Good to know they uphold this text by not publicly murdering and raping random civilians in their homes and proudly sharing the video.

The IDF also says it's not genociding. Military groups are known for their trustworthiness

Easy propaganda is easy. The national socialists were socialists in that they wanted socialists to vote for them. Easy to say something that isn't true, just as easy to not enforce a difference between zionists and Jews.

The current government? Absolutely.

Got it, killing thousands of brown muslim babies wasn't enough to awaken your empathy. But killing three young Jews and two Christians is where you drew your moral line.

Also interesting that the church being 'affiliated with Rome' was somehow a factor in this excellent judgement of your's. Should we assume that you were fine as long as the ones killed are Christians affiliated what say, the Armenian Orthodox church? Better late than never I guess...

God damnit I wanted to say it

I have acquired a new word.

Eh, it isn't on the same level as erasing an entire bloodline on a genocidal crusade, but yes. Does that make it okay? Did the US not get shit for that and continue to get shit for that? During this whole war on Gaza, I've seen the history of America being used as a tell-tale example of how not to do this or any war ever in the future... And it doesn't make Israel look any more "stellar", especially not when it hides behind others' atrocities to dilute its own in the eyes of the world. No different than Putin who makes similar remarks on a regular basis.

It’s a complex answer to why I’d personally hold a drone operator in 2001ish to a similar but higher standard than a guard at their post, versus the IAF today. The former are working with semi limited/limited information: this uniform = enemy but there’s a dark shape in an alley, there’s the front line of contact but why is that person digging by the roadside, drone rolled up from its 32hr autonomous flight plan and now there’s live intel feed - all limited information. In those scenarios genuine, honest mistakes are possible but always avoidable. That’s the “fog” part of the ‘fog of war’ - making life or death decisions quickly with limited knowledge.

All that doesn’t apply to the IAF right now… The fog is clear now; the ISR and SIGINT capabilities of Israel are very strong, drones and satellites are all over Gaza, the bombing targets are clearly identified along with the “collateral” civilian deaths it will cause:

In the early days of the offensive, the head of its air force spoke of relentless, “around the clock” airstrikes… but he added: “We are not being surgical.”

Describing the unit’s targeting process, an official said: “The operatives of Hamas are not immune – no matter where they hide.”

Multiple sources told the Guardian and +972/Local Call that when a strike was authorised on the private homes of individuals identified as Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives, target researchers knew in advance the number of civilians expected to be killed. Each target, they said, had a file containing a collateral damage score that stipulated how many civilians were likely to be killed in a strike.

That’s no longer an “ooops, well we tried hard to limit civilian deaths” if you’re callous about the human cost to achieve your political/military goals. But as long as they’re not your people I guess?

Not accidental, coincidental. They had lists of targets and next to each the level of acceptable collateral damage. Afghanistan showed very clearly where that kind of "ah fuck it" attitude leads: Somehow the German-occupied regions were much, much calmer than the US ones. Now you'll hear Americans say "yeah of course we took the hard tasks and left you the rest" but the thing is: Americans made it hard for themselves. Taliban actually once wrote an apology letter to the Bundeswehr, saying "sorry for attacking your convoy, some idiots of ours confused you for Americans".

"They get more freedoms and a better quality of life than anywhere else in the middle east. In the written law at the very least, they have equal rights."

This is a hell of a statement to make.

For an interesting point of view, I recommend a book called "The Hundred Years War on Palestine." It starts in 1917 and discusses the origins of the state before 1948. It then continues until 2017. I'd honestly like to hear your thoughts if you read it.

https://blackwells.co.uk/...

Maybe USA is an apartheid state too?

Ya nailed it. See, the thing is here, both of you are citizens of nations where you don't have a lot of actual personal choice in what your government does to "represent" you, despite both ostensibly being "representative government."

They're both apartheid states. I live in one, I didn't choose to. You live in one, you didn't choose to.

However, in the case of the US, we don't keep them all in one single, open-air prison with a giant fence between us and them, and bomb the living shit out of all of them if one of them does something fucked up. Usually, we prosecute that individual.

I'm not saying the US is better, it's not. Just look at Guantanamo Bay.

But I am saying the situation with Israel and Palestine is way more fucked up, based on the close proximity, how long this has been going on, and things like Netanyahu probably funding Hamas. Netanyahu is just like US conservatives, he's willing to fund his enemies just so he can keep using them as scapegoats. Netanyahu has been a fucking piece of shit for over twenty fucking years in Israeli politics, and just like the US, we seem to be unable or unwilling to deal with criminal fucking scumbags like him.

there were no "No Irish Allowed" signs during The Troubles either. This conflict, as with all other competing ethnic quarrels, is complex. But it isn't any more complex than those conflicts. In fact, I'd say that the ongoing conflict in Malaysia is more complex than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Also to address the whataboutism, yes, I'd argue that the US is an apartheid state against the natives. Palestinians are living in a genocidal apartheid state. The treatment of Palestinians by the settlers in the West Bank are a clear sign of this. What recourse do the Palestinians have when an Israeli squats on their house while running out for groceries?

USA is a fascist state and always has been, that does not justify what Israeli settlers and the IDF are doing currently

I’m not religious in the slightest and I barely see myself as part of the Jewish nation - but I do, just barely. It is unfortunately true that anti-semitism is alive and well, and will be for the foreseeable future. Even if I don’t view myself as Jewish, some anti-semites will, and we all know where that could lead. So Israel is the only country in the world where we can know for a fact that the government (police) will protect us from anti-semitism, not to mention won’t take part in it.

Which is the chicken-and-egg problem of ethno/theostates, isn't it? If most/all of a group are isolated to one geographical location, and largely absent from the rest of the world, it becomes easier for hate to spread in that rest of the world, because nobody there has lived experience, can have that moment of "but I know Elsa/Ahmed/Luna/whoever, and they're decent person" to challenge propaganda when they hear it (and anyone who's a minority where they live has at least one story of being the cause of such a realisation). But if you're a group that lives in those little geographical pockets, it becomes that much harder to move out, because you give up your support network and move into an area of potentially hostile people.

And of course, bigots know about this and weaponise it. Speaking as a trans person and noticing the current wave of vile legislation against us in the shit parts of the US, it sure as hell feels like the objective there is to force anyone who can leave to do so, and punish those who can't, specifically to prevent a sufficient mass of trans people building up that those same deradicalising experiences can happen (hence why the use of a stereotypical trans name in above example). But in a way it's both better and worse for us, because we aren't just born into certain bloodlines or cultures, we emerge almost everywhere, so and have to fight to make the whole world queer-friendly, rather than just being able to set up somewhere in a small pocket and let the whole world slowly become most hostile to us in response.

Forgive me for going on the offensive, but since you're American... How exactly is your govenment making up for the atrocities committed to the native Americans? A very quick search says it's not all sunshine and roses either... Maybe USA is an apartheid state too?

The US was founded on a genocide that didn't fully stop until the late 20th century. That much is true. We're not an apartheid state because we don't have a population of Native Americans who aren't allowed to leave their designated areas. We do have areas called "Indian Reservations" where Native Americans have limited sovereignty (somewhat comparable to that of a US state), but the people who live there are free to leave and many of them do.

We might very well be an apartheid state if the native population hadn't been genocided to the point that nobody sees them as a threat, so I'm not claiming any kind of historical moral superiority. And the US government still treats Native American groups badly in a lot of ways, but they're at least not treated badly enough to inspire them to form terrorist groups, and it's not because Native American cultures are inherently pacifistic—native attacks on white settlers were quite common in the 1700s and 1800s.

The lesson I take from it is that even people with the worst historical grievances are willing to set them aside if they're given the same opportunities as everyone else.

It's the fediverse, and you're confusing fascism and chauvinism.

Take a look at the effects of colonisation. In 1788 the British First Fleet established a colony in Sydney, land of the Eora Nation, which is now functionally extinct. The following 245 years have led to the near-destruction of the some 200 nations and language groups across the Australian continent. Many are extinct, and genocides (particularly the "Black War" in Tasmania), intermarriage, forbidding indigenous language communication, and disease wiped out most of the rest of the cultural and linguistic heritage of Australia, dating back (in the northern parts east of Darwin at least) up to 65,000 years.

Do the Wiradjuri deserve a state? It would occupy much of NSW and Victoria, if Australia ceded their traditional boundaries. Yet their continuous culture spans far longer than the Jews or Arab Muslims. So I think the answer to your question depends on the circumstances a people have been subjected to, and whether there are enough of them left, with enough resources, to fight the status quo. Ultimately, might makes right, and after the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany a mere 80-odd years ago, there were enough European Jews who had fled the genocides, and enough of a nation/diaspora to band together and influence the world after the dust settled. The same cannot be said for the Indigenous Tasmanians, unfortunately, whose culture was annihilated to the point that their languages only exist on early recordings by anthropologists.

Are the fascists running Israel an ethnic group? No, they're a bunch of war criminals who should be hanged for their actions so Israel can have some hope of transforming into a decent country whose people acknowledge its crimes.

"Hamas vs Israel" is a category error. It's Hamas vs Likud or Palestine vs Israel. Nobody should support Hamas or Likud. Nobody should even tolerate them. They're both terrorist groups whose goal is genocide.

"Race" for humans is a made up concept and "racism" has been used to refer to any kind of hating a group for their ethnicity. "Ethnicity" is a very ambiguously defined concept notably including shared attributes like nationality, language, history, religion, etc.

I, too, am not a fan of words being used incorrectly, but this is not an incorrect use of "racism".

People are killing each other over land and historical grievances, not whether to call God Allah or Yahweh.

Biologically speaking, there is only one human race. So, does that make the word "racism" invalid? It's a stupid term whose origin makes no sense, but I'd argue its meaning had transcended its original linguistic root. Same for anti-"semitism".

They're not being subjected to genocide

I hear both (non-settler) Jews and Christians live in Gaza, that wouldn't be possible if Hamas was all about Jew hating...

Thanks for the recommendation, definitively going to check that out.

Links in case others are looking for it as well:

WW2 Week by Week

War Against Humanity

Is that like The Great War or something?

Yes exactly, but that starts with info collection, cellular there goal, and OSINT

Isreal has a database of all the people living in Gaza as well as their places of residency. Most (if not all) of the prominent Palestinian journalists have been killed in their homes, along with their families, in strikes using smart munitions during the first few days of the "war". It's giving Isreal too much credit to say they weren't specifically targeted.

I think it's an interesting callback to show that the same tactics were being used by all parties 5 years ago. So much so that people often don't even notice it isn't current. Media references from 5 years ago are likely to have Twitter content because of its place in the zeitgeist at the time.