Israel-Gaza war

[CumbrianLefty]

Israel would be cool with cash compensation. Although without a peace agreement, any cash compensation will surely go to build more bombs.

Arafat's legacy does matter in terms of where we are now, right of return really makes no sense when every town is completely different than it was in 1948. It is more productive to build permanent homes for Palestinians (West Bank has plenty of space to build assuming Israel tears down the settlements 20 miles inside and I assume any treaty would give Gazans the right to move there). I just don't think the college campus "river to the sea" rhetoric is one bit productive.

Realistically though, is giving a population of people who has high rates of antisemitism control of a highland region within ten miles of most major Israeli cities actually a good idea? Even in the event of a peace agreement being signed, the opinions of average Palestinians aren't necessarily going to change.

So what's your solution? Presumably just kill or expel them all??

Alternatively, a workable peace agreement is the best chance we have of many Palestinians outlook changing for the better - though nobody should expect miracles.

[Pericles]

At the Camp David summit, Israel offered loads of financial compensation to the Palestinians in exchange for abandoning the right-of-return demand.  Arafat rejected this.  I think Israel would be more than willing to pay pretty much any amount of money to secure peace.  What they're not willing to do is to hand over tons of money to the Palestinians as some sort of speculative operation to try and make things good enough that Palestinians will subsequently decide to accept peace.

That summit was 23 years ago, had very contradictory reports on what happened, and involves leaders long out of power.

Ultimately we have to ask ourselves-if Israel wanted to keep the West Bank permanently and keep ruling over the Palestinians while denying them the rights of Israelis, then wouldn't they do what they actually did?

Admittedly there was a political divide in the Oslo process, but Israeli society did not clearly demonstrate a desire for peace like groups in successful agreements like white South Africans did. And since then, Israel has clearly made a choice that they are fine with the status quo.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

At this point the descendants of those evicted in Nakba have as good as a claim to the land they lost in the later 1940s as the descendants of Germans kicked out of East Prussia do.
Right of return is reasonable for either both sides or none of them, but in the former case it definitely should not entail getting the exact land back.

The Germans didn't get their land back - any claim to that was dropped in 1990 - but they did get right of return to nearly all of it when Poland and Lithuania joined the EU. Not many of them bothered to exercise it.

Framing that as a right of return is interesting. It would be in line with the version of it I mentioned there than the type we see idealistically mentioned...

[pppolitics]

One thing I would like to add.

Let me present the following axioms that I would guess most anti-Israel liberals would agree with:

1) Hamas is an evil organization, and their elimination would be a great good for the world

2) What Hamas did on October 7 was so egregiously evil that it makes their destruction a matter of immediate urgency

3) The only way to destroy Hamas is via military action

4) Israel has been genocidal, or at least indiscriminate and brutal, in their treatment of the Palestinians over the course of this conflict, in a way that is completely unnecessary and avoidable

5) Israel's conduct is so abhorrent that in the great value tradeoff, it is better for them to end operations (allowing Hamas to continue to exist) than to continue operations (committing more atrocities)

#3 is wrong.

Hamas can never be destroyed militarily since it is as much an ideology as a militant group.

The only way to destroy Hamas is for the people to reject it.

Instead, Israel is driving people right into Hamas's arms.

No, Hamas is a terrorist group that was created 35 years ago during the First Intafada.  What is its ideology that can't be destroyed?  "We hate the Jews, let's use military force to kill them all"?  That's been the ideology of the Arabs in the Levant region since before the founding of Israel.  It predates Hamas by millenia.

Actually the power and popularity of that ideology has waned substantially since the days of the Camp David Accords, which shows that it can be defeated.  But an ideology alone isn't enough to kill people -- you need an organized, well-funded, well-armed, well-trained violent group with the means to act on that ideology.  Which is what Hamas is.

Take that away and you just have a bunch of dudes full of hatred but without the means to rape women, kill men, torture the elderly, and kidnap children that Hamas has.

What most Palestinians want is the same as what most people want: comfy lives and good jobs.

If people reject Hamas, then it can't hide among the population.

Once it can't hide, it can be targeted and destroyed.

For that to happen, the Palestinians have to believe that their best days have yet to come (upward mobility) and that the Israeli government is legitimate as opposed to a Zionist organization bent on stealing their lands.

If the Palestinians had an Anwar Sadat who would recognize Israel on its 1967 borders under the condition that Israel withdraw from the West Bank (at least all settlements far from the Israel/West Bank border that could not be part of a viable land swap), I think Israel would face significant pressure from the US, NATO countries AND many liberal Jews. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan could fund a Palestinian state. Of course this is easier with both Hamas and Netanyahu out of the picture.

But this is how the Palestinians get comfy lives and good jobs, not the pipe dream of 1948 borders.

There has to be compensation for Nakba.

In other words, those who were displaced and their descendants get cash payment in exchange for giving up their rights to return.

The compensation needs to be of real value, not a penny per square meter.

If they refuse, I guess there are some rural desert areas in Israel that they can be given.

Israel offered considerable compensation in 2000 and would probably up the offer in exchange for a genuine peace agreement. Arafat refused to give up the right to return at that time but talks collapsed soonafter.

Arafat doesn't matter.

The choice should be left to those who were displaced and their descendants.

What do they want? Cash compensation or right to return?

Right of return is not and never will be on the table.  Deal with it

This is the same “we don’t give a sh**t about international laws, deal with it” attitude that Zionists have.

[pppolitics]

One thing I would like to add.

Let me present the following axioms that I would guess most anti-Israel liberals would agree with:

1) Hamas is an evil organization, and their elimination would be a great good for the world

2) What Hamas did on October 7 was so egregiously evil that it makes their destruction a matter of immediate urgency

3) The only way to destroy Hamas is via military action

4) Israel has been genocidal, or at least indiscriminate and brutal, in their treatment of the Palestinians over the course of this conflict, in a way that is completely unnecessary and avoidable

5) Israel's conduct is so abhorrent that in the great value tradeoff, it is better for them to end operations (allowing Hamas to continue to exist) than to continue operations (committing more atrocities)

#3 is wrong.

Hamas can never be destroyed militarily since it is as much an ideology as a militant group.

The only way to destroy Hamas is for the people to reject it.

Instead, Israel is driving people right into Hamas's arms.

No, Hamas is a terrorist group that was created 35 years ago during the First Intafada.  What is its ideology that can't be destroyed?  "We hate the Jews, let's use military force to kill them all"?  That's been the ideology of the Arabs in the Levant region since before the founding of Israel.  It predates Hamas by millenia.

Actually the power and popularity of that ideology has waned substantially since the days of the Camp David Accords, which shows that it can be defeated.  But an ideology alone isn't enough to kill people -- you need an organized, well-funded, well-armed, well-trained violent group with the means to act on that ideology.  Which is what Hamas is.

Take that away and you just have a bunch of dudes full of hatred but without the means to rape women, kill men, torture the elderly, and kidnap children that Hamas has.

What most Palestinians want is the same as what most people want: comfy lives and good jobs.

If people reject Hamas, then it can't hide among the population.

Once it can't hide, it can be targeted and destroyed.

For that to happen, the Palestinians have to believe that their best days have yet to come (upward mobility) and that the Israeli government is legitimate as opposed to a Zionist organization bent on stealing their lands.

If the Palestinians had an Anwar Sadat who would recognize Israel on its 1967 borders under the condition that Israel withdraw from the West Bank (at least all settlements far from the Israel/West Bank border that could not be part of a viable land swap), I think Israel would face significant pressure from the US, NATO countries AND many liberal Jews. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan could fund a Palestinian state. Of course this is easier with both Hamas and Netanyahu out of the picture.

But this is how the Palestinians get comfy lives and good jobs, not the pipe dream of 1948 borders.

There has to be compensation for Nakba.

In other words, those who were displaced and their descendants get cash payment in exchange for giving up their rights to return.

The compensation needs to be of real value, not a penny per square meter.

If they refuse, I guess there are some rural desert areas in Israel that they can be given.

Israel offered considerable compensation in 2000 and would probably up the offer in exchange for a genuine peace agreement. Arafat refused to give up the right to return at that time but talks collapsed soonafter.

Arafat doesn't matter.

The choice should be left to those who were displaced and their descendants.

What do they want? Cash compensation or right to return?

Israel would be cool with cash compensation. Although without a peace agreement, any cash compensation will surely go to build more bombs.

Arafat's legacy does matter in terms of where we are now, right of return really makes no sense when every town is completely different than it was in 1948. It is more productive to build permanent homes for Palestinians (West Bank has plenty of space to build assuming Israel tears down the settlements 20 miles inside and I assume any treaty would give Gazans the right to move there). I just don't think the college campus "river to the sea" rhetoric is one bit productive.

They could be given land in the rural barely inhabited areas of Israel.

Most of them would choose cash compensation over right to return anyway.

[Reactionary Libertarian]

Israel would be cool with cash compensation. Although without a peace agreement, any cash compensation will surely go to build more bombs.

Arafat's legacy does matter in terms of where we are now, right of return really makes no sense when every town is completely different than it was in 1948. It is more productive to build permanent homes for Palestinians (West Bank has plenty of space to build assuming Israel tears down the settlements 20 miles inside and I assume any treaty would give Gazans the right to move there). I just don't think the college campus "river to the sea" rhetoric is one bit productive.

Realistically though, is giving a population of people who has high rates of antisemitism control of a highland region within ten miles of most major Israeli cities actually a good idea? Even in the event of a peace agreement being signed, the opinions of average Palestinians aren't necessarily going to change.

Any successful two-state solution will be predicated on Palestinians relinquishing all claims to land outside the 1967 borders. Israel will not agree to any deal if there is a possibility of it becoming a Gaza 2.0 situation. But there’s never going to be a unilateral withdrawal where they just give control to Palestinians, while Palestinians still want to destroy Israel.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

To Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P! - First of all, thank you for making an actual good faith substantive response. Though I will disagree with some of what you say, you are discussing in a reasoned manner with reference to facts and the like, and this is exactly how reasonable people can eventually get closer to the truth.

I hope pppolitics will take your post as an example to learn from and perhaps improve the substance of his or her arguments in the future.

Two counterpoints:

1. Palestinian deaths were around 20k several weeks ago. At this point we're approaching 40k, and that's not counting casualties that were buried under rubble, crushed by IDF bulldozers, or abducted from Israeli occupied territory, summarily executed and then tossed in an unmarked mass grave. Comparing Gaza to Fallujah at this point is a weak comparison because the battle is nowhere near finished and the bodies have yet to be counted. The Israelis haven't even seriously started in Rafah or other major towns in the south and fighting is still intense and ongoing almost everywhere else. I'd be shocked if the final Gazan civilian death toll doesn't exceed 100k at a minimum, and that's if the Isrealis agree to a total ceasefire and unrestricted access to humanitarian aid within a month. By the time the casualties reach a level you'd consider "genocidal" it will be far too late to do anything about it. Considering the atrocities already committed it's hard to imagine that the Israelis would be any more restrained against the overwhelming majority of Gazans currently living under areas of Hamas control than they'd been against the small minority they've managed to capture so far

I am sure you are correct that civilian casualties will increase the longer things go, and whatever is the true number of civilian casualties now will be higher than it is now (whether that means it is higher than the Hamas' claimed number, is another question). Regardless, there is no way to know for sure other than to wait and see.

However, this fact is precisely the reason why I discussed the amount of time that the Battles of Fallujah, Hue, Berlin, and Nanjing lasted. Other things being equal, the longer a battle lasts in an urban area, the higher casualties will be, so if you want to have some sort of objective evaluation of whether civilian casualties are higher or lower than what would be "normal" for a military operation in an urban area, you must take into account the length of time it lasted. Hypothetically, if 1% of the civilian population is killed in 1 month of fighting, you would expect that if fighting goes on another month, probably around another 1% will be killed. Of course, this is not exactly linear and there will always be some variation, but more or less that is the sort of thing you would expect.

So, for example, what if the Germans had not (mostly) mass surrendered after Hitler shot himself in the Battle of Berlin, and instead had continued to fight and the battle lasted for twice as long? If so, rather than ~6.25% of the civilian population being killed, we would probably expect around 12.5% to have been killed. Or maybe 10%. or 14%. But the point is, something higher in general rough proportion to the length of time. And of course, when civilian casualties become high enough, eventually in the extreme case civilian casualties go down because you run out of civilians - this is all inexact and not linear and depends on what exactly people do. This should all be very obvious.

The important point though, is to ask yourself the question - if the Battle for Berlin had lasted twice as long, and as a result twice as many civilians had been killed, would we say that the Soviet behavior was somehow "worse"? No, not really. Similarly, if the battle in Gaza lasts longer because Hamas decides to keep fighting rather than surrender, Israel is not really worse than if hypothetically fighting were to stop now, even though civilian casualties would be lower if it stops now.

It is also true that the fighting could stop in Gaza now if there were a ceasefire. It is also true it could mostly stop if there were a unilateral ceasefire by Israel and Israel pulled back for a while. Or technically, the fighting could have stopped if the Soviets surrendered (technically, either side can surrender).

But the same is true of the Battle of Berlin. The fighting could have stopped earlier there if there were a ceasefire. And it is also true that the fighting could stop or at least become less if the Israelis adopted a unilateral ceasefire. Or if Israel surrendered to Hamas (which would certainly be surprising, but is technically possible).

But there particular expectation that either side surrender (or even temporarily stop fighting) in a war until whenever they decide to do so for whatever reasons they decide it, and continuing fighting is not considered a war crime, even though (obviously) it leads to higher casualties (including civilian casualties) as a direct result. And certainly there is no expectation that the stronger side or the side that is attacking and/or winning surrender, if anything you would expect the side on the defensive (in this case Hamas) to surrender if anyone does.

It is true that if fighting continues, more people will die, and I think you and I both and probably pretty much everyone reading would consider that in a generic way that is "bad." Of course it is! But that is simply a statement that war is bad and that in a perfect ideal world there would be no war and all fighting would instantaneously always stop in any war. Of course.

I won't try to respond to the tweets because this is what it looks like to me and also for the reasons MacArthur mentioned. I assume they are just random anecdotes/opinions/whatever, because I clicked on some previous tweets you posted in another post and wasn't sure what the point was other than generally Israel = bad. However if that is wrong and if there is some particular point you think is substantive and want to discuss though which is related to a particular tweet or something, let me know though and I will attempt to respond.

2. Israel, unlike past genocide perpetrators like Nazi Germany, is incapable of maintaining its military capabilities alone. The extreme dependency of the IDF (and the Israeli economy more broadly) on foreign aid means that they can't just drop a bunker buster on every hospital and call it a day; they have to maintain at least a thin pretense of plausible deniability to continue their campaign. So instead they've copied the Nazi strategy used against the Slavs and other so-called "Untermensch" during Generalplan Ost: intentional deprivation of food and water plus targeting of medical facilities with the goal of promoting the spread of famine and pestilence. Generalplan Ost led to the deaths of a "mere" 15 million people, or just over 5% of the Soviet population, less than that if you consider that GPOst included non-Soviet populations like the Poles.

If what you say is/were accurate, it will be reflected in the civilian death counts. However, I don't think it is. For one thing there clearly does not appear to be mass starvation occurring in Gaza or anything of the sort. We know what that looks like, and if it were happening you would be posting lots of pictures like this - https ://negativecolors.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/image051a.jpg

I am deliberately not embedding or linking that picture, it is a picture of starving Somalian children in 1992. Readers can view or not at your discretion. But the point is, if this were happening you would be posting lots and lots of this.

Secondly regarding the Soviet civilian casualties your numbers are wrong and misleading. You say "15 million people, or just over 5% of the Soviet population." Although I am sure I could find higher (or lower) estimates, what I will bother to dispute is not the 15 million, but your claim that this is 5% of the Soviet population. The Soviet population in 1941 was ~ 196,716,000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union).

15,000,000/196,716,000 = 7.6%, which is already 50% higher than your 5% figure.

However, from here:

https://conference.iza.org/conference_files/transatlantic_2016/peter_k200.pdf

Almost 85 million people or 44.5 percent of pre‐war population of USSR lived in the territories that were occupied during WWII (Goskomstat, 2015).

It only really makes sense to calculate the death rate for the portion of the Soviet population which was actually under German occupation in the denominator, not the total population. So:

(15,000,000/196,716,000)/0.445 = ~17.1%

As a percentage of the population under occupation, going with your own 15 million figure, about ~17.1% of the civilian population died. So you are understating by at least 3x or so just how bad the German conduct in the Soviet Union was.

Also, at any one time only a portion of that 44.5% was under occupation - Germany first advanced to Moscow, then was pushed back towards Rzhev and Bryansk, and later pushed further in the south in 1942 to Stalingrad and the Caucasus than they had advanced in 1941, so if you took that into account the effective percentage would be even somewhat higher.

Also, there would have been many additional civilian deaths from starvation in non-occupied areas if not for American food lend lease, those would have been as a result of the German invasion, though not indirectly inflicted by Germany.

In addition, you could make a fairly reasonable argument to count some of the many millions of military deaths in the Red Army as being civilian or "semi-civilian"/"quasi-civilian" in the sense that many of the millions who died in the Red Army were forcibly mobilized civilians (and partisans etc which were combatants but also sort of civilians). Whereas with Hamas, as far as I am aware there is not mass mobilization of civilians into fighters per se, so pretty much everyone who is fighting for Hamas is someone who wants to be fighting.

So as far as the numbers go, you are dramatically understating the German occupation of the Soviet Union. Also there is nothing in the IDF even remotely comparable to Einsatzgruppen, Babi Yar, etc. If you think there is, you should say - specifically - what you think it is.

But putting aside the question of genocide and looking at it from a purely military perspective there's one battle that most exemplifies the IDF "strategy" here: the 1st Battle of Grozny fought on New Years Eve, 1995. The similarities are striking:

* Opening with the use of overwhelming, indiscriminate firepower against mostly civilian targets ("Shock and Awe") for minimal military benefit
* Sending tanks into deep urban combat with minimal support
* Inability of the attacking force to hold positions against guerrillas using tunnels to quickly retake "secured" positions
* Leadership more concerned with projecting an image of victory to the domestic population and politicians than actually achieving military objectives
* A final civilian casualty rate of around 6%
* A Pyrrhic nominal military victory followed by decisive strategic and political defeat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80%931995)#Casualties

From here (I know that linking to wikipedia will upset politics, but I shall do so anyway):

As of the civilian casualties, Sergei Kovalev, the Russian Duma's commissioner for human rights, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin's aide on human rights, who had been in Grozny during part of the fighting, estimated 27,000 people, many of them ethnic Russians, died in five weeks of fighting, about 6% of the population.[30][31] According to the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University:

sources estimate that a large percentage of civilian fatalities [during the First Chechen War] occurred during the invasion of Grozny between December 1994 and March 1995. From the beginning of the invasion to the middle of February, fatality estimates range from 25,000 to 30,000 civilian deaths. This range indicates that the majority of the civilian fatalities in the entire war occurred during a mere four-month window. Of the estimated 25,000 killed in the invasion of Grozny, it is estimated that 18,000 were killed by mid-January. According to General Dudayev, the first president of the Chechen Republic, 85 percent of civilians killed in the invasion (approximately 25,500) were ethnic Russians due to the fact that the Chechens were the first to evacuate the capital; this estimate is close to the figure put forward by Russian human rights campaigner Sergei Kovalyov, who estimated the number of ethnic Russian deaths at 24,000.[32]

So the same 6% figure you reference was over 5 weeks of fighting.

Now consider that the Israeli ground invasion has been going on for a bit more than 2 months (began ~Oct 27) and in addition, before then, extensive bombing was occurring.

So even if we do not count the bombing period prior to the ground invasion, "Battle of Gaza" has lasted, so far, 8/5ths as long as the 1st Battle of Grozny.

Using the Hamas estimates of 20k+ deaths and generously rounding that up to 30k, I previously calculated that this was ~1.3% of the population of Gaza.

So if the Israeli infliction of civilian casualties in Gaza were as intensive per day as the Russian infliction of civilian casualties in Grozny, we would expect there to currently be about 230k civilian casualties in Gaza, right now, today. This is just assuming that civilian casualties are roughly proportional to how long a battle lasts, and will go up in rough proportion if it lasts longer (and again, not counting the time spent bombing prior to ground invasion in Gaza even though civilian casualties were already being inflicted then).

0.06*2400000*8/5 = 230,400

So I do not think this supports your argument. Going strictly by the Hamas ~20k figure, and doing this all with simple math, Russia in Grozny was about ~10x worse than what Israel is doing in Gaza (in so far as civilian deaths are a measurement of how "bad" a battle/war is). If anything, it much more supports the notion that Grozny was quite different from what is happening in Gaza now.

Of course, as you say it is possible that the 20k figure of current civilian casualties from Hamas may be an underestimate. If so, we can re-evaluate later. But the point is it will need to be a LOT higher. Not just a little, but a LOT... like 10x as much... to be comparable to 1st Grozny.

Did they, though? The official Israeli Oct 7 death count is ~400 "legitimate military targets" (IDF, police, etc) and ~700 civilians. When you consider that

* Israeli military positions are located in civilian kibbutzim
* One of the first locations where Hamas forces made contact with Israelis was at a rave with thousands of civilians present and few to no soldiers (reports vary)
* Armed but non-uniformed reservists attacked Al-Qassam fighters, often from civilian homes and civilian vehicles
* Israeli forces have been documented on video engaging in combat while using civilian vehicles with civilians still inside as cover
* Many of the casualties ascribed to Hamas, including one of the literal posterchildren of "Hamas brutality", have since been revealed to have actually died from the IDF indiscriminately firing into cars and houses with Hellfire Missiles and tank shells

it doesn't seem like Hamas was just shooting anything that moved. There were certainly atrocities and acts of terror but if the primary goal was to kill as many Israelis as possible then the civilian death toll would have been in the thousands instead of the hundreds. Plus if they had prioritized civilian targets instead of military bases then IDF casualties would be fewer too.

OK, fair enough point. I have not tried to research the details and I do not know for 100% sure all the details of what happened and how exactly Hamas acted beyond what I saw from the real time news coverage. I am not going to spend time trying to research it further now to determine to what extent "shoot anything that moves" is an accurate description (clearly it is not 100% accurate, because if it were, there would be no hostages).

My general impression though is that Hamas was trying their best to kill or capture anyone they could manage to, but that is just a general impression. But it is possible there could be things I don't know from the real time news reports and perhaps there were cases where Hamas willingly refrained from killing civilians or something despite having the ability to do so. Maybe in a year or 2 or 5 when it is well documented history I will read a book on it, and can re-evaluate then.



Last point - I do agree with you that there is a lot to criticize in Israeli rhetoric from various different people and groups. There are a substantial number of Israelis who would frankly probably like to nuke Gaza, and have said so. Of course, the same is true of substantial parts of the US population (and even politicians etc) wanting to nuke the middle east after 9/11. I agree that it is well and good to be critical of that.

However, I would consider that separately from the actual conduct of the IDF. Simply because some (or quite a substantial number) Israelis do support genocide or ethnic cleansing does not mean that the IDF is actually committing genocide or ethnic cleansing any more than the fact that many Americans after 9/11 at least rhetorically supported nuking Mecca mean that the US military actually did nuke Mecca.

[Silent Hunter]

Framing that as a right of return is interesting. It would be in line with the version of it I mentioned there than the type we see idealistically mentioned...

They can freely cross the border any time they like. On Usedom, they can walk across it.

[patzer]

Israel would be cool with cash compensation. Although without a peace agreement, any cash compensation will surely go to build more bombs.

Arafat's legacy does matter in terms of where we are now, right of return really makes no sense when every town is completely different than it was in 1948. It is more productive to build permanent homes for Palestinians (West Bank has plenty of space to build assuming Israel tears down the settlements 20 miles inside and I assume any treaty would give Gazans the right to move there). I just don't think the college campus "river to the sea" rhetoric is one bit productive.

Realistically though, is giving a population of people who has high rates of antisemitism control of a highland region within ten miles of most major Israeli cities actually a good idea? Even in the event of a peace agreement being signed, the opinions of average Palestinians aren't necessarily going to change.

Any successful two-state solution will be predicated on Palestinians relinquishing all claims to land outside the 1967 borders. Israel will not agree to any deal if there is a possibility of it becoming a Gaza 2.0 situation. But there’s never going to be a unilateral withdrawal where they just give control to Palestinians, while Palestinians still want to destroy Israel.

Okay, so there's a peace deal with a Palestinian governing political party who's quite politically astute and agrees to a two state solution under the 1967 ceasefire line and drops territorial claims... and as a fully independent state they re-arm... and sooner or later there's some discontent with their government and a more radical one is elected and they decide to revive the old territorial claim and attack Israel. And Israel is defenseless thanks to most of their population being within a few miles of the highland area full of Palestinian military presence.

Why would any Israelis accept this? They will be well aware that is a likely course of events.

So what's your solution? Presumably just kill or expel them all??

Alternatively, a workable peace agreement is the best chance we have of many Palestinians outlook changing for the better - though nobody should expect miracles.

Casually raising genocide as an option is odd.

No, the least bad option is probably full incorporation of the West Bank into Israel with all of the Palestinian population there who want to be Israeli citizens getting it, and having the same rights as the rest of the Arab citizens of Israel. Arbitrary partitions on ethnic lines never tend to work well. Perhaps also involving autonomous regions similar to Srpska in Bosnia, though that might not work well given the current tensions between Srpska and the Bosnian government.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

To Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P! - First of all, thank you for making an actual good faith substantive response. Though I will disagree with some of what you say, you are discussing in a reasoned manner with reference to facts and the like, and this is exactly how reasonable people can eventually get closer to the truth.

I hope pppolitics will take your post as an example to learn from and perhaps improve the substance of his or her arguments in the future.

Likewise. Go easy on pppolitics, his heart is in the right place and these are trying times. It takes enough effort for me to keep a level head about this stuff

I am sure you are correct that civilian casualties will increase the longer things go, and whatever is the true number of civilian casualties now will be higher than it is now (whether that means it is higher than the Hamas' claimed number, is another question). Regardless, there is no way to know for sure other than to wait and see.

However, this fact is precisely the reason why I discussed the amount of time that the Battles of Fallujah, Hue, Berlin, and Nanjing lasted. Other things being equal, the longer a battle lasts in an urban area, the higher casualties will be, so if you want to have some sort of objective evaluation of whether civilian casualties are higher or lower than what would be "normal" for a military operation in an urban area, you must take into account the length of time it lasted. Hypothetically, if 1% of the civilian population is killed in 1 month of fighting, you would expect that if fighting goes on another month, probably around another 1% will be killed. Of course, this is not exactly linear and there will always be some variation, but more or less that is the sort of thing you would expect.

My overall point was that we can't make a definitive comparison of casualties until the battle is over, and the battle isn't over. The numbers from the Gazan Health Ministry (what you call "Hamas' numbers") are almost certainly undercounting because they've historically used the hospitals to keep track and the Israelis have consciously made things extremely difficult for the hospitals with targeted strikes, the abduction of key personnel, the assassination of journalists and their families, double tap attacks on ambulances, etc. The death count could be over 100k and we'd have no way of knowing until well after the battle was finished.

So, for example, what if the Germans had not (mostly) mass surrendered after Hitler shot himself in the Battle of Berlin, and instead had continued to fight and the battle lasted for twice as long? If so, rather than ~6.25% of the civilian population being killed, we would probably expect around 12.5% to have been killed. Or maybe 10%. or 14%. But the point is, something higher in general rough proportion to the length of time. And of course, when civilian casualties become high enough, eventually in the extreme case civilian casualties go down because you run out of civilians - this is all inexact and not linear and depends on what exactly people do. This should all be very obvious.

The important point though, is to ask yourself the question - if the Battle for Berlin had lasted twice as long, and as a result twice as many civilians had been killed, would we say that the Soviet behavior was somehow "worse"? No, not really. Similarly, if the battle in Gaza lasts longer because Hamas decides to keep fighting rather than surrender, Israel is not really worse than if hypothetically fighting were to stop now, even though civilian casualties would be lower if it stops now...

So the same 6% figure you reference was over 5 weeks of fighting.

Now consider that the Israeli ground invasion has been going on for a bit more than 2 months (began ~Oct 27) and in addition, before then, extensive bombing was occurring.

So even if we do not count the bombing period prior to the ground invasion, "Battle of Gaza" has lasted, so far, 8/5ths as long as the 1st Battle of Grozny.

A few key differences:

1. The Russian army intentionally moved as quickly as possible in both Grozny and Berlin, whereas the Israelis have intentionally moved slowly both to reduce their own casualties and to allow their "hunger plan" to kick in. Intentionaly stretching out the length of a campaign in a way that consciously increases the proportion of civilian casualties reflects on the attackers rather than the defenders. For example, the Nigerian government consciously blockaded and starved the Biafran population to death in numbers that wouldn't have been possible through regular combat. The Nigerian army didn't use this strategy because it was somehow more humanitarian but because they were militarily incapable of decisively triumphing over the Biafrans in direct combat. If anything the use of starvation as a weapon of war to drag things out is worse than moving quickly, not better. The Siege of Leningrad is another example where your prioritization of time over the total number of casualties would falsely portray the Germans as more merciful than they were, particularly if you only counted the first few months when starvation had only begun to set in.

2. It isn't a battle, it's a campaign. The Gaza Strip isn't one big city, it's several towns and cities separated by farmland and the fight for each of these towns and cities is separate. Unfortunately we don't know how many casualties there are in each individual area but it would be more representative to look at the figures for the places that are actually currently engaged in combat (eg. Gaza City, Beit Hanoun) rather than counting the whole strip as a single battle when large parts have yet to be engaged.

If what you say is/were accurate, it will be reflected in the civilian death counts. However, I don't think it is. For one thing there clearly does not appear to be mass starvation occurring in Gaza or anything of the sort. We know what that looks like, and if it were happening you would be posting lots of pictures like this - https ://negativecolors.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/image051a.jpg

I am deliberately not embedding or linking that picture, it is a picture of starving Somalian children in 1992. Readers can view or not at your discretion. But the point is, if this were happening you would be posting lots and lots of this.

https://twitter.com/GregCasar/status/1738321676499063077

So actually, international observers rate the current level of "acute food insecurity" in Gaza higher than any previously recorded famine, including Somalia. And this isn't some unintended consequence of the fighting, starving out the Gazans and spreading disease is the consciously stated goal of Israeli leadership

https://twitter.com/RedKlutz/status/1726452866498609164

Secondly regarding the Soviet civilian casualties your numbers are wrong and misleading. You say "15 million people, or just over 5% of the Soviet population." Although I am sure I could find higher (or lower) estimates, what I will bother to dispute is not the 15 million, but your claim that this is 5% of the Soviet population. The Soviet population in 1941 was ~ 196,716,000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union).

15,000,000/196,716,000 = 7.6%, which is already 50% higher than your 5% figure.

However, from here:

https://conference.iza.org/conference_files/transatlantic_2016/peter_k200.pdf

Almost 85 million people or 44.5 percent of pre‐war population of USSR lived in the territories that were occupied during WWII (Goskomstat, 2015).

It only really makes sense to calculate the death rate for the portion of the Soviet population which was actually under German occupation in the denominator, not the total population. So:

(15,000,000/196,716,000)/0.445 = ~17.1%


As a percentage of the population under occupation, going with your own 15 million figure, about ~17.1% of the civilian population died. So you are understating by at least 3x or so just how bad the German conduct in the Soviet Union was.

I will grant that my rough estimation should have been "5-10%", not "just over 5%". Though the 15 million included ~4 million Polish Jews who I wouldn't necessarily count for various reasons (not Soviets, not victims of the "Hunger Plan" but direct extermination)

Otherwise, part of my point is that most of the Gazan population also isn't under Israeli ground occupation either, they've largely evacuated to sections still under Hamas control. The apples to apples comparison is to look at the entire population, not just the part that was occupied. Unless you have numbers that only look at the casualty rate for Palestinians under Israeli control, which to my knowledge don't actually exist at this point.

But I'll keep that 17% as reference for later. Also

In addition, you could make a fairly reasonable argument to count some of the many millions of military deaths in the Red Army as being civilian or "semi-civilian"/"quasi-civilian" in the sense that many of the millions who died in the Red Army were forcibly mobilized civilians (and partisans etc which were combatants but also sort of civilians). Whereas with Hamas, as far as I am aware there is not mass mobilization of civilians into fighters per se, so pretty much everyone who is fighting for Hamas is someone who wants to be fighting.

I would say that POWs intentionally starved to death count but combat fatalities don't. But even if we count every Soviet death in WW2 regardless of cause the percentage would only be as high as ~15% (again, I'll get back to this).

So as far as the numbers go, you are dramatically understating the German occupation of the Soviet Union. Also there is nothing in the IDF even remotely comparable to Einsatzgruppen, Babi Yar, etc. If you think there is, you should say - specifically - what you think it is.

There are no specific Einsatzgruppen units but judging by their execution of 3 naked, white flag waving, Hebrew speaking hostages (plus testimony from ex-IDF whistleblowers) they're basically shooting anything that moves in "hot combat zones" regardless of whether they're civilians or if they're surrendering. That may have been the standard at Stalingrad but it's well out of the ROE of basically any modern army, even the Russian army. There have also been multiple reports from international agencies of the summary execution of prisoners and civilians in occupied areas though obviously the IDF isn't letting anyone in to verify. There's also plenty of testimony that they've intentionally starved and tortured prisoners before forcing them on death marches, a classic method of death by attrition used against Soviet prisoners.

Anyway, if I could be as specific as possible with the "apples to apples" comparison I'd ideally exclude

* Deaths by death camp (while this may be a Genocide it certainly isn't a Holocaust)
* Deaths of soldiers in combat
* Deaths of non-Soviet citizens
* Deaths caused directly by Soviet authorities (GULAG prisoners, NKVD victims, etc)

while including

* Deaths by starvation and deprivation, including POWs and sieges like Leningrad
* Deaths by indiscriminate "anti-partisan operations"

and putting a question mark over "deaths by Einsatzgruppen/mass execution", we'll see how many atrocities are uncovered in the coming months and years.

Obviously there are other categories I'm missing and I don't have the time to break it down so I'll have to settle for the less precise measures already given.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994%E2%80%931995)#Casualties

From here (I know that linking to wikipedia will upset politics, but I shall do so anyway):

As of the civilian casualties, Sergei Kovalev, the Russian Duma's commissioner for human rights, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin's aide on human rights, who had been in Grozny during part of the fighting, estimated 27,000 people, many of them ethnic Russians, died in five weeks of fighting, about 6% of the population.[30][31] According to the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University:

sources estimate that a large percentage of civilian fatalities [during the First Chechen War] occurred during the invasion of Grozny between December 1994 and March 1995. From the beginning of the invasion to the middle of February, fatality estimates range from 25,000 to 30,000 civilian deaths. This range indicates that the majority of the civilian fatalities in the entire war occurred during a mere four-month window. Of the estimated 25,000 killed in the invasion of Grozny, it is estimated that 18,000 were killed by mid-January. According to General Dudayev, the first president of the Chechen Republic, 85 percent of civilians killed in the invasion (approximately 25,500) were ethnic Russians due to the fact that the Chechens were the first to evacuate the capital; this estimate is close to the figure put forward by Russian human rights campaigner Sergei Kovalyov, who estimated the number of ethnic Russian deaths at 24,000.[32]

So the same 6% figure you reference was over 5 weeks of fighting.

Now consider that the Israeli ground invasion has been going on for a bit more than 2 months (began ~Oct 27) and in addition, before then, extensive bombing was occurring.

So even if we do not count the bombing period prior to the ground invasion, "Battle of Gaza" has lasted, so far, 8/5ths as long as the 1st Battle of Grozny.

Using the Hamas estimates of 20k+ deaths and generously rounding that up to 30k, I previously calculated that this was ~1.3% of the population of Gaza.

Right, this is Grozny but slower. Naturally, since the Russian Army was much larger than the IDF and the Chechens had far fewer fighters and preparations than Hamas. I disagree that killing more people at a slower pace (at least initially) is somehow more moral than killing the same number quickly. Particularly when you're intentionally using starvation and disease as a weapon, one aspect that distinguishes this campaign from Grozny.

Another thing: the rate of deaths is not going to be uniform because

* the rate will increase as the IDF pushes further into the strip and a greater proportion of the civilian population falls into combat zones
* the proportion of deaths reported by the Gazan Health Ministry will fall as hospitals become battlegrounds or inoperative
* deaths by starvation always start slow and then rise rapidly. At Leningrad many people died after the end of the siege thanks to malnutrition

Going back to the previously referenced point on starvation, an estimated 380,000 Gazans are currently facing IPC Stage 5 Catastrophic food insecurity ie. they're starving to death. If the Israeli campaign continues at the current pace for months without any ceasefire or "humanitarian pause" to allow sufficient food to enter then it's safe to say that all of these people (if not more) will ultimately die of starvation. That would constitute around 16.5% of the Gazan population, which would put the death toll above the "total Soviet death" proportion of ~15% and just under the "occupied Soviet death proportion" of 17%. So it really isn't such a crazy comparison for the higher end of casualties by the end of the conflict even if it's inherently imperfect. At the low end Grozny's 6% would translate to around 120,000 deaths, a number I'd expect to be close to the final tally if the Israelis give up and agree to a ceasefire within the next month.

So there's my range of likely fatalities, we'll only know whose estimate is correct once the fighting is long finished and international observers have had a chance to go through the area.

OK, fair enough point. I have not tried to research the details and I do not know for 100% sure all the details of what happened and how exactly Hamas acted beyond what I saw from the real time news coverage. I am not going to spend time trying to research it further now to determine to what extent "shoot anything that moves" is an accurate description (clearly it is not 100% accurate, because if it were, there would be no hostages).

My general impression though is that Hamas was trying their best to kill or capture anyone they could manage to, but that is just a general impression. But it is possible there could be things I don't know from the real time news reports and perhaps there were cases where Hamas willingly refrained from killing civilians or something despite having the ability to do so. Maybe in a year or 2 or 5 when it is well documented history I will read a book on it, and can re-evaluate then.

Agreed. We'll only know for sure long after the fact.

Last point - I do agree with you that there is a lot to criticize in Israeli rhetoric from various different people and groups. There are a substantial number of Israelis who would frankly probably like to nuke Gaza, and have said so. Of course, the same is true of substantial parts of the US population (and even politicians etc) wanting to nuke the middle east after 9/11. I agree that it is well and good to be critical of that.

However, I would consider that separately from the actual conduct of the IDF. Simply because some (or quite a substantial number) Israelis do support genocide or ethnic cleansing does not mean that the IDF is actually committing genocide or ethnic cleansing any more than the fact that many Americans after 9/11 at least rhetorically supported nuking Mecca mean that the US military actually did nuke Mecca.

Sure, but there's a gigantic difference between random Israelis and the very top levels of military and political leadership up to and including the top generals, the President and the Prime Minister. It's one thing if Random Texan or even Random Texan Congressman talks about nuking Mecca, it's entirely different if the President or members of the Joint Chiefs talk that way. Even worse would be if that wasn't just "empty threats" and the President and Joint Chiefs talked about starving Iraq to death to punish the civilian population and then proceed to do exactly that. The real factor distinguishing genocide from mass slaughter is intent and the Israeli leadership have used more genocidal rhetoric demonstrating intent than all but the most blatant genocidaires of the past century.

[Meclazine for Israel]

The less you write, the more people read.

[American2020]

I've a question: will it be possible for the UN to revoke the UN Resolution 181 in the goal to cancel the state of Israel ?

Some twittos suggest it. They consider Israel as too evil to exist.

Anything can be said on social media, emotionally. But I doubt it can brin some viable solutions.

[Horus]

The less you write, the more people read.

Every single contribution MBD (or for that matter Impartial Spectator) makes in this thread is independently superior to your entire posting history.

[Horus]

https://twitter.com/samah_fadil/status/1740879555626246171?t=5Ej8IhbPbPR1qxQxuYI...

Israel is an incredibly racist society, despite the PR. Polls have shown over 50% of Israelis think Black Jews are a negative for their country.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

"neutralized".

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

I've a question: will it be possible for the UN to revoke the UN Resolution 181 in the goal to cancel the state of Israel ?

Some twittos suggest it. They consider Israel as too evil to exist.

Anything can be said on social media, emotionally. But I doubt it can brin some viable solutions.

Like many other things, it's theoretically possible, but wildly unrealistic. This would be a security council resolution, so it would require the US, UK, and France to all be led by either far-right or far-left leadership.

And the next step after that would likely be either nothing or nuclear war, rather than an orderly dissolution of Israel. The UN has few enforcement powers.

[Horus]

"neutralized".

I don't care for the source either, doesn't make the complaints of the family less valid, nor does it change my point

[AtorBoltox]

https://twitter.com/samah_fadil/status/1740879555626246171?t=5Ej8IhbPbPR1qxQxuYI...

Israel is an incredibly racist society, despite the PR. Polls have shown over 50% of Israelis think Black Jews are a negative for their country.

I wonder if this soldier's family believe in 'from the river to the sea'

[Horus]

I've a question: will it be possible for the UN to revoke the UN Resolution 181 in the goal to cancel the state of Israel ?

Some twittos suggest it. They consider Israel as too evil to exist.

Anything can be said on social media, emotionally. But I doubt it can brin some viable solutions.

Like many other things, it's theoretically possible, but wildly unrealistic. This would be a security council resolution, so it would require the US, UK, and France to all be led by either far-right or far-left leadership.

And the next step after that would likely be either nothing or nuclear war, rather than an orderly dissolution of Israel. The UN has few enforcement powers.

Far right Le Pen is likely to be running France soon and she's very pro Israel as well as pro Russia.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

https://twitter.com/samah_fadil/status/1740879555626246171?t=5Ej8IhbPbPR1qxQxuYI...

Israel is an incredibly racist society, despite the PR. Polls have shown over 50% of Israelis think Black Jews are a negative for their country.

I wonder if this soldier's family believe in 'from the river to the sea'

I don't know if this source can be trusted in any way, but most black soldiers in the IDF are black Jews and would be likely to be fiercely patriotic.

[AtorBoltox]

https://twitter.com/samah_fadil/status/1740879555626246171?t=5Ej8IhbPbPR1qxQxuYI...

Israel is an incredibly racist society, despite the PR. Polls have shown over 50% of Israelis think Black Jews are a negative for their country.

I wonder if this soldier's family believe in 'from the river to the sea'

I don't know if this source can be trusted in any way, but most black soldiers in the IDF are black Jews and would be likely to be fiercely patriotic.

I know, I was just drawing attention to how Horus doesn't actually care about this family or black Israeli's and is just using them as another cynical cudgel to try convince us the dismantling of Israel is just

[Horus]

https://twitter.com/samah_fadil/status/1740879555626246171?t=5Ej8IhbPbPR1qxQxuYI...

Israel is an incredibly racist society, despite the PR. Polls have shown over 50% of Israelis think Black Jews are a negative for their country.

I wonder if this soldier's family believe in 'from the river to the sea'

I don't know if this source can be trusted in any way, but most black soldiers in the IDF are black Jews and would be likely to be fiercely patriotic.

I know, I was just drawing attention to how Horus doesn't actually care about this family or black Israeli's and is just using them as another cynical cudgel to try convince us the dismantling of Israel is just

I support the existence of Israel within 1967 borders. All settlers need to either go back over the line or lose citizenship.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Even if Israel isn't committing "genocide", surely you are against the 50+ years of occupation/colonization of the West Bank? Because ignoring that is ignoring the elephant in the room.

The Palestinian Arabs are on Jewish land, land given to the Jews by God, Himself.  Jews were in "Palestine" long before Arabs were.  If you want to play the "indigenous peoples" card here, you lost.  This is beyond question.  

If you want to talk about virtue, the Palestinian Arabs have a long history of desiring to drive the Jews out of Israel, regardless of its borders.  During WWII, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the leader of Palestinian Muslims, collaborated with Hitler, himself, to ensure that no Jews entered "Palestine".  The "Palestinians" have opposed the existence of a Jewish state, regardless of the borders drawnl  The Grand Mufti fled to France, and then to Cairo to avoid prosecution for War Crimes.  They have taken up arms against Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973.  Not a single Palestinian, whether they be from Hamas or Fatah, from Arafat to Abbas,

At no time has any Palestinian political entity acknowledged the right of Israel to exist, regardless of whatever borders are drawn.  This is undeniable.  You, yourself, have never stated (to my knowledge) what borders an independent Israel IS entitled to.  If you can't specify the borders you believe Israel is entitled to, there is no reason to believe that you are a part of the "From the River to the Sea" crowd.  

Israel has every right to defend itself from foreign entities that wish to destroy it and launch rocket attacks and terrorist actions against Israel within its borders.  The elephant in the room is the refusal of all of its political entities to affirm Israel's right to exist under ANY proposed borders.  If you can show me where any Palestinian political entity of substance acknowledges Israel's mere right to exist withing some set of borders, please edify me.

[pppolitics]

Even if Israel isn't committing "genocide", surely you are against the 50+ years of occupation/colonization of the West Bank? Because ignoring that is ignoring the elephant in the room.

The Palestinian Arabs are on Jewish land, land given to the Jews by God, Himself.  Jews were in "Palestine" long before Arabs were.  If you want to play the "indigenous peoples" card here, you lost.  This is beyond question.  

If you want to talk about virtue, the Palestinian Arabs have a long history of desiring to drive the Jews out of Israel, regardless of its borders.  During WWII, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the leader of Palestinian Muslims, collaborated with Hitler, himself, to ensure that no Jews entered "Palestine".  The "Palestinians" have opposed the existence of a Jewish state, regardless of the borders drawnl  The Grand Mufti fled to France, and then to Cairo to avoid prosecution for War Crimes.  They have taken up arms against Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973.  Not a single Palestinian, whether they be from Hamas or Fatah, from Arafat to Abbas,

At no time has any Palestinian political entity acknowledged the right of Israel to exist, regardless of whatever borders are drawn.  This is undeniable.  You, yourself, have never stated (to my knowledge) what borders an independent Israel IS entitled to.  If you can't specify the borders you believe Israel is entitled to, there is no reason to believe that you are a part of the "From the River to the Sea" crowd.  

Israel has every right to defend itself from foreign entities that wish to destroy it and launch rocket attacks and terrorist actions against Israel within its borders.  The elephant in the room is the refusal of all of its political entities to affirm Israel's right to exist under ANY proposed borders.  If you can show me where any Palestinian political entity of substance acknowledges Israel's mere right to exist withing some set of borders, please edify me.

How do you know that an invisible man in the sky gave the land to the Jews?

[Comrade Funk]

Even if Israel isn't committing "genocide", surely you are against the 50+ years of occupation/colonization of the West Bank? Because ignoring that is ignoring the elephant in the room.

The Palestinian Arabs are on Jewish land, land given to the Jews by God, Himself.  Jews were in "Palestine" long before Arabs were.  If you want to play the "indigenous peoples" card here, you lost.  This is beyond question. 

If you want to talk about virtue, the Palestinian Arabs have a long history of desiring to drive the Jews out of Israel, regardless of its borders.  During WWII, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the leader of Palestinian Muslims, collaborated with Hitler, himself, to ensure that no Jews entered "Palestine".  The "Palestinians" have opposed the existence of a Jewish state, regardless of the borders drawnl  The Grand Mufti fled to France, and then to Cairo to avoid prosecution for War Crimes.  They have taken up arms against Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973.  Not a single Palestinian, whether they be from Hamas or Fatah, from Arafat to Abbas,

At no time has any Palestinian political entity acknowledged the right of Israel to exist, regardless of whatever borders are drawn.  This is undeniable.  You, yourself, have never stated (to my knowledge) what borders an independent Israel IS entitled to.  If you can't specify the borders you believe Israel is entitled to, there is no reason to believe that you are a part of the "From the River to the Sea" crowd. 

Israel has every right to defend itself from foreign entities that wish to destroy it and launch rocket attacks and terrorist actions against Israel within its borders.  The elephant in the room is the refusal of all of its political entities to affirm Israel's right to exist under ANY proposed borders.  If you can show me where any Palestinian political entity of substance acknowledges Israel's mere right to exist withing some set of borders, please edify me.

I just can't with this guy. Someone else do it. What evil, racist vile. The evangelical fetishization of Jews makes Gretchen Weiner's kiss assery of Regina George look normal. It's creepy as hell.