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Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by jakelazaroff on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @12:43AM (#44497136)
> Pretty much all Israeli serve in the IDF. He called for their death. The mental gymnastics.

This argument makes no sense to me. You're basically saying that it's bad to call for the deaths of a genocidal military… once a certain percentage of the country enlists? Like, at what threshold do you think it would have been unacceptable to chant "death to the Nazis" or "death to the Imperial Japanese Army"?

Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by YZF on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @01:16AM (#44497313)
Let's help you make sense of this:

- Israel is at war with Gaza after it was attacked by Gaza. This war will end as soon as Hamas surrenders and the hostages are returned. Could have ended a long time ago.

- Gaza is ruled by Hamas that just like Bob Vylan advocates for the murder of all Israelis and Jews. That is the genocidal party to this conflict, by their own declaration and actions.

- The correct analogy is the US going to war with Japan after Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. Even that analogy is weak because Pearl Harbour was a military target while Gaza attacked civilians including massacring random people who went to a music festival. Just like Glastonbury. What would the UK do if Glastonbury was attacked by ISIL, 10's of thousands of people murdered, and thousands taken hostage? I mean we've seen what it did for a lot less than that.

- Israel's defensive war looks exactly like this war would look like if any other western country had similar military action. It is generally targeting military targets and civilians unfortunately also get hurt. If you compare to similar recent campaigns and adjust for the significantly more dense population, tunnels, the use of civilian infrastructure, you will see that Israel is waging this war with less impact to civilians compared to e.g. the western allies war against ISIL or Al Qaeda. None of Israel's critics are able to give a realistic option here for Israel to achieve its legitimate goals of self defense. Hamas has been attacking Israeli cities with rockets and massacred Israeli civilians. Israel can not let it remain in control, and a force, in Gaza.

- No other country in the world would do less in terms of military action under similar circumstances. We've seen countries like the US, the UK, Australia, France, take significantly more violent measures in significantly less serious (to their self defense) circumstances.

- The argument that Gaza was somehow occupied before Oct 7th and Palestinians had no choice to improve their situation without violence is a lie. Their violence, against civilians, is an explicit, declared, contiunous, choice. Gaza was handed to the Palestinians in 2005. Even if you can somehow twist the blockade on Gaza to be something else there is still no other country in the world that would act any differently. Gaza has received billions of dollars in support since 2005 and Hamas has invested it in weapons and tunnels.

- The IDF is not a "genocidal military". It's just a military. It's fighting a difficult war to defeat a brutal enemy that is holding hostages, doesn't care about deaths of its own people, and refuses to surrender. No other western military would fight in a more "clean" or "fair" way under the same circumstances and non-western militaries would be a lot more brutal and violent (like Russia did to the Chechens or Turkey to the Kurds). The allegations of genocide are false. They are an antisemitic blood libel. Civilian casualties are unfortunately an outcome of this kind of war which Hamas started and is continuing to date.

- The media, including the BBC, is reporting Hamas PR as news and certain media (like Al-Jazeera) is basically engaged in a PR campaign on behalf of Hamas. According to Hamas any militant that dies is a civilian and civilians that die without relation to any military activities are also killed by the IDF, including Palestinians killed by Hamas. According to the media there are no combatants and no military infrastructure and no tunnels e.g. in Gaza. All targets are civilians and all infrastructure is civilian. The truth is the opposite.

- According to the media "there is no safe place in Gaza". The truth is the humanitarian zone, designated as a safe area, accounts for a tiny minority of casualties in this war, mostly related to Hamas commanders hiding there. Palestinians who have chosen to move there are significantly more safer than those who for whatever reason do not.

It's generally bad to call for the death of anyone. Doing it in a music festival given Hamas' massacre of music festival goers is doubly stupid/insensitive/evil. Sometimes you have to fight, and kill, but you should never wish for anyone to be dead.

Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by jakelazaroff on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @01:30AM (#44497365)
At this point what you're doing is tantamount to writing long essays trying to convince people that the Earth is flat. It is very very obviously a genocide — probably the most well-documented one since the Shoah! — and everyone but the most hardline Israel supporters can see that.

There's a reason that support for Israel in the US has dropped to just 12% among Democrats. [1] Even among Republicans, it's down 18 percentage points! And this is despite heavy censorship of pro-Palestinian narratives (as evidenced by the article).

[1] https://mondoweiss.net/2025/06/the-shift-just-12-of-dem-vote...

Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by Paradigma11 on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @07:28AM (#44499019)
This argument seems so counterproductive to me. Israel is obviously committing war crimes, attempting ethnic cleansing and any number of other horrible violations of international law and common standards.

But I don't see how it is committing genocide. They are not trying to destroy the people, the genus. There are 2+ mill people in Gaza and with all those bombs they killed 100k or less? Basically that is just what urban warfare looks like.

This is like the Diddy trial, where you give the perp a way out by overprosecuting.

Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by jakelazaroff on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @08:16AM (#44499271)
[delayed]
Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by Paradigma11 on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @09:52AM (#44499986)
The point is that what you are describing is not genocide. "The legal term “genocide” refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group." Israel does not do that. Russia does do that to the Ukrainians. Putin thinks Ukraine is not a real nation and he thinks the Ukrainians are not a separate genus. That is why Ukrainian children are getting indoctrinated in the occupied territories and the Ukrainian language getting suppressed.

Does that mean that Ukrainian civilians are worse off than Palestinians? No, obviously not. Israel is guilty of many crimes and many of them are worse than some forms of genocide.

Words have meaning and you are offering the Israeli apologetics an easy way out arguing semantics and the easy way is that they are right.

Re:BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR by jakelazaroff on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @10:05AM (#44500101)
> "The legal term “genocide” refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group." Israel does not do that.

Israel "does not do that" only if you ignore remarks by IDF members, MKs and the Prime Minister himself explicitly saying they are doing that.