You can't kill 2.1 million people by bombing them.

That's why Israel has systematically taken out every hospital in Gaza: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdd25d9vp2qo

Has blocked and sabotaged aid at every turn, including bombing UN food trucks: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1158746

And when allied countries got too uneasy about them just blocking all aid trucks at the border, they set up their own aid organization to trickle out nominal amounts of food while they take pot shots at people desperate enough to show up: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74ne108e4vo

They didn't just make this up as they go, presumably the plans have been sitting around for a long time waiting for a suitable moment.

I think that's a very unsensible comment.

1. You definitely can kill 2.1 million people by bombing them. It's actually way easier than doing it with a gun. 2. If you decide to do it with a gun, and you end up killing tens when tens of thousands are gathering for food, you're aiming terribly. 3. There is enough proof of Hamas using hospital facilities as headquarters. 4. Instead of getting food into Gaza (paid partly by Israel) only to get people to gather and then shoot tens of them every day, Israel could have just not let food in.

In other words, none of this makes sense. There's a war. Yes, Israel is committing terrible crimes. No, it's not because they aim to kill everyone, it's because they really stopped caring about killing civilians. It's horrific and is illegal.

There is actually one party in this conflict that has deliberately said it's aiming to kill civilians, and that's Hamas. I have no idea about your personal opinion, but I suspect that many of the people who are shouting "genocide!" would have been very quiet if the Jews were the ones being slaughtered, and I have absolutely no doubt that if only Hamas had the power, it would have committed way more serious crimes than the IDF ever committed.

> You definitely can kill 2.1 million people by bombing them. It's actually way easier than doing it with a gun

Only if you have enough bombs, which they need to constantly purchase from the US using aid money given to them by the US.

They don't have the stockpiles to eradicate without using their (not so) secret nukes. If they were to do that, there'd be a lot worse follow on effects for Israel. If they simply trickle the deaths over time, people get tired of the horror and need to look away for their own sanity.

Genuinely wondering what terrible effects would there be for Israel if they used nukes? Not morally, internationally. IMO it's perhaps one of the few conflicts in the world where one side could theoretically use nuclear weapons and essentially no one will shoot back. "Trickle the deaths over time" doesn't make any sense - there are probably more births in Gaza than deaths now, and that's not including the general Palestinian population.

The point is to colonize Gaza, they won't irradiate it first.

Well officially Israel doesn't have nukes. They are widely believed to have them ofc but that's something they have to consider. Breaking the ambiguity by using them could spark a lot of 'we told you they were super dangerous' responses(with action) possibly. You might be right tho.

No one will shoot back now. But it is a signal to other countries that using nukes might not be that bad. Even other banned chemical and biological weapons. So either there is complete chaos or the whole world will have to make sure Israel can not profit from this action.

Though probably true, it is irrelevant. Hamas doesn't have the power, and Israel does. This war is almost entirely one sided.

My point was that the comment I was commenting on was false, and that many people who express that sentiment wouldn't be expressing it if the powers were flipped. I'm personally very glad that the powers aren't flipped because I think that if Hamas had F-16s there would many more deaths.

> and that many people who express that sentiment wouldn't be expressing it if the powers were flipped

That is definitely not true.

Do you really genuinely believe that typical american liberal types would ignore a genocide committed against Jewish people by anyone, particularly arabs? In the American liberal mind "genocide" is, essentially, synonymous with The Holocaust, and I think your average liberal is, if anything, sensitive to Jewish discrimination, over and above random people out there in the world. There are definitely anti-semetic Americans and they should be launched into the sun, but I think your sense that people wouldn't care if Jews were being killed in the tens of thousands is extremely off point.

I'm sorry, I live in Europe and I was referring more to the kind of protests and protesters I see around me. The aren't many liberal Americans there. I completely agree that the situation could be different elsewhere.

Jewish groups have been supporting those protests in the US, Europe and Israel.

I have no idea what crowd composition at European protests looks like, but the vast majority of the people upset about the ongoing genocide are not antisemetic.

There is a propaganda campaign in the US trying to conflate being against genocide with being antisemetic. I'm sure similar tactics are being used in Europe.

I am myself supporting many of these protests, and it's exactly from this perspective that I say that many of them are antisemitic. But this is a bit of a useless discussion because neither you nor I can bring any evidence into how antisemitic they are, or how and if they would react if (or when) Palestinians are slaughtering Jews.

If you think it's nonsense, try to go into a anti-war protest with a t-shirt saying that Jews too should be able to live in Middle East. If this thought makes you slightly concerned, you got my point.

Not sure I get your point.

Try the same, but opposite argument.

Something like: Would you wear a t-shirt saying “Palestine is treated unfairly” to oct7 memorial or airport/border crossing?

People are protesting with this kind of shirts in Israel basically every week.

Where do you live in Europe that you believe those opposing the Israeli genocide in Gaza would support a genocide of Jewish people anywhere? Because that is an outrageously delusional view.

I don't think that my exact location is very relevant here, but I urge you to ask protesters around you how they see "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" turning into reality, and let me know what happens with the Jews according to their plans.

If the Israeli administration could get away with fire bombing the strip, it'd have done so a long time ago. The whole world is screaming at them to stop the genocide and you think it's them just not "caring about civilians" that's responsible for this. There's no war in Gaza, there's only a genocide. A holocaust.

I'm not Arab, I'm not Muslim. I've never met a Jewish person. I've no reason to have any prejudice against people of Jewish heritage or ethnicity. But it's still a genocide by any definitions of the word. A lot of Jewish people even agree with this. And the reason that you and most Israeli people seem to struggle to grasp it is because they've been drinking on this exact extremist rhetoric that the "other" side only wants to see them slaughtered. By the same measure, you're saying Hamas can justify it's actions since there will always be ultra-Zionist factions of Israeli societies that wants to see Palestinians slaughtered. I implore you to wake up to what is being done in the name of your people.

I am an Arab Jew, and I actually have many friends in Gaza. I don't disagree about the usage of the words Genocide, though I think the terms is a little too easy to apply. I think a Holocaust is a completely different thing. There are Palestinians in the Israeli parliament, in the Supreme Court. No one is gathering Palestinians in gas chambers, and in general the Palestinian population only grew since the establishment of Israel. If there were more Jews in Europe after WW2 than before it, no one would remember it as a Holocaust.

There is war in Gaza in the simple sense that rockets from Gaza still shoot into Israel, that Israeli hostages are still being held, and that Hamas itself (the elected goverenement) says it would attack again. It's a very unbalanced conflict, and in it terrible crimes are committed that you can call genocidal. But Jews in the ghettos weren't bombing Berlin - not during WW2 and not after it.

That's an interpretation of events that I've heard from a lot of Israeli folks that are in some way horrified what's happening in Gaza. I think it's very naive and I don't even think most folks saying this believe in it themselves. What actions from the IDF, what imbalance of power, what civilian casualty rates will you need to see to believe that it's no longer a war? Are you really waiting for the actual mass starvation to take place before accept there's intent? Does it have to be gas chambers? Does the death toll have to pass 1 million? 6 million? Do you really think that the Israeli government wants to brings the hostages back? What do you think would happen after they did bring them back? Will you rescind your support then?

Jews in the Ghetto didn't get the chance to shoot rockets at Berlin but had they been able to fight back, I'd have given them the same understanding that I currently extends to Palestinians that grew up in the concentration camp that is Gaza. Hamas is the direct results of Israeli policies of the past decades. Even if the IDF manages to somehow invent some purity test for Gazans that it can use to confirm there are no longer any Hamas members left and it finally declares it's operations concluded, you'll have people shooting rockets at Israel if they keep their policies with the Gaza strip and the West Bank. But long term solutions come later, right now, Israelis need to wake up and say no to what is unfolding in the name of their security.

I will stop thinking that this conflict is a war when there will be a side in it that doesn't have the motivation to take over all the land, and acts towards it by attempting to kill the other. As long as there are two parties that are constantly trying to kill each other, I call that a war. As I wrote elsewhere - that doesn't mean I disagree with the idea that genocidal actions are being taken during this war.

Your comment about Jews in Ghetto is wrong at every possible level. Jews were killed in the Holocaust _without_ a conflict, _without_ attempting to kill Germans, _without_ fighting with anyone over the land and _without_ having any aspirations to control the other. That is an example of a situation where there is no war, and no, it has nothing to do with the situation between Israelis and Palestinians.

Stop telling lies about Gaza conflict being "war". Israeli military has absolute superiority over Palestinians. What it is is a genocidal campaign meant to wipe them off the face of the Earth.

Also, stop using the Holocaust as a propaganda tool. My grandfather happened to be a Buchenwald concentration camp survival. It didn't give him or anybody else any right to violate Geneva convention.

First, I don't recall you set the rules for discussion here. Now, to your points:

1. Genocidal actions can take place in a war, and no definition of a war ever said that the parties have to be of equal strength. Every war that was ever won by one side or another had some sort of power supremacy. Go read the legal definition for genocide and you'll learn that the question of imbalance of power plays absolutely no role in it.

2. I haven't used it as a propaganda tool, and in fact it wasn't me who brought it up at all. I was only commenting that the current situation in Gaza is not comparable to the Holocaust, and I fully stand behind it. To make it clear, I am very happy that it isn't comparable, and I wouldn't want to see any Palestinian suffering like my ancestors did. Not once in my life have I used it to justify crimes committed by Jews, so please learn to read before commenting on my posts. If anything, I always believed that what Jews went through should serve as a reminder for us to never allow things like that from happening again, and I still see the Holocaust as perhaps one of the main driving forces in my opposition to this war.

I didn't mention any HN rules, so you're mainly arguing with yourself.

Shooting at mothers trying to get humanitarian aid for their starving children does not fulfil any definition of war I am aware of.

Read history books yourself. Once one side of a war becomes dominant, it just ends.

Unless it is not really a war but a hideous genocide campaign cynically carried out by Israeli government under the pretext of self-defensive war.

> Once one side of a war becomes dominant, it just ends.

Sorry for being pedanto, but other side must stop resisting for war to end. Guerrilla warfare is quite usual when there is great power imbalance.

I think I got so upset by people needlessly dying in Gaza that maybe I went too far in this discussion. Obviously, the war and genocide don't necessarily exclude each other.

There were more than 100 armed jewish uprisings in Germany during WWII:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_resistance_in_German-oc...

Going through your criteria in order: Of course they defended themselves, including attempts to kill Nazis. They also attempted to keep their homes, and certainly would have rather Germany have different leadership

Does that somehow mean the concentration camps were a "war"?

I think the parent meant there were no shooting before the genocide started. Jewish resistances were reactive to nazi actions.

I.e. there was not even a possibility that nazis were defending. While somebody from Palestine side did fire the opening salvo on oct7.

> While somebody from Palestine side did fire the opening salvo on oct7.

Now, that's a re-writing of history if I've ever seen one.

> Israeli and Palestinian deaths preceding the 2023 Gaza war. Of the Palestinian deaths 5,360 were in Gaza, 1,007 in the West Bank, 37 in Israel. Most were civilians on both sides.

Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%...

See the chart on the top right with the orange bars

I do understand that it was not the first first salvo.

And that blockading policy and financing of anything but fatah and bunch of other stuff influenced today situation.

But you must admit that oct 7 was unusual escalation. Which now are used as the reason for current idf actions.

I suspect that it's you who have undergone deep mental conditioning if you think that I am justifying this war. One can hold a complex opinion, and nowhere have I said that I think this war is justified.

Not only I do not belittler their suffering, I personally helped some of them out. I also ran an organization that provided thousands of Gazan with electricity, and I was arrested by the Israeli police when encouraging Palestinians in Israel to vote. At the same time I have family members who were killed (and kidnapped) on the first day of this war. Life isn't black and white.

Thank you for sharing your perspective Yoav, it's refreshing to read comments from an actual observer and not an army of armchair warriors.

I am completely OK with being conditioned against siding with a 20 month long genocidal onslaught committed by an apartheid ethnostate against a blockaded territory with no sovereignty and no actual defenses of its own.

I completely agree that life isn’t always black and white. But right now it is, just like it was in countless other situations in the past. You can think it’s “complicated” all you like, but the evidence is overwhelmingly against such a framing, which is where the conditioning comes into the picture.

It is great that you volunteered in Gaza, but it’s also tragic that you fail to see what is happening even after directly interacting with Gazans.

Some day in the future, when free Palestinians can build museums and monuments and make movies to mourn those lost in this genocide, everyone will always have been against this.

From Israel's perspective, Palestinians are a problem. Long term, they have a few options:

1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that

2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The current government certainly doesn't want that, and I have no idea what part of the Palestinians would want that.

3) Continue to treat them as sub-human, and deal with the consequences of the hatred that fosters. That seems to have been the "strategy" before October last year.

4) Try to exterminate or exile them, or at least decimating them to such an extend that the problem becomes smaller.

Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.

> Continue to treat them as sub-human, and deal with the consequences of the hatred that fosters. That seems to have been the "strategy" before October last year.

This is a pretty big claim, and I highly disagree with it. I didn't particularly like Israeli policy towards Palestinians for the last 15 years, but they were certainly not treated as "sub-human". Gazans, specifically, were governed by Hamas, which had a lot more say in how the average Gazan was reacted than ISrael did.

Gaza was governed by Hamas under an Israeli blockade. You don't think that had any effect on Gaza lives?

(An Israeli and Egyptian blockade)

Yes, I do think it had an effect, but less of one than their governing body did, hence my saying so.

Either way, unless you think the blockade itself is "Israel treating Gazans as sub-human", then my point still stands.

> I didn't particularly like Israeli policy towards Palestinians for the last 15 years, but they were certainly not treated as "sub-human".

Garbage. Gaza had its only airport bombed to oblivion 20 years ago and was told any attempt to repair it would result in the same. Its port has been blockaded by the Israeli navy for 15 years. Its only land exits have been heavily locked down.

Israel will routinely turn electricity off to the country for days to punish for something, be it a rocket attack, or teens throwing stones. They’ve even turned off water for days too.

That’s treating people as subhuman, imprison them and do things like that to them for decades.

The Gazan government is a declared enemy of Israel, wanting its destruction. It has used hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to build its militant group to fight Israel.

Given the circumstances, Gaza's neighbors blockade it to keep it from building an even bigger fighting force.

> Israel will routinely turn electricity off to the country for days to punish for something, be it a rocket attack,

You mean, when occasionally Hamas will try to kill random Israeli civilians using rocket fire? Which is basically a declaration of war and causes Israel to fight back?

> or teens throwing stones.

I don't think that's actually true.

> That’s treating people as subhuman,

Israel is treating Hamas-controlled Gaza as a hostile enemy that is intent on destroying it. Given that Hamas, even under the blockade and with all the restrictions in place, still managed to invade Israel and kill a thousand citizens, while kidnapping and holding hostage 250 civilians, and still, a year and a half later, is holding these people hostage and torturing them daily... given that, I think it's hard to say blockading them was a bad idea.

If you think the blockade is the reason for their actions, then you're quite simply wrong - they were founded many years before and always had the same goal of destroying Israel, including working hard against the peace process that was forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority.

> You mean, when occasionally Hamas will try to kill random Israeli civilians using rocket fire? Which is basically a declaration of war and causes Israel to fight back?

Changing the goalposts, are we?

Yes, that happens.

How is Israel turning off electricity and fresh water to the entire country as a result not considered treating the population as sub-human (as in not deserving of basic human needs), the original point of this discussion ?

> If you think the blockade is the reason for their actions, then you're quite simply wrong - they were founded many years before and always had the same goal of destroying Israel, including working hard against the peace process that was forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority.

Oh, you're so close to the point! "The peace process forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority" is exactly why Netanyuhu and his ilk started supporting Hamas. Because when your explicitly stated goal is to evict Palestinians (and Netanyuhu has said as much, in as many words), global sympathy starts to wane when the PLA is looking for peaceful solutions (yes, admittedly, after periods of violence and terrorism) and now Israel looks like the bad guy. So let's prop up Hamas, because they are more extremist, and make a more convenient bad guy.

> How is Israel turning off electricity and fresh water to the entire country as a result not considered treating the population as sub-human (as in not deserving of basic human needs), the original point of this discussion ?

I think that temporarily not supplying a semi-state with electricity while fighting a war they started, does not fit the definition most people would have of "treating them as sub-human". If you do - fine.

> Oh, you're so close to the point! "The peace process forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority" is exactly why Netanyuhu and his ilk started supporting Hamas.

No, you're getting the chronology very wrong here.

Hamas was founded in the 1980s ('88 I think). The main peace talks started in the 1990s, with Oslo getting signed in '93. The terror campaign Hamas started to wage was around that time, trying to derail the peace talks.

In '95, Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli right-wing extremist, and Netanyahu was elected for the first time as opposed to Rabin's "successor" Peres. A major Hamas terror attack right around that election is largely attributed to tipping the election in favor of Netanahu, who won by the thinnest majority in Israeli history to this day (iirc around 10k votes).

Another PM, Barak, was elected to pursue peace and had talks with the PA in 2000 and 2001. This is when the second intifada was launched, unclear how much from Hamas and how much from the PA. Later, a different PM (Sharon), actually considered a right-wing hawk, was elected and initiated the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005. Olmert, his successor, was elected on a platform of disengaging from the West Bank. In the meantime, Hamas was elected to rule Gaza, the blockade was started, and Hamas began shooting rockets at Israel. Peace negotiations were again held in 2008/2009 between Olmert and Abbas.

Only in 2009 did Netanyahu even get back into power.

So the idea that Netanyahu somehow started supporting Hamas - which is a somewhat of a mischaractirization in any case - is only really relevant several years after the blockade started and rockets were fired, which is many years after Hamas worked to shut down the peace process.

> I think that temporarily not supplying a semi-state with electricity while fighting a war they started, does not fit the definition most people would have of "treating them as sub-human". If you do - fine.

And water. For days or more. And well, most of the world considers it a war crime, but hey, if you think it's NBD...

You make it seem like these things all happen like clockwork, with concrete black and white dates.

And well:

> The Hamas movement was founded by Palestinian Islamic scholar Ahmed Yassin in 1987, after the outbreak of the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation. It emerged from his 1973 Mujama al-Islamiya Islamic charity affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Initially, Hamas was discreetly supported by Israel, as a counter-balance to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Netanyahu was formative in Likud. That whole statement used to "prove" Hamas (look, since we're talking about Hamas - let me be unequivocally clear - is a terrorist organization who do despicable things) has goals of excision/extermination... "From the River (Jordan) to the (Red) Sea"... misses the irony that that was Likud's election slogan for a decade or more.

>Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation

As the Palestinians are the majority, the Jewish Israelis would become a minority in terms of citizens and votes. This is very much akin to Apartheid South Africa, where a minority ethnic group rules over the rest of the population.

The White minority in South Africa were around 15% of the population, while Jews and Palestinians in Israel & Palestine seem to be much more around a 50%-50% split.

Yes, and I should have clarified that the Palestinian majority is a lot slimmer than was the case in South Africa.

Although there remains the case of 700,000 Palestinian refugees who (in the hypothetical scenario of a unified state) would tilt the balance further if allowed to return to their/their parents homes or given property as compensation for repossessed homes.

You'd think given Israel's history they'd do everything they could to not make 4) acceptable.

It's very common for people to treat their own side as naturally right, and excuse anything their side does, simply *because* it is their own side.

For a commonplace example, look at a soccer match, fans screaming at the referee whenever a decision doesn't go their team's way.

I think it's the contrary. "Never again" means by any means necessary we will prevent another genocide of our people, even if it means committing genocide unto others. That much has become clear.

I don't think there's much overlapping between those who experienced the holocaust and whoever is in charge in Israel right now.

Speaking for experience from some relatives, the immigration laws for people of jewish faith and ancestry were nigh insurmountable if you came from african, arab or middle east countries and pretty much just nominal even in recent times for those who had even a remote connection but came from the US and the UK.

I have the feeling they are jewish the same way Henry IV was a Catholic when he said "Paris is well worth a Mass".

Many of the Zionists viewed the Holocaust as teaching that the Jewish people need a state of their own, no matter what it takes or how many people they have to kill. They viewed the European Jews who had died in the Holocaust as weak, passive cowards who had "allowed" the Holocaust to happen, and went like sheep to their slaughter (ignoring the Warsaw Uprising, and all of the underground Jewish resistance movements). I think Israel's current actions reflect this viewpoint.

I suggest reading this 1923 essay by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, one of the early figures in the history of Israel and the Zionist movement, before Israel became a state.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot

> There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realised long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. ...

> The native populations, civilised or uncivilised, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilised or savage. ... Every native population, civilised or not, regards its lands as its national home, of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain that mastery always; it will refuse to admit not only new masters but, even new partners or collaborators. This is equally true of the Arabs. Our Peace-mongers are trying to persuade us that the Arabs are either fools, whom we can deceive by masking our real aims, or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine , in return for cultural and economic advantages. ...

> We may tell them whatever we like about the innocence of our aims, watering them down and sweetening them with honeyed words to make them palatable, but they know what we want, as well as we know what they do not want. Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel." ... Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim.

> We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached.

Now, Jabotinsky was arguably naive in that he thought that after the inevitable forcing of the Arabs to accept Jewish colonization of their homeland, once they have "given up on all hopes", they could be negotiated with on the terms of settlement:

> In the second place, this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is "Never!" And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions. Then we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizen, or Arab national integrity.

The problem, of course, is that once you have that amount of upper hand over someone, you don't actually have to negotiate. You can just keep taking everything you want, by force. And that is exactly where Israel found itself in the long term.

Or exile is probably the key word. There are more historical examples of exoduses than genocides.

The problem with understanding this situation is that it probably has more to do with Israel's internal politics than what the situation looks like on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere. Just a quick read from the wikipedia page should give an idea just how corrupt the situation really is.

There's also the fact that Palestinians aren't a homogenous group in any sense of the word. That makes it hard for them to unite under any political flag. It also doesn't help that the borders are all closed, from both sides, and no neighboring country are willing to accept them.

From the outside the situation certainly looks very bleak.

Palestine rejected statehood 5 times. Nothing to do with Israel. Nothing you said is even slightly true.

> Since 1) and 2) are (again, from the perspective of Isreal's government) undesirable, and 3) has stopped working, 4) seems to be their current strategy.

The Israeli govt and people would be very supportive of (2). After all, there are more Arabs living in Israel than in Palestine. The Palestineans, on the other hand, overwhelmingly reject this option.

Ongoing war has been a crucial component of the current government's re-election campaigns for decades, so any option that ends the war is a non-starter.

I fear their plan is to expand military operations into additional countries until they can get back into a pseudo-stalemate scenario. That'd explain the bombings in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.

Perhaps it shouldn't be up to Israel to decide the future of non-citizens then.

So HN flat out ignores history. Posts misinformation and propaganda. And HN sucks it up cos it’s anti Israel pro terrorist. Really shows the mental decline of HN over the years.

How does this post misrepresent Israel’s options and its apparent decision?

Palestine has had many opportunities for statehood. Current President of Israel is not completely opposed to statehood, citing security concerns which are clearly valid considering Palestine has repeatedly broken cease fire agreements and Hamas entire goal is to eradicate Israel. They are not being treated as sub-human. Remember Israel warns Palestine of air strikes. There have been many reports of Hamas refusing to allow people to leave sites that are targeted for the sole purpose of of martyrdom. The only people being exterminated is the terrorist Organization Hamas.

All 4 bullet points are either completely false or misleading.

Clearly there is disagreement in Israel to some limited degree about the reality and appeal of a two state solution, but it’s hard to see that as a realistic or desired outcome when Netanyahu keeps saying things like “everyone knows that I am the one who for decades blocked the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger our existence.” https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-boasts-of-thwarting-...

Certainly it’s the stated position and goal of the current government, which is what the initial post said.

> that would endanger our existence

> citing security concerns

If your neighbour keeps throwing stones at you and you agree to not throw stones, they continue to throw stones. You would probably not support any of their wishes.

“I have no argument so I’ll downvote and leave” haha typical HN mentality.

Gaza is a separate state, a failed state run by criminals and terrorists.

And why are they Israel’s problem to solve? What about Jordan who expelled EVERY Palestinian in 1970? What about Qatar? What about Egypt? Lebanon? Any Arab country???

Why is it Israel’s problem? There was a legal agreement in 1948. It could have been so simple.

Palestinian militants have destabilized every host country they’ve inhabited. I say this with sympathy for the displaced. Who wouldn’t consider taking up arms if forced from home, stripped of citizenship, corralled into camps, condemned to generations of refugee status.

But it is also obvious, historically, why Arab countries aren’t welcoming masses of Palestinians into their countries even in these dire moments.

Because Palestinians were already there when Israelis came and decided to create their state on those lands?

Funny how exiling Gazans to the West Bank is out of the question. It's almost as if they have designs on the entirety of it.

Netanyahu has privately expressed preference for terrorist Hamas over political Fatah, and Israel has propped up those terrorist groups in the past (this is well documented not a conspiracy theory).

Why? Because Netanyahu and a good chunk of the Israeli population want the Palestinians to cease to exist and its territory to be part of Israel. An opponent that wants to achieve its goals through political action and appeals to the international community meant that there was a risk of Israel being dragged into a two-state commitment. A terrorist group attacking civilians gives those hardliners a perpetual excuse to go to war.

In short: the answer is yes, that appears to be precisely the point: to prevent any possibility of peaceful reconciliation and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.

> to prevent any possibility of peaceful reconciliation

This seems like a feasible goal.

> and drive the Palestinians to eventual expulsion or eradication.

That strategy haven't worked for what 50 years, what makes anyone think it'll work anytime ever?

The Palestinians don't exactly have anywhere to go.

If there is a lot of malnutrition, population numbers will change without migration.

That would take a long time, and the world won't look away for that long -- I hope not

> It's not pretty, but

That's a wild phrase to use in the context of killing indiscriminate civilians after luring them to the food they're desperate for.

There is something so deeply disturbing about how casually inhumane Israelis can be. They then drop “Hamas” like it’s a full sentence that magically cleanses whatever depravity they just spewed.

And it’s all so casual and self righteous.

its not pretty? Selling for profit? You missed the "ah war is hell. Just give up resisting so everything will be fine" part of the propaganda book.

Israel wants to kill all Palestinians. This helps achieve this. They're committing genocide.

If that is true, Israel would now actually, literally be persuing the exact same politics Nazi Germany did until they escalated their attempted genocide by making it intolerable to genocide by industrial scale murder. Not a good look for Israel, at all.

Israel cares less about looks and more about american support, ehich this administration has cut them a blank cheque for

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Please don't take HN threads into hard-core ideological and/or nationalistic flamewar. I realize this topic tends strongly in that direction, but that's not a reason to go there, it's a reason not to go there.

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Other commenters are doing it too, but it's a matter of degree, and the rhetoric in your post here is a degree worse. You can make your substantive points without resorting to "cult", "stamped out", "criminal ideology" and so on. Fortunately it doesn't look like your account has a habit of doing this, so it should be easy to fix.

What is the evidence for that?

If Israel wanted them to leave, wouldn't they seek cooperation with a nation that is willing to have them, and organize mass transports there?

At least I haven't heard of any such thing.

> wouldn't they seek cooperation with a nation that is willing to have them

There is no such nation. Iirc Israeli politicians have more than once responded to critique with "you take them, then". But there aren't any takers.

Just like the Jews in Germany back before WW2, in fact.

You do realise that the people writing for Haaretz are also nationals of that country right? Maybe learn to be precise, helps in all situations.

When asked, in an representative online, poll, 47% percent of Israeli agreed that the IDF should kill all the inhabitants of cities it conquered[1].

So sure, workers at Haarez probably don't, but when the extermination feeling is widespread enough that 47% feel they can openly agree to a question proscribing the killing women and children, then insisting on the insistence on precision comes across mostly as an attempt at distraction.

[1] https://theconversation.com/in-israel-calls-for-genocide-hav...

Israel here obviously standing for "the current government of Israel" (with presumed majority support), not "every single Israeli person".

Fortunately many Israelis are against the ongoing genocide, but powerless to stop it.

There's a palestinian guy living in the US making the rounds on tiktok, talking to random israeli people on something like omegle. The amount of hate he gets is nothing short of depressing. Children cursing at him, IDF soldiers saying they want to kill every single person in Gaza, calling them sub-humans... sounds like the fourth reich is here already.

All this to say you're right, but the government is indocrinating more and more people for these views.

Be very wary of any such weaponized truth: you don't know how much selection bias is at play, how much confirmation bias is requested, you don't even know if the interviewees are what they say they are.

You raise a very valid point, which i will take in consideration. I don't believe it to be the case, since the person in question also shares positive interactions, and i believe some of the worst "contacts" have been doxxed. But your point still stands.

You can find the videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@HamzahSaadah

It is indeed sickening. They straight out tell you how they want all Palestinian children to die.

People seem to use the down-vote on my comment, why? I pasted it for discoverability. It is exactly what the parent is talking about, and it indeed is sickening, go check out some videos where many people say disgusting shit. If you do not think it is disgusting, then please imagine they are talking about your children?

And if you disagree with the guy, go dislike his videos.

I disagree: when anything is obviously meaning what someone obviously thinks it means, then others will apply their own obvious understanding of it to justify very non-obvious behaviours.

If Israel wanted to kill all Palestinians, wouldn't it be easier to start with the millions of Palestinians living in Israel, unarmed, instead of going into Gaza?

They are doing that. Most people in Gaza were displaced from other legal Palestinian territories. Gaza is was the (big) internment camp.

The perpetual fight is mutually beneficial to all. The extremist right would not have been able to claim large swaths of land had they not had the air cover to raze Gaza. Now there is serious talk of going back into Gaza. And talk by Trump to turn it into a seaside resort has the settler movement giddy.

"all"

If you can't see how obvious it is, then you can't accept the truth. Racist, ethno-nationalist supremacy attitude inexorably leads to genocide. The hasbara cognitive dissonance and reality distortion fields hide behind a DARVO mythology.