This is a genuine question, not a debating point: Are the people calling for a ceasefire in Gaza asking for a unilateral ceasefire? Or are they equally insistent that both sides stand down?
Again, this is an honest question. After all, pretty much everyone would prefer a ceasefire to endless slaughter.¹ But at a minimum it would have to be genuine, right? And that would require both Israel and Hamas to agree.
Unless I'm mistaken, neither side has shown any willingness to suspend hostilities. Am I missing something here?
¹But not quite everyone, I know.
To me it *feels( like most people calling for this don't realize(?) that there are actually ongoing military action from Hamas. Like, I even have to remind myself of this all the time.
But Hamas has asked for ceasefires to trade captured people, and been rebuffed.
Hamas isn't going to single-handedly stop fighting while it's being shot at.
And there are other groups like Islamic Jihad, and any random idiot with a gun.
We should have ceasefires in the Israel-Hamas war, the war in Sudan, the Myanmar civil war, and the Islamic insurgencies in Northern Africa, all of which have similar death tolls this year (10-13,000). And let's get one in Ukraine, where many more people have died. (The slaughters go on whether you're paying attention or not.)
It may sound heartless to question the calls for a ceasefire in Gaza (which I would love to see), but why are millions now demonstrating for a ceasefire in one conflict and not the others? Is the slaughter of innocents more or less heinous depending on who and where they are?
The only answer is protests imply some chance of the protest having an influence on the issue at hand. If enough people thought the US gov could just stop a war in Myanmar they would protest.
It’s all I got on this one.
That would be a rational explanation. But I'm not sure they care as much about the people of Myanmar and elsewhere. Maybe they would if the other wars were on our TV screens every night. Or maybe not.
But how the US could stop the war in Gaza is not clear to me. Israel is not a client state of the US. The decisions on fighting Hamas are being made by Israel, not Biden, and it seems to me that Netanyahu is going to do what he thinks he needs to do regardless of what the US president says. Biden says, Let's have a ceasefire. Netanyahu says, not now. Maybe, you could say, we shouldn't have given the military aid to Israel in the first place. And maybe if we didn't, Israel might not exist anymore. I'd say that would not be a good outcome. Maybe it would be better if Netanyahu were not leading Israel. (I think so.) But the Israeli people choose their leader, not us. Israel is not a client state of the US.
There are other steps the US could take, of course. But if there's a way the US can force a ceasefire (or even better, a permanent peace), how that happens eludes me. Maybe the protestors have it all figured out.
ETA:
Another comparison to consider is the conflict in Yemen. US gives more military aid to Saudi Arabia and hundreds of thousands have died in recent years. Still, few protests.
Maybe it’s just a lazy Saturday, but I can’t think of a single example where the US stopped any war, ANY war at all, other than by actively joining it.
I think the people who figure US influence is that strong are more than a bit naive.
The protests are also easy to see in that the non terrorist palestinians are clearly the underdog and everyone roots for the underdog if they don’t have an informed or un-informed reason not to do so.
Yugoslavia?
Suez. Ike told France and Britain they were all on their own on this, and they folded. The Israelis too, but they'd already got all they wanted out of it.
South Africa.
Russia vs Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The U.S. could organize a trade embargo against Israel along the lines of the embargo against Russia. Or even act unilaterally.
Also, in Sudan, Myanmar, and Yemen, it isn't a case of "the good guys" engaged in ethnic cleansing. Israel is a rich ally of the white west, and is supposed to live up to a higher standard.
Since you bring up Russia, I think there's one glaring difference between it and Israel. Russia invaded Ukraine with no provocation at all. It started a war on Putin's whim for expansionary empire-building, which is likely to continue if he's not reined in. In contrast, Israel's war on Hamas is in retaliation to a horrific terrorist attack. It's hard to argue that Israel had no justification for taking action. The more valid objection to Israel is about how it is conducting the war.
About living up to a "higher standard," that assumes that we in West do the same. But recent history shows the opposite. When the US was attacked on 9/11, we went to war against two countries whose regimes did not launch the attack. We committed war crimes, including torture. The death and human tragedy we inflicted was orders of magnitude greater than what has happened in the last six weeks. Are we safe now? One thing for sure: we destroyed any credibility we once had in the region. The Palestinians and their Arab neighbors don't want to hear from us. The Israelis pretty much do what they want.
It's often the case there are no "good guys." But when protests are only against those who should be "good guys," that lets the "bad guys" off the hook. Maybe the target of protests should be the instigators, not just those whose reactions go too far.
It might also be information overload. So many tragedies, so little time.
They're the same people who don't care much about the hundreds of thousands dead in Syria, just that the US killed half of 1% of them so they try to rationalize Assad using nerve gas.
You mean "they think" the US killed half of 1% (when in fact it was Assad).
Well, if the US used one drone strike to kill one person (unlikely) and 199 other people were killed by other sources, that would be the US killing half a percent.
Not that anyone seems to care about drones except when a Democrat is in office.
Neither side of this conflict wants a ceasefire, if you define the sides to be Israel's government and Hamas. The people of Israel and Gaza may have differing opinions...
The people calling for a ceasefire are implicitly calling for one imposed upon both sides from the outside. Nobody* is calling for a unilateral ceasefire.
Israel has 10s of thousands of troops in Gaza. It seems to me that an actual cease fire would also involve Israel withdrawing those troops and Hamas releasing the people it kidnapped.
Those are things you negotiate after a cease-fire. Cease-fires normally equate to a freezing-in-place of the conflict.
Honestly I don’t how a cease fire would hold with that many Israeli troops in Gaza. It would pretty much be an occupation, and I don’t see either side wanting that.
Hamas has at least a couple of offers on the table, offering the release of a certain nIumber of their hostages for a number of the political prisoners that Israel is holding. Israel isn't willing to even talk.
Moreover, a "complete cease fire by both sides" has traditionally meant that Israel is, of course, free to pick off Palestinians with snipers, at will.
If the Arab Nations put down their arms, there would be peace. If Israel gives up her arms, there would be no Israel. Obviously, we disagree.
Nobody's talking about Israel, with the most powerful military in the mid east, disarming and disbanding its military, giving up its hundreds of nukes and all the rest.
This straw man, like the "right to defend itself", is getting seriously worn out.
I didn't say people are proposing such a thing. I just stated a truism. And are you saying that Israel does not have the right to defend themselves.
Wow. You're an idiot.
No, it's not a truism. +1 to illilillili.
Since Israel has for the last two decades, actively made sure there was no peace for the occupied territories.
Straw man sure are easy to defeat, huh?
Salamander:"Israel isn't even willing to talk"
Washington Post :"U.S. close to deal with Israel and Hamas to pause conflict, free some hostages"
:https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/18/us-israel-hamas-reach-tentative-deal-pause-conflict-free-dozens-hostages/
"The people calling for a ceasefire are implicitly calling for one imposed upon both sides from the outside."
That sounds like the US military comes in to shut down the fighting. Not sure how else to read it. Not a good idea, I would say.
In the past, the UN has sent in peacekeeping forces, usually with a multinational makeup, after a cease-fire is in place. It may have been achieved by negotiation, or by sanctions or threats of sanctions. I can't think of a case where a cease-fire was achieved by a third party entering a conflict. Likely any third party with sufficient interest to risk its own troops, has an interest in the conflict ending in a particular way ....
It doesn't have to be enforced militarily.
I think it is time the US "stepped" out of wars unless they are asked. I'm still not clear why we still send funds to Israel to arm them. We are totally complicit in this war!
We're sending aid to both sides.
Hard to argue with this. Hamas won’t stand down.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/17/hamas-benjamin-netanyahu-ceasefire
“Start with those who look at the havoc wreaked in Gaza – at the many thousands killed, at the pile of rubble that was once the largest Palestinian city in the world – and decide that, whatever horrors Hamas committed on 7 October, surely it has now sustained enough of a blow; given all that Gaza has suffered, surely now Hamas will be deterred from future attacks. Such thinking fundamentally misunderstands the nature of that organisation. Because Hamas is a different kind of enemy, one that does not fit the usual theories of war. Put simply, it does not mind if its own people die.”
“For Biden and co are overlooking the fact that Netanyahu and his coalition are utterly opposed to the very arrangement Israel’s western allies advocate. This is the most rightwing government in Israel’s history. It includes junior ministers who fantasise about flattening Gaza with a nuclear bomb or repopulating it with the Jewish settlements that were uprooted in 2005, and senior ministers who are, even now, wrecking any chance of cooperation with the only body that could plausibly fill the vacuum in a post-Hamas Gaza: the Palestinian Authority.“
It is actually quite easy to argue with that. People under occupation who do not see a peaceful way to get out from under occupation resort to violence. The idea that Hamas is unique in this fashion seems silly. Such moves, of course, depend on the fact that occupying powers tend to leave ordinary lives while people under occupation suffer from the occupation, so even though the violence in response to an attack is greater than the attack, the change for the two sides is greater for the occupying power. That is what drove the French out of North Africa and the British out of India. Thinking this is unusual leads to misunderstanding what is happening.
+1
Yeah, very easy to argue with a disingenuous argument that a ceasefire should mean total capitulation of one side.
In effect, the call is for Israel to stop the wide spread bombing campaign, i.e. stop targeting hospitals and refugee camps. Israel is arguing that that's where Hamas is.
There are also people calling for the restoration of water and electricity, i.e. the end of collective punishment, as well as (others?) the return of the hostages. But the main thing is to get the bombing to stop.
There's not much call for Hamas to stop firing rockets into Israel because that is not in the news and it has died down.
There's not much call for lying about the cease fire, but there you jave it, someone lying about the cease fire.
Fuck, golack, you didn't have to be a bigot, but there you did it.
This is a puzzling question given the history of the conflict. Gaza has lived under constant blockade for more than 15 years now. That is an act of war. Before that Gaza was under direct occupation for decades. The Palestinians, first primarily the PLO more recently Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Despite this in Drum's history of the conflict, he twice talks about the Palestinians starting a war with the first intifada and the second intifada. These "wars" ended when things returned to the status quo ante (which is of course much worse for the Palestinians than the Israelis). And since the second intifada there have been several such flare ups that have ended with similar returns to the status quo ante.
The differences this time are that in the other flareups since the second intifada, while thousands of Palestinians have died, the death toll on the Israeli side was small enough that Netayanhu could assure French Jews that Israel is perfectly safe for Jews. That can't really be done so convincingly this time. The second is the number of hostages that Hamas continues to hold. But as far as I can tell there have been some hostages released due to negotiations and a couple released for humanitarian reasons, but none have been released by this show of overwhelming force by Israel.
So a ceasefire would be what it has been in the past, either a halt in bombings so that humanitarian aid can be brought to the Palestinians and negotiations can be held to release hostages. Or a decision that a sufficient number of Palestinians have died to show that Israel does not take attacks on it lightly. Hamas has certainly accomplished enough that it is likely to be happy with a ceasefire. Really the question has only been when we get to enough dead Palestinians for pressure to build on Israel to agree to a cease fire. This has happened several times before, and it is likely to be the outcome this time.
Israel could instead try to return to a direct occupation of Gaza (hopefully without any new settlements) but that would be costly for them both financially and in terms of likely casualties, so it is unlikely that is the way that Israel will go.
Lon Becker:"Gaza has lived under constant blockade for more than 15 years now. That is an act of war. "
The United States attacked islands held by Japan in early 1945. That is an act of war.
It might help those who are trying to understand the situation to put things in context. For example, Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005. Rather than focus on rebuilding, Gazans focused on attacking Israel. The blockade was to prevent Hamas from getting weapons and materials that were used for making weapons such as fertilizer and pipes. Concrete and other building materials were restricted because they were being used to build tunnels for fighters, in particular tunnels under the border so they could a) attack Israel and b) smuggle in more weapons and materials.
Once that context is made clear, your initial statement can be evaluated more effectively.
'Disengaged' you say, ignoring forays into Gaza to 'arrest' and shoot civilians - as recently as the week before Oct 7th - wall building, settling, snipers, beach-clearing, blockading all economic activity, and restricting food imports as well as burning farms.
That doesn't fuck sound like disengagement.
You didn't have to lie about this, but you did.
Do you have a source for your bolded comment?
By the way, everyone reading this sees that I simply said disengagement. By no means does that mean that Israel never goes in to stop, for example, missile attacks on its population, as is its right and responsibility. So everyone sees that this is not a lie.
And everyone sees that you did not respond to the facts of my post, just picked out one word, gave it your special interpretation chosen so that you could call me a liar, then did just that.
But if that is what you need to do, I won't tell you to stop.
You lie agian. As per usual. As I noted in our last go-round, you're dishonesty extends even to the playing stupid word games. But hey, anything to bog down / derail the discussion when it turns to Israel's bad behaviour, amirite ;-\ There is absolutely zero reason to regard you as doing anything other than operating in entirely bad faith.
I'd like to remind everyone that I called this one -- and called it correctly -- on this bozo long before anyone anyone else twigged.
Hey Scent, what's up?
In a previous thread,
https://jabberwocking.com/destroying-hamas-is-fine-but-there-are-still-limits/#comments
you made an ad hominem attack.
"people here who actually, you know, look stuff up before shooting their mouths off think of you as an intellectual and moral lightweight."
I responded:
"Kindly supply the list of people who think of me as an "intellectual and moral lightweight”
Once that list is provided, demonstrate that they agree with that assessment."
You replied several times in that thread, but never addressed that comment.
How do you respond? It will say a lot about you.
Israel benefits from this kind of historic ignorance. In 2005 Israel pulled its (deeply immoral from any perspective that does not ignore the humanity of the Paelstinians) settlements out of Gaza because the second intifada made clear that it was easier to avoid a two state solution by building settlements in the West Bank rather than Gaza. It did so only after getting an agreement from Egypt to allow Israeli control over what entered and left Gaza through Egypt. It then promptly left a seasons worth of agricultural exports to rot on the Israeli border.
And yet silly people keep talking as if Gaza was put in a position to thrive economically despite being completely at the mercy of a petty occupying force. Things got worse in 2007, but the idea that Israel ever actually left Gaza alone is a fantasy. I can see why supporters of Israel need that fantasy. After all it is easier to defend slaughtering so many Palestinian children after starving so many Palestinian children if you can pretend that Israel was generous with the Palestinians than when you keep in mind that Israel has actually spent the last 30 years intentionally and relentless killing the chance for a two state solution, and crying anti-Semitism if anyone suggests Palestinians should have rights in the one state that remains.
No ceasefire until every member of Hamas is killed or captured.
Looks like the IDF may have screwed up royally. It looks like they bombed a children's school being used as a shelter in Northern Gaza.
Preston Stewart has a good analysis of the war.
I appreciate his calm, practical approach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9su7XK-2Exw
This guy is good also:
https://youtu.be/-d8mbazZf_U?si=2nEpzlvePjHyKrWT
There was an explosion there, with many casualties. That's all we know, that's all Preston said.
Was it a Hamas missile that went off course, as we have seen before?
Were there missiles being launched from the school, as we have seen before?
We don't know.
I am not saying Israel has not done this. I am saying you draw conclusions without evidence.
If you have any more information, let me know.
Steve, you seem to be forgetting we're talking a cease-fire.
That means both sides.
You're not examining both sides.
Crissa,
Thanks for reminding me of what you were talking about. civiltwilight and I were talking about something else, namely what Preston Stewart was talking about.
Civil made the assumption that it Israel was bombing a school for no reason, but the actual evidence was simply that there was an explosion.
If there is more evidence, I would like to hear it, but until then I don't think we should be drawing conclusions.
Things like that happen in war. If Hamas cares about their citizens whom they were elected to govern they should immediately surrender. Hamas will be held accountable for starting this war that has brought so much misery to both Israel and Gaza.
You asked too late:
A pause for likely just civilian hostages. The snag was that Hamas wanted to trade IDF hostages for imprisoned Hamas. For reference, the last exchange was 1 IDF for 1000+ Hamas, and one year ago that was the rough outline for a Hamas proposal that was rejected.
Also, how do you trade prisoners when someone is carpet bombing neighborhoods?
There is no carpet bombing. Stop lying.
Crissa isn't going stop lying, so you are wasting time answering them.
You say - we are giving up the hostages, because that is a war crime, no matter what, no matter how.
(Which is different from bombing an enemy that just attacked you, which is not a war crime, except under certain circumstances.)
Then Israel either stops bombing as they promised, or they don't, and they suffer the consequences if they break their word.
“Are the people calling for a ceasefire in Gaza asking for a unilateral ceasefire? Or are they equally insistent that both sides stand down?”
Well, there’s no question - none - at all - simply no question that some groups are demanding a complete cessation of hostilities from Israel without demanding anything at all from Hamas.
And this dynamic has been abundantly obvious ever since the radicalized fundamentalists at Harvard and other Ivy League madrasas began issuing statements (in October) asserting that Israel and Israel alone as responsible for the Jihadist massacre perpetrated on Israeli civilians by Hamas.
But it gets worse. It’s not just a case that some of these academic ideologues demand everything from Israel and nothing from Hamas, in many cases they actively cheer Hamas on. By tearing down posters of the Jewish children that Hamas kidnapped, our 21st century ivy leaguers are basically complicit in the terrorist atrocities perpetrated against Jews.
And at many protests, the very idea of asking anything of Hamas is openly ridiculed. The kids who in theory will someday hold responsible positions in our society are out there holding up signs asking, “But do you condemn Hamas?” Get it? They think the entire premise of the question is so self-evidently absurd that simply by repeating it they successfully mock anyone who raises that point.
If, like Kevin is doing here, you ask what if anything these Leftist protesters are demanding of Hamas, they will deem your question to be so stupid that all you will receive in response, if you’re lucky, is mockery. If you’re not lucky, these self-righteous and self-appointed avatars of so-called social justice might simply inflict actual violence against you. But that’s OK, because if you like Israel then you must be part of the white, colonial, intersectional, and racist (of course), problem. So, in that case, you deserve a good beating anyway.
Welcome to the modern Left! I personally consider it to be one of the single greatest disappointments in my life as a Liberal, and profoundly embarrassed, Democrat.
Anyway, many writers (more than I can remember) have pushed back on the prevalent narrative that Israel must enact a more or less unilateral ceasefire. Jennifer Rubin at the WP has stated that the emphasis should be on demanding Hamas to return hostages. Hilary Clinton, in the Atlantic, wrote recently that Hamas has proven beyond doubt that it cannot be trusted and must be destroyed (she also calls for an end to the Netanyahu government). Bret Stephens @ the NYT (and elsewhere) has been one of the most eloquent post-10/7 writers that I’ve encountered, and he calls out the moral failings of American Hamas supporters like no one else. But there are many others. The Jewish Forward magazine, in my opinion, is required reading at this time.
But you know who’s probably not reading the Jewish Forward? That would be the raging antisemites who use the cloak of DEI to assert their own prejudicial poison throughout our modern campuses.
The modern Left is not composed of nice people fighting for social justice; it’s just composed of yet more evil extremists who want to seize whatever influence and power they can to inflict pain on others. And, at the moment, the “white” and oppressive targets of their wrath are Jews. All Jews. Spare me the sophistry, forget the gaslighting: these monsters are as thoroughly anti-Semitic as any other bigoted group in history. They’re not breaking the cycle, they’re amplifying it to dizzying and dangerous heights.
Nice trolling!
@illilillili
That’s not a substantive or constructive response.
Are you capable of anything else?
There's no substantive case to be made against someone posting bigoted trolling.
I think the pro-Hamas wing of the Democratic Party is several orders of magnitude smaller than you think it is.
Can you name a single elected official who refused to condemn Hamas?
I don’t think he was talking about elected officials.
Then it isn't really relevant or measurable, since there are approximately 48 million Democratic voters, and he is claiming that what 1000 of them do represents Democrats.
'Some people'.
Nice, anonymous bigotry, Leo.
We’ll said!
It's easy to find articles online about Israeli attacks, but hard to find articles of Hamas attacks. In any event, Israel has far stronger capabilities than Hamas. A one-sided cease-fire on the part of Israel is not out of the question. This would allow the UN to deliver water, food, and fuel, without compromising the ability of Israel to defend itself. An international effort to evacuate civilians during a one-sided ceasefire would also be reasonable.
A one-sided cease fire would allow Hamas to keep firing rockets into Israel, to blow up Israeli forces, and even potentially capture more hostages.
Any cease-fire will benefit Hamas more than Israel, in that it gives Hamas time to regroup for the next Israeli attack, and attempt to create more pressure on Israel to withdraw entirely.
And how many orders of magnitude fewer people are killed by Hamas than the IDF?
And how are they going to take hostages? Magic teleportation?
More bigoted trolling.
You’re really showing your antisemitism. Maybe you should go join your Hamas friends in Gaza.
FTR: Atticus just said that anyone who's anti-Zionist is antisemitic.
They can capture more hostages the way they captured Gilad Shalit.
>>And how many orders of magnitude fewer people are killed by Hamas than the IDF?
Is that how you measure justice, by numbers?
So Japan is clearly the victim. They lost 500,000 civilians and the US lost only 12,800.
Personally, I measure justice, at least in part, by who kills civilians in order to maximize killing, committing face-to-face murder, rape, burning alive, and torture, with no military objective, no hope that the attack would stop more killing. Preventing Hamas from doing that again, and again, and again, as they have publicly promised, is justice. If Hamas uses human shields, then it does not mean that Israel is not allowed to defend themselves. It means the civilian deaths explicitly caused by their use of human shields are on the heads of Hamas.
Civilian deaths in pursuit of stopping monsters like Hamas is regrettable, but necessary. It is a completely different moral realm, so the numbers are not the most important issue.
Doctor discusses an area of al-Shifa hospital he was not allowed to go near under threat of being shot,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LZ9avl9nDQ&t=550s
...Why do we believe this is a doctor from the hospital? It's been removed several times over, and there are no pictures post-invasion of such a place.
Removed from what?
That's France24's own YouTube channel.
No ceasefire. If Hamas wants to protect the people of Gaza they should surrender.
Palestinian Authority denies Hamas music festival massacre,
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/h1nngcpnp
And . . . leftist wingnuts are going to swallow this hook, line and sinker.
Beware the following site is very graphic. But it shows the difference between what Hamas did and what Israel is doing.
https://www.hamas-massacre.net