The article accuses Israel of potentially committing war crimes in its conflict with Hamas, focusing on a siege on Gaza, airstrikes harming civilians, and evacuation orders. It criticizes the U.S. for not condemning Israel’s actions and emphasizes the need for diplomatic solutions. The piece argues that Israel’s approach could backfire politically and suggests that there’s no military solution to the conflict. It calls for the U.S. to exercise influence to deter such actions, asserting it’s in the interests of both the U.S. and Israel to prevent further civilian casualties and maintain regional stability.
This whole situation feels like what Putin dreamed would have happened with Ukraine. A very public and brutal attack on civilians responded to with a disproportionate level of military force with the end result being the land of the initial aggressor belonging to the perceived victim.
Putin had to invent an excuse, but he would have loved a reason such as this. Combined with Israel possessing one of the foremost intelligence agencies in the world and Egypt warning of an impending attack; this feels like, if not planned, a welcome event for the current Israeli administration.
This is such a bizarre conspiracy theory. Netanyahu will be remembered as being asleep at the wheel for the worst attack on Israel in its history – and the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. His political career, built almost solely on his ability to protect Israelis from exactly this kind of attack, is almost certainly over. His ability to obstruct his corruption trial is too. That’s extreme risk, no reward and really makes no sense at all.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Netanyahu openly admitted to enabling Hamas in order to delegitimize other Palestinian groups. It’s not even a conspiracy theory it’s just a fact.
Though vile, encouraging strong extremists relative to moderates to divide Palestinians and discredit the idea of Palestinian government is not remotely the same thing as conspiring to murder thousands of your own citizens for political gain.
(Also, he didn’t openly admit it. There’s an unconfirmed report that he said that during a 2019 meeting. Others close to Netanyahu have said that was basically the policy whether he said it or not.)
I don’t know, I really think it’s a mix. A relatively small attack would have had a similar rallying effect without commensurate vitriol towards the ruling party. It may have been that Netanyahu believed, or chose to believe, that the impending attack would not be nearly so large or vicious as it ended up - another metaphorical bottle rocket barrage that he could use to distract from his other authoritarian undertakings.
But I do agree that any conspiracy that asserts that the current Israeli government was looking for hundreds of Israeli deaths is deluded. Clearly, they did not see or chose not to see the scale of the coming attack.
But in this world, Netanyahu would have to trust Hamas to stage a small attack so much that he’d have the military stand down and give them free reign for like 16 hours. Absurd. Not to mention they were already getting small attacks from Gaza and regular violence in the West Bank from the crisis they created that has spiralled out of control. Again, extreme risk for no reward. And the most certain outcome would be gaining nothing and losing his power, legacy, and freedom when caught (if he wasn’t executed for treason).
In people’s imaginations massive conspiracies are easy to pull off. In the real world, conspiracies that would necessarily involve dozens to hundreds of people (and multiple branches of government) don’t stay secret for long – especially when they’re catastrophically fucked up. It takes just one chatty Kathy, one drunk brag, one guilty conscience, one failed attempt at blackmail, one low-level conspirator who wants a book deal to topple the house of cards. Humans are nearly as bad at conspiring as they are at assessing risk.
Funny how Ukraine is being supported for the reason of “fighting occupation” that is Russia and russia bad.
At the same time, Palestine is being given collective punishment because they are terrorists for fighting for their human rights and water and food and medicine and their own homeland.
I don’t know (wo)man, somehow I can’t image bunch of Ukrainians gliding into Moscow’s music festival and youths facilities with aim of killing as many as possible as brutally as possible.
I would compare Hamas rather to Chechen back when Russia invaded them. And Russia killed their own people in at least two occasions when mass taken as hostages in that time.
I don’t recall Ukraine targeting civilians, even though it’s clear they could cause horrific civilian casualties in Russia if they wanted to.
Israel has a lot of Palestinians prisoners who were civilians and many are children. In order to get prisoners, you need prisoners to exchange. Britney Griner wasn’t brought back from Russia using money or resources but another prisoner. Palestinians have no int’l negotiating power.
So we live in a world that has made rules that criminalize Palestinians right to defend themselves. Some take desperate action, after 50+ years of violence and apartheid, and you’re judging the reaction and not the the thing being reacted to?
I don’t understand logic like this. It leads to awful communities where violent people are propped up at the expense of their victims. No one responds well to apartheid and illegal annexation.
I thought Russia was the initial aggressor against Ukraine. Where’s the retaliatory angle in that conflict? Did Ukraine kidnap people from a music festival like Hamas?
Russia absolutely is the initial aggressor in the Ukraine conflict, but emphatically insists they are responding to a threat from the Ukraine in their propaganda.
Who cares what Russia claims? Everyone knows their grievances are entirely fictional. It’s not even a plausible fiction.
Do you think this attack on the music festival is the first thing that’s ever happened between Israel and Palestine? Surely you’re not that stupid.
Israel is an occupying force and they’re forcibly removing Palestinian civilians from their family homes. They are the aggressors. They are “Russia” in this analogy.
Israeli president Isaac Herzog, while allowing that Gazan civilians weren’t legitimate military targets, nevertheless suggested that they bear responsibility for Hamas’s actions, saying, “They could have risen up, they could have fought against the evil regime”
Hamas has also said the same thing about Israelis, saying that they elected war criminals and hence every Israeli has some amount of guilt. Do Israelis not hear themselves? They’re only validating the terrorists with this rhetoric.
It’s interesting what happens when the rhetoric used is applied to both sides.
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Why don’t the citizens of Israel stand up against their governments war crimes?
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If the citizens of Israel didn’t all want to be complicit in their government’s war crimes, why haven’t they risen up to outlaw mandatory military service?
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Why don’t the citizens of Israel do anything about the settlers committing terrorist acts in plains clothes, and instead just let them blend with the rest of the population?
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Why do the citizens of Israel not stand against their military protecting, supporting, legitimizing the terrorist acts of the settlers?
The list goes on…
America is Israel’s bitch.
This isn’t an endorsement for Trump or Republicans who aren’t much better, and rather I wanted to add this since I don’t think the other comment was focussed on the important bit.
1986:
Joe Biden says that Israel is the best 3 billion dollar investment the United States makes, and that if there were not an Israel, the US would have to invent a one to protect US interests in the region.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FYLNCcLfIkM
Don’t endorse the channel, don’t know anything about the channel, I googled for the C-SPAN clip
And a more modern example with a legitimate source:
And I — I’ve often said, Mr. President, if there were — if there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=FYLNCcLfIkM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Biden, and any US president, is pro-military industrial complex. Anything that lets them sell more weapons and increase US hegemony is what their ideology is.
Why would you single out Biden, when people in our Congress can’t even say, out loud, anything critical of Israel (no matter how valid) without facing a real risk of losing their entire political career?
You’d only single him out if you had an agenda. Surely you don’t have an agenda, right?
No agenda, no. Biden himself says HE IS A ZIONIST. Many Americans are proud Zionist, many of whom are gov. representatives.
I mean… when has the US ever backed off from committing war crimes?
Wasn’t there an article yesterday that the US asked for restrained actions even against the hamas?
Essentially, Biden is very much a ‘consensus’ leader. In other words, he tends not to make strong deviations from policy unless there is very broad support for them. Supporting Ukraine was pre-existing US policy and popular at the time of the 2022 invasion - so Biden intensifying it wasn’t out of character for him.
Opposing Israel, on the other hand, would be contrary to established US policy and something that is not widely supported in the US. So Biden is very unlikely to do anything substantial to restrain Israel, regardless of how horrific the situation gets.
They asked. That’s not really much. Israel still has a carte blanche from the international community to commit warcrimes.
I mean they’re committing warcrimes right this moment and instead of stopping them everyone is giving them weapons.
https://www.reuters.com/world/white-house-israels-call-move-gaza-civilians-is-tall-order-2023-10-13/
“These Palestinian people, they’re victims, too. They didn’t ask for this. They didn’t invite Hamas in and say, you know, ‘Go hit Israel.’” – Kirby
