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[hector13]

A question for you: do you actually think it’s possible for Israel to commit war crimes in this conflict? What would the line be for you?

When there is a war, there are war crimes. I have seen relatively reliable evidence of war crimes committed by the Israeli Army in this war, like executing Hamas fighters who clearly tried to surrender

The problem begins when everything one side does is called a war crime. Don't supply resources directly to the enemy? WAR CRIME. Doing any air strikes that cause any collateral casualties?  WAR CRIME. It is hard to spot actual ones.

Hamas clearly have the ability to smuggle materials to build rockets, which means they clearly have the ability to smuggle in other things, like food, and water, and fuel. Who exactly is the blockade punishing if it doesn’t affect Hamas? Gaza wasn’t exactly a paradise prior to the conflict. I’d call this a crime against humanity, at best.

Israel has to do everything possible to minimize civilian casualties. I’ve mentioned before that cutting off electricity makes it harder for people to get evacuation notices, but even if they did, Israel is still bombing areas that they’ve told people to evacuate to; refugee camps; hospitals; they’re also not letting anyone leave via their border. That I’d be pretty comfortable calling war crimes.

There are myriad ways Israel could have responded to the October 7th attacks

Can you name a few?

Boots on the ground.  They have special forces, Mossad, diplomats, money, prisoner swaps. Bombing the shit out of Gaza is just the easy option.

Like they’re fighting around and bombing near a hospital in Gaza City “because Hamas” have tunnels underneath the hospital, or they bombed an ambulance convoy “because Hamas” use ambulances to shuttle people and materiel around.

But both are true. As soon as one side uses hospitals and ambulances in this way - bombing them stops being a war crime. This is why there are rules for not using hospitals this way.

No, it doesn’t stop being a war crime unless certain conditions are fulfilled:

Such loss of protection is an “exception” involving three elements where the medical transport is: used to commit acts harmful to the enemy; due warning is given; and there is a reasonable time for the warning to be heeded. With the first of these, acts harmful to the enemy can, according to the ICRC, include “transport of healthy troops, arms or munitions, as well as the collection or transmission of military intelligence.”

Because Hamas” basically culminates in things like bombing media headquarters providing critical coverage in Gaza

Yeah, this one was a rather transparent lie. "Hamas intelligence" wasn't the target. But if you are acting as propaganda for one side of the war, you will get hit. USA bombed the infrastructure of media of Irag for "some" reason, too.

The US doing something doesn’t make it any less awful. My point is “because Hamas” is not a good enough excuse, and allowing it to be used over and over as justification eventually makes the above (and worse!) acceptable. Yes Hamas is a disgusting terrorist group, that doesn’t justify doing disgusting things.

[Strongpoint]

Boots on the ground.  They have special forces, Mossad, diplomats, money, prisoner swaps. Bombing the shit out of Gaza is just the easy option.

Neither of those options can destroy HAMAS. Which is the stated goal of Israel.

Boots on the ground without the use of tanks, artillery, and air force would result in huge casualties among Israelis and would absolutely not be enough to destroy HAMAS

Massad is likely capable of assassinating some of some of HAMAS leaders here and there but that also wouldn't destroy HAMAS

What kind of diplomacy would hurt HAMAS is beyond my understanding.

Paying HAMAS or releasing their pals in exchange for hostages (NOT PRISONERS) equals justifying HAMAS's tactics and would explode Israel. Its citizens would be justifiably very unhappy seeing their government not only allowing a horrible attack but also rewarding it.

And Israel is going the hard route: A short air strike campaign followed by a limited land invasion.

An easy one would be spending a few months flattening Gaza with dumb bombs and artillery (including incendiary and cluster munitions) ignoring 6-figure civilian casualties and then moving in to mop up whatever survives. Or going in immediately in full force assault treating all civilian buildings as enemy fortifications and acting accordingly (see Mariupol)

[Rockeater]

The airstrike campign + limited inceursuon is not going to destroy HAMAS, causing the people in Gaza to suffer with no alternative is the reason they join HAMAS in the first place.
A diplomacy option would be to support a less hostile group and not literally support HAMAS as a bullwork against the PA, to not shoot peaceful protestors in Gaza in 2018-19, to actually try for peace and not continusly prevent palastinan families to return to the homes they were kicked out of.

Israel isn't even going for limited incursion, current plans in Israel leadership are between complete miletary control of the strip to straight up transfer to Egypt.

[pr1mezer0]

No wonder they're racist when the enemy stole their land and butchers them, in the name of God. But the same happens when you think you're the epitome of culture, or the purest race; like in Germany and south Africa.
We need a diverse unified earth, and a religion reconciled with science.

[scriver]

“From the river to the sea” is also a contentious one. I don’t doubt that there are anti-Semites that do use it to mean extermination of Jews on that land, but there are others that use it to mean they want peace there. Jumping to the conclusion that everyone there, who was broadly peaceful, was using it to call for the elimination of Jews is a ludicrous jump to make.

If you think the people using a slogan calling for ethnical cleansing are doing so for peace then you show a severe lack of critical thinking. How can it not be immediately obvious to you how that is just antisemitic apologism?

[Strongpoint]

The airstrike campign + limited inceursuon is not going to destroy HAMAS, causing the people in Gaza to suffer with no alternative is the reason they join HAMAS in the first place.
A diplomacy option would be to support a less hostile group and not literally support HAMAS as a bullwork against the PA, to not shoot peaceful protestors in Gaza in 2018-19, to actually try for peace and not continusly prevent palastinan families to return to the homes they were kicked out of.

Israel isn't even going for limited incursion, current plans in Israel leadership are between complete miletary control of the strip to straight up transfer to Egypt.

Limited is not in goals (it is quite clear that the goal is full occupation of Gaza) but in the number of used troops. They could move in with a far larger chunk of their army, bulldozering everything in their path.

Also, no. Diplomacy won't help. We may discuss how wrong Israeli actions were over the years. It doesn't matter. Hamas, the de facto totalitarian government of Gaza, can't be removed by diplomacy or by promoting moderate Palestinian factions. At best, you can ignite a civil war in Gaza, which is both unlikely and quite bloody.

[feelotraveller]

The Guardian had an interesting short piece https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/from-the-river-to-the-sea-where-does-the-slogan-come-from-and-what-does-it-mean-israel-palestine a couple of weeks back that might be of interest for some. Most immediately relevant:

“Between the river and the sea” is a fragment from a slogan used since the 1960s by a variety of people with a host of purposes. And it is open to an array of interpretations, from the genocidal to the democratic.

but the whole thing is worth a quick read.

[Strongpoint]

The thing is, we have a war between Israel and Hamas and we do know that Hamas uses this slogan and we know what it means by that - "Israel must be destroyed, all 'Jew settlers' expelled or killed"

You just don't use a slogan used by a side in the war and claim that you're just an anti-conflict and anti-war crimes protestor who doesn't support that side of the war.

Plus there is also way more menacing (even if less popular) "globalize the intifada".

[scriver]

I'd agree that the politician might have been using it as a subversion of the slogan. But that isn't how people straight up using the slogan is using it.

[feelotraveller]

Thing is people are using that slogan in a way that is accepted publicly (including by government/law enforcement) as not being hate speech, incitement to violence or genocide.

For example there was a big pro-Palestine protest (claimed to be 50,000 by the organisers) in Sydney yesterday.  The main chant was 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' (along with 'Gaza, Gaza, don’t you cry, Palestine will never die').  Speakers called for a ceasefire.  Lots of police were in attendance but in a watching role and part of their statement was that they respect the right of individuals and groups to "exercise their rights of free speech and peaceful assembly".  One of the comments of the Premier (government head honcho) was "“Protest is allowed in NSW but it needs to be done consistent with the law … You can’t allow hate speech in NSW, you can’t use it as a platform for racial vilification or incitement to violence, and the police have shown they will charge people who breach those rules".  To the best of my knowledge no arrests were made.  Certainly there were no mass arrests of the thousands chanting 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free'.

[Strongpoint]

If one of the goals of those protests is to show Israeli people that they are wrong and motivate them to stop the war, choosing a slogan those Israeli people see as genocidal is rather counterproductive, no? Because it looks not like "we want peace" but more like "we want your country to cease to exist."

Frankly speaking, I think it is what the majority of the people who chant this mean exactly "Israel should stop existing", and "We mean a different thing, wink-wink" is just a common game played by many hateful movements.

As for those who sincerely don't... If someone, out of their ignorance, uses the N-word believing it is not insulting, it doesn't stop being that for black people. If you are so uneducated on the topic that you don't know the meaning of the words you are chanting... You should not be involved in political protests.

[feelotraveller]

You walk down a Sydney street chanting the N-word you'll find yourself behind bars quick smart.  And the reason for that is that the community, police and government understand it as hate speech.

The goal of the protest was to put pressure on the Australian government to lobby for a ceasefire - as I mentioned. It amazes me that by implication you think that calling for a ceasefire equates to 'Israel should stop existing', especially when for decades the Israeli government has been hell bent on ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people.

Meanwhile the death toll in Gaza has hit 11,180.

[hector13]

The airstrike campign + limited inceursuon is not going to destroy HAMAS, causing the people in Gaza to suffer with no alternative is the reason they join HAMAS in the first place.
A diplomacy option would be to support a less hostile group and not literally support HAMAS as a bullwork against the PA, to not shoot peaceful protestors in Gaza in 2018-19, to actually try for peace and not continusly prevent palastinan families to return to the homes they were kicked out of.

Quoted for truth.

If the goal of Israel is to destroy Hamas (or the like), they ain’t going about it the right way. People having their homes and communities destroyed aren’t going to be philosophical about the matter. Equally so, all of Hamas isn’t in Gaza, so even if it was razed to the ground and all the tunnels filled with concrete, Hamas still exists, or get re-created by some of the Palestinians whose families have been destroyed in Israeli strikes that live elsewhere.

“From the river to the sea” is also a contentious one. I don’t doubt that there are anti-Semites that do use it to mean extermination of Jews on that land, but there are others that use it to mean they want peace there. Jumping to the conclusion that everyone there, who was broadly peaceful, was using it to call for the elimination of Jews is a ludicrous jump to make.

If you think the people using a slogan calling for ethnical cleansing are doing so for peace then you show a severe lack of critical thinking. How can it not be immediately obvious to you how that is just antisemitic apologism?

Because allowing language to be essentially stolen by the most extreme elements of society means we wouldn’t be able to talk about anything. Interpreting something in the worst possible way is how to shut down dialogue - it’s something abusers do - on what is a relatively ambiguous statement. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Free from what? Free to do what?

When Israelis use the phrase, do they use it to mean they want to exterminate Jews from the area? Heck, Likud used the phrase in the 70s, do they want to eliminate the Jews?

[Starver]

Just to shake things up a bit, politically...

(If I read it correctly, the Right are basically "Whatever we think about Jews, we think it far more about Muslims", and the Left are "We won't be associated with that...")

[scriver]

The airstrike campign + limited inceursuon is not going to destroy HAMAS, causing the people in Gaza to suffer with no alternative is the reason they join HAMAS in the first place.
A diplomacy option would be to support a less hostile group and not literally support HAMAS as a bullwork against the PA, to not shoot peaceful protestors in Gaza in 2018-19, to actually try for peace and not continusly prevent palastinan families to return to the homes they were kicked out of.

Quoted for truth.

If the goal of Israel is to destroy Hamas (or the like), they ain’t going about it the right way. People having their homes and communities destroyed aren’t going to be philosophical about the matter. Equally so, all of Hamas isn’t in Gaza, so even if it was razed to the ground and all the tunnels filled with concrete, Hamas still exists, or get re-created by some of the Palestinians whose families have been destroyed in Israeli strikes that live elsewhere.

“From the river to the sea” is also a contentious one. I don’t doubt that there are anti-Semites that do use it to mean extermination of Jews on that land, but there are others that use it to mean they want peace there. Jumping to the conclusion that everyone there, who was broadly peaceful, was using it to call for the elimination of Jews is a ludicrous jump to make.

If you think the people using a slogan calling for ethnical cleansing are doing so for peace then you show a severe lack of critical thinking. How can it not be immediately obvious to you how that is just antisemitic apologism?

Because allowing language to be essentially stolen by the most extreme elements of society means we wouldn’t be able to talk about anything. Interpreting something in the worst possible way is how to shut down dialogue - it’s something abusers do - on what is a relatively ambiguous statement. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Free from what? Free to do what?

When Israelis use the phrase, do they use it to mean they want to exterminate Jews from the area? Heck, Likud used the phrase in the 70s, do they want to eliminate the Jews?

You're embarrassing yourself.