I’m not surprised. Israel loves attacking civilians and their infrastructure. They are no different than Russia, but for some reason the majority of western countries support Israel.
I’m not surprised. Israel loves attacking civilians and their infrastructure. They are no different than Russia, but for some reason the majority of western countries support Israel.
Israel is a modern, western democracy. Russia is an autocratic oligarchy.
Israel is at war for self-defense because of an attack from a hostile nation. Russia started a war to annex land.
Israel's wars are existential. Russia's wars are military adventurism.
Israel is a NATO ally. Opposing Russia is why NATO exists.
Israel is a vital part of the tech and military industrial complexes of many western countries.
...I guess it's a mystery why western countries treat these countries differently.
It is true that both Israel and Russia has attacked infrastructure and killed civilians. But, then again, so does every nation at war when they are valid military targets. Your statement is like saying that Dolly Parton is no different from Adolf Hitler because they were once children, but for some reason one is universally loved and the other is universally hated.
For it to be a war both sides must have a military
Remember that massacre of civilians launched by Gaza's government, that consisted of 5000 simultaneous rockets, a coordinated plan consisting of drones, paragliders, motorcycles, and speedboats by 3,000 armed Hamas militants? That's their military.
I’m not saying it as an insult. I’m using it as a declarative statement. Your inability to understand how the asymmetry creates even more room for literal war crimes, which Israel has done IN GREATER NUMBER, AND IN GREATER NUMBER OF CASUALTIES, you truly are, just purely and simply, pathetic.
Neither side is good, but one side is demonstrably more deadly and commits more war crimes while trying to claim the moral high ground. It is genuinely pathetic to buy that propaganda.
I’m not saying it as an insult. I’m using it as a declarative statement.
A statement can be both, you insufferable twit. <--- See? Both declarative and insulting.
Your inability to understand how the asymmetry creates even more room for literal war crimes, which Israel has done IN GREATER NUMBER, AND IN GREATER NUMBER OF CASUALTIES, you truly are, just purely and simply, pathetic.
My inability to understand a point you hadn't yet bothered to make is pathetic, so therefore calling me pathetic is somehow not an insult? Bless your heart, you don't seem to be capable of coherent reasoning.
Israel has attacked it’s own institutions to protect their Prime Minister from prosecution. Including charges of voter suppression and going after political rivals. That’s not a democracy.
Israel was already committing acts of war against Gaza with the blockade and countless military adventures into Gaza for decades. To include preventing the democratically elected party from forming a government in both territories. This war started in 2006.
This not the 1970’s. There is no existential threat to Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah do not have the power to get rid of them. Syria is paralyzed. Jordan and Egypt are trading partners. Iran would get a NATO bombing campaign inside of 24 hours as a prelude to a ground invasion started from Iraq and they know it. This is not the cold war.
The existence of greater war crimes does not make Israel’s any less galling.
And finally, we can develop tech anywhere. Israel getting frozen out would hurt but it’s not anything the west would actually worry about tech wise.
There is still no evidence the hospitals were home to more than a few security guards.
A flawed or imperfect democracy is still a democracy.
Israel was already committing acts of war against Gaza with the blockade and countless military adventures into Gaza for decades.
You're using that term wrong. Military adventurism is the use of military force for matters other than defending one's homeland; Israel's homeland was literally attacked.
While one can certainly cite causes for this ongoing conflict all the way back to the late 1800's, I would argue that Palestine was defeated a long time ago but refuses to pacify and accept terms. An act of war like an embargo isn't uncommon when one is already at war with a government that is still belligerent, launching attacks, and calling for their destruction.
There is no existential threat to Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah do not have the power to get rid of them.
Their calls for genocide should not be overlooked simply because they presently lack the means. If Israel loses this war, (although it is incredibly unlikely,) they have nowhere to retreat to. They will not exist as a country, so existential is the right word. Compare that to Russia, whose people will simply return to Russia should they lose in Ukraine.
The existence of greater war crimes does not make Israel’s any less galling.
Israel claims to have valid military targets and the high civilian death count is due to collateral damage. If true, this makes their military actions legal, not war crimes.
we can develop tech anywhere. Israel getting frozen out would hurt but it’s not anything the west would actually worry about tech wise.
No we cannot simply move tech anywhere, production requires infrastructure, which takes a lot of time and money to build, and development requires an educated population with a culture of technological entrepreneurialism and investors. Israel has all the nessicary components. They are one of the few places outside East Asia that produces advanced chips.
By that definition Russia is still a Democracy. Putin is voted back into office regularly. You cannot have it both ways.
Likewise you cannot justify previous military adventures with an attack that happened after them. But I do get why you would want to do that. Otherwise it gets kind of hard to (checks notes) defend shooting unarmed protestors and their medics.
If you want to talk about homeland I’m sure the Palestinians would love to tell you about how they lived there for thousands of years. Using the word homeland to describe settlers and colonists is just ridiculous. Being there for 500 years didn’t entitle Europeans to Asia, the Americas, or Africa. Why would 50 years entitle them to Israel?
If the hospitals were legitimate targets we’d have seen more than a maintenance tunnel hatch, 5 AKs, and 2 cans of oil spray.
As for how necessary they are, we just built another chip plant in Arizona, with plans for more in the US.
Finally, and in an edit because I fat fingered my phone, private calls for genocide in no way justify an actual ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign. Hamas as an organization has publicly stated many times they will settle for the 1969 borders and/or the destruction of the Israeli state. They very clearly avoid calling for killing all Jews.
Clearly Israel is more democratic than Russia, which is a de facto autocracy. Do I really need to elaborate on this?
Likewise you cannot justify previous military adventures with an attack that happened after them.
As far as I'm aware every war Israel has ever fought has been in defense of its homeland, and therefore by definition not Military Adventurism.
If you want to talk about homeland I’m sure the Palestinians would love to tell you about how they lived there for thousands of years. Using the word homeland to describe settlers and colonists is just ridiculous.
It's not really their homeland? Well, Israel disagrees and there's been a lot of people living and dying there who now have a legitimate claim that it is, especially since they are currently in possession of said land and Palestine has no way of contesting their territorial claims. Regardless of how you feel about the term, "homeland," it applies here:
an autonomous or semiautonomous state occupied by a particular people.
Yes you do since Netanyahu is doing the same political stuff Putin is doing. He’s literally passed a law preventing the courts from holding him accountable for anything he does to maintain power. Which absolutely includes using the police to intimidate voters.
So please, elaborate.
Israel has been in a state of war continuously since the mid 2000’s. The election of Hamas was not a declaration of war against Israel. No matter how much you want to pretend. You don’t even need to go into cold war era to disprove the myth of them only defending themselves. To boot, many of their military adventures are justified by having settler militias attack Palestinians so the IDF can look clean when it clears the Palestinians out of a village. It’s a pattern repeated over and over again in Colonial history.
“We conquered this so it’s ours” went away at the end of World War 2. Not even the Soviet Union could make it stick anymore. The Israelis do not get some special dispensation to kill the locals and take their land. They can take the same deal settlers got in Africa. Become citizens of the unified successor state with democracy everyone gets to participate in
Netanyahu is doing the same political stuff Putin is doing.
He's simply not. Russia fakes elections in a way that lets us know they are faking elections and don't give a shit:
Our new research using election forensics techniques suggests that the 2016 Duma (legislative) election had the largest magnitude of fraud under Putin’s presidencies since 2000. What’s more, we suspect that the Russian government may have deliberately manipulated some results — in ways that show they’ve been reading papers on detecting election frauds!
Metaphorically, we suspect the Russians may be giving us the statistical finger. They appear to be sending signals that they are on to election forensics researchers — while continuing to cheat, obviously, right in front of us. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/01/11/when-the-russians-fake-their-election-results-they-may-be-giving-us-the-statistical-finger/
Bibi is trying to neuter the Justice system, which would be a power grab, and he is trying to intimidate voters, but he doesn't outright fake elections. He's not an autocrat, (not yet anyway.) He is still beholden to popular vote in a way that Putin never will be. And because of this democracy he's likely to be removed from power soon.
Putin just straight up murders and throws his political opponents in prison, en masse. He will be removed from power when he dies, and any claims of Russian democracy by the Federation are made in bad faith, to support comparisons like this one.
“We conquered this so it’s ours” went away at the end of World War 2. The Israelis do not get some special dispensation to kill the locals and take their land. They can take the same deal settlers got in Africa. Become citizens of the unified successor state with democracy everyone gets to participate in
That would have been nice. Jews started out by legally buying the land until a xenophobic Arab nationalist movement was whipped up and started a cycle of massacres, making a 1-state solution impossible, and the hostilities never stopped. Most of that land was taken as a result of failed wars waged against Israel.
One doesn't need a special dispensation for self-defense. Letting an enemy who outnumbers them and wants to drive them into the sea elect their leadership sounds like a terrible idea, that isn't remotely viable today.
Right. I’m guessing you haven’t cracked a history book in the last decade or so.
Israeli settlers were the ones who pushed the British out and then started burning out Palestinians. We have the British Army reports on it. At the end of the day Israel is nothing but a modern colonialist state. Winning the war doesn’t give you moral authority.
And Bibi has already neutered the justice system. That law got passed.
Edit - and repeating myself. Hamas doesn’t want to kill all Jews. That’s Israeli propaganda. Their charter lays out their specific demands. A return to the 1969 borders or the dissolution of the state of Israel. So a two state solution or a one state solution. Not a permanent occupation and Apartheid.
guess allowing hezbollah to take over the lebanese government on behalf of iran, and use that country as a staging ground for advanced weaponry to attack israel and kill jews was a poor choice after all
Is that the same Hezbollah that only exists thanks to Israeli invasion? Kinda like Americans whining about Al-Qeada when their own government made them.
Is that the same Hezbollah that only exists thanks to Israeli invasion?
Yes and no. Hezbollah is a result of militant Nakba Palestinians destabilizing Lebanon.
Hezbollah emerged during Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war, which broke out in 1975 when long-simmering discontent over the large, armed Palestinian presence in the country reached a boiling point. Various Lebanese sectarian communities held different positions on the nature of the Palestinian challenge. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hezbollah
Israel was attacked and invaded first, successfully repelled the invaders, then occupied and annexed land from the belligerent forces. Some Palestinians left for Lebanon from within Israeli territory, (not invasion, as one cannot invade their own lands,) and some refugees left from invaded/annexed lands, (could accurately be called invasion.)
Hezbollah. If you're going to act incredulous and unfairly imply Israel is being duplicitous, at least keep up on the context and invent some imaginary motivations that make sense.
Israel has been bombing Lebanon in a stated goal to destroy hezvollah, and the article makes it clear that this is a lebanon town near the Israeli border that has been clearly bombed.
What’s duplicitous in pointing out that Israel likely bombed this solar array used for pumping well water?
What’s duplicitous in pointing out that Israel likely bombed this solar array used for pumping well water?
That wasn't what I wrote. They seem to be implying that Israel is being duplicitous; intentionally targeting Palestinian civilian structures by saying Hamas is there when they know they are not.
Okay. Why did Israel target this civilian infastructure? Was it intentional, or did they bomb it while stating they were attacking Hezzbolah?
Israel has been destroying large swaths of civilization infastructure, now in 2 nations, and each time blamed it on “the enemies hiding among and supported by the civilians.”
There is undoubtedly truth to the above, but surely you can see that taken uncritically, that is also a statement that excuses away all civilain death and damage.
Do you earnestly believe that destroying the water source and livelihood of 400 families was a direct and reasonable war goal for Israel to execute on Lebanon?
They're saying Israel would make up a plausible cover story to attack civilian infrastructure in Lebanon. I'm saying in that case they would plausibly blame Hezbollah, and not Hamas, as they are not based in Lebanon.
Do you understand? It's not complicated.
Why did Israel target this civilian infastructure? Was it intentional, or did they bomb it while stating they were attacking Hezzbolah? Do you earnestly believe that destroying the water source and livelihood of 400 families was a direct and reasonable war goal for Israel to execute on Lebanon?
No idea. If you want to research and justify or condemn this attack based on additional context, by all means. Let us know what you find. I'm not going to do it for you, and I don't know anything about the circumstances of this attack besides what's in this article.
So we both agree that Israel keeps destroying civilain infastructure, and they are doing so because they are stating that all of it is also wartime infastructure.
Mostly they have blamed Hamas, as most of the strikes have been inside Gaza. So the joke made above, as they destroyed what is clearly not wartime infastructure in Lebanon, is that they would still blame Hamas, even though that would be the wrong enemy.
In truth, there is no justification past “total war,” i.e “destroy all infastructure, wartime or not to crippled an enemy’s society” to destroy these panels. Since there can be no real justification, the joke about blaming Hamas, an enemy that could not be at fault, is clear and not disingenuous at all.
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