[implements]

During the Falklands War there were discussions in British political circles about what death toll would be unacceptable to liberate 1,800 people from Argentine occupation and rule - a calculus on the value of human life vs geopolitical concerns, I guess.

The global consensus seems to be that Israel’s current actions have become excessive - if that’s true, I wonder where the line between legitimate and illegitimate responses to being attacked by a semi-State actor like Hamas is?

Genuine question - I don’t understand how a state would go about determining an ethical response in this circumstance (leaving aside wider positions on the nature of the I/P conflict itself).

[HL33tibCe7]

During the Falklands War the discussion was around military deaths, not civilian deaths.

The problem people have with Israel is not that they're killing Hamas fighters or that IDF soldiers are being killed. It's that they're killing civilians (amongst other war crimes and crimes against humanity).

It's a completely different situation.

Edit: just to flesh out my position here a bit. Civilian deaths are unavoidable in war. But the attacker _must_ take measures to prevent that as much as possible. Israel have not. In fact they've done the opposite.

[ryandrake]

> The problem people have with Israel is not that they're killing Hamas fighters or that IDF soldiers are being killed. It's that they're killing civilians (amongst other war crimes and crimes against humanity).

There is also a deliberate propaganda effort to blur the distinction between Hamas and Palestinians. Look at every conservative news source that reports on pro-Palestinian protests. Every one of them uses the term "Pro-Hamas protestors" instead, even though you'll find very few people there who support Hamas terrorists. This is clearly deliberate.

See also the deliberate conflation of IDF = Israeli government = Israeli people = the Jewish Ethnicity = Judaism. So, thanks to propaganda, if you oppose one of them, they think you oppose them all and are antisemitic.

[seo-speedwagon]

Genuine response: the “wider positions on the nature of the I/P conflict” are essential to informing the situation, and cannot be divorced from the discussion.

Israel has no ethical response because there is no ethical means by which one can maintain apartheid. History did not start on Oct 7, 2023. It’s like pondering where the line is between legitimate and illegitimate responses to the Warsaw ghetto uprising, or to Haitian revolution.

[BunsanSpace]

"History did not start on Oct 7, 2023"

Where should we start?

When the arabs colonized the levant? or the many massacres of native jews? The wars of aggression by arabs? This conflict is awfully messy and each side has a laundry list of legitimate grievances.

[stanfordkid]

Not really. It’s absurd to draw the line into ancient history of Arab’s colonizing the Levant. Early 1900s to 1948 are more reasonable given that people actually exist that lived in this time or at least meaningful records of history.

The fact is the British/UN gave a bunch of land to people that wasn’t really theirs to give. Nakba happened (which is illegal to even talk about in Israel) which was already a mass genocide/forced displacement). People alive today saw this happen. Watch the documentary Tantura to see some of the horrors by early Israelis (rapes, torture, killing people and feeding them their own genitals).

The point is: throughout most of modern history “Israel” has been invading Palestine. The fact that the UN recognized Israel in 1949 doesn’t matter… because that recognition required mass displacement and horrors to actually materialize.

Arab wars etc are a consequence of this. Sure maybe Israel won some of those. But one has to accept that the very conceptualization of Israel is rooted in genocide and displacement from the start. Many (or maybe most) states throughout history were formed this way I guess … Israel had the bad luck of doing it during a time that the human rights and morality of modernity was beginning to fully form.

[weatherlite]

How was the Nakba a genocide?

[stanfordkid]

It was ethnic cleansing, violent forced displacement paired with massacres of 750,000 people. My mistake — not genocide.

[weatherlite]

You're correct it was not genocide. The other side carried out quite a few massacres of its own and tried to displace the Jews (or worse) - so it was pretty much just a war.

[racional]

Per the modern definition of the term:

Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part.

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

[weatherlite]

So indeed the Nakba was not a genocide

[corimaith]

The word "genocide" (and many other terms) means very little nowadays. Well you can tell at least the parent isn't trying to be neutral in providing history there.

[dlubarov]

> Nakba happened (which is illegal to even talk about in Israel)

This is very inaccurate, the actual law is described here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_Law#Provisions

[runarberg]

> 4. Referring to the Israeli Independence Day or the founding day of the country as a day of mourning.

So you are not allowed to call it the Nakba, or describe it as anything but something to celebrate as long as you receive funding from the government.

I don’t know how the media, libraries, schools or other institutions work in Israel, but in Iceland this would pretty much amount to a ban, as almost all media, and institutions receive at least some funding from the government, and the most important ones actually depend on it.

I also find it curious how this flies in Israel’s participation in Eurovision. Russia was banned for using state media to spread misinformation. Meanwhile Israel has laws which bans their state media from recognizing previous state atrocities, and is not banned.

[dlubarov]

Your interpretation doesn't seem right. It is certainly permitted to use the word Nakba, and there's no requirement to celebrate anything.

[Redoubts]

> in Iceland this would pretty much amount to a ban, as almost all media, and institutions receive at least some funding from the government

skill issue.

[tsimionescu]

This is a somewhat complex question to answer, and one that can't truly be untangled from the broader history of the I/P conflict. But the base idea is this: you can't fight terrorism with bombs. Israel's stated goals in this war don't make sense: even if they could eliminate every single Hamas (military) operative, the kind of assault they are perpetrating is obviously going to give rise to a new wave of militants, probably much more embittered than Hamas is today.

So, Israel can only have two actual goals in this war: either they are seeking to purge Gaza of Palestinians, or they are seeking to punish Gazans in general for the actions of a few terrorists on October 7th, eye-for-an-eye style. There is no other reasonable interpretation of this war, and the vast majority of the world's countries see it this way (as seen by the overwhelming support for all pro-Gaza resolutions at the UN, typically 150+ to 10 or less).

Now, if Israel actually wanted to eliminate the terrorist leadership that perpetrated the October 7th attack while not creating new generations of terrorists, they would have gone about this intervention in a completely different way. They would have had to work with the non-militant parts of Hamas leadership and the PLO of the West Bank and with neighboring Arab countries to bring these murderers to justice, along with sending the equivalent of police forces for taregtted operations.

For an example of how this can work, you can look at how the UK dealt with the IRA in Northern Ireland, or Spain with the Basque Country separatists. They certainly didn't start bombing Belfast or Bilbao semi-indiscriminately to weed out the terrorists there.

Of course, what I'm saying is laughably far from anything that was actually possible to imagine as an Israeli response, given the long history of repression and mutual hatred of those territories. The reality is that Israeli leadership, and a sizeable segment of the Israeli population, wants the territory of Israel to include Gaza and the West Bank, but without bringing in the huge Arab Muslim population there as full citizens with equal rights in Israel. They also want to avoid creating explicit laws officially recognizing them as the second-class citizens that they are. So, the goal of Israeli leadership is actually maintaining the status quo: people in Gaza and the West Bank (and East Jerusalem) are living as second class citizens, their land is slowly being encroached by more radical coloniats, and their anger is controlled by bombings and deprivation when needed.

[HL33tibCe7]

> or they are seeking to punish Gazans in general for the actions of a few terrorists on October 7th, eye-for-an-eye style

High-ranking Israeli officials have openly stated this at the start of the war and throughout.

[seo-speedwagon]

Israel’s minister of national security has explicitly said he wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

https://x.com/NTarnopolsky/status/1792891809498022385

[gizmo686]

He has also:

* Been denied entry to the IDF/excused from mandatory conscription due to his extremist views

* Been convicted (in an Israeli court) of supporting a terrorist organization.

* Made a legal career out of defending alledged Jewish terrorists in Israeli courts.

* Arguably contributed to the assassination Yitzhak Rabin and the collapse of the Oslo accords.

[nolongerthere]

Do you speak hebrew? I don't see subtitles to that video, where do you get that?

[seo-speedwagon]

Here’s a synopsis reported by the Times of Israel

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ben-gvir-says-h...

[nolongerthere]

The subtitled video doesn't say anything about ethnic cleansing, the minister says he would like to see those who were exiled from Gaza in 2005 returned and allow Jews to live there again. He makes no mention of displacing the current population.

[goldfishgold]

Subtitled version here https://x.com/TranslateMom/status/1793230643104485487

[aen1]

"few"

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/22/poll-hamas-remains-p...

[tsimionescu]

Hamas is a complex entity, the ruling party of Gaza as well as a militant terrorist arm. The population of Gaza is around two million people, all of Hamas is maybe 50,000 people, terrorist arm is some subset of that, and the people who actually participated in the Oct 7 atrocities are maybe a few thousand counting all support personnel. I think that easily qualifies as a few people compared to two million.

[dlubarov]

> They would have had to work with the non-militant parts of Hamas leadership and the PLO of the West Bank and with neighboring Arab countries to bring these murderers to justice

I don't really see how this could work? As far as I know, all Hamas leadership supports the Oct 7 attack. The PLO and neighboring Arab countries don't really have power in Gaza.

[ImPostingOnHN]

Is that surprising, considering how Israel had treated Palestinians before that date?

If mere support is a hangup, then supporters of Israel's genocidal retaliation must similarly be excluded from talks.

I speak sardonically, of course: preconditions to negotiation are rarely helpful to achieving a negotiated outcome.

Here's one example: if Israel starts by treating Palestinians as human beings equal to Israeli people, without preconditions, it would remove a lot of Hamas leverage, plus it's the right thing to do.

Then, a bilateral peace committee seeking to punish genocide perpetrators on either side, perhaps as judged by the ICJ, can be established.

[weatherlite]

> For an example of how this can work, you can look at how the UK dealt with the IRA

Did the IRA kill around ten thousands of Brits in one day and kidnapped a few thousands (I'm adjusting to population size here) ? Did the IRA have the sworn objective to eliminate England? Did the IRA join forces with another terrorist organization and a superpower bent on destroying England to encircle England from all directions and join the war?

[arp242]

The circumstances of the catholic population in Northern Ireland was also significantly less extreme and dire. So if you want compare the scale of it then you also need to take that in to account.

However, the more important issue is not to get distracted by these sort of things. We can tit-for-tat this endlessly and never get anywhere, and the only way to solve this is to move beyond that. That's what they did in NI.

If we strip away all the violence, forget who did what to who, and all of that, then the inescapable conclusion remains: the IRA was right to protest the treatment of Catholics. Even Ian Paisley later admitted as much. And similarly Hamas is ... right to protest the treatment of Palestinians. That does not mean I condone the violence, like the general rhetoric of Hamas, or anything else. It's just an acknowledgement that 1) at the core of an issue are genuine grievances, and 2) as long as these grievances exist there will always be a Hamas.

You don't need to like these facts to accept it exists. You also don't need to just shrug and do nothing about Hamas. But you DO need to actually solve the rot cause (while you're also fighting Hamas). And for decades Israel has not just flat-out refused to do almost anything, it generally has made things worse. The violence of Israel is not as spectacular as the violence of Hamas, but it absolutely exists.

[weatherlite]

> Hamas is ... right to protest the treatment of Palestinians.

The reality is much more nuanced and quite frankly contradictory to this simplistic viewpoint. What are Hamas' goals - some kind of peaceful solution or the violent destruction of Israel and expulsion of most Jews from the area? I tend to say the latter. Also, calling what Hamas did on October 7th 'protest' seems weird to me. It committed a massacre and knew damn well it was starting a war.

[CRConrad]

Yeah, that's probably why the GP didn't say "Hamas is right to commit terrorist acts", but "... is right to protest the treatment of Palestinians". Which, like, are you saying they're wrong on that? Because if you are, it's you who are. Wrong, that is.

[tsimionescu]

No, and neither did Hamas.

[weatherlite]

Yes it did. Which events I listed are you disputing?

[tsimionescu]

You adjusted your post to note that the ten thousand dead was an adjustment. Even so, it's an adjustment in the wrong direction - Northern Ireland is tinier than Israel, not larger. And the correct comparison is Irish Republicans in Northern Ireland ~ Palestinians, British loyalists in Northern Ireland ~ Israelis. You can view the greater UKs role in the conflict as similar to the USAs role in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Of course, none of these comparisons are remotely 1:1, but they are close enough.

Going for a less shallow dismissal of your points then:

> Did the IRA kill around ten thousands of Brits in one day and kidnapped a few thousands (I'm adjusting to population size here) ?

The IRA in total killed some 2000 people, representing some 0.2% of the Protestant population of Northern Ireland. Hamas killed in total ~2600 people since 2008 (where I found simple data on Wikipedia), which represents about 0.04% of the population of Israel, taking a very small estimate for the total population. So, in percentages, the IRA was about 5 times as vicious as Hamas (edit: accidentally wrote 50 earlier).

> Did the IRA have the sworn objective to eliminate England?

Yes, the IRA had the objective to eliminate British rule in Northern Ireland entirely, which is quite similar to Hamas's goal of eliminating Israeli rule in all of Israel. I'm not sure if the IRA was as happy to kill any loyalist civilians as Hamas is in killing Israeli civilians, to be fair.

> Did the IRA join forces with another terrorist organization and a superpower bent on destroying England to encircle England from all directions and join the war?

I'm not sure what superpower you refer to here (are you calling Egypt a superpower? Edit - oh, you mean the USSR...). Regardless, Ireland did have some amount of implication in the Troubles, though of course immeasurably less. I'm also not sure why it's more legitimate to bomb civilian buildings or not based on whether those civilians were once supported by outside countries, 50 years ago.

[weatherlite]

"The IRA (Irish Republican Army) was responsible for killing around 1,800 people during its terror campaign from the late 1960s through the late 1990s. This includes approximately 650 civilians"

So 650 civilians in around 30 years, that's less than what Hamas did in a couple of hours on October 7th. Btw Hamas is not only active in Gaza, it was a big part of the terror campaign that derailed the Oslo peace initiative and later Camp David - mostly in the West Bank. Hamas' reach is all across the Palestinian territories and it has hit Israelis in all kinds of ways - suicide bombings (in the West Bank), rockets (Gaza) and recently full on invasions and massacres. The death toll, destruction and disruption to the economy and civil life it had on Israeli society is orders of magnitude larger than what Britain has ever experienced.

> Yes, the IRA had the objective to eliminate British rule in Northern Ireland entirely, which is quite similar to Hamas's goal of eliminating Israeli rule in all of Israel. I'm not sure if the IRA was as happy to kill any loyalist civilians as Hamas is in killing Israeli civilians, to be fair.

So there's a major difference here I think, Britain could have simply left Northern Ireland or reach some compromise to meet some of the IRA's demands (which has actually eventually happened) and still remained Britain. For Israel to meet Hamas demands it needs to commit national suicide, cede control to a group that hates it (happy to kill Israelis - your words) and wants to take revenge and as a result probably have the majority of its population flee the region completely (where to? perhaps to the West, which is also not the most hospitable environment for Jews/Israelis).

> I'm not sure what superpower you refer to here (are you calling Egypt a superpower? Edit - oh, you mean the USSR...).

I am talking about Iran which is considered a regional superpower and about the fact Israel is surrounded by Iranian made armies (Hezbollah to the North, Yemenite Houtihs and Iraqi militais to the East) that are now occasionally bombing its civilian population or trying to force a naval blockade on it. England never had to face anything remotely similar to this with the IRA. The last time England had something similar to this was WW2.

[oliwarner]

The Falklands death toll was around 900 people, only three of whom were non-combatants.

The situation with Gaza is very different. There aren't perfect answers, and fifty years of being kettled under military occupation has only made everyone involved hate each other that little bit more.

Whatever the exact numbers are, it's clear that normal people have suffered unduly as a result of military action, in a way that has extended far past self defence, with documented actions that seem barely human.

A comparison to the Falklands war —as unnecessary as that was— seems perverse.

[davidguetta]

Its also simply becausz its not just about self defense.

People would care less if israel was not actively supporting illegal settlers and that extremists killed ytzak rabin that was looking for peace. Or that netanyahu was on camera saying he wants to make palestinian civilians suffer as much as possible while he negociates in bad faith and doesnt respect the usa that are 'easy to manoeuver".

Its not just about hamas