[davidf18]

Palestinians were given opportunities for self-determination in 1948, 2000 (Camp David), 2008, and 2006 in Gaza (blockaded by Egypt because of Hamas elected to run Gaza). In 1948, they along with 5 invading Arab countries tried to destroy Israel, resulting in their own destruction of their Arab state. In 2000, Arafat turned down a peace agreement with Bill Clinton starting terrorism that resulted in 3000 Palestinian and 1000 Jewish and Israeli Arab deaths, in 2008 Abbas turned down a peace agreement.

After 10/7 almost every Israeli knows that the Palestinians are not interested in their own state.

Of the 32,000 Hamas stated deaths, 13,000 are terrorists, thus resulting in a far lower civilian-to-combatant death ratio than in other urban conflicts such as Mosul.

The lesson learned with Japan in Germany in WW II is that total military defeat is necessary. The AI technology enables the targeting of all terrorists, not only senior-level terrorists as before, resulting in a quicker end to the conflict than otherwise and thus resulting in fewer civilian deaths.

As we know these terrorists hide among civilians including in and under hospitals, making these legitimate targets. The high number of civilian deaths occur from the terrorists hiding among civilians.

[C6JEsQeQa5fCjE]

> Of the 32,000 Hamas stated deaths, 13,000 are terrorists

13k out of 32k is around 40%. The estimates for the number of murdered children and women have been about 70% [1] for months, so the "40% are terrorist" claim already does not match that unless women and children are counted as terrorists. Anyway, even going with only 60% of those murdered being women and children, that still implies that every single killed male person is a terrorist. Now, I am sure that IDF already presents this as true in order to justify the murders, but that will not pass basic logical scrutiny of any critically-thinking person.

[1] 2024, March 14, https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/death-toll-children...

[nsguy]

"according to the Gaza Health Ministry" i.e. according to Hamas. The actual truth is nobody knows. There are a lot of children in Gaza.

To be crystal clear, the below isn't attempting to justify targeting children but it's important that those who are blindingly critical of Israel understand the complex realities.

Hamas does employ combatants under 18yo (which is what counts as children in those counts): "There have been reports of children below 15 years of age in Hamas, with the lowest recorded age being 12, but the process of selection for the Izz al-Deen Al-Qassem Brigades is reportedly long and rigorous and has not to date included children." - https://www.refworld.org/reference/annualreport/cscoal/2001/...

"Amnesty International is gravely concerned about reports that earlier today a 16-year-old Palestinian child was found to be carrying explosives when attempting to pass through the Israeli army checkpoint at Huwara, at the entrance of the West Bank town of Nablus" ... "a 17-year-old Palestinian detonated an explosive belt he was wearing as he was being tracked down by Israeli soldiers," - https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/mde150...

"However, children receive military training and are used as messengers and couriers, and in some cases as fighters and suicide bombers in attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.21 All the main political groups involve children in this way, including Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.22

At least nine children carried out suicide attacks in Israel and the Occupied Territories between October 2000 and March 2004" - https://www.refworld.org/reference/annualreport/cscoal/2004/...

[vharuck]

>"according to the Gaza Health Ministry" i.e. according to Hamas.

I.e., according to the only available source, and one that has proven itself reliable in past conflicts.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-is-gazas-ministry-of...

>Throughout four wars and numerous bloody skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, U.N. agencies have cited the Health Ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.

>In the aftermath of war, the U.N. humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records.

>In all cases the U.N.’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza Health Ministry’s, with small discrepancies.

>2008 war: The ministry reported 1,440 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 1,385.

>2014 war: The ministry reported 2,310 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 2,251.

>2021 war: The ministry reported 260 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 256.

It's perfectly reasonable to question data from an organization known for propaganda and terrorism. But please also try to find answers to your doubts.

[NomDePlum]

You bring out a statistic of 9 children carrying out suicide attacks in 4 years when a 1,000 times that were deliberately killed by Israel in 4 months?

You do realise that statistically that argument is insane by several orders of magnitude?

There is no rationale, or sane, argument for killing this number of children indescriminately. Never mind the tens of thousands that have been disabled and maimed.

[nsguy]

This isn't about statistics. This is simple fact that Hamas has used children, including young children. It definitely uses 17yo and 16yo. If they used 9 (out of?) back then this simply means they don't care about using children in war.

There's things like making children lie in graves so they get accustomed to being martyrs, this is the longer story: https://aish.com/the-jihadist-who-converted-to-judaism/

I think it's important to understand this to know who Israel is dealing with.

On Israel's side of this I think it's clear Israel has been using fairly indiscriminate force at times. However even if Israel used has the most discriminate use of force a lot of children would get killed.

What do you propose Israel can do against Hamas? What would you do when 30,000 combatants are sitting on your border, embedded with civilians, in civilian clothing, want you to kill as many civilians as possible, use them as shield while launching attacks at you? Half of the population is younger than 18yo. What do you do when thousands of rockets are launched at you from densely populated places? Let's reset to Oct 8th, how do you wage this war?

[DSingularity]

Until you understand that for a very large number of Israelis Palestinians are sub-human you will waste your efforts trying to argue with Israelis based on rationality or ethics. They are racists full stop.

The reason is simple: it’s the combination of forced military and being the descendants of a generation that migrated and ethnically cleansed Palestine are overwhelmingly potent sources of indoctrination. Most people tend to assimilate and therefore they will blend into the Israeli military (and you see what kind of ethics they have) and most people find it difficult to condemn their parents and grandparents as genocidal monsters so instead they will favor whatever narrative absolves their lineage.

[nsguy]

This is nonsense. Palestinians live in Israel too. There is less racism in Israel towards Palestinians than racism towards minorities or blacks in the US.

You just don't get it.

The hatred Israelis feel towards Gazans right now is not driven by racism. In general Israel's feelings towards Palestinians is related to the violence Palestinians have inflicted on Israelis and the violent conflict in general. Israelis think Gazans want to murder all of them and that feeling has support reality.

I agree there's some amount of indoctrination but that's also a simplistic world view.

[DSingularity]

Really? Less racism than towards blacks? You must never have heard Israelis speak about Palestinians.

I really wonder, if you think this is what Israelis think, what do you think Palestinians think? You know, the ones that have been murdered by the tens of thousands. The ones that have been made refugees in their own country.

[8note]

"There are a lot of children in Gaza" tickles the Bayesian probabilities that Israel is mostly killing children in Gaza.

Overall it still points to "what is the right response to guerilla warfare?" Or, "if even children want to kill you for what you're doing, what makes you so sure you're in the right?"

[nsguy]

I don't know what's the right response.

It's important to note that Hamas' suicide bombers were in general manipulated. I.e. this is not some grass roots child that decided they want to "kill you". This is cold blooded recruiting, conditioning, sending people to blow themselves up. I recommend you read up on that a little bit, there's a fair bit of material.

This (the start of the wave of suicide bombings) was also during somewhat euphoric time in Israeli-Palestinian relationships with the peace process happening, it wasn't a time of extreme repression.

You should also look a little at the textbooks and curriculum taught to those children.

[ineedaj0b]

Children are pretty dumb, easily manipulated. The whims of children would tell you they want an iPad not much more

[cess11]

No, Israel has never seriously been open to palestinian self-determination. Netanyahu brags about it, because he knows that it has been the mainstream position among israeli politicians so he has to project an image of being especially valuable in that regard.

It's not hiding when you are on your own territory. It's not a shield if your enemy kills non-combatants with impunity. It's also very hard to discern "terrorists" from resistance fighters when you're an occupier operating in occupied territory, which Israel doesn't even try to do.

[digging]

Thought experiment: Let's assume the vast majority of Palestinians genuinely despise Israel and would be willing to sacrifice their own community's existence to exterminate Israel.

Do you think that's a genetic inclination? My guess is you don't.

So if it's a cultural inclination, do you think it can be changed? Seemingly no, so why not? Why wouldn't goodwill and nation-building be able to change Palestinian minds?

Taking lessons from the final acts of WWII is extraordinarily myopic and foolish. It seems to assume that whatever did happen must have happened - why would we believe that? It's contradicted by the simple and undeniable fact that humans make errors in judgment. People chose to cause suffering. People chose to respond to suffering with war. People chose to pursue war to "total military defeat" (I would say that is actually a fiction but we can go along with it as it's close enough to the truth for our purposes here).

[nsguy]

I agree but I'm sure this comment will be met by backlash from the anti-Israeli crowd. Nobody actually knows for sure how many are dead, how many are combatants, or anything else about the casualties.

For more context: Camp David (peace with Egypt) was in 1978 and Oslo started in 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

The right wing in Israel now refers to Oslo as the "Oslo Disaster" due to the large number of Israelis killed in what they claim is a result of giving the Palestinians control over some of the land, arming their police force, and letting Palestinian leaders from abroad (Tunisia) return to the region.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at...

The left (whatever is left of it) says Oslo never had (EDIT: never was given) a chance to succeed and wasn't implemented properly.

Just a total mess like it always is in this region.

---

I do agree Israel has just cause to "remove" Hamas from Gaza post 10/7 (for some definition of remove). I also think Israel has been waging this war very poorly. I agree Palestinians don't want peace. They want Israel erased (which they sometimes put in different words but with the same end result). They say so out loud (see street interviews with Palestinians e.g. on YT, even before this war, and surveys etc.). I also know this from talking to a small sample of Palestinians myself. But, as we say in Hebrew, wise people don't get themselves into a situation that a smart people knows how to get out of, and unfortunately post Oct 7th even smart people have a hard time getting anywhere. That said, the blame lies on the Palestinians. They are responsible for the public in Israel moving right. Which in turn created this pathetic excuse of a government and general erosion of Israeli society. Which in turn is resulting in Israel's heavy handedness in Gaza (though even the less heavy handed version would be not that different in scope). They are doing that because they think that's how they'll get what they want. Hamas (supported by the majority of Palestinians) thinks that right now they're actually getting what they want. I think it's unlikely they'll get what they want. Israel is bound to take ever more aggressive approaches and nobody is going to help the Palestinians. Stopping the violent struggle, accepting Israel is a fact, and talking to Israel, is the only way Palestinians will get anything, but they're not willing to do that for various reasons (and when I say they I mean the vast majority + a way of imposing its will on the minority, i.e. if Palestinians can't get Hamas to stop killing Israelis then it doesn't even matter).

[8note]

Is Israel moving right meaningful? Before moving right, israeli's as a voting block weren't particularly worried about how colonization of the west bank was going, and wasn't going to prioritize decolonizing the west bank over other local needs.

Can you point to policies of removing west bank settlements to show that before the horrific attack, accepting Israel was going well in the west bank? If anything, the not-being-kicked-out-of-your-home was going better in the violent Gaza strip, and they overstepped their hand

[nsguy]

I think it's extremely significant. There was a majority of Israelis around the time of the Oslo accords that would have supported dismantling all the settlements (+/- or land exchange in some specific cases) and handing over the entirety of the west bank to Palestinians. This was a given, had major support, and the only reason that flipped was Hamas' campaign of suicide bombings, which also led to Rabin's assaination. I lived there at the time and I think I have the right perspective here.

You're also wrong about Israelis at the time not worried about the west bank. The Israeli left was extremely worried about the occupation of the west bank. I would say resolving the status of that territory was an important thing since 1967 (though I was born in 1968 so I don't have the entire experience in my head) but for some of that time the state of war with the surrounding Arab countries was a show stopper to that. The peace with Egypt was one of the factors that enabled the start of the peace process with the Palestinians.

Today you'll maybe find 5% of Israelis are agreeable to that two state solution, at best.

I'm not quite following your second question here. Settlements in the west bank have occasionally been removed but before the Oct 7th attack we're in a process of the right wing getting more embedded in the west bank and the extremists more emboldened which is sort of the process I'm alluding to here. I'm not sure if you're referring to violence forcing Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 here as some sort of benchmark for the west bank? Supposedly Arik Sharon's plan was to follow the withdrawal from Gaza with a unilateral withdrawal from most of the west bank.

Keep in mind that most of Gaza was handed to the PA before the 2005 withdrawal as part of the peace process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Jericho_Agreement I don't remember all the details any more, I'd have to look them up.

My point is the Palestinians could have gotten all the West Bank and Gaza through peaceful negotiations within the Oslo framework. It is true that what pushed Israel to even talk was the first intifadah though I'm convinced there was no need for violence even then.

A complete treatment of this topic would require a lot more time and effort. But anyways, the move right is again extremely significant for Palestinians, in a bad way. (EDIT: It's pretty bad for Isrealis a way in many ways)