demagogue on 9/10/2024 at 22:10
Israel has blockaded Gaza since 2005, which aside from having perpetually decimated its economy making it unviable as a political & economic entity, it's legally an act of war, and the West Bank is controlled by settlers and riddled with Israeli infrastructure which Palestinians can't access, and the Israeli government already openly calls the West Bank Israeli territory. You'll notice in all of Bibi's maps he loves to show off that the West Bank is integrated with Israel with no border shown. That doesn't sound like "leave us alone"; Israel isn't leaving them alone!
Palestinians live in Israeli controlled territory but have no rights with the authorities that administer their day to day life. Israelis are certainly free to leave the territory if they don't want to control the lives of Palestinians. I don't think they want to do that; and as the poll I gave above said, 3/4 of Palestinians aren't even asking Israelis to leave. So if they're not going to leave, that limits their options in dealing with the Palestinians.
The Israeli government is not free to ethnically cleanse their land of Palestinians though, nor is it legal for them to control their lives without giving them political representation and civil and political rights. There was a time when they could have negotiated for an independent Palestinian state, but the prospect for that being possible has long since passed if you look at the actual conditions on the ground & Israeli effective control over the land. It's just like the Bantustans or Sequoia, not a serious proposal for an independent state at all, very intentionally engineered to be so.
@SE, given the number of missing and scale of attacks, it's going to be much higher than the stated numbers to begin with. 41K is already an outdated number but the one they're still using, so you'd technically bump it consistent with the scale of attacks, and it's the vetted one. There's a problem with data collection in a time of war as you can imagine. There should be an independent and forensic process to account for it after the conflict in any event. If one wants to be objective about it, you defer to that process and give a rough justified estimate in the meantime. I'm happy to defer to that kind of process.
Subjective Effect on 9/10/2024 at 22:18
Quote Posted by Nicker
No, let's just take Likud's word for it.
A democratically elected government or a terrorist organisation that can't be voted out on pain of death? Yeah, I know which I'd choose.
Quote Posted by demagogue
Israel has blockaded Gaza since 2005, which aside from having perpetually decimated its economy making it unviable as a political & economic entity, it's legally an act of war
You are right. After Hamas started terrorist attacks in 2005 Israel shouldn't have blockaded the territory, instead allowing them to import all the weapons they want. Right?
What about the Egypt border? Oh aha aha they aren't Jews, sorry forget I mentioned it.
Quote:
Palestinians live in Israeli controlled territory but have no rights with the authorities that administer their day to day life. Israelis are certainly free to leave the territory if they don't want to control the lives of Palestinians. I don't think they want to do that
So Hamas and Fatah have NO authority at all? What's the point of them then? Why are they clinging to power? When are the elections? Why do you never mention anything about Fatah being 19 years into their 4 year term?
Israel feels the need to control the population because of security concerns. And you know it.
Starker on 9/10/2024 at 23:00
You choose to believe that bombing a clearly marked ambulance is above the board and completely justified? Btw, bombing an ambulance is a crime even if it's used to transport an enemy combatant. Which, by all available evidence, it wasn't.
SD on 9/10/2024 at 23:07
It's something of an irony these days that the Palestinians are rapidly running out of allies in the Middle East as more and more Arab countries make peace with Israel; so much so that when Iran attacked Israel in April, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE participated in its defence. Such a thing would have been unthinkable not that long ago.
I used to be one of those Westerners like demagogue, labouring under the misapprehension that what Palestinians* most desperately want is their own state. Well, in a way they do, but what they actually want is no Jewish state. This much has been known since well before the reestablishment of Israel in 1948.
As British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin - who was very much not sympathetic to Jewish statehood - noted in 1947:
His Majesty's Government have thus been faced with an irreconcilable conflict of principles. There are in Palestine about 1,200,000 Arabs and 600,000 Jews. For the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish state. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.
How can you have any rapprochement with people who don't want you to coexist with them? The Jews have reluctantly accepted the existence of an Arab state alongside the Jewish one on multiple occasions. The reason their nation is called Israel in the first place is because they felt the Arabs would want to call theirs Palestine. At every juncture, the Arabs have rejected the chance for their own state, because they still cannot accept the existence of a Jewish state.
One can accept Palestinian grievances over settlements in the West Bank, if one can overlook the inherent insanity of international law demanding that places like Bethlehem be judenrein forever. But those are points for negotiation under any future agreement, which needs to begin with Palestinians not murdering Jews and accepting their right to inhabit their native lands in peace.
Remember that land for peace is an accepted principle with precedent. Israel has already given the Sinai peninsula, a region three times the size of Israel, back to Egypt, in exchange for nothing more than peace with its neighbour.
*I use the term hesitantly, because they've only called themselves that since the 1960s, and before that it always - always - referred to Jews. The slogan "Free Palestine" was originally a Zionist one**
**While we're on the subject of "Free Palestine", let's talk about the gaslighting in that "From the river to the sea..." chant. Stop telling us that it just means you want Palestinians to be free. For one thing, we've all seen what Hamas's idea of freedom means over the past two decades. For another, we know that what it really means is a Palestine free of Jews. It may be ambiguous enough in English to fool the useful idiots in Western campuses and city centres, but the original Arabic phrase - "From the water to the water, Palestine shall be Arab" - leaves no room for misunderstanding.
SD on 9/10/2024 at 23:18
Quote Posted by Starker
Btw, bombing an ambulance is a crime even if it's used to transport an enemy combatant.
The Geneva Conventions are explicitly clear that ambulances being used for purposes outside their humanitarian function lose their legal protection. An ambulance transporting Hamas fighters is every bit as much a legitimate military target as a truck or armoured vehicle that does the same.
Starker on 9/10/2024 at 23:48
This is not true:
Quote:
(
https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/NSM20-TF-Report-_-Final.pdf)
Hospitals, ambulances, and other medical units, convoys, and transports (‘medical units') enjoy special protection under international humanitarian law.
Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes shall not be attacked, and must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their special protection only if they are currently being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy. Prior to attack, a warning must be issued setting a reasonable time-limit for the adversary to cease its use of the unit, and an attack can only take place after such warning remains unheeded.
Even if this special legal protection is lost, general rules of distinction, precautions, and proportionality continue to apply. These rules protect civilians and civilian objects (including medical equipment) in or near the medical unit.
Besides, an ambulance that is outside of a hospital is hardly out of place. An ambulance that is being used to transport a patient even less so.
Nicker on 10/10/2024 at 04:07
Quote:
A democratically elected government...
That's a stretch. Run by a convicted criminal who emasculated the courts to protect himself from prosecution and prison. Sound familiar?
Not to mention he believes in an invisible being who divinely pre-approves his atrocities. Kind of the point of this thread.
It's not about who's to blame, because that game goes back 5,000 years or more. It's about who will accept responsibility and with lying, deluded, criminal shits on both sides, unfortunately there are no adults in the room. Universal problem it seems.
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An ambulance transporting Hamas fighters is every bit as much a legitimate military target as a truck or armoured vehicle that does the same.
What the actual fuck? Are you saying that Likud bombs can tell the difference or are you saying you don't care?
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For another, we know that what it really means is a Palestine free of Jews.
But the ONE STATE SOLUTION has no such implications on the flip side. Got it.
Subjective Effect on 10/10/2024 at 06:25
These are the fevered frothings of haters, really.
Of course the BOMBS don't know who is in the ambulances. It's the military that know. And it doesn't matter if an ambulance is outside a hospital!
Is there a protection spell on hospitals that causes the ejection of Hamas militants from ambulances that get near? Ffs what is wrong with you people? It's like you haven't been paying attention.
This is Hamas.
Do you have any idea who these people are? Did you not see the videos from Oct 7th. Would you like me to link to videos of them executing people, throwing grenades into rooms with children in them? Do you blank this stuff out? It's not beyond them to use anything and say anything to play the victim. They are known to have used ambulances as troop and weapon transport, hospitals as launch sites and hostage holding. You should remember the IDF strike team that dressed as hospital staff to enter and kill some Hamas members. You guys were probably in the group that were appalled the IDF dressed as medical staff and not appalled at the reason they needed to do that.
SD on 10/10/2024 at 09:30
Quote Posted by Starker
This is not true
Er, even the source you've just cited says they lose their special protection if they are being used by the enemy outside their humanitarian function.
An ambulance is not a magic device that can shield terrorists using it from justice.
Starker on 10/10/2024 at 12:49
So there are reports of Hamas having used an ambulance as transport, therefore bomb all ambulances?
And again, no evidence whatsoever that the ambulance was used for combat purposes or that there was Hamas in it. Furthermore, there's video that shows there was a patient in it on a stretcher.
I mean, what a mighty convenient excuse. Hamas are said to have used hospitals, therefore bomb all hospitals. Likewise bomb all schools, all libraries, all archives, all museums, all bakeries, all convenience stores, all residential buildings, all mosques, all churches, all cemeteries, etc. You can always say later that there must have been Hamas inside it, at least at some point.
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Do you have any idea who these people are? Did you not see the videos from Oct 7th. Would you like me to link to videos of them executing people, throwing grenades into rooms with children in them? Do you blank this stuff out?
I fully condemn Hamas's actions. I have no problem saying they are complete monsters who committed war crimes against Israeli civilians.
Though I have likewise no problem seeing that mass killing of children is an atrocity. Blowing a bunch of children up with a bomb is no less evil in my eyes than blowing them up with a grenade.
