Israel/Gaza - Here we go again...

Not sure of the exact demographics, but if HAMAS was last voted in 18 years ago and you had to be 18 to vote, then anyone under 36 wasn't involved in that vote. So a big proportion.
HAMAS are evil, no doubt, but they are not everyone in Gaza.
Israel cannot kill every HAMAS operative without killing every Gazan as every time they kill a woman or child they recruit more for HAMAS.

https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-hezb ... aec124461b

Hezbollah hit by a wave of exploding pagers and blames Israel. At least 9 dead, thousands injured

It’s an axiom that not only modern warfare; but also modern terrorism, is highly dependent on communication!
So what are terrorists going to do in the future?
Land lines can be tapped! Cell phones can be tapped and traced! And now pagers can be rigged to explode on command!
Well, there’s always old school…carrier pigions?

Arol wrote:Well, there’s always old school…carrier pigions?

* Looks sideways at Dastardly, Muttley and their flying machines.

...could work...

Arol wrote:https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-hezbollah-israel-exploding-pagers-8893a09816410959b6fe94aec124461b

Hezbollah hit by a wave of exploding pagers and blames Israel. At least 9 dead, thousands injured

It’s an axiom that not only modern warfare; but also modern terrorism, is highly dependent on communication!
So what are terrorists going to do in the future?
Land lines can be tapped! Cell phones can be tapped and traced! And now pagers can be rigged to explode on command!
Well, there’s always old school…carrier pigions?

Hmmm, yes, assassination methods with no positive control of whether or not the person getting blown up is actually an intended target, this is very clean and ethical behaviour the israeli state is engaging in.

Arol, I am still waiting for that number of palestinian casualties you think is acceptable in return for removing HAMAS from the picture. Is it 41000 dead, nearly 100000 wounded and 1.9 million displaced? More? Less?

The E wrote:
Arol, I am still waiting for that number of palestinian casualties you think is acceptable in return for removing HAMAS from the picture. Is it 41000 dead, nearly 100000 wounded and 1.9 million displaced? More? Less?

Do you have any better ideas?

Dilandu wrote:Do you have any better ideas?

Do I have an idea that is better than laying waste to the ghaza strip?

Yes. It starts removing Netanjahu from office, a firm internationally backed guarantee for palestinian self-governance and a sanctions regime against Israel specifically targeted at israeli leadership and its military.

Now, same question to you, Dilandu: What are your thoughts on the number of acceptable civilian casualties in the process of removing Hamas as a factor?

The E wrote:
Do I have an idea that is better than laying waste to the ghaza strip?

Yes. It starts removing Netanjahu from office, a firm internationally backed guarantee for palestinian self-governance and a sanctions regime against Israel specifically targeted at israeli leadership and its military.

Now, same question to you, Dilandu: What are your thoughts on the number of acceptable civilian casualties in the process of removing Hamas as a factor?

I.e. your idea is basically that Palestine must be rewarded and Israel punished and left incapable of defending itself.

Dilandu wrote:I.e. your idea is basically that Palestine must be rewarded and Israel punished and left incapable of defending itself.

I do believe that genocide is unjustifiable and should be punished, yes.

The E wrote:

Dilandu wrote:I.e. your idea is basically that Palestine must be rewarded and Israel punished and left incapable of defending itself.

I do believe that genocide is unjustifiable and should be punished, yes.

What genocide? I consider it to be an abuse of language to call what is going on in Gaza a genocide*. It is true combat in Gaza has lead to thousands of civilian deaths. That is what happens when intense combat takes place in cities. IMHO, compared to other such incidents, the number of casualties in Gaza is relatively low (though comparison is difficult because I don't know what percentage of the population of those other cities were evacuated to the countryside).

*the only way it can be considered to be a genocide is to argue that there is no Palestine people, just a bunch of tribes that share a language.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:What genocide? I consider it to be an abuse of language to call what is going on in Gaza a genocide*.

Please define genocide.

While you do so, please also consider the terms of the Genocide Convention, an international treaty that Israel is party to.

It defines the following five acts that, when committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, constitute genocide:
1. Killing members of the group
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Israel, by my count, is guilty of at least the first three, and given the statements by Netanyahu I cited earlier in this thread, I am going to say that they also fulfill the "intent" requirement - that, to me, makes this whole thing a genocide on the palestinian people by the israeli government.

Now, one can certainly take issue with this definition of genocide - it was written explicitly so that none of the victors of WW2 could be accused of genocide for their actions in that war. It is, thusly, too limited (it excludes the erasure of cultural identities through education, or the forced displacement of a population, for example) - but it is useful.

It is true combat in Gaza has lead to thousands of civilian deaths. That is what happens when intense combat takes place in cities. IMHO, compared to other such incidents, the number of casualties in Gaza is relatively low (though comparison is difficult because I don't know what percentage of the population of those other cities were evacuated to the countryside).

So the only way to deal with Hamas was to turn Gaza into rubble? There was truly, absolutely, positively no other way to handle this situation?

As you might be able to infer, I do not believe that to be true - what I do believe is that the israeli leadership has invested far too much into Hamas as an internal threat to deal with it in any other way. What is happening right now is not a righteous action of retribution to deal with a crime, it is the culmination of a long project by successive generations of israeli leadership to marginalize non-jewish communities in Israel and to take ownership of territory Israel considers to belong to it.

*the only way it can be considered to be a genocide is to argue that there is no Palestine people, just a bunch of tribes that share a language.

Yeah, nah, that's not how that works.