Get Jared Kushner back on the job.
The end of the occupation of Japan was contignent on their ratifying a new constitution that explicitly prohibits foreign wars and allows a military for self-defense purposes only.
Just sayin’.
Just to reiterate about this misconception that seems to be held by a number of people: There is no such guarantee between the US and Israel going in either direction. Israel has never militarily come to the aid of the US, and likewise the US has never sent troops to defend Israel from invasion. There is no obligation from either side to do so.
In 1973 when Israel suffered a surprise attack by Egypt and Syria and faced what was momentarily the greatest existential threat to its existence since its founding war in 1948, there were no US troops on the ground to guarantee Israel’s existence, and there was absolutely no consideration of sending any. The closest thing the US did to guarantee Israel’s existence was to air and sealift in supplies to Israel in response to the Soviet Union doing the same for Egypt and Syria. Ironically, it was the Soviet Union that came closest to threatening to directly intervene in the war when the ceasefire of October 22 failed to hold, the USSR placed seven airborne divisions on alert and a letter was sent that
In that letter, Brezhnev began by noting that Israel was continuing to violate the ceasefire and it posed a challenge to both the U.S. and USSR. He stressed the need to “implement” the ceasefire resolution and “invited” the U.S. to join the Soviets “to compel observance of the cease-fire without delay”. He then threatened “I will say it straight that if you find it impossible to act jointly with us in this matter, we should be faced with the necessity urgently to consider taking appropriate steps unilaterally. We cannot allow arbitrariness on the part of Israel.”[412][413] The Soviets were threatening to militarily intervene in the war on Egypt’s side if they could not work together to enforce the ceasefire.
In comparison, the US has defense treaties with NATO, South Korea, and Japan that guarantee that an attack on them will be treated as an attack upon the United States, and the troops already on the ground to ensure that would be the case in actual fact as well as in words.
You’ve phrased this to sound liike you think there is something wrong with this concept.
But you have accurately stated the entire problem with the Palestinians.
Of course there are conditions that must be met before they are entitled to have a state with an army. Not murdering babies in their cribs -and dancing with pride about it- is one of those conditions.
So far, after 20 years of full automomy in Gaza , it is obvious that Hamas is incapable of joining the family of nations.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Israel is also murdering babies in their cribs. Not with knives and guns, but with dropping bombs on civilians in order to get to Hamas.
Yes, these babies are collateral damage of Israel’s attempt to destroy Hamas, and not individually killed like Hamas did, but at the end of the day both are killing babies in their cribs.
Note: I’m not saying both sides are the same. Israel has a right to defend itself, but don’t use “killing babies in their cribs” as a sensational reason why Palestinians should not have statehood
I assume you have never lived in a war zone so let me make an analogy to something more familiar to you: crime in America…
Surely you can understand the difference between premeditated murder and accidental unintentional manslaughter ?
Yes, somebody dies, in both cases. But there’s one hell of a difference.
Now. let me clarify my analogy by adding some more details:
Suppose the person who performs the premeditated murder proudly films it while he is shooting, and then proudly posts in on the internet and and publicly declares that he will murder again…
This person doing the murdering is a fanatic white-supremacist “prepper” with a house full of weapons and dynamite, and is a proud member of the Ku Klux Klan. The victims are black. The Klansman keeps shooting, and announces that he is going to keep murdering the all the niggers in the neighborhood and use his dynamite to blow up their houses till the neighborhood is clean and free of niggers. (For example, the Tulsa riots in 1921)
The family of the dead black victims shoot back at the armed Klansman, and their bullets detonate the dynamite in the Klansman’s possession. The Klansman dies, as does his young innocent child alongside him.
But, yeah, there’s a dead child. So according to the logic in the post above, the black guys defending themselves are just as guilty as the Klansman.
There is nothing “sensational” about my description of Hamas.
What is sensational is your use of the word murder to describe collateral damage by Israel in a perfectly legitimate war of self-defense.
There will be a time to discuss statehood for Palestinians…but only after Hamas and its leadership of baby murderers are out of the picture.
–
(note to mods: yes, I used the n-word.
For educational purposes, because it is appropriate to my analogy about America.
And I hope that my use of the word will emphasize to the pro-Palestinians on this site that Hamas’s attitude to Jews is worse than the Klan’s attitude to niggers. Please be aware of, and beware of, who you are supporting.
Supporting Palestinians means opposing Hamas. Opposing Hamas doesn’t necessarily mean supporting everything the IDF does.
Over the past month, there have been lots of demonstrations all over the world supporting Palestinians.
None of them have called for opposing Hamas…
Over the past 20 years ,there have been no mass demonstrations opposing Hamas.
Over the past 20 years, the UN has fully supported Palestinians without ever opposing Hamas.
But, yeah, supporting Palestinians means opposing Hamas.
As the president of Harvard would say, it’s just a minor nuance , and depends on the context.
All those signs saying “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” really mean “free Palestine from Hamas’s control”.
…almost everybody that supports Palestinians have universally come out in opposition to Hamas. I’ve done it multiple times over and over again in multiple threads all over the boards.
And I still get accused of “propagating Hamas propaganda.”
We don’t have to say it every single time.
Meanwhile over in the other thread I’m keeping a documented count of all of the IDF warcrimes. 70 days of siege that have bought Gaza to the brink of famine. Shutting down 20 hospitals, including all of the hospitals in the north. Indiscriminate AI lead bombing campaign. At least 20,000 dead. And experts believe that there are thousands still buried in the rubble.
We don’t have to condemn Hamas every time we ask for the carnage to stop.
Is this hyperbole? Seems like an utterly ridiculous statement. Do you have a cite? Seems like all I’d need to find to disprove it is a single quote from a single pro Palestinian protester who condemns Hamas.
This is exactly why I’ve ducked out of any discussions on the War in Gaza other than to occasionally provide factual correction and at most note that I am disgusted by the conduct of the Israeli government over the past two and a half months. I don’t have the energy to either be accused to “propagating Hamas propaganda” or watching other people suffer such accusations because we don’t like how the Israeli government has been acting.
Its flashbacks of being called unpatriotic, unamerican, or a traitor for not supporting the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Only you wouldn’t really see it from people on this board apart from a select few who have long since departed.
How was Israel to solve this problem when for a significant chunk of those 75 years its neighbors wanted to push them “from the river to the sea?” In 1948, Transjordan, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq invaded Israel and were later joined by Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and even Morocco with some of their leaders calling to push them to the sea. This is how the Arab world welcomed Israel to the region.
But there’s been some progress. Who would have thought Israel would have made peace with Jordan and Egypt? Abd from what I can recall, Israel was willing to give the Palestinians almost everything they were asking for around 1992-93, but the PLO rejected the plan. That’s the last time I can remember both sides seemingly making an effort at peace.
Another way to look at the main question at the core of the OP:
What if the US had not been supporting either side till now. Then someone proposes that the US start giving $3 billion per year to Israel (with all the benefits people claim the US gets out of it). Would this fly? Would the US be convinced to start giving billions per year to Israel?
…I’ve taken care to meticulously provides cites for every position I’ve taken. I used almost exclusively western sources and media organizations, humanitarian agencies, and the United Nations. The facts speak for themselves.
And I don’t blame you for ducking out. This war is taking a toll on all sides.
I agree that Israel faced extreme dangers from its neighbors for, let’s just say the first half of it’s existence. There has been very little done to solve the problem for the past 20 years or so, or about the time that both Hamas and Benny and his jets took power on each side.
No one can honestly believe that the “defeat” of Hamas will solve the underlying problems between Israel and Palestine. I have not heard one word about an Israeli plan on how to reach a meaningful peace. I don’t see why the US should feel obligated to support the latest punitive assault that will do nothing but reset the clock until the next terrorist action.
I believe that the US should either not pay for it, or insist that any military aid be tied to actions by Israel that include serious steps to a long term solution.
I get the point of the question - you’re trying to put the human cost of the current war in Gaza front and center. However, it isn’t really a fair question, because we can’t really say what would be different if we hadn’t been “taking sides”, i.e. providing military assistance, funding, seeming weapons, etc.
Do you think Israel would have been able to survive the wars in 1967 and 1973 without U.S. weapons? Would they have had British or other countries’ weapons?
The political landscape could be so different as to make the question irrelevant and nonsensical.
I think it’s entirely possible (no, obvious) to think that Hamas is a brutal, inhumane, horrific terrorist organization that needs to be eliminated, while at the same time to think that Israel’s approach to the war is brutal, inhumane, and wrong.
You asked for our solution, so mine is that heavy bombardment in civilian areas is unjustified, and efforts to soften up the Hamas from afar are too indiscriminate to have been used and should cease immediately.
The approach is a methodical ground assault to attempt to target military targets and fighting insurgents while sorting and separating non-combatants.
This would be expensive, time consuming, and would definitely lead to more loss of Israeli soldiers’s lives. It would be extremely challenging to distinguish male combatants from Hamas fighters, especially with Hamas trying to blend in, and using the process to escape our even strike against Israeli troops.
But it is much more humane than the loss of lives by women and especially children that is currently ongoing.
I think it’s a unique circumstance. Quoting what is or isn’t permitted by the Geneva Conventions and international law misses the point of how singular is the situation, regardless of who is or isn’t technically right.
I believe the IDF should have operated as if all civilians were Israelis. What if Hamas had set-ups in non-military locations, but the hospital was filled with Isreali doctors and patients? What would they do then? Well, do that.
What if Hamas had occupied an Israeli civilian area? What would they do if it was populated by Jews? Well, do that.
Hamas is an evil organization and deserves eradication. Israel should not be handcuffed. But I believe they should view Gaza citizens as under their care, deserving of the same concern. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do.
Yes, and yes. Prior to the Six Day War in 1967, Israel’s number one and two suppliers of arms were France and the UK respectively.
In the 1960s, with the expulsion of France from North Africa completed in 1962, the shared strategic interest against Arab nationalism dissipated, leading France to take a more conciliatory attitude toward the Arab nations and a correspondingly harsher tone toward Israel. However, work on the nuclear reactor continues with French help. France imposed an arms embargo on Israel before the beginning of the Six-Day War. After the embargo the Israeli Air Force was severely limited in long-term strategic planning and capability, as the embargo caused a shortage in spare parts for most of Israel’s French fighter aircraft, which were highly advanced at the time. According to the New York Times, “this double game, however, ended when the Six-Day War in 1967 forced France to pick a side. In a shock to its Israeli allies, it chose the Arab states: despite aggressive moves by Egypt, France imposed a temporary arms embargo on the region — which mostly hurt Israel — and warned senior Israeli officials to avoid hostilities.”[18]
The change of sides impaired as well the French-American relationship, as France was seen as an increasingly outdated and aggressive neocolonial power. The USA started to assume its current role as ally of Israel with the Six-Day War in 1967, while France decided to take sides with the Arab world to improve its relations after the independence of Algeria.[18]
In 1960 Ben-Gurion arrived in France for Israel’s first official visit. Until the Six Day War, France was the main supplier of Israel’s weapons. Just prior to the Six-Day War in June 1967, Charles de Gaulle’s government imposed an arms embargo on the region, mostly affecting Israel.[1] In 1969, de Gaulle retired and Israel hoped that new president Georges Pompidou would bring about better relations, but Pompidou continued the weapons embargo, straining the relations once again.
The extension of US Foreign Military Financing to Israel and Egypt is only a result of the Camp David Accords in 1978. Also note the French help on the Israeli nuclear reactor program - which is where the Israeli nuclear weapons program came from.
These days Israel exports a lot of weapons, though its balance with the U.S. is mostly imports. America has a much bigger arms industry than Israel (as do France, Russia, the UK, China, etc.)
Do you think it is really unique? What about, say, US operations in Baghdad? Are there any equivalents?
Yes, I agree, in part because of Israeli and international hostages*, and in part because trading brutality for brutality and inhumanity for inhumanity only ends up reducing the civilized sides’ humanity.
* We could consider the Palestinian people as international hostages to Hamas.