…as a big simplification in naval war games, not as a real-life military rating for a ships durability under actual fire.

Another disgusting case of Republicans using the country’s well being as a hostage to enact culture war bigotry - but it’s top-tier asshole gamesmanship, that keeps being appeased and rewarded:

• Demands suicidal internal rules that enforce a lame-duck speakership, chaos ensues.
• Demands cuts to previously agreed budgeting, largely cutting liberal spending. Tantrum rewarded, shutdown avoided
• Tries to pull the same trick in the same year, gets snubbed by establishment partisan dealings. Removes McCarthy, installs hardline Speaker.
• Demands ‘impossible’ border controls, Dems agree to deal. Trump putting Trump first like always, kills the deal so that he can wield that club in the general election. Deal avoided, everyone loses

And now this. You cannot deal with these people in good faith, this is the end result of appeasement without consequences. Realpolitik and hard power win when met with milquetoast responses, and the left continues to enable these bold plays. Fuck that, mint the stupid coin and let the court decide to tank the global economy or affirm “yes, spending bills mean spending is authorized” and put this to bed

• Israel is currently subject to an ICJ judgement to prevent harm to civilians in Gaza
• Ignoring that, basic human decency demands that you take measures to help people
• Especially if you are blockading that area, so only what you allow goes in
• Doubly so if you do not make accommodation for those civilians’s safety or survival outside of the combat zones, but leave them locked in a tiny geographical area

The IDF have been severely limiting aid in not Gaza through all of the checkpoints. This is well documented

Israeli civilians are making their own blockades of the crossings, and the IDF is allowing them to block aid. This is also well documented

At least 20 out of 22 hospitals identified by CNN in northern Gaza were damaged or destroyed in the first two months of Israel’s war against Hamas, from October 7 to December 7, according to a review of 45 satellite images and around 400 videos from the ground, as well as interviews with doctors, eyewitnesses and humanitarian organizations. Fourteen were directly hit, based on the evidence collected and verified by CNN and analyzed by experts.

You replied to a commenter pointing out that a million plus civilians are starving to death, with “WHAT ABOUT THE ISRAELI POLICE???”

Everyone except the most hardcore anti-semites was completely horrified on Oct 7-9. Then the IDF began its bombing campaign, and here we are today, quibbling over which hospital is okay to blow up, or how much the Israelis should be allowed to starve the Gazan

Just like the Global War on Terror, the crimes done by America dominate the discussions and history- 9/11 and the civilian deaths is acknowledged as the casus belli but the overreaction is our legacy

My paint remains though - the wires might be linked from the building to the tunnel, but it’s a jump to say the UNRWA is complicit instead of a victim

Fuck those poor, helpless, blockaded, starving civilians that have been bombed from their homes, if we give them water/food/power/ceasefire it goes to Hamas

Your bitterness and hatred will just continue the cycle of violence. I hope you do better, but history has shown that we don’t. Look beyond yourself and your pain, and maybe ask why

I’ll argue you on the damning part.

If someone illegally, and without your consent, taps into your power lines and steals electricity to run say, a weed grow operation, are you suddenly now affiliated with that drug ring? No, of course not, you weren’t involved and are also a victim

If however you allowed that to happen, that’s a different story. The IDF has a high burden of proof to clear here, especially after their big claims of Al-Shifa and the cemetery fell flat

Multiple cuts to the video, no verification it is a UNRWA building, nothing linking the tunnel to the UN building is shown. Just talk

Do better, don’t swallow propaganda willfully

Yes. I’m denying the pathetic ‘evidence’ you tried to insert into the discussion, because it functionally proves nothing:

• A tunnel entrance, then the video cuts
• Now we’re in a tunnel, looking at computers racks and screens. And another video cut
• Now we’re in a BUILDING! Ooooh how’d they get into the building? Hmmmm that’d seem like some actual proof if they showed how the tunnel and building were linked! Too bad they don’t show that part, I wonder why not? 🤔
• Ohhh now he’s saying things. “Omg look at the wires, they’re cut! Only eeeevil people cut wires, they must be hiding something” DAMNING PROOF, we clearly need to disband UNRWA immediately

You keep offering these low effort drive-by claims, and reply with cheap arguments or retorts when challenged. There’s plenty that Al-Quassam and Hamas have done wrong, without inventing false narratives that lack evidence.

Multiple cuts to the video, no verification it is a UNRWA building, nothing linking the tunnel to the UN building is shown. Just talk

Do better, don’t swallow propaganda willfully

Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization, under international sanctions. Nobody expects them to bow to UN pressure.

Israel is supposedly a responsible and law abiding nation state, with diplomatic ties, international recognition, and is expected to behave according to international law.

If you want equal treatment that can be done, the UN is repeatedly tired of Israel’s behavior

Nukes. Against who exactly? Nukes only hold value against nations and battle groups, not terrorists on your doorstep

Wearing the military strategy hat for a second, how exactly can he/the IDF achieve “total victory” over Hamas and de-militarize Gaza?

• Can the IDF actually physically achieve that goal (irrespective of laws or decency, just raw power) given the loss of people, machinery, and support from allies already felt?
• Can the Israeli state afford that kind of protracted engagement, given the use of reservists causes a huge negative cash flow with lost taxes and soldier payouts? War is expensive enough just from materiel and consumables.
• Can they afford to be occupied in Gaza that long, while Hezbollah continues to fire missiles across the northern border?

No, or not at least without putting the Israeli state as a whole at significant risk. It’s absurd to pretend that Gaza can be demilitarized, even if the IDF demolishes every house they can see. Before Hamas there was Fatah, before Fatah there was the fedayeen, before the fedayeen… you cannot kill the ideal of Palestinian statehood without a genocide.

…population death spiral which will cause increased social and economic pressures. Which witless politicians will see, and refuse to make the hard choice today by making families and life affordable (at the expense of ‘the market’) and either;

1. Refuse to do anything
2. Abuse the ‘economic steroids’ that is immigration. Low and high skill migrants both grant economic benefit, but this usually leads to racist/xenophobic reactionary popular sentiment and politics
3. Address the reasons why raising a family is increasingly becoming a financial death sentence, or a choice between having kids or being able to retire.

Almost everyone chooses option #2 because for politicians it’s easy, they get to show off “economy stronk, line goe up” and self congratulate on how they ‘solved’ economics by offsetting all developmental costs for an entire generation of their workforce. And then the next round of witless politicians see that short term success, and instead of actually solving the problem they…

Plus the literal interpretation of some Saudi royal family member owning a milk empire is very funny to me

Yes, but the US iced out Pakistan and leaned into Jordan after Bin Laden was discovered in Abottabad and AQA millitants routinely received refuge in Pakistan. Alliances need to serve both sides and Netanyahu’s refusal to deescalate or take the off-ramp and let Israel move on from his policy failures, has put Biden and the US atop a geopolitical powder keg.

We didn’t for a good while…

You mean the operation that targeted Iranian offshore platforms? That illegal use of retaliation?

The ICJ also rejected, by 15 votes to one, the U.S. counterclaim seeking a finding of Iran’s liability for interfering with the freedoms of commerce and navigation in the Gulf by attacking ships through missiles and mines.

The Court concluded, however, that the US had not submitted convincing evidence that the missile attack on the Sea Isle City in 1987 could be attributed to Iran. In view of all the circumstances and the evidence submitted by the US, the Court found that… the mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts was insufficient in itself to amount to an “armed attack” on the US…[and] that the evidence of Iran’s responsibility for mining the USS Samuel B. Roberts was inconclusive.

If the US had destroyed an offshore rig/Iranian vessel that was actively firing on neutral/US flagged shipping, that would be justified. Thwacking offshore installations because “they shady af, trust me bro” is not a legitimate use of force

I’ll bite, just in case you’re not a troll here to poison discourse.

Flipping the script, Israel has a population of a little over 7.1 million Jewish people, per Israeli census data.

Taking the semi-firm death tally from Oct7, at under 1,200, statistically speaking, those 1,139 deaths are a ‘rounding error’ (0.00016028708134%) of the Jewish population in Israel, let alone Jews all over the world.

But here’s the important part that you missed/willingly ignored - each one of those killed on Oct7 are individual tragedies, just as each of the tens of thousands of civilians deaths afterwards in Gaza are. And nearly all of this death and misery is preventable.