will still need to rely heavily on Gazans to work for the organization and provide the aid.

So this isn’t about UNRWA in Gaza. This is about UNRWA, as an agency that provides support for the Palestinian diaspora, consisting of a broader population of refugees around the region who one day hope to return. Israel opposes this mission of UNRWA, because they view it as interfering with their own river-to-the-sea vision for Palestine.

That’s what all this propaganda is about, and why it’s aimed at American audiences. Get the US to withdraw aid for UNRWA. Reconstitute aid for Gazans under some other NGO umbrella, using the same funds and same employees. What gets left out? The diaspora! Convenient, that.

[Aunt Teefah]

Thank you for providing this important context. I certainly suspected something like that to be the case. Unfortunately, people like Dilan Esper will seize upon any pretext, however flimsy, to try to inflict misery on the Palestinians.

[Dilan Esper]

I am glad to see we drew a bunch of propagandists here. If anything you guys made my point that we probably need to get rid of UNRWA and replace it with something that is very carefully monitored and has no relationship with Hamas.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"Per Dilan Esper that means intertwined collusion. Why? He doesn’t have a reason. He doesn’t have an argument. You can see how he cheats by saying “they had a tunnel in our facility”. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing; it’s just sleight-of-hand to cover up his remaining empty rhetoric.

The Israelis provided evidence 12 of 13,000 UNRWA employees had Hamas ties. Since then, we’ve seen no other proof of further connections."

Your credibility, and your 'point' have both been thoroughly destroyed.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Ah, so the plan is to "get rid of UNRWA" and then re-create it without any Gazans (or Palestinians or Muslims--you can't be too careful!) in it. Sure, that seems practical.

[Truthfulness]

@ObviouslyNotSpam It's also guaranteed to be free of Hamas influence.

[David Nieporent]

UNRWA has for years run schools in the disputed territories that simply recite Hamas (and before that, PLO) propaganda.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You’re a fan of the settlers and settlements?

Boy, are you going to hate how this story ends. Mostly because you seem to root for violent, immoral, superstition -addled, right-wing assholes.

[Theendoftheleft]

'Boy, are you going to hate how this story ends'.

The nuking of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Mecca, Medina, Tehran, and Lahore?

What's not to like??? 🙂

[Truthfulness]

That's exactly how Kirkland wants it. He would love living in the U.S.S.R.

[Theendoftheleft]

‘…frankly racist and Islamophobic notion that Muslims are all jihadist crazies…’

But this hasn’t anything to do with race. Furthermore, it’s question begging to think it’s mistaken–depending upon how robust your understanding of 'jihad' is.

The term ‘Islamophobia’ presumes that one’s fear and hatred is predicated upon ignorance of Islam. That just begs the question, purposely. It says the more you learn about the faith, its various doctrines, strands of belief, etc., then the more you’ll hold it in esteem, see it to be congruent with Western values, and to be a fundamentally good and worthwhile belief system.

That’s just horseshit, though. Reasonable, educated, well-meaning people can (and should) come to just the opposite conclusion.

They can also very reasonably, and upon good evidence, conclude that Mohammad was a warmongering illiterate pedophile con artist who created an imperialist apartheid normative order.

[Commenter_XY]

Sarcastr0, you do not need to worry. Israel will never surrender to Hamas.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

After Americans stop proving the skirts Israel hides behind, Israel may not be in much position to make decisions about much of anything.

[Truthfulness]

Would you like to wager on it? Israel is doing fine.

Stop rooting for Hamas and repent of your antisemitism.

[Publius_2020]

>> "someone like her deciding that hey, maybe Hamas should just surrender and release the hostages could help move the needle"

This commentary seems naive at best, and disingenuous at worst. And I don't think the author is naive. There is zero possibility that a WaPo opinion writer is going to move any needles concerning the actions of Hamas. There was (and is) no shortage of recognition that Hamas' actions were (and are) horrific; it was published in WaPo repeatedly. But at a certain point, the hostage scenario becomes the status quo and it's no longer breaking news. WaPo doesn't run daily (or even weekly) pieces calling for Russia to surrender and Putin to give himself up to the ICC. Indeed, if it did, people would scratch their heads and ask 'what does WaPo think that will accomplish?' I don't think Mr. Bernstein has any illusions that a WaPo editorial calling for Hamas to surrender would be any more effective than one calling for Putin to surrender.

So what is Mr. Bernstein trying to accomplish here? Well, he tells us in the latter part of that sentence: "given that Hamas is counting on world opinion to stop Israel's offensive and keep it in power." What he seems to be seeking is to [a] end criticism of Israel's military action, because [b] that criticism might "stop Israel's offensive." In the guise of moral pontification, he's trying to defend Israel's bombing of Gaza.

People who criticize the bombing of Gaza, of course, aren't "defending Hamas" (no matter how many times that juvenile canard is repeated on the Internet) -- they're expressing disgust at the loss of innocent human lives in Gaza (more than 10,000 children have been killed at this point). That disgust can and does co-exist with disgust at Hamas' actions.

Notably, nowhere in Mr. Bernstein's piece does he express an ounce of concern for the next 1000 children who will die under Israel's bombardment. No, the purpose of this piece appears to be to shut down criticism of the bombardment -- so that it may continue.

[David Bernstein]

There are plenty of people defending Hamas, including Ms. Attiah, who retweeting praise for the massacre while the bodies are still warm. And as I noted above, the *only* reason Hamas keeps fighting is the hope that Western useful idiots will prevail upon Israel to desist, because Hamas can't win a military victory. If Hamas wasn't receiving virtual wall to wall support from the international left and much of the Arab/Muslim world, it would know it was doomed. Indeed, if the world had truly been united in condemning Hamas, insisting it surrender and release the hostages, and resolved to pressure Qater, Turkey, and Iran, Hamas's benefactors, after Oct 7., which is what should have happened, the war, if it had started at all, would be long over.

[SimonP]

There are plenty of people defending Hamas, including Ms. Attiah, who retweeting praise for the massacre while the bodies are still warm.

I'm not going to dig through her Twitter history to see what she was actually retweeting around October 7, but her tweets and retweets are a useful compendium of responses to the various asinine and wrong things you've felt the need to post there.

More recently, she seems to be more focused on Netanyahu's plan to slaughter civilians in Rafah and calling out Netanyahu's domestic efforts to get Israelis used to the idea that many of the hostages won't be coming home.

[Commenter_XY]

It is probably true what you said about the hostages; many are dead. They killed Americans too. That sort of makes it our fight as well.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

"The deaths of Lawrence and Webber mean at least 14 American citizens have died while fighting in Ukraine since the war broke out last year, although the exact figure is unclear."

That certainly justifies American boots on the ground in Ukraine as well as in Gaza.

[Commenter_XY]

It actually does not = That certainly justifies American boots on the ground in Ukraine as well as in Gaza.

Try harder.

[Randal]

Publius has a point -- you failed to ritualistically condemn Israel's wanton murder of civilians in your opinion piece, even though it would've been trivially easy for you to do so. That must mean you hate Palestinians and want them all to die.

[Publius_2020]

While this is rhetorically clever, I think the reality goes one step beyond that. A person who fails to condemn (today, this week) the Hamas terrorist attack in October is not (in any credible or cognizable way) implicitly saying that they want more such attacks. There's no credible inference that they are hoping for such attacks to continue this week, and next week.

But Mr. Bernstein cannot make the same statement. It's clear from his argument that he affirmatively wants Israel's bombardment to continue. His stated goal is to shut down criticism of that bombardment because it might result in sufficient international pressure that Israel is coerced into stopping. He wants more bombs to drop -- knowing, full well, that those bombs will kill another 1000 children. (Perhaps another 10,000 children.)

That's ethically different than the situation with general US commentators who are bowing insufficiently in the direction of the October 7 massacre. There is no basis for inferring that those commentators want to see more such massacres, or want to see such atrocities continue.

[Social Justice is neither]

Good to see you standing in support of Hamas supporters who have never stepped away from cheering the Oct 7 attack. Apparently you just want it to get out of the news so they can re-arm and plan their next slaughter of civilians for you to tut tut over.

[Nige]

Yeah, you just HATE the slaughter of civilans.

[Truthfulness]

It's war, Nige!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Bernstein's ire in this regard is unusually selective and predictably partisan.

He says nothing about the incessant stream of bigotry published by the blog with which he is associated -- not even with respect to the regular exhibitions of express right-wing antisemitism or the habitual publication of vile racial slurs.

He says nothing about right-wing bigots (for example, Elon Musk), even when their conservative bigotry veers into antisemitism.

But he rails strenuously against antisemitism (real or perceived) he figures he can pin on members of the liberal-libertarian mainstream. He lathers this blog's carefully cultivated collection of conservative commenters in a polemically partisan manner.

Carry on, clingers. So far as your betters permit.

[Theendoftheleft]

I enjoy your bigotry, AIDS. Your spin doesn't work, but your bigotry is amusing.

It must eat you up inside knowing that the whole world things your values are garbage, though, yeah?

[Martinned]

The chief prosecutor of the ICC has just published another statement:

I am deeply concerned by the reported bombardment and potential ground incursion by Israeli forces in Rafah.

My Office has an ongoing and active investigation into the situation in the State of Palestine. This is being taken forward as a matter of the utmost urgency, with a view to bringing to justice those responsible for Rome Statute crimes.

All wars have rules and the laws applicable to armed conflict cannot be interpreted so as to render them hollow or devoid of meaning. This has been my consistent message, including from Ramallah last year. Since that time, I have not seen any discernible change in conduct by Israel. As I have repeatedly emphasised, those who do not comply with the law should not complain later when my Office takes action pursuant to its mandate.

To all those involved: my Office is actively investigating any crimes allegedly committed. Those who are in breach of the law will be held accountable.

I also continue to call for the immediate release of all hostages. This also represents an important focus of our investigations.

https://twitter.com/KarimKhanQC/status/1757081372680700206

I look forward to hearing why this is biased against Israel.

[Bob from Ohio]

It mentions a pretend state and relies on press reports. Not to mention Israel is not a party so he has no jurisdiction.

Dude must have a death wish if he thinks he can try Israeli politicians and especially, soldiers.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Is that pretend state any less important than your pretend god?

Do you genuinely believe that childish fairy tales are true, or do you merely claim to believe in that nonsense as a matter of right-wing tribalism or maybe to pick up some clients in Can't-Keep-Up, Ohio?

Carry on, clinger.

[Truthfulness]

The "pretend state" is proven to not be a recognized nation according to overall world consensus. The "pretend god" has not been proven to be that, contrary to you claim.

Those "childish fairy tales" are responsible for shaping the lives of billions of individuals and many nations; we got to where we are because of them. For one, you owe the idea of the seven-day weekend to those "childish fairy tales".

Repent of your bigotry and let go of your anti-theism and antisemitism.

[Aunt Teefah]

"must have a death wish if he thinks he can try Israeli politicians and especially, soldiers."

Israel truly is the mafia of nations. Lacking any defense, it and it supporters set out to kill the judge and prosecutors. Impunity has turned it into a rabid dog.

[Theendoftheleft]

'Israel truly is the mafia of nations'.

HA! What??? I live in a country (not Israel, thank the gods) where EVERYONE knows we're an American client state.

[Don Nico]

Martin,
1) There is no state of Palestine. Already Mr Khan shows a bias.
2) Khan implies that Hamas deserves a safe refuge protected by the civilians among whom it has shielded itself for nearly 20 years.
3) Mr Khan has shown no inclination to prosecute Hamas leadership, despite its vocal advocacy of the genocide of Jews.

[Sarcastr0]

There is no state of Palestine Don this reveals HIS bias. (See how that works? I never find pedantic wrangling like this to be load-bearing for any argument of substance).

If you take “all wars have rules and the laws applicable to armed conflict cannot be interpreted so as to render them hollow or devoid of meaning” as implying that Hamas deserves a safe refuge protected by the civilians, you are taking a profoundly immoral stance.
Israel was horribly wronged; that does not give them a blank check to commit war crimes, no matter how bad Hamas is. What kind of psycho would think otherwise?

And you end with the same false choice Prof. Bernstein offers. Same shit as you can’t care about gun control unless you also talk about black violence in Chicago. Deflection is not a defense.

[Commenter_XY]

It is objectively true = There is no state of Palestine.

[Randal]

You guys are retards!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestine

I bet the earth is flat too, right, XY?

[Theendoftheleft]

Wikipedia posits that it's a state and therefore it is??? Your post is amusingly retarded.

By the by, what will you do when the United States loses this new cold war and all of international law, including the laws of war, are dismantled as racist imperialism? Will you apologize? Will you pay compensation to the people you subordinated?

[Commenter_XY]

Randal, I looked at a world map from Rand McNally published last year. I do not see palestine anywhere.

There is a thing called objective reality.

[Randal]

Good news! Hamas isn't on the map either, so by your logic it doesn't exist! The war is over!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Did you find Judea or Samaria on that map?

If not, why do you keep babbling those names?

[Truthfulness]

Where have we claimed there's a "Judea" or a "Samaria" today? We claimed no such thing, let alone babble on it. Could you be anymore dishonest about either us or the Jews?

[Martinned]

Here is the decision of the ICC's pre-trial chamber I saying otherwise. You don't have to agree with it. I don't think I do. But it seems reasonable for the ICC's Chief Prosecutor to follow it.

https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/CourtRecords/CR2021_01165.PDF

[Don Nico]

"There is no state of Palestine Don this reveals HIS bias."
You are amazing. There is NO state of Palestine however much you stamp your feet and raise your voice. And you thinking that there is reveals a profound bias on your part.
You call that pedantry; I call your response simple lying.

[Randal]

There is literally a State of Palestine. You might consider it a misnomer, but that's a personal problem. That's what it's called, so that's what Khan calls it.

[Truthfulness]

There is objectively no Palestinian state. The leadership accepting this would also require them to recognize Israel, which they don't want.

[Don Nico]

Profoundly Immoral?
You have a lot of nerve to claim moral authority in your response packed with distortions, lies and false indignation.
Where did I comment on guns in Chicago. Hmmm. Nowhere.
Just another of your lies decorated with self-righteous indignation.

[Sarcastr0]

Israel was horribly wronged; that does not give them a blank check to commit war crimes.

You take issue with a judge saying that. You call it pro-Hamas.

That is profoundly immoral.

[Commenter_XY]

Sarcastr0, if you are alleging Israel committed war crimes, back it up. Cite them. Otherwise, it is just slander. Not Misek level, but slander nonetheless.

Or is this just another instance of you spouting transfacts, your personal opinion that you try to identify as objective fact?

[Nige]

Every dead child is a war crime.

[Commenter_XY]

A tragedy, I agree = Every dead child in this war

[Nige]

You don't, really. Otherwise you wouldn't support the killing of children.

[Truthfulness]

You just don't understand war, Nige. The deaths of civilians, including children, are a sad inevitability of war. That doesn't mean putting an end to terrorists is unjustified, however.

To condemn every nation that defends itself by putting an end to their enemies in their territory, where those same enemies started the attack, is nothing but twisted thinking. Repent!

[California Dreamer]

24 hours ago, I attempted to respond to Commenter_XY's challenge to submit evidence supporting the allegations that Israel committed war crimes, but the articles I submitted as evidence are still "awaiting moderation" after one day. Apparently the moderator doesn't regard Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and (horrors) The New York Times and Washington Post as reliable sources.

[Truthfulness]

Because they aren't reliable--those "sources" have been misleading or outright dishonest with their reports.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

.

There is no state of Palestine.

The state of Palestine is every bit as real as your so-called god, clinger.

Which means that when better Americans stop providing the skirts Israel has been hiding behind for decades -- or when someone in your family confronts a problem, if your ostensible concern for Israel is just hollow, partisan right-wing nonsense --- your prayers will be meaningless, silly bullshit.

Does this bother you?

[Theendoftheleft]

Right, so the state of Palestine isn’t real.

You’re going to be replaced, AIDS. It’s hard to say that replacing dog shit with horseshit entails that the latter is better, of course.

The rest of the world MIGHT be better off as a result of your replacement. However, even my American faculty colleagues (refugees, really, from your idiocy) worry about what will happen when the third worlders and wokerati control your weapons of mass destruction.

[Martinned]

1) Given that the ICC pre-trial chamber held that there is a state of Palestine, for the purposes of the work of the ICC, I'm not sure how the Prosecutor following that ruling is supposed to show bias.

2) I don't know what you're talking about. Israel is welcome to shoot at Hamas as far as the Prosecutor is concerned. Israel just can't do that at the expense of disproportionate civilian casualties.

3) He literally said that he was investigating Hamas too.

[Truthfulness]

1) The ICC does not determine what is and isn't a state. Doesn't help that they have biased members.
2) Israel is justified into shooting Hamas regardless of any civilians in the way. It's not Israel's fault that they are placed by Hamas as well. Statistics show that Israel is doing an excellent job keeping civilian deaths as low as possible.
3) They are lying, seeing as they show no report on Hamas.

[Aunt Teefah]

Really compelling point, Professor Bernstein. When you think about it, a lot of the world's intractable problems become much more manageable if the opposing side were to simply give up. Yet newspaper editors try to hide this simple truth from us. Very curious.

For instance, a lot of people are concerned about what might happen to the country if Trump were to win another term. They're always talking about adopting *this* strategy or *that* policy to try to beat him in the election. But have they even considered just asking him to drop out? If someone were to calmly and rationally explain to him the error of his ways, surely he would listen. Very telling that newspaper editors like Karen Attiah refuse to even consider this approach.

Similarly, 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan spent two weeks trying to formulate a game plan to beat the Kansas City Chiefs. Yet out of all that time, he refused to take 30 seconds to ask the Chiefs if they'd agree to forfeit. Was he even trying to win the Super Bowl? Is he stupid?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

He should have hired a Defensive Coordinator who wouldn't just give up 5-7 yards at a time in the final 2 minutes of the game trying to play Prevent.

It showed a complete lack of faith in his own defense to change the entire approach like that. Kansas City had plenty of punts in the game, the 49ers only needed to accomplish that objective one more time to win.

Instead he let Mahomes march down the field at-will and get the game-tying field goal.

[ThePublius]

He didn't "let" Mahomes march down the field at-will, he couldn't stop Mahomes from doing so!

[California Dreamer]

Of course it would be wonderful if Hamas surrendered. Hamas is awful. But 2 wrongs don't make a right, and Israel has succeeded in the seemingly impossible task of behaving worse than Hamas. 10 eyes for an eye and 10 teeth for a tooth is not the solution.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Many, many people believe two wrongs make a right. Perhaps most people.

The reality, of course, is that only three lefts make a right.

[ThePublius]

You have a quite common, but unfortunately simplistic and mistaken understanding of "proportionality" in the law of war. There is not accounting for casualties on either side, as if Israel should only kill as many civilians as were Israeli civilians killed on 10/7. Rather, Israel must kill no more civilians as is necessary in accomplishing their legitimate military objectives. I believe they are doing so, attempting to minimize civilian casualties while prosecuting the war.

[Nige]

'I believe they are doing so,'

No you don't. Nobody does.

[Truthfulness]

You're lying. Stop shilling for Hamas.

[Nige]

'In short, no matter how much they purport to care for Palestinians, their biggest priority is that Israel not emerge victorious over Hamas.'

Their biggest priority is that the IDF stop killing thousands and thousands of people. Hard to believe, I know, so hard to believe you need to invent arbitrary standards for unquoted unnamed people to fail to live up to and ascribe bad-faith motivations to them.

[JasonT20]

...you need to invent arbitrary standards for unquoted unnamed people to fail to live up to and ascribe bad-faith motivations to them.

Well, that sums up Bernstein's whole post really well.

[Truthfulness]

There's nothing arbitrary about putting an end to a terrorist group. You and Nige are disgusting.

[Abegweit]

So lemme get this straight. You're asking me whether I am more angered by the despicable scum who steal and use murder to achieve their aims? Or am I more moved by compassion for their hapless victims? It's a hard question to answer. I do know that the best way to help the victims from this far away place is to call out the scum for what they are. You included.

And BTW, Reason claims to be a libertarian website. Why for the love of God are they letting scum use it to justify the worst attack on the NAP in this century? And where are the articles decrying this horrible attack on freedom>

[Truthfulness]

You're reading one right now. Hamas violated the NAP and are facing the consequences.

[TZM]

Odd how the global left gets a mention here while the guy who cynically let billions go to Hamas to undermine the PA so he wouldn’t have to give up the goal of Greater Israel gets none.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Goalposts don't move themselves.

[David Bernstein]

Why *wouldn't* someone who cares about Palestinians want Hamas to surrender? Has Hamas rule been good for the Palestinians in Gaza? Is there a reason to think it will be better for them in the future? Would any of the people I'm referring to want to live in a country ruled by Hamas or some analogue?

[Dilan Esper]

It's not just the hostages (although the hostages are bad enough-- morally, Hamas needs to release the hostages now and in exchange for nothing, but a lot of people implicitly want Hamas to get some concessions in return for that).

Hamas has a lot of warmaking capabilities (including most famously an extensive network of tunnels, but also rocket launching facilities, etc.) which it uses to launch periodic (and sometimes constant) attacks on Israel. Israel has every right to expect that stuff to be dismantled.

Unlike Prof. Bernstein I am less hung up on the notion of a "surrender". I'm not actually even sure what that would look like. But Hamas could actually do a bunch of things that would make further terrorist attacks on Israel more difficult and a ceasefire more likely, and the pro-Palestinian movement does not call for those things because fundamentally they believe that Jews shouldn't have a state on what they see as "Muslim land" and that the Palestinians should be able to continue to "resist" until Israel ceases to exist and Palestinians control the land.

[Greg J]

Just as with WWII, the war is not going to end until the unconditional surrender of the Hamas Nazis.

So if you want the suffering of the Palestinian people to end, you want Hamas destroyed.

if, however, you're just a Jew hating Nazi PoS, then you don't want Hamas to surrend

[David Bernstein]

In fact, one of the strongest critiques of US policy in Iraq was that (supposedly) Saddam offered to abdicate if he could take $1 billion and get free passage to exile, and the Bush administration turned him down flat.
But I don't recall anyone actually defending Saddam the way they defend Hamas. There were people who said that the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. There were people who said the US shouldn't be invading a sovereign nation that did not attack the US. There were people who said it will destabilize the region. There were people who just reflexively oppose any US military action.
But in any event, the much better analogy is to Al Qaeda, like Hamas an Islamist terrorist organization that murdered civilians. And the US did indeed give the Taliban the opportunity to hand them over rather than invade, just as the world had three weeks to get Hamas to surrender before Israel invaded. I don't recall anyone in this country with the moral idiocy to say, explicitly or implicity, "actually, putting aside practicalities, we would prefer Al Qaeda win to teach the imperialists a lesson." People warned of quagmire and not to nation-build, just as people are warning that Israel shouldn't try to permanently occupy Gaza. But that's quite different from wanting Al Qaeda to win because you think they are the relative good guys.

[Krychek_2]

David, that's not the question. Hardly anyone disputes that the world would be a better place if there were no Hamas. But the issue is how much collateral damage is it acceptable to inflict on innocent civilians.

A bad guy running from the police runs into your house. That he is a bad guy is not in dispute. But should the police burn your house to the ground, killing you and your family in the process, to get rid of him? That's the question.

I don't think Israel has any great options, candidly. Anything less than a full victory over Hamas means that Hamas will be back again. A full victory over Hamas means a replacement terrorist organization will rise up to take its place in time, and probably not much time. And what is happening in Gaza right now is starting to look a lot like genocide, and as an American taxpayer I'm really not interested in funding genocide, even for a good cause. If I were prime minister of Israel I honestly have no idea what I would do.

[JFree]

My main concern is to avoid ME being complicit in this shit. And that means stop giving Israel the means - on my dime - to keep doing this.

[Jacob Grimes]

It only looks like genocide if you use an obscure, academic meaning of genocide that doesn't involve the deliberate killing of large numbers of people. Genocide isn't the destruction of buildings or the temporary displacement of people during war (if Israel wanted the Palestinians out of Gaza, it wouldn't be establishing a 1km border buffer zone or asking ME countries to establish a post-war transitional government). It's the systematic extermination of a people.

In terms of deaths, it doesn't come close. Think of it this way:
On Oct 7, Hamas killed around 1200 people in isolated communities with small arms.
Over 120 days of war, the IDF has allegedly killed about 30,000 people, at least several thousand of them combatants, in an invasion using bombs, tanks, and artillery in a very densely populated area.
If the IDF wanted to kill people, it could surely do so at a much higher rate than Hamas. But it isn't. In fact, it's doing so at a much lower rate. Which is entirely consistent with the IDF trying to limit civilian casualties and not at all consistent with "genocide."

[FivebySixThree]

Wars will not end until the people supporting those starting the wars lose their will to do so or can no longer afford to do so, I would not want to even contemplate how long WW2 would have dragged on if the allies avoided civilian casualties.

[David Nieporent]

A bad guy running from the police runs into your house. That he is a bad guy is not in dispute.

Oh, that's in fact very much in dispute, whether it should be or not.

But should the police burn your house to the ground, killing you and your family in the process, to get rid of him? That’s the question.

Setting aside whether that accurately characterizes what's happening, that's a question. But "Should the bad guy leave the house" is also a question. And if someone says, "No; I think the police need to go away; he doesn't need to do anything," then you might wonder whether this person is actually upset about what happened or only hates the police.

[Ghost of Patrick Henry]

Nope, the bad guys ran back into their OWN house, filled with other bad guys or those who support the bad guys. Then then refuse to surrender to save the lives of their supporters and dare the cops to come get them. When the cops come to get them, they hide behind women and children and then try to run out the back door. Get your analogy right!

[SimonP]

"It only looks like genocide" if you invoke what that term means, under international humanitarian law, you mean.

Israel could be doing far worse is not really a defense.

[Martinned]

If only the US had friends in the Middle East who might be persuaded to stop funding Hamas...

[Randal]

Who is saying that they want Hamas to win, even implicitly? I think you made that up.

[Social Justice is neither]

Sadly, given the abundance of people like the one you're responding to, I wouldn't hold too much hope for that last statement being unsupported if the US were attacked today.

[Jacob Grimes]

We both know that most people aren't using the word "genocide" as defined by whatever international document some diplomats put together. It's a bit obtuse to put the past four months of conflict in Gaza in the same category as the Holocaust, Rwandan genocide, the Holodomor, or the Armenian genocide.

[Krychek_2]

But this is a legal blog, so one would expect legal definitions rather than popular definitions to be used. If this were a thread on insanity as a criminal defense, I think it would be understood that the technical legal term would be at issue and not merely whether the average person on the street would consider the defendant to be batshit crazy.

And you're right that Gaza isn't Rwanda, but that argument is only worth so much. That's a difference in degree, not in quality.

[SimonP]

The reported casualty numbers - itself likely a significant undercount due to the fact that many may still be buried in rubble - already constitute more than 1% of the pre-war population in Gaza. Considering the massive internal displacement of Gazans within the territory, the systematic targeting of schools, hospitals, and universities, the ongoing blockade or slow-cade of humanitarian aid, and so on - the question isn't whether Israel is engaging actions that would indisputably constitute "genocide" by any layperson's definition, but when that threshold will be passed.

We can call it mere "ethnic cleansing," if you like, since that is much more clearly what Israel is engaged in. But Israel has now killed more than 20 times as many Gazans as Hamas killed Israelis on October 7, and is gearing up to attack the last remaining "safe" zone to which Gazans have been directed to flee. When will you start to care?

[Ed Grinberg]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Toyq6DkGXT4
At 3:46 you can see a typical Western leftist patiently explain (re: 10/7 atrocities in Israel) that "this is what decolonization looks like." Who do you think she is rooting for?

[Jacob Grimes]

The reported casualty numbers are entirely unreliable because they are reported by an unreliable source, Hamas, whose only chance of survival is to play up civilian suffering to drive international opinion against Israel. It is foolish to think that Hamas would readily butcher innocent people but refrain from lying. The supposed "corroboration" from earlier conflicts is equally useless. Hamas doesn't, and never has, allowed outside organizations unfettered access needed for actual investigations, not to mention the real risk of reprisals against witnesses who don't toe Hamas' line.

You're married to a fundamental misunderstanding of the conflict: that Israel is only allowed to kill a certain number of people in response to Hamas' attacks, a number that depends upon how many Israelis are killed. That's simply absurd. Israel's goal is to eliminate Hamas and rescue the hostages, not engage in some tit-for-tat campaign.

Finally, to call the evacuation of civilians "internal displacement" akin to ethnic cleansing shows ignorance or bad faith on your part. Israel is literally taking actions (setting up a buffer zone, asking for an internationally led transitional government) that directly contradict any goal of permanently displacing Palestinians from Gaza. And as for targeting schools, hospitals, etc., it's well documented that Hamas has deliberately operated from those locations. It's the assessment of both the US and Israeli intelligence agencies that this occurs and has been confirmed by witnesses and video evidence over the past decade. If you choose to ignore it, that's on you.

[Randal]

You do realize, right, that that's a clip taking the piss out of over-the-top protesters? That's not "typical." It's nutpicking for comedy. Do you really think that's what David is responding to?

There's a lot of those at Trump rallies of people saying the absolutely stupidest shit you can imagine. Do you believe those represent "typical" conservatives? If so you may be one of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNIJH5gufaQ

[SimonP]

The reported casualty numbers are…

Accepted by the US and Israel as accurate, and broadly believed to be an undercount.

You’re married to a fundamental misunderstanding of the conflict: that Israel is only allowed to kill a certain number of people in response to Hamas’ attacks, a number that depends upon how many Israelis are killed.

No, I haven’t made that argument. I have drawn the comparison only to give a sense of the scale of death being caused by Israel in Gaza, since your contention was that no normal layperson would characterize what’s happening as a “genocide.” Not that the scale of non-combatant deaths have ever been justified militarily, either.

Finally, to call the evacuation of civilians “internal displacement” akin to ethnic cleansing shows ignorance or bad faith on your part.

No, in fact, forced displacement of non-combatants is a war crime, as is destroying virtually everything they leave behind.

Israel is literally taking actions (setting up a buffer zone, asking for an internationally led transitional government) that directly contradict any goal of permanently displacing Palestinians from Gaza.

Israel has not articulated any plan for governing post-war Gaza, other than to reject any possibility that Hamas or the Palestinian Authority could be involved, as well as to reject any notion that it could lead to any form of sovereignty or statehood for the Palestinian people. The fact that they are just planning to make it a more inhospitable prison for 2 million people whose entire lives have been destroyed already by Israel does not mean that they have a plan other than displacement. They are just setting the conditions for a massive humanitarian crisis, so that they can set the terms to the world community: “You don’t like it? You take them! Otherwise they will die here.”

Maybe you should take a moment to refresh yourself on what Germany did to the Jews in the 30s.

[Krychek_2]

Yes, the bad guy should voluntarily leave the house, and Hamas should voluntarily cease its operations. But neither of those is going to happen. So we are stuck with the reality that actually exists and not the reality that would exist in a just world.

And if I'm the homeowner who is about to die when the police torch my house with my children inside, it makes little difference to me that the real culprit is the bad guy who ran into my house. Yes, it's true, he set the events in motion. But he wasn't the one who set the house on fire. That, in fact, was the police.

I once knew a family in which the mother's idea of discipline, when a child did something wrong but she didn't know which one, was to paddle all the children until someone confessed, and then make the culprit apologize to his siblings for getting them beaten. This continued up until the day that an innocent sibling said to his mother, "He doesn't owe me an apology; he's not the one who beat me. That was you." Same principle applies here.

[David Nieporent]

No, in fact, forced displacement of non-combatants is a war crime, as is destroying virtually everything they leave behind.

Leftists have this weird idea of labeling anything they don't like as "genocide" or "war crime" or whatever. No, that isn't a war crime.

Here's Article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention:

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.

Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.

[SimonP]

So what you actually mean, Chip, is it’s not a war crime if certain conditions are satisfied.

Conditions which, of course, you take as granted.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

That day is approaching. Pres. Biden seems to be exhausting his support of Israel’s right-wing assholes . . . And he may be the final U.S. president who strongly supports Israel. Think of all the benefits to Americans if we stop subsidizing Israel’s right-wing, superstition-laced belligerence.

[Truthfulness]

You're not complicit in Israel putting an end to Hamas? To hell with you and your antisemitism.

[Truthfulness]

[Theendoftheleft]

AIDS, America is going to normalize Islam, one way or another. There are going to be scores of millions of American Muslims in the coming decades across America. They aren’t going to be liberal or left-wing (even if they’re anti-capitalist)–especially as the West and ‘Western values’ wane in influence and power globally.

You’re going to be completely outbred by impoverished South American Catholics and by jihadis, the latter of whom structure their lives around the musings of a war-mongering illiterate pedophile who created an imperialist apartheid cult. Your values will be replaced.

The evolutionary dud, unequal gays should start planning to go back into the closet ASAP.

Feminism has guaranteed the survival and paramountcy of the patriarchy for countless generations now.

Tolerance of minority faiths and belief systems will be finished in America. (The Left, which will completely take over the Blue Team once the geriatrics currently in power are gone, will crush those groups long before greater Islamicization across your country.)

Polygamy, child marriage, and non-Western, Islamic-style slavery will be normalized. All of those practices will be deemed to be compatible with the constitution.

The international system that liberal-progressive American imperialists foisted upon the world after WWII will be completely dismantled and replaced.

Screw the Jews and screw Israel. YOU are completely ruined. If your head wasn’t so far up your ass you’d have even a sense of what’s actually coming.

Rubbish bin of history, AIDS. You and everything you hold dear.

[Truthfulness]

Antisemitism thrives under your wishful scenario. We now know for sure, yet aren't surprised, about your burning hatred for Jews.

[Armchair]

Let's run with this analogy for a second, and see what actually happens. A bad guy runs into your house. What do you do?

1. Assume for a second you're not physically being held hostage. (If you are, it's a different scenario, with different limits). Do you leave the house? Or do you stay in the house? If you leave the house, there's no problem long term. Let's say you stay in the house.

2. The police arrive, and ask the bad man to surrender himself. He declines, and opens fire on the police. The police say via loudspeaker, "If you can safely leave the house, please do so". What do you do? If you leave the house, no problem. Assume you stay.

[Krychek_2]

And how exactly can the Palestinians leave Gaza? Egypt won't allow them in and there's no other exit route. They've got nowhere to go.

[Commenter_XY]

K_2, where is the arab world when gazans need them. Nowhere to be found. I think the saying that fits: All hat, No cattle.

Israel certainly won't stop arabs in gaza from relocating.

[zztop8970]

How much pressure do you see being put on Egypt to allow them in, vs. pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire?

[Krychek_2]

I lived in the Middle East for three years. I think that most of the problems in "the Arab world" are of their own making. If Israel disappeared tomorrow, those problems would not go away because the underlying causes, mostly created by the Arabs themselves, would still be there.

All that said, I can't support the ethnic cleansing that is now taking place in Gaza. Hamas has moral culpability for its own acts, but so does Israel. Hamas isn't the entity that's left tens of thousands of Gazans dead and the country in ruins. Israel did that.

Now, does Israel have any really good options? No, and I will entertain the possibility that what Israel is doing may even be its least bad option. I don't think it's going to work though. Even if it eradicates Hamas, another terrorist organization will simply rise up to take its place.

[David Nieporent]

There’s a lot of those at Trump rallies of people saying the absolutely stupidest shit you can imagine. Do you believe those represent “typical” conservatives?

Maybe not, but they represent typical Trump supporters.

[Commenter_XY]

I agree = If Israel disappeared tomorrow, those problems would not go away because the underlying causes, mostly created by the Arabs themselves, would still be there.

I agree = Now, does Israel have any really good options? No, and I will entertain the possibility that what Israel is doing may even be its least bad option.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If that is an audition for a position as a member of the Volokh Conspiracy . . . the only thing missing is a vile racial slur or two.

[Theendoftheleft]

Sì Guizi!

🙂

[Truthfulness]

@Rev. Arthur T. Kirkland

Not being antisemitic and calling out Hamas for who they are is somehow indicative of a position that is permissive of “a vile racial slur or two”? What an absurd proposition. You’re not in a position to talk, considering your deplorable antisemitism and vile slurs towards Jews, Christians and other groups.