[CapricornNoble]

> I disagree with your characterization of what Israel is doing as crimes, at least not in general (I'm sure specific war crimes have been committed). It is a war.

So what is the threshold past which even Israelis would acknowledge that what Israel is doing is both morally repugnant and illegal? What would that look like, in terms of actions on the ground?

The problem is that the crimes do not appear to be one-offs, but systemic, especially when viewed in the context of public statements by senior leadership of the Israeli government explicitly advocating for violence and destruction.

It is not normal wartime activity for a bulldozer to drive over LIVING human beings: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/21/middleeast/gaza-war-israe...

It might be "normal" for soldiers to pose for pictures in a combat zone, but soldiers committing war crimes while doing so should be prosecuted in accordance with international law....and for some reason IDF soldiers do this quite often, from posing while burning down libraries, to scrawling graffiti such as "Nakba 2023" on walls with a smile, to making instructional videos on how to blow up mosques on TikTok.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/israeli-soldier-burning-bo...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Palestine/comments/1cuujzz/two_isra...

https://archive.is/HTC4J (NYT)

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2024/02/15/exp-amanpour...

It's a pattern of callous destruction that makes the razing of Lidice ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre ) look positively quaint.

[edanm]

> So what is the threshold past which even Israelis would acknowledge that what Israel is doing is both morally repugnant and illegal? What would that look like, in terms of actions on the ground?

I can't speak for Israelis in general. I certainly think some of the things Israel is doing are morally repugnant, especially some of the actions in the WB (or lack of stopping settlers from their actions), and especially any of the things Israel has done to withhold aid from Gaza.

I don't think that makes the war itself a crime or most of the things happening in it crimes. I do think, like most Israelis do, that one of the reasons the war is going on so long is because of Netanyahu's particular political needs, which is obviously extremely immoral.

It's war. It's complicated. There are no easy answers.

> The problem is that the crimes do not appear to be one-offs, but systemic, especially when viewed in the context of public statements by senior leadership of the Israeli government explicitly advocating for violence and destruction.

Some officials have made clearly awful and genocidal statements. Most of the ones in charge have not, except for the first few weeks after the Hamas attacks, and have made thousands more statements that explicitly speak against any kind of genocidal intent. I think it's important to look at statements in their totality.

> It might be "normal" for soldiers to pose for pictures in a combat zone, but soldiers committing war crimes while doing so should be prosecuted in accordance with international law....and for some reason IDF soldiers do this quite often, from posing while burning down libraries, to scrawling graffiti such as "Nakba 2023" on walls with a smile, to making instructional videos on how to blow up mosques on TikTok.

Those soldiers are obviously doing terrible and stupid things, and often face some form of military trials. This is unacceptable behavior in my mind and is rightly condemned.

[CapricornNoble]

Overall this is a pretty balanced take. I still think we have different interpretations of what is "normal" for a war but I don't expect we'll close the gap on that.

Now to introduce some levity into the conversation:

> It's war. It's complicated. There are no easy answers.

When I was a Senior Watch Officer at the Operations Center of a 3-star command, our Operations Chief was lifelong infantryman and Fallujah veteran. I haven't been in combat. But I used to frequently rant "Why do we always make this stuff so complicated?!?! It can't be this hard to kill people!" For those lacking context I'm complaining about how I felt that our approach to command & control was needlessly diffusing our core Marine Corps function of efficiently killing our enemies.

...and one time the Chief just looked at me and responded plainly: "Trust me, it's not."

[runarberg]

Nothing here is “normal” war behavior, even by the standards of war. And people see that and correctly judge Israel for it.

I remember growing up in Europe during the Iraq war. Even though I was young, I got that USA was obviously on the wrong, and so did most people around me. I remember not just hating the American government for what they were doing, but Americans in general. When Bush was reelected in 2004 it was seen as a damning proof that it wasn’t just the American government that was bad, but every American. It took me personally a few years to erase this prejudges from my head.

I also remember being in Europe during the Syrian civil war. Syrian refugees had a huge sympathy from most people around me. This was compounded by how many European governments treated Syrian refugees horrible (and still do), such injustice only grew our sympathy for Syrian people.

I no longer live in Europe, but I see the same sentiment for Ukrainians who are obviously wronged by a heinous Russian invasion into their country.

Palestinians have had to suffer injustice for a long time, and awareness of this injustice has grown rapidly over, with the ongoing genocide, support for Palestinians among the people (not governments) has also grown massively. This is consistent with previous victims of war.

During the Iraq war Bush’s lies played a factor in anti-American sentiment, so did the Patriot act, the Guantanamo Bay prison, the Abu Ghraib torture revelations, and the number of massacres (particularly the Nisour Square massacre, and the “Collateral Murder” as leaked by Chelsea Manning).

During the Iraq war we heard of those atrocities on a weekly to a monthly basis, and they were all a big deal, and we all hated Americans for it. Compounded were with the emotion was the impunity in which these crimes were committed. Americans were very seldomly (and very selectively) punished for these crimes. Individual soldiers were arrested, tried, received minimal (if any) punishment, and later pardoned or acquitted. But we all knew the crimes were systemic and that generals, cabinet members, and presidents were equally, of not more guilty of those crimes. The problem was with American policy, and nobody was being arrested for that.

Now compare this to Gaza. Israel has been committing the crime of Apartheid for a very long time. They have been subjugating Palestinians with an illegal occupation, a border wall (in Europe we know all to well of the infamous Berlin wall), shooting at protestors with much more impunity than UK soldiers in Belfast. Gaza was illegally blockaded and systematically bombed every few years (something the reminded us all to well of Sarajevo).

And now during the Gaza genocide we see the same kinds of atrocities as during the Iraq wars (including torture and sexual abuses of prisoners) except now, instead of them being reviled every few weeks or months, we see every day another massacre, another neighborhood bombed, another hospital sieged, another torture camp exposed, etc. This is not normal, not acceptable, and people don’t accept it.

There was a time where Israel had it relatively good compared to other oppressors, that people made a fine distinction between the government and the people (unlike with America). But I don’t think this is true any more. The crimes of Israel are far to severe, and the impunity far too great. Hardly any of these soldiers committing the crimes are ever prosecuted, none of the war crimes are investigated, no general is questioned, and no politician is impeached. People see this and (IMO correctly) judge Israeli society along with their government for the impunity of how those crimes are committed.