Rising tensions in East Jerusalem

[wiggin]

I understand that and wasn't disagreeing with any of that, my primary point was indeed how the term was misused but even misused its silly.

I agree that nuking Gaza would not be proportionate - based on some media coverage you might think Israel had done that. What Israel has done in reality is proportionate.

It's quite difficult to determine if Israel's strikes have all been proportionate or not (I mentioned this earlier). Rarely do we have enough information to determine that with any degree of certainty.

Israel can reasonably argue that they follow the principle of distinction reasonably well (with some notable exceptions), but proving that they follow the principle of proportionality is a lot harder. They are not always forthcoming with the precise military gain expected in some high profile strikes (as in the case of two notable strikes during the current conflict that killed in excess of 50 people, mostly civilians), and when they are forthcoming their level of detail in public is modest (as in the case of the Jala Tower strike). I'm not surprised about this, but it makes it hard to determine whether they have appropriately weighed things. Similarly, we don't have a clear understanding of what calculation goes into estimating civilian casualties and property/environmental costs and whether those are realistic and appropriate - especially for choice of munition.

I am encouraged that Israel, like most Western powers, has established a relatively robust vetting process for target/munition selection and strike approval (this is for pre-planned strikes, things like CAS are a lot more fluid but are also judged with a lot more leniency). The existence of such a process, however, does not mean that they always (or even mostly) get it right. Let's not make blanket claims of proportionality either way when we simply don't have enough information to judge. It's reasonable to say either 'X strikes seem to be achieving very little compared to the cost, unless Israel provides some evidence to the contrary', or 'Y strikes seem to be justified since they were targeting Z important military objectives and they appear to have put in substantial efforts to minimize the civilian losses'. But let's not speak with any certainty.

[Steely Glint]

This is a very specific word with a very specific legal context and it's used so casually that people think that a mere mismatch in power is illegal. A given action might be unethical, immoral, unwise, or counterproductive, but it could still be legal. Let's use the right language to describe what we're criticizing - both because it's problematic to accuse someone of a crime when you're actually accusing them of something else, and because it complicates the criticism when people can point to reasons why a law has not in fact been broken. It's one thing to accuse someone of libel, quite another to accuse them of being a dick.

It's an every day word which also has a legal definition. Still, I think you're missing the point here: people accusing Israel of war crimes (specifically related to the air strikes, disregarding any other war crimes or violations of international law they might be committing) because they do not believe Israeli claims about there being a Hamas in the buildings they're levelling, and they have very good reason to be skeptical.

[wiggin]

It's an every day word which also has a legal definition. Still, I think you're missing the point here: people accusing Israel of war crimes (specifically related to the air strikes, disregarding any other war crimes or violations of international law they might be committing) because they do not believe Israeli claims about there being a Hamas in the buildings they're levelling, and they have very good reason to be skeptical.

Skepticism about any statement by either the IDF or Hamas is warranted. Definitive conclusions based on such skepticism are less supportable.

[Aimless]

It's an every day word which also has a legal definition. Still, I think you're missing the point here: people accusing Israel of war crimes (specifically related to the air strikes, disregarding any other war crimes or violations of international law they might be committing) because they do not believe Israeli claims about there being a Hamas in the buildings they're levelling, and they have very good reason to be skeptical.

Oh no, there's probably been one Hamas member or Hamas-friendly person in every building they've targeted. Along with their entire families, ranging from infants to octogenarians.

[RandBlade]

It's an every day word which also has a legal definition. Still, I think you're missing the point here: people accusing Israel of war crimes (specifically related to the air strikes, disregarding any other war crimes or violations of international law they might be committing) because they do not believe Israeli claims about there being a Hamas in the buildings they're levelling, and they have very good reason to be skeptical.

Really?

There's a way to test that theory. If Israel haven't damaged Hamas's military capabilities, they haven't damaged Hamas's "Metro" of underground smuggling tunnels then Hamas will be restocked with thousands of rockets and ready for the next Round versus Israel in no time.

If Israel have damaged Hamas's military capabilities, taken out much of the Metro then Hamas will have been greatly handicapped and there'll be a few years now of relative peace until this happens again. There's been 7 years since the last major conflict, when Hamas were really handicapped, if there's another 7 years of relative peace then Israel have targetted Hamas and not just random Gazans.

[Steely Glint]

Skepticism about any statement by either the IDF or Hamas is warranted. Definitive conclusions based on such skepticism are less supportable.

So, what are the conditions under which it would ok to be definitive, in your view?

Oh no, there's probably been one Hamas member or Hamas-friendly person in every building they've targeted. Along with their entire families, ranging from infants to octogenarians.

One of the subtle nuances of this conflict is that when an IDF bomb or bullet hits a target, whatever or whoever it hits... that person or thing becomes Hamas. It's like transubstantiation. Leftists on Twitter angry about "dead children" and "ethnic cleansing" simply aren't qualified to appreciate the complex metaphysics at play here.

[BluntHorse]

-

[RandBlade]

No BluntHorse, you silly silly person, its because Hamas deliberately hide their infrastructure and dig their tunnels behind human shields. That is an illegal war crime BTW, but you don't care about that do you?

You think Israel are targetting those sites for shits and giggles? No, they're doing so because Hamas are using that as a shield. Hamas chose that, not Israel, so either Israel let Hamas have free immunity, or they bomb the sites that have human shields.

There's a reason using civilians as a human shield is the war crime forbidden by the Geneva Convention, not bombing the civilians.

[BluntHorse]

-

[BluntHorse]

-

[LittleFuzzy]

Sure, Israel has a right to defend it self. I implied as much.

Really? I just went back over your posts. I didn't see anything which might let me infer that concession. Would you mind pointing it out?

[Steely Glint]

Do Palestinians have a right defend themselves?

[Hazir]

Do Palestinians have a right defend themselves?

The answer is not clear cut if you are talking about the legal principle.

[Aimless]

A 15 minute fight with a large group of people and no one even had to be transported from the scene afterward? I dunno, sounds like a staged bit of political theater by evengelist q-anon types trying to do a false-flag.

I agree, the real events look more like this:

Twitter Link

It's an every day word which also has a legal definition. Still, I think you're missing the point here: people accusing Israel of war crimes (specifically related to the air strikes, disregarding any other war crimes or violations of international law they might be committing) because they do not believe Israeli claims about there being a Hamas in the buildings they're levelling, and they have very good reason to be skeptical.

Every time violence flares up between Israel and Palestine, there's a concomitant surge in asinine galaxy brain takes about how "proportionality" is assessed against the military objectives rather than against the number of dead on your side. This is misguided and misleading. To the extent that your military objectives concern the pre-emptive defense of life on your side, any assessment of proportionality must take into consideration the enemy's capacity to kill those you seek to protect. Moreover, even if we acknowledge the IDF's military objectives as being legitimate, and we acknowledge—for the sake of argument—that they're only targeting key Hamas assets, if their objectives are such that they justify the killing of dozens of small children and octogenarians—and half a thousand in the previous major escalation—they either have a completely implausible view of Hamas's capabilities, or have sharply discounted the value of Palestinian lives.

There's a lot of societal pressure on all of us to discount the value of human life, and some people who have never fully been in touch with humanity to begin with are especially vulnerable to that pressure. It's very easy for smart people to rationalize away whatever vestigial respect for human life they had to begin with, in this case—tragicomically—in defense of Netanyahu's cynical attempt to sabotage his impending ouster.

One of the subtle nuances of this conflict is that when an IDF bomb or bullet hits a target, whatever or whoever it hits... that person or thing becomes Hamas. It's like transubstantiation. Leftists on Twitter angry about "dead children" and "ethnic cleansing" simply aren't qualified to appreciate the complex metaphysics at play here.

Tbf, not just this conflict. See eg. civilian casualties of US attacks. The irony is that a large share of Israeli adults have served in the military, at least as conscripts—and a comparatively large share are counted among the IDF's reserves; any given Israeli adult is much more likely to have participated in or facilitated military operations against Palestinians than a Palestinian adult is to have participated in or facilitated a military or terrorist operation against Israelis. Arguments the IDF and its apologists use to defend overbroad and excessively violent operations in Gaza can easily be employed in Hamas propaganda materials.

Do Palestinians have a right defend themselves?

No. All kidding aside, Palestinians in the occupied territories have next to no legal means of defending themselves—or retaliating—against Israeli military operations, or against the ongoing implementation of apartheid policies and legalized & bureaucratized ethnic cleansing. That's one reason why the rest of the world has an obligation to stop—or at least stop facilitating—the ongoing crimes against Palestinians in the occupied territories.

[RandBlade]

I’d have a lot more sympathy with the Free Palestine movement if they were protesting against the murders of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

But they don’t care about that any more than Hamas care about the people of Gaza. Because the Chinese aren’t Jews.

They’re just racist useful idiots for Iran and ultimately Russia.

[wiggin]

So, what are the conditions under which it would ok to be definitive, in your view?

Honestly? In a modern asymmetrical conflict fought by a Western power? Probably never. It's okay to live with uncertainty.

There are times when it is possible to definitively conclude that the principle of distinction has been violated. It is much, much harder to do so for proportionality, because proportionality requires an understanding of the information and calculations made by military or intelligence officials (or political figures) when a strike is planned and approved. That information is rarely available and it makes it very challenging to understand whether a seemingly unacceptable civilian cost is mitigated by one of three scenarios:

1) The expected military gain was very substantial (say, a decapitation strike against Deif or the destruction of a major munitions facility)
2) The expected civilian cost was much lower than it turned out to be (details are sketchy but that might have been what happened at the Wehda Street bombing, due to collapse of an underground facility undermining the foundations of several buildings above)
3) They missed their intended target due to either human or technical error ('smart' bombing is far from foolproof)

None of these scenarios make civilian casualties any better, but they might make them legal or even potentially understandable. But we rarely get enough detailed information to assess whether this is the case - even seemingly reasonable explanations from military folks can be reasonably doubted without a level of detail and proof that said military folks are highly unlikely to provide because it would expose much of their tactical intelligence gathering capabilities (which in the case of Gaza appears to be quite extensive).

This isn't to say that Western militaries get a free pass; hard questions should be asked, and the press (and others) should hold political leaders to account to provide an explanation for a given action that causes irreparable suffering and harm. But I'm just saying that certainty is not going to be possible. At best, we might get insight into the process behind target selection, munition selection, and strike approval, to get some sense whether their approximate calculus is reasonable. We are not likely to ever get enough information to understand if a specific strike met an outside observer's criteria, however.

It is a truism that any battle fought in a densely populated city is going to kill a lot of civilians, whether military facilities and operations are being hidden within civilian areas or not. The only way to avoid these casualties is to either avoid fighting in cities entirely (challenging in most asymmetric conflicts) or pursue a political solution (challenging given the realities of both the Palestinian and Israeli leadership at the moment). The question to ask is not whether civilians will be killed, but whether the minimum amount of civilians were killed/harmed to achieve the necessary military objectives. Even if the answer to this question is 'yes', we should be prepared for civilian casualties on the order of 50-75% of total casualties (fairly standard for urban warfare of this sort).

Obviously this is horrible; that's generally the case with war. It's also the reason why every effort should be made to encourage a political solution to this conflict.

[Steely Glint]

Every time violence flares up between Israel and Palestine, there's a concomitant surge in asinine galaxy brain takes about how "proportionality" is assessed against the military objectives rather than against the number of dead on your side. This is misguided and misleading. To the extent that your military objectives concern the pre-emptive defense of life on your side, any assessment of proportionality must take into consideration the enemy's capacity to kill those you seek to protect. Moreover, even if we acknowledge the IDF's military objectives as being legitimate, and we acknowledge—for the sake of argument—that they're only targeting key Hamas assets, if their objectives are such that they justify the killing of dozens of small children and octogenarians—and half a thousand in the previous major escalation—they either have a completely implausible view of Hamas's capabilities, or have sharply discounted the value of Palestinian lives.

That, and the fact that everyone defending the IDF's practices seems to believe, or pretend to believe, that the cause of these violent outbreaks is that Hamas™ just wakes up one day and decides to start shooting rockets at Israel apropos of nothing, just because they hate The Jews that much and therefore Israel has No Choice But to Defend Itself From This Unprovoked Violence Targeting Innocent Civilians rather than the trigger being, pretty much always in recent times, Israels ongoing and entirely illegal expropriation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, so that land can be, by one means or another, transferred to Israeli settlers. Importing your own civilian population into occupied territory is literally a war crime. It's right there in the Geneva convention.

Yet we're all supposed to just sit here and try and evaluate the rights and wrongs of the IDF's targeting strategy and pretend none of this is happening?

Honestly? In a modern asymmetrical conflict fought by a Western power? Probably never. It's okay to live with uncertainty.

Is it though?

You just created a framework where no military attack that hits civilians can ever by called illegal, or even "disproportionate", because all the military in question has to do is claim there was a military purpose behind their attack (which they have no obligation to disclose because "op-sec") which somehow outweighs (to them) the loss of life, and having created this unreachable burden of proof you then want to suspend judgement indefinitely, and all the while the one sided slaughter continues. Do I even need to explain how this position makes militaries (doesn't need to be western) completely unaccountable?

This arbitrarily high and one sided burden of proof is an old and well known trick, to preserve the status quo: as long as no conclusion can ever be reached, nothing can ever be changed.

Don't get me wrong. There's a place for this sort of philosophical skepticism - thought experiments, the sciences, etc - but the place is not when refugee camps, journalist offices and children's charities are getting blown up on dubious pretexts.

[Aimless]

That, and the fact that everyone defending the IDF's practices seems to believe, or pretend to believe, that the cause of these violent outbreaks is that Hamas™ just wakes up one day and decides to start shooting rockets at Israel apropos of nothing, just because they hate The Jews that much and therefore Israel has No Choice But to Defend Itself From This Unprovoked Violence Targeting Innocent Civilians rather than the trigger being, pretty much always in recent times, Israels ongoing and entirely illegal expropriation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, so that land can be, by one means or another, transferred to Israeli settlers. Importing your own civilian population into occupied territory is literally a war crime. It's right there in the Geneva convention.

Well yeah but it's a lot less clear-cut in the original Hebrew. Steely, you're approaching this from the perspective that international law exists and matters, and that the opinion of the international community is worth any consideration; you must try to see this from the MIGA perspective of people who don't "give two shits about what is 'considered' illegal by the international community, since Israel will always be 'considered' in the wrong by said community." From that perspective, your criticism doesn't rate—at all.

Yet we're all supposed to just sit here and try and evaluate the rights and wrongs of the IDF's targeting strategy and pretend none of this is happening?

Frankly, I believe it's a bit of a red herring; IDF's casual, politically motivated dehumanization of Palestinian children and senior citizens will never be condemned by western powers, and the issue of provocation is one around which there will never be any consensus between the world and the small part of the world that simply does not care. I mean, even I don't think it's legitimate to attack civilian centres in response to ongoing low-grade apartheid & ethnic cleansing operations outside one's own territory. All we can do is report/share what little we know of specific events, and support organizations that try to make things better in various ways, whether through direct support (eg. the provision of healthcare services) or through the exertion of pressure (eg. by organizing boycotts of goods produced on settlements).

[wiggin]

Is it though?

You just created a framework where no military attack that hits civilians can ever by called illegal, or even "disproportionate", because all the military in question has to do is claim there was a military purpose behind their attack (which they have no obligation to disclose because "op-sec") which somehow outweighs (to them) the loss of life, and having created this unreachable burden of proof you then want to suspend judgement indefinitely, and all the while the one sided slaughter continues. Do I even need to explain how this position makes militaries (doesn't need to be western) completely unaccountable?

You don't need to take my word for it. To my knowledge disproportionate use of force has not been successfully prosecuted because the burden of proof is quite high (the Rome Statute says 'clearly in excess' which gives militaries a lot of wiggle room) and because it's so hard to prove.

See for example, this discussion about a war crimes case in Yugoslavia. A very high profile case that was followed closely in IHL circles was with respect to Gotovina, and he was originally convicted of violating proportionality based on an exceedingly stringent standard:

https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblo...er-yugoslavia/

It was later overturned on appeal and led to the general belief that this was not easy to prosecute:

https://www.ejiltalk.org/why-the-got...gment-matters/
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journ...D8EB4CEB83ECF4

You're right, we have no adequate way of policing proportionality right now. I don't think it's good, but because certainty on this decision rests to heavily on the decision making process and information available to commanders at the time of an attack, it's very difficult to prosecute. (This is besides the question with Israel, of course, since they're not party to the additional protocols or the Rome Statute, so you'd have to prosecute them under customary IHL which is tricky.)

I'm curious - do you think that militaries are in any way accountable to IHL right now? Outside of truly egregious and obvious violations, pretty much all of it is on the honor system.

Don't get me wrong. There's a place for this sort of philosophical skepticism - thought experiments, the sciences, etc - but the place is not when refugee camps, journalist offices and children's charities are getting blown up on dubious pretexts.

I think that you're misunderstanding my critique. I am not saying that any Western military engaged in an asymmetric conflict is immune from criticism. I'm saying they probably can't be definitively tied to a war crime on the basis of proportionality.

In that context, there are two worthwhile avenues to pursue to address civilian casualties that shock the conscience:

1. Work outside of the legal realm to pressure militaries to be more restrained in the use of force. It's not likely to work all that well, but political and public pressure certainly tends to constrain the scope and length of certain campaigns (especially Israel's, given the extremely high level of scrutiny compared to other Western campaigns). In fact, I'd say that the desire to have a sufficiently long window of time to achieve their primary objectives is Israel's best self-interested reason to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, above and beyond their agreed responsibilities under IHL and their own internal laws on the use of force. I'm fine with this approach, I just don't believe that certainty about proportionality should be bandied about because it undermines the basic (and excellent) argument: far too many Palestinian civilians die in these flare-ups, regardless of the legality of their deaths.

2. Work to change the strategic calculus that results in these sorts of conflicts in the first place - essentially, Israel can safely ignore a few rockets lobbed their way every month or two (and they do!) if they have reason to believe that said rockets will be limited in range and scope, and that enemy capabilities in other realms have not reached dangerous proportions. Israel tends to view these engagements as a limited period in which to inflict the maximum damage possible on Hamas' ability to attack Israel, so they hit it with everything they've got once a decision is made to attack. This was the case here: they wiped out naval commandos capabilities, some tunnel/bunker complexes, some weapons production infrastructure, some mid-level and mid-upper level leadership, and were effective at countering antitank units. It's seen (in a typically awful choice of words) as 'mowing the lawn' - indefinitely managing the conflict by occasional bursts of high intensity warfare interspersed with years of tense semi-calm. If this 'strategy' (or lack thereof) by Israel can be effectively changed, we'd obviate the need for this kind of high intensity urban warfare that has so characterized fighting in Gaza since the disengagement. I'm not sure how to do it, short of ousting Hamas and engaging in substantive dialogue with Fatah, but that's our best shot at actually changing things.

[Hazir]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't seem to see any reports about missiles being fired from the West Bank. Which begs the question why only Gazans seem to be willing to go to war over real estate in Jerusalem.

[wiggin]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't seem to see any reports about missiles being fired from the West Bank. Which begs the question why only Gazans seem to be willing to go to war over real estate in Jerusalem.

It has nothing to do with willingness - after all, most of the suicide bombers during the Oslo process and 2nd intifada (who killed far more Israeli civilians) came from the West Bank. The situations and politics in the WB and Gaza are so different that it's surprising they actually want to form a single state. Yes, there were protests and street violence in various places in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over several overlapping issues: first, Temple Mount tensions, second, the upcoming Sheikh Jarrah ruling, and third (the one that precipitated the deadliest violence) the ongoing fighting between Hamas in Gaza and the IDF. These, however, were limited in scope for several reasons:

1. Palestinian cities in the WB are nominally under Fatah control. Fatah at least theoretically eschews the intentional targeting of civilians and has not developed the kind of rocket and artillery capabilities that Hamas has in Gaza. Hamas is unrepentant about their desire to kill Jews and destroy Israel utterly; this makes their choice of weapon a bit easier to stomach.

2. The Israeli security situation in the WB is miles better than in Gaza; since the 2005 disengagement Israel has had no persistent presence in Gaza and since 2006 Hamas has been firmly in charge. Israel tries to exert some control over Gaza's borders, with Egypt's assistance, but the reality is that lots of weapons and materials get through the Philadelphi corridor and most of their shorter range weapons can be made in Gaza from relatively innocuous materials. Hamas has gone from having a handful of crappy homemade rockets and artillery pieces in 2001 to having thousands of fairly sophisticated weapons ready to fire at any given time. In the WB, Israeli security forces perform nearly daily raids and have some degree of coordination with PA security forces (most of the time), which allows them to nip this kind of sophisticated weapons manufacture in the bud. They also have much better control over the frontier with Jordan, so smuggling is a lot harder. Frankly, Israel treats the WB as a policing problem (albeit by infantry) and they treat Gaza as a hostile country.

3. The populace in the WB (and the PA leadership) are far less willing to countenance that kind of behavior by various smaller armed groups, including Hamas. The lives of WB Palestinians, while still far from ideal and not even close to free, are substantially better than their compatriots in Gaza. They have more to lose by a repeat of the Israeli incursions into the WB in 2002, not least of which is the tens of thousands of jobs they have in Israeli settlements or Israel proper, and some degree of economic interdependence. They know that an artillery/rocket threat immediately next to Israel's major population centers will engender a much swifter and comprehensive response from Israel.

4. Lastly, this round of fighting was clearly intended by Hamas to take center stage in the ongoing tensions in Jerusalem, by appearing to 'defend' the Temple Mount and Sheikh Jarrah. It appears that this has succeeded. That's why they went all-in despite the minimal actual damage they inflicted and the utter absence of concessions by Israel in the cease fire. They were making a play for Palestinian support, and they got it.

[Aimless]

On censorship—and self-censorship—in Western media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict:

Twitter Link

Accounts from employees, short clip from the Vice doco (did a double take when the man being evicted mentioned that it was a Swede who was taking their home).

[Hazir]

@Wiggin : your reply confirms what I implied; Hamas is the main cause for the type of conflict we're seeing in a disturbing frequency. I feel deeply uncomfortable defending Israel's reactions, but the fact of the matter is that they are reactions to acts of war by Hamas.

[wiggin]

I would say Hamas chose the timing, but the current situation is untenable, which was the true main cause. You are correct, though, that without rockets launched at Jerusalem it is likely that a few hundred people would still be alive today.

[Aimless]

Tensions remain high as videos like this continue to circulate:

Twitter Link

Twitter Link

If these videos show what they purport to show, it's clear Israel should invite cops over from the US to train them in judgement and restraint. Maybe not shoot 16-y-o girls in the back? I dunno. Could be staged/fake/old/misrepresented though, will have to wait and see.

[LittleFuzzy]

If these videos show what they purport to show, it's clear Israel should invite cops over from the US to train them in judgement and restraint. Maybe not shoot 16-y-o girls in the back? I dunno.

I'd think the training would be going in the other direction. "This is how you shoot a 16 y/o girl in the back" (US cops take notes)

[Loki]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/w...netanyahu.html

Is there a positive way to interpret Israel's opposition to the rebuilding of Gaza?

[LittleFuzzy]

I don't know that I would call it positive but it could be cast as the only effective Israeli response to Hamas' dedication to unending warfare from Gaza. Israel can defend itself from their attacks but the economic cost of doing so is massively greater than the cost of making the attack. The rest of the world won't let them actually put an end to the threat, and so Israel is forced to keep the Gazan economy in tatters to keep them from investing enough into their asymmetric attack capabilities to drive the cost of defending against those attacks entirely out of Israeli reach.

[GGT]

Lewk, I'm not going to litigate this with you but suffice it to say I tend to be much more involved in discussions regarding Israel than I do regarding the GOP. While I eschew such name calling in general, I only speak up when it's something particularly relevant to a subject I'm discussing. I have previously - and will likely in the future - criticized Congresswoman Tlaib's policy proposals and rhetoric. I wanted to make sure to distinguish my criticism of her views and statements from a personal attack on her as a person, especially since my known inclinations might make my silence seem to be agreement.

That being said, I do not find hypocrisy to be a particularly galling charge (much as it might be the ultimate gotcha in our society). I sincerely hope that everyone is hypocritical - that we all have extremely high standards we hold ourselves to, and fail to fully achieve them despite our efforts to grown and improve. Show me someone who believes they always do the right thing and I'll see someone who is either deluding themselves or is incapable of growth.

Well said I appreciate what you (and Loki) said about dissenting opinions on policy while trying to avoid the personal attacks. It's not an easy thing, especially with hard-liners who see the world in absolute terms. It's refreshing to see a discussion where Israelis aren't *always* right, and Palestinians aren't *always* wrong.

But I'm only on page 2 so far....

[GGT]

I’d have a lot more sympathy with the Free Palestine movement if they were protesting against the murders of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

But they don’t care about that any more than Hamas care about the people of Gaza. Because the Chinese aren’t Jews.

They’re just racist useful idiots for Iran and ultimately Russia.

Whoa there, wtf?! It only took reading 2 more pages to see the devolvement from policy to personal.

I'm almost ready to check out from this thread because it's just more Blood and Soil racist/tribal bullshit that's been going on for far too long.

But I have a couple of questions first about this asymmetrical warfare: If all Israeli citizens have a mandatory military service period, doesn't that make them all "fair game" as military combatants? ie How could Palestinians begin to know who's a civilian vs a soldier anyway?

And if the US (and UK) are the major funders of Israel's defense systems and weaponry, why should we ignore their offense tactics when they're in breach of previous agreements?