Sorry, I forgot that you’re a bad faith idiot and took you seriously for a few seconds. My bad, I won’t repeat that mistake.
If you’re agreeing with Smapti, who has made it clear he believes Israel has no responsibility at all to protect Gazan lives (or Palestinians in general), you’re demonstrating something about yourself that makes me feel sad.
Making long term peace is the only way to protect its citizens, Smaptanyahu. Netanyahu and his allies have been working against this for over a decade, and yet you still support every move they make.
When did I say that, now?
Israel should do everything in its power to minimize civilian casualties, but it also has a responsibility to protect Israeli civilians, which means ending Hamas. Israel should do so while causing as little damage to Gazan civilians as possible.
I agree! Unfortunately Hamas has 0 interest in this so they have to be militarily removed, then we can make long term peace with a group that replaces them.
Netanyahu’s allies today are very different people than his allies a decade ago, and he himself had a very different platform then. But I get it, knowing 3 Israeli names is hard enough, actually understanding internal Israeli politics is much more complicated.
And I don’t disagree that this situation is Netanyahu’s fault; I just don’t think that most Americans blaming him actually understand what he did. They think he is a hawkish populist and always has been when in fact he is the ultimate opportunist and has championed different platforms at different times.
Really? I don’t recall Smapti supporting the Judicial overhaul, or supporting Netanyahu’s legislative tricks that allow him to steal Oct 7th rebuilding funds and send them to West Bank settlements that weren’t even hit, or supporting keeping the Haredim out of the army, or even supporting the idea that we should hold off on elections until Netanyahu’s term ends in 3 years.
Unless you have some examples of Smapti supporting those positions, Im going to assume that the claim that he supports every move Netanyahu makes is utter bullshit. In fact, the only thing Smapti seems to support is Israel’s war in Gaza; which is by no means a position unique to Netanyahu.
As a supporter of newly elected leader of the newly founded Democrats party (which merged Labor and Meretz) Yair Golan, I DO support Israel’s war to end Hamas’ rule of Gaza, while strongly opposing every one of those other points. The impression I get from Smapti is similar, not that he is a Netanyahu supporter.
Smapti refuses to criticize how Netanyahu and his allies are running this war. The idea that the IDF operates without their influence and at least some of their direction is not realistic.
This war can’t be won with Netanyahu and his allies in charge. All it can do is more of what it’s doing - shed blood. Israel is not getting more safe and secure because of the war - quite the opposite.
And regardless of Netanyahu’s allies over the years, he’s been helping Hamas in Gaza for years because they’re the best allies against two states.
If you honestly believe the IDF is doing literally everything in its power to minimize civilian casualties, then I’m afraid we live in such wildly different factual universes that any exchange in ideas is probably pointless.
FWIW, I think you do care. Thus my doubt that Smapti would find support even among the pro-Israeli people in this thread for his sentiment that there is no reason to care about innocent Palestinians.
But I’m not really interested in his views. He has demonstrated that he’s a psychopath on this topic, and there’s no discussion to be had. But I would be interested in your views on Bartov’s essay. I see a lot of you in his description of his friends in Israel, and I wonder if you see that too.
What you said was:
You didn’t say ‘Smapti refuses to criticize Israel’s handling of the war’, you said Smapti “supports every move” that Netanyahu makes.
Which, unless you have some examples of Smapti supporting the Judicial overhaul or the religious service exemption, or not having elections, or ANY of Netanyahu’s policies, is utter bullshit.
Netanyahu HAS caused the current situation, I agree. But you are presuming that he has some ideological opposition to a Two State Solution, which I don’t think is true. That’s the side he espouses nowadays because it’s where his base is; some of his actions over the years are consistent with that goal, while others are very much not. And that’s precisely what you’d expect out of an opportunist like him.
I agree, which is why I stopped posting in this thread for the most part.
I thought it was pretty clear that he meant that specifically in the context of the war in Gaza, and not his broader political agenda.
That’s exactly what I meant.
Babale is, with team Smaptanyahu, on the “IDF can do no wrong” side, and thus discussion with them is probably pointless.
So Israel isn’t conducting genocide in the same way you would. Got it.
On the subject, is anyone else concerned that Smapti has evidently given detailed thought to how he would conduct a genocide? Totally normal behavior.
I don’t know if Smapti said that there is no reason to care about innocent Palestinians (a sentiment I disagree with), or if he was saying that it seems odd to expect an electorate that’s been under attack by another group for decades* to prioritize the wellfare of people in that group over their own security.
And obviously that applies for Palestinians to, I don’t think anyone finds it hard to understand why they might hate Israelis or Jews. I don’t think anyone is saying 'Palestinians should stop supporting Hamas and terrorism because it’s mean to Israelis and Palestinians shouldn’t be mean to Israelis"; the argument always has been that Hamas makes life worse for Palestinians.
I think Bartov sounds like someone who’s never lived through a war before. His complaint basically boils down to feeling like there isn’t enough public expression of sympathy for Palestinians. That’s idiotic. That’s not how Americans talked about the Japanese or Germans in WW2, it’s not how Argentinians talked about the British during the Falklands war, it’s not how Ukranians talk about Russians today, and it’s certainly not how the Palestinians talk about Israelis.
He needs to grow up and realize that in the real world, war is ugly; and one of the least important ways in which it is ugly (when compared to civilian casualties, the devastation of cities, etc) is the fact that politicians on both sides of the war say mean things about one another.
Overall, he strikes me as incredibly naive.
We can discuss what the IDF is doing wrong all day, once we accept the fact that their operation against Hamas is in and of itself legitimate. If you believe that Israel should just tolerate Hamas continuing to exist on its border after Oct 7, then yes, discussion is very much pointless.
If you want to pretend that anyone who doesn’t want Israel to immediately pull out of Gaza is a blind and rabid Netanyahu supporter, fine, go ahead; since you’ll have no one serious on the Israeli side to talk to, I guess you can sit around and seethe for the rest of the conflict. That sounds much more “pointless” to me, but you do you.
For those interested in a slightly less myopic view of the situation:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/20/biden-israel-liberals-yair-golan/
Some choice quotes:
Yair Golan is super Based and 100% correct here.
Did you read the essay? He served in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Which one did you serve in?
War against Hamas is just. It is not being carried out in a just manner.
Given what Smapti said about these children any suggestion about his opinion of their innocence is very much in question.
That’s an easy slogan to repeat. Coming up with an actual strategy for urban warfare that doesn’t kill civilians is much, much harder. In fact, I don’t believe it’s possible to effectively fight against an enemy that sets up positions in hospitals and schools without causing significant civilian casualties.