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My Imaginary GF posted:If their cause is truly about something more than earthly hatreds and desires, it will survive the test of time.  Not a single violent crime committed by a member of a minority against the majority group, despite active oppression, apartheid, and violent crimes committed by the majority against the minority? For, what, eight years? I see the good old "colonialist's excuse" standard continues to fare well despite its growing age.JeffersonClay posted:I don't think Hamas is attempting to perpetrate genocide. I do think they bear at least some responsibility when they advocate attacks against civilian targets and people listen to them. I do think it's reasonable to see those attacks as part of a larger strategy to resist occupation, even if the individual attackers have a diverse set of motives. How much responsibility does Israel bear for actually carrying out attacks against about a thousand civilian targets during the Gaza invasion?
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Nov 19, 2014 22:07
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Doflamingo posted:The current Israeli government is like a child looking for any excuse to start a fight; perhaps it's best not to give them one so when they finally do go on the offensive anyway they won't have a scapegoat to fall back on. The international community will surely step in then.. right? This isn't a reasonable standard, though. When "any Palestinian-on-Israeli violent crime" is sufficient excuse to start a fight, that means that avoiding a fight basically means stopping crime completely. Even ignoring the active oppression and theft of land and all that stuff, it is just plain impossible to get to such a level of harmony within a community that nobody - not a single person - gets beaten, murdered, or robbed at gunpoint for several years in a row, especially when Israelis are not held to the same standard. It's a literally impossible standard which exists solely to give racists an excuse to blame the victim when a colonial power decides to brutally suppress an ethnic group. team overhead smash posted:The situation in Israel and the oPT gives the Palestinians the right to resistance, including armed resistance, but this is still within certain constraints. I find the South Africa analogy very apt and just like in South Africa although violent resistance was allowable, it was only possible if directed at legitimate targets and in the normal acceptable bounds of a war. It's not just South Africa, though. I can't think of any successful national independence or liberation movement against a resistant colonial power that didn't include at least some violence against civilians. Even the Indian independence movement had plenty of terrorism and violence involved; Gandhi gets all the credit for Britain letting India go, but it really probably had a lot more to do with the widespread violence that broke out all over India in the wake of WWII, which Britain had no hope of putting down in its exhausted post-war state. Hell, Israel itself doesn't have much right to complain about an independence movement carrying out violence against civilians considering its own history; although Zionist militias were often capable of kidnapping or killing British Army soldiers, they also carried out both indiscriminate and targeted attacks against civilians, and were able to carry out bombings and assassinations against civilians as far away as Rome and London. I hate to say it, but if literally every colony has broken the laws of war agreed on by the colonialist nations then maybe those laws are more idealistic than realistic.
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Nov 20, 2014 20:39
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fade5 posted:So the Palestinian dude who rammed his car into Israeli pedestrians? Israel literally just demolished his loving house, leaving his family with nowhere to live. I'm a little curious where the "bringing back punitive demolitions" line has come from in the media, because they never stopped in the first place. Israel demolished the homes of the kidnapping suspects too, and have punitively demolished several hundred more houses in the ten years since they "stopped" doing punitive demolishments in 2005.
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Nov 20, 2014 21:00
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My Imaginary GF posted:"Survive the Shoah, get your house taken over by the Soviets and lose everything? Quit colonizing, that land with safety isn't yours." The safety has nothing to do with the land, though. In fact, the land has directly contributed to endangering them in the past, such as when the Arab countries invaded in response to Israel's unilateral theft of the land in 1948. The factor that ensured their safety was not the land.
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Nov 21, 2014 00:33
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My Imaginary GF posted:A rabbi in Palestinian territory molests several Israeli children before fleeing to Zimbabwe. The rabbi is in Amsterdam for a bris, and Israel requests his extradiction. Does Israel have jurisdiction to prosecute said rabbi or request extradiction, even if Palestinian attache in Amsterdam indicates Palestinian view of violation of sovreignty if Amsterdam were to proceed with extradiction? Well, as the crime was not committed in Israeli jurisdiction, Israel would have no grounds to charge him for his deeds there, as Israeli civilian law does not apply in the Palestinian territories and even Israel does not attempt to claim otherwise (all settlements are officially under military rule and outside the jurisdiction of Israeli civilian law). Even the US doesn't legally claim that sort of privilege (though that doesn't stop executive overreach), which is why we have laws against leaving the country for the purpose of committing certain acts illegal under US law - because we don't have jurisdiction to prosecute those acts themselves. Most countries would be highly unlikely to extradite the rabbi to a country that has no jurisdiction over the crime, and it's somewhat unlikely that a country would willingly extradite a civilian being charged under military law. As usual, you're showing a depressing lack of knowing what the gently caress you're talking about.
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Dec 2, 2014 16:14
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emanresu tnuocca posted:I'm pretty sure that the Israeli penal code technically applies to all Israeli nationals whether the felony occurs in Israel or outside of it. Usually it's just a technicality if you've done something that's illegal in Israel and legal elsewhere, such as smoking pot in Amsterdam but it does apply to the settlers living in the oPT. Looks like some Israeli civilian laws are applied to settlers, but not all of them, and military law reigns supreme for everything else - a situation that settlers consider to be unjust and discriminatory, of course. There was some furor last month over a proposed law that would have required military authorities to automatically copy any civilian law passed in the Knesset to military law as well, loopholing settlers the full benefit of civilian law without officially covering the settlements under full civilian rule (which, according to critics, would basically be annexation).
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Dec 2, 2014 19:03
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Dead Reckoning posted:Actually, using incendiary weapons against combatants isn't a war crime, despite what is popularly believed. As to the second point, something has to use its toxicity as a primary wounding mechanism to be considered a chemical weapon, since a lot of materials used in military weapons (lead, for example, as well as many other metals) are toxic to humans. In the case of White Phosphorus, its chemical toxicity is very much secondary to its burning action. Using incendiaries against civilian targets, or on military targets in close proximity to civilian targets or in civilian areas, is absolutely illegal though!
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Dec 3, 2014 19:08
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Brainbread posted:So, apparently the US government may have been talking about sanctions against Israel for continuing to build settlements in Jerusalem. The original reports come from Haaretz, and while the original article is paywalled, the headline explicitly mentions the potential effects such news could have on election polls, so this could be more of an attempt to influence Israeli politics than a real thing actually likely to happen.
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Dec 6, 2014 22:10
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Cat Mattress posted:What reason could the aggressor hypothetically have had to attack the Chabad in particular instead of Jews in general? An synagogue happens to be a really good place to find a Jew, maybe, particularly an Orthodox synagogue? That said, something does seem a little off - what the hell was the place doing open at 1:45am, and what were a student and a homeless guy doing there together at that time of night? It's entirely possible that this wasn't just some random attack.
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Dec 9, 2014 19:05
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Eregos posted:Perhaps the thread can explain this to me. A common charge I hear from anti-Israel activists is that Israel deliberately targets Gaza civilians with airstrikes and shelling as part of some larger strategy to do... what exactly? I don't see any strategic sense behind it from a Machiavellian standpoint, it never really weakens support for Hamas as far as I know and it increases international sympathy for Gaza. The (also Machiavellian) idea that Israel is simply committed to degrading Hamas' capacity, regardless of the civilian cost, seems much more plausible to me. Israel has made it fairly clear that it's collective punishment, mixed with a fair chunk of racism and at least a partial belief that anyone who doesn't work against Hamas is for Hamas. Just because it isn't particularly effective doesn't mean that isn't the reasoning behind it. Sure, it's just plain easier for a 21st-century military to operate with as little risk to themselves as possible when they don't care about civilian casualties, but that alone isn't enough to explain bombings of things like hospitals.
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Dec 10, 2014 01:12
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I wish there was more media interest in what goes on inside the Palestinian territories beyond just repeating press releases from Israel, Fatah, and Hamas about the I/P conflict, because it seems like things are getting seriously chaotic politically in the Gaza Strip lately, and the reconstruction is an utter mess. As most of us recall, Fatah and Gaza had agreed to unite and form a unity government covering all Palestinian territories, but the ink was barely even dry on that agreement when Israel launched Protective Edge and bombed the hell out of Gaza. But although the Israeli invasion failed to destroy Hamas, Israeli negotiators cut a deal with Abbas in which they would give Fatah control of UN-brokered Gaza reconstruction efforts and allow them (but NOT Hamas) to bring money and reconstruction materials into Gaza. Unsurprisingly, this pretty much tanked the unity government, as Abbas was basically selling Hamas down the river in exchange for getting favorable treatment from Israel in the Gaza Strip. Hamas, which had little hope of withstanding such a PR barrage, surprised everyone by resigning their role as a government entity and handing control of Gaza to the PA...in theory, anyway. Fatah, however, has failed to take control, sending no security forces and leaving Gaza's security solely in the hands of Hamas security officers, who are very likely not being paid at all because Hamas has no money and the PA is not stepping up to pay the salaries of Gaza officials from the Hamas government. The current Prime Minister of the PA himself, Rami Hamdallah, has complained about "nervous security conditions" in Gaza and stated that Hamas is "the actual security authority in Gaza", allegations rejected by Hamas officials who say that Hamdallah should "stop avoiding his responsibilities" and "he should do his job". Since then, the claims from both sides have been getting progressively more dramatic and, in Fatah's case, nonsensical. Abbas has claimed that Fatah has zero presence in Gaza and that Israel is secretly negotiating with Hamas, claims that the PA sent medical supplies and equipment to the Gaza Strip throughout and after Protective Edge but that none of the aid has reached the hospitals because Hamas officials have been stealing it, and that a strike among hospital janitors who haven't been paid in seven months is just an "invented" crisis "incited" by Hamas officials as a way to "blackmail" the PA. Meanwhile, Hamas has accused Fatah of blocking supplies from entering Gaza, protecting and expanding settlements, treating Hamas as "an enemy rather than a political opponent", and "taking the Palestinian cause back to square one" with politically-motivated activities like ordering a PA investigation into every single NGO in the Palestinian territories.
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Dec 13, 2014 01:19
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Absurd Alhazred posted:
All election plans have been put on hold till further notice, and with the the way the political situation has been deteriorating, I don't see them happening in anytime soon. Fatah and Hamas each say that they're ready to hold elections any time if only the other party would stop stalling and delaying, but the sad truth is that neither Fatah nor Hamas are confident that they would benefit from elections right now, nor do they trust each other not to interfere with the elections. They also don't trust Israel to not interfere with the elections. Sudden movement restrictions on East Jerusalem on election day, or mass arrests of political figures and volunteers just when the campaign period hits its peak, could easily sway the course of an election. In addition, both parties fear that even if they win the election, the results won't be respected. Hamas remembers full well what happened the last time they won elections, and Fatah's total failure to take control of Gaza after Hamas' resignation isn't an encouraging sign about their ability to govern either. DarkCrawler posted:I just find it sort of difficult to be invested in the internal politics of the Palestinians when ultimately it is meaningless. They have no agency, no power over the course of the events, and no matter who comes out on top momentarily they're at the mercy of Israel. They may not have much agency in terms of overall relations with Israel and grand nation-building stuff, but that's not the only thing that has meaning. For example, all police and security personnel in the Gaza Strip right now have not been paid in six months or more, because Hamas is out of money and the PA is very very unwilling to pay anyone who was employed by the Hamas government, even during the unity government period. Hell, it took five months for even regular, unarmed civil service employees to get money from the PA government. That's pretty meaningful, both to the people who have been working without pay for half a year, to the families they have to feed, and to all the other people who would be harmed if all of Gaza's police or government clerks decided to go on strike the way the hospital janitors have. That's unlikely to have any massive geopolitical impact, but to the people actually caught up in these political games, it still matters.
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Dec 13, 2014 06:57
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Lustful Man Hugs posted:Shouldn't the Israeli government desperately be mending diplomatic fences in the hopes that they can ensure a friendly US administration in 2016? I know there are a lot of various fanatics and political ideologues in the current administration, but surely there are staffers, secretaries, etc in the government who are capable of basic self-interest. There's no way there's going to be an unfriendly US administration anytime in the next six years. For one thing, the 2016 election season is starting pretty soon, so Obama is going to have to dial it back in order to keep the big Democratic donors happy. For another, "refusing to unconditionally veto any and all UN proposals which condemn Israel's actions in any way" is not the same as "unfriendly" and Israel will do just fine with even a neutral America, at least in the near future. Implying that the war effort against Germany had anything at all to do with the Holocaust is almost as dishonest as bringing up the Holocaust at all in relation to post-1970s Israel. Discrimination against Jews was still common all over Europe in the 30s, just as discrimination against Muslims is common all over Europe now...but that last part is enough to put to rest the idea that removing Hamas from the list has anything to do with discrimination. Indeed, the fact that the court chose to keep Hamas' funds frozen despite the fact that their inclusion on the terrorist list was declared to have been incorrect is an important indicator of how much that finding really matters. Israel's just using it as an opportunity to play the oppressed underdog for PR purposes.
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Dec 18, 2014 17:39
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Lustful Man Hugs posted:I don't think this is as much as a given as it was a while ago. I could see a Clinton administration cooling off ties with Israel if a large chunk of Europe has already done the same by 2016. It already looks like things are going to be this way over the next few years, and if there's another Gaza conflict in the interim two years, it will just accelerate this process. Hillary Clinton isn't really anything of an ideologue one way or another, and will probably be fairly on a lot of foreign policy issues. See the second half of what you quoted. Us being less friendly with Israel is not the same as being unfriendly with them. Israel can survive just fine without the US subsidizing their military, and there's no way we're going to put economic sanctions on them. Besides, if Obama is any indication, the big thing annoying US leadership about Israel isn't their tendency to wage indiscriminate warfare against armed Muslim groups, but rather settlement expansion.
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Dec 19, 2014 18:58
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My Imaginary GF posted:Do you expect Israeli or Palestinian co-operation on ICC investigations, or for the agency to be used as a political tool? That's why USG has been opposed to Palestinian membership: Palestinians at the ICC threatens the credibility of the institution itself, and guarantes its use as an active political bargaining chip. Israel, America, Australia, and our other allies won't press ICC charges against Palestinians in European and semi-European nations, in exchange for Palestinian non-membership. Now that they're becoming members, pre-emptive prosecutions must be launched against Palestinian targets. It'd be a real trick for Israel to press charges against Palestine in the ICC, given that neither Israel nor the US are members of the ICC. Israel refused to ratify the ICC treaty for fear of being forced to cooperate with any possible future investigation into their actions in Palestine. This also makes it difficult for them to influence ICC proceedings.
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Jan 1, 2015 04:40
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emanresu tnuocca posted:I had a whimsical thought yesterday as I was going to bed, as an extension of the 'what is there to negotiate' notion, it would be a grand move by Abbas to publicly call for Israel to list its pre-requisites for a peace treaty, to clearly state what it requires from Palestinians so that it could end the occupation, pushing this point would really be the best way to unmask Israel and prove to anyone who still doubts that the occupation is intended to be permanent. I dunno, it doesn't seem like much of a "gotcha" to me - Israel could easily list off some conditions that are totally unacceptable to Palestine but not so odious that Israel's supporters can be convinced that there's anything wrong with the conditions. Besides, although they haven't really ever announced a formal list, there's been some fairly common demands from the Israel side in I/P negotiations: for example, prohibiting a potential future Palestinian state from allying with any country without Israel's say-so, maintaining full Israeli control over Palestinian airspace, giving Israel the right to make military incursions into Palestinian territory at any time for "security purposes", and demanding that Palestine forever renounce any and all claims and grievances it may have against Israel. I've noticed Israel repeatedly making demands like those in negotiations in recent years, and while they're totally and completely unacceptable to Palestinians, they fall closely enough to existing talking points that Israel's supporters don't have to do much stretching to claim they're justified and necessary.
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Jan 1, 2015 11:14
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In somewhat lighter news, Gaza's government employees have gone on strike over the PA's plans to fire the 50,000 people who were hired under the Hamas administration (and whom the PA has refused to pay) and rehire the 70,000 PA employees who were laid off during and after 2007 (and who have been receiving steady paychecks from the PA ever since, despite not working). Probably not really a good idea from the PA, honestly. While their desire to get rid of Hamas employees and bring back their own is certainly understandable, it's pretty impressive that the Hamas employees continued to work for over six months with almost no disruptions in services, and completely screwing the people who've shown that kind of dedication is probably not going to end well. Especially since over half of them are working security functions currently, and most of those are probably armed. Going out of their way to gently caress over 20,000 cops, security guards, militia, and other armed keepers of the peace is not really a good idea for the PA, who desperately need to build loyalty and trust in Gaza if they don't want Hamas to just take it back whenever they feel like. Firing everyone affiliated with Hamas and rehiring their old loyalists will probably be a net loss in the long run, especially considering that they've been paying the latter's full salaries for seven years while screwing the Hamas employees even during the supposed unity government. Abbas has been handed Gaza on a silver platter, but there's no guarantee he's going to be able to keep it when Hamas decides they want it back. He needs to be laying the groundwork for popular support of the PA in Gaza, but so far, I haven't heard of the PA doing much to benefit Gazans who aren't already PA supporters. The reconstruction, which was supposed to be the golden goose that gave Abbas his foothold there, has stalled out in basically every way imaginable - international donors have ponied up only a small fraction of the necessary money, Israel isn't allowing enough materials through, the UN aid workers delayed the process for months while they attempted to come up with an oversight mechanism, the PA is failing to take ownership of Gaza and has been slow to distribute the aid, Hamas has been intimidating and attacking Fatah ministers, and lately it seems that some PA officials have been diverting aid to themselves to sell at a profit and others have been handing it out to whoever gives them the biggest bribe. quote:Hamas employees strike over expected job losses
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Jan 2, 2015 16:50
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Lustful Man Hugs posted:I've always thought the term conquistador was the most apt. Doesn't fit half as well as "settler" does. The conquistadors were conquerors seeking to exploit local resources, not civilians moving into a territory and forcing out the natives after the military beats them into submission.
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Jan 3, 2015 00:24
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emanresu tnuocca posted:The following is an archived blog post from the IDF spokesperson official website, it was removed yesterday from the website, anyone wants to guess why? Because of settlers throwing rocks at a US convoy a day or two ago, no doubt. Nice catch. Absurd Alhazred posted:Wow, yeah, way to host a Facebook page to which people can post poo poo. Looks like it actually was posted by the Fatah Facebook page - Times of Israel had a screenshot showing the bit under it that shows who posted it, and it matched the Fatah page's profile picture.
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Jan 3, 2015 19:56
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My Imaginary GF posted:The area was not secure. American diplomatic security cannot be guaranteed by IDF in Palestinian territories. If the settlements were to be formally annexed to Israel as part of a comprehensive agreement with PLO on the future of Palestinian statehood, then IDF could guarantee American diplomatic security. Considering that Adei Ad, the settlement in question, is considered illegal even by Israel, I find it highly unlikely that Israel would desire to annex it. In fact, it's unlikely that the IDF would be welcome at all in the area, since the last time they were there was for the purpose of dismantling and demolishing parts of the outpost. http://www.theage.com.au/world/west-bank-tense-as-evacuation-fears-prompt-settlers-to-attack-olive-trees-20090724-dw7h.html quote:
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Jan 4, 2015 06:24
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My Imaginary GF posted:Nation states do not deal with villages, they deal with sovreigns. Here are the facts: Israel recognizes Palestine as sovreign over the territory where the attack occured. Palestine claims sovreignity over the territory in which the attack occured. The world recognizes Palestine as sovreign over the territory in which the attack occured. If Palestine is unwilling or unable to accept the responsibility for its recognized sovreignity, then Palestine should not exist as a sovreign entity. Yet all these bodies also recognize that Israel is using military force to prevent the Palestinians from protecting that sovereignty. Since the Palestinian security forces are prevented from entering or even approaching the settlements, the blame and responsibility for any incident in the settlements would rest on Israel, which not only fails to prevent people from illegally crossing its border into Palestine but also intentionally prevents Palestine from fortifying those same borders or expelling illegal entrants. Though, to be honest, I'm far more interested in the domestic Israeli reaction to this than I am in watching people get super furious at an obvious troll, which really isn't that interesting now that MIGF isn't even really bothering to hide it anymore. Talking about real news is way more interesting than watching people hurl wild hyperbole and dismissive insults back and forth for page after page. So, like I said, what's the reaction to this inside Israel? Everyone else has made their stance pretty clear - the US has issued a statement saying it's "deeply concerned" about the attack and spread it all over the news, the Palestinians are pointing to it as an example of settler brutality, settlers have followed it up with more violent attacks against Palestinians in that area and have called for the deportation of the American consulate staff, but how is this playing in Israel itself? The news sites aren't really making a big deal out of it, so I can't really get a read of any kind on it; I really expected more noise to be made about it considering the sheer tonedeafness of the settlers and the fact that this is election season. Of course, I'm sure no one wants to piss off the settlers too much, but this is basically the best situation there could possibly be for those who oppose the settlers; Adei Ad appears to be a tiny settlement particularly prone to violence which has thrown rocks at IDF soldiers, committed brutal "price tag" terrorism against its surroundings, and is already following it up with more attacks without showing the slightest whit of concern or regret for the diplomatic incident it's caused with Israel's biggest and best ally. Even if the news and the politicians are playing it cautiously while the situation develops, there's no way this isn't going to catch some wind in Israeli politics sooner or later, right?
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Jan 4, 2015 09:30
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emanresu tnuocca posted:Now Israeli leftists are trying to paint Bennet as directly responsible for the Kfar Qana massacre and to be honest I feel that's a bit unfair, it was hardly his own decision to bomb the UN compound given that he was taking fire on the ground but this whole incident is definitely indicative of what a fanatic and reckless person that douche is. Are they? I can't find any of thise accusations in the English language news, just an article from a right-wing site quoting him claiming that left-wingers are blaming him for it, so if they are it doesn't seem to be taking off. Either way, though, he brought it on himself. He's been insisting that IDF soldiers engaged in Protective Edge shouldn't be investigated or charged for alleged misconduct, not even in the case of a unit accused of engaging in "indiscriminate fire" in the streets of Gaza. Now his own misconduct from his IDF days has been dredged up, which apparently was not seriously investigated or punished, and he's been forced to go on-record stating that a) he knowingly and deliberately disobeyed orders in a way that got his unit in serious trouble, and b) the idea that he or anyone else should have been investigated for their role in the incident is ridiculous, even in cases (such as his own) where there was clear misconduct. Kinda puts a big dent in the credibility of his no-investigations stance.
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Jan 5, 2015 15:55
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syscall girl posted:You're going to be the first person to have an intra-cranial hernia. You know that, right? I had no idea low-effort trolling was so dangerous to one's health! Like, I'll happily humor a troll as long as they're at least pretending, but at this point MIGF is just trying to see how obvious he has to make it before people stop biting
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Jan 6, 2015 02:02
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A. Beaverhausen posted:http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2015/01/us-opposes-israeli-freeze-pa-tax-revenues-20151614832204731.html The quote is honestly a lot less lovely in context! The full article is about the US denouncing the tax freeze by Israel, but includes the administration pointing out that a Republican-led Congress is going to be debating spending bills soon and the State Department won't be able to do anything if Congress decides to freeze aid so the PA probably shouldn't push it too hard right now.
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Jan 6, 2015 06:53
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InequalityGodzilla posted:Could we get a post of the actual text? Haaretz is behind a paywall or something. From the summary, looks like a famous black Jew getting hassled by airport security, presumably because they doubted his Jewishness because of his skin color?
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Jan 6, 2015 18:12
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Pretty much. Looks like they feel that the populated areas are fortified and/or secured enough to ward off any likely Hamas incursion without the need for an active soldier presence, but that it might still be dangerous for people to leave those towns to go march around the exit of a tunnel right next to the border. It does make some sense - it's highly unlikely that a Hamas army is going to stream through an incursion tunnel and commit to armed invasions of nearby towns, but a small group of people wandering around next to the tunnel might be making themselves extremely obvious targets for kidnapping. Just look at the pictures of the march - there is nothing around them as far as the eye can see, except for some barely-visible trees in the far-off distance. There's no reason for people to be out there, so the area hasn't been secured the way the populated areas have been.
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Jan 6, 2015 20:23
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Baudolino posted:So what will the PA do for Money now that they ain`t getting no more tax Money from Israel or aid from America? The civil servants in Gaza haven't been paid for more than six months already (Hamas ran out of money a while ago), and the PA's got at least some money reserves and some domestic tax collection capability that isn't dependent on Israel. Even with the money flow cut off, the PA will be able to hold together for a year or two, which is longer than either Israel or America are willing to risk tightening the PA's belt anyway.
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Jan 7, 2015 05:30
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Baudolino posted:What does the US risk by having the PA going bankrupt? I just don`t see how Fatah could retalitate against the US and not destroy themselves in the process. Every single alternative to the PA is worse for basically everyone involved. Even the right-wing has limits to how hard they can push - killing the PA will almost certainly resurrect Hamas and unleash armed groups in the settler-filled West Bank, which will be very difficult to defend, and there's been some question about how prepared the IDF really is for a prolonged ground conflict. A recent government report suggests that training quality has declined since 2006, equipment maintenance is shoddy, and all-around preparedness for war is very poor. Mandy Thompson posted:Why would Israel oppose Palestinian membership in the ICC unless they though they couldn't win. If Israel's cause is just, they should welcome their day in court. Seems like Israel knows what they are doing is wrong. When Israel declined to ratify the Rome Treaty, they claimed that the ICC would be abused as a political weapon against them, and that Arab countries were already pressuring it into "inventing" crimes designed to criminalize things that Israel was doing that they considered to be perfectly legal (like settlements). There's no way an excuse that versatile ("Yeah, of course they found us guilty - of a fake crime cooked up by anti-semites specifically to target us, and decided on by a stacked court!") isn't going to be brought back in a few months when the ICC stuff starts moving forward. http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFA-Archive/2002/Pages/Israel%20and%20the%20International%20Criminal%20Court.aspx quote:Areas of concern
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Jan 7, 2015 18:54
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There's also the fact that Gaza's high population density and the Israeli blockade mean that there are very few places Hamas can operate that aren't in civilian areas. Hell, the stated goal of the construction materials ban is specifically to prevent Hamas from building any kind of base or fortification that might be able to withstand Israeli artillery or airstrikes. Of course, the real goal is collective punishment, just like Israeli strikes against rocket launch sites or their practice of blowing up the civilian homes of suspected militants. In the first place, it's ridiculous to speak of pinpoint aerial bombings in densely-packed civilian areas.
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Jan 13, 2015 16:54
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team overhead smash posted:3) It is in turn used as a tool against the Palestinians to point out how poor Israel faces hundreds of rocket attacks per year aimed at its civilians, which is a grave breach of the Geneva Convention. This is a bit of a "pot calling the kettle black" scenario, though, given Israel's penchant for launching artillery attacks and airstrikes in highly-concentrated civilian areas without much regard for that they're attacking. I think they'd be hard-pressed to defend their strikes against rocket launch sites as genuine military targets, especially given the portability of the rockets and the very low chance that whoever fired the rocket will stick around long enough to get killed by the retaliatory strike. team overhead smash posted:To that end a single guy with a rifle taking a few potshots at a passing IDF soldier and then running away constitutes an effective level of resistance. If he wounds or kills the soldier, that single action would be the equivalent of firing like 500 rockets and would make it into all the Israeli papers the next day, almost certainly as a front page story if the soldier was killed and nothing else major happened. Get that happening regularly? That puts a lot of pressure on them. You strongly underestimate the racial tensions in play here if you think a group of Palestinians (armed or not) can get anywhere near an IDF soldier without taking fire. Since the beginning of 2015, at least five Palestinians (none of whom were militants) have been shot by the IDF, at least three have been kidnapped, and at least two groups/gatherings of Palestinians have been tear gassed. And that's just in two weeks, and only in the West Bank (though a Gazan was reportedly shot by the Egyptian military for coming too close to the Egyptian border too). There are no "passing IDF soldiers" in Gaza, and in fact the IDF is likely to fire at and drive off any approaching Palestinian, since thanks to the blockade there is no reason for a Palestinian to be anywhere near most of the border. Even in the case of assault-in-force, the IDF border guards have cover, most likely armored reinforcements, and definitely artillery+air support; their tactical superiority is overwhelming in a case like that, which is why Hamas doesn't do it despite the fact that they've demonstrated a preference for targeting IDF units when they have the opportunity.
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Jan 14, 2015 15:16
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team overhead smash posted:Yes, agreed 100%. It's completely hypocritical and should not be a valid arguement. Since Israeli towns and villages are within Palestinian territory, the same talking point about Israeli civilians being in danger would be just as valid in any hypothetical conventional war between Israel and the West Bank. Hell, it's even more or less usable even in periods of peace, given the seemingly ceaseless violent clashes between settlers and Palestinians. There's no way that a Palestinian army closing in on an Israeli settlement (or the IDF base next to it) wouldn't be more than enough of justification for Israel, since as we all know, all Palestinians are anti-semitic murder terrorists who don't recognize Israel and intend to push the Jews into the sea. Besides, the rubble hasn't even been cleared from the recent Protective Edge, in which Israeli forces killed over a thousand people in Gaza because three people were kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank. I said it then and I'll say it again now: when a colonizing power needs an excuse or justification to take military action against the natives, they will find one, no matter how hard the natives work to avoid giving them that excuse. It's not really worth sacrificing most of your options and dooming yourself to tactical inferiority just to delay the inevitable uppity native suppression operation by a couple of months. It's literally impossible to deprive an occupying power of violent incidents they can use to justify their own violence and suppression of the natives. quote:This seems to be almost exclusively about Gaza, but as I pointed out in my last post I was talking about Fatah turning away from their mixture of collaborationism and pushing for international help. I'm pretty sure at least three of the six Palestinians killed during the last two weeks were in fact shot for throwing stones. Or maybe that was the group that got tear gassed. Extend it another two weeks and we find not only another Palestinian shot by the IDF for throwing stones (among numerous other Palestinian fatalities), but an incident in which the IDF attempted to arrest two preschoolers for throwing stones. The IDF isn't exactly restrained about shooting Palestinians! More importantly, it goes both ways. There are thousands of IDF soldiers in the West Bank, who have demonstrated the ability to operate with effective impunity in Palestinian areas - raiding homes and businesses, abducting or killing people by the hundreds, and in one recent incident, closing the main entrance of a Palestinian neighborhood for three weeks in retaliation for Palestinian attacks on the checkpoint there. Israel also controls the West Bank's borders and could trivially impose an embargo if necessary. Much of the West Bank is under effective Israeli control. This means that IDF soldiers are more vulnerable to Fatah, true, but it also means that Fatah are more vulnerable to Israeli strikes.
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Jan 14, 2015 18:10
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team overhead smash posted:So we agree that the IDF are actually in a position where someone could throw stones and shoot at them, not elusive never seen shadows that no-one would possibly be able to shoot at? I didn't say the IDF were spooky ghosts that are too invisible to throw rocks at, I said they had a tendency to shoot at Palestinians who get close enough to throw rocks (or to shoot at them). If they're lucky, they just get shot at with tear gas or rubber bullets, but the high fatality rate associated with activities like "throwing stones at IDF soldiers" or "being within sight of IDF soldiers" indicates that IDF soldiers are rarely picky about who they use lethal fire against. It's pretty hard to sneakily shoot at someone who'll will gladly shoot at you just for being there and is just fine closing the checkpoint rather than allowing Palestinians through if there seems to be any danger at all.
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Jan 15, 2015 14:45
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Absurd Alhazred posted:So, after the PA collapses when members of its security forces sell their guns to ISIS militants for food, what happens next? Honestly, I don't think it'll come to that. Unlike Hamas, the PA's cash situation isn't that serious, and I can't think of a single entity (besides Hamas and other extremist groups) that wants Fatah to collapse.
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Jan 17, 2015 06:06
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InequalityGodzilla posted:That is some impressively passive aggressive poo poo right there. Absurd Alhazred posted:I want to make it clear to any reader who might have the impression that surely, such a moron could not have had any actual experience for his job, that this person has actually spent 15 years in the Israeli Foreign Service. To be fair, that's super common in foreign affairs stuff. You can't really come out and say mean things about the other nation, but you can make little gestures like this to suggest that you don't view the other countries as equals or that you look down on them or that you're not happy with them, and that kind of minor but obviously intentional disrespect can become an issue of national pride and prestige or as an opening step to a series of negotiations. If a country openly snubs the other's representative like that, it's usually an indication that they feel that they're in a strong position, that they have the advantage in negotiations or conflict, or that they're going to do what they want and don't even care about what the other nation thinks.
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Jan 18, 2015 21:27
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Rather than the same old report from eight years ago, I'm going to link something a little more recent - a report issued last month from the Israeli government, suggesting that the issues seen in the Lebanon War have not been fixed and that the IDF is not even slightly prepared to wage a real war. To summarize, the IDF is neglecting various upkeep activities (like maintenance and training) for the ground forces, resulting in poorly-trained officers managing even more poorly-trained soldiers in poorly-organized units with poorly-maintained equipment and a poor logistics system for replenishing their supplies. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4609198,00.html quote:IDF reservists in shabby shape, comptroller says in damning report
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Jan 20, 2015 07:18
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Xander77 posted:At long last. I don't know about after WWI, but the cult of the bomber was definitely gaining ground after WWII after birthed by enthusiastic generals who saw the air superiority we had over late-war Germany and convinced themselves that relentless strategic bombing would inevitably break the German will to fight even without needing to advance ground troops. Korean War caught the US in a particularly bad position because Truman had wanted to cut back military spending after WWII, and the Air Force had managed to convince him that all future wars would be fought exclusively by USAF strategic bombers carrying nuclear weapons and therefore he should direct all of his budget cuts at the Navy and Army. Although those ideas didn't fare well during the Cold War, bombers are a really attractive option against insurgents because they often have no aircraft and no anti-air capabilities capable of shooting down modern bombers, so Western nations can just cruise in and bomb the enemy territory whenever they like, without needing to commit to an ongoing campaign or risk taking casualties. For the budget-conscious IDF, which has little real need to use ground forces for anything and is terrified of the political effects of even a few casualties, ground troops are the perfect place to cut corners, as long as the bomber pilots can still sortie for punitive or "surgical" strikes at the whim of a politician or general.
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Jan 21, 2015 09:01
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SedanChair posted:Wow, way to stand up for the disadvantaged there, Stav Shaffir. Way to look out for those affected by war. Gender discrimination is actually a big problem in Israel, with the more conservative religious types advocating for outright gender segregation. There are neighborhoods where women have to sit at the back of the bus and the sidewalk on one side of the street is "men-only". I mean sure, it's not quite as bad as the brutal slaughter of innocents, but would it have been right to criticize a black woman in the US for complaining about racism while US troops were sealing off Fallujah and shooting everything that moves (leading to roughly 1300 civilian deaths in two one-month periods)? It may be hard to comprehend for us foreigners, who mostly don't know nor care about any issues in Israel other than the one affecting the international community, but in Israel domestic issues are seen as just as important (if not more) as foreign policy issues, even if those foreign policy issues happen to be indiscriminate bombing of civilians. I don't know what Stav Shaffir thinks about the I/P conflict, but she probably cares less about it than she does about the fact that she could very well be attacked by a stone-throwing mob for having the wrong hairdo or wearing the wrong clothes in certain neighborhoods, and some rabbis have claimed that it is against Jewish law for women to drive cars or attend exercise classes. Bookstores in Haredi neighborhoods have been forced by endless harassment to allow religious groups to decide which books they do or don't carry, and one 8-year-old girl became world-famous after Haredi men spat on her and called her a prostitute while she was walking to elementary school. In fact, Israeli ultra-Orthodox women have just formed a new polticial party, Bizchutan/B'Zechutan/Ubezchutan (depending on which media outlet you ask) in order to fight for their rights, since the existing ultra-Orthodox parties are men-only parties which ban women from having any political involvement in the parties at all, despite the fact that women are usually the primary breadwinners in Haredi families, since Haredi society considers it wrong for men to work. It's easy for us to say that the oppression and slaughter of Palestinians should be the primary concern of all Israelis and that no other group's rights should be considered until the injustices against Palestine are resolved, but gender relations in religiously-conservative areas of Israel are seriously hosed, and who the gently caress are we to tell Israeli women that they can't care about their own oppression until the oppression of another group is halted?
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Jan 24, 2015 05:53
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A Terrible Person posted:Please, tell us more about the Only Moral Democracy in the Middle East. RandomPauI posted:I'm not sure where I got this idea, but growing up I was convinced Israel was supposed to be like the USA but in the middle east. The more I found out about how things actually were there the sadder and angrier I became. Where could that have come from? The problem is that Israel has a lot of fringe and extremist movements with disproportionate political power, which tend to concentrate in regional enclaves where they wield tremendous local influence, and tend to act out so loudly and fiercely against anything they don't like that even private businesses will often bow to pressure. The settler movement is a well-known one, but since it's covered in this thread often, I'll skip it and head to the worst of the worst: the "ultra-Orthodox" Haredi movement, which is (to oversimplify it a bit) a fundamentalist movement that rejects secularism completely and believes that society should be built around strict adherence to original Jewish law as written in the Torah; it's safe to think of them as the Jewish version of people who want society ruled by Sharia law. They're the main source of all the abuse and discrimination against women, since they believe all the same crap about modesty and sin that you'd expect from someplace like Saudi Arabia. They take extreme offense at seeing people near them violating their extreme interpretations of Jewish law, so they tend to live close together, concentrate in specific areas, form extremely insular communities, and eventually take over entire neighborhoods. They also have zero respect for the secular government, and have demonstrated themselves willing to physically attack police and soldiers who enter Haredi communities, compare the government (and anyone else who criticizes them) to Nazis committing a "spiritual holocaust" against them, and wield enough concentrated power in their area that the police fear to enter Haredi neighborhoods and mayors are often brought over to their side. Harassment of people or businesses who violate Haredi precepts within a Haredi neighborhood is common, and members of the Haredi community who go against Haredi beliefs often find themselves completely ostracized by the community. Many private businesses which serve Haredi areas bow to the pressure and willingly impose Haredi-style restrictions on their service in order to satisfy the complaints they receive, and those that refuse are subjected to harassment, vandalism, and violence. Rabbis refuse to condemn them since they're the most strongly-religious demographic in Israel, and the police and IDF are reluctant to come down on them with any real force, preferring to avoid confrontations rather than engage in a serious crackdown. Haredi communities have their own media and their own schools, and avoid mixing with secular society as much as possible - except when they attempt to impose their values on secular society (or at least protect themselves through their own political parties. What are the Haredi principles? Well, for one thing, they're anti-Zionist, at least in theory. But that's the one and only bright spot; basically everything else is horrible. They believe that the most noble occupation for men is devoting oneself to study of the Torah and Judaism; both conventional employment and secular schooling are shunned by the Haredi, and less than half of Haredi men are employed (most of those non-employed Haredi families are on welfare, though some also rely on the women to provide income while the men study). The Haredi strongly oppose IDF membership; they are specially exempted from the draft (which is a controversial political issue in Israel in recent years) and those Haredi who enlist willingly often find themselves subjected to harassment and exclusion from the Haredi community. They also want to enforce most of the usual Jewish religious stuff, like closing roads on Saturday so no one can offend them by being seen driving on Shabbat. The Haredi belief that sticks out the most to me, though, is the institutionalized discrimination against women to almost ridiculous levels, believing that it is sinful for men to be close to or sometimes even to see women any more than necessary. Haredi beliefs require women to wear "modest" outfits that show minimal skin, prohibit men from having physical contact of any sort (such as a handshake) with women in public or even being near them, prohibit men and women from being in a secluded or private area (such as, say, an elevator) together, prohibit men from hearing the sound of a woman singing, and advise men to look at women as little as possible lest they be distracted by sinful thoughts. Of course, pornography and sex-related items are banned, and sex itself is frowned upon except as absolutely necessary for procreation. All this means that everything is segregated in order to keep women as far from men and out of view of men as much as possible, women are given no role in public life except when they're needed to work to support their deadbeat scholar husband and their family, signs are posted at the entrances to Haredi neighborhoods warning women not to dress in "immodest" clothes in order to "not disturb the sanctity of our neighborhood and our way of life", and so on. If a breach of Haredi policy is sighted, it's often met with violence or at least vandalism. Even pictures of women are frowned upon, and advertisements or posters featuring women are often defaced or torn down. This holds doubly true in Haredi media; women's faces are often blurred out, and there was a recent controversy about a Haredi paper photoshopping Angela Merkel and other female world leaders out of a photograph of the recent Paris solidarity rallies. Unfortunately, there's one more belief that the Haredi hold: a faithful devotion to the command "be fruitful and multiply". They have lots of kids, and believe that having big families is their religious duty...and it also happens to do wonders for their political strength. The Haredim, who already make up about 10% of Israel's population, are the fastest-growing demographic in Israel by far, growing much faster than even the Arab population. Twenty years from now, all those kids are going to be a lot of votes if things remain as they are now. The thing is, the special status of the Haredim already causes a lot of tension in Israeli society. A lot of people don't like the fact that the Haredim are exempted from IDF service, are mostly on welfare but have tons of kids anyway, and constantly try to impose totally backward rules on everyone else. The Haredi have enough political power to effectively stonewall any changes right now, but as the Haredi population grows relative to the Israeli population as a whole, the situation is only going to get more and more unsustainable. Even though the Haredi's voting power will go up, the growing percentage of the population exempted from military service and dependent on welfare will eventually become unworkable, and who knows what will emerge from the resulting political chaos? It's because of poo poo like this that I pay some attention to Israel's RandomPauI posted:I'm not sure where I got this idea, but growing up I was convinced Israel was supposed to be like the USA but in the middle east. The more I found out about how things actually were there the sadder and angrier I became. Where could that have come from? What did you think of Germany, Spain, and other first-world countries back then? I think there's a general perception among Americans that all first-world Western countries are basically just like us except that they speak a different language and have different tourist attractions. And since a lot of the earlier Israeli immigrants were European, and there's plenty of secular Jews, it's not as wrong as you might think. But the privileged position given to religious authorities in Israel really kind of fucks things up, and the manner in which Israeli society and government tolerates and enables extremist groups to function and thrive basically ensures that all sorts of regressive garbage can run rampant. The contradictions inherent in Israeli society, combined with the political structure that gives relatively small groups the opportunity to exercise great influence over larger parties, mean that the government is simply powerless to stop this kind of crap from happening - both the discriminatory policies in the first place, and the violent mobs who strike out at any who dare defy them. It's not that much different from the settlers, who also wield enough power in the political process to protect their interests, and also are able to commit violence and terrorism with impunity because law enforcement and the military are reluctant to make any real effort to suppress them for fear of political blowback or outright riots.
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Jan 24, 2015 12:24
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SedanChair posted:Homegrown, eh? By European leftist immigrants, steeped in European leftist ideas? Yeah, it's a good thing Europe was around to invent feminism for them, since we all know non-Europeans are savages incapable of coming up with leftist positions by themselves. And no, Occupy absolutely had skeletons like that in its closet. Granted, by that time the US had pretty much stopped carrying out Protective Edge-style massacres in favor of a more constant low-level oppression, but it's downright ignorant to suggest that the US didn't have this whole thing about invading and oppressing a foreign power while engaging in indiscriminate punitive massacres against the civilian population in the name of suppressing terrorists. SedanChair posted:No I was pointing out what a sick joke it is to agitate for women to get into a men-only shelter so they can escape imaginary danger, while remaining silent about women getting killed for real a few miles away. Of course it wouldn't make sense for her as a Labor politician to make that her focus, but who cares? I say the same poo poo about Elizabeth Warren, knowing that if she took a different stance she would be unelectable and irrelevant. Yeah, look at how sick and selfish it is for women to care about issues that affect them and their demographic personally! Why, they don't even care about the issues faced by a completely different demographic who is being oppressed in completely different ways by completely different people! Look at those dumb stupid feminists, how dare they care about intense and often violent discrimination against themselves when other groups are also being oppressed? How dare they not focus primarily on the one issue that I, an American who has never been to Israel and only has the vaguest idea of Israeli issues, care about? Their own rights can wait till after rights are given to the one oppressed group that the international community cares about, and the other groups facing oppression and discrimination in Israel can suck it. The political situation in Israel? Who cares about that? As an American and an internet poster, it's my solemn right to not know or care what the political situation is like in Israel, just as it's my duty to care only about the issues I care about and dismiss the issues I don't care about as not only irrelevant but actively counterproductive to leftism, which of course was a European invention that Arabs and Semites never could have come up with on their own.
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Jan 24, 2015 20:50
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Did you know that there is an African American President, and that there are many successful African American actors, politicians, and media personalities, and therefore racism is over? Gosh, you're right! Clearly since African-Americans are incapable of integrating into white society, we should just pack up them all up and ship them back to Africa! 
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Jan 27, 2015 19:22
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