Discussion for the Israel-Hamas War: A thread in the Pit

The BBQ Pit
1741

I disagree. If the attack targets military personnel then it’s not a terror attack, it’s an act of war. Which… is not great, either.

Given that something like 20% of the population of Israel is non-Jewish I’d be more comfortable if you phrased that as “Israeli lives matter”, because the gentile citizens of Israel aren’t being spared, either.

That, and the fact that legally they are stateless people which makes it extremely difficult for them to travel/emigrate elsewhere given how every country on earth these days wants passports and documentation. If you aren’t a citizen of anywhere you’re a refugee no matter how long you’re family has lived in one place.

I’d like to know where you’re getting these numbers. Cite?

Also, would like to know what is meant by “injuries”. Certainly, people holding the pagers were maimed and blinded, but how badly injured were “injured” bystanders? Seriously? Permanently? Or gashes/cuts that will heal relatively rapidly with no long-term impairments? You make it sound like everyone nearby was grievously injured and I’ve seen reports that bystandars were mostly relatively minor injuries. Not saying a serious one was impossible, it just doesn’t seem to have been the rule.

Quite a few nations do NOT recognize that sort of citizenship, known as jus soli or citizenship by soil - you are only considered a citizen of that nation if you are born to citizens of that nation regardless of where you are physically located at birth, known as jus sanguinis, or citizenship by blood. Which is why we have stateless people in this world.

At present only 17% of countries have unrestricted jus soli, all but two in the western hemisphere. That really is a trait of the Americas, not the rest of the world. Another 17% have a limited jus soli, those countries sprinkled across the rest of the world, and by “limited” it might only apply to orphans (not people with still-living relatives) or with some other condition.

For 2/3 of the world’s nations the ONLY way to be a citizen is to have at least one, and sometimes requiring both, your parents to have citizenship in that country. Which means if you’re parents weren’t citizens then you aren’t. Doesn’t matter how many generations your family lives in that country, no matter how many generations are born there, you are not a citizen. Again, this is why we have so many stateless people in the world. (Somewhere between 4 and 10 million - they can be hard to count what with some nations only interested in counting citizens within their borders and ignoring anyone else).

If the Jews have right-of-return to their Jewish state why shouldn’t the Palestinians have right-of-return to their Palestinians state?

1742

They can do whatever they want within the borders of a future Palestinian state, including giving the right of return to all Palestinians, or to two billion citizens of China for all I care.

What they demand is a right for Palestinians to migrate to the Israeli state in a two state setup.

1743

Thank you for that clarification

1744

Nah, there is such a thing as naturalization. Typically you have to have lived in the county for a certain number of years. Even (in a few countries) things like local children of long-term residents being automatically eligible for citizenship at the age of 18, precisely to avoid them ending up stateless.

1745

@Smapti was was referring specifically to allowing people to be citizens of the country they were born in, that is, citizenship by birth, and not naturalization.

Yes, that would be countries among the 17% I mentioned that do have jus soli but with restrictions.

Meanwhile, in 2/3 of the world’s countries it’s possible to be the scion of multiple generations of a family but still not a citizen of that country or any other, therefore stateless. Multi-generational statelessness is a thing, although sure, when possible, people try to get citizenship somewhere if at all possible.

1746

Right; generally this would be easiest to do in the country where you permanently reside and work (it might take a while, e.g., in Switzerland you have to have lived there for 10 years). I suppose they could reject your application for some reason, but that is the most straightforward way for an immigrant to gain citizenship. You are giving the impression it is a nearly unattainable goal, which for some people it is (refugee in Gaza?), but if that person can (via $$$$ and/or connections and luck, which I will be the first to point out most people do not have all of those) get their ass to, say, Germany, and legally claim asylum, in 8 years they can apply for naturalization. If they stay in Gaza, or can’t leave, of course they are screwed.

You are correct, and it is important, to point out that, in most countries, being born there does not automatically confer citizenship.

1747

Well, sure - there’s a comedian who started life as a stateless Palestinian and eventually wound up an American citizen. He made that saga part of his routine for some time. It is certainly an attainable thing but that doesn’t mean it’s easy or even the usual outcome for a stateless person.

I had a friend in college who was Finnish-Japanese and, due to citizenship laws, citizen of neither country. Her parents, who while not wealthy did have some resources, sent her to the US for college in hopes she would gain US citizenship and thus belong somewhere. But that’s a lot different than someone who has been mired in multi-generational poverty with little or no documentation and relatives who are likewise stuck in a ass-end of nowhere, which is probably closer to the circumstances of the average Palestinian in the Middle East.

1748

Saw this, which just about perfectly sums up my view:

1749

I’m glad that you can agree that “Nasrallah was evil.”
I’m not so glad when the next word is “but”.

[proud Godwin alert]
I get a nervous feeling that you one day you will post “Hitler was evil, but”
[/Godwin]

Bibi might be prolonging the war in Lebanon for his own sleazy reasons. You think that his sleaze is the only context that is important.

So let’s look at other contexts, based on the facts :

  1. The sabotage of the exploding beepers was a huge, complex spy project. It was not invented by Bibi to distract from his legal troubles. The project was planned like a Mission Impossible story, with very complicated, very professional spycraft. It began 2 years ago, placing secret agents in several countries for long-term cover ops. It was still running, and there were more pagers on order by Hezbollah… Had it worked as planned, it would have been a massive victory on the battlefield. Unfortunately, the plot was discovered, and was about to be ruined. So the logical decision was made to set off the 4000 explosives earlier than planned, before they were discovered.
    That decision would have been the same for any prime minister in Israeli politics, not just Bibi.

  2. After the 4000 terrorists were wounded, Nasrallah panicked and called meetings of his top generals…thus revealing his location. They were planning war crimes–raids across the Israeli border to capture civilians, repeating the atrocities of October 7. There was real reason to think that this was the last opportunity to track Nasrallah before he re-organized his command, and moved to a new secret location, where Israeli military intelligence would lose him. So his bunker was blown up, successfully killing a lot of people who deserved to be killed.
    This was a logical military decision, which would have been the same for any other prime minister, not just Bibi. Note that none of Bibi’s liberal opponents (Gantz, Lapid, Bennet) have publicly criticized him for it.

You say that you "cannot analyze Israel’s actions without this context ".(Bibi’s personal motives).
I say, Choose your context more carefully.

Hezbollah is the most dangerous threat to Israel’s physical existence. Reducing that threat is the legitimate job of any Israeli prime minister. Even a sleazy one like Bibi.

1750

Yeah, I’ve given up arguing this point with @iiandyiiii, but this is exactly right, and not just for the specific questions of blowing up Hezbollah’s pagers and killing Nasrallah, but for the war as a whole. Netanyahu makes for a convenient scapegoat (because he truly is an unrepentant piece of corrupt shit), but the fact is that the war in Gaza and the fighting in Lebanon are not happening because of Netanyahu. They are happening because Hamas attacked Israel, and then Hezbollah decided to join in. Or more accurately, because Iran ordered their multiple proxies to attack Israel in order to distract from their ally Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It’s ironically funny that the same guy who dismissed posts by me and by @smapti as “But Hamas!” thinks that “But Bibi!” is a good argument.

1751

I invite posters who disagree with me to quote the specific words I’ve said that they disagree with rather than vague and unclear allusions that I can’t follow.

1752

Well, you said this:

In response to this:

I think that’s pretty clearly the attitude we are both responding to.

More explicitly, I think it’s really silly how you hyperfixate on Netanyahu as if he controls all of Israel’s actions.

1753

So I shouldn’t consider Netanyahu’s history and motives at all? The Prime Minister is irrelevant?

1754

You should when discussing Netanyahu, or the Prime Ministe’s actions and things within his sphere of control.

The problem is that you seem to think he has far greater control over the country than he actually does, because you keep talking about him dragging on the war for personal benefit as if that’s something he can do on his own, or bringing him up in discussions of IDF policies that are determined internally by the army’s hierarchy and aren’t subject to his meddling (maybe you still think he’s the Commander in Chief?).

1755

Netanyahu and his allies in the Israeli far right control the government, and the government controls the military. The IDF is subordinate to the PM, even if the PM isn’t on paper the c-in-c. These are facts.

Because of their control, Israel has tolerated or assisted the brutalization of Palestinians in the West Bank for many, many years. They have been de-facto allies of Hamas and Hezbollah against two states for many years. They’re still their allies in the “perpetual bloodshed” quasi-party, even while they shed each other’s blood.

Whether or not Netanyahu and his allies personally want to murder every single Palestinian, they have been every bit the enemies of peace that the Hamas and Hezbollah death cults are. Killing Nasrallah doesn’t change this. They’re still enemies of peace, even if they killed another enemy of peace. For as long as they tolerate and enable the brutalization of West Bank Palestinians, and tolerate and enable the Jim-Crow-like institutions that ensure this continual brutalization remains routine, they will remain enemies of peace, and thus enemies of real security for Israel.

1756

Tell me you don’t understand parliamentary politics without telling me that you don’t understand parliamentary politics

The government sets the objective that the military is tasked with achieving; it doesn’t micromanage the sorts of things that you’ve complained about in this thread.

The government makes the decision to go in to Gaza, but it doesn’t tell the army what kind of bombs to use or under what conditions it is OK to bomb a building that’s used both as a hospital and a terrorist HQ. The Ramatcal (Commander in Chief) makes these decisions, and that position is very intentionally divorced from politics.

Your view of how Israel’s government and the IDF operate is a caricature. It’s the American system with all the flags found-and-replaced. It is not an accurate reflection of Israeli society.

1757

Let me get this straight - your position is that the Israeli government is not controlled by Netanyahu and his right wing allies?

I’ll note, though, that you didn’t challenge anything I said about the brutalization of Palestinians in the West Bank. Was that because we agree on that?

1758

Netanyahu, and his right wing allies, each lead separate parties with separate agendas. These parties form a coalition which Netanyahu is the leader of.

1759

No, of course not. It’s because there are two possibilities. Either you actually think that occupied foreign territory is analogous to Jim Crow laws, in which case we will never have a rational discussion on this topic, or you don’t, and you are using the term “Jim Crow” to mean “Bad Thing I Don’t Like”, which is a nonsense rhetorical technique I am not interested in engaging with.

1760

Foreign territory? It’s under Israel’s control. No other country claims it. Hopefully it will one day be part of a sovereign Palestinian state, but just because it’s not on paper part of Israel doesn’t make brutalization and oppression less bad. Jim Crow wasn’t about national borders. If there had been a chunk of Mississippi or whatever that wasn’t claimed by the US, but in which the US oppressed and brutalized Black people, it wouldn’t have been any real difference from Jim Crow.