Israel/Hamas War Superthread

[Dill]

(02-17-2024, 10:56 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: I’m not here to play tit for tat Dill, because again, the displacement, the incursions, the blockades, the occupation, the accords, none of that matters in relation to what I am saying.
The basis of my entire argument concerns genocidal intentions realized by literal actions and how the opposition decides to respond to it.
You can go through the history of the conflict and complain about Jewish occupation all you want, but it's irrelevant to the argument. It's as simple a question as this.
Does Hamas want to annihilate Israel and has stated so? Yes.
Have they violently attacked Israel and killed innocent people as a means to show their genocidal intentions? Yes.
Therefore, if Israel decides to respond by completely obliterating Hamas, and the way for them to do that is by killing Hamas and destroying any capabilities they have of carrying out their genocidal intentions, then anyone who does not want to die should do their best to flee to somewhere that Israel is less likely to target until the conflict is over. If Israel really wanted to kill everyone, they would have done it already.
And what I'm telling you is none of that matters within the confines of the argument being presented here. I am not concerned with who has done bad/questionable/immoral etc... actions against who in an ongoing conflict. What I am concerned with is who wants to commit genocide against who and have they acted on it.

I much appreciate your efforts to clarify your position. It did sound, though, like you did not understand that Palestinians cannot just walk out of the Gaza Strip. They are "contained" there by the Israeli military, and by Egypt on the southern border. Have been for two generations now. I don't find that normal or ok. And you keep insisting that they "choose" to stay, like no one is forcing them to.  Or if someone is, it is still THE GAZANS' FAULT, not that of those who have walled them in. Sometimes it seems you are talking about refugees staying in Gaza City; sometimes it seems you are talking about refugees choosing to stay in the Strip itself. I get confused.

The bolded is our primary point of disagreement. Were there no Gazan history of Israeli dispossession, massacre occupation, and containment, Hamas would neither exist nor want to destroy Israel.  You want to treat the disease without examining the cause. Hamas said "genocide" so that's all anyone should consider. But you did allow a bit of history in a previous post when you invited to readers to empathize with Israelis suffering an occasional crude rocket, rather than with the people they've penned in Gaza whom they actually bomb with smart munitions--people with nowhere to run.

So it's clear you are claiming that history should not matter. But you haven't offered any clear argument as to WHY it shouldn't.
"But one party said 'genocide'" doesn't seem to be a clear standard for dismissing the conflict's history, all the more so given the actual balance of forces.

Second point, this dismissal of history is also a dismissal of everything one needs to know to find a solution which ends the conflict. A sovereign Palestinian state might go a long ways towards that, but it will be much harder now that so many 10s of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Again.  

Third point, in a previous post you said

"What I am condemning, is the belief people have, to think that just because they call a place home and decide to live under tyranny, knowing that by doing so they are going to become human shields for their tyrants, which allows them to further carry out their tyranny, that they then get to decide how a military responds to attempted genocide."

Shouldn't International Humanitarian Law should determine "how a military responds to attempted genocide"? Any military.
I have been surprised at how the "But-they-use-human-shields" argument has come to the fore in discussions about this conflict, to justify disproportional military responses and collective punishment. Like "what else can you do when the people you've imprisoned for two generations on territory you control finally hit back hard?"  I suspect there is something else you can do.