As always, there's a lot you can say about the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. But one of the things you can say is this: After holding them prisoner for 11 months, Hamas decided last week to murder six of them in cold blood rather than take the chance they might be rescued.
Condemn Israel all you want. But either condemn Hamas too for this monstrous act or else forfeit your claim to be a decent human being.
Isn’t military service mandatory in Israel? Wouldn’t most Israeli “hostages” either be a former or current soldier if they’re 18 or older? I never really understand why that isn’t brought up more often. The whole country (minus children) is or was combatants.
The last thing defenders of the Palestinians should do is to try to elide the distinction between civilians and military. The fact that Israelis do military service before moving on to civilian careers does not make all Israelis legitimate targets. Similarly Israel gives numbers of terrorists killed that suggest they are counting every adult male killed. It is true that terrorists do not wear uniforms, so any adult male could be a terrorist. But obviously that doesn't mean they are. So it is probably a good thing that more attention is not given to the fact that most Israelis do military service.
Well like you said, if Israel is counting every adult male Palestinian as a terrorist, why shouldn't the fact that all Israeli adults are or have been soldiers not at least be mentioned? Is this like Michelle Obama saying when they go low we go high? To what end?
It would be better to call out the lie that every adult male that Israel kills is a terrorist. Three of them were escaped hostages trying to get back to Israel, to take a pretty clear example.
The problem with repeating this error in the other direction is that it serves to legitimize the Israeli claim, and it doesn't work. Because of the racist way that people view the conflict people are willing to count all Palestinians as combatants, they will not do the same with Israelis.
In general it is a bad idea to push a line of argument that is both wrong and counterproductive.
So transferring that reasoning to the US, a 95 year old WW2 veteran is fair game as a military target for a Japanese terrorist.
Do you realize how far you have to twist reality for your arguments to make sense?
About as far as counting every adult male Palestinian as a terrorist in order to lowball the number of civilians killed by Israel.
The worst thing that Hamas has done in its history was a serious of bombings during he Oslo period designed to get Netanyahu elected and to kill the peace process. I don't think it has been possible to morally support Hamas ever since. But what Drum's post misses, and he does this because he still has his kindergarten understanding of the conflict, is that Hamas actions now are done in the context of an Israel whose policies towards the Palestinians for more than a decade has been that Israel can sufficiently brutalize the Palestinians to the point that there is no blowback for Israel. And if this is true then the current situation is perfectly sustainable, and there is no reason to change. That is what the kindergarten version of the story counts as the peace that Hamas broke with the 10/7 attack, one in which Palestinians were continually brutalized but Israel did fine.
Israel could have had its hostages back months ago, but it would have to have agreed to stop slaughtering Palestinians. The Israeli army has not hidden the fact that at this point the slaughtering of Palestinians has no military value. But Netanyahu needs the slaughtering to continue for political reasons. and so it does.
If hostages are rescued alive, then Netanyahu gets to say that there is no need to negotiate and some pressure is off him to stop the slaughter of Palestinians. Using raids that get Israelis killed puts pressure on Netanyahu to end the slaughter. In that context it is surprising that this hasn't happened sooner. There was an earlier rescue of hostages, and it was used to argue that the slaughter of Palestinians could continue without abandoning the hostages. That seems like a joke now. Prior to 10/7 Gaza was being treated like an open air prison, fishermen were shot at if they tried to go where the fish were, peaceful protesters were killed by Israeli sharpshooters, the entire enclave lived under food insecurity, and Netanyahu could tell French Jews that Israel was perfectly safe, so if there was a slight uptick in anti-Semitic violence in France they should move to Israel where things were peaceful. 10/7 made that seem like a joke. And that seems to be the point of Hamas' strategy to make the idea that Israel can achieve peace through brutalization unsustainable. But, of course, to get that leasson you have to not ignore the brutalization of the Palestinians as Drum does for that most part. Palestinians being slaughtered is not unfortunate it is evil. Palestinians being kept on limited calories is not unfortunate it is evil. Palestinians being chased from their villages by settlers with the protection of the army is not unfortunate, it is evil. And that is what the kindergarten version of the situation misses.
There is the famous quote attributed to Stalin that one death is a tragedy a million deaths is a statistic. Drum is illustrating that point here. It is 10 deaths that are a tragedy, and it is, and 10s of thousands of deaths that are a statistic. The 10's of thousands of deaths should be treated like thousands of times the tragedy as the 10 deaths. That is not meant to make the 10 deaths not a tragedy, just to highlight had disgusting Drum's attempts to distract from the actual tragedy, millions of people kept stateless for decades, while they are herded into ghettos in the West Bank and cut off from normal life in Gaza. Thousands of civilians killed every few years as a means of pacifying the population, reporters killed when they report on the area, peaceful protesters arrested or shot from a distance. And now the horror currently in Gaza which could rise to a Pol Pot level of evil before it is done.
In that context it seems absurd to think that the thing worth getting upset about is that Hamas murdered its hostages rather than let their rescue be the excuse for continuing the slaughter of Palestinians.
Lon Becker, your comments always add great value to an often discouraging conversation. Thank you for taking the time to make them.
Pol Pot 1.5 to 2 million civilian deaths.
Gaza 15,000 to 20,000 civilian deaths.
Every death is a tragedy.
The comparison numerically is absurd.
Israel is currently putting 2 million people on repeated forced marches with limited access to food. For some reason you gave an estimate of the deaths that is about half of the lowest reasonable estimate. It involves taking the count of every body that made it to a hospital, assuming that adult males don't count and then loping off another 10 or 20 thousand people to get to the number you give. That is not something that should be done when you are suggesting that numbers are exaggerated.
Additionally Israel has destroyed most major buildings in Gaza, and it has made it dangerous to go through the rubble looking for bodies. So that count is almost certainly low. People with experience in these things put the likely figure closer to 100,000. That is still lower than Pol Pot, but not quite so ridiculous.
When you add to that that most of the remaining 2 million people are at serious risk, we have not even gotten to the fact that there is a polio outbreak, and very little drinkable water, and you add that Netanyahu seems to want to keep this going until he is no longer under threat of criminal prosecution, then the claim that this could wind up at the level of Pol Pot does not seem that unreasonable.
I understand why you want the comparison to be ridiculous, but given what Israel is doing in Gaza, it is not guaranteed that it will reach that level, but it certainly not ridiculous to think it could. That is the path things are on. And nobody seems to know how to get off it, or to the degree they do, nobody seems to want to take that path because it involves being highly critical of Israel, and we all know that is anti-Semitic.
Kevin, did you do a story about the twins murdered by in Israeli raid? "As a father was registering his twins' birth in Gaza, an airstrike killed the 3-day-olds and their mother at home." https://abcnews.go.com/International/father-gaza-twins-birth-gaza-airstrike-killed/story?id=112835680
I am sure with the almost 20,000 minors killed by the invasion, you coiuld find a compelling story to give balance.
He could, but he's clearly not interested in doing so and not interested in examining his own bias.
You mean a raid to kill terrorists hiding in residential areas that unintentionally kills civilians?
Why do you think that is equivalent to shooting hostages in the head with no military objective whatsoever?
40,000 deaths reported by Hamas, all causes
Only 60% verified
15,000 combatants killed
6,000 die in Gaza every year
Where do you get 20,000 minors killed by invasion?
After reading almost all of the comments, I cannot recall who asked if Hamas had admitted murdering the hostages, but in addition to previous reports that each had been shot in ghe head and up close - not likely in an escape attempt, given the tunnels - the following article is from the NBC site I happened to see next:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hamas-says-hostage-guards-gaza-are-operating-new-instructions-rcna169276
Can't begin to find the post to which I wanted to reply to!