naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
A mass scale war crime to block food and water to 2.3 million people. Using war crimes to punish a population is an excellent way to get the world to hate you and the victims to never forget.
Does "the world" or its hate matter? US is firmly on-side and the brief mainstreaming of pro-Palestinian sentiments in the Democratic Party seems to have been reversed. Starmer is defending them right now I saw. Egypt's noises amount to refusing to take refugees.
The nations that matter are either on-side or cowed. "The world" will do what it does: nothing. The world doesn't act, nations do. And some matter more than others
I wish you were right about the importance of world opinion, but I strongly suspect you are not. It seems like something people mainly bring up when convenient.
The rest of the world is 75% of GDP and 85% of the global GDP ppp. If the US wants to become genocidal and increase its reputation as extremely aggressive it will accelerate the shift away from the US globally. Most middle eastern countries trade more with China as they haven't invaded middle eastern countries.
Besides the point made below, not everything is about trade. That is what the situations in Ukraine & Israel prove. That's an assumption from happier times.
Israel and the US could avoid trading entirely, but having a carrier strike group show up to remind everyone to "be careful" has value beyond mere economics.
Tomorrow Kenya could throw mountains of cash at Israel, but it wouldn't replace that sort of support when the chips are down.
Most Middle Eastern countries trade more with China because it's a manufacturing powerhouse that gives them a lot of money in exchange for their resources, which it is relatively lacking in compared to the USA. Not invading Middle Eastern countries barely plays a role in it.
Taking civilian hostages is also a war crime. As is murdering civilians, and raping them. All of which Hamas, the legitimate government of Gaza, did to kick off this little war. Exactly what remedy would you propose for these war crimes?
Does Israel even recognize Palestine, let alone Hamas-led Gaza strip, as a nation? I've thought their stance was more of "there's this piece of land that we might have a claim on, but it has a lot of squatters on it. We don't know where they came from, but we're kind-hearted enough to not kick them out and will let them stay as guests as long as they behave"
Gaza used to have their own water, and EU/USA etc donate materials for water pipes and so on, but then Hamas started digging up the pipes to use for rocket making.
I also read something about the underground reservoir being polluted which is why they now rely in water from Israel but not sure.
Egypt can always open their border and help Gaza with those things too!
I also read something about the underground reservoir being polluted which is why they now rely in water from Israel but not sure.
2.3 million people in a tiny strip of desert are going to need to import water. It is the US and Israel that forces Egypt to police imports to Gaza. If it was up to Egypt they would allow more trade.
It is the US and Israel that forces Egypt to police imports to Gaza.
You're going to have to substantiate this because it disagrees with basically everything I can find. Israel helped facilitate Gaza building a desal plant, for instance.
Do you have a citation for that? It wouldn't surprise me, but when I went to look for details it seemed like there were dozens of articles about EU assistance and nothing about Israeli assistance.
Except that Gaza is under a naval blockade and have been for a long time. Israel is illegally imposing a blockade on Gaza that is destroying Gaza's economy.
People casually throw out accusations that Israel is acting "illegally". Like their "illegal" use of cluster bombs. But they (and the US) refused to sign and ratify that cluster bomb treaty. A bunch of countries that already didn't have cluster bombs signed an agreement to continue not using weapons they don't have. And then Israel and the US "illegally" go against a treaty they are not parties to.
Does Israel have an obligation to send water or electricity to Gaza? Let’s start there. Are you saying Israel has an obligation before we move on to any blockade.
You are asking a disingenuous question based on a highly dishonest and propagandized conception of the situation. Thought in short, yes, kind of.
You are speaking as if Gaza and Israel are two sovereign states. Gaza, the state, attacked a bunch of civilians in an act of war against the other state, and Israel provides electricity, water, food out of humanitarian kindness despite all this antagonism. Talk about stupid and evil, huh? Really biting the hand that feeds.
Israel has been economically sieging Gaza well before any of this started. They don't easily allow in concrete, medical supplies, whatever into a one of the most densely populated areas in the world that's about half the size of New York City. They violently refuse to allow Gaza/Palestine right to self determination and occasionally bomb the place in flower wars. Gaza has never been allowed to have their own power generation, water, economy for trade, food, etc. Pragmatically, Israel has had to be involved with Gaza's infrastructure if they are not committing to full public ethnic cleansing/genocide. It's a bit amazing they have functional infrastructure as it is, and anyway this makes it a unique situation since there's not a lot of world places I can think of like this. West Berlin during the Cold War is one of the only things I can think of.
An analogy would be more like a bank robber that took control of food, water, and potty breaks for the hostages. And then the bank robber expects praise for "providing" like he's doing a favor. He's not killing, probably, because the police outside will get angry - not out of altruism. Now the robber is denying food unless the hostages complies with the heist.
Of course, this all ignores what happened prior to this. Including Hamas dismantling systems to attack Israel. Your history starts too late. Gaza has been and continues to be the shittier party in this play.
But of course my statement wasn’t dishonest. I was breaking it down into bite size pieces. I was saying “first start with X.” Was then going to move onto the next.
From what I understand from the news, they don't have an obligation to send food, water, or electricity but they do have an obligation under international law to allow for a humanitarian corridor. Willing to cede the floor to anyone who understands international law better than I do.
The humanitarian corridor is Gaza’s border with Egypt, and it’s not Israel’s fault that Egypt doesn’t want the entirety of Gaza’s supply situation running through their territory.
Yes Israel has an obligation not to commit war crimes on a mountainous scale.
This was in response to the question:
Does Israel have an obligation to send water or electricity to Gaza?
This seems to imply that Israel not sending water or electricity to Gaza is the committing of war crimes on a mountainous scale. Could you clarify what the connection is here? I'm not that familiar with actual war crimes (i.e. in the sense of actual treaties and laws around what nations are allowed to do to each other's combatants and such), so I'm guessing there must be some international treaty that gives Israel that obligation to send water or electricity to Gaza, and I'm wondering what that is.
This is literally insane. You are claiming that if side A attacks side B, that side B is required to continue to provide services to side A. Since that has never been required in the history of war I’ll suggest that it is not customary international law.
Blockading food and water to civilians is a war crime. Also Israel's illegal blockade along with their recent attacks provide Hamas with more than enough justification for fighting back.
Blockading food and water to civilians is a war crime.
"civilians" is important part.
AFAIK only when it can be assured that it will go toward civilians rather than enemy soldiers. Sieging starving enemy who refuses to surrender is AFAIK not a war crime.
Did you know there's a big aquifer for the Levant that unfortunately, for Israel, heavily falls into West Bank territory? What Israel does is just station wells and military in the West Bank to suck it up anyway. In return they provide what is needed by the Palestinian Authority in good faith, supposedly.
Now I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of every single peace deal and have no desire to learn. But water rights is one example of something I don't think Israel has every budged much on that doesn't get talked about much in public. Why would they give sovereign rights to water in the Middle East to their sworn racial enemies? I wouldn't take any deal that had the Israelis feeding and watering me if I were Palestinian, in turn.
I really wish I shared your optimism that would end the conflict. Unfortunately I think the reality is that Palestinian state would declare war on Israel in very short order, with the goal of reclaiming the entirety of what they consider to be their land.
What happens if the new state keeps shooting rockets at Israel and periodically sends death squads into Israeli territory to kill as many people as possible?
Why is it a war crime to demand the hostages before opening the border? Hamas isn’t a random terrorist group, they are the government of the Gaza Strip. They are in possession of the hostages.
Because it is instrumentalizing the suffering of the population to pressure the government. Terrorism at its most basic definition.
...and what was shooting up the music festival?
Near as I can tell, most of the arguments against turning the Gaza strip into a parking lot boil down to "the Jews are a bunch meanies for not allowing themselves to be driven into the sea in 1948"
Most people (worldwide) who are using these arguments are just using them as a stick to beat Israel with. But there's also a very conservative line of thought which holds ones friends and allies to higher standards than one's enemies. Hamas are a bunch of vicious terrorists, no one expects better from them, but Israel is a member of the community of nations and must be expected to do better. Of course this is all very high sounding in the abstract, but when the rubber hits the road it's "cooperating with defectbot" or "allowing oneself to be slaughtered".
TBH I kinda wonder if the real point isn't the pressure, but to degrade fighting capacity for when they go in. Urban warfare sucks at the best of times, I doubt you could do it very well if you haven't had a drink of water in a week.
Pretty much, yeah, though the level of "terror" inflicted by reducing consumer access to high tech goods is obviously so thoroughly different from food and water and basic medical needs that it's a difference in kind.
Right. This would arguably be worse than the holocaust. The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands. But this atrocity would take place after the moral lesson of the holocaust, by a people who were victims of the event, and when Israel is facing zero threat to its continued existence and territorial sovereignty.
Well I guess this is totally like the Holocaust except for the fact Hamas could turn over the hostages to end this particular embargo while Jews in occupied countries couldn’t do anything to end the Holocaust.
The same thing I expect all 14 year olds to do re: governance?
That’s a total non-sequitur.
Hamas could end this particular blockade tomorrow given they govern Gaza - your case that there are a lot of children affected is a strong one for why giving up a few hostages in order to save the lives of children would be the right thing to do!
On the other hand during the Holocaust there was no “Government of the Jews” holding land that the Nazis were fighting and there was no demands by the Nazi government re: Jews except for dying or escaping if lucky.
What is the non-sequitur of holding one million children hostage until an independent terrorist group releases their hostages? Think about how this rule could be extrapolated. What would Afghanis not have been justified in doing to America to free the 150 innocent men who were literally tortured in Guantanamo Bay for years? Or consider that the Nazis infamously blamed all Jews on the few thousand or ten thousand Jews who were involved in the Soviet Revolution and the failed November revolution. This moral rule blows. How about we just don’t threaten to starve (or “thirst out” or whatever) one million children.
Do you believe that Hamas doesn’t rule Gaza? Otherwise I’m not sure how your argument makes sense.
If the Taliban were the rulers of Afghanistan at the time Afghanis were in Guantanamo they would have been well within their rights to embargo America.
Again - in order to compare this to the Holocaust, what demands did the Nazis make of a “Jewish government” that was completely sovereign in the territory it controlled that the “Jewish government” had within its power to do to end the Holocaust? Frankly if this hypothetical “Jewish government” was privileging the lives of 100 German hostages or some failed Bolshevik revolutionaries over the lives of 6 million Jews I would think they were pretty evil!
Hamas as the ruling entity of Gaza could release these hostages today if they wanted to end the embargo of the territory they exclusively control!
Hamas isn’t independent, that’s the point. It’s not like Al Qaeda was to Saudi or even to Taliban Afghanistan, Hamas is literally the government of this territory and has per polling the support of the vast majority of the people.
Zero threat to their continued existence? Besides occasional raids like the one we’ve seen I’m not even sure how to model cheap drone tech and what it could do to Israel with a neighboring populace that wants to kill all of you.
The entirety of Israel existence depends on them finding new technological solutions to new warfare options. If they fail once it’s game over.
You can say that about any country in the drone age, or even the nuclear age, or even just the high-flying bomber age. Hamas was able to find a zero-day vulnerability in Israel’s defenses which led to 1200 deaths at around 0.01% of their population (which has a TFR of around 3.0). There is no risk at all to their continued existence from this attack.
The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands.
What are you talking about? What does this have to do with anything? Are you counting soviet civilians as subjects of germany, and german soldiers as tragic passive victims 'being killed' through no fault of their own? It sounds like those germans were having a real hard time in this war that came out of nowhere, and then decided a bit of jew-killing would help.
Germans had rationing, but they were not starving during the holocaust, every other population they controlled was. I think there was a Hitler quote about that - apparently traumatized by the WWI blockade, he swore that every european would starve before a single german, or something to that effect. Plus the more intentional starving of 'zig millionen' slavs in the hungerplan.
I wonder if @coffee_enjoyer made the same mistake or if he had the cynicism to imply the intentional starving of slavs by germans was a hardship borne by the german people.
Not defending it in any way, more a data point in the stupid = evil argument, but I think nazi leaders really believed germans would starve if they did not secure arable land. I found TiK’s argument on shrinking markets really illuminating on this. I can’t believe anyone could do such a thing without an ‘either them or us’ frame.
Anyway, one more reason why I dislike pessimistic arguments - zero-sum, de-growth, peak resources, third world exploitation, starving proletariat, inevitable civil war, demographic collapse, climate & AI apocalypse type stuff – it gets easier to support horrible measures if you already think the future will be horrible. The cure is usually far worse than the disease.
How can it be a war crime to not feed the people trying to kill you? Was it a warcrime to blockade Germany during WW1? Are our sanctions on North Korea a war crime? Is cutting off Russia from US trade a warcrime?
The people of Gaza have agency. They chose to forgo all the necessities of civilization in favor of killing Jews with literally every resource at their disposal.
Hamas is a single issue party, and that single issue is genocide of the jews. Every mouth you feed in Gaza is a person who will grow up and try to kill you. Let them feed themselves.
is there evidence that they're using european donated pipelines to make rockets, instead of older lines? just send PVC pipe if you're worried about that.
Isn't this a bit like the "US government money going to Planned Parenthood/Christian charities but that money doesn't fund abortions/Christian ceremonies" situation? Pipelines aren't fungible like money, but if getting PVC pipe allows them to dig up existing non-PVC pipes, that's close enough to fungible, and so they're using European-donated pipelines to make rockets regardless. It's just that the European-donated pipelines aren't being used to build the body of the rockets; rather, the European-donated pipelines are being used to substitute the existing pipelines for their water-carrying use while those existing pipelines get used as the rocket frame.
That's a fair point, the effective fungibility breaks down at some point. Of course, it's also the case that at some point they should run out of Israelis to blow up, but I think it's most likely that that point is far beyond the point after which they run out of metal pipes, so that's not really a limiting factor.
no argument from me that hamas doesn't care about improving palestinian lives. just questioning the telegraph article saying european donations are being used to build qassams.
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Notes -
A mass scale war crime to block food and water to 2.3 million people. Using war crimes to punish a population is an excellent way to get the world to hate you and the victims to never forget.
Yes, but, we're far past that. Too late to worry about long-term animosity from Gazans at this point.
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Does "the world" or its hate matter? US is firmly on-side and the brief mainstreaming of pro-Palestinian sentiments in the Democratic Party seems to have been reversed. Starmer is defending them right now I saw. Egypt's noises amount to refusing to take refugees.
The nations that matter are either on-side or cowed. "The world" will do what it does: nothing. The world doesn't act, nations do. And some matter more than others
I wish you were right about the importance of world opinion, but I strongly suspect you are not. It seems like something people mainly bring up when convenient.
The rest of the world is 75% of GDP and 85% of the global GDP ppp. If the US wants to become genocidal and increase its reputation as extremely aggressive it will accelerate the shift away from the US globally. Most middle eastern countries trade more with China as they haven't invaded middle eastern countries.
Besides the point made below, not everything is about trade. That is what the situations in Ukraine & Israel prove. That's an assumption from happier times.
Israel and the US could avoid trading entirely, but having a carrier strike group show up to remind everyone to "be careful" has value beyond mere economics.
Tomorrow Kenya could throw mountains of cash at Israel, but it wouldn't replace that sort of support when the chips are down.
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Most Middle Eastern countries trade more with China because it's a manufacturing powerhouse that gives them a lot of money in exchange for their resources, which it is relatively lacking in compared to the USA. Not invading Middle Eastern countries barely plays a role in it.
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Taking civilian hostages is also a war crime. As is murdering civilians, and raping them. All of which Hamas, the legitimate government of Gaza, did to kick off this little war. Exactly what remedy would you propose for these war crimes?
Also note that the Geneva conventions explicitly do not apply unless both nations either have signed them or have agreed to abide by them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions#Common_Article_2_relating_to_international_armed_conflict_(IAC)
Does Israel even recognize Palestine, let alone Hamas-led Gaza strip, as a nation? I've thought their stance was more of "there's this piece of land that we might have a claim on, but it has a lot of squatters on it. We don't know where they came from, but we're kind-hearted enough to not kick them out and will let them stay as guests as long as they behave"
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Gaza used to have their own water, and EU/USA etc donate materials for water pipes and so on, but then Hamas started digging up the pipes to use for rocket making.
I also read something about the underground reservoir being polluted which is why they now rely in water from Israel but not sure.
Egypt can always open their border and help Gaza with those things too!
2.3 million people in a tiny strip of desert are going to need to import water. It is the US and Israel that forces Egypt to police imports to Gaza. If it was up to Egypt they would allow more trade.
You're going to have to substantiate this because it disagrees with basically everything I can find. Israel helped facilitate Gaza building a desal plant, for instance.
Do you have a citation for that? It wouldn't surprise me, but when I went to look for details it seemed like there were dozens of articles about EU assistance and nothing about Israeli assistance.
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No one is blocking food and water - everyone is free to ship them trough the mediterranean.
Except that Gaza is under a naval blockade and have been for a long time. Israel is illegally imposing a blockade on Gaza that is destroying Gaza's economy.
Which government made this law and enforces it?
People casually throw out accusations that Israel is acting "illegally". Like their "illegal" use of cluster bombs. But they (and the US) refused to sign and ratify that cluster bomb treaty. A bunch of countries that already didn't have cluster bombs signed an agreement to continue not using weapons they don't have. And then Israel and the US "illegally" go against a treaty they are not parties to.
It's been a pet peeve of mine since college when people declare the US and Israel to be acting "illegally". We are not subject to private agreements between European counties.
Of course we stockpile cluster bombs and there's no such thing as a law to tell us otherwise.
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https://youtube.com/watch?v=N6rogaLYRGQ?si=MKMD3TKxLO4ydjEC
About that.
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Does Israel have an obligation to send water or electricity to Gaza? Let’s start there. Are you saying Israel has an obligation before we move on to any blockade.
You are asking a disingenuous question based on a highly dishonest and propagandized conception of the situation. Thought in short, yes, kind of.
You are speaking as if Gaza and Israel are two sovereign states. Gaza, the state, attacked a bunch of civilians in an act of war against the other state, and Israel provides electricity, water, food out of humanitarian kindness despite all this antagonism. Talk about stupid and evil, huh? Really biting the hand that feeds.
Israel has been economically sieging Gaza well before any of this started. They don't easily allow in concrete, medical supplies, whatever into a one of the most densely populated areas in the world that's about half the size of New York City. They violently refuse to allow Gaza/Palestine right to self determination and occasionally bomb the place in flower wars. Gaza has never been allowed to have their own power generation, water, economy for trade, food, etc. Pragmatically, Israel has had to be involved with Gaza's infrastructure if they are not committing to full public ethnic cleansing/genocide. It's a bit amazing they have functional infrastructure as it is, and anyway this makes it a unique situation since there's not a lot of world places I can think of like this. West Berlin during the Cold War is one of the only things I can think of.
An analogy would be more like a bank robber that took control of food, water, and potty breaks for the hostages. And then the bank robber expects praise for "providing" like he's doing a favor. He's not killing, probably, because the police outside will get angry - not out of altruism. Now the robber is denying food unless the hostages complies with the heist.
Of course, this all ignores what happened prior to this. Including Hamas dismantling systems to attack Israel. Your history starts too late. Gaza has been and continues to be the shittier party in this play.
But of course my statement wasn’t dishonest. I was breaking it down into bite size pieces. I was saying “first start with X.” Was then going to move onto the next.
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From what I understand from the news, they don't have an obligation to send food, water, or electricity but they do have an obligation under international law to allow for a humanitarian corridor. Willing to cede the floor to anyone who understands international law better than I do.
There is a lengthy discussion here, and the same author opining re Gaza specifically here
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The humanitarian corridor is Gaza’s border with Egypt, and it’s not Israel’s fault that Egypt doesn’t want the entirety of Gaza’s supply situation running through their territory.
considering that egypt has had to ask israel to stop airstriking the crossing, it sounds like israel does have some part to play.
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Yes Israel has an obligation not to commit war crimes on a mountainous scale.
This was in response to the question:
This seems to imply that Israel not sending water or electricity to Gaza is the committing of war crimes on a mountainous scale. Could you clarify what the connection is here? I'm not that familiar with actual war crimes (i.e. in the sense of actual treaties and laws around what nations are allowed to do to each other's combatants and such), so I'm guessing there must be some international treaty that gives Israel that obligation to send water or electricity to Gaza, and I'm wondering what that is.
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This is literally insane. You are claiming that if side A attacks side B, that side B is required to continue to provide services to side A. Since that has never been required in the history of war I’ll suggest that it is not customary international law.
Blockading food and water to civilians is a war crime. Also Israel's illegal blockade along with their recent attacks provide Hamas with more than enough justification for fighting back.
https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/water-and-armed-conflicts
"civilians" is important part.
AFAIK only when it can be assured that it will go toward civilians rather than enemy soldiers. Sieging starving enemy who refuses to surrender is AFAIK not a war crime.
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I said we needed to go step by step. So do you still maintain Israel is obligated to provide resources to Hamas before we get to blockade issue.
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What is illegal about the blockade as it existed since 2007?
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What's the peaceful resolution that's available?
Israel gives its settlements back and Palestinians can form their own state.
Wasn’t that basically what happened back in the mid 2000s followed by Hamas fucking it up?
Did you know there's a big aquifer for the Levant that unfortunately, for Israel, heavily falls into West Bank territory? What Israel does is just station wells and military in the West Bank to suck it up anyway. In return they provide what is needed by the Palestinian Authority in good faith, supposedly.
Now I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of every single peace deal and have no desire to learn. But water rights is one example of something I don't think Israel has every budged much on that doesn't get talked about much in public. Why would they give sovereign rights to water in the Middle East to their sworn racial enemies? I wouldn't take any deal that had the Israelis feeding and watering me if I were Palestinian, in turn.
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I really wish I shared your optimism that would end the conflict. Unfortunately I think the reality is that Palestinian state would declare war on Israel in very short order, with the goal of reclaiming the entirety of what they consider to be their land.
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What happens if the new state keeps shooting rockets at Israel and periodically sends death squads into Israeli territory to kill as many people as possible?
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Why is it a war crime to demand the hostages before opening the border? Hamas isn’t a random terrorist group, they are the government of the Gaza Strip. They are in possession of the hostages.
Because it is instrumentalizing the suffering of the population to pressure the government. Terrorism at its most basic definition.
...and what was shooting up the music festival?
Near as I can tell, most of the arguments against turning the Gaza strip into a parking lot boil down to "the Jews are a bunch meanies for not allowing themselves to be driven into the sea in 1948"
I mean God forbid that tit be met with tat
Terrorism. I'm not sure what your point is.
If you want to say that terrorism is ok as long as the other guy did it first, just say that. But it doesn't make something not what it is.
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Most people (worldwide) who are using these arguments are just using them as a stick to beat Israel with. But there's also a very conservative line of thought which holds ones friends and allies to higher standards than one's enemies. Hamas are a bunch of vicious terrorists, no one expects better from them, but Israel is a member of the community of nations and must be expected to do better. Of course this is all very high sounding in the abstract, but when the rubber hits the road it's "cooperating with defectbot" or "allowing oneself to be slaughtered".
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TBH I kinda wonder if the real point isn't the pressure, but to degrade fighting capacity for when they go in. Urban warfare sucks at the best of times, I doubt you could do it very well if you haven't had a drink of water in a week.
Unlikely as the fighters will get absolute priority and they likely have enough in the tunnels for the soldiers stockpiled for a siege.
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Are all economic sanctions terrorism then?
Yep.
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Pretty much, yeah, though the level of "terror" inflicted by reducing consumer access to high tech goods is obviously so thoroughly different from food and water and basic medical needs that it's a difference in kind.
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Right. This would arguably be worse than the holocaust. The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands. But this atrocity would take place after the moral lesson of the holocaust, by a people who were victims of the event, and when Israel is facing zero threat to its continued existence and territorial sovereignty.
Interesting type of Holocaust denial. I have no idea where you got your information.
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The Wannasee Conference was January of 1942. German armies were still besieging Stalingrad a year later.
Apologists for genocide and other mass atrocities always claim that they are necessary for self-preservation. That doesn't mean anyone has to believe it.
Wannsee.
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Well I guess this is totally like the Holocaust except for the fact Hamas could turn over the hostages to end this particular embargo while Jews in occupied countries couldn’t do anything to end the Holocaust.
What do you expect the average citizen of Gaza, who is about 14 years old, to do about Hamas?
The same thing I expect all 14 year olds to do re: governance?
That’s a total non-sequitur.
Hamas could end this particular blockade tomorrow given they govern Gaza - your case that there are a lot of children affected is a strong one for why giving up a few hostages in order to save the lives of children would be the right thing to do!
On the other hand during the Holocaust there was no “Government of the Jews” holding land that the Nazis were fighting and there was no demands by the Nazi government re: Jews except for dying or escaping if lucky.
What is the non-sequitur of holding one million children hostage until an independent terrorist group releases their hostages? Think about how this rule could be extrapolated. What would Afghanis not have been justified in doing to America to free the 150 innocent men who were literally tortured in Guantanamo Bay for years? Or consider that the Nazis infamously blamed all Jews on the few thousand or ten thousand Jews who were involved in the Soviet Revolution and the failed November revolution. This moral rule blows. How about we just don’t threaten to starve (or “thirst out” or whatever) one million children.
It seems like all of these arguments boils down to “we will let Hamas utilize their population to protect Hamas.”
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Do you believe that Hamas doesn’t rule Gaza? Otherwise I’m not sure how your argument makes sense.
If the Taliban were the rulers of Afghanistan at the time Afghanis were in Guantanamo they would have been well within their rights to embargo America.
Again - in order to compare this to the Holocaust, what demands did the Nazis make of a “Jewish government” that was completely sovereign in the territory it controlled that the “Jewish government” had within its power to do to end the Holocaust? Frankly if this hypothetical “Jewish government” was privileging the lives of 100 German hostages or some failed Bolshevik revolutionaries over the lives of 6 million Jews I would think they were pretty evil!
Hamas as the ruling entity of Gaza could release these hostages today if they wanted to end the embargo of the territory they exclusively control!
I had understood that their military branch is independent of their ruling branch for op sec reasons
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Hamas isn’t independent, that’s the point. It’s not like Al Qaeda was to Saudi or even to Taliban Afghanistan, Hamas is literally the government of this territory and has per polling the support of the vast majority of the people.
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Zero threat to their continued existence? Besides occasional raids like the one we’ve seen I’m not even sure how to model cheap drone tech and what it could do to Israel with a neighboring populace that wants to kill all of you.
The entirety of Israel existence depends on them finding new technological solutions to new warfare options. If they fail once it’s game over.
You can say that about any country in the drone age, or even the nuclear age, or even just the high-flying bomber age. Hamas was able to find a zero-day vulnerability in Israel’s defenses which led to 1200 deaths at around 0.01% of their population (which has a TFR of around 3.0). There is no risk at all to their continued existence from this attack.
Yes you can. But France doesn’t declare its purpose to murder Germans when presented with the opportunity.
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What are you talking about? What does this have to do with anything? Are you counting soviet civilians as subjects of germany, and german soldiers as tragic passive victims 'being killed' through no fault of their own? It sounds like those germans were having a real hard time in this war that came out of nowhere, and then decided a bit of jew-killing would help.
Germans had rationing, but they were not starving during the holocaust, every other population they controlled was. I think there was a Hitler quote about that - apparently traumatized by the WWI blockade, he swore that every european would starve before a single german, or something to that effect. Plus the more intentional starving of 'zig millionen' slavs in the hungerplan.
I was sure the Germans were starving, too, but I guess I was thinking of the Steckrübenwinter late in WWI.
The Hungerplan was unambiguously, cartoonishly evil.
I wonder if @coffee_enjoyer made the same mistake or if he had the cynicism to imply the intentional starving of slavs by germans was a hardship borne by the german people.
Not defending it in any way, more a data point in the stupid = evil argument, but I think nazi leaders really believed germans would starve if they did not secure arable land. I found TiK’s argument on shrinking markets really illuminating on this. I can’t believe anyone could do such a thing without an ‘either them or us’ frame.
Anyway, one more reason why I dislike pessimistic arguments - zero-sum, de-growth, peak resources, third world exploitation, starving proletariat, inevitable civil war, demographic collapse, climate & AI apocalypse type stuff – it gets easier to support horrible measures if you already think the future will be horrible. The cure is usually far worse than the disease.
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How can it be a war crime to not feed the people trying to kill you? Was it a warcrime to blockade Germany during WW1? Are our sanctions on North Korea a war crime? Is cutting off Russia from US trade a warcrime?
The people of Gaza have agency. They chose to forgo all the necessities of civilization in favor of killing Jews with literally every resource at their disposal.
Hamas is a single issue party, and that single issue is genocide of the jews. Every mouth you feed in Gaza is a person who will grow up and try to kill you. Let them feed themselves.
is there evidence that they're using european donated pipelines to make rockets, instead of older lines? just send PVC pipe if you're worried about that.
PVC pipes work for your sprinklers and your drains, they wouldn't work at all for the high pressures needed in a municipal water system.
There's a lot of PVC used in muncipal water systems.
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Isn't this a bit like the "US government money going to Planned Parenthood/Christian charities but that money doesn't fund abortions/Christian ceremonies" situation? Pipelines aren't fungible like money, but if getting PVC pipe allows them to dig up existing non-PVC pipes, that's close enough to fungible, and so they're using European-donated pipelines to make rockets regardless. It's just that the European-donated pipelines aren't being used to build the body of the rockets; rather, the European-donated pipelines are being used to substitute the existing pipelines for their water-carrying use while those existing pipelines get used as the rocket frame.
Well, at some point they should run out of metal pipes to repurpose if all the replacements are polymer pipes.
That's a fair point, the effective fungibility breaks down at some point. Of course, it's also the case that at some point they should run out of Israelis to blow up, but I think it's most likely that that point is far beyond the point after which they run out of metal pipes, so that's not really a limiting factor.
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Well, here is a Hamas produced video showing their valorous efforts to scrap vital infrastructure to build rockets to kill with so...
I get that this is a den of contrarians. But when people tell you, unambiguously, who they are, believe them.
no argument from me that hamas doesn't care about improving palestinian lives. just questioning the telegraph article saying european donations are being used to build qassams.
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