I was listening to one of the people that got to the front lines on Oct 7th (Noam Tivon got to Nahal Oz, one of the Kibbutzim that were attacked) tell a story about how the Hamas attackers forced a child at gunpoint to go around knocking on doors where families were hiding to make them come out and then killing them (or worse). Once they were done with that child they killed him.

The perpetrators don't get immunity by embedding with civilians. Some of them might even technically meet the definition of a child (<18yo).

This isn't just about punishment or retribution. This is also about preventing them from killing more people in the future.

Yes. When I see photos of dead children I am very moved but this fantasy that somehow this can become a "fight man to man" is not how this world works. I hope the number of dead can be minimized (children or otherwise). The ultimate responsibility for all this in this conflict is on Hamas. That said we should require Israel to adhere onto certain standards.

If you think it is not about punishment or retribution you have not listened to what Israel's own leaders have said.

""I am personally proud of the ruins in Gaza. [...] every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did."

https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1760548502348701804

What the Israelis are doing now is no different from what the Romans did to quell various rebellions, what the British Empire did in their colonies, or what the Nazis did to the Warsaw ghetto after the uprising.

I speak Hebrew and I listen to a broad range of voices coming out of Israel. Do you?

If you tell me what country you're from I'll try the same trick on you, take some selective voices from your "leadership" and present them as if they're policy or the official position of your country.

Punishment or retribution is not Israel's policy here and is not what's being executed on the ground. Are there some crazy voices in Israeli politics. Yes. That proves nothing. Also many of those voices were heard in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7th that was so brutal, barbaric, and shocking, that "blood was boiling" and emotions ran high.

What you're saying here is basically blood libel. To take your analogies, it's not different than the stories about Jews drinking the blood of Christian children. It's an antisemitic lie in the form you present it. That people have the audacity to draw comparisons between what the Nazis did to the Jews and what's going on in Gaza is mind boggling.

How can you claim that what a minister says is not indicative of government policy? How come you are in a better position to interpret government policy than the ministers themselves?

"I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed ... we are fighting against human animals" - Israel's defense minister. "You must remember what Amalek has done to you" Israel's fucking prime minister. "It is an entire nation out there that is responsible" Israel's president.

You have 100 Israeli doctors calling for Israel to bomb a hospital: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231106-100-israel-doctor...

It is very clear that what is going on is fueled by vengeance. Israel knows it can't destroy Hamas, but it can make the civilians suffer which it thinks will act as a deterrent. "Was it worth it?" they ask and hope that future Palestinians will answer "No".

You can accuse me of blood libel all you want, but this is exactly what the Nazis did to resistance groups in the territories they occupied. And the German people cheered them on, just like the Israelis do now.

I can claim it because it is true. A minister (that is part of a coalition of many parties in Israel) is not indicative of government policy. There are some pretty whacky ministers in the Israeli government right now with some pretty weird opinions. This is not Israeli policy. Policy is determined by Cabinet and broader government votes, not by what people are saying (responding emotionally or trying to appease some political base). It's also what's executed on the ground. Israel's government is also subject to judicial oversight, the government can't just do whatever it wants. You just don't understand Israel's political system and how it works, and you're taking statements either made under extreme emotional states or by extremists and presenting them as official policy.

You're taking the Israeli defense minister quote, a snippet of it, made at the height of shock, as factual policy, when you know this is not true on the ground, e.g. Israel is letting food and fuel in and has not laid a complete siege on Gaza since Oct 7th. It also supplies Gaza with water. I'll concede that in the immediate shock after the barbaric Oct 7th attack there were some very strong statements made but actual policy has been within the laws of war. Gallant was also mostly referring to what Israel supplies Gaza but Israel has no direct control over the Gaza-Egypt border. His referral of "fighting human animals" was referring to Hamas's Oct 7th rape, mutilation, murder, torture, etc. Maybe not the best choice of words.

I am going to maintain that this is a blood libel.

I do think I'm in a better position to interpret government policy because I actually listen to the broader voices and understand how the system works. You're obviously not exposed to the broad public discourse in Israel but rather to highly filtered/cherry-picked views.

"Israel is doing all it can to get civilians out of harm's way as it battles Hamas in Gaza, including dropping leaflets warning them to flee, but its attempts to minimize casualties were "not successful", Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.": https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-not-success...

"A senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military is undertaking a “maximum effort” to minimize civilian casualties amid its military campaign in Gaza.": https://thehill.com/policy/international/4269020-netanyahu-a...

"“We don’t seek to govern Gaza, we don’t seek to occupy it. But we seek to give it and us a better future … and that requires defeating Hamas,” he said. “I’ve set goals, I didn’t set a timetable because it can take more time.”: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/netanyahu-says-not...

"The PMO said that when Netanyahu used the biblical quotation “Remember what Amalek did to you,” he was using it as a way of describing the savage Hamas attack of October 7, and certainly not as a call for wanton killings.

The PMO pointed out that the same phrase appears in a permanent exhibit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, as well at a memorial in The Hague itself for Dutch Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

“Obviously neither reference is an incitement to genocide of the German people,” the PMO said." https://www.timesofisrael.com/pms-office-says-its-prepostero...

"President ‘disgusted’ by judges using ‘partial, fragmented quotes’ in genocide ruling, ignoring accompanying remarks that Israel follows international law, doesn’t target civilians" https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-blood-libel-herzog-says-icj-...

The IDF spokesperson has said hundreds of times in his daily briefings that the war is not against Palestinians, it's against Hamas: "“I’ve seen, personally, many types of targets that we have. The resolution of the intelligence, as in whose house it is, which Hamas commander uses the facility or what the offices in a certain building are used by Hamas for,” Conricus said. “I can tell you that the intelligence is solid and it is focused and that we are striking targets that are directly related to Hamas and not targets that don’t have anything to do with them.” https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4250823-tapper-presses-id...

""I want to be clear from the beginning, there is not a single drop of cynicism about Palestinian civilian casualties. We do not want and we are not trying to achieve any casualties. Our fight is against the evil terrorist organization Hamas. It is them that we are targeting, not the civilian population. But unfortunately, because Hamas hides behind them, unfortunately, civilians get caught in the middle," he said." https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/hamas-prefers-t...

EDIT: and again, the comparison of Israel to the Nazis is ignorant and disgusting.

Your argumentation is a form of damage control. Just like modern neo-Nazis either downplay, minimize, or try to justify atrocities committed by the Nazi regime you try to downplay, minimize or justify atrocities committed by the Israeli regime. The neo-Nazis say that the number of victims of the Holocaust is grossly overstated. You will say that there is no grounds for accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. The neo-Nazis say that ordinary Germans had no idea about the concentration camps. You will say that ordinary Jewish Israelis do not revel in Gaza's destruction. Neo-Nazis spreads the myth of the clean Wehrmacht (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht), just like you will spread the myth of the clean IDF. Neo-Nazis downplay statements from leading Nazi leaders just like you downplay statements from leading Israeli leaders. They say "Yeah, Hitler said he wanted to exterminate Jews but he didn't mean it!" and you say "Yeah, Gallant said Gaza should be starved but he didn't mean it!"

While Golan is a minister without a portfolio, she wouldn't be in her position if she was not a popular politician or if her views were not aligned with those of the rest of the government. And she certainly has power to affect government policy. Although these ministers may be "whacky" to you the very fact that they are ministers prove that they aren't wacky to most Jewish Israelis. After all, they were elected.

Children are starving to death in Gaza and your country is on trial for genocide. While you try to excuse these crimes and justify calls for genocide (Amalek). Whine about anti-Semitism all you want, in my eyes you are nothing but an Israeli neo-Nazi. You have learned nothing from history and had you been German you would have justified the Nazi crimes too.

This honestly does not deserve a reply.

Your argument is that Israelis are Nazis and therefore Israelis are Nazis. You refuse to entertain the possibility that the literal Nazis here are the Hamas and their supporters despite all the evidence and their rhetoric saying so.

Your comparison of Israel to Nazis is disgusting, ignorant and antisemitic.

You're taking natural emotional responses when your people are brutally raped, mutilated, kidnapped, slaughtered in their homes and comparing it to the deliberate calculated murder of 6 million Jews that did nothing to the Germans over years.

EDIT: You are the one who is "downplay, minimize, or try to justify atrocities committed by the Nazi regime". What does that make you by your own definition? A lot of people have died, I'm not happy about it. There's been a lot of destruction. I blame Hamas for starting the war. There are starving children, yes. These are nothing compared to the Nazis. Nothing. Israel is within its rights to wage this war, it has good reasons, it is persecuting it within the norms for similar wars. It is not committing genocide and "your country is on trial for genocide" is bullshit and you know it.

No, the argument is that Israeli Jews are acting exactly like Germans did during the Nazi era. They either don't care or they cheer on the slaughter of innocent civilians. The destruction of Gaza is more complete than the destruction of Dresden during WWI or of Warsaw after the ghetto uprising. Yet more than half of all Jewish Israelis think their army is using too little force! This and many other frightening statistics indicate that Jewish Israelis are just as genocidal as the Germans were or the Hutsi.

The difference is that Jewish Israelis have access to contrarian views. The Germans and Rwandans had no free press and no internet to access alternative opinions on. That the Jewish Israelis have, but by and large still choose fascism and murder is despicable.

> You're taking natural emotional responses

This bullshit makes you complicit. You're not in uniform, perhaps, but you are here online debate-lording your way to the last word. The Spanish government did not call for genocide after the 2004 Madrid attack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings), nor did the French government after the 2015 Paris attack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks). Neither Spain nor France took revenge on the Islamists by carpet-bombing civilians.

> Israel is within its rights to wage this war, it has good reasons, it is persecuting it within the norms for similar wars. It is not committing genocide and "your country is on trial for genocide" is bullshit and you know it.

No, I don't know it and neither does the court that decided to accept the case. No, Israel is not "persecuting it within the norms for similar wars". It currently has displaced almost all Gazans, destroyed over 50% of all buildings (that much more than Japan and Germany during WWII), and is starving children to death. If you can't see how fucking evil that is, you are a lost cause.

Sorry, this was harsh. HN does not allow you to edit comments otherwise I would.