When I’m in bed, my cat will walk up to the side of the bed and meow. I reach down to stroke her and she walks away. Then she comes back and meows again. So I reach down to try to pick her up. Walks away again. Okay, so she wants me to follow her, right? Maybe she’s hungry, wants to go outside? So I get up. But then she doesn’t go anywhere except the foot of the bed. Then she let’s me pick her up and put her on the bed. But then she quickly walks to the end of the bed and acts like she’s going to jump down. Then I have to make a big production of making a spot for her, patting the bed and speaking soothingly. Then she lies down. This little game happens every night. She has me trained.

Cute. And yet…I AM A MEAT ZOMBIE. MUST EAT. NOM NOM NOM.

It’s war. Both sides constantly use propaganda to their advantage. Propaganda is just story-telling. The best propaganda is fact-based, but framed in a particular way that is favorable to the propagandist. I would suggest that Hamas is particularly good at propaganda nowadays.

Israel, on the other hand, relies primarily on established sympathy among older people who formed their positive opinions about Israel back in 70s, 80s, and 90s. Israel was the “little engine that could”: a tiny country surrounded by genocidal autocratic countries determined to exterminate it. Israel was like the Athenians successfully battling the Persian Empire with their small but plucky citizen militia. Believe it or not, Israel was seen as the underdog in those days.

Young people today only know Israel as the right-wing, corrupt shithole is has become under Netanyahu. And Israel isn’t trying very hard to convince them otherwise. The sooner Netanyahu and his religious zealots are gone, the better for everyone.

Yeah, I guess roof-knocking isn’t feasible during this phase of the war. Hamas certainly is creating moral dilemmas by hiding among civilians.

When you step back and look at it objectively, one has to admit that Iran and the various Islamist groups they sponsor, like Hamas, have quite a brilliant strategy. Just as Hamas cannot defeat the IDF militarily, no one can topple the US and the broader West through conventional military means. The only way to win against the West is to exploit the divisions in our society by creating moral dilemmas. Events like 9/11 and October 7 are calculated to goad us into over-reaction, which generates moral dilemmas, and over-extension, which drains our coffers and our will. The US is particularly vulnerable to this strategy because Americans see themselves as exceptional and less susceptible to the forces of history that affect other nations. This is foolish, of course.

It is not a “fact” that Israel “created” Hamas. Providing some funding 20 years after their founding is not creating. Perhaps calling that a “conspiracy theory” was not the best choice of words. Clarifying what I meant with further conversation is not “bs”. Questioning my integrity rather than engaging with the argument is an ad hominem attack.

I must say that I don’t understand why people like yourself always jump to questioning people’s motives and honesty rather than engaging directly with the argument. It is basically an ad hominem attack.

How nice of you to tell me what I should have said to make you believe me. Charming.

I don’t disagree that Netanyahu and his right wing coalition were complicit with Hamas, and that regime change is needed. I’ve said that in other comments in this thread.

I push back against the simplistic statement that “Israel created Hamas”. It is way more complicated than that. Hamas was founded in 1987 as a splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood. Also, Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people, not the Israeli government. And, they are part of a wider radical Islamist movement, along with ISIS and the Houthis, that are sponsored by Iran. You could just as well say that Hamas was “created” by Iran.

I also push back because simply saying that Israel “created” Hamas, as if it were Israel’s fault alone, implies a lack of agency on the part of Hamas. Even if Netanyahu and his nutty right wing coalition provided some funding for Hamas, it was Hamas itself that carried out the raping and murdering on October 7. They own that atrocity, even if many other actors are complicit in it.

Okay, you’re right. I didn’t read the comment that way the first time around, but I see what you’re saying. The settlements in the West Bank could, arguably, be seen as evidence of creeping genocide. I think there is a better explanation for the situation in Gaza, though.

That’s a conspiracy theory.

Yes, you are right. If Netanyahu funded Hamas as a cynical way to make peace LESS likely, he is a bastard. I mean, he’s a bastard anyway for lots of reasons, but I agree with you. Netanyahu and his crazy right wing regime need to go. We definitely need regime change in both Israel and Gaza, preferably at the ballot box.

Yes, definitely. The laws of war hinge on the difference. Bombs and artillery do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, which is why there are always civilians killed in war. And yet, the use of bombs and artillery is not a war crime.

Now, the principle of proportionality is important here. In the laws of war, the degree of destruction and civilian casualties has to be reasonably proportional to the military objective. For example, to take an extreme example, it would not be generally considered reasonable to knock down a high rise full of civilians just to take out one sniper. That’s why Israel does that roof-knocking thing they do. Each military action has to be evaluated on its merits to determine if it is a war crime. Many of Hamas’s actions have been war crimes (e.g. the use of rape as a weapon of war, hiding combatants among civilians, etc), and I have no doubt that Israel has committed war crimes as well in particular situations. But specific instances of war crimes does not automatically mean they are committing genocide.

I’m am aware that some people call Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide. The crucial missing element, though, is intent. If Israel was intent on actually genociding the Palestinians, far more Gazans would be dead, and Israel would also be killing Palestinians in Israel proper and the West Bank. If, however, Israel’s intent is to root out a well-entrenched terrorist group hiding in the civilian population, it would be look pretty much exactly like the current situation. Are Israel’s actions in Gaza perfect? No. But they are more consistent with a difficult rooting out operation than genocide. In my opinion.

What about…what about…whataboutism.

You didn’t address a single one of my points. I’m not going to defend Israeli expansion of settlements in the West Bank. That is obviously a bad faith move on the part of the Israeli right wing and Jewish fanatics. Gaza being an “open air prison”…well, Gaza is that way because of Hamas. Israel distrusts Hamas for good reason. October 7 was just like 9/11 and was calculated to be that way.

Check out Rishi’s toddler fist. It is such a visually clever way for the editor to underscore the headline.

I don’t think Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Israel is trying to take out Hamas, but Hamas is using the Palestinian people as human shields.

That is their strategy. Hamas spent 15 years digging in to Gaza, including under hospitals. Then they commit an extremely provocative atrocity, using rape as a weapon of terror, which was guaranteed to rile up the Israelis for war. Just like Osama bin Laden did to the Americans. And then the Hamas leadership flees to Qatar where they can watch the chaos unfold. It’s diabolical. But it has been done before.

The US has spent decades developing and deploying smart munitions in an effort to be the good guys and minimize civilian casualties. It’s all very laudable but, in return, terrorists like the Houthis and Hamas have learned to hide more effectively in the civilian population, effectively creating human shields, which is a war crime.

It is probably true that a few retaliatory strikes won’t stop the Houthis from firing their Iranian missiles at civilian shipping. Something more drastic may be necessary. For example, I can’t imagine that Egypt is particularly happy about the reduction in traffic through Suez, nor should any bordering country be happy with missiles flying around over a shipping lane. It’s also an environmental disaster waiting to happen.

China is imitating the US Munro Doctrine, in which the US largely succeeded in excluding the European Great Powers from the Western Hemisphere by the end of the 1800s. China is trying to do the same in their neighbourhood. In this analogy, the South China Sea is China’s Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea.

However, it will be exponentially more difficult for China to achieve local hegemony given that they are surrounded by other industrialized nations on home soil who clearly see the threat and don’t want to become subjects of an authoritarian state.

The lesson that the US learned from WW1 and WW2 is that authoritarian states are very dangerous and the US cannot isolate itself from world events.

The lesson the US is learning from “winning” the Cold War is that global hegemony is corrupting and dangerous in terms of domestic politics.

I don’t think international law has done much to protect Israel over the years. Israel has been attacked 4 times by neighboring countries since their inception. Maybe that’s why they are the way they are when it comes to questions of security.

My point is that no civilian should be killed, but that isn’t realistic nor is it the criteria for engaging in warfare. What percentage of civilian casualties is “enough” is not a precisely answerable question. The best you can say is, “as few as reasonably possible given the circumstances”. No war has zero collateral damage, but that doesn’t mean that war is never justified.

In your earlier comment, you said that reaching 1% of the population killed could never be justified. And yet, about 9% of German were killed in WW2, and yet few would argue that the Allies should have stopped fighting once German casualties reached 1% of the population.