Hizb ut-Tahrir
In London today:
They have assessed this video, filmed at the Hizb ut-Tahrir protest in central London today, and have not identified any offences arising from the specific clip. However, recognising the way language like this will be interpreted by the public and the divisive impact it will have, officers have identified the man involved and will be speaking to him shorty to discourage any repeat of similar chanting.
“Divisive.”
Not quite, Sunshine. It’s not quite that bland. Jihad means, for instance, what Hamas did two weeks ago today. It means, ultimately, everyone on the planet must submit to Islam, and Islamism must be in charge everywhere on the planet. It means submit or die.
I know the best way to dampen this frightening Islamist rage.
Back Israel to the hilt as it humiliates and abuses Palestinians on a daily basis, steals their land, and massacres them.
Fixate on the crimes of Hamas when the IDF has inarguably killed thousands more Palestinian civilians than Hamas has killed Israeli civilians. (Remember though: For normal people, killing civilians of any sort is wrong. But we’re not talking about normal here.)
Talk about a “Clash of Civilizations” and “Crusades” and “My God is stronger than their god.”
It’s also good to destroy secular governments of Muslim-majority governments because they’re “authoritarian.” And to replace them with Jihaadist nutbars as was done in Libya and was attempted in Syria. Also, authoritarian Egypt and authoritarian, misogynist Saudi Arabia can be treated as important allies. (You might have to outright lie about making Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state because of its butchering of opposition journalists, its denial of basic human rights to the female half of its population, its corruption, and its policy of genocide in Yemen. Because at the end of the day Saudi Arabia’s oil production is a crucial support for the petro-dollar.) (Now that I think about it, you might also have to lie about bringing an end to Saudi Arabia’s genocide in Yemen when you’re actually more invested in it than they are.)
It’s also a good idea to invade and destroy several of their countries and create millions of refugess who will flee to Europe where they can be abused by neo-nazi skin-heads and other such defenders of Western Civilization.
Follow these simple tips and the danger of Islamists taking over the world will fall from remote to negligible.
NightCrow, do you think the baying mob had that noble version of jihad in mind? I think the common and violent meaning is more likely.
For the time being, at least, I’m “fixating” on the side that explicitly and inarguably wants every Israeli–every Jew–dead. That teaches such hatred to children. The side whose atrocities are not those of “bad apples” but planned at the top. The side that cares so little about the civilians on its own side that it has consistently failed to create separate military and civilian zones, and uses them as human shields.
The Germans had legitimate grievances after WWI, too. It’s still okay to draw a sharp line and say, this, this, is inexcusable and must be stopped.
Lady M: While I agree, arguably the Settler movement and the increasingly dominant far right in Israel are not that different in philosophy
I am absolutely with Lady Mondegreen on this, right now. That is all I shall say.
The far right in Israel at least benefit from somewhat of a tempering force of the Ashkenazis… that’s why those pesky courts must be brought under control.
Does Hamas need to be stopped? Yes. But I fail to see how the newest effort by Israel (backed by the US) is any different than the previous 5-6 decades of policy, and thus, I don’t see any outcome from that approach other than the creation of more militant terrorists.
I honestly think the only real out (and I don’t think it CAN happen, to be clear), would be for the US to preempt Israel–invade Gaza, declare it an American protectorate, and, in any portion of the area that is pacified, bring in food, water, medical supplies and economic aid. Saturate the entire area with troops–basically, send as many into that one little strip of land as we sent into Afghanistan as a whole. Make it clear to the Israelis that there will be no further strikes, and that the US will determine policy in the area without Bibi’s input.
Hamas (or other) militants pop up? Deal with them rapidly and efficiently, then get back on with establishing a secular order.
Like I said, I don’t think this could happen. But I think it’s a damn sight more likely to produce a positive result than either continued interventionism (where we back one side only and then express surprise when the other side blames us for any abuses committed) or isolationism (which would genuinely doom Israel, at least until they decided to confirm everyone’s suspicions about their possession of nukes).
I think of the whole thing like this:
Say you have a heavyweight boxer. This boxer is maybe not the nicest person in the world, but they’re pretty capable in a fight.
Then you have a weedy dude who is, lets face it, a total shit. Weedy dude decides it would be a good idea to mug the boxer.
Do we consider it disproportionate if the boxer ends up making the weedy dude swallow teeth? Or do we think of it as a fundamentally stupid person suffering the natural consequences of a very bad decision?
Israel is very good in a fight. It has won most of its conflicts with its neighbors, and it was doing so long before it allied with the West.
Hamas is not simply a terrorist group, it is the elected government of Gaza. It has a policy of not dividing its military and civilian zones, because that way it can use civilians as human shields. The civilians are aware of this.
That Israel can levy the consequences we’ve seen on Gaza, makes attacking Israeli civilians, massacring children FFS, a very stupid thing to do. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Gazans in this situation? Or is it the natural consequence of them choosing to be governed by terrorists?
And sure, I agree that Netanyahu has to go. Part of the build up to this was his government’s choice to provide funding and aid to prop up Hamas, in order to avoid having to face a Palestinian government that would support a two-state solution.
Netanyahu is a classic example of how strong-men who run on security issues are generally very bad for security.
But how can we expect Israelis to view things that way when on the left, the response to their children getting massacred is to talk about proportionality, like that has any real meaning?
How disappointing:
“For the time being, at least, I’m ‘fixating’ on the side that explicitly and inarguably wants every Israeli–every Jew–dead. That teaches such hatred to children.”
You must have been sticking your head in the sand. I’ve seen people on the street interviews with Jewish Israelis calling for the extermination of Palestinians. As if there aren’t scores of examples of racist Israeli “settlers” attacking Palestinian civilians.
What else are you saying? That all the abuses I spoke about will continue until Palestinians (and other Muslim Arabs and Muslims in general) develop a better attitude?
“The side whose atrocities are not those of ‘bad apples’ but planned at the top.”
Whereas Israel’s security wall, its settler colonies stealing Palestinian land and its massacres in Gaza are the products of uncontrollable civilians and renegade corporals?
“The side that cares so little about the civilians on its own side that it has consistently failed to create separate military and civilian zones, and uses them as human shields.”
And not the side that bombs schools and hospitals and power stations and water filtration plants SOMETIMES under the pretext that Hamas is storing weapons in those places, only for those claims to turn out to have been lies?
“The Germans had legitimate grievances after WWI, too. It’s still okay to draw a sharp line and say, this, this, is inexcusable and must be stopped.”
Right. And we stop it by continuing to abuse the Palestinians. Continuing to invade or attack countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, that have governments we don’t like. Creating millions of refugees who are then treated like garbage if they manage to get to Europe.
We fight the Isamist message by cynically arming, protecting, funding, training Islamic fundamentalist mercenaries to overthrow secular governments like Libya’s or Syria’s? Or as political counter-weights to secular groups like the PLO, the way the Israeli government did with Hamas in its early days?
I’m making a very simple point. The policies of the US government (and its vassals in Europe and Israel and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchical autocracies) are contributing to the problem the original post is so frightened of.
How did that work out in Afghanistan? Not well.
If it’s American troops patrolling the Gaza Strip, then American troops will be the ones getting shot at, having rocks thrown at them, and being bombed by IEDs. How would that help anything?
Ultimately, the other Muslim countries have to take responsibility for the Palestinians and make them stop supporting or being terrorists. Israelis can’t do anything to change them, Americans can’t do anything to change them.
The Hamas terrorist invasion, along with the despicable eruption of virulent anti-semitism in the West, have made it more clear than ever that Jews need a national home. How can Jews feel at home in any country where people march down the street calling for their extermination?
Events have also made it clear that a two-state solution is impossible, because the Palestinians have never had a state, know nothing about having, creating, or running a state, and have no interest in taking responsibility for themselves as a state. No state is ever going to grow out of Hamas or Fatah, just rackets and warlords. Someone else has to take responsibility for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, but it can’t be Israel and it can’t be the United States. Regional Arab nations, which have been supporting Palestinian terrorism for decades now, need to take responsibility for ending it.
Papito,
Will you unequivocally condemn Israel’s carpet bombing of civilians in Gaza?
Me, I would condemn Israel carpet-bombing civilians in Gaza if they were. But they’re not. If you think they are, you’re either unclear on what “carpet-bombing” means or you don’t care. I suspect the latter; I don’t imagine that anybody here even believes that you believe Israel is actually saturation-bombing Gaza. Your chances of convincing anybody else here to believe anti-semitic lies are pretty poor.
Papito,
I knew you’d make some silly quibble about “carpet” bombing. Whatever precise word you want to use, it is a massacre of civilians. I’m pretty sure you won’t condemn it in any case.
I am surprised that you have accused me of spreading anti-semitic lies.
From your contributions on this site on this topic you have exposed yourself as a blatant racist.
Just so you know.
The difference between bombing locations with command, control, and offensive facilities of a group that has already attacked your country, on the one hand, and carpet bombing, on the other hand, is more than a “silly quibble.” You demonstrate that you either don’t know or don’t care about the reality of the situation on the ground (e.g. Hamas continues to launch rockets at Israel, and has a long history of using human shields), and the accepted rules of legitimate warfare (e.g. the death of civilians resultant from bombing legitimate military targets is not a war crime, whereas kidnapping toddlers is).
As for the rest, I got a good laugh out of it, so thanks. You should go down to the Student Union and propose a resolution condemning me.
By continuing to insist that Israel has done nothing against the Palestinians you show yourself to be either ignorant or dishonest.
By insisting that there are no innocents in Gaza because they’re all crazed members of a degenerate death-cult culture you show yourself to be racist.
Sorry. But that’s just how it is.
Maybe you and Ben Shapiro can get together and give each other tips.
Me, I’m confused. Where did Papito make either of those statements? I realize you are just paraphrasing your understanding, but I didn’t read his comments to say either that Israel has done nothing against the Palestinians, or that there are no innocents in Gaza.
It could be that my reading comprehension has failed in my old age, or it could be that a lot of people, including even some people that comment here, have on blinders regarding either one or the other side of this issue. I rarely get involved in the Israeli/Palestinian discussions because there are too many people who get so upset. Take this as just a semantic quibble, because I am not going to say what side I come down on.
Right now, I just want to understand how you read that into Papito’s comment.
@#9 Freemage:
Ooh man, I absolutely love that idea… it’s either that or Israel purges Gaza (which given circumstances they probably should do, for a given value of “should”). When you take your foot off the rattlesnake’s head it’s pretty fucking pissed so it’s definitely gonna bite you, so either you crush the snake or you stay out of its reach and leave it alone.
Also, Palestinians are not a race nor a particularly distinctive ethnicity. They’re of similar ethnicity to the Mizrahi Jews (and Israel is a country where the term “Ashkenazi” is a pejorative). This is a religious war of theocrats vs a fragile coalition of theocrats and liberal democrats. If it weren’t for the liberal democrats I’d just be cheering on religious barbarians killing each other, but that’s just because I’m a very bad person.
iknklast,
First off, let me state that I’m not a fan of any religion. Islamic fundamentalism is, therefore, something that I deplore.
I despise racism. I despise antisemitism. I despise racists who assert that because they don’t believe in some sort of biological or genetic superiority of some “races” over other “races” that they are therefore NOT racist. They just believe that some people have cultures that keep them down. (An argument entertainingly trashed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ciwjHVHYg [You don’t have to watch it but it’s pretty fun.])
But a lot of people commenting on this blog appear to me to be saying nothing other than that the crimes of Hamas arise not out of any legitimate grievances [NOTE: I’m saying “legitimate GRIEVANCES” and NOT “legitmate CRIMES.”] against Israel, but out of anti-semitism.
A lot of people here seem to be saying that Islamist rage arises out of the degenerate nature of Muslim culture which is inherently obscurantist, intolerant, violent, xenophobic, misogynist, anti-semitic, etc., etc.,
My original comment was that a lot of the things we do in the West, including carte-blanche support for Zionist imperialism and support for Israeli war-crimes and decades-long abuses of the Palestinians, will make more and more Muslims more and more angry with the West. You can add invading their countries and killing them in the millions. You can also add the cynical support for Jihaadists by the USA, and the Saudis in places like Syria and Libya.
Many people commenting here seem to be saying nothing but that the Palestinians have brought this all upon themselves by not overthrowing Hamas.
Many people here are saying that this situation is frustrating because it’s so “complicated” because on the one side you have the Israelis justifiably blowing up schools and hospitals and apartment buildings and desalinization plants and power stations, and on the other side you have these hateful Muslims who refuse to condemn their own side and agree that Israel has a right to defend themselves. (I mean, what can you do with a people like that, ammiright???)
Anyway, what Papito has written about “the situation on the ground” is based either on ignorance, delusion, or lies.
“Ultimately, the other Muslim countries have to take responsibility for the Palestinians and make them stop supporting or being terrorists. Israelis can’t do anything to change them, Americans can’t do anything to change them.”
Now how does this read as anything other than Papito saying that Israel and the USA have done everything for peace but this has been in vain because of the violently racist nature of the Palestinians.
The demolitions of people’s homes; the starvation diet imposed on them; the abuse at checkpoints; the racist abuses of the “settlers”; the persistent land theft; … all of this is non-existent in Papito’s fantasy land.
Read this:
“Events have also made it clear that a two-state solution is impossible, because the Palestinians have never had a state, know nothing about having, creating, or running a state, and have no interest in taking responsibility for themselves as a state.”
How is that anything other than racist contempt?
And then Papito has the gall to accuse me of trying to spread “anti-semitic lies”!
I have said NOTHING that was anti-semitic, whereas Papito has been marinating themselves in racist bigotry. People like that have to wake-up to the reality that tossing the slur “anti-semite” around so carelessly has weakened its effectiveness. They need to step outside their comfortable bubble of deluded self-righteousness and breathe in some reality.
You seem to be jumping to a lot of bizarre conclusions.
I don’t have a solution, and there’s plenty of blame to go around, but one thing that seems clear to me is that no one really cares about the Palestinians. Not the Israeli government, most certainly not Hamas, and not other Arabic or Islamic countries.
But anyway, here are some voices of actual Gazans.
Help me out then Ophelia.
Right now, Israel is killing scores of Palestinian civilians. Point me to all the comments here unequivocally condemning this. Show me how many fine people are refusing to find excuses to “justify” these war crimes. Show me the comments that refuse to make fine distinctions between killing Palestinian civilians and killing Israeli civilians. Where are the comments pointing out the documented racist end-point of Zionism that exists in Israeli society?
Israel has had an enormous intelligence failure, likely the result of several decades of fundamentalist nincompoops bubbling up through the government because of Israel’s cultivation of fundamentalist nincompoops in its population who vote for said representatives. Hamas should never have been allowed to generate the operative capacity for its raid; its plans should have been sussed out by Israeli intelligence, its resources excised and its provocateurs quietly assassinated. That this did not happen, and instead those intelligence services allowed Israel’s enemies to overrun military outposts and kidnap and torture and murder Israeli civilians, is a shameful stain upon the Israeli government that it should never live down.
And Israel has, in the course of decades, turned Gaza into an open-air prison in which millions of people live in misery and fear, to such an extent that many tens of thousands view murdering Israeli civilians as justified retaliation. Conditions on the ground are not quite to the level of a National Socialist concentration camp, but they are not dissimmilar to a less extreme prisoner of war camp. Anyone born in such conditions, with a readily-identifiable proximate cause, can be forgiven for seeing in that cause a mortal enemy and behaving in kind.
But let’s be honest here, the reason that Gaza and the Palestinians therein are a problem is not because of Israeli brutality, it is because of Israeli restraint. If Israel wished, it could solve the Gaza problem for good and all at any point in the last seventy years in a few days, namely by doing to the Palestinians therein what every single one of Israel’s neighbours has actually attempted with Israel and marching the civilians into the sea after a pitiless and total military conquest. If Israel wished, it could have actually carpet-bombed Gaza immediately in retaliation to the latest incursion, making not even a hint of an attempt to separate combatants and civilians.
Instead, Israel has done its best under the circumstances to act in a measured and limited way; among other things, the Israeli military gave multiple deadlines for civilians to evacuate the areas to be assaulted; when the first deadline passed without sufficient evacuations, the Israelis gave at least one more before commencing operations. Note that this surrendered valuable military intelligence to Hamas, giving them time both to harden the points under assault and relocate the hostages away from target zones, making Israel’s job of killing combatants and rescuing hostages all the harder.
Yes, Israel is a colonial project whose existence imperils the “native” population of the territory (except for the Jews who managed to evade the many expulsions of their ancestors, or to return before the establisment of the modern state of Israel). Short of simply abandoning that project and allowing the Jewish peoples of the Levant to once more be scattered to the four winds, there are no easy ways forward that do not cost millions of people their lives.
This is the reality on the ground. Either Israel vanishes, Gaza and the West Bank get denuded of their Palestinian populations, or there is a continued grinding occupation which reliably flares up into an uprising to be brutally suppressed every decade or so. The most likely course of events is that some terrorist group gets a real weapon of mass destruction and causes a mass casualty event in Jerusalem or Tel-Aviv (think the other-other N-word), which will give whatever grab-bag of fundamentalist wackaloons in the Israeli government a blank check to actually do a little genocide.
Me
Here is the problem with the pablum and cliches you’re peddling:
Israel is not a US vassal state. If it was, the US would be obligated to land troops in Gaza to pacify the situation. Suzerains do have obligations to their vassals.
Israel is an independent state, it has fought several wars to ensure that it remains an independent state. The US’ alliance with Israel really only started with the Suez Canal crisis, and the US maintained an arms embargo on Israel up until 1960. Israel won wars before that.
As much as you claim Hamas has “legitimate grievances” – so does Israel. In this case Israel’s grievance does justify a military response.
We cannot expect Israel to tolerate Hamas any further, this recent atrocity fully justifies doing whatever it takes to eliminate Hamas.
That is going to lead to civilian deaths, far more than Hamas’ attack did. Israel is far better armed, and is in a position to besiege Gaza. Because Gaza is set up in such a way that there is no demarcation between military and civilian zones, there is no means by which civilians won’t die.
And it will still not be equivalent to what Hamas did, because Hamas specifically set out to kill and kidnap civilians, some of whom were children, some of whom were toddlers. There is a clear difference between collateral damage, and intentional damage.
We cannot expect Israel to tolerate Hamas any further. What do we expect Israel to do?
The way you are arguing – there is never a point at which Israel is not at fault, whatever Hamas does. There are always “legitimate grievances” that apologists can fall back on.
Well at a point that fails. And that is the point we’re at here – Hamas illustrated exactly why Israel behaves the way it does – so the grievances become a whole lot less legitimate.
And yes, Israel is much more powerful than Gaza. That doesn’t mean that Gaza is in the right, it means if Gaza doesn’t want to get mauled, it shouldn’t poke the sodding bear.
Dear Der Durchwanderer,
You might possibly be correct in stating that if Israel exterminated the Palestinians in a dedicated campaign then this crisis could be concluded. But you know as well as I do that putting such a brutally honest policy into effect would be fodder for anti-semitic propagandists. And the Israelis also know this. That’s why they’re doing it in slow-motion. It is what it is.
The original post that started this discussion was about angry Muslims shouting “Jihad!” in London at a recent pro-Palestinian demonstration.
My original comment was that the West does a lot of things to make Muslims angry. This is over and above whatever things Muslims already believe that makes them angry about stuff. And I was trying to say that if we are worried about angry Muslims, one thing we could try would be to stop doing the needless things we do that are making them angry.
We don’t have to make laws banning cartoons that make fun of Mohammed, but maybe we could stop invading their countries. And if violent Jihadists frighten us, perhaps we could inquire why the US government keeps giving them weapons and using them to attack secular Arab governments that it doesn’t like.
As for the case of Israel: I agree that the Arab population in the Middle East wasn’t exactly benevolent towards them. But I’m not going to attribute that to any particularly Arab or Muslim form of intolerance. Look at how Europeans and Americans are responding to immigration to their countries. So far there aren’t any moves to carve-out a separate country for Latin Americans out of the territory of the USA, or to do anything similar in Europe for the Africans and the Arabs. But there’s a lot of xenophobic racist hysteria and a lot of cruelty being directed the immigrants’ way.
Now, I’m not going to claim to be an expert, but my interpretation of events subsequent to the Oslo Accords is that instead of adhering to the Two-State Solution, and recognizing the Palestinians’ right to self-government in the post-1967 borders, Israel continued its policy of expansion and expected the PLO/Fatah government to suppress the inevitable anger on Israel’s behalf. It was this betrayal that caused the Palestinians to turn to Hamas.
And it is this continued violation by Israel of the Oslo Accords that makes peace impossible. At the very least it should be recognized and admitted as a very important barrier to peace. A needless action that should be abandoned.
Bruce Gorton,
Here is the problem with the pablum and cliches you’re peddling:
[BTW: Do you see how easy that is? All I had to do was copy and paste your empty insult in this comment box. If you disagree with someone, if you have contempt for their arguments, the first thing you should do is to demonstrate that there arguments are, in fact, contemptible. Spoiler alert: You utterly failed to do that.]
For instance, I have no idea what you were trying to accomplish when you typed:
“Israel is not a US vassal state. If it was, the US would be obligated to land troops in Gaza to pacify the situation. Suzerains do have obligations to their vassals.”
That’s a pretty specific definition of “vassal state” and of a suzerain’s obligations to same. The USA provides Israel with enormous diplomatic, economic and military support and has done so for decades. (I’m not sure how the USA’s behaviour prior to 1960 is relevant to this discussion so I’ll ignore it.)
The rest of your “argument” seems to be putting “legitimate grievances” in quotation when you refer to the Palestinians, asserting that Israel doesn’t “specifically set out to kill and kidnap civilians, some of whom were children, some of whom were toddlers.”
I’m not going to say that you’re insane, but I think you must know that what you’re saying is insane. Do you seriously believe that Israel is justified in the level of bombardment and the thousands of civilian deaths it is causing because some of those hospitals, schools, UN offices, civilian apartment blocks, power stations, water treatment plants MIGHT have Hamas weapons stored there?
Where is the clear and present danger that justifies these bombings of civilians and civilian infrastructure?
Are you ignorant of the documented killings of children, medical personnel, and unarmed civilians during the (initially peaceful) 2018 “March of Return”?
https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-iopt/report2018-opt
Are you going to pretend that the IDF doesn’t subject Palestinian children to military justice and subjects them to physical and psychological abuse?
https://www.wvi.org/jerusalem-west-bank-gaza/video/alone-palestinian-children-israeli-military-detention-system
You seem to want to believe that Israel has done absolutely nothing to provoke the Palestinians. You seem committed to finding any excuse you can to excuse Israel’s barbarism. You ignore every action of Israel that contributes to the Palestinians’ legitimate grievances. If the circumstances were reversed, and it was Hamas that could assist Palestinians’ bulldozing Israeli homes, Palestinians bullying and abusing Israeli families living nearby, if Hamas was protecting Palestinian civilians attacking Jewish people at the Wailing Wall, Hamas arresting Israeli children for throwing stones at them, and firing artillery and dropping bombs on Jewish neighbourhoods when the far-weaker Israelis resorted to terrorism, … I wonder what you would be typing.
Me
“That’s a pretty specific definition of “vassal state” and of a suzerain’s obligations to same. The USA provides Israel with enormous diplomatic, economic and military support and has done so for decades. ”
It isn’t a narrow definition, it is the definition. A vassal state would at the very least have to be a protectorate, which Israel is not. It would also be obliged to provide military or economic support to its suzerain, which Israel is not obligated to do.
What Israel is, much like a lot of other independent nations, is a US ally.
By the definition you seem to be operating under, the US could just as well be called a vassal of Saudi Arabia – considering how economically dependent the US is on Saudi keeping OPEC on the dollar. So far as economic backing goes, that’s a pretty big one considering how that is what makes the US budget work.
“I’m not going to say that you’re insane, but I think you must know that what you’re saying is insane. Do you seriously believe that Israel is justified in the level of bombardment and the thousands of civilian deaths it is causing because some of those hospitals, schools, UN offices, civilian apartment blocks, power stations, water treatment plants MIGHT have Hamas weapons stored there?”
What do you think it means for Gaza to not have separated out its military and civilian zones? How exactly do you propose Israel retaliate in the case of its civilians being massacred and kidnapped by Gaza’s government? Or does Israel not have the right to?
“You seem to want to believe that Israel has done absolutely nothing to provoke the Palestinians. You seem committed to finding any excuse you can to excuse Israel’s barbarism. You ignore every action of Israel that contributes to the Palestinians’ legitimate grievances.”
You seem to want to believe that Gaza has done absolutely nothing to provoke the Israelis. You seem committed to finding any excuse you can to excuse Gaza’s barbarism. You ignore every action of Gaza that contributes to the Israelis’ legitimate grievances.
And that barbarism includes the recent attack on Israeli civilians.
If Israel’s soldiers went into Gaza to round up civilians, slaughter a lot of them, and then take civilians, including children hostage, I wouldn’t be going out of my way to find excuses for Israel. I would agree that Gaza would have every right to retaliate in that circumstance.
And if Israel maintained a policy of not separating its military and civilian zones, I would recognize that this right would include civilian casualties as collateral damage. I would recognize the difference between this and the attack that sparked the war.
As much as Gaza would have an obligation to minimize civilian casualties, Israel would have an obligation to keep its civilians out of harm’s way, and not use them as human shields.
This is actually part of why I think Netanyahu has to go – his support for those settlements put people at risk. His authoritarian tactics coupled with his political gamesmanship helped create the situation Israel finds itself in now.
But that doesn’t change the fact that Israel is stuck in a position where it has very little choice but to retaliate. Hamas cannot be tolerated any longer – and with how things work in Gaza, there is no way to achieve that which doesn’t result in massive civilian casualties.
What comes next – needs us to be able to see Israel’s side in this. If you take the approach that everything Hamas does, Israel is to blame, Israel will tell you to get fucked with your bullshit, and rightly so.
If you assume Israel is a vassal, they will respond very similarly. Israel will point out that they were winning wars without you. They don’t need you quite as much as you think they do.
The Oslo accords were basically land for peace, part of what caused the accords to fail was that the Palestinian side never stopped the use of terrorism – so the Israeli side figured if they weren’t getting peace, they’d stop ceding land. It wasn’t as simple as the Israeli’s not keeping their end, neither side really was.
So where to from here? Hamas has to go. In all honesty so does Likud.
But we’re not going to talk anybody into the latter if we can’t see exactly why they voted for it in the first place. If we can’t see Israel’s grievances in all of this, and if we can’t acknowledge when Israel does have the right to fight back, then why should Israel listen?