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Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

fool of sound posted:

This attack is directly a product of every less extreme option being systematically closed to the Palestinians. They can't hope to negotiate; Israel has historically negotiated with them in bath faith when it deigns to do so at all. They can't hope for integration; even the Israeli left is so anti-Arab that they would rather fail to form a government than negotiate with the Arab List. They can't hope for foreign intervention, it's either solidly on Israel's side or willing to abandon Palestine for better relations with the former. They can't hope to win a military confrontation; they have what arms can be smuggled in, Israel is outfitted by the USA. They can't even hope to make a functional homeland for themselves; Israel functionally controls their borders and infrastructure, and progressively steals what land it wants anyway. There are no options available to them except terrorist attacks or submitting to ever worsening oppression. Saying that "Hamas shouldn't be doing this" implies that other options actually exist. They don't.

Palestine and Israel do not operate on level ethical ground. Israel is an actual functional nation state, Palestine is a gulag that Israel and the international community sometimes finds convenient to pretend is one. The power dynamic and relative options means that their acts cannot carry the same ethical weight.

If a mass shooter is shown to have had a life of torture abuse and neglect, we don't say they have a lesser moral or ethical obligation to not commit massacres. It just makes it maybe that little bit more understandable. The same applies to (quasi)-state actors.

This line of reasoning is further undermined by the fact that they managed to steal a bunch of armored vehicles and overwhelm at least one outpost. Maybe if they had more of their troops doing that instead of committing atrocities they would have had even more materiel for a next phase

e: also this attack will very likely end up having been a terrible tactical and strategic move when the dust settles so all of the justifications will only look worse as time passes

Kagrenak fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Oct 9, 2023

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Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

fool of sound posted:

Ok now the next step in this train of thought is "why they are protesting" and "why they were willing to join a short term, unstable coalition largely based around a failed attempt to get rid of Bibi".

What next phase? The one where Israel denies all their civilians access to basic utilities and then bombs any building that might contain a male between the ages of 15 and 60 while the world continues to ignore those acts by a state actor with an actual ability to resolve the conflict? This isn't comparable to a mass shooter. It's comparable to a slave revolt or tribal raids during the US's western expansion.


The one that's ongoing where there are reports of more fighters breaching the walls and continuing fighting? The one where they captured IDF officers and could have had additional more useful hostages instead of killing and capturing a bunch of idiot ravers?

Yeah Israel will respond with horrendous war crimes of their own that makes this one look tame. But at this point that feels as inevitable and as examined as the sun rising in the east so of course people are talking about the new event.

emanresu tnuocca posted:

That rave is like the single biggest mass-casualty event in the history of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. In terms of casualties per capita it's a 9/11 * 3 all by itself. It's a significant event. The headlines were never going to be "Israel-Palestine Conflict Still On Going, Israel still very bad, also 260 civilians killed in a single attack". Like, c'mon, goons.

What I kind of fear though is that it's going to hold on to this record for a very short time.

Is this even true for the Israeli side of the conflict? Probably for some decades it is but it pales in comparison to multiple other atrocities Israel has committed in the last couple decades.

Kagrenak fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Oct 9, 2023

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Zzulu posted:

They have no real reason to enter Gaza until it is bombed to oblivion. They have complete air superiority don't they?

Yeah I don't think that Hamas even really has a substantial stock of RPGs MANPADs or anything so they can probably even carry out rotary operations with impunity. It's going to be an absolute nightmare on the ground long before they go in on foot.

Kagrenak fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Oct 9, 2023

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

FlapYoJacks posted:

Perhaps the U.N. could do something more substantial than tut-tut at Israel?

What actions could they take? The US will block anything more substantial than milquetoast condemnations and vague calls for a return to dialogue. At some sort of ideal minimum they would be sending in peacekeeping/monitoring forces to keep the power, water, food and medicine flowing but I'm sure my country's delegation wouldn't go for that at all.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

FlapYoJacks posted:

How about the UN give Palestine more money/aid while condemning Israel and sending peace-keeping troops to ensure Israel stops committing genocide?
There is plenty they can do, but they don't want to do.

They literally can't send a peacekeeping mission because of the US' veto (and honestly probably the UK's France's as well). You'd have to erode the vast bipartisan support in the US for Israeli war crimes first.

They do send aid and probably will increase the amount (although it still won't be nearly enough) and I'm sure they'll issue more condemnations soon for all the good that'll do, too.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Viller posted:

Collateral damage is the side effect to the response to arming 700+ civilians. Any country on the planet would do the same. Hamas is responsible, no one else.

The US committed a bunch of atrocities post 9/11 but even we didn't straight up strategic bomb entire neighborhoods in Kabul after walling it up and preventing everyone from leaving the region. If this is Israel's opening move then I think that term will be horrifyingly appropriate for the campaign they're beginning to wage.

fwiw up thread I was also condemning the rave massacre and other civilian directed attacks as a tactically useless atrocity by Hamas. But the reprisals on this scale and with this level of collective punishment are even less defensible, especially given Israel's absurdly superior military might.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

selec posted:

I think the refugee crisis is about who has the power—why should border countries be willing to fix a problem that is entirely under the control of a frequently-hostile neighbor?

Because this is how many (arguably most?) refugee situations come about? Why should Europe accept Ukrainian refugees when Russia could simply leave? Even if Israel were to unilaterally stop the occupation, massacres and encouragement tomorrow there would still be a refugee crisis across the region.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

zer0spunk posted:

I'm one of those people that likes to think that even without pearl habor america would have joined the war effort. I don't know if that makes me naive or an optimist

Maybe the political leadership would have but in 39 and 40, the only polling I can find suggests the US public's appetite for joining the war directly was quite low, with 84-88% of people against sending troops/declaring war.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/great-debate

https://news.gallup.com/vault/265865/gallup-vault-opinion-start-world-war.aspx

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Szarrukin posted:

so not "beheaded" anymore?

This is loving disgusting

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

mannerup posted:

erosion of civil liberties over this in France, Austria and Austraila where pro-palestinian demonstrations are being banned from assembling

I'm honestly starting to wonder if the tensions about this conflict in the west will end up leading to pockets of spreading sectarian violence. The tone of protests on both sides has already been incredibly heated and banning protests and showing up with cops already there is already a form of state violence and almost always drives protests towards more extreme action.

Szarrukin posted:

Media spreading fake news about "Palestinians beheading infants" and then backing up without any comment are disgusting. If being against literal blood libel is bannable, so be it.

Oh I see so you're just drawing a strong moral disambiguation between beheading babies and burning them. Cool and normal to do.

Kagrenak fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Oct 12, 2023

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Crosby B. Alfred posted:

I've been searching a bit over Twitter, AP, Reuters and few ME Journalists and I have not seen a single officials statement or plans aside from vague their armed forces will be invading Gaza and it'll be long tough fight.

They've definitely repeatedly mentioned dismantling Hamas, which I'm sure they'll attempt to do by killing more civilians than they ever have before.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-admits-failures-and-promises-investigation-vows-to-dismantle-hamas/amp/

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

frajaq posted:

Why did they lie about that detail then?

I'll say the same thing I did to the other poster:

Take a minute to reflect if drawing a moral distinction between beheading babies and mutilating/burning babies is really an avenue you want to pursue. I sure don't draw a moral distinction between what Israel is doing to the babies they're targeting in Gaza and these now corroborated acts of Hamas, other than the fact the IDF is worse because of scale.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Zzulu posted:

Just from a "war rules" perspective as long as Israel can point to somewhere and say "Hamas is there" they can bomb that area without technically doing war crimes.

Civilians are basically fair game as collateral as long as they are not the primary target, including hospitals and schools...

So yeah, international humanitarian laws are completely meaningless because you can just point at a school and go "the enemy is using it as a storage/bunker/whatever!" and then you can level it to the ground. Not that there's anyone enforcing these rules in the first place so they have always been very toothless.

This is a deliberate bad faith misreading of international law which repeatedly mentions that military actions involving dual use civilian infrastructure/buildings have to be proportionate to the importance of the target and risk to civilian life. Which absolutely does not characterize Israel's targeting of the strip.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

dadrips posted:

Not really, collective guilt is the same thing no matter how you want to frame it and holding an entire polity with a population of two million accountable for the actions of a subset of those two million isn't what I'd call the actions of a moral country. Hamas' actions were evil, but Israel's response somehow manages to be even moreso.

I think Irony be my Shield meant it lessens the rhetorical and persuasive position of those condemning Israeli atrocities against Gaza. Which I think is unfortunately and fairly clearly true if one takes a brief look at the state of public discussion. Morally and ethically I agree with you that it changes nothing about Israel's conduct.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Irony Be My Shield posted:

The head of the UN aid chief also seems to think they crossed in (and a few more also) so I think we might need more corroboration on the "they were rejected" tweet.

https://twitter.com/UNReliefChief/status/1716183555343085624

Yeah and https://twitter.com/JulietteTouma, who is on the ground in Gaza and quoted in multiple articles saying the trucks crossed in has not posted any updates saying that they have been turned around or anything. It's still a pittance and nowhere near enough but it doesn't seem like they got turned around?

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

I said come in! posted:

Is it probably off the table that anyone at all comes to Palestines rescue? The U.S. is going to destroy anyone who tries?

Who would come to their rescue anyway? I don't think anyone in the region cares enough to get directly involved. It's not like Israel is a particularly soft target even if the US stayed completely out of it

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

BUUNNI posted:

More like Israel is not winning the perception war despite the fact that it has orders of magnitude more resources, funding and tech than hamas

I really don't understand how you're getting to this idea from anything you've posted. As far as I can tell this is basically fully based on vibes.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

BUUNNI posted:

It's not "vibes" to see that Israel is losing US and international support because they keep killing innocent people.

Has any state come to a position that's unexpected of them at this point? Because as far as I can see, the reaction has been predictably permissive of Israel's atrocities. The data you yourself posted shows that the only thing that has happened in US domestic politics that people have solidified the sides they likely had before the conflict/Israel's ethnic cleansing escalated and most evidence points to the global response being along similarly predictable lines.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Paladinus posted:

They posit that there was 'fuel or some other flammable material present on the site', and that's also what I thought was a bit vague. At the very least knowing the amount of fuel, whether it could have been from the cars there or from an improvised generator, or it only could have been from something the size of a tanker (tank truck). At the same time, they are really certain that it was fuel and not anything that Israel used in the area.

To me, one of the main sources of knowledge on violations of human rights by Israel was this comprehensive and very damning (even in its headline) HRW report from 2021

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

Maybe I'm missing the bigger picture, but my impression is that HRW's reporting is far from being 'a mouthpiece for the US state department'.

No you see they're towing the line. I don't see how you wouldn't be convinced that they're a state department mouthpiece. They definitely never the United States foreign policy or that of it's allies.

This was after like 5 minutes of phone scrolling. You could say they have a bias towards the West (I would disagree but it's at least maybe defensible), but to call them a State department mouthpiece is loving stupid.

Nucleic Acids posted:

In the end it’s just one little data point Zionists will cling to while ignoring the atrocities committed by Israel on an hourly basis, includes by bombing other hospitals.

This is definitely the larger immediate issue at play here. It's not like Hamas is going to read the HRW report and stop firing rockets where they might overfly Palestinian civilians (basically most places they can launch from especially now) and these misfires, if that is what happened, almost never cause this kind of damage and casualty figures. On the other hand, Israel was killing more civilians than this on a near daily basis and has vowed to return to that level of intensity of collective punishment against the civilians of Gaza.

Kagrenak fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Nov 29, 2023

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

A big flaming stink posted:

This is literally the logic of might as well not have any laws because criminals will break laws.

"Might as well not try to free those undergoing imprisonment because the genocidal entity will inflict more harm!"

You're arguing Hamas should continue to commit war crimes because there is a hypothetical benefit which outweighs the crime in this circumstance. If the benefit never materializes (it won't, Israel will just take other hostages for future hostage trades/because they have a goal of causing terror onto the Palestinians), maybe continuing to commit the war crimes isn't actually worth it. This exact type of cyclical situation is a good chunk of why taking civilians hostage is a war crime.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

moths posted:

It's just a straight distraction.

It refocuses the discussion into a context where the only counterpoint is absolutely monstrous, so there's no discussion to be had.

Now the conversation is about (theoretical) rape gangs and a single kidnapped baby Instead of the systematic extermination of a people and new war crimes on a daily basis.

Because that kind of distraction can squeak out, at best either a "both sides are bad," or atrocity fatigue - Which are both always a win for the oppressor.

It's the same "he was no angel" bullshit that was used against George Floyd.

And it works, as a low-effort troll. It's not breaking any rules, is technically true, and can be repeated forever without losing effectiveness. If you're lucky, it'll take on a life of its own and people will spin their wheels comparing kidnapping to counterfeiting instead of, you know, some other current event.

I mostly lurk this thread and don't want to get into the discussion about which side did what and whether or not Hamas is justified in using the tactics they have. However, on the meta-discussion level, I feel like calling it a distraction tactic in this thread ignores a core part of why the thread focuses on Hamas' crimes more for periods of time: it's the only part of the conflict where there is real disagreement and this is a debating and discussion forum. Other than the occasional crazy person who wanders in for three posts, everyone here agrees that what Israel is doing is horrifying and completely unjustified. Almost every poster ITT believes basically all of the reported atrocities that the IDF has and is committing. It's not an interesting discussion to just post the latest horrifying causality reports, there's nothing to debate if essentially everyone is onboard with saying that Israel should unilaterally withdraw and cease hostilities.

So of course a ton of the posts end up being about things like whether or not oppressed people have more moral leeway to ignore formal and customary laws of war, as people ITT have deep seated opinions on either extreme of this debate. People ITT also have a much wider range of scepticism surrounding claims of Hamas' atrocities, some to the point of basically saying circumstantial evidence is worthless, which is a pretty extreme epistemic point to make and some people ITT really buy into third hand accounts with credulity. Of course the discussion will circle around the areas of disagreement when the alternative is bleakly posting updates about the continued genocide.


Now, I agree that in other areas, like media coverage and the public discussion, Hamas' comparatively small breaches of international law are in fact brought up simply to distract. But I don't think most people ITT are doing this either consciously or unconsciously.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Kalit posted:

FYI, your link is broken. Here’s a working one: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/12/politics/biden-israel-losing-support-netanyahu/index.html

Even though I know he’s been privately saying this kind of message to Netanyahu, I’m a little surprised he’s publicly said this.

Also, why would he walk it back?

Probably thinking of this happening earlier:


But this was a much more direct and clear statement from Biden than the earlier tweet was. I'm sure they'll be asked about these remarks so it'll be interesting to see where they end up going with it. I don't have much hope in them holding to this new line in ways that matter like not sending the IDF more bombs while they continue their atrocities.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

That's why I made the disclosure, isn't it?

Underreporting by 2/3rds is still completely nuts, and again considering the sources almost certainly another lie. If they're reporting figures this bad the real numbers must be awful.

This is basically as conspiracy minded as calling the Gazan health ministry's figures made up. Both are governmental departments but both operate largely independent of political control and there's no evidence to suggest either is providing deliberately misleading figures. It just also makes no sense to call these highly embarrassing figures which are in huge excess of IDF totals an underrepresentation. Why would they do this when they'll catch as much heat for these numbers as they would for the supposed real total?

From the article, Haaretz is the one doing the analysis linking boring daily hospital dispatches to overall casualties, so there's even less reason to call the overall total a falsification:

Haaretz article posted:

The hospitals' data shows that the number of wounded soldiers to be twice as high as the army's numbers.
For example, Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon alone reports treating 1,949 soldiers hurt in the war since October 7 (out of 3,117 injured people treated there during the war), whereas the army reports a total of 1,593 wounded soldiers. Assuta Ashdod reportedly treated 178 patients, Ichilov (Tel Aviv) 148, Rambam (Haifa) 181, Hadassah (Jerusalem) 209 and Sha'arei Tzedek (Jerusalem) 139.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010


It's like their strategy for keeping any specific atrocity out of the news is to just commit the next inconceivably horrible act so fast you can't keep up

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

The Houthi have been launching attacks against shipping for years now:

https://m.jpost.com/middle-east/article-722979

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/5/17/uk-flagged-tanker-repulses-pirate-attack-in-gulf-of-aden

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/3/4/saudi-coalition-foils-attack-on-oil-tanker-off-yemens-coast

One could argue this is an escalation in response but reading about the history of the maritime attacks it seems like they were escalating before Israel decided to crush Gaza.

I also don't think that it's doing much of anything in regard to pressuring the West or even that the USN has deployed great resources in response. The coalition sent a total of like 5 warships between all the countries, that's not even the equivalent of a single carrier group. The only nation really feeling the squeeze so far is Egypt given their loss of passage tax, but then they already oppose Israel's actions and probably don't have any more influence to wield anyway.

Nucleic Acids posted:

Debating the morality of the Houthis is, ultimately, a useful distraction from discussing what’s happening in Gaza.

Why do people keep posting like the discussion in D&D drives global coverage or action on the issue? It's not a distraction, it's the more interesting topic to debate and discuss because there is real disagreement! No one here disagrees how atrocious Israel is behaving, and when there is disagreement about single events, they get discussed at length. Updates about the latest horrifying events that everyone agrees are crimes against humanity aren't going to get discussed the same way as an issue people have varied views on.

moths posted:

Have the Houthis killed anybody? I expect the usuals would be screaming about it if they had.

This is all looking a lot like the same hand-wringing over property damage that effective activism provokes.

They've taken hostages, which whatever your feelings on the tactic are, is certainly not just property damage.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

moths posted:

So "no."

There's no blood on their hands, and they're favorably influencing politics on a global scale.

Is that not the most moral use of force out of anyone in this situation?

It's simply luck that they haven't killed any crew yet, given they're launching anti ship missiles at civilian vessels. They also have kidnapped civilians which can hardly be described as a bloodless act.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Nucleic Acids posted:

These events, which are not occurring absent the context of geopolitics and history, could also be considered from the perspective of Israel and its western allies, having sown the wind through their decades long genocide of the Palestinians, are now facing the reaping the whirlwind.

When I look at it that way, you're right, the random sailors of Norwegian and Japanese vessels are really just reaping what they sowed by doing their job delivering goods which are completely unrelated to Israel or their genocide. Civilians are indeed legitimate targets if their government has supported atrocities, or even looked the other way, thanks for showing me the light.

Or maybe... the antisemitic islamist group isn't being that careful at all in targeting only those who are closely related to the conduct of the genocide? Maybe you don't need to carry water for them after all

Kagrenak fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Dec 20, 2023

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

PostNouveau posted:

Aside from the morality of it, it's interesting how effective this seemed to be. Half the ship traffic had to take the long way, and suddenly Israel is talking ceasefire for hostages and meeting with Hamas officials again.

Other than the timing is there any evidence to suggest the two are related? Not that I don't see Egypt pushing harder for new talks as a result, given the extent of the financial toll the shipping disruption is already causing there.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

It's very odd that when it's the Irish expressing solidarity it's because of their admirable leadership and noble culture, but when the Houthis do they're rabid Islamists opportunistically leveraging a genocide to excuse their misdeeds.

Their slogan literally includes the phrase "a curse on the Jews." Get back to me with this line of thought when the Irish call for a genocide against the English in their motto.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

taqueso posted:

Is a curse equivalent to genocide?

Yes, a militant group or state actor saying "A curse on x people" is a phrase which belies genocidal intent. It would be concerning even as rhetoric from an official, never mind it being an official slogan, symbolically spelled out in red ink.

PostNouveau posted:

It could be coincidental, but it seemed so intractable so recently that it's hard to find any other cause.

Well who caved over what is more about the final shape of the ceasefire than the starting positions.

Yeah I guess I could see that. I guess we'll see if this round results in anything meaningful. If they get a decent amount of concessions out of it, it does make it worthwhile even given the shaky ethical ground imo.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Halloween Jack posted:

Is a genocide that some group theoretically wants to commit, based on your interpretation of their slogan, equivalent to an actual genocide which is currently going on and has been going on for decades?

Don't put words in my mouth. I spend time in real life organizing attempts to influence our congressional delegation to actually take action against the ongoing genocide. In this thread I have condemned Israel's actions over and over and described them as genocide and horrifying crimes against humanity, among others.

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

huh! hey, is this genocide of Jews by Houthis occurring anywhere but your imagination? I ask because there is an actual, honest-to-god, for-real genocide of Palestinians by israel happening right now in the real world.

I agree, there is no ongoing genocide of Jews by the houthi but that wasn't what was being discussed.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

ELTON JOHN posted:

drat wait until you hear about what capitalism does to people in the global south every single day

at least implying that people are okay with Israel's genocide made an effort to seem related

"You condemn/question an actor in the global south's actions, thus you must be okay with 500 years and counting of colonialism" is a pretty good one lmao

Kagrenak fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Dec 20, 2023

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

moths posted:

I'm really not sure what to tell you.

If you've only ever seen Israel get everything it wants from the US - how would you characterize that relationship?

They're using "Jews" and "Israelis" interchangeably, or it's getting translated that way. Which is wrong and unfortunate, but common. And a desired outcome of Israeli messaging.

E: it's Israeli branding that ISRAEL=JEWS. I've tried putting that a few different ways but it seems to keep sliding off.

The antisemitism you've cited is a direct result of Israel being horrible while appointing themselves as the spokes-nation of all Jews everywhere.

It keeps sliding off because it doesn't matter whether Israel and Jewishness are equated - it doesn't excuse their antisemitism. If it were the state of France commuting the genocide we wouldn't excuse a group that had "A curse upon the French," as its slogan and drove the last few families of French people from their territory. Even though everyone can agree that the french people and the state of France are inherently linked culturally, presently and historically.

e: ⬇️ ousting a colonial power is different than ethnically cleansing people, the jews that were in Yemen weren't colonizers, hth. the french were a bad choice for this analogy though I'll give you that.

Kagrenak fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Dec 20, 2023

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Here's a source about the first month of Gazan mortality by people who are actually epidemiologists and statisticians, not some Twitter thread that most can't even read which is also by a random person:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02640-5/fulltext

In this paper they compare mortality patterns from the Gaza MoH with UNRWA numbers and modeling and find no evidence to suggest overinflated numbers.


Here is another one using the UNRWA numbers until a later date. It's interesting to note that UNRWA workers seem to have a death rate twice as high as average Gazans. If Israel is truly taking care to not target protected individuals, why would this be the case?
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02713-7/fulltext

e: the guy you linked runs an organization literally dedicated to defending Israeli interests against international pressure. It's like citing the Center for a New American Security on US-China relations lmao.

Kagrenak fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jan 5, 2024

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

Frankly, it's insane to me that this sort of thing is permitted on these forums, let alone D&D. No one would tolerate someone playing these bean counting games with the deaths at Buchenwald or Auschwitz on behalf of the nazi government, and correctly so. Why do we allow this sort of genocide denial in this case?

Even if you accept Koos' calm Hitler allowing, his dodging of sourcing any arguments along with the horrible quality of what few sources he's providing should be pretty plainly disallowed.

Even if one thought the initial response to Gaza was justified or that a ground invasion is justified, I don't know how you could look at the current situation and not plainly see that this is far beyond that. But then again I guess the train of thought that Steve and others are expressing now is the same as how we got to strategic bombing Berlin, firebombing Tokyo and dropping two nuclear weapons in the closing days of WW2.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Madkal posted:

I don't think anyone in Israel is denying the Holocaust but if you want them to be every kind of evil please go on. Netanyahu has come up with claims about the mufti having a role in the Holocaust which is highly disputed but I think he still believes the Holocaust happened and the last time the let a literal Nazi into the country was to execute him unless you think Israel was secretly pretty chill with Eichmann too.

I don't know what they're talking about in terms of (presumably literal?) Nazis being let into Israel but bibi does have a revisionist streak about the holocaust while trying to court favor from other right wing governments, although I wouldn't say he's a "Holocaust denier"

Here's a Haaretz article about it:
https://archive.is/0c4te

An AP story:
https://apnews.com/article/2b1eb6dbe0f44763b515fbb4c6398f2b

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

Halloween Jack posted:

It's not insane, it's politically impossible. The fact that it's politically impossible is what's insane.

The hypothetical I'm proposing here is ignoring that it's insane that Israel is such a close ally in the first place given historical behavior. Let's pretend that tomorrow, Biden realizes the true horror of what they're doing to Gaza and decides to do something about it. Are there any historical examples where disturbing revelations about a long standing geopolitical ally's behavior against third parties has resulted in former allies taking swift and decisive military action against them?

I'm on the side of a no fly zone being the clear ethical choice but it would be a historic turnaround.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

OctaMurk posted:

Obviously nobody thinks the USA is going to institute a no fly zone over Gaza. His point was to say that if Israel was any other nation, we already would have done so.

I'm pretty sure we would let the UK assault Scotland or Wales for quite a long time before we imposed a no fly zone and we aren't doing anything major to stop other ongoing genocides.

It took basically a year of obvious civilian slaughter even amid pretty broad international consensus that action was required in the Balkans to actually do anything substantial about the issue.

Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

cat botherer posted:

The Houthi government is the one with by far the biggest popular mandate. It controls the areas where the great majority of Yemenis live. Of course they aren’t the recognized government, because the West doesn’t like them. However, getting hung up on that is like someone in 1960 saying that the RoC is the internationally recognized government of China.

It's not really comparable to that situation as literally only Iran recognizes the Houthi as the proper government of Yemen. I do agree that they are the government on the ground for the majority of Yemen's population.

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Kagrenak
Sep 8, 2010

SMEGMA_MAIL posted:

The context is that problematic language is being used by people who just survived a genocide perpetrated with US backing claiming to be acting to stop another genocide with US, versus problematic language people using it to justify the genocide.

This is every bit as ridiculous as claiming black power and white power are equivalently offensive slogans.

They adopted the slogan in 2003.

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