Palestine v Israel.

[pErvinalia]

But people definitely need to make their minds up whether they want Israel to bomb indiscriminately, or to target the bad guys specifically without harming any innocents.

Why do we have to choose between two war crimes?

[JimC]

Killing enemy combatants while they're in a hospital bed is certainly a war crime.

And yes, SD, here is the obligatory statement that the actions of Hamas in their incursion were also clearly war crimes, and that military action against Hamas was justified. But "military action" is not an unlimited action, and Israel has clearly moved beyond the justified by its slaughter of civilians in Gaza. There is no need to call it genocide, it is simply unlawful military actions against innocent civilians.

[rainbow]

Killing enemy combatants while they're in a hospital bed is certainly a war crime.

And yes, SD, here is the obligatory statement that the actions of Hamas in their incursion were also clearly war crimes, and that military action against Hamas was justified. But "military action" is not an unlimited action, and Israel has clearly moved beyond the justified by its slaughter of civilians in Gaza. There is no need to call it genocide, it is simply unlawful military actions against innocent civilians.

There is a need to call it what it is.

Genocide.

[rainbow]

https://museeholocauste.ca/en/resources ... -genocide/

What in this list is the Israeli government NOT doing?

[Svartalf]

funny that they complain how the Nazi treated them, but started acting like them as soon as they got an opportunity

[Strontium Dog]

Stop being anti-semitic, Brian.

Arabs are semites, therefore it's the israelis who are anti semitic

Antisemitism is, and only ever has been, racism against Jews. It was invented to replace the term Jew-hate, to make it sound more scientific.

[Strontium Dog]

funny that they complain how the Nazi treated them, but started acting like them as soon as they got an opportunity

Damn, someone is breaking out all the canards today.

Are Israel rounding the Palestinians up and gassing them all?

Shut up with your racism, fella.

[Strontium Dog]

Latest in Genocide News

https://twitter.com/HenMazzig/status/17 ... 7590187433

[JimC]

funny that they complain how the Nazi treated them, but started acting like them as soon as they got an opportunity

Damn, someone is breaking out all the canards today.

Are Israel rounding the Palestinians up and gassing them all?

Shut up with your racism, fella.

The actions of the Israeli government on Palestinians do not have to be as severe as that to warrant condemnation. The use of the term "genocide" is a distraction; it allows the supporters of Israel to argue reasonably that what Israel is doing is not true genocide, and so it must be OK...

[Brian Peacock]

funny that they complain how the Nazi treated them, but started acting like them as soon as they got an opportunity

Damn, someone is breaking out all the canards today.

Are Israel rounding the Palestinians up and gassing them all?

Shut up with your racism, fella.

Was Turky rounding the Kurds up and gassing them all? Netanyahu still called it a genocide. Previously you invoked the concepts of both absolute and relative numbers to assert that Israel's action in Gaza could not be genocidal, which I addressed here. I note that you chose not to respond to that, just as you chose not to respond to evidence that the Palestinian people have overwhelming borne the brunt of the fatalities and injured since 2008 after casually dishing out an accusation of bothsideism. I accept that you're under no obligation to respond to anything in particular, but at the same time you appear somewhat reluctant to acknowledge the actions and stated intent of the Israeli govt in relation to the Palestinian people, while at the same time being far from shy in admonishing those who challenge your or the Israeli govt's equivocations. Why do you think that is?

[Strontium Dog]

It's a war that accounts for something like 2.5% of civilian casualties in the Middle East since 2011, yet it's the only one where genocide accusations are thrown around willy-nilly.

We all know why the Jewish state, and only the Jewish state, is singled out while more bloody, less justified wars escape scott free.

The entire conflict is rooted in the idea that the Jews shouldn't be allowed to have some of their land back. The thing is, where do you want them to live? Most of the people there are only there because they were kicked out of Arab states, where they were robbed of land covering four times the area of Israel.

Is 49 Muslim states not enough? You need that tiny little sliver of Jewish land too?

[pErvinalia]

So committing war crimes is OK?

[JimC]

I am not saying the state of Israel should not exist, though many do. What I'm saying is that they should not be causing indiscriminate civilian casualties in Gaza, and they should not be allowing an aggressive, violent settlement program in the West Bank, but instead should be seriously pursuing a realistic 2 state solution...

[JimC]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-06/ ... /103427302

Why are violent settlers not being arrested?

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he's committed to ensuring Jewish settlers in the West Bank adhere to the law.

On the vast and publicly available evidence, this is a highly questionable claim.

One of my reasons for doubting this claim is a conversation I had with Yuval Diskin, then head of Israel's domestic security agency, Shin Bet.

In 2010, I was invited along with a small group of foreign journalists to a rare briefing with Diskin. He said one of his major concerns was extremist Jewish settlers who were openly committing violence against Palestinians. He said Shin Bet knew who they were.

I asked the obvious question: if the security service knew who they are, then why didn't it arrest them?

That was a question for the Netanyahu Government, he replied.

It was clear what he was saying: the government did not want the settlers known to be committing violence to be arrested. Shin Bet could identify them – all it needed was the nod from Israel's law enforcement leadership. The settlers have, in effect, enjoyed immunity for years.

So strong is the pushback to any criticism of settlers that Israel's influential finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, this week accused President Joe Biden of engaging in an "antisemitic lie".

Joe Biden and antisemitic in the same sentence?

The term "antisemitic" is used a lot these days. Often justifiably, but sometimes to try to shut down any legitimate criticism of Israel by making people fearful that if they dare to criticise the Israeli government or its army they will be branded as antisemitic – in other words, haters of Jews.

[Brian Peacock]

Yep. Criticising the Israeli govt's action and intent in Gaza and the West Bank, or just calling for a ceasefire and a negotiated long-term peace, gets you labelled either as anti-Semitic or as a self-hating Jew. We had this argument in the late 2010s over the weaponisation of 'Islamophobia' as a charge levelled against a just criticism of Islam or a majority Muslim state.