This is the difference in opinion – by your own words, you believe the Palestinians, men women and children, are majority murderous, genocidal savages. We don’t. You haven’t provided any basis for your assertions about them as human beings.
Got the former in abundance, and pretty much bupkis concerning the latter.
Rape is easy – it’s wrong and should be prosecuted. The settlements are easy – they’re illegal, violate human rights, and should end. Settler brutality in the West Bank is easy – it serves no purpose but inflaming violence and should end and the perpetrators should be prosecuted. Deliberate starvation of Gazan civilians is easy – it’s genocidal, should end, and the perpetrators should be prosecuted. Hamas violence is easy – it serves no purpose but inflaming more blood shed and should end and the perpetrators prosecuted (and the vast majority of Palestinians played no part in this violence).
Maybe not every single aspect of this conflict is easy, but many, many different aspects are.
Well journalists need to be allowed in, I think we’re agreed on that.
In terms of “protection” I think that should be up to the journalists themselves. Some might welcome IDF protection, others might see it as trying to limit access or put undue influence on their reporting.
So I am going to take that as: No, you don’t have any concerns currently.
Because you reached straight for an excuse for one of the apparent war crimes that the IDF has been engaged in.
I know you’re claiming to believe that more data is needed but I would be concerned first, and reaching for excuses later (if at all) Especially since it looks a lot like indiscriminate, blanket bombing, at times even using things like white phosphorus shells.
I don’t like it, but since Hamas uses human shields that is going to cause issues on the battlefield.
This is their war propaganda method. Station troops and weapons in protected areas like ambulances, schools, refugee camps, UN camps, hospitals, mosques, etc. Pretend soldiers are medical workers or journalists. Then blame Israel’s bloodlust when they attack them, hoping enough outrage happens on the international community to pressure Israel not to fight back when it gets attacked.
Its their war propaganda method and it works extremely well at weaponing moral outrage to put pressure on the global community to restrain Israel. It also makes the battlefield confusing. Having said that intentional targeting of protected classes is a war crime and needs investigation.
Israel’s propaganda method is to blame everything on Hamas, no matter what actually happens. If the IDF massacres civilians, blame Hamas. If the IDF destroys hospitals for no reason, blame Hamas.
And it’s very successful with many, as you are demonstrating.
But which claim has actual evidence?
There’s countless images of entirely flattened neighbourhoods, containing, as you say, ambulances, schools, refugee camps, UN camps, hospitals, mosques, etc. Of double-tap attacks, white phosphorus, sniper attacks on civilians and more.
The claim that Hamas was hiding everywhere that was bombed is just a thing the IDF says; the one or two times they have even bothered to attempt to provide evidence it’s been woefully short or dubious.
Yet you choose to believe the latter claim. Until some hypothetical future time where Israel accepts an indepedent investigation (and doesn’t just say that such investigators are antisemites or pro-hamas).
…these are talking points.
And to be quite frank, I’m tired of the talking points.
We have over three years of incidents that you could point to as examples of where you could show us where Hamas stationed “troops and weapons in protected areas like ambulances, schools, refugee camps, UN camps, hospitals, mosques.”
So where are they?
You won’t be able to provide any evidence of this because all you’ve got is “Israel claims…”
But you won’t ever be able to explain why Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz, or Samer Talalka were killed.
They were IDF soldiers who were abducted on October the 7th but managed to escape. They emerged shirtless, waving a white flag when an IDF sniper opened fire, killing Shamriz and Talalka. Haim was injured and managed to escape into a building. When he was persuaded to leave the building fifteen minutes later, an IDF sniper executed him.
Haim didn’t die because Hamas was “hiding behind him.” Haim died because an IDF sniper decided he should die.
So you can stop with the talking points now. They just don’t work. Hamas didn’t force IDF soldiers to spray the car Hind Rajab was hiding in with bullets and to murder the paramedics trying to rescue her. Hamas weren’t hiding among the 15 paramedics that were summarily executed on the 23rd of March 2025. Hamas weren’t hiding in the Turkish Friendship Hospital when the IDF took it over and turned it into a military base and they certainly weren’t hiding in it when the IDF abandoned it and then blew it up.
We have atrocity after atrocity, from killing Refaat Alareer to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to the Flour Massacres to the total siege and you won’t be able to point to a single one and show me evidence that “Hamas was hiding” was the cause. I challenge you.
Because “Isreal says…” isn’t evidence.
Then blame Israel’s bloodlust when they attack them, hoping enough outrage happens on the international community to pressure Israel not to fight back when it gets attacked.
Your entire premise here is that Palestinians deserve what was coming to them because of Palestinian bloodlust. Perhaps we just abandon the whole “bloodlust” argument and focus on what people are actually doing. October the 7th was an atrocity. Those responsible should be held to account.
But what Israel is doing to Palestine are a series of ongoing atrocities that is leading to ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza, and they need to be stopped. That doesn’t make the atrocities committed by Hamas any less of an atrocity. It means we stop giving Israel a pass for the bad things it doing. It’s a matter of urgency that we get them to stop because what is happening on the ground, especially in Gaza, is dire.
Assuming arguendo that some Palestinians fight, that all fighting Palestinians fight for a racially and religiously pure ethnostate, and that a pure Palestinian ethnostate would descend into civil war, so what? I do not see a new argument for the best defense of Israeli policy, nor the negative of any premise I relied on.
~Max
At the time I took it for idle talk, but one Jewish Israeli told me that they did not want to become a minority in their own country. There are one or two steps still missing to connect the dots, but perhaps that sort of thinking would lead some to defend policies that keep Palestinians in particular, and non-Jews in general, from integrating into Israel or (Greater) Palestine.
Not unreasonable, considering that Jews have 2,000 years of experience with being the minority and it hasn’t worked out well for them.
While that may be true, it does not relate directly to Israel’s legally and practically unequal treatment of settler civilians v. Palestinians in occupied territories like the West Bank.
~Max
I think this explains it, from his point of view - in his opinion, Palestinians, as a people, are inherently violent and savage, and can’t be lived with peacefully; thus they must be oppressed.
Thats a perfectly reasonable fear though. There are ~130 christian nations and ~50 muslim nations on earth (which has about 200 nations total). Christians and muslims have a long long history of abusing and mistreating the Jews.
The Jews wanting a nation where they can write their own laws and defend themselves is perfectly understandable.
In Japan there are train cars where only women are allowed to ride. The reason is that the women are sexually assaulted so much that they feel safer in female only train cars. If a bunch of misogynistic red pill men started saying the women were being sexist and men should be allowed to ride in those cars, that wouldn’t be a persuasive argument.
None of this remotely justifies apartheid, terrorism, deliberate starvation, rape, mass murder, and other atrocities that Israel has overseen against Palestinian civilians.
I’m not certain you remember it, but I already put my thoughts, both, of your blanket rejection of Palestinian earnest desire for freedom from Israeli violence and control, and of the ultimate end goal of any solution to Palestinian political existence.
One more quote to outline what I think of when I see engagement with political extremism (which I define as turning towards violence, myself)
I do not see what Israel gains by fucking with random civilians (if anything, it assures their hostility in addition to perpetuating Israel’s reputation as a bad actor), and it also seems to me that condoning those settlers’ activity is an own goal, because their violence may be mostly focused on Palestinians today, but could easily turn against the Israeli public tomorrow.
I have mixed feelings about this, because I know a number of people who have had ludicrous problems immigrating to Israel and indeed one of them has given up entirely. Has Israeli security increased by driving a talented professional to Canada instead? What in the world does religion have to do with it? Even the Christians, Muslims, and others who do not live in the West Bank might end up feeling like second-class citizens if not subjected to canonical apartheid, and this is untenable in the long run.
Now I have a question for those of us who are not engaged in this conflict in the same manner as Israelis or Palestinians (who, themselves might be so intimately engaged as my advice would fall on deaf ears).
Are you engaging from an angle of extremism too? If so, why? Wouldn’t it be better to agree that that biggest benefit that outsiders bring is a sense of rational detachment, not one of righteous vengeance?
As a detached outsider I can only see two ways out. Palestinians getting a vote in their own country, or getting a vote in Israel. That’s it. I would not settle anything less for myself here in Canada. I would not want my Canadian government supporting anything else for ANY OTHER PERSON in ANY OTHER COUNTRY.
Everyone needs a vote to affect political change in their country. Or they are being oppressed and marginalized. Which results in bloody bloody violence.
If this anti-Muslim stuff is true, and I see no reason to doubt that the majority of Israelis, if questioned, would reply that they do not want to live in a Muslim- or Arab-majority country, then Israel will never simply annex those occupied territories.
While that may be true, it does not relate directly to Israel’s legally and practically unequal treatment of settler civilians v. Palestinians in occupied territories like the West Bank.
Besides, Israel has a long history of abusing and mistreating the Palestinians. The Palestinians wanting a nation where they can write their own laws and defend themselves is perfectly understandable. In the Palestinian territories there are roads where only Israeli vehicles are allowed to travel. The reason is because Israeli settlers traveling to and from settlements built on formerly Palestinian-owned land are attacked so often that they feel safer with segregated roads. If a bunch of Palestinians started saying Israel was being expansionist and Palestinians should be allowed to drive on roads in their own territory, that wouldn’t be a persuasive argument… or would it?
~Max