I mean, nobody is obligated to go on arguing with a propaganda machine, and I’m not telling anybody that they have to continue posting about any subject that makes them uncomfortable. And of course, I’m not saying I’m 100% in agreement with every single thing you’ve posted, either. But speaking as a US Jewish supporter of Palestinian rights and member of Jewish Voice for Peace, I appreciate the sources and summaries that you’ve brought to the table in these discussions.
…thank you.
I heard a senior republican being interviewed on the BBC today. His exact words were “we need to let Israel win”. When the interviewer asked him whether there were any humanitarian concerns, he just said that any deaths are the fault of Hamas and Hezbollah for using human shields.
Sorry I can’t cite who it was, I caught it mid-way on the radio. When I googled the words “we need to let israel win” it seems ron de santis has said this previously, so it may be one of the stock phrases (it wasn’t him being interviewed, of course).
Even though it’s all as we expected, it’s nonetheless upsetting to hear people being this callous and to think of how much worse things will get.
I see a lot of denial, and rationalization here regarding israel and their actions. I’ve yet to see any well argued cogent explanation of why what is being done to Gaza is not genocide.
I would say blocking humanitarian aid often by destroying shipements and/or killing aid workers, the total destruction of infrastructure, bombing refugee encampments, telling Gazens, "go here you’ll be safe, then bombing that spot and telling them to go elsewhere then bomb that too. And most damning an repugnant, the indiscriminate murder of innocents especially children is genocide. It is disgusting hateful genocide. And excusing it by saying hamas started it is and all they have to do is unconditionally surrender is laughable and pathetic. However, when the israli government doesnt appear to view Gazens as human, it’s not surprising.
You know, this framing doesn’t seem helpful.
When you put it like that, it seems like you’re saying the problem results from various people not having yet realized that, oh, shit; those are humans? Well, then, now that this new information has been brought to our attention, our conclusions about how we are to treat them shall — and, indeed, must — change!
If that’s not the case — if they instead already know full welll that, uh, yeah; those are humans — then I’d guess that you’d start off by getting disregarded by anyone who of course figures that the relevant decision-makers are of course aware of that fact; further, for anyone who (a) doesn’t so figure, and who (b) does take your claim seriously, the sensible response would seem to be, well, if the reason it’s not surprising is that they don’t seem to have noticed this, we need to carefully explain it to them so they’ll rethink their conclusions in light of this new information!
Is that actually your read on this, and your proposed approach?
I’m not sure I know what you’re trying to say. My take is that israel has dehumanized Gazens, so as to rationalize the slaughter of children, and the withholding of food and clean water, etc. What is your take on this?
Well, that they know full well that the Gazans are human, and that so framing the issue — in terms of them so rationalizing what they’re doing — could well lead to a conclusion that stopping the slaughter and withholding is a matter of stopping the hypothetical rationalization that, as it happens, they may not actually be bothering with.
If the Israelis in fact already know full well the Gazans are human — and so need to engage in no such rationalizing — then it seems like a waste of time and effort to convince them of what they, uh, already know; it also seems like you’ll get raised-eyebrow dismissiveness from anyone who figures that (a) the Israelis already know that, and so (b) it’d be a waste of time and effort to convince them of what they already know.
…the concept of dehumanization isn’t a new one. It even gets its own wiki page.
A partial list of organizations which have accused Israel of committing “genocide”, “crimes against humanity”, and/or “ethnic cleansing”:
Amnesty International
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
Human Rights Watch
Doctors Without Borders
The United Nations
The International Criminal Court (has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant)
I was reluctant to accept the “genocide” label for a long time, but it seems like either it’s genocide, or essentially every major human rights NGO in the world is anti-Semitic.
Or maybe they’re just wrong
All wrong in exactly the same way with consistent claims and supporting evidence.
Makes sense to me. William of Ockham just exploded in his grave, but that was probably also coincidental.
One of two things is true: there is a systemic bias against Israel, or 17/26 (65%) of the bad things that happened in 2024 were done by Israel.
Ockham’s Razor doesn’t cut in the direction you seem to think it does (unless the Jew truly is a uniquely evil creature 
)
Only if you define Jews as only Israelis.
Yep quality logicking once again.
So there’s a list of international charities and NGOs that are saying a genocide is taking place, and they must, all of them, just have a bias against Israel. And the evidence of this is…because the international community has made repeated urgent appeals in the last year for the bombardment to stop.
There must be a bias, because look how many people are telling Israel that what they are doing is wrong!
Sorry, I forgot that you only pay attention to this issue once a decade when it becomes big news out West.
The UN and the international orgs it spawns have been consistently biased against Israel; this is not a new development.
Or maybe 59% of all evil really is done by Israel.
So there has been international condemnation for decades, and that’s proof of anti-Israel bias?
An alternative explanation is that there are repeated resolutions because nothing ever happens; the US always vetos them and Israel goes ahead and builds another settlement or takes away another human right. Rinse and repeat.
Anyway, we can’t delve too much into the history as it is off-topic, so for brevity’s sake: no, I don’t agree that being frequently the target of criticism in itself can be held up as evidence of bias.
It’s fair to say that the UN historically pays a disproportionate amount of attention to Israeli human rights violations, but that doesn’t mean those violations aren’t actually happening.
And I’m not aware of any similar history on the part of Amnesty International or Doctors Without Borders.
There has been a level of international condemnation that drowns out all the international condemnation offered towards all other countries combined, yes. If you think Israel is really so evil that this is appropriate, that we basically have a monopoly on doing bad shit, we will never see eye to eye.
3 things:
- I don’t agree with your premise of the number of UN resolutions being some measure of claimed evilness and I just gave my reasons why in the previous post, that you’ve ignored.
- Your argument doesn’t address why the many other agencies, not just the many governments in the UN, are condemning Israel’s actions.
- I think this is likely off-topic; we’re talking about what is happening now, there have been plenty of threads litigating the history of Israel and Palestine.
I don’t know, to be honest, whether there is bias against Israel or whether they are committing genocide. I don’t typically track what is happening in Israel and the territories it governs. Maybe there is a systemic bias; I certainly admit it is possible as antisemitic feelings are well documented. That said, have you ever examined whether you are the one who is biased in this instance?
So what is going on in Gaza?
According to Palestinian officials, around 45,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. This is about 2.1% of the population or about 1 person out of every 47. Some other international estimates make this ~2.5% (1/40) and some estimates are as low as 1.7% (1/58). The IDF claims they have killed 17,000 “militants” (~0.8%, 1/125), but they offer no evidence or analysis that I have been able to find. The Palestinian officials have published very detailed evidence for about 36,000 of the deaths, and strong evidence on another 7,000; they are deemed to be credible and accurate in their estimates by most international organizations (see this Nature article) so let’s just use their numbers.
If 45,000 Palestinians have died since October 7, this is about 110 people every day. If the Israelis are perpetrating a genocide, they are less efficient that I would expect them to be. Auschwitz alone averaged more than 1,000 deaths (or 0.11% of the total Jewish population) a day during the holocaust.
Still, I don’t think Israel is valuing Palestinian life either. According to the IPC site that I linked to before, now >57% of the population of Gaza is rated at 4 (emergency) or 5 (Catastrophe/ Famine) on the IPC food insecurity classification scale.
Stage 4 (41% of Gaza’s population) is described as Households either:
- Have large food consumption gaps which are reflected in very high acute malnutrition and excess mortality; or
- Are able to mitigate large food consumption gaps but only by employing emergency livelihood strategies and asset liquidation.
Stage 5 (16% of Gaza’s population) is described as
- Households have an extreme lack of food and/or other basic needs even after full employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident.
For stage 4, there is an expected excess mortality of 1-2 / 10,000 every day, while for stage 5 the excess mortality is 2-4 / 10,000 per day. Doing the math, it looks like the Israelis are upping their game as this conservatively works out to 155 people per day dying of starvation under the current conditions. The IPC released an alert noting that there are currently only ~57 aid trucks entering Gaza every day, the lowest rate since last October. Fifty seven trucks of food & supplies for 2.1 million people. Seems sketch.
I still don’t know if this counts as a genocide, but I am upset that my government isn’t doing more to stop the deaths in Gaza. Israeli seems to be off the rails IMHO.
Links to cites provided if requested.