But beheaded babies and babies in ovens portrays a different level of atrocities being committed. This kind of fictional atrocity dissemination is very similar to the approach used during the Gulf War[1].

More importantly, the point is that Western media outlets - who have always proclaimed to be arbiters of truth, objectivity & journalistic integrity - neither did the absolute basic fact checking required before publishing such information, nor apologized later for doing so once the dust settled.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

I'm not going to disagree with you about the media sucking, but for what it's worth, I think every side thinks that. I am pro-Israel and have the same feelings about other stories that were rushed, not vetted, wrong, and never apologized for.

Just one thing: you mentioned the "girls" (in fact soldiers) with "bloody pants" in your previous comment. It's quite a stretch to go from bloody pants to "victim of rape".

Indeed, this picture came out much later:

https://www.instagram.com/israelmfa/p/C7Q1v38tKql/

Shows what appears to be the famous "bloody pants" soldier sitting on the floor close to other presumably injured soldiers after some sort of combat. Isn't that the most obvious way of getting "bloody pants"? Why the leap from those to unfounded rape accusations?

What do you think the Israeli response to Oct 7 should have been?

Feel free to share your objections to what I wrote.

Unfortunately, it is hard to discern legitimate interest vs. someone wanting to engage in a debate for the sake of it. And I am not interested in wasting my time figuring out which is the case.

I did not say or imply that I have objections to what you wrote.

Your comment strongly implied that you think that Israel overreacted to Oct 7. So I am curious what you think their response should have been.

> Unfortunately, it is hard to discern legitimate interest vs. someone wanting to engage in a debate for the sake of it. And I am not interested in wasting my time figuring out which is the case.

Is curiosity "legitimate interest"?

I would expect any response to (among other things):

a) adhere to international law (which we now know is a complete farce thanks UNSC veto)

b) not involve ethnic cleansing/forced displacement of Palestinians for a 3rd time in the last 75 years - the only reason it didn’t work this time is because the Egyptians strongly pushed back

c) not involve the deliberate targeting of civilians, the mass punishment of a civilian population, and the denial of access to aid to a civilian population (under occupation no less)

d) not result in the highest proportion of children fatalities and injuries of any modern war - and not involve redefining or rewriting the meaning of the word “child” to give themselves some wiggle room

e) not involve the deliberate targeting of journalists, academics, aid workers, and hospital staff - even if the Israelis claim to have “proof” of them being Hamas members (imagine immediately defunding a UN organization because the Israelis claim a few dozen employees were Hamas members)

f) adhere to Israel’s responsibilities under IHL as an occupying force

Fighting a war against guerillas in an urban context is challenging. Mass & targeted bombing of a densely populated occupied territory containing an enemy with no air force and no air defenses is not only genocidal, but also outright cowardly behavior.

Israel has not overreacted to Oct 7, they have just applied the same policy that they have used for many decades "at least ten of theirs for each one of ours".

This policy is an effective deterrent against enemies, but it should be obvious that with such a policy it will never be possible to end any conflict unless absolutely all enemies and all their relatives or friends are killed.

There have been times when the relations between the parties in this conflict had improved a lot and there was some hope for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Nevertheless on both sides, but especially in Israel, there are people who benefit a lot from the existence of the conflict, so any opponents have been removed by any means possible, including assassination, until the mutual relationships have become as bad as today, when no hope for any kind of peace remains.

Most people in Israel are quite nice, but they are deeply scared by the thought that that at any time someone coming from the neighbors of Israel could come and cut their throats, so they work continuously very hard at their jobs, believing that they must provide thus their individual contributions so that Israel will maintain its military and economic dominance over their enemies, in order to ensure their safety. The workers of Israel have worked all the time since WWII pretty much as hard as those of USA during its short participation to WWII.

Workers from other countries would be very unlikely to work willingly so hard as those of Israel. This is very profitable for the upper class of Israel, for whom an end of the conflict would have caused serious losses, when the workers could not have been motivated any more by patriotic slogans.

>This policy is an effective deterrent against enemies, but

Why do you consider this an effective strategy, when the same strategy has been used for decades yet the violence keeps getting worse?

> Israel has not overreacted to Oct 7, they have just applied the same policy that they have used for many decades "at least ten of theirs for each one of ours".

The interesting thing is that Hamas seems to share Israel's view that Israelis are more valuable than Palestinians. Whenever there is a prisoner exchange Hamas tends to demand an order of magnitude or more Palestinians be released for each Israeli released.

For example in 2011 Hamas got over 1000 in exchange for a single Israeli.

Or could it also have something to do with Israel having an order of magnitude more Palestinian prisoners (thousands of whom have yet to be charged for years) than Hamas has Israeli soldiers ? If Hamas has 10 Israeli hostages and while Israel holds 10,000, does asking for thousands in return mean you value your people less? Or is that just common sense? And I don't even know what the point of bringing this up is.

>Your comment strongly implied that you think that Israel overreacted to Oct 7. So I am curious what you think their response should have been.

How about a reaction that wouldn't lead the ICC issuing arrest warrants for the government officials leading the response for crimes against humanity ?

I'm not sure what people act so daft, pretending the Israeli response of the last year was just a totally normal and standard military operation and not a clinical live streamed genocide.

I think they could start with not destroying hospitals and schools and doing better than “at least 1/3 of the 40k people killed were militants.” Israel , the most moral army in the world /s, thinks that two citizens killed for every militant killed is an acceptable ratio, it’s not.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-m...

What's the acceptable ratio? I'm not claiming this reality isn't horrific I'm just not seeing many examples of wars fought better. Did the U.S do it better in Vietnam or Iraq? The U.S wasn't even fighting for its survival, it was fighting to "defeat communism" or to keep oil prices low because of the invasion of Kuweit or 9-11 etc etc. None of these reasons were as strong as what happened to Israel.

Vietnam and Iraq are two nation states and had populations between 25-30m at the time US waged war in those countries. Gaza is a narrow strip of 139 square miles of land with 2mn people packed together like sardines, who have no sovereignty, have been under an economic blockade since 2007, and whose rulers Hamas have no conventional military to speak of. These two are not comparable, I don't know why people keep pointing to the destruction of Nazi Germany and Japan as the benchmark of whats acceptable in Gaza, its quite insane tbh.

Why does the land area matter? Israel is also a tiny and crowded country and is threatened from all fronts. What was the threat against the U.S again , was Vietnam about to invade? was Iraq?

Hamas had enough weapons to kill 1200 Israelis in one day so it's not some helpless entity. It was armed to its teeth. It's only after almost 800 additional dead Israeli soldiers and a very bloody war that Hamas lost most of its power.

>Why does the land area matter?

Really, you don't understand why the total land area occupied by a population you are waging war against matters?

>Hamas had enough weapons to kill 1200 Israelis in one day so it's not some helpless entity. It was armed to its teeth.

I don't even think you believe this nonsense.

If you are trying to claim AK-47s and paragliders is 'armed to the teeth', you need to tell your commander at the Unit 8200 troll farm that he needs to give you better hasbara material.

>It's only after almost 800 additional dead Israeli soldiers and a very bloody war that Hamas lost most of its power.

Oh yes, it was such a tough and bloody fight! All those F-35 sorties pressing buttons to unleash 2000lb pounds on civilian targets, so bloody!

> you need to tell your commander at Unit 8200 troll farm that he needs too give you better hasbara material.

Not gonna engage you any further you seem deranged

What is deranged, is you trying pretend Israel is waging a war against a peer foe by grossly exaggerating the threat of Hamas.

Your government created Hamas. Literally. [1] They were considered an 'asset' right up until Hamas decided they wanted to be more than being Netanyahu's good little prisoners whose only purpose was to serve as a spoiler for genuine Palestinian aspirations.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eus-borrell-says-israel...

I think many people also forget the second intifada suicide bombings, and numerous rocket barrages over the proceeding decades after, to which Hamas was a major belligerent. Despite the more primitive designs of these rockets, without modern defense systems there would likely be more Israeli civilian deaths. I see this context missing from a lot of the discussions of the current iteration of this conflict. Israeli civilians have faced decades of risk (which I think also benefits the right wing of Israeli politics), and this is not a new conflict. October 7th comes on the heels of many other direct and indirect attacks on Israeli civilians. I cant help but think that the current military response might fall under a “never let a crisis go to waste” strategy by Netanyahu’s coalition, which had recently been receiving less support.