Palestinian officials are accusing Israeli forces of carrying out “execution-style” killings in Gaza after the discovery of a mass grave containing at least 30 decomposing bodies. Some of the victims were blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs with zip ties. The bodies were found on the grounds of a school in Beit Lahia. Al Jazeera spoke to one man who helped discover the bodies.
Palestinian man: “Inside the schoolyard, we were shocked to find the dead bodies. Those are Palestinian civilians, blindfolded and handcuffed at the back. The dead bodies were kept inside black plastic bags.”
The discovery of the mass grave comes as the death toll in Gaza has topped 27,000. At least another 66,000 have been injured. The group Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is now estimating that more than 25,000 Palestinian children have lost one or both parents in Gaza over the past four months.
I don’t deny that a genocide was attempted on 10/7. I also believe that Israel has the right to ensure it’s security, especially if the Palestinian public refuses to do so themselves. You might say “But Palestinians have no responsibility to do so” and you’d be wrong. 80 years of terrorism against the Israeli people means that Palestinians have a responsibility to stop the violence.
Until they do, Israel must take actions to defend itself. If you have suggestions for how this should be done, I’m all ears.
Are Palestinians entitled to defend themselves?
Are Jews?
Of course, but this isn’t that. This is about stealing more land and ethnically cleansing it to make way for settlers. You aren’t doing self defense on stolen land.
No, the war started on Oct. 7th. The war is in response to terrorism on the part of Hamas.
You’re just pulling a DARVO here.
You can’t just pick a date and ignore decades of history before that because it doesn’t support your case. The latest one could argue this conflict started was 1948, but Zionist terrorists had been operating in Palestine for decades at that point.
So jews returning to their homeland is itself what justifies oct. 7?
Yeah, that’s pure antisemitism.
It’s not that Jews immigrated to their “homeland”, it’s that they are ethnically cleansing the people who have called that land home for thousands of years. Palestine could have been a modern pluralistic nation that included Jews, but instead zionists chose genocide to try and make a country for only Jewish people. That’s why this conflict is where it is today, Palestinians want some of their land back that was stolen in living memory (as opposed to 2000 years ago), but Israel really wants beachside condos and there are people they consider sub-human in their way.
Are you suggesting that the genocide didn’t start with the Oct. 7 war but has been going on the whole time as part of the return process?
Yeah, dude, that’s just antisemitism.
Is this defending themselves?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks
Yeah, that’s a list of Palestinians attacking invaders/colonizers in Palestine. Palestinians defending themselves in Palestine is unambiguously self defense. The tactics aren’t preferable, but I’m in no position to tell any person suffering under a brutal occupation that their fight for self determination is in some way invalid.
Cool, you say that Israel is colonizers and Palestine is defending themselves.
I’ll say that Gazans are terrorists and Israel is ensuring it’s security. Israelis defending themselves after an invasion of their country is unambiguously self-defense. Their tactics aren’t preferable, but I’m in no position to tell someone who is under attack how to defend themselves.
Unfortunately none of this solves problems for actual civilians in the conflict.
Here’s the problem… For the past several decades or so, Israel has blockaded Gaza and the West Bank from getting any kind of support from the outside.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
They don’t have the material or the personnel to do ANYTHING about the violence being enacted against the Israelis and that’s BY THE DESIGN of the Israelis.
So what do you expect the Palestinians to do? Israeli policies have been crushing them for decades, they don’t have the capacity to throw out Hamas because Israel actively prevents them from having the capacity. Sooo? Obtain weapons illegally? Now in the eyes of Israel they ARE Hamas and they get attacked too.
It gets even worse, because it means they don’t have great access to information either.
There was a video soon after Oct 7 that showed Palestinians celebrating in the streets. They hadn’t been told about the civilian deaths or kidnappings though, only that a prison had been liberated. And that context wasn’t shown alongside their celebrations when Israelis saw it.
The suppression of information has led to misunderstandings that perpetuate the hate and the war. Just as Netanyahu wants, I suspect.
Except Gaza shares a border with Egypt that Israel was not controlling before the Oct. 7 war and I’m not sure if they are controlling it now.
Israel is preventing Palestinians from overthrowing Hamas? Why would that be true and what evidence of that claim do you have?
You can’t defend people and strip them of all agency at the same time.
Israel blocks all materials that the Palestinians would need to throw out Hamas and they have been doing that for decades.
So, again, what do you expect the Palestinians to do?
So to the best of your knowledge, there has not been a single uprising attempt against Hamas, and the Jews in Israel are to blame?
Wow.
No, again, Israel has COMPLETELY blockaded Gaza.
The Palestinians don’t have anything with which to even attempt to throw out Hamas.
So what would you have them do? What do you think Israel’s reaction would be if they tried to smuggle weapons in through the blockade?
Again, this is all Israel’s design. They could lift the blockade today. They could normalize relations with the Palestinians today. They won’t, because what they really want is to choke them out and steal their land. They won’t be satisfied with less.
https://newrepublic.com/post/178243/benjamin-netanyahu-literally-says-from-the-river-to-the-sea
“According to other translations, Netanyahu said that Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River,””
So your argument is essentially that the Jews are to blame for terrorist actions against them and the terrorists themselves should not be held accountable because the Jews won’t allow it…
I’m not sure if you personally are an antisemite but the people telling you this nonsense clearly are and I think you should start considering how these arguments come across to people who aren’t antisemites.
No, I’m saying Israel is to blame for the Palestinians inability to do anything about Hamas.
If you want Hamas gone, stop treating Palestinians like terrorists.
I’m not the one treating Palestinians like terrorists, you are. You are the one claiming they support terrorism against Israel because Israel forced them into it.
That’s nonsense and you don’t believe that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaza
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks
Israel fully withdrew from Gaza and displaced Israelis that had been living in Gaza since the 1940s because of two decades of terror bombings of busses in Israel.
I vehemently oppose the use of violence to achieve political goals in all forms.
I would suggest educating yourself on this conflict and the historical reasons for the state of the conflict today.
Nobody cares what happened in the 1940s, we’re talking about the abuses heaped on Gaza within living memory.
Unfortunate to not care about Israeli civilians being displaced, how am I supposed to care about Palestinians being displaced then?
When the Israeli civilians are engaging in UN declared illegal occupations, it’s hard to have sympathy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law_and_Israeli_settlements#:~:text=Since the occupation of the,validity and pose a serious
Pretty sure it’s illegal to slaughter thousands of civilians on 10/7. Hard to have sympathy.
Oh, it absolutely is, I’m not justifying murdering people.
Kicking people out of settlements they are occupying illegally because they have a delusional belief that God gave it to them? No sympathy there.
Completely agree. Very unfortunate that so many Israelis were forcibly displaced during the disengagement from Gaza in 2005. Thank you for considering their plight.
You got your sides mixed up, it’s been 80 years of terrorism, subjugation, blockades, land grabs, against the Palestinian people, and the Palestinians have a right to ensure their security. Have you considered why Israel needs to ‘defend itself’? Why do you think Palestinian people have been fighting for 80 years?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks
TL:DR: Israel isn’t defending itself by committing a genocide against a population they’ve subjugated.
There are a series of issues with this…
Genocide isn’t an act of defence - it’s an attempt to completely exterminate a group of people, and is the greatest act of aggression a group could possibly commit.
The response we’re seeing is in no way proportionate, and causing a completely unacceptable level of civilian casualties (10k+ children alone in response to 1,200 total killed according to Israeli counts).
Israel have killed more Palestinians than the total number of Hamas members in existence with zero indication of progress, and no sign of stopping.
Israel have maintained Palestine in conditions described by the UN as an open air concentration camp, and have placed severe apartheid restrictions on Palestinians for years.
Israel have killed orders of magnitude more Palestinians than Hamas have killed Israelis.
Israel funded the rise of Hamas (who were no less violent then) over the secular moderates - as confirmed by both IDF leadership at the time she Arafat. I see no reason for them to do this other than to manufacture pretext for the genocide while maintaining US support.
Palestinians seem to have a lot more to “defend themselves” against - between the numbers killed and displaced and the very restrictive living conditions they’re subjected to.
Israeli leadership have said pretty plainly and repeatedly that they intend to exterminate Palestinians - if all Palestinians were to lay down arms and submit to the apartheid conditions, movement restrictions, and conditions we’ve seen over the past decade, the well funded nuclear power with modern military simply won’t stop.
What makes Israel’s actions self-defence while Hamas’s lesser actions are not?
No legitimate person is accusing Israel of extermination. My impression is most of you are accusing Israel of “cultural genocide” and not actual extermination. Am I wrong on that?
A disproprortionate response in war is not in the definition of genocide. Is your argument that Israel is committing war crimes or that they are specifically doing genocide, and are you aware that there is a legal difference?
How do you define progress when fighting a terrorist cell? Are you using the same rubric that the IDF is or are you defining progress differently? This point feels like it weakens your argument.
I would need to see the direct quote you reference. And seeing that Israel left Gaza in 2005, apartheid is a dishonest word to use in reference here. West Bank, sure, but I believe the argument made is that Israelis are genociding Gaza’s, not those currently in.the West Bank. If the rhetoric has changed, please inform me.
Point 5 is just point 2 repeated. Please reference that.
Hamas began as a human rights charity. Can you establish that Israel paid Hamas to attack Israel or is that conjecture? Are you also claiming that it’s the Israeli’s who support Hamas and not the Palestinian people? If so, doesn’t it make sense for the Palestinians to turn over the Israeli sleeper agents who govern them to the international courts as evidence of genocide? As we can see, this point, if what you are trying to make, is easily disproven by the fact that the Palestinians are not bringing down Hamas themselves.
Having a lot to work against doesn’t make you the victim of genocide. This point brings nothing to your argumentt.
Please provide the direct quotations, not reporting of the quotations. This point you might be correct on, but the ones I have seen were grossly mistranslated and the correct translations were clearly in reference to Hamas fighters, not all Palestinians.
I didn’t write this to attack, but because I think your post deserved a response instead of possibly getting lost.
I disagree with point 2, or maybe it needs to be clarified?
A disproportionate response is a war crime (not genocide) but deaths each side isn’t the measure of proportionality - neither is strength, tech, economic strength.
Proportionality is using only as much force as necessary to eliminate the threat and minimize civilian casualties. I haven’t seen the intel reports of the attacks on civilian structures that hamas are using, but proportional response does need to be called into question.
I think everybody is willing to have a conversation on the imbalance of power and whether Israel can show more restraint.
The people screaming genocide aren’t allowing us to have that conversation unless it is on their terms.
I would call this genocide:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks
I’m sure you’d call Hamas’s actions a genocide, but based on what definition or metric?
No differences between Israel and the Nazis?
No difference between Israel’s self-defence and Hamas’s attacks?
Godwin’s law states that you have lost the argument/credibility.
Your inability to point to a meaningful distinction between those you’re supporting and literal Nazis or provide a consistent definition of genocide (because you can’t manufacture one that describes Hamas without admitting Israel is committing one) says far more than Godwin’s law ever will.
Your inability to form any argument besides a comparison to Nazis says far more about your reasons for advocating for genocide of Israelis.
Still waiting on that definition of genocide or a meaningful distinction from the Nazis.
Meanwhile, I don’t need to make an argument - I’ll just let the Israeli leadership do that for me…
Prime Minister Netanyahu
and
and
“Defence” minister Galant
Kallner…
Atbaryan…
Halevi…