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.
Don't think it's gonna work that way.
Why are you so focused on delegitimizing criticism of Israel because about 10 wackos don't also condemn Hamas?
It's pretty sad when my response to this is basically "OK, and who exactly are you talking to with that last sentence?"
Also can't help but notice that contrast between your tone here and your tone when talking about the thousands of innocents that Israel has slaughtered, murdered, and starved in cold blood. On top of denying that Israel's actions are genocidal or even genocide-adjacent, you consistently give the other side pretty short shrift. It's not a good look.
Ten wackos? Buddy, have a conversation with most leftists in the “from the river to the sea” crowd and you’ll have a hard time getting most of them to admit that Hamas is a murderous, bloody terrorist group.
Right. But out of the universe of Just Kevin’s Readership, there are only about 10 wackos who defend everything Hamas does. Everyone else reading this blog and commenting on it is part of one or more of the following groups: Israel Can Do Wrong, Hamas Is Uniquely Evil And Must Be Crushed By Any Means Necessary, I Don’t Care About Anyone In The Middle East (aka the Justin contingent), or Hamas Is Bad But Israel Is Also Doing Bad Stuff Too. None of those groups support Hamas killing people.
"Hamas Is Bad But Israel Is Also Doing Bad Stuff" pithily summarizes my position. I'm older than Kevin and both sides have been committing atrocities for as long as I can remember.
I'd change that slightly to "Hamas is Bad But the Netanyahu Government is Also Doing Bad Stuff." Many of us can distinguish between Judaism, Jewish people generally, the Israeli people, and the Israeli government. Those four things are not the same.
I'm also wondering where these Hamas defenders are. I'm certainly not seeing a lot of activity on the left defending Hamas's actions—there's really no question that what they are doing is evil and wrong. That doesn't excuse the Netanyahu government for committing genocidal acts.
I can recall atrocities by both sides going back over 60 years. It's not just the Netanyahu government; they're following long-established precedent.
When is the last time the Israelis murdered hostages?
"When is the last time the Israelis murdered hostages?"
December 15, 2013 perhaps.
December at the longest. That's when the IDF murderd three Israeli hostages.
Laugh. Love how you equate accidentally killing hostages you are trying to rescue because you thought they were Hamas with deliberate murder of hostages whose capture was a war crime and whose every minute in captivity was additional criminality.
Accidently? The IDF shot them while they were waving a white flag and shouting in Hebrew. They chased the third guy down and shot him in the head while he cried. Doesn't sound like an accident to me.
Ah... and the motive for deliberately killing escaped hostages would have been what, exactly?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/22/hamas-booby-traps-gaza/
In recent days, the IDF has reported that its soldiers have been hearing recordings of weeping and people speaking Hebrew — attempts, commanders believe, to trick the Israeli soldiers to search for hostages nearby. The IDF has not released those recordings.
Some analysts suggest that wariness of such traps might have been a factor in the IDF’s mistaken killing of three Israeli hostages in Gaza last week — that the troops were spooked and too fast to fire.
Murdering hostages is only one of a long list of atrocities.
Yes. But it is Hamas's most recent atrocity so getting attention right now.
Why are you assuming Kevin’s post is aimed at the commenters of this blog? I took it as he was talking to Hamas sympathizers in general. Not just people who read his blog, let alone just try r people that comment on it.
Citations not included.
It's war, it's horrible, and Hamas has not legitimacy, but Israel doesn't offer any ceasefire or sovereignty to the Palestinians, so...
By the way, 'from the river to the sea' is an Israeli slogan. That you're using it here shows that you're the bigot.
The history of the phrase is a little more complicated than that, I think.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea
So, you don’t even have an anecdote to back up your claim, much less data.
I condemn Hamas.
Israel was a stupid, racist, colonial mistake conceived in utter contempt for the Arab peoples of the region, and regarding which a path to a just and lasting peace has never existed. It should be unwound by evacuation of its non-Arab citizens to the West immediately.
There is no contradiction between those two statements.
In all seriousness what country(ies) would you propose take the population of Israel? Including the 60% of its population who are primarily of middle eastern or North African Jewish who fled their historic homelands?
Also where would you propose the European Jews have done at the end of the Second World War to address the centuries of discrimination and out right genocide they experienced?
Also would you argue that had the regions Arab population accepted the 1948 borders that they wouldn’t be in a much better and much more peaceful place today?
"Also would you argue that had the regions Arab population accepted the 1948 borders that they wouldn’t be in a much better and much more peaceful place today?"
They would probably be in about the same place. If Arabs hadn't started a war in 1948 the Israelis probably would have.
Hopefully the USA, as Jews have proven to be wonderful, productive neighbors here. I suppose we will have e to share them with Europe, etc, however.
What should have happened in the past was:
1: Britain and France should have gotten out of the Middle East as fast as administratively possible after WWI
2: America should have rescued as many Jews as possible during WWII
3: A chunk of Germany should have been given to Jews as reparations
In response to your points in reverse order
3) yes I can see Jews in 1945 wanting to share a border with the much more populous country that just tried to kill then all - in between a bunch of other counties that either actively participated in the holocaust or looked the other way and in the area of Russia and Poland that had their own long history of persecuting Jews. There was no way on about 50 levels that their was ever going to be a Jewish homeland in Europe post 1945.
2) anti semites in the state department (see Breckinridge Lomg) successfully blocked the US from filing its quota of visa for Jews fleeing Europe so there is no evidence that their were the political conditions to take more Jews during the war.
1) Britain and France primarily stayed in the Middle East to secure their main oil supply in cas ether was another war with German (and post the 1936 Arab revolt actively blocked Jewish emigration to Israel to shire up their access to that oil) so they were never going to leave after wWi and especially not after 1933.
Also if you think either the American or European right is going to allow several million Jews emigrate to their countries i have a bridge I would like to sell you.
Germany does not contain Jerusalem.
"...had the regions Arab population accepted the 1948 borders..."
"...had the region's Atab population accepted the colonization of their homeland..."
FIFY
Colonization requires a nation to be the colonizer.
Name the nation that colonized Israel.
Not a religion, not an ethnicity, a nation.
Ah. Then can't we say the same about the existence of Muslims in the region? Should they all be evacuated to Saudi Arabia?
And what about the Sephardic Jews, many of whom have no history in the West or Europe? Tell us you are an anti-Semite without saying you are an anti-Semite.
The Palestinians are more closely related genetically to the Biblical era tribes of the region than anyone on earth, including all but a few clans of Jews from the region, who are similarly related. By and large, the Muslim population of the modern Levant are descendants of converts, not invaders.
It's anecdotal, and therefore not conclusive, but I happen to know a number of people in the '"from the river to the sea" crowd' and none of them defend murdering hostages and the like. Some of them *do* defend armed resistance and even Hamas (in a general sense), but that does not mean every action thereof (just as there are those who do defend "Israel" [or many other states or organizations] while not defending every action the state takes).
Civilians killed during legitimate military actions are not the same as executing hostages. Yes, they are all equally dead, but the actions are from different moral universes.
We live in very different moral universes, particularly when the "legitimate military exercise" is dropping a blitz of bombs on a captive population less heavily armed than any random American paramilitary militia.
If you want to start grading different varieties of "intentionally killing innocent civilians" be my guest, but I don't make fine distinctions between war crimes.
They’re dropping bombs on an enemy military force that has embedded itself in a civilian population. Urban warfare is ugly, but that’s nothing new. Every military that’s ever conducted urban warfare, from the most noble to the most evil (you can decide where the US has fallen on that continuum over the decades) has produced similar civilian bloodshed. You can admit it’s horrible without pretending Israel is uniquely culpable.
A lot of times, when an army is defeated and can't stop an enemy army from romping through its territory and smashing what it will, that army will end the war by surrendering. cf. the CSA in 1865, Germany in 1945, and Japan some time later in 1945.
I find it puzzling that, in the present case, nobody pitches this as a viable option.
Note that in these cases the defeated army largely submits to whatever justice the victors care to dispense. The US executed something like 900 Japanese as war criminals.
Indiscriminate killing of civilians is not a legitimate military action, nor is the intentional starving of an entire people, nor is multiple decades of oppression and apartheid.
Sure, Hamas is really bad, but Israel has no legs to stand on.
Collective punishment is a war crime.
By "never again", they mean "never again to us, but we'll totally do it to other people we don't see as people."
The thing about the December 15 incident is that it demonstrates that the IDF is simply shooting at anything that moves in Gaza.
They shot three men who weren't trying to hurt them, who weren't armed, and who, if questioned even at shouting distance, could easily have identified themselves as Israeli hostages.
This tells us a lot about how the IDF is targeting the civilian population of Gaza in general.
I agree and disagree. Nearly all the student protests I've heard about fall into the category of "Israel brought this on themselves" and so any response by the Palestinians, no matter how ugly, is justified. So, we're not talking about just 10 wackos.
OTOH, the Israelis have lost it; their government is completely out of control, and AFAICT, the majority of Israelis don't care. They're out in force protesting now because of 6 murdered hostages, but there are what, 7000 *times* more dead Palestinians in Gaza, and I have to believe with the indiscriminate bombing we're seeing, that the vast majority of them are civilians.
So, I really want to see the administration (or the next) halt weapons deliveries to Israel until the bombing stops. Hell, I'd cut back until they're out of the west bank. But I also don't see any chance that Harris will intervene before the election: threatening Israel is electoral poison because it will look like she's running scared from some college students.
As far as the Israelis not caring about Palestinian deaths, well, I suspect that the horror of October 7 on top of decades of living in a garrison state forever is messing with their minds at this point. It is easy to urge restraint from a country thousands of miles away where we are unthreatened by existential threats to our existence.
But I suspect that under the same circumstances, Americans (and just about anyone else) would be driven to do some pretty horrific things. It's not like the Israelis are different types of human beings than we are. Our reaction to 911 showed a touch of that. So we should be a little more humble and a little less self-righteous, in my opinion.
Although in fairness, the Palestinians have been living under military rule since 1967, and Israel never stopped building new settlements in the West Bank since '67, driving West Bank Palestinians from their homes.
On the other hand, the Palestinian leadership started the Second Intifada to pressure Israel starting in 2000, using suicide bombing to kill Israeli civilians, and effectively politically destroying the only people willing to negotiate with them.
Both sides boost their own extremists in response to extremist behavior on the other side. Both sides think they'll win in the end. Both are wrong, I suspect.
I'd agree, except that the only existential threat (if there is one) to a Israel's existence is that brought on by Israel itself.
That's like saying that Al Qaeda was an existential threat to the USA. It wasn't.
The claim that Israel faces no existential threat is difficult to square with the fact that their neighbors have, within living memory, made no less than three credible attempts to wipe Israel from the map and drive its citizens into the sea.
It's a different reality now than it was then.
I grew up in a large Irish Catholic family and went to a college in the late 60s:early 70s with a lot of other Irish Catholic students. I was a big supporter of ending the discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland and
I understood why many had become terrorists — as they say one person‘s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. However, unlike some of my family members and Irish friends, I was adamantly opposed to terrorism and violence by either side and was beyond appalled that some of them donated to the IRA. As another saying goes an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.
There were a lot of heated arguments about that. I always pointed out that both Ghandi and MLK had proved the power of peaceful resistance — a strategy that gives your side the moral high ground and is more likely to lead to a peaceful solution. We had grown up watching the power of the civil rights movement’s peaceful resistance and were seeing the fruits of that as LBJ got the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act passed.
It infuriates me that even in our elite media the Israeli Palestine crisis is framed so simplisticly (simple mindedly) as one side good the other bad, as white hard and black hats. As with the Northern Ireland situation my sympathies lie more with the underdog not the side with all the power but I condemn violence by either side. How hard is that?
You are, of course, correct. Hamas is no shit Evil and has been doing Evil things worthy of the most strenuous condemnation for quite some time now.
But people have a way of being able to rationalize just about anything, don't they?
So why does Hamas hold "hostages" and Israel hold "prisoners"?
Because the hostages are civilians who are captured for political leverage, and the prisoners are criminals who are captured to stop them from committing crimes.
The prisoners are anyone who Israel deems should be a prisoners regardless of age, gender, or actual actions, which is why such a large number of them are minors.
In this conflict you have a vicious terrorist organization that doesn't care about human lives on one side, and a vicious terrorist government that doesn't care about human lives, with the full support of the USA, on the other.
The only difference between Hamas and and the Bibi led Israeli government is the size of their budgets and military capabilities. Morally the two are the same.
> which is why such a large number of them are minors.
True. Also because Hamas is training and employing minors as terrorists.
> In this conflict you have a vicious terrorist organization that doesn't care about human lives on one side, and a vicious terrorist government that doesn't care about human lives, with the full support of the USA, on the other.
I agree.
> The only difference between Hamas and and the Bibi led Israeli government is the size of their budgets and military capabilities.
I disagree. As loathsome as the Israeli government is, they were willing to give Gaza a chance at self-governance, which turned out to be an opportunity to create a terrorist haven. If Hamas wanted peace, they could have it.
"they were willing to give Gaza a chance at self-governance"
I mean, sorta. It's not like "Gaza" is a country, or the people who live there are citizens of a country; nor does Gaza have a currency, control over its borders, an airport, any say over whether or not Israeli forces can enter Gaza, etc.
I'll definitely admit that I am not particularly knowledgeable about Israel, Palestine, or the people living there, but I'll also hazard that if you squint at the conflict, it looks less like a conflict between two nations and more like a civil war within the borders of one nation that, for whatever reason, likes to think think that areas it controls are not part of itself.
Now do Bibi propping up Hamas for years to thwart a 2 state oucome
https://theweek.com/politics/why-israels-netanyahu-encouraged-suitcases-of-cash-for-hamas
Ahh, yes, the 'we can hold these children in detention permanently without proving they've ever been child soldiers because child soldiers exist' excuse.
Gross.
As loathsome as the Israeli government is, they were willing to give Gaza a chance at self-governance
How magnanimous of the illegally occupying colonial power to offer "self-governance" to Palestinians!
They don't want "self-governance." They want the illegal occupying power to quit their lands. They. Want. Independence.
And rightly so.
Of course this is a lie.
The minors Israel holds are all old enough to commit crimes, including murder and are accused or convicted of such crimes.
Hamas, on the other hand, is holding infants hostage.
You, of course, are despicable anti-Semitic scum.
Just last week read an account of a Gazan father who was coming to the hospital to great his wife and newborn twins only to find them all dead from an Israeli bombing of the hospital. Not the same? An estimated 20,000 minors killed by Israel?
Not sure how anyone can consider the residents of Gaza anything other than hostages or prisoners given how policed their border is. I don't think South Africa exerted as much control within the bantustans.
" . . . and the prisoners are criminals who are captured to stop them from committing crimes."
And you know this . . . how?
The architects of October 7 were all prisoners in Israeli jails who were exchanged for hostages. Sin war was in jail for murdering Palestinians. Look it up.
so, precrime detention?
So you're saying that the soldiers Hamas holds are hostages, too?
If they are criminals, they should be charged, arraigned and allowed legal representation. Several thousand, however, are being held without charges and incommunicado in indefinite detention.
Aside from the ridiculous "pre-crime detention" aspect of this, there are mountains of well documented cases of innocent civilians being captured, detained and abused. Many of them released after months of horrific treatment. Many it seems are targetted because of their medical work. This is just one example: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-doctor-tortured-lancet
I condemn them all. It’s like watching a gang war where all sides are guilty of the most awful things. And even the so called innocent people aren’t all that innocent. Likewise I condemn their enablers here in the USA. From genocide Joe to these various groups protesting and fighting. They would drag the rest of us all down and into their religious war. Fuck off.
Ahh yea, blaming Joe for (checks your notes) making sure third parties don't kill even more Israelis and Palestinians.
What difference does it make which side I condemn there? It's going to go on forever the way it has for the past 75 years. I condemn the politicians and pundits that fail persistently to see there's no good outcome in store for either side, and there never will be. Their inability to explain honestly what the US is doing there, and describe a path to ending its involvement is what's really unforgivable.
This began in 1917, not 1948.
Even earlier. The Zionist movement really got going around 1897, and by 1917 there were 10s of thousands of Zionists, mostly from Russia, in what had become the Palestine Mandate. And they were already feuding with the local population.
I agree that the Zionist movement began as you said, but before Lord Balfour declared a separate war on Palestine within the broader WWI, there was no casus belli. While the pre-WWI migration of Jews to Palestine was problematic, it was on the level of our “border crisis” today, not an act of war.
Go back even further to the 7th century when Muslim invaders conquered the region. They began building Mosques on top of Jewish holy sites and implementing a host of legal restrictions on the rights of Jews.
This is an ancient conflict, which is why there is so much bad blood.
What does it matter if you condemn good or evil?
Any government who bombs hospitals and schools forfeits any right to complain about atrocities. If you want to debate over whose atrocities are worse, that's a pointless exercise.
Yeah, Hamas is horrible now let's hear the condemnation of Israeli torture & rape...
‘Everything is legitimate’: Israeli leaders defend soldiers accused of rape
Israeli society is divided over the arrest of 10 soldiers for the brutal gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner caught on video.
However, for some, including the country’s far-right finance minister, the outrage has centred on the “crime” of recording the video, rather than the alleged rape itself.
Taking to X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday night, Bezalel Smotrich demanded “an immediate criminal investigation to locate the leakers of the trending video that was intended to harm the reservists and that caused tremendous damage to Israel in the world and to exhaust the full severity of the law against them”.
Others, including the hard right and ultranationalist politicians, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, within Israel, have argued that any action – even gang rape – is permissible if it is undertaken for the security of the state.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/9/everything-is-legitimate-israeli-leaders-defend-soldiers-accused-of-rape
Agree with you.
The woman "caught" throwing stones at IDF "soldiers" gets seventeen years as a prisoner in Israeli jails.
This topic is a bad look for our blogger.
Has the air of those grimace worthy 'but what about the black people killing each other in (insert large city)!?!?!?!' responses.
This. I think Hamas is horrible and deserves to be wiped out, but not at the expense of killing or displacing everyone in Gaza, which appears to be Israel’s ultimate goal.
But Kevin really does sound right now like all the Blue or All Lives Matter crowd when someone complains about an unarmed black person being shot by police and then saying “yeah but blacks kill each other all the time, so?” It really is a bad look for him to be saying “well even though thousands of Gazans have been killed, the elected-18-years-ago government of Gaza killed half a dozen hostages, so they’re obviously the worst.” When you find yourself ranking atrocities, you might be The Asshole who needs a time out on the topic.
It is rare that (at least some of) the comments are more insightful than the original post. The extent of wrongness and outright evil on both sides of this feud is astonishing. I don't know much about the recent protests, but it is good to hear voices apparently saying "Enough of this bullshit!"
It is like Moses coming down from the mountain with "the" Ten Commandments and finding the Jews worshipping a Golden Calf. Hmmmm.
After doing its "best" to sabotage negotiations and plans to end the war and free the hostages, Israel calls foul when some of them are finally killed.
After killing 40,000 civilians in Gaza, I should embrace a false equivalence involving 6 Israeli civilians? Let's see. That makes one Israeli life equal to 6,667 Palestinan lives.
Because I won't say the words Kevin wants to hear, he no longer considers me a decent human being. Tough darts, I say.
👍👍👍
Well said.
Each one of those 40,000 dead civilians has a father, mother, son, daughter, brother or sister who will be rededicated to the destruction of Israel - swelling the ranks of Palestinians sworn to that cause.
The IDF murdered 7 World Central Kitchen aid workers, one of whom was an American citizen, on 1 April. Some survivors of the first strike boarded the second car, which was minutes later hit by a second missile. Some survivors of the second strike boarded the third car, which was in turn struck by a third missile.
This was deliberate, cold-blooded murder sanctioned at the highest level, even if the murderers were button pushers sitting in office chairs.
Let's not forget abou this incident:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/10/body-of-6-year-old-killed-in-deliberate-israeli-fire-found-after-12-days
At a minimum, Kevin deserves a bird salute for this post. He's turning into a bigger and bigger ahole every day....
The "dex"?
There is indeed a long list of IDF atrocities. And don't forget all those assholes in the Settler Movement.
Exactly.
The forfeiting of humanity can be ascertained with the comparison of the material support Americans provide to one side of the conflict between the Palestinians and the colonizers who occupy Palestine. Americans had nothing to do with the killing of the six prisoners taken during the Al Aqsa Flood breakout retaliation in defiance of Israeli oppression, with the exception one of the prisoners taken was an American participating in the farce Israel is a land provided by some omnipotent deity for those who can meet the requirement to identify as Jews. Americans provide almost all the weapons and the finances used by Israelis to wage a war of terror against the Palestinians. Palestinians whose land was taken away from them by a Western controlled 'rules based order' to right some horrible inhumane crime committed against the Jews of Europe. The foreclosure against the humanity of Palestinians goes back to at least 1947.
What is the "the Al Aqsa Flood breakout retaliation in defiance of Israeli oppression"? Is that the October 7th massacres?
The breakout retaliation in defiance of Israeli oppression of Palestinians was mimicry of a similar action taken by the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto against the Nazis in the 1940's.
Kevin knows his holiday click bait! 😝
Hamas is exactly who we thought they were, so I find it implausible that Bibi didn't know this was eventually coming. I think most Israelis can now see that Bibi sees the hostages as pawns that he can throw away for what he believes is the greater cause: redeeming himself by eliminating Hamas.
This
Many of those who planned and perpetrated the Oct 7 pogrom, including Yahya Sinwar, were released in prior exchanges of Palestinian terrorists for Israeli hostages.
At what point does Israel recognize that these exchanges just enable the murder and kidnapping of more Israelis?
The right thing to do is to refuse exchanges ACD destroy Hamas at all costs. Make sure that the next time someone suggested a plan like Oct 7 his own compatriots take him outside and shoot him like a mad dog.
You apparently haven’t noticed that the Israeli government has for years been, not taking ‘an eye for an eye’ , but killing ten or twenty or more Palestinians for every Israeli killed. Has that brought peace?
It's actually :asymmetric destruction," in their terms. Their policy of Dahiya, like Putin's tactic of targeting residential buildings, schools, & hospitals, , calls for the destruction of civilian infrastructure.
The six hostages died to keep Netanyahu in power and out of jail for a while longer. I wonder how many lives Trump would be willing to sacrifice to hang onto power and stay out of jail?
Every single one of his supporters if it came to it. Never mind the lives of everyone who doesn't support him.
At least two of his fans have died violently… that one shot inside the Capitol and the other at his assassination attempt. Gods punishment, I suppose.
At least one of the officers defending the Capitol, Brian Sicknick, was a trump supporter. He died the day after he was attacked. It should also be mentioned that he was - unlike trump - well-respected and courteous to everyone.
I’m old enough to know not to venture into this topic, but I can’t help noting the irony that the same issue that is bugging KD about the Afghanistan withdrawal (it’s easy to demagogue) is one he is happy, apparently, to join in demagoguing in this case.
In other words, specifically because the Afghanistan withdrawal produced bad headlines for a very brief period despite, in the longer term, looking very different, it was easily demagogued. The people complaining about the “chaotic” withdrawal have not been forced to answer whether their plan would be to stay in Afghanistan for another 20 years.
Similarly, what Hamas did is surely barbaric, but, based on the admittedly scattershot reading I have done, far more than 6 Palestinians have died in recent years from explicit Israeli policies such as not allowing ambulances to travel freely into the territories. But of course those deaths don’t cause big headlines, nor do they dominate the “news cycle”, because they happen more irregularly and not all on the same day at the same time.
And now I go back to my regularly scheduled ignorance of the whole thing.
I have always believed the Palestinians are the worst-led people in the world, though I’m also open to the idea that the Israeli government has done what it can to make it that way.
When hostage rescuers screw up in a way that ends up with the hostages getting killed then it is obvious that they didn’t do their job. Sometimes it is inevitable but it I’d certainly worth looking into. The US definitely messed up the Waco operation that lead to countless victims and the city of Philadelphia in fricking bombing one of its own city blocks to deal with Africa was a colossal disaster. I do not give the IDF any benefit if the doubt here. Two things can be true here, Hamas committed and evil act and the IDF botched the rescue operation which perhaps should not have been attempted.
The victims weren't countless. We know exactly how many there were.
"When hostage rescuers screw up in a way that ends up with the hostages getting killed then it is obvious that they didn’t do their job."
Sure. No matter how difficult, no matter how bad the odds, no matter how many extremely difficult things had to be accomplished to even know where the hostages were, not bringing them back is a failure.
But in this case, Hamas knew the IDF was coming, and chose to murder the hostages rather than leave them. So no, it is not Waco or Philadelphia. Not even close.
This is a doctor trying valiantly to save a patient, but the patient succumbs to her wounds. You can say the doctor didn't do his job, yeah.
I get that analogies are never perfect but in your situation the patient was going to die anyways. In Gaza, the hostages would be alive if not for the botch up intervention. I think Waco is closer than you realize in that Koresh ordered the burning and sacrifice of his young victims who ultimately, like Hamas, is responsible.
Very true.
Here are some facts. I can provide sources if desired, but they are pretty easy to verify. You can do what you want with the facts, but ad hominem attacks and hand waving will not make them any less true.
The population of Gaza has increased 750% since 1950.
The birth rate in Gaza is 38th in the world.
The death rate is 6th lowest in the world.
40,000 civilians were not killed by Israel. You may want to read more carefully before you post.
According to Hamas, there have been 40,000 Palestinians deaths since October 7. About 10% of that number is attributed to Google forms filled out online. About 30% is from “reliable media sources”. Hamas never says what those media sources are.
Hamas does not list cause of death. About 6,000 Gazans die every year from causes that are not Israeli attacks.
Hamas does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. A low estimate is 10,000 combatants.
So the highest number of civilians killed by Israel is 24,000. The lowest is 8,000.
Every year, 57,000 babies are born in Gaza.
The Palestinians that you say Israel is trying to destroy as a people are the exact same people that are citizens in Israel, members of Parliament, and members of the military. Exactly the same ethnically, racially, and every other way. The only difference is where they live.
If you want to call that situation genocide, go for it.
Oh, and the reason Israel is bombing schools and hospitals is because Hamas is basing operations in schools and hospitals. That has been clear for decades.
The WCK bombing was at night. There were gunmen at the warehouse where the convoy started, and a soldier looking at grainy drone footage mistakenly thought that they got in the cars. Once that mistake was made, there is every reason to keep shooting at them as they switch cars. Israel admitted the mistake and apologized. If you want to assume that Israel is so perfect that they never make mistakes in a chaotic war environment, go for it.
Your words are unimportant, and I do not hear them.
Typical. Don’t want to listen to any facts.
Skipped over all your math proving that genocide isn’t happening because honestly, if you’re doing math to justify killing, you’re probably a sick fuck in many other ways.
But.
If someone murders my relative, and another 2 of my relatives give birth the same year, I don’t say “oh well, the family is still growing, so that murder didn’t matter at all.” Cause, you know, the individual that got murdered still had value in and of himself, even if my relatives have hundreds of kids to try to replace him.
Conducting urban warfare with a historically low civilian to combatant death rate is not genocide. It’s ugly and tragic but not genocide.
Evidence for ‘a historically low civilian to combatant death rate’ needed.
Here you go.
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286
John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point; served for 25 years as an infantry soldier and two tours in Iraq.
He's written a lot about this, this link is one of the earlier ones. He has been to Gaza several times.
From the link, using March figures, 31,000 deaths, before the UN pointed out the flaws in the Hamas numbers, and assuming every death in Gaza is Israel's fault.
"That would mean some 18,000 civilians have died in Gaza, a ratio of roughly 1 combatant to 1.5 civilians. Given Hamas' likely inflation of the death count, the real figure could be closer to 1 to 1. Either way, the number would be historically low for modern urban warfare.
The UN, EU and other sources estimate that civilians usually account for 80 percent to 90 percent of casualties, or a 1:9 ratio, in modern war (though this does mix all types of wars). In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a battle supervised by the U.S. that used the world's most powerful airpower resources, some 10,000 civilians were killed compared to roughly 4,000 ISIS terrorists."
There are attempts on Reddit to rebut this, but they don't really make a dent.
Spencer himself admits that be has no clue how many peole have died in Gaza nor how many of them are Hamas. Of coorse, no one knows those numbers so Spencer's just BSing. Beyond that, the 80-90% of deaths being civilians has been widely disupited. See here for example:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240542361_Lives_and_Statistics_Are_90_of_War_Victims_Civilians
Congrats, you found the reddit thread attempting to debug this. Yes, one paper from 2010 saying "There is persuasive evidence that certain wars have had civilian death tolls far lower than 90%. " Yet lots of other reputable sources say it is accurate.
For the sake of argument, let's say it is not 90%. What number does your expert say it should be? 75%? That is still 3:1. Unless you can give a number, you can't contradict the point that it is much more than Israel's 1.5:1
Sorry, when a random guy on the internet makes a guess with no sources, it is Being. When a world expert with decades of experience is making a professional estimate, it is a reasonable starting point.
And if you want to say nobody knows, then you have no evidence that Israel killed anyone, which is absurd The numbers I gave are reasonable.
1) Nope, didn't rely on reddit. But nice try a-hole.
2) Again, Spencer discredits himself. He admits he doesn't know. He's just making guesses. They’re not informed guesses at all. He's making the guesses that give Israel the biggest benefit of the doubt possible. Which is what he wants to do. He’s no expert. He’s a liar and a moron.
3) Who says "Israel's number" is 1.5-1? Again, you’re relying on Jogn Spencer for that. Someone with zero credibility. BTW, here's an article from the BBC talking about the difficulty of distinguishing between civilians and combatants. And about how Israel deliberately inflates the number of combatants:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68387864
You would think your so-called expert would be aware of things like this. And might want to take that into account in hos numebrs. But he either isn't or is deliberately misleading people. Or both.
4) “And if you want to say nobody knows, then you have no evidence that Israel killed anyone, which is absurd”
Oh dear lord. You may have made the dumbest comment in the history of the internet. So congrats on that.
5) I’m going to be 100% honest with you. Which other people should do as well. You’ve made a lot of comments on this thread. Not one has added value. Instead, you’ve engaged in lies and propaganda. You’re an objectively horrible human being. Go the fuck away....
BTW, John Spencer regularly writes articles with Arsen Ostrovsky, a far-right wing "human rights" lawyer who compared Palestinians to cockroaches. Even Twitter/X was forced to note similarities to Nazi propaganda.
https://www.cjpme.org/pr_2023_10_16
The fact that Spencer collaborates Ostrovsky says a lot. And it doesn't say anything good. As I've already noted, Spencer is no expert. He's a liar and a propagandist.
So again with the ad hominem.
When you resort to that, you have proven you lost the argument.
"This world expert on urban and subterranean combat as West Point with 25 years of experience has zero credibility"
says a random guy posting on the internet.
Read that last sentence again and think about it hard.
I added a bunch of facts which nobody, including you, has even attempted to rebut, and nobody has addressed the consequences of. There is a reason nobody has rebutted them.
So show me a lie I told.
Tell me a fact I gave that is wrong.
Try to do it without ad hominem attacks.
Try to use actual facts and sources rather than just saying my sources are unreliable for no visible reason.
“In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a battle supervised by the U.S. that used the world's most powerful airpower resources, some 10,000 civilians were killed compared to roughly 4,000 ISIS terrorists.“
That’s barely more than 1:1, nothing at all like the bizarrely evil 9:1 you’re citing as “ good.”
Israel’s far over that by any standard. There is no possible way anything like 18,000 of the dead in Gaza are armed terrorists. Too many women, children, aid workers, journalists, and so on are documented as killed. And of course there’s the thousands of maimed civilians you won’t talk about to add on to that.
I feel sad for you and your tiny soul.
Barely more than 1:1? Are you kidding? That’s 2.5:1.
I'll lay out the math for you. It is civilian to combatant ratio, which means you divide the civilian number by the combatant number.
10,000 / 4000 = 2.5
Please reread what I wrote.
I never said that 9:1 was good. You made that up.
If you can provide the documentation you say exists to prove your point, I will be happy to look at it. If it comes from a source other than Hamas, a terrorist organization known for lying about things like this, I may change my mind.
If you can't actually find any documentation, might you change your mind? Really, will you acknowledge that if someone provided sufficient evidence, you would change your mind?
I did not mention the tens of thousands of injured civilians because I was talking about genocide. Why do you assume I would refuse to talk about it?
So what you are saying is you didn't actually read it.
What is clear is you can't rebut any of the facts, and you can't make the argument that it is actually a genocide, given the facts, so you just hand-wave about an individual murder that has nothing to do with genocide.
16,000 civilians dead in a war is a tragedy. It is not a genocide, at least not given the facts of this situation.
If you had read what I actually said, and understood it, you would know that I never justified any killing. I explained how the 40,000 civilians killed is utterly misinformed, and that the basic definition of genocide excludes what is happening in Gaza.
Hand waving. Check,
Ad hominem attack. Check.
Actually addressing the facts and points made - still waiting.
Your hair splitting, "Oh, it's only 8,000 civilians dead." isn't as persuasive as you think.
You don’t think 8k deaths is an acceptable number consider the terror attack Hamas committed and the fact that they do their best to use human shields?
It’s unacceptable.
Parsing the number of babies killed is just embarrassingly evil.
The only evil ones in this conflict are Hamas.
So what IS an acceptable number? If you say zero there’s no sense in continuing a conversation that deals with the real world. That’s just saying all war is unacceptable. Ok, sure, philosophically that’s a defensible position, but it’s useless in a discussion where war actually happens.
I'm not trying to be persuasive. I am pointing out facts and drawing the unavoidable conclusion.
The number posted was wrong. I corrected it.
Every death is a tragedy.The exact number doesn't matter. But it is unambiguously not genocide, given the facts presented.
Civilians die in every war. It's unavoidable. What makes it a war crime (yes, war crime according to the Geneva conventions), is the indiscriminate nature of the Israeli attitude toward civilian casualties. They're not making even the most minimal effort to avoid civilian casualties. Deliberately targeting hospitals and schools is beyond the pale, and is definitely a war crime, notwithstanding any Hamas militants who may be hiding there.
War crimes. People have been hanged for less.
As mentioned below, and above, targeting hospitals and schools is not a war crime when the enemy unambiguously bases their military forces in those places.
"Not making even the most minimal effort to avoid civilian casualties"
What, exactly, do you base this comment on? What credentials do you have to evaluate this? Have you been to Gaza? Have you studied similar urban and subterranean conflicts? Or is that your "gut feel" from watching the news?
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286
John Spencer chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point; served for 25 years as an infantry soldier and two tours in Iraq.
" In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I've never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy's civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Please argue the facts. I understand this is not what you have been led to believe, or perhaps what you want to believe. But it is reality.
@Steve C, I appreciate your efforts in laying this all out. I very much enjoy seeing the usual suspects confronted with facts that refute their wild claims.
Netanyahu, in May, gave the number as 30,000 killed, 16,000 of which were civilians. The number has certainly grown since then. Gazans put the total number closer to 40,000, but the difference really doesn't matter. It's a lot. More than half of the civilian casualties are children.
As for hospitals and schools, consider this scenario in your own community: Suppose a criminal group of some kind, fresh off a killing spree, has holed up in the basement of a hospital or school. Under what circumstances would it be acceptable to bomb the hospital or school to get the criminals? I'm not going to wait for an answer because you'd never, ever consider doing that. The lives of the people in the hospital or school are more valuable than getting the criminals. So if you consider the Israeli actions acceptable, then it must mean that the lives of Gazans have little value. I can see why this might be true inasmuch as the number killed is less than the babies being born.
Bad analogy.
Suppose a criminal group has been shooting at your house, and at your kids, for years. They are shooting from a hospital next door. Last month they broke through your fence and killed a couple of your kids.
How many of your kids have to die before you start shooting back at the criminals in the hospital? Does it mean the lives of the patients have little value? You don't aim for the patients, but if a criminal is standing behind a patient and is firing at your children, do you just let them?
That's a much better analogy to the reality. Still crappy, but it gets the most critical points that you ignored.
I don't shoot back. I call the police, who will take measures to address the situation. That would be the rational answer. Destroying the hospital and killing everyone in it is not the rational answer.
If a criminal is standing behind a patient, do you just shoot the patient to resolve the situation? That's in essence, what they've done.
As I said, crappy analogy. Who is the police in the real world? Who, exactly, does Israel call when Gaza fires tens of thousands of rockets at Israel and invades?
What is the rational answer in the real world? Just let Hamas keep operating, and keep fighting, as long as they are based in hospitals and schools? That is telling Israel to commit suicide.
And who are the police who can arrest Hamas terrorists operating or if a hospital without bombing the hospital?
Is there a substantiated claim that schools or hospitals were the source of firing at Israelis? Or of any other kinetic military action?
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240318-israel-reports-gun-battles-at-key-gaza-hospital
From 2014, pretty undeniable that Hamas was doing it.
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/unrwa-condemns-placement-rockets-second-time-one-its-schools
https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/hamas_human_shields.pdf
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/hamas-admits-rockets-were-fired-at-israel-from-gaza-neighbourhoods-1.2764125
Do you need evidence that they have *stopped* doing it?
There are hundreds of miles of tunnels under Gaza. There are no Hamas-provided bomb shelters that I have ever heard of.
More recent, but IDF is the source. Not sure who else would have data right now.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/gaza-hospital-boss-admits-hes-a-hamas-commander-used-medical-facility-as-terror-base/
archived nytimes article, no evidence of firing, just military command and hostage holding, but US intelligence.
https://archive.ph/NHiVp
video of tunnel inside school
https://www.reddit.com/r/2ndYomKippurWar/comments/1d4r1jj/tunnel_inside_a_school_that_was_destroyed_in_the/?share_id=K36hQayR83SGrW1qOBB_p&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1
So I do not have ironclad evidence that Hamas is doing it now outside of the IDF. Lots of evidence from IDF, but if you want to believe Hamas over Israel, I can't stop you.
How many kids? ALL OF THE KIDS! If you did that, here in America, you’d almost certainly be guilty of manslaughter. You were at least reckless. It’s imperfect self defense at best. And in a non-
If you did what Israel is doing and just dropped a bomb certain to kill innocent and guilty alike, you’d have intentionally killed them. You’re getting the chair.
I feel sad for you.
"You don't aim for the patients, but if a criminal is standing behind a patient and is firing at your children, do you just let them?" The short answer is yes. In those sorts of circumstances you pull back, take cover, and plan an operation that will rescue the patient, not kill him.
You are missing the point entirely.
The point here is not rescue the patient, but kill the terrorist that is actively trying to kill you and your children. The terrorist that is putting the patient's life in danger by using them as a shield.
Your choices are:
1) Kill the terrorist, and do your best to not kill the patient.
2) Do nothing and let the terrorist continue to kill your children
Israel will not do option 2.
Your proposal looks like option 1, but is actually option 2. Because you require that they come up with a perfect plan. It is impossible to conceive, never mind execute, so it can never happen.
if it doesn't have to be perfect, that means as long as Israel does their best with the time and resources available, it is acceptable. And that is exactly what Israel is doing. But that is not good enough for you.
Ahh, yes, the, 'millions are ethnically cleansed doesn't make them civilians' lie.
When someone puts forward such a ridiculously one-sided, blinkered view of Israel's actions, they obviously are not worth talking to. (And no, this is not in any respect a suggestion that Hamas is anything other than pure evil - but the way you completely disregard Israel's sins is, well, appalling.)
Which sins exactly? Please see my other comments on the actual number of *civilian* deaths caused by Israel, and Israel's exceptional care to reduce civilian casualties. These are sourced claims, not just my impression.
You mean your lies, your propoganda? Or John Spencer's? Though I guess there's no differnce between the two.
If you have to ask, you already obviously don't give a fuck. Fuck off and die, asshole
Why would you cite population growth of an impoverished area as proof they're not being impoverished?
Why would you assume I said anything about impoverishment? That is not even remotely mentioned in my post.
Can you refute my facts?
Do you claim Israel is committing genocide given those facts?
Kevin Kevin Kevin ... Tell me why, exactly, you believe it was Hamas wot killed those hostages?
I'd assume because Hamas said they did.
Good enough for me. My automatic assumption when any IDF-associated person moves their lips is that they are lying.
That's... a good point. Now that I've come back, I don't see any claims from Hamas to their deaths.
Maybe you should start to recognize that one side in this conflict is pure evil. The other has its faults, but it’s generally respects life and human rights.
With notable, significant exceptions.
Agreed.
Which side is which, Sir Trollington?
PUREEVIL!!!
PPPUUURRREEEEVVVILLLLL!!!!
Such a stupid person.
You really are. I hope no one teases you , though.
This seems like a strawman
Did it take a lot of labor to craft it on this national holiday?
Straw man? Why don’t you go interview some of those “from the River to the sea” protestors.
Another eye for another eye, until everyone is blind.
I know I keep repeating myself, but apparently Mr. Drum has decided to triple down on his bad attitude of the last few weeks and can no longer view this situation objectively. He was, within recent memory, not an embarrassment of a human being, so RIP to that guy.
Who verified "which" side killed them? Is this Bibi's version? UN's? Hamas?
ie did Hamas execute them before an inevitable rescue
or were they killed in a gunfire exchange during an attempted rescue?
just asking
Condemn [fill in the blank] all you want. But either condemn [fill in the blank] too or else forfeit your claim to be a decent human being.
Define "decent human being." Never mind, I'll do it.
A decent human being adheres to the moral "treat others the way you would want to be treated if the shoe was on the other foot" principle in every context. Netanyahu won't play by that rule. Neither will Hamas. However it happened, Israeli voters elected an authoritarian. All of that is bad. Bad is bad. Claiming virtue because "they" are better than "we" are at being bad is sophistry.
The Hebrew prophets, in lieu of promoting being bad, promoted being good. So did the Prophet Muhammed. So did Jesus. That's a clue. Here's how I interpret that clue. Do as you're told.
Should we condemn America for the monstrous act of imprisoning people at Guantanamo Bay in horrible conditions for 20 years, without ever bringing them to trial? Anyone who refuses has perhaps forfeited their claim to be a decent human being.
Yes, we should condemn the US for the monstrous act of imprisoning people at Guantanamo Bay in horrible conditions for 20 years, without ever bringing them to trial? Repeatedly, and loudly.
There are a lot of good points made in this ever expanding post...as there always are with anything involving Israel...but some odd added points for consideration:
1. Everybody keeps calling for a ceasefire...what is this all about? There have been dozens of cease fires, {there was a ceasefire in effect on October 7}, why is no one calling for Peace?
To answer my own question...Peace would involve actual trade offs, decisions about the future...rights surrendered, land transferred, a movement to the future as opposed to the rumination endlessly on the Past.
2. There are massive peace rallies all across Israel....and not a one in Gaza or Lebanon. (interestingly, Hassan Nasrallah.is pretty reasonable in his efforts to reign in rocket fire into Israel, not enough for my liking...but he is playing this well, in almost a statesman like way).
So why isn't there a peace grouping, a movement for peace, in Gaza?
To again answer my question...they don't want one except on their terms.
So the war continues and no one should be surprised. (It is interesting how helpless many posters are in the face of an honest Peace in Gaza) Traveller
Hw more stupid can you get?
"So why isn't there a peace grouping, a movement for peace, in Gaza?"
Because the IDF tends to bomb large gatherings of Gazans. Unlike the people of Israel, the people of Gaza don't have the luxury to go on strike (since they have no jobs, thank you Israel), or protest because day and night they are under constant fire from Israel. Would you ask why are the people in Ukraine not protesting on the streets for peace?
"they don't want one except on their terms."
Isn't that what everyone wants in any conflict? Telling the oppressed to shut up and take whatever the oppressor offers isn't asking for honest peace, it is asking the oppressed to just shut up and fuck off.
good post. Its amazing the contortions that people go through to convince themselves that the bad group is deserving of their suffering and are IN FACT complicit and to blame for the bombs falling on their schools.
What is it Stalin said? A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic?
Great quote, but no evidence Stalin said or wrote it.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/
Another entertaining set of comments on this war. They demonstrate conclusively why there will never be peace. Low levels of violence punctuated by civil wars, radicalization, “terrorism”, and fanaticism are the norm in this part of the world. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
The Holy Land… 😂
I condemn Hamas militants for targeting civilians and all crimes against humanity they are guilty of.
Condemn Hamas all you want. But either condemn Israel too for their well documented war crimes and crimes against humanity or else forfeit your claim to be a decent human being.