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Coleman Hughes puts the case for the Israel beautifully in this 2 minute video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZloHekt7WLo
I don't think the Israel-Palestine conflict can be understood without considering the facts that (1) Hamas, and the Palestinian people in aggregate, are strategically committed to genocide against the Jewish people, and (2) Hamas, with the enthusiastic support of the Palestinian people, deliberately embeds themselves into the civilian population in such a way that their operatives cannot be brought to justice for acts of terror without high civilian casualties. If you don't believe those two things, then the occupation looks unjust, and the Palestinian civilian casualties like a moral outrage that can be blamed on Israel. If you do believe those things, then Israel is taking just and necessary steps to defend themselves, and the Palestinian civilian casualties look like a moral outrage that can be blamed on Hamas. By analogy, suppose someone broke into my house and started killing members of my family, and he was holding his 1-year-old daughter in front of his chest as a human shield; I take a shot and accidentally hit the girl. The death of that child is his fault, not mine. In a similar case where his daughter is 10 years old and is deliberately acting as a human shield for him as he continues to stab members of my family, her death on him and her, but not me.
My opinion is that Israel has the right to defend itself by waging war against Hamas -- and also that, since Israel has overwhelming military superiority, they have an obligation to do this with the lightest touch they safely afford to. But Oct. 7 showed that Israel has heretofore been applying a lighter touch than they can safely afford to -- and so a heavier touch, so to speak, is called for. This "heavier touch" means that thousands of Palestinians will be killed, some of whom are completely innocent -- and the blame for that catastrophe lies entirely with Hamas and their civilian collaborators.
The objective of genocide against the Jews is stated in Hamas's 1988 charter. In the early 2000's, the ruling party of Palestine was Fatah, a terrorist organization. Before the 2006 elections, Fatah renounced terrorism as a tactic, but Hamas did not. Subsequently, Hamas became more popular and they won 74 seats in Palestinian parliament, a majority, compared with Fatah's 45. Since then, Hamas has controlled the schools and media in Gaza and the Palestinian population has become even more fanatical in their genocidal hatred of Israel. The analogous situation in the US would be if the KKK and the Aryan Brotherhood were the two major political parties, the KKK renounced terrorism, and as a result the AB pulled ahead in the polls and won majorities in both houses. But it is still not analogous because the AB doesn't strategically target black noncombatants. Hamas is morally worse than the KKK and the AB; they are more comparable to the Nazis, but they have much broader public support in their home country. They even use the same pretext as the Nazis: those people perpetrated a grievous historical wrong against us, and so we want them all dead, whether they individually had a hand in the alleged wrong or not.
In the abstract, this is the case for Palestine. If you look at it in the abstract and in a vacuum, it makes sense, but I don't think we should look at it in the abstract and a vacuum. Instead, we should compare the response of the Palestinians to the way they have been treated to the responses of other groups who have been treated badly. We didn't see this kind of terrorism from the counties occupied by the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union. Are the Palestinians being treated worse than the Ukrainians were in the Holodomor? (Hell no) Ukraine's ancestral homeland was occupied, and, unlike the Palestinians, they were really targeted for genocide. We didn't see this behavior from 1st Century Christians in the Roman Empire (who, in the latter case, were really targeted for genocide). We don't see it by Armenians against Azerbaijan, we didn't see it when France and Poland were occupied by Germany; We don't see it from the Comanches or the Sioux today; etc., etc., etc.
When somebody says, "how would you feel if...", the very fact that they have to make up this hypothetical means that they cannot think of a historical example of a morally justified campaign of terror against a civilian population by an allegedly oppressed civilization. And the reason there are no examples is that in the real world, civilized people do not respond to oppression with campaigns of murder of civilians on the other side. In a hypothetical, you might imagine that they do, or that you would -- but they don't and you wouldn't.
If you want to argue in the direction that my historical examples above aren't comparable to the Palestinian case, then that itself demonstrates that you cannot make a moral case for Hamas. If you wanted to (validly) argue that the Palestinian response is moral, you would have to either (1) assert that the Palestinians have gotten shafted worse than any other group in history ever has, or (2) point to historical examples of morally justified campaigns of homicide against civilians, morally comparable to that of Hamas in terms of their justification and methods (e.g., in their use of human shields, the degree to which they preferentially target civilians, and their stated objective of genocide). You might argue, for example, that (A) IRA terrorism is or was morally justified, and that (B) the tactics of the IRA are morally comparable to those of Hamas. Or you might argue that the French Underground in WWII was comparable to Hamas in their justification and in their tactics. Would you make one of those arguments, or any other such argument based on a historical example rather than a hypothetical or an abstraction? You have all of recorded history to choose from.
This is missing something important that can strengthen the case, because this is not an ad-hoc argument used exclusively for Israel-Palestine, but instead has precedent. One much stronger than analogy. Consider child soldiers. Killing children in war is wrong. Willfully killing children is a war crime. Along comes some military genius who decides that because you're not allowed to kill children, he should recruit them into the military, and use the power of their anti-child-killing war-crime-fields to make them invincible. They can shoot you. You are not allowed to shoot back. Genius.
The typical policy on this, however, is that child soldiers are offered no special protections, and that the use of child soldiers, rather than their killing, is the war crime. This is because to allow for special protections for child soldiers would act as a perverse incentive for their use, beyond the morale effects that fighting against child soldiers already has. The ideal world is one in which child soldiers get gunned down with complete indifference, just as any other soldier would be, to deter their use.
Similar must apply to a state that treats the lives of it's own civilians not just with total disregard, but as a currency that could be spent for generating sympathy. It's a perverse incentive. There's just no more direct parallel because not even some of the worst regimes in history have attempted this (and even if they tried, getting e.g. Japanese civilians blown up even more would have generated very little sympathy).
In 1945 no one gave a shit if all of Japan were to be glassed and given what we see of Japan today I would say that total annihilation of their fundamental cultural model was a good thing. The japanese today are conscientious productive cooperative participants, and the world accepts them as such only after they renounced whatever bullshido weeb shit Tojo and his fuckfaces spun hp. The modern islamists, especially in their palestinian incarnation, revel in the genocidal rhetoric espoused in their holy book and have in fact carried it out to their maximal, albeit low, capability whenever they could. If the muslims desire to matyr their children to destroy the great satan, then it is their fault that the great satan has bullets.
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Did you ignore the part of my post where I said that I accept those facts and think the Palestinians are morally in the right to do that? It is not just to defend yourself against justified self-defense.
I'd consider the Israeli retaliation to be a campaign of murder of civilians on the other side just the same (I mean, even without getting into the weeds of how much the civilians they kill when allegedly going after Hamas seem to be treated as happy accidents by them, we have concrete cases of Israeli soldiers sniping Palestinian women and children for sport).
Yes, in my opinion. (Also the ETA and a lot of other examples like that) I think I'm generally much more sympathetic to terrorism than the socially accepted median, and find the idea that civilians inherit no culpability for the actions that a state they elected, supported, voluntarily cheered for and in turn benefitted from to be distasteful and self-servingly promulgated by people who stand to benefit a great deal from such exculpation.
I'm slightly overwhelmed with the number of responses, but I think a lot of them bring up similar points (e.g. the "Israel right to take revenge in turn for Palestinian actions?" ones). Please look at them for detail.
This is only half of the argument, my friend. The reason (A) was given a label is because it was conjoined with (B): the IRA's tactics and objectives are morally comparable to those of Hamas. That would entail that the IRA maximizes civilian casualties on their own side tactically, targets primarily civilians on the other side, and has the death of all Englishmen as a persistent and publicly stated objective. I assume you don't assert those things but I could be mistaken.
Sorry, I didn't quite grasp the structure of the argument there. I don't know enough about the IRA to answer this with confidence, but my vague understanding is that a lot of the IRA bombings certainly looked like they were maximising English civilian deaths.
This is such an extreme claim about Hamas that I would want to see evidence from it, ideally not just consisting of opinions from pro-Israel sources - unless you stretch the definition so far that it applies to any case of "use civilian infrastructure for cover so you are harder to eradicate with anything short of omnicidal measures [which you figure your enemies won't take]", in which case this seems to cover Ukraine as well (a bridge that I imagine people who are going to argue for "American foreign policy is basically good" are not willing to cross).
Absolute bullshit on IRA maximizing deaths. IRA car bombings were violent and killed but the IRA never focused on civilians the way Hamas has. 60% of PIRA kills were security targets, compared to 70% civilian Israeli casualties on Oct 7 alone not to mention the intifadas which focused on killing civilians. To equivocate the two reverses causality: seeking evidence for IRA, moral victors, being as bloodthirsty as Hamas to give Hamas cover.
As for Hamas aiming to maximise its own kills of civilians for the purpose of making Israel look bad, you have automatically excluded any piece of evidence that contradicts that statement.
But here, evidence: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2023/10/hamas-terror-attacks-and-international-law/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-tells-gaza-residents-stay-home-israel-ground-offensive-looms-2023-10-13/
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/unrwa-condemns-placement-rockets-second-time-one-its-schools
There is PLENTY of evidence provided by non-Israeli sources of Hamas loading up schools and civilian areas with weapons and fighting within it. It is deliberate policy by Hamas to exploit lawfare to cry foul when Israel strikes back, yet Hamas places all its military infrastructure in built environment. Furthermore the Gaza strip is not an urban metropolis there sre plenty of open spaces as csn be seen by the first search o google maps. Your refusal to consider the evidence is not because the evidence doesn't exist, its because your first order principle is Hamas has no choice and you are working backwards from there.
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This claim of fact isn't central to my point and if you don't accept it I withdraw it. The point is this:
So do you want to (validly) argue that the Palestinian response is moral? If so do you accept that you would have to agree to either (1) or (2), and if so, which do you agree to?
If you claim, for example, that (A) the IRA is generally justified in how it prosecutes its campaign and (B) the IRA's methods and objectives are morally comparable to those of Hamas, then we have something to talk about. But if there is no such claim you would make about any organization in history other than Hamas, then that would be notable.
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I read your post and you mentioned "vile and ineffectual resistance" but I don't see where you mentioned genocide as a strategic objective. That is to say Hamas and a critical mass of the Palestinian citizens want all of the Jews dead as an ultimate objective, whether they have a state or not. You assent to that as a matter of fact and think it is a morally defensible position?
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I appreciate this comment, but I do have one historical nit:
As I mentioned during a previous discussion, this isn’t true. After the fall of Jerusalem, the Jews’ treatment of the Greeks and Romans was rather similar to modern-day Palestinians’ treatment of Israelis, except far more deadly.
Quoting my previous comment:
After researching your sources, I found enough evidence to withdraw the example from the post -- though implicitly I was referring to the Roman occupation in the Second Temple Period rather than the Kitos War.
It would be nice if you cited your sources more precisely, by author name, date, and document name, preferably with a link. I notice you did not name the document by Cassius Dio, or quote it, which is peculiar because it is pretty juicy in support of your point:
I think the current consensus (right or wrong) is that that quote makes Dio less credible, and in any case that is also my opinion. I don't find the other sources credible in their details either -- but I agree they are enough to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the Jewish rebellion in the Kitos War was tactically targeting Greek and Roman civilians.
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