Israel’s war crimes in Gaza are by design, not default

[metis]

Exactly. Which begs the question of how Israel can justify such similar behavior.

It's not, but your remark says a lot.

 

[metis]

Your equivalent argument:

"Daddy! Tommy down the street hit me first! That's why I got all my friends to beat him, his family, all his friends, and their children!"

(At least 26,751 people have been killed and 65,636 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from the October 7 Hamas attacks stands at 1,139.) - as of yesterday.

Seems cause & effect are lost to you.

 

[Bthoth]

Hamas committed war crimes and a horrible atrocity on 10/7.

What would be the cause?

Why would israel impose retribution to 2.5 million for the atrocities of a few?

 

[Colt]

I came across this article, think it explains why Israel's war crime are by design and not default very well.

Israel’s war crimes in Gaza are by design, not default

For Israel, violence is not incidental, accidental or coincidental. It is part and parcel of its colonial DNA.

www.aljazeera.com

In the long, well funded planning of the attack on Israel, Hamas knew what the response would be.

 

[metis]

Irrelevant. You can't use war crimes to justify doing more war crimes.


Again, if you're going to justify or downplay war crimes by saying the other side started it, then you have no basis to condemn Hamas.


And Israel doing war crimes isn't new either. It's just pretty obvious that you can't justify committing war crimes by pointing to other war crimes. If we do that, you can condemn neither Israel nor Hamas. If you believe what Hamas did was unjustified (which, obviously, it is) despite whatever Israel may have done to Gaza or the West Bank in the past, you cannot then turn around and say "because of what Hamas did, what Israel is doing can't be considered that bad" or downplay it implicitly along those rhetorical lines.

Seriously, this conversation reminds me of another thread in which a poster was attempting to justify excessive police violence against protesters with logic along the lines of "well, they must have been doing SOMETHING to deserve it", which completely misses the point of the violence being EXCESSIVE. You can justify a RESPONSE, but you can't justify WAR CRIMES any more than you can justify EXCESSIVE police violence. That's literally just what that means.

We can agree that Hamas are evil, that their actions on 7/10 were vile, that justice demands the release of the hundreds of Israeli civilians they've kidnapped, that swift and reasonable military action against Hamas is justified in response to the well over 1,200 innocent civilians who were slaughtered by Hamas. We can agree to ALL OF THAT and STILL SAY "The actions Israel is currently taking in Gaza, the damage they have done, the tactics they have used, and TENS OF THOUSANDS OF CIVILIANS THEY HAVE KILLED is unjustified and can be considered war crimes".

This is called moral consistency. I fail to see why it is difficult for people to grasp it.

I have already stated that both sides have and are committing war crimes.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I have already stated that both sides have and are committing war crimes.

So you acknowledge that Israel's actions are war crimes, and that pointing to previous war crimes as motivation does not justify or excuse those war crimes?

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Seems cause & effect are lost to you.

Again, you're literally excusing disproportionate response as "cause and effect". Do you not understand how this logic implicitly justifies Hamas?

"Israel may have done bad things in the past, but that does not justify or excuse what Hamas did."
"Seems cause and effect are lost on you."

 

[Regiomontanus]

Can we think of any other event in history where a class of people were painted as being subhuman?

History is full of such cases. Blacks in the US/slavery. The genocide against native Americans. The campains of extermination against the Maori in NZ, etc...

 

[Revoltingest]

^ it's almost incomprehensible ...

I can agree with your terse statement, but I
suspect that we apply it to different things.

Perhaps it takes atheists to see when Jews &
Christians perpetrate evil. You defend your
tribe, & cannot so readily see it in a bad light.
Too many people view Muslims as an intractable
enemy because of a history full of religious conflict.
I see Muslim individuals in a more sympathetic light.
And this is notwithstanding my low opinion of Islam.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

You defend your
tribe, & cannot so readily see it in a bad light.

That's a lie on two levels:

1. Unlike you, I do not view the "[my] tribe" as monolithic.
2. Unlike you, I have been actively and financially opposing right-wing Israeli bigotry and xenophobia for years.

 

[Revoltingest]

That's a lie on two levels:

You should be aware that accusing another
poster of lying is very much against the rules.
If you genuinely really believe this, it bespeaks
a need to calm down, lose the anger, & consider
other views, even difficult ones.
You do not have THE TRUTH.

1. Unlike you, I do not view the "[my] tribe" as monolithic.

I previously cautioned you against that mistaken inference.
Read & retain better, bub.
But still, group trends are what they are.

1. Unlike you, I have been actively and financially opposing right-wing Israeli bigotry and xenophobia for years.

Virtue signaling me, are you?
I see in your posts that you're not fully right wing.
But I also see your posts defending what Israel does,
& denying genocide, simply because the policy
Israel currently pursues (Palestinian diaspora) isn't
officially declared yet by all in government.
To deny genocide is to defend it.

 

[dybmh]

I came across this article, think it explains why Israel's war crime are by design and not default very well.

Israel’s war crimes in Gaza are by design, not default

For Israel, violence is not incidental, accidental or coincidental. It is part and parcel of its colonial DNA.

www.aljazeera.com

I found the article to be one-sided and shallow. It's an opinion published by Al-Jazeerah. Al-Jazeerah is the Qatari national media. Qatar is a supporter of Hamas. That means, this is not really an article. It's a story. It's story-telling. See below, in a spoiler to save screen-space.

Spoiler

That said, let's look at the "article". It begins:

"The gruesome scenes of death and destruction in Gaza are a reminder that for Israel, violence is not incidental, accidental or coincidental. It is part and parcel of its colonial DNA."

Colonial DNA? Not True. In 1936, this is the official Zionist position. The intention was ( and is ) peaceful co-existence in spite of repeated unjustified attacks against Jewish people who had legally purchased land from the Arabs of Palestine.​

​

"The [Zionist] Congress reaffirms on this occasion the declarations of previous Congresses expressing the readiness of the Jewish people to reach a peaceful settlement with the Arabs of Palestine, based on the free development of both peoples and the mutual recognition of their respective rights." - LINK​

​

"Like the French in Algeria, the Dutch in Indonesia and South Africa, the Belgians in the Congo, the Spaniards in South America and the Europeans in North America, the Zionists have also dehumanised the natives of the land as a precursor to or justification for guilt-free repression and violence."

This is an attempt at re-writing history. The French, the Dutch, and the Belgians did not purchase land legally. They were all military expansions. ( The Dutch was commercial supported by the navy ). The Jewish people purchased land legally and lived peacefully on their purchased property. Worshipping at the western wall was exaggerated into fear that the jewish people were coming to take their mosque, Al-Aqsa. Arab attacks on the jewish people for almost 50 years and a declaration of war by the Arabs produced the 1948 war. Anti-israeli propagandists ignore all of that history.​

​

"But colonialism must not be conflated with Judaism. If anything, the Jews have historically been the victims of racism for centuries, rendering many of them anti-colonialists."

Well. There you go. We, the Jews, are in the majority anti-colonialists. The land was purchased in the spirit of free development and mutual recognition of each others rights.​

​

Anti-israel propagandists often cherry pick Zionist leaders', specifically the founder's, words in order to "flip-the-script" and demonize. Here's what Theodore Hertzl wrote in his diary. The part in red is what the propagandists quote. The part following in blue is what they omit. - SOURCE​

​

​

The middle section between the two boxes is also important. It shows that the Zionist plan is to purchase the land far above market value. And that is precisely what they did. This is still happening today. Land in East Jerusalem is being purchased, legally, by israeli Jews. It's true that Zionism includes a desire for the land, but, it's not dehumanizing colonialism.​

​

"In 1948, Israel was established on the ruins of another people, the Palestinians. It was made into a Jewish majority state through the deliberate ethnic cleansing of the land’s 750,000 Palestinian inhabitants. Since then, Israel has maintained security through state repression, military occupation, bloody wars and countless massacres against civilians."

There are two important details omitted here. First, the Palestinian's ethnically cleansed... themselves. They spread misinformation ( propaganda ) intended to incite the Arab's to rise up and fight against the israeli Jews, but, it back-fired. This is documented by BBC. The Palestinian journalist confessed to spreading the false reports. These are things that are not taught to Palestinians because it is humiliating. The Palestinians are in denial of what occured because the majority of their people fled not fought during the Nakba.​

​

​

Deir Yassin massacre - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

​

The second point is, the majority of land which was dispossessed, ethnically cleansed, was the result of a peace treaty. The Palestinians surrendered their land in order to end the war. The anti-israel propagandists will never admit this. The Arabs surrendered. They attacked first; they lost; they surrendered in order to end the war.​

​

"Nazareth, the city of my birth, was one of the few to be spared from ethnic cleansing but only because a military commander named Benjamin Dunkelman, a Canadian Jew who led the 7th Brigade of the Israeli army, refused to carry out his superiors’ evacuation order for this Christian majority city, as he later wrote, mainly out of fear of the international repercussions."

That's not true. That's the story they were told. The truth is humiliating, and, shows that the Muslims lost and potentially were in violation of what is written in the Quran. Here's what the propgandist didn't include in their story-telling:​

​

"The surrender of Nazareth was formalized in a written agreement, whereby the town's leaders agreed to cease hostilities in return for promises from the Israeli officers, including brigade commander Ben Dunkelman (the leader of the operation), that no harm would come to the civilians of the town. Soon after the signing of the agreement, Dunkelman received an order from the Israeli General Chaim Laskov to forcibly evacuate the city's Arabs. He refused, remarking that he was 'shocked and horrified' that he would be commanded to renege on the agreement he, and also Chaim Laskov, had just signed. Twelve hours after defying his superior, he was relieved of his post, but not before obtaining assurances that the security of Nazareth's population would be guaranteed. David Ben-Gurion backed his judgement up, fearing that expelling Christian Arabs might provoke an outcry throughout the Christian world. By the end of the war, Nazareth's population saw a large influx of refugees from major urban centers and rural villages in the Galilee."​

​

Nazareth - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Further, the word "wrote" in the Al-Jazeerah story is a link intended to corroborate what they have written. It goes to amazon.com. The author of this story does not *actually* quote the book. This is a form of a paywall-deception. The writer does not think readers will have access to their source. They do not expect anyone to spend the money to purchase the book in order to see what it *actually* says. This is often and recently employed by the Oct. 7th deniers quoting Ha'aretz and NewYorkTimes online news articles which are behind a paywall. This permits the writer to distort the contents of the article, or in this case the autobiography. Here's what was omitted:​

​

​

The Arabs of Nazareth surrendered. Then the Arabs attacked anyway. In the following chapter the author continues discussing this ongoing pattern of Arabs breaking their truces, but the anti-israel propagandist intentionally omits these details. That's the end of the story in the book cited by the Al-Jazeerah "journalist". There is nothing here about ANY attempted dispossession. That's fictional.​

​

The truth is, Nazareth was not included in the 1949 Armistice Agreements. It was not dispossessed because it was included in its own written peace treaty and israel held to its agreement. There was no attempted disspossession of Nazareth by israel. That's just the story , a revision of history, that is told to the Palestinians to avoid the shame of surrendering, breaking the truce, and losing the war. As it's written in the Quran:​

​

الَّذِينَ عَاهَدتَّ مِنْهُمْ ثُمَّ يَنقُضُونَ عَهْدَهُمْ فِي كُلِّ مَرَّةٍ وَهُمْ لَا يَتَّقُونَ​

فَإِمَّا تَثْقَفَنَّهُمْ فِي الْحَرْبِ فَشَرِّدْ بِهِم مَّنْ خَلْفَهُمْ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَذَّكَّرُونَ​

وَإِمَّا تَخَافَنَّ مِن قَوْمٍ خِيَانَةً فَنبِذْ إِلَيْهِمْ عَلَىٰ سَوَاءٍ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يُحِبُّ الْخَائِنِينَ​

8:56 Those who - you made a covenant with them then they break their covenant every time, and they (do) not fear (Allah).​

8:57 So if you gain dominance over them in the war, disperse by them (those) who (are) behind them, so that they may take heed.​

8:58 And if you fear from a people betrayal throw back to them on equal (terms). Indeed, Allah (does) not love the betrayers.​

​

ذَٰلِكَ لِيَعْلَمَ أَنِّى لَمْ أَخُنْهُ بِٱلْغَيْبِ وَأَنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يَهْدِى كَيْدَ ٱلْخَآئِنِينَ​

​

12:52 That he may know that I not betray him in secret, and that Allah (does) not guide (the) plan (of) the betrayers.​

​

مَن يَهْدِ اللَّهُ فَهُوَ الْمُهْتَدِي ۖ وَمَن يُضْلِلْ فَأُولَـٰئِكَ هُمُ الْخَاسِرُونَ​

7:178 Whoever guides [by] Allah then he (is) the guided one while whoever He lets go astray then those [they] (are) the losers​

​

The Arabs consistently have been the aggressors in this conflict and they consistently break their preace treaties. They consistently have been the "losers" as it is written in the Quran.​

​

That's enough for now. I'll continue with the analysis of the Al-Jazeerah story you posted later.

Thank you,

 

[libre]

First, the Palestinian's ethnically cleansed... themselves.

You cannot be serious

 

[metis]

So you acknowledge that Israel's actions are war crimes, and that pointing to previous war crimes as motivation does not justify or excuse those war crimes?

correct.

 

[Revoltingest]

You cannot be serious

He is.
This makes it dang near impossible to find common ground.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

correct.

So why was your first response in this thread, which is about Israel's war crimes, to say:

"It was not Israel that attacked others on its independence in 1948, nor did they start this recent conflict."

Which is pretty explicitly an attempt to justify their war crimes as a valid response.

 

[dybmh]

You cannot be serious

1) They ( the Palestinians ) created a false narrative which was intended to inpire ( incite ) the Palestinains to go to battle against the israeli Jews. It back-fired. Instead the Palestians fled en-masse. They, the Palestinians, caused their own Nakba.

2) The Palestians agreed to the dispossession of their land as part of the 1949 Armistance agreements. They started a war. They lost the war. They surrendered the land. They caused their own Nakba. Had they agreed to live in peace side-by-side with the jewish people who had purchased land legally... there would have been no Nakba.

 

[Revoltingest]

I came across this article, think it explains why Israel's war crime are by design and not default very well.

Israel’s war crimes in Gaza are by design, not default

For Israel, violence is not incidental, accidental or coincidental. It is part and parcel of its colonial DNA.

www.aljazeera.com

Thinking about intention....
I've spent some time in a Synagogue.
(Churches too. This non-believer has
had various compelling circumstances.)
Speakers sometimes address the Israel-Palestinian
conflict, but in a way I find oddly circumspect.
They lament the violence, but without a sense of
criticism. It's something that happens, but there's
no addressing causes....it's a happenstance...much
like the weather. Self examination was absent.

 

[metis]

Again, you're literally excusing disproportionate response as "cause and effect". Do you not understand how this logic implicitly justifies Hamas?

"Israel may have done bad things in the past, but that does not justify or excuse what Hamas did."
"Seems cause and effect are lost on you."

Listen, one can relitigate the past until the cows come home, but the here & now has it that Hamas attacked civilians, raped and tortured some, took hostages, and they well knew what they were doing and what Israelis would do back in return. On top of that, they have 350 miles of tunnels whereas some of the entrances/exists are under hospitals, schools, etc. And then when Israel tries to destroy these funnels and the militants hiding within them, some like you blame Israel. How can Israel destroy these illegal sanctuaries without doing harm to innocent civilians that Hamas uses as human shields?

I truly feel sorry for innocent Palestinians, but this is war and war in the last two centuries have it that the vast majority of deaths are civilians. Israel has no choice, unless they were to just stand back and allow Hamas to run rampant over them and just watch the Hamas' missiles hit them without responding.

Unless you have something new to add, this conversation between us is over.

 

[Sakeenah]

The IDF did not dig the tunnels beneath the cemetery the terrorists are using.

Sure, there must be tunnels everytime the IDF destroys hospitals, schools and cemeteries. I mean the IDF would never do anything to hurt civilians, there must be a logical explanation. It's not like they destroyed property, humiliated civilians and boasted and laughed about in tik tok videos. The IDF are civilized thank God they aren't like those what did the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallan call them again..oh yes Human Animals. Every member on this forum must be proud of themselves for defending the IDF, you'll be on the right side of History.