If anything negative you can say about Israel is equated to antisemitism then Israel gets a free pass. Hamas engaged in terrorism, but Israel's response was out of proportion. Saying that aloud doesn't make one antisemitic. The ICC and UN are not antisemitic organizations for ordering arrest of Netanyahu and condemning Israel's use of excessive force.
What would have been a proportional response? Is it a numbers game? lets do 2x? 5x? 10x?
In the gilad shalit deal Palestinians established the proportion of 1 Israeli to 1027 Palestinians.
So on Oct 7 - 1,195 were murdered, by your standards Israel should have killed 1,227,265 Palestinians.
First of all, the proportional response should be delivered directly to the source: Iran. There are lots of bad guys in Gaza, but there are lots of innocent people too. Indiscriminately killing everyone is not the solution.
You still didn't define what's the proportional response.
Come on armchair commander show us your battle plans for Iran. Do we nuke it? Do we destroy all the dams? Do we hit just the nuclear facilities? Or do we eliminate their oil industry? Maybe just all the military bases, oh we forgot all the subterrains rocket facilities, do you want to invade Iraq style?
If the IDF would have Indiscriminately killing people then the number would have been 10x, and you know it.
A) It's hard to argue that the war in Gaza was indiscriminate when the IDF achieved the highest combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio in the history of urban combat, despite Hamas hiding in tunnels underneath population centers.
B) When soldiers flood across your border from a neighboring polity by the thousands, it would be an abdication of sovereignty not to defend against that immediate threat, regardless of the enemy's funding sources.
> If anything negative you can say about Israel is equated to antisemitism then Israel gets a free pass.
I am not arguing this. Everyone is free to criticize Israel; when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
> but Israel's response was out of proportion
Why do you say this? What would a proportionate response have looked like to an attempt to conquer your country by firing 5,000 rockets while 6,000 people invaded and murdered everyone they could find? Bear in mind, that immediately afterwards, Hamas leaders promised to repeat October 7th again and again until Israel was annihilated.
> when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
And where it gets disturbing is when you make the claim of different standard without any evidence, and launch accusations of antisemitism.
Not everyone in Gaza is Hamas. As of January 2025, at least 46,707 Palestinians have been reported killed, including about 18,000 children. Israel has a right to annihilate Hamas, but those 18,000 children were not Hamas.
Well I obviously don't believe they are committing genocide.
If Israel wanted to commit genocide, why are there more Gazans alive today than this time two years ago? Israel could turn Gaza into a parking lot overnight; why didn't they?
Please backup your claim of more Gazans alive today. Gaza is a parking lot. In fact it is worse than a parking lot... it is not possible to park many cars there because of all the fallen buildings. (I am going by what I see on TV... not a single building is seen still left standing.)
Unless there have been zero births since this article was published, even if you take the 50,000 death estimate from Hamas at face value, the population has increased since the start of the war. Of course, there is reason to suspect the Hamas figures, since they have been systematically manipulated, don't distinguish combatant deaths, don't separate out deaths from natural causes, and don't call out deaths caused by misfired Palestinian rockets.
The central camps have been almost totally untouched since the hostages are being kept there: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-804993 (article is a few months old but this is still true). And even outside of these camps, 16+ hospitals remain operational in Gaza despite serving as terror HQ.
This is not what the article says at all. An in any case, if the IDF knew where the hostages were held, why wouldn't they surround these areas and liberate them, instead of terrorizing civilians over and over again on all the territory?
> if you take the 50,000 death estimate from Hamas at face value
Looking at the following:
* the scale of destruction visible on satellite images, drone footage - shown by both parties in the conflict
* the quantity of bombs (29,000+ air-dropped bombs according to US intelligence, plus the tank and artillery ammunition)
* the population density in the whole Gaza strip
* the lack of resources and safety to rescue people and recover bodies from under the rubble after bombing
* the lack of food, water, medical supplies, medical staff, ambulances
Can we realistically think that the number of casualties could be that low?
This is the second time you write a comment where you argue that stable birthrate/population numbers contradict genocide.
The ICC issued a warrant for Netanyahu on (among others) the grounds of using starvation as a method of warfare [0]. Starvation as a method of warfare is consistent with genocide [1]. These are international legal facts/definitions.
1) Hamas run health ministry numbers are not trustworthy
2) You do know that Hamas uses children soldiers right?
3) Not everyone in Gaza is Hamas true, but most of them (pre war) and most west bank Palestinians (currently) support them
4) If Egypt allowed non combatants to flee, they would be safe, however they closed the door or asked 1000s of dollars in bribes, but then they couldn't be used against Israel like the Arab nations always do.
>I am not arguing this. Everyone is free to criticize Israel; when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
What different standard is being applied?
>Why do you say this? What would a proportionate response have looked like to an attempt to conquer your country by firing 5,000 rockets while 6,000 people invaded and murdered everyone they could find? Bear in mind, that immediately afterwards, Hamas leaders promised to repeat October 7th again and again until Israel was annihilated.
A proportionate response is not denying food, water, and medical aid to civilians. It's not destroying every school and hospital in the region. It's not committing genocide. You look at the situation as a zero sum game where only Israelis or Palestinians can live. Hamas is not all Palestinians and destroying their homes and families does not make them righteous or productive.
Maybe taking some effort to address the issues that have created the circumstances of the attack in the first place would be the better option. Like giving Palestinians either their own country or at least equal status in Israel. Maybe not taking their land and settling it. One cannot maintain inequality and peace. 50,000 Palestinians lost their lives for 1,000 Israelis. Does that seem proportionate to you?
1. OK, great: this is a legitimate argument against the existence of Israel. So we can then expect Israel to be the focus of 0.5% of anti-nationalist protests, since it is one of ~200 countries.
2. What is the "correct" number of fatalities when fighting a defensive war against an enemy committed to annihilating your country? And besides, even Hamas now admits that 72% of combat-aged fatalities they have recorded were men.
3. I never said carte blanche; I just find it curious that people find so much time in their day to protest against Israel, but when Alawites are massacred in Syria, civilians slaughtered in Sudan, or hundreds of thousands of children starve in Yemen, nobody says "boo". Surely you value the lives of innocent Muslims everywhere the same?
> 72% of combat-aged fatalities they have recorded were men
I don’t think this is the point in your favor that you think it is. “Combat-aged” excludes children and elderly, which are the most reprehensible deaths. And this means that over a quarter of combat-aged deaths were women. Women in this situation are quite unlikely to be combatants.
If anything negative you can say about Israel is equated to antisemitism then Israel gets a free pass. Hamas engaged in terrorism, but Israel's response was out of proportion. Saying that aloud doesn't make one antisemitic. The ICC and UN are not antisemitic organizations for ordering arrest of Netanyahu and condemning Israel's use of excessive force.
What would have been a proportional response? Is it a numbers game? lets do 2x? 5x? 10x? In the gilad shalit deal Palestinians established the proportion of 1 Israeli to 1027 Palestinians. So on Oct 7 - 1,195 were murdered, by your standards Israel should have killed 1,227,265 Palestinians.
First of all, the proportional response should be delivered directly to the source: Iran. There are lots of bad guys in Gaza, but there are lots of innocent people too. Indiscriminately killing everyone is not the solution.
You still didn't define what's the proportional response.
Come on armchair commander show us your battle plans for Iran. Do we nuke it? Do we destroy all the dams? Do we hit just the nuclear facilities? Or do we eliminate their oil industry? Maybe just all the military bases, oh we forgot all the subterrains rocket facilities, do you want to invade Iraq style?
If the IDF would have Indiscriminately killing people then the number would have been 10x, and you know it.
A) It's hard to argue that the war in Gaza was indiscriminate when the IDF achieved the highest combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio in the history of urban combat, despite Hamas hiding in tunnels underneath population centers.
B) When soldiers flood across your border from a neighboring polity by the thousands, it would be an abdication of sovereignty not to defend against that immediate threat, regardless of the enemy's funding sources.
> highest combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio
Very hard to believe.
Let's ask the world's leading expert in urban warfare, then:
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urb...
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnwspencer2018_israel-has-d...
Note the falsification of Hamas casualty figures:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hamas-quietly-drops-thousands-dea...
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/how-hama...
It's actually quite believable when you define a combatant as males aged 13+
> If anything negative you can say about Israel is equated to antisemitism then Israel gets a free pass.
I am not arguing this. Everyone is free to criticize Israel; when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
> but Israel's response was out of proportion
Why do you say this? What would a proportionate response have looked like to an attempt to conquer your country by firing 5,000 rockets while 6,000 people invaded and murdered everyone they could find? Bear in mind, that immediately afterwards, Hamas leaders promised to repeat October 7th again and again until Israel was annihilated.
> when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
And where it gets disturbing is when you make the claim of different standard without any evidence, and launch accusations of antisemitism.
Not everyone in Gaza is Hamas. As of January 2025, at least 46,707 Palestinians have been reported killed, including about 18,000 children. Israel has a right to annihilate Hamas, but those 18,000 children were not Hamas.
> Israel has a right to annihilate Hamas
How should they go about this? What rules should they follow? And when other countries violate these rules, are you commensurately outraged?
Not committing genocide would be a good start. And yes, I am opposed to all genocide.
Well I obviously don't believe they are committing genocide.
If Israel wanted to commit genocide, why are there more Gazans alive today than this time two years ago? Israel could turn Gaza into a parking lot overnight; why didn't they?
Please backup your claim of more Gazans alive today. Gaza is a parking lot. In fact it is worse than a parking lot... it is not possible to park many cars there because of all the fallen buildings. (I am going by what I see on TV... not a single building is seen still left standing.)
Save The Children estimates 50,000 births in Gaza in the first 9 months of the war, when the fighting was the most intense: https://www.savethechildren.net/news/women-self-inducing-lab...
Unless there have been zero births since this article was published, even if you take the 50,000 death estimate from Hamas at face value, the population has increased since the start of the war. Of course, there is reason to suspect the Hamas figures, since they have been systematically manipulated, don't distinguish combatant deaths, don't separate out deaths from natural causes, and don't call out deaths caused by misfired Palestinian rockets.
The central camps have been almost totally untouched since the hostages are being kept there: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-804993 (article is a few months old but this is still true). And even outside of these camps, 16+ hospitals remain operational in Gaza despite serving as terror HQ.
> 16+ hospitals remain operational in Gaza
No, the last fully functional hospital of Gaza was just bombed yesterday [1]
> despite serving as terror HQ
This remains to be proven and sounds more like propaganda.
> The central camps have been almost totally untouched since the hostages are being kept there: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-804993
This is not what the article says at all. An in any case, if the IDF knew where the hostages were held, why wouldn't they surround these areas and liberate them, instead of terrorizing civilians over and over again on all the territory?
> if you take the 50,000 death estimate from Hamas at face value
Looking at the following:
* the scale of destruction visible on satellite images, drone footage - shown by both parties in the conflict * the quantity of bombs (29,000+ air-dropped bombs according to US intelligence, plus the tank and artillery ammunition) * the population density in the whole Gaza strip * the lack of resources and safety to rescue people and recover bodies from under the rubble after bombing * the lack of food, water, medical supplies, medical staff, ambulances
Can we realistically think that the number of casualties could be that low?
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjr7l123zy5o
This is the second time you write a comment where you argue that stable birthrate/population numbers contradict genocide.
The ICC issued a warrant for Netanyahu on (among others) the grounds of using starvation as a method of warfare [0]. Starvation as a method of warfare is consistent with genocide [1]. These are international legal facts/definitions.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_(crime)
1) Hamas run health ministry numbers are not trustworthy
2) You do know that Hamas uses children soldiers right?
3) Not everyone in Gaza is Hamas true, but most of them (pre war) and most west bank Palestinians (currently) support them
4) If Egypt allowed non combatants to flee, they would be safe, however they closed the door or asked 1000s of dollars in bribes, but then they couldn't be used against Israel like the Arab nations always do.
>I am not arguing this. Everyone is free to criticize Israel; when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
What different standard is being applied?
>Why do you say this? What would a proportionate response have looked like to an attempt to conquer your country by firing 5,000 rockets while 6,000 people invaded and murdered everyone they could find? Bear in mind, that immediately afterwards, Hamas leaders promised to repeat October 7th again and again until Israel was annihilated.
A proportionate response is not denying food, water, and medical aid to civilians. It's not destroying every school and hospital in the region. It's not committing genocide. You look at the situation as a zero sum game where only Israelis or Palestinians can live. Hamas is not all Palestinians and destroying their homes and families does not make them righteous or productive.
Maybe taking some effort to address the issues that have created the circumstances of the attack in the first place would be the better option. Like giving Palestinians either their own country or at least equal status in Israel. Maybe not taking their land and settling it. One cannot maintain inequality and peace. 50,000 Palestinians lost their lives for 1,000 Israelis. Does that seem proportionate to you?
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1. OK, great: this is a legitimate argument against the existence of Israel. So we can then expect Israel to be the focus of 0.5% of anti-nationalist protests, since it is one of ~200 countries.
2. What is the "correct" number of fatalities when fighting a defensive war against an enemy committed to annihilating your country? And besides, even Hamas now admits that 72% of combat-aged fatalities they have recorded were men.
3. I never said carte blanche; I just find it curious that people find so much time in their day to protest against Israel, but when Alawites are massacred in Syria, civilians slaughtered in Sudan, or hundreds of thousands of children starve in Yemen, nobody says "boo". Surely you value the lives of innocent Muslims everywhere the same?
> 72% of combat-aged fatalities they have recorded were men
I don’t think this is the point in your favor that you think it is. “Combat-aged” excludes children and elderly, which are the most reprehensible deaths. And this means that over a quarter of combat-aged deaths were women. Women in this situation are quite unlikely to be combatants.
The correct number of non-Hamas fatalities is 0.
If that standard were universally applied, even purely defensive wars could not be done.
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Where are you getting your news? It must be good because you're 100% right lol