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by l2silver 277 days ago
I see a lot of comments here are about how other countries should react to this designation, rightfully so.

I wonder also though, how Israel will react. Is this anything new for them?

5 comments

Same cards they always play:

- our enemies are Hamas sympathisers

- our enemies are secretly Hamas members OR

- it's antisemitism

One look at the victims (or their mangled remains) immediately discounts all three.
That may be, but that has never stopped Israeli military from doing anything.
1. Multiple Israeli human right groups have already been calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide.

2. The overwhelming majority of Israelis knows and does not care about Palestinian civilian suffering, they do not even try to hide it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMyyVaiY4V8

What about the rest of Israel?
Until Israeli citizens do to the coalition what they're [ostensibly] hoping Gaza citizens do to Hamas

then what about the rest of Israel?

Israeli citizens, the vast majority of them, have not taken meaningful effort in overthrowing the government of a corrupt prime minister doing everything in his ability to stay in power, else Israeli citizens ought to learn from Nepal and call for a concrete transition of power. At this point, they are complicit in the genocide, like it or not - simply protesting in Tel Aviv and their local kibbutzim won't cut it. And I say this as someone who's view has shifted massively on this topic since October 7, 2023 - from a vocal supporter of Israeli action (as a Muslim nonetheless!) to a vocal opponent now. Until Israeli citizens overthrow their corrupt government of their own will, they are all part of the genocide and must be rightfully ostracized. Especially given that Netanyahu has outed himself as a one-Jewish-state proponent, and has no interest in a peaceful resolution - or in regional peace.

What's to say Israel's next plans aren't for Greater Israel next? Stealing parts of the Egyptian Sinai, Lebanon, Syria (which they already have done) and Jordan? And then Saudi Arabia and Iraq?

Ancedotally, as an Israeli, people's (or at least protesters') discontent with the Netanyahu government is essentially limited to his criminal charges, general populist antics, and his refusal to cut a hostage deal.

You would be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks the IDF is commiting war crimes in Gaza, let alone a genocide.

There is great skepticism towards international NGOs that make these accusations, especially the U.N., owing to past pro-Palestinian bias.

Obviously, there are war crimes happening in Gaza—like in any war.

But having followed a number of conflicts, I don’t see Israel conducting itself in a way that’s uniquely bad.

What makes Gaza different is the opponent: one committed to total war, willing to sacrifice civilians in order to manufacture outrage and turn Western opinion against Israel.

Documented examples include:

- Shooting at civilians who follow evacuation routes

- Sending children with bombs in their backpacks

- Denying civilians access to bomb shelters

- Storing weapons caches and launching rockets from civilian areas

In my STEM degree I was forced to take an ethics class, if I wanted the degree. One thing that stood out to me in that class was how we were exposed to many schools of ethics, and looking at the limitations of each one. Specifically, when one train of thought didn't have any limitation to it.

When you regurgitate this, it lacks an explanation on what the limitations would be, what wouldn't be accepted rule of engagement, based on the same rationale.

"it's a densely populated place with civilians everywhere, except we arbitrarily decided that every male over the age of 15 is not a civilian, so we'll bomb and bulldoze the surface level and not find any of the tunnels whatsoever, because the opponent is so different!"

isn't Israel supposed to have the highest concentration of PhD's anywhere? this is cognitively negligent

Initially that's what I thought too. But then the more the war progresses, there's only one group benefiting from what's happening - and it's not the remaining hostages.

Also, do Israelis really believe that with the extremely omnipresent intelligence apparatus that Israel enjoys, especially on the technological front, their country was not able to predict the October 7th attacks? Or did Netanyahu, personally on the verge of being convicted criminally, found a route out by starting a long-drawn out campaign where his hawkish approach would bolster his image? This entire affair has had all the stench of Putin's Chechnya escapade.

There is widespread bias against Israel, for the simple reason that Israel does not let press on the ground. Not even conservative, pro-Israel voices were allowed to report with boots on the ground.

And now Israel went a step further, by attacking a sovereign third-party nation that is trying to give a voice to the other un-sovereign side. Granted, they are heavily biased, but they are (were) also Israel's thread to communicate with Hamas leadership - and Israel just bombs their soil? Don't Israelis think on those terms?

I could never really get behind imagining expansionist policies without a clear philosophy supporting them

What would be the philosophy here? I've seen holdings from wars being held and released, and Golan Heights

it's not like there's a lack of "settlers"
he had press conference today and walked back what he said.
I think at the moment a term like "genocide" is still floating free from the reality of what that term means.

Here's an interview with a senior UNICEF worker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsAo2j6aih0

I think after that I can't imagine the question, "will this impact israel?" makes any sense. They're deliberately perpetrating a genocide. It's real. It's the deliberate and systematic murder of two million people. I dont see the sense in asking: will the murderers care?

There's no murder of two million. There's at most, according to Hamas itself, 60,000 dead out of which 10,000 were hamas militants. This is a regular ugly war.

If Israel wanted to kill two million, they could've done it already.

It seemingly doesn't matter how accurate Israel tried to be, they call genocide either way.

It's incredibly difficult to kill two million people, the easiest -- if not the only practically possible way -- is with mass starvation.

Here's an interview with a senior UNICEF worker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsAo2j6aih0

You may want to distance yourself from a defense of israel. This is not what you think it is; within a year a very large percentage of gazans will be dead, a very significant majority of all their children. They are starving now with water withheld. You can kill a large number very quickly if you withhold water.

That's where we are. Israel's actions have becoming increasingly genocidal as they have ratched up the "genocidal escalation ladder" with impunity. They had been afraid that someone would step in, but none have.

There's now no way of reversing at least 20% of the population dying, it's really just a question of whether they can finish them off, at least as a peoples with a need and claim to that land. If they can be whittled down to a small fraction of their original population, they can then be ethnically cleansed.

I'd imagine that has been the plan now for at least a year, or at least, most of this one.

> within a year a very large percentage of gazans will be dead, a very significant majority of all their children. They are starving now with water withheld.

I appreciate that you're making a prediction. We can check back in a year and see the population levels compared to today.

That's bullshit. There's plenty of water in Gaza, as well as food. They get external aid all the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGTMN9mgKcc Plenty of open restaurants in Gaza.

Even according to Hamas only 200 died out of starvation, and that number is disputed as well.

This is all Hamas propaganda that everyone believes.

There's an interview with a UNICEF worker on the ground there which you can watch, he even mentions when the restaurants reopened during the cease-fire
No. The Hamas death toll figures are just the identified dead. They don't include people buried under rubble or who died from secondary effects (health system collapse, starvation, disease). Plenty of sources think the deaths are in the hundreds of thousands.
People in Israel don't really care about stuff that comes out of UN.