That Hamas is greatly undercounting the number of people dead? Are we missing hundreds of thousands of people? Maybe vast numbers are starving to death stick-figure like but Hamas hasn't felt the need to mention this?
Or do we have a "genocide" going on without people dying?
IMHO what we have here is a brutal war but Israel isn't engaged in genocide. Even Hamas' numbers don't back that up.
Philip: Israel is engaging in genocidal activities by actively denying food, water, medical aid and evacuation routes to civilians in a war zone.
That is the claim. It's been the claim for a year.
So... how many people have died from this?
Here is a graph of Gaza death toll for every 5 days since the beginning of the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war#/media/File:Gaza_death_graph.png
If vast numbers of people were dying from hunger and thirst, wouldn't the per day body count be going through the roof?
We have a "genocide" where the number of dead per day is going down, not up.
The numbers suggest people aren't running out of food or water. The lack of medical care is killing fewer people as time goes on.
The UN claimed the lack of humanitarian evacuation routes would kill hundreds of thousands of people in the invasion of Rafa, but after the invasion Hamas claimed 900 people died.
The numbers strongly suggest the "genocide" narrative is wrong.
During Covid, we started out without much information at all because we haven't seen this in a century so the entire situation was effectively brand new.
Is covid worse than the flu? Is covid so bad we need to shut down the economy? Do the vaccines work?
Turns out that many of the answers are "it depends". So what "the official truth" was could reasonably change from day to day.
Unfortunately, shutting down unreasonable questions and unreasonable demands also includes shutting down reasonable questions and demands.
We also have the complications that...
1) The gov loves to use excuses to take power and keep it
2) There are segments of society that reject vaccinations and don't trust science.
3) Those segments in #2 need to be beaten down in order for herd immunity to be a thing.
The idea that RoR isn't the cornerstone of the problem and the conflict.
The only supposed ‘example’ of that is Arafat in 2000,
When I read wiki on the RoR, the peace process, and the conflict, I see it spelled out repeatedly that the RoR is the cornerstone of the Palestinian demands. I also see that in the charters.
Accepting a limited right of return would not have, at any point, destroyed ‘Israel’.
150k per year forever means Israel is destroyed as a Jewish state over the next several decades.
For all the happy talk about how it wouldn't be used and how it would be discouraged, 150k/year was the actual black letter definition of "limited" from the Palestinian point of view.
The only thing Arafat actually wanted was the right of return to Jerusalem.
That spin doesn't match the Palestinian proposal.
a thing that actually could _end_ this, if Palestinians were actually _paid_ for the land they were forced out of
I see no evidence the Palestinians have ever made this proposal. If it'd work then that's great. However you are assuming they're not serious about RoR.
If you're correct then the settlements and so on are the root of the problem and all we need is for Israel to pull out and that would be that.
However I see a ton of evidence that says they are extremely serious about getting an Israel-destroying RoR.
If that's where their heads are at, then peace is impossible. That explains why there was no peace before the settlements existed which was the first 40 years or so. That also explains their charters, wiki's various statements, and so on.
I'm not looking at Israeli propaganda. I'm looking at Palestinian charters and proposals and even behavior.
For example Hamas doesn't make any distinction between "settler in an area that should be ours" and "Jew in an area that will eventually be Jewish". Those villages they wiped out weren't in disputed territory.
From this specific action? Probably not. The builders seem unclear as to what exactly they're building.
However we're bouncing back and forth from this as an example and policy in general.
If we get rid of NIMBY's ability to shut down the creation of housing and other changes to neighborhoods, then we will see more changes to neighborhoods and we will see more market forces resolving various issues.
If you're saying that you're in favor of change but just not this specific change and you want it stopped, then you're deep in NIMBY territory. They're always in favor of change but just want that change to happen somewhere else.
If we allow people to build what they want, then we're going to see more housing and more rich companies building random stuff.
The tools which allow you to pick and choose what is built will be controlled by NIMBY and they strongly oppose affordable housing. So the more tools you allow to control what is built, the less affordable housing you'll get.
If you're going to go full YIMBY then it's also expected that you'll have rich builders seeking profit. That's a good thing because stopping them also stops housing in general.
DavidTC: I would like a _single_ person in this discussion to actually address this very obvious point
My way to "address" your obvious point is point out that it doesn't match what the Palestinians themselves have claimed. Nor does it match the charters, nor the peace negotiations.
If your claims are correct, then why are the settlements not such a big deal in the peace negotiations but an Israel-destroying right to return is worth walking away from the table over?
The solution is the UN and Arab countries stop claiming/treating them as refugees and then in two or three generations this will be a dead issue.
Right now the Palestinians are strongly enabled by the rest of the world. Hamas is both the government of Gaza and not responsible for the welfare of it's people because the UN does that.
We have a UN agency whose job in practice is to keep the conflict going. They teach that the RoR is a real thing and their mandate is to care for the "refugees" until it's resolved.
I like to assume good intensions but this concept seems an effort to prevent Israel from existing and keep the conflict going.
The peace proposals keep falling apart because they don't give back land stolen 70 years ago.
Go look up the Palestinian peace proposal in 2000, which was the closest we've gotten to peace.
To deal with the Right to Return, Israel would take back 150k people per year forever. Ergo Israel will be slowly destroyed over the course of decades.
Trying to claim the Palestinians are willing to make peace without an Israel-destroying RoR doesn't match the peace negotiations, the official statements, the charters, and so on.
At some point we need to admit that they mean what they say and negotiate for.
If you mean, "go back to the 1967 borders" then the problems are...
1) It wasn't defendable then.
2) It hasn't been politically possible for decades. Even the extreme peace types in Israel know they need a land swap because some of those settlements are too large to destroy.
If Israel tries to do this unilaterally, then by definition they draw borders without Palestinian input. That also means "to benefit themselves".
Put differently, the parts of Hamas that we-the-West view as extremely ugly are also the parts that gets them viewed as "representing legitimate Palestinian political aims".
Any group that attempts to "non-violently" destroy Israel is going to encounter a total lack of Jewish cooperation and Jewish State violence. For example the Gaza peace marches of 2018, i.e. "The Great March of Return".
So yes, I think it's fair to say the people of Gaza support Hamas in this context.
DavidTC: propaganda that the situation is exactly the other way around, that Palestinians hate Jews for no reason, instead of them quite sanely hating a state that is doing _this_ to them.
The entire "No Israel No Jews" plan, long predates what the West views as the occupation.
Having dialed it up to 11 before the occupation, it's a non-sequitur to claim the occupation is at fault.
For that matter, the various peace agreements have failed because Israel won't accept an Israel-destroying "Right to Return".
DavidTC: That’s pretty much textbook apartheid
Yes. And it's why Israel should stop with those sorts of "settlements". However imho them stopping won't bring peace because it has little to do with the underlying conflict.
DavidTC: but their belief in the humanity of the outgroup are. They have managed to nearly _completely_ dehumanize Palestinians.
They view various groups of Palestinians (including the bulk of Gaza) as Nazis. As people who are genocidally opposed to Jews being alive (or at least alive there). As the kind of people who will kill every Jew they can get their hands on.
The problem is this rep is well earned and even boldly proclaimed.
By throwing out the rules for war, Hamas (and by extension Gaza) have made the war much more blunt and much more destructive.
If you're going to use a hospital as a military base, you're opening the door for scared hostile armed brutal people to go through.
The same thing holds true for using individual homes and having those same brutal people do house by house searches for booby traps and hostile soldiers.
Those tea cups are in the middle of a battlefield. They aren't supposed to be deliberately smashed, that's a problem. But them being in the middle of a battlefield is a much larger problem.
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/26/2024”
So what is your claim here?
That Hamas is greatly undercounting the number of people dead? Are we missing hundreds of thousands of people? Maybe vast numbers are starving to death stick-figure like but Hamas hasn't felt the need to mention this?
Or do we have a "genocide" going on without people dying?
IMHO what we have here is a brutal war but Israel isn't engaged in genocide. Even Hamas' numbers don't back that up.
"
Philip: Israel is engaging in genocidal activities by actively denying food, water, medical aid and evacuation routes to civilians in a war zone.
That is the claim. It's been the claim for a year.
So... how many people have died from this?
Here is a graph of Gaza death toll for every 5 days since the beginning of the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war#/media/File:Gaza_death_graph.png
If vast numbers of people were dying from hunger and thirst, wouldn't the per day body count be going through the roof?
We have a "genocide" where the number of dead per day is going down, not up.
The numbers suggest people aren't running out of food or water. The lack of medical care is killing fewer people as time goes on.
The UN claimed the lack of humanitarian evacuation routes would kill hundreds of thousands of people in the invasion of Rafa, but after the invasion Hamas claimed 900 people died.
The numbers strongly suggest the "genocide" narrative is wrong.
"
The definition of "full-blown genocide" just got equated to "civilians killed in a brutal war".
The result of that redefinition is Israel isn't allowed to have a brutal war in Gaza.
This then becomes "Israel must tolerate it's civilians being terrorized and even subjected to mass murder".
"
So all we have to do is pretend that the gov has no ability to hurt companies if they don't do what is wanted and we're good.
"
I find Israel troops videoing themselves breaking teacups a lot less of a problem than someone videoing themselves killing civilians.
"
During Covid, we started out without much information at all because we haven't seen this in a century so the entire situation was effectively brand new.
Is covid worse than the flu? Is covid so bad we need to shut down the economy? Do the vaccines work?
Turns out that many of the answers are "it depends". So what "the official truth" was could reasonably change from day to day.
Unfortunately, shutting down unreasonable questions and unreasonable demands also includes shutting down reasonable questions and demands.
We also have the complications that...
1) The gov loves to use excuses to take power and keep it
2) There are segments of society that reject vaccinations and don't trust science.
3) Those segments in #2 need to be beaten down in order for herd immunity to be a thing.
"
My brother had a high prey drive dog who found a squirrel under a car. After that every car had a squirrel.
On “Kamala Harris DNC Speech: Watch It For Yourself”
What part of my statement is disputable?
The idea that RoR isn't the cornerstone of the problem and the conflict.
The only supposed ‘example’ of that is Arafat in 2000,
When I read wiki on the RoR, the peace process, and the conflict, I see it spelled out repeatedly that the RoR is the cornerstone of the Palestinian demands. I also see that in the charters.
Accepting a limited right of return would not have, at any point, destroyed ‘Israel’.
150k per year forever means Israel is destroyed as a Jewish state over the next several decades.
For all the happy talk about how it wouldn't be used and how it would be discouraged, 150k/year was the actual black letter definition of "limited" from the Palestinian point of view.
The only thing Arafat actually wanted was the right of return to Jerusalem.
That spin doesn't match the Palestinian proposal.
a thing that actually could _end_ this, if Palestinians were actually _paid_ for the land they were forced out of
I see no evidence the Palestinians have ever made this proposal. If it'd work then that's great. However you are assuming they're not serious about RoR.
If you're correct then the settlements and so on are the root of the problem and all we need is for Israel to pull out and that would be that.
However I see a ton of evidence that says they are extremely serious about getting an Israel-destroying RoR.
If that's where their heads are at, then peace is impossible. That explains why there was no peace before the settlements existed which was the first 40 years or so. That also explains their charters, wiki's various statements, and so on.
I'm not looking at Israeli propaganda. I'm looking at Palestinian charters and proposals and even behavior.
For example Hamas doesn't make any distinction between "settler in an area that should be ours" and "Jew in an area that will eventually be Jewish". Those villages they wiped out weren't in disputed territory.
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/26/2024”
My divorce lawyer did just fight with his landlord and ended up in a new building. This sort of thing isn't normally "destruction".
"
From this specific action? Probably not. The builders seem unclear as to what exactly they're building.
However we're bouncing back and forth from this as an example and policy in general.
If we get rid of NIMBY's ability to shut down the creation of housing and other changes to neighborhoods, then we will see more changes to neighborhoods and we will see more market forces resolving various issues.
If you're saying that you're in favor of change but just not this specific change and you want it stopped, then you're deep in NIMBY territory. They're always in favor of change but just want that change to happen somewhere else.
"
If we allow people to build what they want, then we're going to see more housing and more rich companies building random stuff.
The tools which allow you to pick and choose what is built will be controlled by NIMBY and they strongly oppose affordable housing. So the more tools you allow to control what is built, the less affordable housing you'll get.
If you're going to go full YIMBY then it's also expected that you'll have rich builders seeking profit. That's a good thing because stopping them also stops housing in general.
On “Kamala Harris DNC Speech: Watch It For Yourself”
DavidTC: I would like a _single_ person in this discussion to actually address this very obvious point
My way to "address" your obvious point is point out that it doesn't match what the Palestinians themselves have claimed. Nor does it match the charters, nor the peace negotiations.
If your claims are correct, then why are the settlements not such a big deal in the peace negotiations but an Israel-destroying right to return is worth walking away from the table over?
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/26/2024”
That sort of thing is expected of what we should see with YIMBY.
"
Hopefully Cannon gets removed from the case on this one.
"
TFG is going to constantly interrupt her if they have live mics and lie constantly if they don't.
I'm not sure there's a solution here other than "no debate".
I would prefer a robust debate but there's no way he's going to follow even the basic rules of discourse.
"
What does "no live mics" even mean in this context? How could that even work?
On “Kamala Harris DNC Speech: Watch It For Yourself”
The solution is the UN and Arab countries stop claiming/treating them as refugees and then in two or three generations this will be a dead issue.
Right now the Palestinians are strongly enabled by the rest of the world. Hamas is both the government of Gaza and not responsible for the welfare of it's people because the UN does that.
We have a UN agency whose job in practice is to keep the conflict going. They teach that the RoR is a real thing and their mandate is to care for the "refugees" until it's resolved.
I like to assume good intensions but this concept seems an effort to prevent Israel from existing and keep the conflict going.
"
The peace proposals keep falling apart because they don't give back land stolen 70 years ago.
Go look up the Palestinian peace proposal in 2000, which was the closest we've gotten to peace.
To deal with the Right to Return, Israel would take back 150k people per year forever. Ergo Israel will be slowly destroyed over the course of decades.
Trying to claim the Palestinians are willing to make peace without an Israel-destroying RoR doesn't match the peace negotiations, the official statements, the charters, and so on.
At some point we need to admit that they mean what they say and negotiate for.
"
If you mean, "go back to the 1967 borders" then the problems are...
1) It wasn't defendable then.
2) It hasn't been politically possible for decades. Even the extreme peace types in Israel know they need a land swap because some of those settlements are too large to destroy.
If Israel tries to do this unilaterally, then by definition they draw borders without Palestinian input. That also means "to benefit themselves".
"
Put differently, the parts of Hamas that we-the-West view as extremely ugly are also the parts that gets them viewed as "representing legitimate Palestinian political aims".
Any group that attempts to "non-violently" destroy Israel is going to encounter a total lack of Jewish cooperation and Jewish State violence. For example the Gaza peace marches of 2018, i.e. "The Great March of Return".
So yes, I think it's fair to say the people of Gaza support Hamas in this context.
"
LeeEsq: I wouldn’t go so far to say as the Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas.
They don't support Hamas' corruption and brutality on it's own people.
They overwhelmingly support the "Right to Return" which puts them on a path to supporting "No Jews" which they also support.
The only way to make that happen is war+genocide+terrorism. Arguably Hamas did 10-7 to become more popular.
"
"Should be"?
No. Of course not.
Lots of stuff happens in a war that shouldn't happen. It's expected.
Opening the door to war is opening the door to a ton of savage brutal instincts. It's why we try to keep that door closed.
If you want to condemn Israel over broken teacups you're able to set the bar at that level, and as you pointed out it's bsdi.
I'm more concerned about percentage of population they control ending up dead. If they sink to Hamas levels then we'll see a lot more than we have.
"
DavidTC: propaganda that the situation is exactly the other way around, that Palestinians hate Jews for no reason, instead of them quite sanely hating a state that is doing _this_ to them.
The entire "No Israel No Jews" plan, long predates what the West views as the occupation.
Having dialed it up to 11 before the occupation, it's a non-sequitur to claim the occupation is at fault.
For that matter, the various peace agreements have failed because Israel won't accept an Israel-destroying "Right to Return".
DavidTC: That’s pretty much textbook apartheid
Yes. And it's why Israel should stop with those sorts of "settlements". However imho them stopping won't bring peace because it has little to do with the underlying conflict.
DavidTC: but their belief in the humanity of the outgroup are. They have managed to nearly _completely_ dehumanize Palestinians.
They view various groups of Palestinians (including the bulk of Gaza) as Nazis. As people who are genocidally opposed to Jews being alive (or at least alive there). As the kind of people who will kill every Jew they can get their hands on.
The problem is this rep is well earned and even boldly proclaimed.
"
War is an amazingly blunt and destructive tool.
By throwing out the rules for war, Hamas (and by extension Gaza) have made the war much more blunt and much more destructive.
If you're going to use a hospital as a military base, you're opening the door for scared hostile armed brutal people to go through.
The same thing holds true for using individual homes and having those same brutal people do house by house searches for booby traps and hostile soldiers.
Those tea cups are in the middle of a battlefield. They aren't supposed to be deliberately smashed, that's a problem. But them being in the middle of a battlefield is a much larger problem.
"
Jaybird: It’s found in “they’re destroying beautiful things because they belong to the less powerful outgroup”.
The army isn't there destroying things because they're less powerful. The army is there because they support a genocidal terror group.
Supporting a genocidal terror group means you can't have nice things. That's part of the whole "let's have a brutal war in my back yard" package.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.