Report from Israel: Israelis Aren't Out for Vengeance, But For Safety and Security

One constant refrain I have seen in the media since Hamas' Oct. 7 massacre is that Israel is seeking "revenge" in Gaza, or "retaliating" for Oct. 7. Israel, by contrast, asserts two primary motivations--return of its hostages, and the defeat of Hamas to restore Israeli security.

Having just returned from Israel, on the same lawprof trip that Josh Blackman went on, I saw firsthand that Israel's account of things is the one widely embraced by the Israeli public. As soon as you step off the airplane in Israel, posters with photos of the hostages are everywhere. In talking to Israelis, it's obvious how deeply the hostage situation cuts. Israelis don't just know that there are 120 hostages, they know their individual names and stories by heart.

As for security, people underestimate how much of a shock 10/7 was to Israelis. There were the multiple failures of the intelligence services and the army. There was the depraved brutality of Hamas. But most of all, there was the uncertainty and a loss of a sense of personal security. That morning, the country was in chaos. No one knew how bad the attack was, or what it would lead to. Would Hamas break through to the southern cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Be'er Sheva? Would there be a simultaneous attack from the West Bank, threatening not just border towns but Israelis in the "center," including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem? Would Hezbollah join the attack, and launch thousands of precision missiles at Israeli cities? Iran? No one knew, and it was clear that the IDF was woefully unprepared for any such scenarios, given that it clearly was caught with its pants down in the South.

So Israelis desperately want the hostages returned, and for their sense of security to be returned. Residents of the South and North who had to evacuate after 10/7 especially want to to be able to safely return to their homes.

What Israelis, in general, are not after is vengeance. Considering that Israel was in month nine of a war with support both wide and deep among the Jewish public, there was little if any of the rabble-rousing nationalism and militarism one might expect in such circumstances. Every Israeli we spoke to volunteered that Hamas must be defeated, but that thereafter, "we have to find a way to live with" neighboring Palestinians. While I'm sure there is a minority who have more aggressive views, even "support the troops" or "we will succeed together"-type signs were vastly outnumbered by hostage posters. Israelis are resigned and determined, but not bloodthirsty.

It's also true that I saw very little over concern about Palestinian civilian casualties, even among the people we met who are on the left, even far-left, politically, who would normally be vocal about such things. This, it seems to me, is a product of several factors.

First, Israelis see the war as one of survival. Israel can't survive if the South and North are uninhabitable, nor if the public in the rest of the country lives in permanent dread of sudden, brutal, terrorist attacks. When your survival is at stake, you tend to be less concerned with the fate of others.

Second, Israelis' sympathy for the civilian population of Gaza is strained by the behavior of civilians there. During the Hamas invasion, mobs of Palestinian civilians entered into southern Israeli towns, looting, murdering, and raping. In some cases, Hamas had to protect its hostages from civilians who sought to murder them on the spot. When the hostages were brought into Israel, including sick, elderly people and small children, civilian crowds cheered. And when Hamas had to figure out how to hide the hostages, it paid civilians to do so, who, according to released hostages, participated eagerly. One civilian was even murdered by a doctor in Sheba hospital. Meanwhile, while many thousands of Palestinians had some clue as to where the hostages were being held, it seems that Israel has received precious little assistance or tips from them, even, again, about children and aged hostages.

Third, as Josh pointed out earlier today, while many of us think international law standards are in practice weaponized bullshit, Israeli lawyers, especially IDF lawyers, really believe in it, and really do their best to comply. Every unit has a lawyer attached to it, and any significant operation must be discussed with and approved by those lawyers. Many operations are modified to meet the lawyers' objections. (Aside: The biggest issue is "proportionality," ie, an operation's military value must be "proportional" to the risk to civilian welfare. This strikes me outside of extreme situations as an entirely subjective and thus absurd legal standard, but all indications are that the IDF's lawyers really do try to adhere to it as best they can.) If Israel is fighting a war for survival and is doing its best to comply with international law, resulting civilian deaths are on Hamas's, not Israel's, conscience.

Fourth and finally, Israel has a people's army. Most of the soldiers fighting in Gaza are reservists who come from all over the country, and have the entire spectrum of political and ideological views. Gaza is only 1.5 hours or so from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the reservists are often home on leave or go home when their tour ends. There's a lot of chatter in anti-Israel circles about Israel being indiscriminately violent and Gaza and so on. But what Israelis are hearing from their friends and family in the IDF, left, right, and center, is that the IDF is doing everything it can reasonably do to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties. Indeed, they are hearing that soldiers are being wounded and even killed because of the precautions they took to avoid harming civilians.

Of course, I'm not on the ground to confirm this narrative. But when an Israeli's left-wing kibbutnik brother-in-law and his right-wing Likudnik nephew both tell him that the IDF is going out of its way to reduce civilian casaulties, at the expense of IDF casualties, that Israeli will be inclined to believe it--even if the kibbutznik is praising these actions, and the Likudnik is decrying them as unfair to the soldiers who get killed or injured.

Comments

[John F. Carr]

Photos of hostages are evidently common in the Jewish area near the border of Brookline and Newton, in the suburbs of Boston. I see a trickle of stories about vandalism of such displays.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

It seems like one of the fundamental cleavages with respect to the war response is the competing objectives of security the hostages and eradicating Hamas. The two things aren't always in diametrically opposing tension, but they are at least sometimes in partial tension. It seems difficult to square the government (not the public)'s conduct of the war with anything other than prioritizing the latter at the expense of the former, which I take to be the primary objection of the hostage families who have been a thorn in Netanyahu's side.

So I suspect that once you dismiss the barking antisemites -- as of course you should -- most of the more measured and legitimate criticism which says "Israel is out for revenge" is explicitly predicated on this idea: that the term Israel in the sentence refers to the Netanyahu government (including, of course, some people considerably to Netanyahu's left); and that revenge means the punishment of those involved on October 7th to the exclusion of competing priorities (minimizing collateral damage, securing the hostages, longer-term peace). This seems like a relatively reasonable debate on competing priorities, and to the extent international law has gotten involved, international law is often predicated on imposing on states certain duties which are held in balance with their rights to prosecute war.

I think the response that Israel takes certain actions to minimize death, for example by calling ahead in some cases, by dropping leaflets, by not engaging in a total blockade of external resources, etc. is well met, but it's part of a holistic evaluation: if you want to point to the things Israel does do, you need to be able to weigh them against all the choices Israel makes. So, for instance, by choosing to strike a building, there's either an explicit or implicit calculus that the military value to doing so (aiming for, say, a Hamas commander) outweighs the costs to doing so (collateral damage). That's fine, but the mere statement of the tradeoff is not enough, you actually need to quantify the tradeoff in this conflict versus others.

Finally, you mention the question of sympathy for average civilians. This is an understandable thing. It's understandable that Ukrainians would feel little sympathy for individual Russian civilians (for example, those living in Crimea or border regions of Russia, or for those in the Donbass who identify as Russian) who are killed during the conduct of their self-defence. It's understandable that Americans might feel relatively little sympathy for Afghans impacted by the War in Afghanistan. I think the psychology of this is well-understood. Civilians often have a degree of sympathy or support for their (quasi-)governments when they do heinous things during the conduct of (quasi-)wars. I have no doubt many Gazans support Hamas. There are people in the comments section of this site who routinely support political violence against their neighbors. People have the capacity for immense cruelty when they are under threat or when they are responding to hatred against them. But how is any of this a defence? In war we have obligations -- legal and moral -- not to treat civilians, and particularly children and babies, as combattants, even if they have bad political views and even if they hate us as much as we hate them. So I am surprised to see "Ordinary Israelis don't care about ordinary Palestinians because ordinary Palestinians support violence against ordinary Israelis" used as a moral defence, and equally surprised you don't seem to process that you can switch the words in the sentence around a little and that's exactly why we should avoid dehumanizing others.

[David Bernstein]

"That’s fine, but the mere statement of the tradeoff is not enough, you actually need to quantify the tradeoff in this conflict versus others."
There is really no plausible way to "quantify" military advantage against civilian harm, except, as I said, in extreme cases--down take down an unused enemy building if it's going to kill 50 civilians. But let's say that killing Deif or Sinway is estimated to kill 50 civilians. I don't see how what objective calculation you can make, besides asking whether there is a way of doing it that is estimated to kill fewer civilians, and then there's still the quesiton of "but what if it's less likely to succeed."

There is indeed a potential conflict between hostage rescue and defeating Hamas. Some hostage advocates have even said that Israel should be willing to let all 9K Palestinian terrorists out of Israeli jails, including the most hardened murderers, in return for the hostages. Which is nuts. But Bibi has already agreed to a 30-1 ratio, with the ratio including Israeli dead, not just living hostags. Which is already kind of nuts. But in any event, Bibi would argue that short of surrender, the military campaign is the only reason Hamas is willing to negotiate, so in fact a hostage deal is dependent on putting military pressure on Hamas. Beyond that, the goal is to destroy Hamas as a military force, and the most diret way of doing that is killing as many of them and destroying as much of their equipment and tunnels as possible.

[Brophy]

You don't need to quantify the tradeoff precisely. Maybe Israel is killing 10 civilians for every Hamas soldier, maybe it's 5 or 15. Clearly, Israel is motivated by revenge and has succeeded in punished Hamas and the civilians that support them, as well as the civilians who oppose them. By the time they're done, will the killings look like the Roman sacking of Carthage 2000 years ago? Will half the Gazans starve or die in bombings? Why can't the United States be neutral in this conflict and declare both sides evil? Can't Israel and the Gazans defend themselves?

[ReaderY]

The problem with this is that the number of civilians Israrl has killed in Gaza is so low as to be virtually trivial compared with e.g. the millions killed in the US’s “war against terror” in the Middle East, among other major modern conflicts.

Hamas shills such as yourself are taking advantage of people’s ignorance by completely ignoring the history of modern urban warfare and treating levels of civilian casualties well within ordinary modern standards based on actual combat as if they were somehow unusual.

In the US wars, for example, no food or medical aid was allowed into besieged cities, and millions died of starvation and disease. This is par for the course and normative for modern war. Israel’s allowing food into besieged cities is an act of grace well above what is actually normally done in modern war, the actual customary international warfare standard.

The trick Hamas shills such as yourself pull is to compare Hamas’ estimates with US military estimates of confirmed direct kills, which of course err on the low side and omit idirect deaths (e.g. starvation and disease from sieges). An honest and fair comparison would have to include reasonable neutral estimates of all deaths including indirect. Israel looks quite good under such a comparison aand has absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

[shawn_dude]

I don't buy that there's no way to measure an appropriate value against the cost of bombing civilians. For example, we know that the IDF believes that bombing a UN school full of children is worth it for a single Hamas member. And so far, we've seen that the IDF is unwilling to carpet-bomb Gaza. We've also seen attacks on journalists. That sets up at least a minimum framework for measuring cost/benefit of innocent deaths.

[Michael P]

If Hamas doesn't want schools or hospitals to get bombed, they shouldn't use them as military facilities. While Hamas uses a given facility to launch attacks or to escape after attacking, it's fair game to be attacked in response.

Clearly, then, Hamas wants and invites these attacks.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

Thanks for your reply and your time. Also let me just say I understand this is a gut-wrenching thing to talk about, so I appreciate the extent to which someone sort of dissecting the finer points of argumentation is missing a visceral and overwhelming hurt that you're feeling throughout this (I hope you would recognize the same thing in others as well).

Everything you're saying is true, but my point is that this is the starting point of the conversation, not the ending, and it seemed to me in the post that the mere assertion that some tradeoff existed was enough to de-fang the criticism in its tracks.

I do not agree. Every military on earth has SOP orders, and those orders imply a particular willingness to use force balanced with various risks (to the soldiers, to civilians, to enemy combatants, etc.) and these choices are not beyond criticism.

I do not think it is very likely Netanyahu would release 9,000 prisoners in return for hostages. But that itself is a position that implies a tradeoff. Getting the hostages back is important, but it's not that important, for some "that". Likewise, knowing that the hostages are being held in buildings and tunnels that are subject to bombing is also a tradeoff. The tradeoff is: Getting the hostages back is important, but it's not that important. If the position is that hitting harder faster is more likely to optimize for the number of alive hostages, it's nevertheless a tradeoff for which hostages survive and which die.

Your reply I think makes your position clearer: The primary goal is to destroy Hamas as a military force, which is also viewed as the means to achieve a secondary goal, concessions in terms of hostage release. I don't necessarily think this is wrong in that this may well be the tradeoff any government would make. But I don't understand the need to elide this tradeoff when making a moral defence of Israel's actions vis-a-vis the plight of the hostages. When you talk about how no one is forgetting the hostages, everyone is thinking of them, everyone is united about saving the hostages, I think that overstates the extent to which their plight has been subordinated to what you admit is the primary goal. I think there's more tension than you admit between the two goals.

Also, in your post you note -- and I think your characterization of the position is fair -- that a lot of defence of Israel is predicated on the idea that international law (whether as applied or just as a set of norms) is "weaponized bullshit" because it is "subjective". In effect, for war to work, the belligerent themselves needs to be be able to weigh costs versus benefits in all things, and if they assign no cost to collateral damage, well, that's because war is existential to them. In your response to my comment you suggest the difficulty of weighing life for life in terms of targets versus collateral damage, or prisoners versus hostages. I agree this is hard, but I don't think that gives anyone a pass. We're playing with live ammunition here, lives are at stake, that makes it more important not less to think through all the hard stuff.

Moreover, I don't really buy it from your perspective. If international law explicitly encoded an objective life-for-life tradeoff -- i.e. if proportionality was legally defined as "X civilian deaths for Y targets is unacceptable, Z targets if the targets were senior military leadership" -- and that definition concluded that Israel's actions in Gaza fell short of international law, you would oppose the definition and support the actions. The conversation would eventually spiral into the impossibility of objectivity in all things. I think it's reasonable to criticize international law, I just feel like the grounds from which you're doing so are on shakier ground than you admit.

Take care.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Right-wing fan of Israel is not bothered by the disgusting conduct of Israel's hard-right government? Sounds right.

We shall see how Israel fares after Americans stop providing the military, economic, and political skirts Israel has been operating and hiding behind for decades -- because most Americans (especially educated, modern, younger, non-bigoted Americans) don't like right-wing bigotry, corruption, and violence laced with old-timey superstition at home, and are not likely to subsidize it at great and varied cost anywhere else forever.

I hope better Israelis (not the parasitic, belligerent, right-wing religious kooks, for example) leave Israel -- for the United States, ideally -- before that proposition is tested. They deserve better, and many parts of can't-keep-up America could benefit from such immigration.

[Frank Drackman]

Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you’re ever feeling suicidal, say on November 5, take a bottle of Ambien and have a few drinks, and don’t use your CPAP(that’s how good a Doc I am(I did(and still do) other Doctor stuff besides keeping people’s alive while Surgeons inflict surgery on them) I know you’ve got the Sleep Apnea)

Frank

[ReaderY]

The fact of the matter is, ANY Israeli government, even a quite left-wing one, would be prosecuting this war in a way involving some combination of degrading Hamas and hostage rescue attempts that would not look all that different from what this government has done.

No Israeli government would simply start handing over ransom without a fight, which seems to the only way Rev. Kirkland would avoid calling Israelis mass murderers. Or would even this satisfy him? I frankly doubt it.

[ReaderY]

The other thing Kirkland ignores is that Israel’s left is much more represented in the IDF than in the government, because the ultra-Orthodox people Kirkland rails about mostly have draft exemptions. There have certainly been out-of-control settlers and and such and the IDF has not done enough to crack down on them. But Israel’s center-left is overrepresentated in its professional security establishment.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

And yet Israel still follows a course of right-wing belligerence, war crimes, superstition-based government brutality, and right-wing corruption. That has made Israel an international pariah and cost it the support of younger, educated, modern Americans.

The problem for Israel is that it relies on American support to continue to effect its selfish, theocratic, immoral, expensive right-wing preferences. And that American support is evaporating, for ample cause.

I hope America ditches Israel and Saudi Arabia simultaneously. I don't like brutal, criminal, superstition-addled right-wingery anywhere.

[Theendoftheleft]

Nonsense, AIDS. Your fundamental mandate is a comprehensive social re-engineering project that denigrates nation-states, endogenous breeding habits, etc. These self-exclusionary practices, including in the form of political organisation, are now being denigrated because they constitute a threat to your global imperialist agenda. (Hence the label ‘ethno-state’ to replace ‘nation-state’.) You’ve just brainwashed your kids to think that anyone who believes otherwise is ‘ignorant’ or ‘phobic’ — even though you yourselves look down on most cultures and have no credible social engineering skills.

So, too, the American youths have been conditioned to be anti-imperialistic and anti-colonial, SAVE INSOFAR as doesn’t negatively impact the imperialistic spread of their own values, institutions, economic interests, etc. That includes legal-political efforts globally, such as the international legal system created largely by America after the Second World War. (This aspect doesn’t seem to be working out so well for your liberals and progressives, though; as the youths are now questioning the very legitimacy of the USA as a settler colonial state on stolen Indigenous land. Diversifying the colonists and making a more equitable distribution of the resources amongst those colonists cannot legitimize the land or resources claims, after all.)

Regardless, younger Americans have been conditioned to think thus WHILST simultaneously remaining uncritical of what counts as colonization, what counts as ‘decolonization’, what counts as legitimate law, etc. If a country doesn’t look like America (absent its economic dogmas and political structures), then it is per se illegitimate.

Fortunately, most of the world doesn’t believe ANY of that crap. And, again, most of the world is not multiculting and shall not do so either. More than that, they’re challenging the American international system; and it seems as though they finally have the power to do something about it.

The American liberal-progressive youth will therefore be in for quite a shock when they learn that they’re actually the bad guys. They’re the ones bullying the rest of the world about how to live. They’re the ones who have betrayed everything the left has fought for for over 200 years in terms of labour laws INSIDE the USA. They’re the ones who regularly employ totalitarian forms of speech and thought control domestically. They’re the ones who are bringing down American universities and other centres of knowledge production by trampling upon the core norms upon which those bodies rest; etc.

The real question then becomes, since America’s TRUE basis of support for Israel is because the latter is a client state of America’s empire, and since America’s empire is now under direct threat, will American now abandon its ally. It might very well be doing so in an effort to get the Islamic world and others to stay with Team America. (It’s not because of the death counts: East Timor, Morocco, the Kurds, Chile, etc, are PROOF POSITIVE of that. Moreover, you certainly don’t want American youths to know the real nature of those countries laws and cultures, how they’re fundamentally incompatible with your espoused American values. You also don’t want them to learn about the real history of Palestine, the rest of the Levant, the Maghreb, etc, since that’s a threat to your ability to try to integrate such folks, have them held in esteem, and not be deemed an existential threat to the American republic, constitution, and ways of life.)

The gambit matters, because those other folks rather seem inclined to have a multipolar or bipolar world. This, not just because they don’t want economic domination, but because they hate American culture and America’s real project of pan-cultural genocide.

America has also seemingly maintained 1/5 of its naval fleet near the Gulf for decades in order to maintain an eye on its imperial control over the oil and natural gas supply, to ensure it goes to the USA and the West and not predominantly elsewhere. So, a related question is whether it is willing to to abandon SA and let those resources go predominantly to China instead.

That’s part of a ‘national security’ (really, an empire) question that I doubt most American youths have even thought about: what happens to the world, and the future of the human race, if China and the PRC is the hegemon for the foreseeable future?

You’ve fucked the whole civilised world, AIDS. You aren’t moral, your aren’t progress, and you aren’t even well-educated. Your youths are emotionally immature dogmatists who have never faced criticism or setbacks and will be incapable of maintaining the business of modern civilisation. Your youths are infantilised fuckwits who are most likely going to be eaten alive by more predatory folks and cultures.

At any rate, you should also be asking yourself WHY Jordan is a country, why its leader is the leader, and why you are bothering to prop up its regime. (Having been there multiple times, I KNOW why America’s really there.) It would make for a perfectly fine Palestine, after all.

[apedad]

Thank you Prof. Bernstein.

Unlike Prof. Blackman who throws out things like, "If you don't like what I write then stop reading," your description here was thoughtful and worthy of continued discussion.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The only mention of the West Bank asked whether the oppressed residents of the West Bank might attack Israel. How thoughtful.

[bernard11]

Thanks, David, for this post.

Two things, one minor

1. You write, “When the hostages were brought into Israel, including sick, elderly people and small children, civilian crowds cheered. ”

I think you meant “brought into Gaza,” not Israel.

2. Israel, by contrast, asserts two primary motivations–return of its hostages, and the defeat of Hamas to restore Israeli security.

I think it would have been very wise of Netanyahu to make this point repeatedly and emphatically in the days following Oct. 7. I don’t recall him doing so. It would, IMO, have done a lot to improve the rest of the world’s (or maybe just a part of it) reaction to the Israeli response.

[David Bernstein]

(1) Israel is terrible at PR; and
(2) One reason Israel is terrible at PR is its ridiculous electoral system, resulting in coalition governments, which has two bad effects: (a) it allows members of parties that have very little say in relevant policy to make stupid and extreme statements to get attention for themselves domestically, which are then broadcast internationally as if they are government policy; and (b) in particular in the current context, Bibi relies on extremist parties or his government will fall. And if he says perfectly reasonable things publicly, like "if Hamas surrenders and releases the hostages, we could end the war quickly" or "we will not be resettling Gaza, period," he risks the extremists bolting and his government falling. Even though everyone knows that both statements are true.

[ReaderY]

I think this is a flaw with Bibi, not just bad PR. A different personality might have kicked certain individuals out of the government the minute they started saying things that would offend Western allies and imperil national security, and told the rest to toe the line or else.

But there is no need to agree with everything this government is doing, or even to think highly of its competence, to support Israel’s basic right to exist and defend itself.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You should stick with corrupt, bigoted, violent, parasitic right-wing criminals and extremists such as Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben-Givr, Likud, and the Haredi. It suits you. But only until accountability, and the inevitable reckoning, arrive.

After that, you will have the memories.

[Theendoftheleft]

Accountability to whom?

Are American liberals and progressives ready for their impending reckoning, collapse of empire or otherwise?

[David Bernstein]

That's true. One problem though is that Bibi screwed over his coalition partners the last time he made a coalition agreement, so it would be exceedingly difficult for him to form a more moderate government.

[apedad]

" . . . resulting in coalition governments, which has two bad effects . . . . "

Completely agree - especially for Israel because of its small size politically.

For example, Germany has a coalition federal govt, but it also has strong state govts which can act as a counterbalance to the federal govt (as we have in the US).

Additionally, it has a strong, independent, financial base outside of Berlin's influence (Frankfurt), and a strong, independent media.

Israel simply doesn't have the size to be able to offset powerful interests and (as Prof. Bernstein mentions), which allows minor voices to be greatly amplified.

[EscherEnigma]

Israel is terrible at PR?

We're still sending bombs and missiles their way, aren't we? So I think their PR is working just fine on the folks that matter.

Hint: the 100+ journalists that Israel has killed in Gaza since October didn't matter.

[David Bernstein]

You mean “journalists”. Anyone with freedom to live and report around Gaza was either a member of Hamas, or otherwise connected to and endorsed by Hamas.

[EscherEnigma]

Oh shit dude, I didn't realize you were that kind of insane. This is "believe it or not, that baby was Hamas too!" level of insane.

[zztop8970]

https://nypost.com/2024/06/09/world-news/gaza-journalist-held-3-hostages-in-his-home-with-his-family-israeli-military-says/

[Terry Anne Lieber (Don't Feed Tony)]

He is right, you are wrong.

[Drewski]

I think Bernstein's claim is perhaps a little over the top, but consider this recent article from a CNN reporter who worked for 16 years in Gaza, writing about how Hamas tightly controls access based on sympathy and manipulates journalists:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/07/opinions/israel-hamas-gaza-media-press-prusher/index.html

It should not be a surprise that a strongly ideological organization believes that its narrative is more important than transparency and leverages its power to promote the former and suppress the latter. It's a pattern we've seen elsewhere time and time again. With their strong popular support, religious mandate, and willingness to take extreme measures for their cause, it should be equally unsurprising that Hamas is effective at controlling information.

I think it's fair to say that anyone with freedom to live and report around Gaza is, at a minimum, sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and antipathic toward Israel. It's notable that Hamas has a policy of forbidding Jewish journalists.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Do you put "aid workers" in quotation marks, too? Because that is what would be necessary to excuse Israel from its barbaric conduct.

[Frank Drackman]

Only 100? Tough

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

When Israel fails, it will have right-wing jerks (in Israel and the United States) to thank for the end of its run.

Israel is going to change -- away from its right-wing belligerence, superstition-driven right-wing bigotry, and right-wing war-criming -- one way or the other.

Either way, I will be content. I just hope the United States ditches Saudi Arabia simultaneously. I don't like those brutal, selfish, superstitious, bigoted, right-wing assholes, either.

[Theendoftheleft]

As opposed to its socialist founders? If the country would have been founded by the right there'd be no Palestinian problem today.

And the way the left is acting and trending in the United States, AIDS, it's increasingly doubtful by the day that your country will be a going concern for very much longer.

Are you ready to hand over your property to the Indigenous people upon whose land it sits?

[Brett Bellmore]

"We’re still sending bombs and missiles their way, aren’t we? So I think their PR is working just fine on the folks that matter."

That's because Hamas is so mind bogglingly awful that it's virtually impossible for their enemies to NOT be fairly popular.

[shawn_dude]

AIPAC would disagree (privately.)

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" Fourth and finally, Israel has a people's army. "

Well . . . not all of the people's army, is it?

Parasitic, privileged, childish superstition for the win!

(Or maybe not, a relatively recent development.)

[Ed Grinberg]

.

Well . . . not all of the people’s army, is it?

You're so fucking ignorant...
from Wikipedia:
"National military service is mandatory for all Israeli citizens over the age of 18, although Arab...citizens are exempted if they so please"
Get it? Any Arab Israeli who wants to serve in the IDF is allowed to do so. (Some do.)

[EscherEnigma]

I suspect Kirkland was actually referring to the continuous (and contentious) deferrals given to ultra-orthodox students, and the privileges that Israel gives to the ultra-orthodox in general.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

No need to suspect. It's as blatantly obvious as it is disgusting and immoral.

[Theendoftheleft]

AIDS, your values are garbage and your elites are engaged in a global, totalitarian social re-engineering project.

So, what does it even mean for you to hide behind claims of something being 'disgusting' or 'immoral' when you want to fundamentally transvalue all values? The socially constructed moralities of most Americans, which are heavily shaped by the Semitic cults???

Who is your posturing meant to deceive?

Is it moral to try to normalize the musings of a warmongering illiterate pedophile in the United States and have them taught, as they now are in certain places, in American law schools (rather than religion or political science departments)?

Is it moral to try to normalize sexual degenerates, or to misrepresent unequals as being equals warranting equal rights? Is it moral to dump millions of poor Aztecs and Mayans into the USA and exploit them as neo-serfs?

[Terry Anne Lieber (Don't Feed Tony)]

And what about the Arab Israeli citizens? Shouldn't they serve too? Or their religious exception is a-okay, while the Haredi one isn't? Or perhaps it is their ethnic identity and literal support of the enemy which makes them inadequate to serve in the IDF?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

[Theendoftheleft]

Again with the countdown to America's cold war turning hot?

You know you won't be safe, right?

[Sabedi1]

The reason this "conflict" never ends is that Hamas is not a rogue subset of Palestinian Muslims. It is the embodiment of Islam. There's no way you can defeat Hamas without defeating Islam.

Ann Coulter was right, you either kill their leaders and force them to convert to Christianity, or you wipe them off the Earth.

[apedad]

So much for toning down the rhetoric.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" kill their leaders and force them to convert to Christianity "

Because clingers figure their flavor of childish superstition (nonsense) is better than others.

[Theendoftheleft]

No. Clingers, in their ignorance and arrogance, pretend to treat all normative systems as equal because they scoff upon their shared (dubious supernatural) grounds. They ignore sociology, anthropology, legal history, and empirical evidence (about inbreeding, child abuse rates, slavery practices, etc) because they, in their unfounded hubris, think they'll be able to subvert all such beliefs anyway.

The irony of the childish superstition about peoples' equality being the driving their arrogant, totalitarian, global scheme is, of course, lost on them. Once more, they tend not to understand irony, after all...

[Randal]

It blows my mind that you, and apparently "Israeli civilians" at large, still haven't figured out why Gazans don't like you. And no, it's not because you're Jewish.

[Commenter_XY]

Yes, it is entirely rooted in Jew hatred. For that to change, hamas must be utterly defeated, and seen as defeated throughout the muslim world. Then peace can happen because it will be a peace between equals.

[Randal]

Then why hasn't peace happened in the West Bank?

You're retarded if you think Israel is ever going to allow Palestinian self-determination. They've dragged their feet for 50 years, and they'll drag them for 50 more. Another several generations of Palestinians are destined to live under Israel's jackboot.

That's why they don't like you.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" and they’ll drag them for 50 more "

I do not expect them to get the chance.

[Jacob Grimes]

It's as if you're deliberately ignoring the past 20 years of Gaza.

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the dismantling of its settlements there was a huge step towards peace and gave significant autonomy to Palestinians. Yet Palestinians embraced the militant party that proudly slaughtered Israeli civilians a few years earlier. Then the Gazans allowed themselves to be wholly taken over by Hamas. Hamas and the Oct 7 attacks are still largely popular today, including in the West Bank.

You cannot demand that Israel dismantle settlements or grant self-determination to Palestinians without explaining why the result would be any different from what happened in Gaza.

[Randal]

It's not like they left Gaza alone. It was under a complete Israeli blockade.

And don't say Egypt. Egypt's choice was to help Israel with their blockade or have Israel do it for them by deploying to the Philadelphi corridor and taking control of the border crossings... as they now have.

[Terry Anne Lieber (Don't Feed Tony)]

They left the Strip alone. You're just a disingenuous Jew-hater.

[Randal]

They left the Strip alone.

Right. In the same sense that prisoners in solitary confinement are left alone.

You’re just a disingenuous Jew-hater.

You're right again, two for two, my Jew-hatred is completely disingenuous.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's as if you're just ignoring that these zones have borders with other countries besides Israel. Apparently only Israel has any obligations here?

[Randal]

By "countries" you mean Egypt. See above. I'll reprint it here to make it easier for you.

And don’t say Egypt. Egypt’s choice was to help Israel with their blockade or have Israel do it for them by deploying to the Philadelphi corridor and taking control of the border crossings… as they now have.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, the West bank borders on Jordan, but, yes, "Egypt". There, I said it. "Egypt", "Egypt", "Egypt".

Egypt doesn't have agency here, so it's all on Israel?

Yes, Egypt chose to help Israel with the Palestinians, because everybody in the area has a bad history with the Palestinians, not just Israel.

[Randal]

Egypt doesn’t have agency here, so it’s all on Israel?

We can be upset that Egypt is helping Israel, sure. But it's Israel's show.

Are Egypt and Israel independently blockading Gaza? No. Is Israel blockading Gaza on behalf of Egypt? No. Is Egypt blockading Gaza on behalf of Israel? Yes.

[Theendoftheleft]

No. Egypt is blockading Gaza primarily on behalf of the United States.

Egypt has a puppet regime. One that treats the Muslim Brotherhood as an existential threat. Hamas is MB's bastard child. It's funded by regimes that are a threat to Egyptian military rule.

So, you're baldly asserting 'yes' doesn't make it so.

[Jacob Grimes]

Did anything of note happen before the blockade?

[Don Nico]

Randal,
You have commented in the past the the "two-state solution" is dead. In that the question becomes, what does Israel have to do to accommodate its new Arab citizens.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I doubt it will get the chance to worry about that.

[Randal]

Israel has three options. Cleanse them, become explicitly apartheid (aka abandon democracy), or give up on being a Jewish state.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I doubt Israel will have any options when better Americans pull the plug. There will be no choice involved. Just accountability.

[Don Nico]

It will give special privileges for haredim and transform to a semi-secular state.

[Randal]

That would be amazing.

[Don Nico]

Indeed it would be.
However, making Palestinians Israeli citizens seems to be the only way forward toward a peaceful and prosperous Middle East, once the influence of Iran can be neutralized.

[David Nieporent]

This is complete bullshit. Israel did not "drag its feet" at any point. Israel has begged for Palestinians to make a deal with them, and there was never any acceptance. Moreover, the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank live in Area A; the vast majority live in Areas A or B — under the daily control of the PA, not Israel. And of course wrt Gaza, for the last two decades 100% of Gazans have lived under Palestinian "governance," such as it is.

[Randal]

This is complete bullshit. All of Israel's actions from settlements to propping up Hamas to unreasonable demands to the Gaza blockade have been designed to preserve the status quo of a subjugated and controlled Palestinian population. All of the West Bank remains occupied. Israel completely controls the economy. Area C is 60% of the West Bank, and Israel keeps annexing bits of it while refusing Palestinians' desires to develop it.

[David Nieporent]

Over 90% of Palestinians live in Areas A and B. Israel has not in fact annexed any of Area C.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

If you wish to try to defend Israel's brutal, violent, thieving, bigoted, superstition-driven conduct in the West Bank, you do so at the expense of all of your moral credibility.

And that will be far from the only price to be paid for that egregious, despicable conduct of Israel's right-wing war belligerents.

[Theendoftheleft]

Thieving? Wouldn't the Palestinians have to actually own it??? Do you understand the actual import of Resolution 242, yeah?

More importantly, and speaking of accountability, when the very standards that underpin your prejudices in this regard are themselves cast aside over the coming generation as tools of domination and oppression---when you lose this new Cold War, of course---you're REALLY going to get it. This, not just from the Global South, but from your fellow (better) Americans who are waking up to what your lot has actually been up to internationally these last several decades.

There will be nowhere safe in this world for you or your children to run. 🙂

Tick tock, tick tock...

[Randal]

You mean, over 90% of Palestinians have been squeezed out of Area C and into the relatively tiny and overcrowded (and incontiguous) Areas A and B. 33% more Israelis than Palestinians now live in Area C.

Israel’s policy in Area C is based on the assumption that the area is primarily meant to serve Israeli needs, and on the ambition to annex large parts of it to the sovereign territory of Israel. To that end, Israel works to strengthen its hold on Area C, to further exploit the area’s resources and achieve a permanent situation in which Israeli settlements thrive and Palestinian presence is negligible. In doing so, Israel has de facto annexed Area C and created circumstances that will leverage its influence over the final status of the area. In about 60% of Area C – 36% of the West Bank – Israel has designated large swathes of land as state land and allocated land to settlements and their regional councils.

https://www.btselem.org/planning_and_building

To wit:

On 10 September 2019, Netanyahu announced his government’s plan to annex the Jordan Valley, if it won the election. He also reaffirmed his previous pledge to annex all Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank.

The Jordan Valley contains lots of Areas A and B too, in case you’re unaware of the geography.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Facts, the reality-based world, and reason beat dogma, childish superstition, and right-wing dumbassery every time.

That doesn't deter right-wingers, of course. But that's no problem replacement is not already solving, every day, in the natural course of American progress.

[David Nieporent]

You mean, over 90% of Palestinians have been squeezed out of Area C

I do not, in fact, mean that.

On 10 September 2019, Netanyahu announced his government’s plan to annex the Jordan Valley, if it won the election. He also reaffirmed his previous pledge to annex all Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank.

Did he win the election? Did he annex the Jordan Valley or all Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank?

[Randal]

Did he win the election?

Why yes he did. Which presumably means that a majority of Israelis want to annex the Jordan valley and all Jewish settlements.

Did he annex the Jordan Valley or all Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank?

Allow me to repeat, since I do enjoy spreading truth:

Israel’s policy in Area C is based on the assumption that the area is primarily meant to serve Israeli needs, and on the ambition to annex large parts of it to the sovereign territory of Israel. Israel has de facto annexed Area C and created circumstances that will leverage its influence over the final status of the area.

[Theendoftheleft]

Yes, Randy.

NOW, couple these development with those in China, Ukraine, Kashmir, and the new ‘coup belt’ across Africa.

Pair it with the one-belt-one-road initiative, the end of the Petrodollar, and the end of the American unipolar world.

Add to it a likely realignment of all of South American and Africa with Team China, and against the West. Do not be surprised when the states, borders, and governments across both of those continents (save perhaps Argentina and Chile, and certain states in North and NE Africa) disappear from the world over the next generation or so. That will be as a result of the efforts of real self-determination by the peoples who live there.

The standards by which you impugn Israel are themselves doomed, as is the entire system your lot imposed on the world.

Your liberal order is well-nigh over. Americans, from the left to the right, will not die to defend the indefensible—let alone a project that is geared to throwing their own children under the bus, socio-economically!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFn8_ESsffI&t=119s
(From 14:13)

Tick tock, tick tock…

[Randal]

Yes, it would be pretty stupid of us to give up on western-style globalization right when China and others are attempting (and making some slow progress) on eastern-style globalization.

[Theendoftheleft]

They don't get citizenship, political self-determination, or support in Lebanon or Syria. And they don't have a real say in Jordan either.

And they don't really care about that. They don't care about democracy, and they wouldn't care if the West Bank and Gaza were part of Jordan and Egypt respectively. (They tried a coup in Jordan in 1970. It didn't work. They haven't tried since, and they don't need to do so.)

They want the land out of the hands of the Jews. They have, as Khalidi writes, a national identity that's only recently invented, but which is subordinate to more tribal, regional, and religious identities. They don't really care about SELF-determination, since their identities are primarily shaped by other considerations. (This isn't surprising since many of them moved to Palestine from elsewhere, and even UNWRA reported that, by 1972, less than 1/4 of the people living in the refugee camps outside of Israel were actually descended from people who came from Palestine.) The Lord knows I fucked my share of Palestinians whose grandparents are *actually* from Yemen.

Perhaps some serious national soul searching should be undertaken by the community. They can ask if their ENTIRE identity is predicated upon the colonisation, and the cultural appropriation and erasure, of Jewish land, Jewish sites, Jewish concepts, and Jewish bullshit. They might not like what they discover. They won't like discerning that the very concept of a Palestinian is impossible to understand with the Jews as both a predicate and a foil.

[JasonT20]

If Palestinians only have a recently invented national identity, then what about Israelis? They had a shared religious identity, but they did not share a spoken language until Hebrew was revived as a spoken language starting in the late 1800’s. That revival is part of the story of Zionism. Jews, particularly European Jews, saw the need for a unified identity to combat the rampant antisemitism and oppression they suffered. There was a gap of more than a thousand years between the last time that Jews in the region consisted of a large fraction of its population and the declaration of the State of Israel. (And the Jewish part of the UN Partition Plan that was never implemented was about 55% Jewish.)

On the other hand, the Arab people of the region called Palestine before even 10% of the population was Jewish had shared a language and culture on that land for centuries.

I can’t look at arguments like this as anything but myth making aimed at delegitimizing the identity of Palestinians and especially their right to self-determination on their own land that they had continuously lived on for centuries.

[Theendoftheleft]

You’re just equivocating on what counts as a ‘nation’. The Jews were endogenous breeders for millennia. Their’s is a tribal religion, after all.

Actually, the ‘Arabs’ on that land didn’t have a shared culture, since a sizable portion of them are relocated Egyptians, Bosnians, Circassians, Kurds, etc., who were relocated there in the 19th century by the Ottomans and Egyptians. That’s why so many people in Gaza are named Al Masri, after all—including Deif. Then, of course, there are scores of thousands who moved there from Yemen and elsewhere for work in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Why, moreover, should I care what you consider to be mere mythmaking? Rashid Khalidi’s most prominent work is about the construction of the Palestinian identity, which he—debatably and strategically—dates as originating in the 1880s.

It is YOUR myths and your conceptualizations about self-determination, about indigeneity, in addition to ALL international law, that are now all under direct threat with this new cold war. Claims of self-determination, to territorial land claims, etc, BASED on international law, are now under existential threat. And with good reason: the laws are themselves tools of domination and control.

Don’t take my word for it. Your strongest ally in Central and East Asia is India. India will not give up Kashmir, even though it hasn’t been Hindu-majority for a couple of centuries. It will hold on to it not just because the land is geo-strategically valuable, but also because of Indian cultural memory of that land and its holy sites having stolen by the Muslims. It matters not one bit whether the BJP or INC is in control in that regard.

Look at China. Look at its claims over Tibet and Taiwan AND over other territories. Look at WHY it has, consistently, claimed its sovereignty over those lands. Look at WHY it scoffs at the West when criticised about this.

Look at the coup belt, the Sahel. They’re French creations. The locals will likely deconstruct those creations now.

You don’t want to hear it (and your fellow Americans will wrongly assume that one must be pro-Putin to say so), but look at what Russia and the Russian-speaking people of Eastern Ukraine say about how Ukraine was formed circa 1990.

As I noted to Randy, we should all expect Africa and South America to look quite different over the next generation or so, as efforts at self-determination MADE IN DEFIANCE of your conceptions and rules about those things, are undertaken. It could get very ugly.

America’s own efforts to talk about ‘decolonization’ domestically are also fake, and the world can see it. Diversifying the settler colonists and giving the Indigenous people more powers within the settler system isn’t the decolonization of anything. It’s merely the attempted legitimization of the settler regime—including its property laws. Perhaps you thought that the Anglo-Saxon settler colonies were safe because they were grandfathered in to the international system you created. You’re nonetheless in bigger trouble than your realize.

The end of the liberal international order seems nigh. Let’s see how you perform in this new cold war. The odds don’t seem to be in your favour—especially as half your country, and much of the world, now views your liberal programme as villainous.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Entirely rooted? Nothing to do with their desperate lives and lack of power which they would logically blame on the country with the power?

Who then attack them, killing civilians. Who will they blame, even if Israel is completely innocent, merely doing it for self-defense?

I'm unsure how much face value to take on the OP when a comment is made that NO actual journalists were killed. Not a one. A journalist also can in some way be "endorsed" by Hamas -- including if Hamas decides their reporting is useful in some way -- and still be [no scare quotes] a journalist.

This is not based on them even being correct to blame Israel. Whatever religion and ethnicity were in control, many in Gaza would feel that way. Many here would feel that way if they were in Gaza's shoes.

Hamas is a symptom. They took advantage of the situation.

One thing that must be in place for a chance is their security, working institutions, and democracy.

Without that, you destroy Hamas (and "utterly defeating" such a force is a bit of a pipe dream), and someone else will fill the void.

[Bob from Ohio]

"someone else will fill the void."

Very well, then we will kill them in turn.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

And, more civilians will be killed, and a third force will arise. Rinse/repeat.

[Bob from Ohio]

That's up to the Arabs. They keep making the same mistakes, you'd think they would learn.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Israelis will be taught a lesson, too, by better Americans.

Tick, tock.

[Don Nico]

Bob,
Except for the Palestinians, the Arabs have learned. That is why Palestinian statehood is at the bottom of the priority list in every Arab capital that is not outright controlled by Iran.

[Terry Anne Lieber (Don't Feed Tony)]

There are no real civilians in the terror enclave.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Tick, tock. Tick tock.

[Frank Drackman]

Counting down the time until your "Replacement?"

[Don Nico]

"Hamas is a symptom."
No, it is the metastasis of a cancer that was contracted in 1948. The remainder of the Arab world sees rapprochement with Israel as the key to a stable prosperous Middle East.
Palestine is at the bottom of all their priority lists

[David Bernstein]

The point being, they weren't killed because they were journalists, and most of them weren't killed while acting as journalists. They were Hamas and Hamas hangers-on killed in combat against Hamas, and they also moonlight as journalists.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Moonlight as journalists. Okay. So, they are journalists now, but part-time?

“Most” were not journalists while they were killed.

They were “hanger-ons” … what? Like embedded American journalists merely “hanger-ons” of the American military? Fair game for the enemy?

[David Bernstein]

Like people who are not officially members of Hamas’s military wing, but are deeply connected to it, and on Hamas’s payroll.

[Randal]

Ok wait so by "no journalists were killed" you meant "no journalists were murdered for being journalists while actually sitting at a typewriter typing journalism?"

Now do aid workers.

[David Bernstein]

If you work for Hamas and are killed while working for Hamas in a war against Hamas, but you also occasionally freelance for the Agence France, calling this "killing a journalist" is absurd.

[Randal]

Like Joe said, that means murdering American embeds is a-ok too, right? They won't count as "journalists" for the same reasons.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Your disdain for journalists, aid workers, non-Israeli children, and others precipitates this offer, Prof. Bernstein:

When Israel's right-wing belligerents experience the consequences of squandering America's support, the cheeseburgers will be my treat. And the beer.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Will Prof. Bernstein favor us with his delusional, partisan, hollow stylings on aid workers, hospitals, refugee camps, and locations expressly labeled as "safe zones" by the Israelis?

If there is a judgment day, I'll eagerly pay extra to watch Jose Garces bitch-slap plenty of Israel's right-wing apologists.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Probably not. Fucking cowards.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Israel's right-wing belligerents have killed journalists. Aid workers. Children. People in hospitals. People in refugee camps. People who moved as instructed to "humanitarian" and "safe" zones. As recently as a week or so ago.

Israel's right-wing bigots and superstitious bullies have leveled infrastructure, homes, and anything else it could reach.

Israel should expect to pay for this brutal conduct in Gaza. And for its crimes in the West Bank. And Israel should be prepared to settle those bills without any more handouts from the United States. When better Americans withdraw support for Israel, and Israel must attempt to defend its conduct without big brother to hide behind, accountability and justice will occur.

I hope smart, decent Israelis are already preparing to depart for the United States. It will be easier, cheaper, and less morally disgusting to protect them here than it is to bail them out over there . . . and think of the benefit to the United States from the immigrants.

Tick, tock.

[Theendoftheleft]

‘Nothing to do with their desperate lives and lack of power which they would logically blame on the country with the power?’

No, not really, which is why their neighbours don’t do anything en masse about their situations much either. Save for the Kurds and the ‘Arab Spring’ movements, the latter of which were really Western-funded efforts.

In fact, they live materially better lives than their neighbours. That’s why, for example, Jordanians moved into the West Bank in the 1990s. Gazans could also move abroad if they wished. It's astounding how many citizens of my Western country were residing in Gaza when the war broke out; funny how they, and citizens of quite a few other Western countries, PREFERRED to live there.

Hamas isn’t a symptom. It’s a tactic. The first one, pan-Arab nationalism, failed–especially since their Arab brethren didn’t see them as constituting a real, PEDIGREED group. Then the socialist tactic (PLFP, etc) failed with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then the prospect of pan-Islamic support came in. Hence, Hamas and IJ. Palestine is a great cause for Iran, the Houthis, and Hezbollah, because they know that—as Shia heretics—they’re they next target.

Aside from the medium-term schemes to eliminate the post-Mohammad saint worshipers, the Islamic world, it should be noted: protects Sudan from charges of Genocide and mass slavery, Mali and its the hundreds of thousands of slaves, Morocco’s actions against the Saharawis’ efforts at self-determination (who Biden just sold out), etc. Don’t take my word for it AT ALL: the Islamic world regularly votes as a bloc in the UN on these issues. They couldn’t give a rat’s ass about democracy, self-determination, empowerment, equality, etc.

[Theendoftheleft]

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240716-four-killed-in-shooting-near-oman-mosque-police

This happens in Pakistan every few weeks.

It's going to spread. 🙂

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Peace will happen when America stops propping up Israel.

Maybe not immediately, though.

In any event, it will be the right thing to do.

[Theendoftheleft]

Ha! No it won't. What an idiotic statement.

Do you understand why so much of the world hates America, AIDS?

Do you understand what's happening with this global 'inflection point', as your vegetable POTUS calls it?

[Terry Anne Lieber (Don't Feed Tony)]

It is exactly because they're Jews. Or, if we're being pedantic, it is because they're Islamist fundamentalists and they hate all non-believers, most especially Jews.

Ironically, Arafatians are indeed the worst of the bunch. They are so radical, so bloodthirsty, that even other Jew-hating Arabs feel uncomfortable in their vicinity... so much so, that they don't want to take in any of them. (Plus, let's not forget that every single time they did, it ended in civil war, attempted coup, and the instigation of war against the recipient state.)

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

They sound roughly as bad as the fundamentalist Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Violent. Deluded. Bloodthirsty. Radical. Superstitious.

[Theendoftheleft]

So, like you?

[Martinned2]

Sure, and the crusaders at Béziers weren’t out to kill a lot of people. They just wanted the Cathars to see the error of their ways.

[Randal]

Israelis Aren’t Out for Vengeance, But For Safety and Security

Wait… how is that better? At least vengeance would come to an end once the emotional sensitivities subside. Safety and security requires a long-term solution. It’s the justification that Israel has already been giving for holding Palestinians captive all these years.

We put Japanese in camps for safety and security reasons. History is replete with examples of humanitarian atrocities justified on security grounds. Ultimately, safety and security can’t be invoked to justify the permanent subjugation of the Palestinians.

[JasonT20]

I have to agree completely with this. "Safety and security" can only happen when no one is actively trying to kill you. Security is something that can only exist when at peace. During war or during the times in between uprisings in the occupied territories, the best that can be achieved is to mitigate the dangers of a stateless people in those occupied areas resisting the efforts to contain them. Whether they resist with marches and protests, efforts to put international pressure on Israel, an organized military, or terrorism, it is not rational to expect that they will sit there and take being controlled by a government that doesn't represent them or respect their full civil rights.

There is no ultimate safety and security for the Israeli people until there is a solution to the core of the problem: millions of Palestinian people with no self-determination, little to no recourse for any violations of their rights by Israeli occupation, or violation of property rights via settlements.

Peace happens when all sides make a final agreement. That is, unless one side is wiped out. Hamas made a final agreement impossible in the short term, but I just don't see the right wing in Israel as wanting any final agreement that Palestinians would ever accept - namely, a sovereign state of their own.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The right wing in Israel won't call the shots here.

Better Americans will.

This will end slowly . . . then suddenly.

The slowly part is already underway.

Tick, tock.

[Theendoftheleft]

Of course they would: a sovereign state of Palestine in what’s today called Jordan. You’d stop propping up the Hashemite king, who was only imposed by the British because he was a minority tribe leader who’d be wholly dependent upon foreign power to sustain power. They should have made it Palestine years ago. (1970, really.)

Regardless, most peoples in most states don’t have self-determination or secure property rights. In fact, the international legal system is DESIGNED to ensure that they don’t. It legitimizes the existing regimes and doesn’t require democratic forms of government for valid membership.

Fortunately, or unfortunately for you, we’re in a new cold war where that entire system is under threat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFn8_ESsffI&t=119s

Watch from 14:13 onwards.

[JasonT20]

Of course they would: a sovereign state of Palestine in what’s today called Jordan.

What makes you think Jordan would ever agree to that, let alone the Palestinians? And why should they?

They should have made it Palestine years ago. (1970, really.)

The whole set of boundaries that was the basis of most modern nations in the Middle East were drawn up by European powers (mostly Britain and France) after WWI. But the Mandate for Palestine was called that because that region had been called Palestine by various powers going back to the Greek Historian Herodotus writing in the 5th century BCE. The Arabs living there had started calling themselves Palestinians by the beginning of the 20th century.

You are basically arguing that we should ignore all of that and make Palestine be a nation in an entirely different location with borders made up out of the current nation of Jordan. Hey, Jordan's borders were made up anyway, so what's the big deal in doing it again regardless of what the people there actually want?

[Theendoftheleft]

So what? You know that the Romans also created three Palestinian territories, too, yeah? (Prima, Secunda, Tertia). Those don’t track what today’s Arabs call ‘Palestine’. It was the colonising power’s form of culture erasure to eliminate the name of Judea, which the Romans also called it (and wrote about, and had carved into monuments, etc).

Indeed, the borders were created by the European powers. Again, their continuation is now under direct threat, globally, not just in the ME. The strict borders also carved up groups oddly, eg the Arabs in Southern Turkey.

You do know that the super-majority of the population of Jordan is Palestinian, yeah??? It was even in 1921. It’s not for nothing that Arafat et al attempted a coup there. And there’s NO reason for the Hashmite dictatorship's continued existence other than to advance Anglo-American interests in the greater ME. (I’ve been to the MASSIVE American embassy in Amman. Have you?)

[JasonT20]

I can't tell for sure what your "So what?" is responding to. Rather than guess, I will just reply cleanly to what followed.

ou know that the Romans also created three Palestinian territories, too, yeah? (Prima, Secunda, Tertia). Those don’t track what today’s Arabs call ‘Palestine’.

I only referenced the ancient history of the word to counter the usual argument that "Palestinians" are an invented group of people. The important thing is the continuity of that word for people of that region going back at least a hundred years, when it was (Mandatory) Palestine. (The Mandate for Palestine was the formal agreement of the League of Nations that covered both the region of Palestine (sometimes called Mandatory Palestine) and [the Emirate of] Transjordan.)

Jordan and Palestine are two separate geographical regions. People that call themselves Palestinian now have lived there for multiple generations, some for several generations, are descended from Arab and/or Arabic speaking people from Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, or had lived in Palestine before it the British left and are refugees or the descendants of refugees from the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948.

You do know that the super-majority of the population of Jordan is Palestinian, yeah??? It was even in 1921.

The first part of that seems reasonable, given the number of Arabs displaced in 1948. The second part, not so much. I'd need to see where that claim comes from.

For the most part, you diverged from your original point quite a bit and don't directly respond to my questioning of that point.

[Theendoftheleft]

Oh, and its disputed whether Herodotus and other Greeks weren't just referring to the coastal populations when referring to Palestine. Peleshet. There were Greek colonists populations there (and across the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean for centuries/millennia), including in Gaza.

[Don Nico]

“how they shed their principles and integrity for money and power.”
Now apply your analysis to the Kurds.

Palestinians had two chances for a state which they declined. Now that surrounding Arab states have a strong interest in rapprochement with Israel, their time has passed.

[JasonT20]

Palestinians had two chances for a state which they declined.

What are these chances that I hear people talking about regularly? How did I miss, over the last 30+ years of my adulthood, them being offered a state and refusing?

[Don Nico]

You weren't paying attention. Do your own homework. You learn about it in most historical films about the middle east. HInt: The last offer was made under Pres. Bill Clinton

[JasonT20]

I think we both needed to do our homework. When I did look it up, the last offer made was from PM Olmert in 2008. But it fell apart for a variety of reasons, including both the internal politics of Israel, the hopes of some Palestinian Authority leaders hoping for a better bargaining position under the next U.S. President, and perhaps even some skepticism from within the U.S. diplomatic class.

If by the offer you mean that happened while Clinton was in office, I assume you mean the Oslo Accords? From what I do remember (I'd have to do more 'homework' for sure), the framework of the Accords didn't hold together very long. Especially with the Israeli PM that negotiated it, Yitzhak Rabin, being assassinated in 1995 by an ultranationalist Israeli student that opposed the Oslo Accords.

[JasonT20]

By the way, if you did mean the Oslo Accords, it did not offer the Palestinians a state. It was a framework for turning over some authority to the Palestinians and withdrawing Israeli military from those areas Palestinians would get more control over. It seems to have explicitly left the final determination of the status of the West Bank and Gaza for a future agreement.

[Theendoftheleft]

An American not being properly informed about--- well-documented---international affairs?

The chances are high, methinks.

[Botaglove]

Why does killing people who currently identify as Hamas defeat Hamas? More people take their place, for example the relatives of all the civilians blown up when large bombs are dropped on residential buildings that might contain somebody who is Hamas.

The Israeli army has gone back to clear places of Hamas that it has previously cleared of Hamas. If the real goal is to eliminate Hamas for all time the only apparent means will be to eliminate Gazans and a big chunk of the West Bank population. If that is to be the measure of victory perhaps that should be more upfront.

[Don Nico]

The IDF has not routed and then held areas. They routed and left to maintain capacity to turn North to fight Hezbollah it necessary.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Israelis will expect America to fight Hezbollah for them.

Unless Israel's government changes course and nature overnight, I hope we decline. There is no important point to favoring one group of superstitious, bigoted, violent, old-timey right-wing jerks over another.

[Theendoftheleft]

Doubtful: you'll do your Gulf oil suppliers' bidding if you wish to remain the dominant consumer of their resources.

And if they wish for you to destroy their heretical brethren, in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran, you'll probably do so if it means keeping the oil from going to China.

Do you reckon there will be many more satellite campuses of 'top' American unis popping up in theocratic dictatorships in the Gulf over the next few years. 🙂

[Theendoftheleft]

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240716-four-killed-in-shooting-near-oman-mosque-police

This happens every few weeks in Pakistan. Of course, your so-called 'better' Americans don't want to talk about this sort of stuff...

It will spread, too. 🙂

[Botaglove]

And when they leave Hamas comes back. So if they want to defeat Hamas they can never leave. How's that going to go over with the Israeli public?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The Israeli public will not be calling the final shots.

It may be experiencing them, though.

[Theendoftheleft]

How? They'll all be in New York...

Your moral posturing always gets betrayed by your subsequent asinine comments, AIDS. You're too dumb to see that you're fake.

Do you have an exit strategy from the United States yet?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The smart, decent Israelis will be in New York, or elsewhere in the United States. They will be Americans, no longer Israelis. Maybe they will consider themselves former Israelis, for sentimental reasons. At that point, the right-wing dead-enders and religious kooks will not be in Israel, either. Not for long, anyway.

[Theendoftheleft]

As I intimated before, you gleefully posit the latter's mass murder. God you're dumb: you're going to continue to post about what you find moral offensive and disgusting nonetheless. Blah blah blah.

Go back to Russia. You're no different from a Marxist Soviet who thinks he has the correct values and so ipso facto has the social engineering know-how to manufacture a new culture and society. (Though its doubtful the Russkies will tolerate you these days; they care about the Russkie identity too much to trust a totalitarian Jewish pig like yourself with any power in their institutions;)

If you stay put, real Americans are undoubtedly going to excise you from the world.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I support accountability. I dislike right-wing assholes, especially when they are stale superstition-driven war criminals and theocratic, oppressive bigots hiding behind undeserved skirts I fund.

If that sounds bad for Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and probably a few others, great!

Tick, tock.

[Theendoftheleft]

Speaking of accountability, what do you think your fellow Americans are going to do to you for your open borders propaganda, and your subversion of their constitution and society?

Where do your kids go to school, Somin?

Tick tock, tick tock.

[Theendoftheleft]

...

[Don Nico]

Study the combat in Mosul. You don't know what you are speaking about.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's tacitly assumed that the supply of people who want to join Hamas and die isn't inexhaustible. Maybe you're right, and the Palestinians are insane to the last man, but everybody hopes there IS some sane residue once you kill all the sociopaths.

[Sarcastr0]

There's a lot of recent experience, from Algiers on, that this is not a good tactical assumption to make.

[Theendoftheleft]

Many Palestinians may wish to fight in the future, but they needn't be cabined in by the infrastructure and ideology of Hamas (or IJ) going forward. They weren't before (PFLP, pan-Arab nationalist groups before that, etc), and they needn't be going forward, eg if they get more support from the Global South, from other nationalist groups.

Remember, the IRA used to regularly train with the PLO.

[Brett Bellmore]

It seemed to work in Germany and Japan. But, admittedly, in neither case was the genocidal regime afforded the the time to raise a whole generation up from birth to be genocides; Are you suggesting that maybe raising a whole generation or two to be genocidal from birth broke them, rendering them permanently unfit for civilization? That they really ARE insane to the last man?

That's a dark suggestion, but if it's true, what would you propose Israel do about it?

[Frank Drackman]

The guys (and girls) driving the Merkavas, flying the F-16's, and every job in the IDF are literally the Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker, and Cops, Firefighters, Doctors, Nurses, any of you Homo's want to actually do something and not just flap your gums, go over and help out, you don't have to have any actual useful skills (I'm talkin to you Shysters) Tote dat Bail! Push dat Broom! I'm sure there's some Writs of Man-damn-us that need writting, or wills to be probated.
Like Kramer said about Mulching, ya gotta go to Israel, ya gotta!

Frank

[jslinner]

The obvious takeaway here is: it does not go without saying that they are not out for vengeance.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, yeah, "It goes without saying" has always been a self-refuting claim.

Obviously there's some element of being out for vengeance present, the Israelis would have to not be human to be devoid of that motive after what Hamas did, and not just Hamas; Random Palestinians flooded out through the breach in the border wall, and were, if anything, even more vicious.

[ReaderY]

Some nerve people who invade another country, slaughter over a thousands civilians, and take hundreds of civilians hostage have claiming the motives of people who fight back are insufficiently pure to deserve to defend themselves.

Since when do only saints get to have the right to defend themselves? And since when do murderers get to do all this pretend moral superiority bulshit when their victims fight back?

Hamas’ basic modus operandi is to pull standards they no perfectly well saints couldn’t achieve out of their asses, and then portray the Israelis as monsters for not living up to them.

This is a good example of the modus operandi at work. It’s so transparent, anyone with a thousandth of a brain and a nanogram of fairness can see through it.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Only a bigoted right-wing asshole would support or try to defend Israel's right-wing conduct in the West Bank . . . and you fit that description, ReaderY. Appropriate accountability will be imposed on Israel's right-wing assholes. You get to rant without paying any cost.

Congratulations.

Have a cheeseburger. Make that a bacon cheeseburger!

[ReaderY]

Every 21st century urban war has involved large numbers of civilian deaths. The Washington Post estimated the number of civilians killed in US wars in the Middle East as over 4 million. Most of these were indirect deaths, e.g. from starvation and disease in sieges.

The trick Hamas shills use here is to compare Hamas’ inflated estimates to the US military’s lowball estimates of confirmed direct kills, completely ignoring both neutral estimates of direct deaths and the much larger indirect deaths. The US, like all modern countries except Israel, does not allow food or nedical aid into cities it and its allies are besieging. This is the actual norm of 21st century war and the actual international standard.

Hamas shills have invented a fictitious standard not applied to any nation except Israel. Just as the ex-Confederates in the American South regularly developed fictitious standards applied only to black people to bolster their portrayal of black people as brutal and savage, Hamas shills have developed these fictitious standards that no country in any of the many modern wars has ever actually followed, and which are never applies to anyone else.

By actual normative standards, compared to how Western countries have behaved in all other wars involving urban combat, Israel has acquitted itself quite well.

This whole “genocide” bullshit is no different from the KKK’s portrayal of black people as savage beasts raping white women right and left in order to dehumanize them and justify segregation and lynchings. It is simply propaganda as an extension as war. Israel has no more to be ashamed of than the NAACP.

Hanas isn’t merely trying to undermine Israel’s ability to defend itself. It is putting into Western minds the idea, as Hamas shill Kirkland regularly states, that Israelis are monsters who deserve to be slaughtered, in order to prepare the world to accept their slaughter as just. It is using tactics the KKK used to caricature and dehumanize black people and gain acceptance of white supremacy as necessary and just.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/15/war-on-terror-911-deaths-afghanistan-iraq/

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Israel's right-wing belligerents deserve everything that is coming to them when better Americans leave Israel to fend for itself.

You get to rant along the sidelines without penalty.

That makes you a lucky, immoral blowhard.