Hamas attacks southern Israel

[mishkin]

let's not hurt the sensibilities of the Israelis while their army devastates Gaza.

Edit: let's not hurt the sensibilities of the Israelis while their army devastates Gaza, forced by Hamas

[Muizer]

let's not hurt the sensibilities of the Israelis while their army devastates Gaza.

Well to insist on using the word genocide, not because it is true, but because it is more hurtful is pretty childish really.

[mishkin]

Well to insist on using the word genocide, not because it is true, but because it is more hurtful is pretty childish really.

I believe it is true, it is genocide, and I have no reason to think that others who have expressed it this way here have done so with the sole intention of harming someone.

[Ludicus]

Almost every line of this article you quoted is either a lie or a misrepresentation. It’s too much to bother with, but I’ll use one small section as an example:

Everybody has the exact same ID card. The ID cards are not labelled with race or religion. To claim otherwise is simply false. Prior to 2005, ID cards did list a person’s leᵓom, which means something like nation/community/ethnicity. The only difference a person’s leᵓom makes legally is whether or not they are drafted. Jews, Druze, and Circassians are drafted, whereas Arabs are not. It’s not some special privilege to be drafted, and Arabs aren’t drafted because their communities for the most don’t want them to be.

While neither are on a person’s ID, their leᵓom and religion are listed in the population registry database. The latter is because Israel maintains the millet system from the Ottoman Empire for family law. Each of the ethnoreligious communities have their courts which are recognized by the state. So for example, Muslim Arabs have issues of family law settled by state-sanctioned sharia courts, the Druze by Druze courts, and so forth. This is because Israel is actually a multicultural state, and that’s how the minorities want to keep it. If someone doesn’t want to be under the jurisdiction of a particular court, they can change their affiliation to “none” and simply be under the jurisdiction of the secular court, though very few of the minorities choose to do so.

Most Arabs in East Jerusalem are permanent residents rather citizens, because they don’t want to be citizens. A lot of people there do most identify as Palestinians and have close ties to other Arabs in the West Bank. Although according to polls, something like half of them prefer to stay as part of Israel rather than be part of a future Palestinian state. In any case, as permanent residents they have all the same legal rights and privileges as citizens, except that they can’t vote in national elections (only local elections). They have the option to apply for citizenship, most have not done so.

Israeli Arabs are 47/48 Palestinians and their descendants.
Let's get the bottom of the issue.Let’s talk a little more about the wonderful life of the Palestinian citizens of Israel: it is discrimination, discrimination and more discrimination.

A personal testimony, I'm a Palestinian citizen of Israel-The Guardian.

One thing that unites Palestinians is that our journey is never easy or smooth. To be a Palestinian citizen in Israel is exceptionally challenging – I struggle to identify fully with a country that views me as a second-class citizen, publicly speaks against Arabs, oppresses Palestinians – and the list goes on.
Supporting Palestine does not equate to antisemitism – advocating for ending Israeli aggression against Palestine doesn’t imply forgetting the historical experiences and pain of the Jewish people. Today, Zionism’s goals come at the cost of Arab lives, leaving us feeling insecure, afraid to voice our opinions and hesitant to empathize with our suffering people

Palestinian citizen of Israel, she says, three times in a row.Because that's what she is; second class citizen, of course.


The Particular Anguish of Being Palestinian in Israel- New York Times

Palestinian citizens of Israel are no strangers to seeing their country of citizenship bring force to bear on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and their own history is rife with systematic discrimination and little recognition of their collective identity.
Most of Israel’s two million Palestinian citizens, who make up about 20 percent of the national population, hold on to their Palestinian identity, language and culture.
Despite the violent history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they’ve been aghast at the deep humanitarian crisis, the starvation of Gazans and the forced displacement of over a million people that evoked the Nakba, or catastrophe — the mass flight and expulsion of Palestinians when Israel became a state.

The trauma has been compounded by their inability to do or even say much about it. The government has cracked down harshly on criticism of its actions, and even empathy with the Palestinian people in Gaza. Palestinian citizens of Israel have borne the brunt of the crackdown.

A Palestinian doctor was suspended from his position, Palestinian students at colleges and universities have been punished, and other people have been arrested for social media posts that were often simply misunderstood by those who don’t speak Arabic.

Well before the war, Palestinian citizens of Israel had to deal with discrimination — lesser government services for education, welfare, housing and culture, along with a campaign against their collective identity.

Now the silencing of dissent has had a significant impact not only on the psyches of Palestinian citizens, who worry that even liking a social media post will put them in a cell, but also on their economic well-being.

Since Oct. 7, their unemployment rate has tripled to 15.6 percent largely because of firings for political reasons, boycotts and downturns in sectors with a large proportion of Palestinian Israeli workers.

The government is also attempting to cut the very budgets dedicated to the development of Palestinian citizens

Reductions to funding directed to Palestinian citizens are slated to be three times higher than the rest — 15 percent compared with 5 percent. Through these budget cuts the Palestinians in Israel are effectively paying a disproportionate cost of the war against fellow Palestinians.

The hostile environment has also worsened the relationship between Jewish and Palestinian citizens.

Rather than isolating and weakening the Palestinian citizens of Israel, marking them as the “enemy within” through repressive tactics, the Israeli government must remove discriminatory policies against them and stop fighting recognition of their Palestinian identity.

So, I'm not at all surprised to learn that Palestinian citizens of Israel are systematically regarded as potential traitors, “How can I convince people that I’m not supporting Hamas after being part of this deal?”

Go figure, Arab Citizens of Israel Released in Deals With Hamas Fear a Backlash- New York Times.

Almost all the 15 Israeli-Arab women freed in the swaps were released against their will. One was expelled from a university and others fear they could be attacked by those who link them to Hamas.
Some of the women have already paid a price for their inclusion in the deal. Gunshots were fired near the home of one of them, and many are worried they could be attacked on the street.
Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, expelled one of the women, who had been studying computer science.
“It’s very clear: Someone who was released as part of a hostage deal with Hamas cannot study here,” said Doron Shaham, a university spokeswoman.
…many Israeli-Arabs accuse Israel of treating them as second-class citizens and sympathize with Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and around the Middle East.
The women and their lawyers also worried that being released under a deal negotiated by Hamas could damage their client’s lives.
“I wrote that my client does not want to be released from the deal with Hamas,” said Ahmad Massalha, another lawyer representing one of the women. “Being labeled as affiliated with Hamas is worse than any punishment that the court would have given.”
One of the women, who spoke on condition of anonymity for safety reasons, said she was arrested for posts that the Israeli authorities considered sympathetic to Hamas. During her interrogation, she said, she told police that she opposed Hamas and that she was against any killing of civilians.
A few weeks later, she said, she was released and only learned that she had been included in a deal brokered by Hamas after she had reached home. She was horrified, she said.
“I kept thinking, ‘How can I convince people that I’m not supporting Hamas after being part of this deal?’” she said.

---
I think they know they are condemned (the palestinian citizens of Israel), in the long term, to complete irrelevance. The demographic struggle, the demographic control exercised in various political and economic ways is crucial to the preservation of any ethnocracy. The relative size of the Jewish population/Palestinian population has always been of central political importance to the Jewish governments. All these concerns were already the subject of a CIA publication a long time ago in 1984 ("Israel's Arab population"),
An interesting quote, but almost redundant because it's so obvious,

The structure of Israeli society favors Jews over Arabs; this will be difficult if not politically impossible, for any Israeli government to change.

If they did, they would no longer be an ethnocracy. For the time being, I don't consider Israel to be an ethnic democracy either. Firstly, the occupation must end.

---

Well to insist on using the word genocide, not because it is true, but because it is more hurtful is pretty childish really.

A childish comment is an immature comment. How immature are you? don't go that way...
Watch and read, London Gaza protest: has row over 'openly Jewish' remark ...




I quote,

I think that people who compare what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust are not being antisemitic.

And he adds something I have said earlier-

anyone who knows history knows that we can’t understand things except in comparison to each other

“(I said earlier, “there is no genocide comparable to Holocaust”, or something like that.)
Then he goes on,

“But that’s not a comfort to someone who has lost their whole family in Gaza, and it would be cruel to say so to them.”

Yes, it’s a different kind of genocide- and a domicide.

[nhytgbvfeco2]

Its interesting that you keep on being selective about the definition of genocide regarding this case. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:


You only mention ethnic and religious classifications but the definition is not limited to them. Racial and national classifications are there too. The definition does not make distinctions on the extensiveness of the genocidal actions either. Pointing out that Israel haven't killed enough Palestinians in your opinion is a moot argument. There being war does not invalidate genocide either. What Sumskilz expressed about expected deaths in such a conflict is merely his opinion and not based on any argument of logic or knowledge.

It still requires intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part. This is clearly not the intent, as is evident from the conduct. Spare me quotes from random individuals with no impact on decision making.

Most of Gaza is devastated, it can no longer be lived in, no homes, no water, no food, infrastructure and services destroyed, more than twenty hospitals destroyed (26?), schools and universties destroyed, more than a million citizens displaced to the last corner that remains unrazed.

The Nakba happened and this is its third act. Are you a Nakba denier?

-------------------------------------------------------

No Exit in Gaza (Human Rights Watch)

The Nakba was in 1948, what relation does it have to deciding whether or not currently ongoing events are a genocide?

Gaza can be rebuilt, as soon as peace is resumed. There is water and food in Gaza, to claim otherwise is just false, people can't survive for half a year without any food and water. The population is only displaced internally, and will return to their homes once the war ends. In most areas they're already able to, as the Israeli army left the areas it finished operations in. What is it you think would be achieved here if this was a genocide? There's no change to the border, no change to the ethnic makeup, no change to the religious makeup. All 3 of those cannot be said for the Bosnia example. So what do you think is being done here? What's the goal? If there's intent to committ genocide, surely there's a clear endgame in mind?

[Ludicus]

International Criminal Court considering issuing arrest ...
Israel working to block feared ICC arrest warrants against ...

Netanyahu was leading a “nonstop push over the telephone” to prevent an arrest …

With a “little” help of the US?....

[nhytgbvfeco2]

It would be pure insanity if such warrants are issued for Netanyahu, but not for Sinwar and Hanniyeh.

[PointOfViewGun]

It still requires intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part. This is clearly not the intent, as is evident from the conduct. Spare me quotes from random individuals with no impact on decision making.

In this thread, people have presented statements from government and military officials as well as recorded actions of Israeli soldiers and public Israeli actions that target and affect Palestinian civilians to a great degree. Dismissing them as inconsequential random individuals doesn't really carry any weight.

It would be pure insanity if such warrants are issued for Netanyahu, but not for Sinwar and Hanniyeh.

Are either of them subject to an ICJ preceeding?

[sumskilz]

Palestinian citizen of Israel, she says, three times in a row.

I posted several polls indicating that a relatively small minority of Israeli Arabs identify as Palestinian. It’s not really surprising that activists who write ranting opinion pieces purporting to speak for all Israeli Arabs would identify as Palestinian. It’s a political statement. I’ve read similar articles, some posted by you, about how terrible and racist the United States is.

Christian Arab Israelis have the second highest average income levels and education rates after Ashkenazi Jews, so higher than all other Jewish ethnicities. Arabs in general are overrepresented among healthcare professionals. They make up 24% of doctors under the age of 67. In recent years, over 40% of new physician licenses have been awarded to Arabs, despite them being only 21% of the population. There is currently a Muslim Arab member of the Israeli supreme court. On the other hand, Arabs commit the vast majority of the murders in Israel. Although most of those committed by citizens involve Arabs killing other Arabs. The people in predominately Muslim Arab Israeli communities tend to be poorer than Jewish Israeli communities, but considering they are still much wealthier on average than Arabs living in any of the neighboring countries ruled by Arabs, it’s not exactly clear that “the Jews” are to blame.

The situation is more complicated than the one-sided narratives you dig up to feed your confirmation bias.

[nhytgbvfeco2]

In this thread, people have presented statements from government and military officials as well as recorded actions of Israeli soldiers and public Israeli actions that target and affect Palestinian civilians to a great degree. Dismissing them as inconsequential random individuals doesn't really carry any weight.

And none of those individuals are in a position to make decisions on the matter. There are 4 individuals in the Israeli government's war cabinet, and they're the only ones with a say.

[Muizer]

I believe it is true, it is genocide

You say it is a shame that we focus on semantics only to dive straight back into that same semantic discussion. If you really regretted it you could have opted for a term that is less speculative as far as the intention of the Israeli government and the IDF is concerned.

A childish comment is an immature comment. How immature are you? don't go that way...

You do not agree that using a term not because it is accurate, but because it is hurtful is immature? I wouldn't have thought I said anything controversial there.

[mishkin]

You say it is a shame that we focus on semantics only to dive straight back into that same semantic discussion. If you really regretted it you could have opted for a term that is less speculative as far as the intention of the Israeli government and the IDF is concerned.
.

I am sorry I was replying to your accusation. What is regrettable in my opinion is that we are debating semantics without simply accepting that what Israel is doing is barbaric.. Again, it is in my opinión genocide, the will to get rid of a population that is hostile or seen as foreign/alien to the Israeli project.

[nhytgbvfeco2]

You think the intent is to entierly rid of this population? How?

[mishkin]

destroying their homes (IDF), attacking them in their homes (settlers), turning them into refugees in other countries, first "temporary" then permanent (descendants). Doing what Israel has been doing since its creation basically.

[Kyriakos]

You think the intent is to entierly rid of this population? How?

A genocide doesn't have to be getting rid of the entire population. Israel already killed 2% of the population. You are arguing that if it wanted to, it could kill a lot more a lot faster, but conveniently overlook that those tens of thousands aren't dolls to be moved about on a whim by Israel nor automatons to revert back to factory setting after this butchery. I am actually wondering how you can think the is any possibility of the survivors not flocking to Hamas or other such terrorist groups even more than before - in other words, how you can think the official line by Israel, that this butchery is happening to prevent in the long run more deaths, stands to logic.
You know that I support Israel, I just don't support any version of Israel regardless of what it does. And I am not alone in this. Of course you are dealing with something horrible, but you have become more horrible even than the religious terror trash you are dealing with, and that says a lot.
In practice, the state of Israel is currently by far the largest benefactor of Hamas, since you can't kill so many people and expect that their relatives/countrymen won't join the groups that at least nominally seek revenge. You turn even those who wouldn't end up in Hamas/other such, to its supporters.

[mishkin]

6 million Palestinian refugees since 1948. And the number continues to increase of course.

[sumskilz]

destroying their homes (IDF), attacking them in their homes (settlers), turning them into refugees in other countries, first "temporary" then permanent (descendants). Doing what Israel has been doing since its creation basically.

According to the UNHCR, the UN agency responsible for caring for all refugees on earth except Palestinians, a refugee is a person "forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country". Setting aside the apparent fact that the UN considers Palestinians to be a special breed of humans distinct from all other members of the species, if the definition of a refugee is expanded to include descendants of refugees, then we are almost certainly all refugees. Without a doubt, under such a nonsensical expanded definition, all Israelis are refugees, the majority of whom due to having been ethnically cleansed from Arab and Muslim countries.

It's worth noting that absolutely zero Jews were allowed to remain in the territories held by Arabs at the end of the 1948 war. The only Jews who survived to be expelled were those captured by the Arab Legion, which was commanded by British officers. Those Jews captured by other Arab forces including non-combatants and children, and even some of those captured by the Arab Legion, were most often tortured to death and mutilated. Although, most Jews fought to the death, knowing full well what would happen to them if they were captured by Arabs. It is well known that during the war, extremist Jewish paramilitary units and some IDF soldiers committed war crimes resulting in the deaths of about 800 Arab civilians and POWs (this is not counting all collateral casualties). The Israelis were (with good reason) quite concerned that losing the war would result in a second holocaust, just three years after WWII. Consequently, when it looked like the major Jewish population center in Jerusalem was going to be cut off and potentially annihilated, the IDF launched an operation to secure the narrow supply lines that were constantly being attacked from Arab villages. The IDF went from hostile village to village demanding that they surrender or be expelled. The populations of those that surrendered eventually became Israeli Arabs, those that did not were taken by force and their populations were driven to near the front lines and dropped off so that they would flee to the Arab side. This was the context that most of the deliberate expulsions took place. By today's standards, it would be a war crime; in the 1940s it was nothing unreasonable. At the end of the war, neither side allowed refugees to return. Returning Jews would have been slaughtered anyway. Subsequently, Arab countries throughout the MENA region took revenge on their own Jewish populations who were already often abused second-class citizens that had played no part in the war. The 1948 war was quite ugly, but not particularly so by the standards of the 1940s.

At the end of WWII and continuing for years afterward, 12–14.6 million ethnic Germans were expelled and/or forced to flee from their ancestral homes. This would have been considered a massive war crime by today's standards, but at the time few thought much of it. Poland, for example, was much more thorough and deliberate in expelling Germans in the 1940s than the Israelis ever were with Arabs. The Poles' rationale was that the Germans had started the war and had tried to exterminate them. The main difference is that Germany accepted ethnic German refugees and granted them citizenship, whereas the Arab nations kept the Arabs from Palestine stateless to serve as political pawns. That, and perhaps because so many people around the world consider Jews to be uniquely evil and/or have some other weird fixation on us, as is evidenced by the fact that most of the ongoing conflicts throughout the Middle East are largely ignored by Westerners, even when the casualties dwarf those of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

[nhytgbvfeco2]

destroying their homes (IDF), attacking them in their homes (settlers), turning them into refugees in other countries, first "temporary" then permanent (descendants). Doing what Israel has been doing since its creation basically.

Of all of those, only the first is relevant to the currently ongoing war. So you're saying that by homes being destroyed in an active warzone, the people of Gaza will somehow be entirely killed?

A genocide doesn't have to be getting rid of the entire population. Israel already killed 2% of the population. You are arguing that if it wanted to, it could kill a lot more a lot faster, but conveniently overlook that those tens of thousands aren't dolls to be moved about on a whim by Israel nor automatons to revert back to factory setting after this butchery. I am actually wondering how you can think the is any possibility of the survivors not flocking to Hamas or other such terrorist groups even more than before - in other words, how you can think the official line by Israel, that this butchery is happening to prevent in the long run more deaths, stands to logic.

34k is not 2% of Gaza's population, it's roughly 1.43%. We also don't know what percentage of this is combatants. There is a tendency here to treat all casualties from Gaza as civilians, which is simply impossible.

Let me ask you a followup question: When the Jews were genocided, did the future generations become terrorists and kill every German they saw?
When Dresden and other German cities were bombed during ww2, did future generations of Germans become terrorists and kill every Brit/American they saw?
Are Armenians running around killing Turks? Do they elect terrorist organisations to govern them?
Are Yazidis slaughtering Sunnis in reprisal for what was done to them? Are they now part of a Yazidi terrorist organisation?
Are the Bosnians? The Tutsi? The Pygmy? The East-Timorese? The Fur?
The 2nd Chechen war resulted in up to 80,000 civilians killed in Chechnya, and a further 16,000 combatants (according to Russia), in the span of 8 months. Chechnya's population is lower than Gaza's. Do you consider that to have been a genocide? The casualties are far higher, out of a population far lower and far less dense, and yet now Chechnya is loyal to the Kremlin, despite being led by a Chechen.
Can you pinpoint a group that faced genocide or mass casualties during war, and afterwards the majority of them turned to terrorism? Why are we pretending like this is what usually happens?
Or do you think the palestinians should be put to a different, lower, standard?


What will ultimately decide the future of the conflict is not the war itself, but the aftermath. What Israel seeks is the establishment of a moderate government, with the involvement of Arab states, that would govern Gaza and help de-radicalize it. Akin to the de-radicalization of Germany after the nazis were defeated.
Currently, education in Gaza is run by a literal terrorist organisation. The people are being radicalized, and the longer Hamas remains in power, the worse this problem will get.

You know that I support Israel, I just don't support any version of Israel regardless of what it does. And I am not alone in this. Of course you are dealing with something horrible, but you have become more horrible even than the religious terror trash you are dealing with, and that says a lot.
In practice, the state of Israel is currently by far the largest benefactor of Hamas, since you can't kill so many people and expect that their relatives/countrymen won't join the groups that at least nominally seek revenge. You turn even those who wouldn't end up in Hamas/other such, to its supporters.

I have never seen you express any sort of support for Israel, so I don't know why you think I "know" that, when I believe the opposite is true.

6 million Palestinian refugees since 1948. And the number continues to increase of course.

Because palestinians are the only group where refugee status is inherited. This number will always grow.

[mishkin]

massive whataboutism

Because palestinians are the only group where refugee status is inherited. This number will always grow.

or maybe the Israeli government could let them return home? Has that occurred to you? and the number obviously not only grows because of the descendants of the 1948 expulsions, you know this very well. In this last adventure you have created a new million displaced people/refugees. Have Israel already decided what they are going to do with them? Is the idea of asking foreign countries to accept them as refugees still maintained? tents?

[Kyriakos]

It's part of the problematic position you hold, that you think the operative in a claim is what the person presenting it thinks, and not the claim. You can follow its symmetry to why you yourself have to support Israel's position, because it is, exactly, a position by Israel.

As for why I'd be supporting Israel, you don't need to go that far. It is an obvious potential ally for my own country. It's just that this doesn't mean it can be a potential ally even if it turns nazi.