I guess it depends on whether you actually want peace or not. Clearly they don’t.
The Israeli goal has always been to achieve peace by removing Hamas, and killing their head of state falls well within those parameters. It should not be surprising when Israel characterizes Haniyeh as an obstacle to peace.
~Max
So what was the point of negotiating with him, or was it just to lull him into a false sense of security?
I would characterize Israel’s approach to the negotiations as that of a belligerent offering and considering terms of Hamas’s surrender, without the benefit of a ceasefire during the negotiations.
~Max
More hypothetical speculation, or what I call the “fallacy of the retrospective alternative”.
No, you don’t in fact know (and you don’t in fact have persuasive evidence to believe) that the prisoner exchange deal involving the vast majority of the currently released Israeli hostages, which took place back in November, actually required Israel’s indiscriminate slaughter of more than 10,000 Gazans to constitute sufficient “pressure” on Hamas.
Much less that the subsequent indiscriminate slaughter of tens of thousands more was somehow necessary for that November event to have taken place (or even that it benefited more hostages than it killed).
Rather, since those events happened to be what actually did happen, you’ve decided to spin them as what necessarily had to happen in order to bring about the hostage release. That’s the fallacy of the retrospective alternative.
Well very clearly the negotiations didn’t require indiscriminate slaughter to occur, because indiscriminate slaughter didn’t happen, but the negotiations did.
I’m very curious about this whole “indiscriminate slaughter” meme. That’s a term that’s been applied to Israel’s past conflicts as well, so let’s use those as an example since the casualty numbers aren’t as contentious.
In past conflicts both Hamas and Israel gave casualty ratios of about 1:3 or 1:4 militants to civilians.
So if you think that Israel is “indiscriminately” bombing Gaza, as in they are just lobbing bombs in without aiming at militants and without regard for civilians… Then this would mean that they’re hitting a random sample of Gazans. Are you really contending that 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 Palestinians are Hamas militants? If Israel’s bombing is “indiscriminate” then clearly casualties would just match the population.
I just love “vaguetalk”, where it looks like you are talking about one side…but you just might be talking about the other. Which side are you referring to when you use the term “indiscriminate slaughter”? Or do you possibly mean both sides?
Presumably Israel since the post Babale was replying to was accusing Israel.
That’s the fun thing about vaguetalk. You can disagree in a way that makes it look like you are agreeing. Of course, Babale could clear this up in about two seconds.
I don’t really see anything vague about that post, tbh. It’s pretty clear who he’s talking about, and overall, he really hasn’t been shy about sharing his opinion on the subject, so I don’t see why he’d suddenly be playing coy now.
There is, or at least was, a poster in this thread who said he was (in the past) actually in the IDF and that (despite the potential existence, as anywhere, of an odd Lieutenant Calley) he trusts, based on his experience, that the IDF is competent and would not engage in indiscriminate slaughter. But, rather than taking the IDF’s word for it, I would only put weight on a neutral investigation, if such a thing is even theoretically possible.
Correct, but you can’t expect Czargasm to hold more than one post in his tiny mind at a time.
I am curious, what is the end goal? What is the maximalist goals of the Israeli state. As a non-believer I’m curious here.
That’s a strange question. What is the US’s end goal when it comes to healthcare? Different people have different goals and figuring that out is one of the main contentions in internal politics.
When it comes to the mainstream political parties in the Israeli parliament, on both the right and left, the goal is the same: peace and security. Over the last few decades we made peace with the Arab countries so that we no longer fight a massive war against them every few years; and now the two main concerns of the electorate are ending the terrorist attacks and ending the need to send young Israelis to die in Gaza.
The disagreement between the mainstream Right and mainstream Left is essentially on the order of operations, with the Left believing that Palestinian sovereignty is the path to peace and the Right believing that Palestinian sovereignty would lead to more and more dangerous conflict, unless it follows a comprehensive peace.
On the outer edges of Parliament you have a handful of right wing fanatics who think that Israel should gobble up Gaza and the West Bank and annex them (not for long, I hope - every poll since Oct 7 shows that these parties should lose their seats come the next election). Saying that Israel’s end goal is their end goal is a little like saying that the United States is very concerned about Jewish Space Lasers based on the speech of prominent Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Except there actually are Israelis gobbling up chunks of the West Bank. Is there something you need to tell the rest of us about Space Lasers?
Hey, that’s only in Area C. Obviously smaller than Areas A and B. Definitely not almost 2/3 of the West Bank “settled” by 5-10% of the Israeli population and supported by Ministers, both Finance and Prime.
Doctors Without Borders is saying that Israeli operations are making it harder for them to deliver healthcare.
So this guy, who says that there should never under any circumstances be any Palestinian state, is some fringe fanatic who nobody takes seriously?
Earlier on Thursday, Mr Netanyahu said Israel must have security control over all land west of the River Jordan, which would include the territory of any future Palestinian state.
“This is a necessary condition, and it conflicts with the idea of (Palestinian) sovereignty. What to do? I tell this truth to our American friends, and I also stopped the attempt to impose a reality on us that would harm Israel’s security,” he said.
Oh, no, wait, HE’S THE FUCKING PRIME MINISTER.
And how about this guy, arguing that it would be “just and moral” to murder all 2 million people in Gaza?
“It is impossible in today’s global reality to wage war – no one in the world would let us starve and thirst two million citizens, even though it may be just and moral until they return our hostages,”
Just some obscure backbencher, surely. Um, no, he’s the Finance Minister!
Genocidal racism is the position of the “moderate right” in Israel. Even more so than in America, the parties and institutions of the moderate right have been completely captured by actual fascists. Referring to these people as “moderates” is doing their propaganda work for them.
Are you stupid, bad faith, or both?
Netanyahu did not say the thing you are said.
What he actually said was that Israel is not going to give the Palestinians sovereignty if that will lead to security threats to Israel.
When the Palestinians’ leadership’s explicit political aim is no longer to kill or expel us all, they can have a state without threatening our security.
Unfortunately, they’ll never have an incentive to do that so long as useful idiots in the West like yourself are running cover for them.
Once again - bad faith, or incredibly stupid? I have no idea, but it’s one or the other.
He did not say anything about killing people in Gaza. Certainly nothing about killing all of them.
If you lie about what Israeli politicians want and say, then sure.
Oh, I see, you’re a paranoid cuckoo nutjob. Got it.