Sounds like pretty good evidence that those maps are correct TBH.
Seems like that still an odd way to view things, any civilian deaths more than zero is bad and your making it sound the civilian deaths as punishment is the goal of the action which would be inherently wrong (and maybe that is the genuine Israeli motivation which obviously would be inherently wrong).
But I think there also a possible viewpoint of Hamas declared war on Israel with thousands of soldiers and missiles, so how many civilians are âallowedâ to be killed in that war is not something I feel knowledgeable enough to estimate. I mean hopefully Hamas would just surrender their leadership and preclude need for invasion?
Well, they wonât. Just like the Taliban didnât surrender Bin Laden to the US. That didnât give carte blanche to the US to kill an indefinite number of Afghan civilians either.
Well as thought experiment how many civilian deaths would you think would be expected if you took on the viewpoint that hypothetically Israel sole motivation was to defeat a government that declared war on them?
To me it seems irrelevant how many civilians Hamas killed, the question is how to resolve a war?
Shutting off power, food, and water is not merely âgoing after Hamas.â Theyâre literally advertising it as collective punishment and claiming an absolute right to commit war crimes and slaughter as many civilians as they want as revenge, not just âgetting Hamas.â
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There is more than one answer to that. Israel can control the number of civilian deaths by choosing different military tactics, for example using more infantry instead of bombing Gaza. That will likely mean more dead Israeli soldiers. So itâs basically a question of how many dead Palestinian civilians do we/you/they accept to save one Israeli soldier.
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Do you think those maps are correct?
Yeah and thatâs why Iâm saying I have no idea. Like to me I wouldnât have envisioned a ground invasion as the more âhumanitarianâ route but I see your point now that you point it out. Seems like a substantial people would die no matter what but I have no idea how many people are expected to die in an urban war where neighboring country refusing refugees. Seems a uniquely terrible situation
Enough smart people on this forum seem to think theyâre correct enough for the point being made versus someone who has an extremely biased opinion, so I lean towards theyâre correct enough, yes.
I donât think we should dismiss the concerns LFS brought up earlier about the possible implication that the map on the left is somehow desired. Iâd much prefer it like this
to center it on internationally recognized Palestinian lands.
OK, leaving aside smart people on this forum vs. Yuv, take a look at the maps yourself. In the first panel the white area is âJewish Settlementsâ. Starting in the second panel the white areas are âIsraeli Landâ. Do you think they indicate that Israel itself is a settlement?
And as Iâve said before, you/people are allowed to take the position that Israel shouldnât exist. Itâs just that if that is a position one has taken, discussions about the rest of this will go absolutely nowhere.
I think Israel should exist. I also think the single greatest threat to Israelâs continued existence right now is Netanyahu and the religious right that is outpacing the rest of the country and dragging it into a theocracy, and not Hamas. I think that what Hamas did was monstrous. But I also think that âgoing full Munichâ (advocated by Yuv on the other forum) is not the solution.
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Criticizing those decisions is valid! Repeatedly dishonestly asking how many citizens are allowed to die is not.
Thatâs a pretty obvious implication of the rest of that post, which you edited out
Itâs clearly not a dishonest question. Itâs phrasing you dislike and find uncomfortable. If youâd prefer, whatâs an objective standard by which youâd agree Israel has acted worse?
Special forces operations targeted against actual Hamas leadership, which is what heâs advocating for, is way, way more of a defensible position than neo-genocide.
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Does âgoing full Munichâ mean this?
If thatâs not the answer, then what is? That seems like the lowest-collateral-damage way to respond.
I didnât have a specific answer in mind, just thought it would be interesting to think about how weâd feel if we were attacked by such a close neighbor, then razed a bunch of it to the ground in response. I agree with you that itâs a really hard situation.
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I donât have a hard answer. Thatâs ok by me, Iâm happy to admit I donât know everything. I think there are a range of reasonable positions. Asserting it makes me uncomfortable, when in reality itâs just a dumb unknowable question designed as a rhetorical device, is just lame
Maybe Iâm wrong, but Iâm really not so sure about civilian death tolls being less in a ground invasion. Iâm guessing we will see how that goes shortly
Thatâs reasonable. I just feel like a lot of the discussion has taken a kinda US centric viewpoint where we envision hypothetically getting attacked by a small number of a terrorist organization that we know is in a far off land and feels easy to justify the likely correct response of not doing anything.
But this situation is getting attacked by the military of the actual government next door. Itâs not like some random organization, is the same government that is doing all the normal government stuff and they sent thousands of soldiers and missiles into your country. (And are encouraging neighboring militaries to do the same)
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