Israel-Hamas War 2023

[The Minsky Moment]

You guys are describing the need for Israel to put artificial limits on utilising their military power.

Every belligerent puts limits on the use of their military power; even the Nazis didn't indiscriminately slaughter everyone in sight everywhere they went. Attaching the derogatory adjective "artificial" in this context begs the question. Modern war is not a natural activity, everything about it is artificial.

[Razgovory]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/professors-claim-pointing-out-how-hamas-brutalizes-lgbtq-people-is-homophobic-violence/ar-BB1l9rXR?cvid=5ec43cb673d54ac4ee7d939e6e5c43ed&ocid=winp2fptaskbar&ei=12&sc=shoreline

This is pretty fucked up.

Describing Hamas' brutalization of LGBTQ Palestinians needs to be labeled "homophobic violence," university professors suggested at an event last month.

Associate Professor Maya Mikdashi took part in a discussion at the school titled "Palestine is a Feminist and Queer Anti-Imperialist Abolition Struggle" with University of Illinois professor Nadine Naber on March 20. During the event, Mikdashi pushed back on the complaint that Palestinians and Hamas mistreat LGBTQ citizens, claiming that the assertion itself is a form of bigotry.

"So I've been at protests where I'm then told, 'Don't you know what Hamas would do to you, if you were in Palestine.' And we have to start naming this, actually, as homophobic," Mikdashi said, as Naber vocally agreed. "You cannot rehearse violence to queer people and be like, 'don't you know ... A, B, you would be...' in really excruciating detail. I think we have to actually shift it."
"It's violence," an audience member said.

"It's homophobic. It's violent," Mikdashi agreed.

"Homophobic violence," Naber affirmed.

"And we have to move it from thinking only in terms of pinkwashing to actually understanding pinkwashing as a form of homophobia," Mikdashi said.

The Anti-Defamation League describes pinkwashing in this context as "used by anti-Israel activists to characterize positive aspects or characteristics of Israeli society – like the promotion of LGBTQ+ rights ... as a premeditated Israeli strategy to deflect attention from what they argue is Israel's persecution of the Palestinians."

Naber also alleged that the concept was based on a "racist assumption" that Arab culture is "hyper-misogynist" and rooted in "backwards or savage concepts." She later insisted that Israel is guilty of sexual assault based on its colonialist founding.

"ndeed the practices of rape and sexual assault that have been well-documented during the founding of Israel and continued today are not an exception or a secondary impact of colonial violence but are part of the settler colonial White supremacist logics and practices of Israel that conflate colonized women with the land and nature and assume that therefore to dominate the land necessitates dominating Palestinian women's bodies and their reproductive capacities from 1948 until today," Naber said.

She further added that there needs to be more organization of queer and trans people who are dealing with Zionism.

"We're going to need our organizing to center queer and trans people not only because they are especially vulnerable to colonial violence and the racism and the doxxing, but they also embody exceptionally nuanced wisdom about Zionism because they are living it in all its complexity," Naber said.

Fox News Digital reached out to Rutgers University, Mikdashi and Naber for a comment.

Mikdashi and Naber's comments follow months of people mocking and criticizing the concept of "Queers for Palestine" while its proponents ignore the ongoing persecution and execution of LGBTQ people in Palestinian society.

While their comments frequently attacked Israel as guilty of normalizing sexual assaults and rape against Palestinian women, the professors did not acknowledge a February report from the Association of Rape Crisis Centers of Israel (ARCCI) that reiterated that Hamas committed "sadistic practices" and violent rape against several people during the initial Oct. 7 attack.

"From the testimonies and information provided, it emerges that the sexual assaults committed in the Oct. 7 attack and thereafter were carried out systematically and deliberately," the report concluded.

[grumbler]

Where are those numbers from? Russia has killed more in Mariupol alone.

The numbers are from the Ukrainian government via the UN.  There are 11,000 or so they list as missing in Mariupol, and some of them are certainly dead, but even if they are all dead, they still don't match the Israeli numbers.

[grumbler]

You guys are describing the need for Israel to put artificial limits on utilising their military power. If their war is justified (as in, they need to destroy the source of mortal danger to their citizens from Gaza) and they do limit themselves in pursuing the successful conclusion of the war, they prioritise civilians of the opposing side over their own.

If we argue that no, Israel has no right in this case to prioritise the safety of its own citizens over others' then why are we saying that they are justified to use some military force but not all? If it is not justified to sacrifice, say, 1000 enemy(-controlled) civilians as collateral damage, why is it justified to sacrifice 1?

Well, a couple of medium-sized nukes would do the job for sure, if you think that any restraint at all on killing civilians is "artificial."

The principal in international law is that force must be proportionate and that collateral damage and deaths should be avoided as far as possible.  Are those limits "artificial?"  Sure.  But all law is "artificial."

[Josquius]

If I don't have a problem with Israel then I'm aligned with Hamas?

If you don't have a problem with murder then you've a lot in common with Hamas.

What makes you say this kind of stuff?    Josquius, whenever I press you for details on something like this you weasel out of it.

No weaseling at all. I just don't fit into the politics as sports Israel supporters vs Hamas supporters pattern you'd like to see.
I recognise the world is far more complicated than this simple black and white picture and that a shit tonne of innocents are being killed with no obvious end in sight.

Oh it's complicated, it can't be quantified!  Numbers are far-right! 

Believing the world works on simple black and white rules is the typical way authoritarian right people view the world.

No, what you are talking about is a feeling.  It feels like Israel has gone too far.  Here is way to present the information that makes you feel better.

You say "feeling", the more scientific terms would be "psychology" and "Political science".

A Middle Eastern state kills 30,000 far-right individuals.  Now, doesn't that feel better?

The typical mindset of toddlers does have a lot in common with the far right. But no. Pointing this out doesn't make me feel any better about them being slaughtered.

Different people and groups have different views on what an "acceptable" number of civilian casualties for Israel to inflict was (even there we aren't talking about simple numbers you can pin on a board, there's a tonne of other factors around it)  but where they've got to now is so far beyond the pale even US support isnt as bluntly unconditional as it once was.
If you don't have a bit of an issue with some of the shit Israel has got up to lately, you don't question just a little the braindead endless campaign against civilian areas with no end in sight, then you're solidly aligned with Hamas and Co as far as being a decent human being goes.

Different people have different views on acceptable civilian casualties but yours is the right one.

Not close to what I said at all.
Different people will have different ideas but with where Israel is now basically everyone, even their usually wilfully blind allies, agree they've gone too far.

[crazy canuck]

You guys are describing the need for Israel to put artificial limits on utilising their military power. If their war is justified (as in, they need to destroy the source of mortal danger to their citizens from Gaza) and they do limit themselves in pursuing the successful conclusion of the war, they prioritise civilians of the opposing side over their own.

If we argue that no, Israel has no right in this case to prioritise the safety of its own citizens over others' then why are we saying that they are justified to use some military force but not all? If it is not justified to sacrifice, say, 1000 enemy(-controlled) civilians as collateral damage, why is it justified to sacrifice 1?

It's not us guys. And it's not artificial limits.   International law actually does exist.  It does actually put limits on what a military can do.

[crazy canuck]

You guys are describing the need for Israel to put artificial limits on utilising their military power. If their war is justified (as in, they need to destroy the source of mortal danger to their citizens from Gaza) and they do limit themselves in pursuing the successful conclusion of the war, they prioritise civilians of the opposing side over their own.

If we argue that no, Israel has no right in this case to prioritise the safety of its own citizens over others' then why are we saying that they are justified to use some military force but not all? If it is not justified to sacrifice, say, 1000 enemy(-controlled) civilians as collateral damage, why is it justified to sacrifice 1?

Well, a couple of medium-sized nukes would do the job for sure, if you think that any restraint at all on killing civilians is "artificial."

The principal in international law is that force must be proportionate and that collateral damage and deaths should be avoided as far as possible.  Are those limits "artificial?"  Sure.  But all law is "artificial."

It's only artificial if you subscribe to the notion that there is something else that is natural. But the concept of natural law went out of vogue sometime ago.

[Valmy]

I guess I thought it was the expectation that armies in a war would avoid civilian casualties. Granted we are in a situation where there isn't really a Palestinian Army to do battle with but still I haven't seen too many discussions of the partisan warfare in WWII Yugoslavia and shrug at the Axis atrocities as "well that is just how war is naturally fought without all those stupid artificial limits."

[Razgovory]

I guess I thought it was the expectation that armies in a war would avoid civilian casualties. Granted we are in a situation where there isn't really a Palestinian Army to do battle with but still I haven't seen too many discussions of the partisan warfare in WWII Yugoslavia and shrug at the Axis atrocities as "well that is just how war is naturally fought without all those stupid artificial limits."

I think we let Axis soldiers off the hook on Yugoslavia because "that is just how war is naturally fought".

[Tamas]

Well we didn't let Axis soldiers off the hook (with exceptions), maybe legally but not morally; but we did let Allied forces off the hook be it Western terror bombing or to a lesser extent the Soviet rape-rampage through Germany and Hungary.

And do you know why (beside that it's the winning side)? Because it's been deemed necessary to win the war for the side that was defending itself/others in what the other side considered an existential/total war. Now, you are allowed to say that Israel is not defending, it is attacking. But in that case, again, what grounds you or Israel have to get the scale out and start measuring "oh ok so Israel lost X lives so they can kill Y Palestinians, but most definitely not Y+1.  Why are they allowed to kill anyone if they are not defending themselves?

But if they ARE defending themselves, then it is against an enemy which stated they don't want the state of Israel to exist, ergo for them it is total war, they simply do not (yet) have the means to wage it on a scale that could fit their ambitions, but the ambition is most certainly there, they did showcase that.

So if we are saying that Israel is rightfully defending against an enemy that has total elimination of Israel as its ultimate objective, then why are we denying them the right to employ the same tools that our countries employed when facing enemies who had the same (or, heck, milder) goals against us? Assuming they are employing the same tools because I think the only thing that can be said for certain at this point is that they do not care who is caught in their crossfire, which is is not exactly unusual when you consider a situation a battle in a war as opposed to some counter-insurgency police operation. Heck, my family knew people who got killed precisely like that.

[Zoupa]

Where are those numbers from? Russia has killed more in Mariupol alone.

The numbers are from the Ukrainian government via the UN.  There are 11,000 or so they list as missing in Mariupol, and some of them are certainly dead, but even if they are all dead, they still don't match the Israeli numbers.

You're either being obtuse on purpose for a reason I can't fathom or terribly ignorant of russia's was on Ukraine.

[Razgovory]

If I don't have a problem with Israel then I'm aligned with Hamas?

If you don't have a problem with murder then you've a lot in common with Hamas.

What makes you say this kind of stuff?    Josquius, whenever I press you for details on something like this you weasel out of it.

No weaseling at all. I just don't fit into the politics as sports Israel supporters vs Hamas supporters pattern you'd like to see.
I recognise the world is far more complicated than this simple black and white picture and that a shit tonne of innocents are being killed with no obvious end in sight.

Oh it's complicated, it can't be quantified!  Numbers are far-right! 

Believing the world works on simple black and white rules is the typical way authoritarian right people view the world.

No, what you are talking about is a feeling.  It feels like Israel has gone too far.  Here is way to present the information that makes you feel better.

You say "feeling", the more scientific terms would be "psychology" and "Political science".

A Middle Eastern state kills 30,000 far-right individuals.  Now, doesn't that feel better?

The typical mindset of toddlers does have a lot in common with the far right. But no. Pointing this out doesn't make me feel any better about them being slaughtered.

Different people and groups have different views on what an "acceptable" number of civilian casualties for Israel to inflict was (even there we aren't talking about simple numbers you can pin on a board, there's a tonne of other factors around it)  but where they've got to now is so far beyond the pale even US support isnt as bluntly unconditional as it once was.
If you don't have a bit of an issue with some of the shit Israel has got up to lately, you don't question just a little the braindead endless campaign against civilian areas with no end in sight, then you're solidly aligned with Hamas and Co as far as being a decent human being goes.

Different people have different views on acceptable civilian casualties but yours is the right one.

Not close to what I said at all.
Different people will have different ideas but with where Israel is now basically everyone, even their usually wilfully blind allies, agree they've gone too far.

[chipwich]

It's the 14 anniversary of the Lettow post!

[viper37]

If you keep ignoring the consequences it is either a deliberate policy to kill civilians or it shows you are totally indifferent.

It can be both.  The two are not mutually exclusive.

We already know Israel considers Palestinians lives to be worthless.

Anyone attempting to help a Palestinian also forfeit its life.  We see IDF snipers shooting anyone who tries to help someone injured during the conflicts.

We have seen numerous casualties among aid workers.

We do not know for certain what is Israel's stance about aid workers helping the Palestinians.  We know they reject the claim of neutrality by UNRWA because of a few incidents.  While they still claim their own innocence after thousands of incidents.

What we know for certain is that this government considers anyone helping an injured Palestinian to be a terrorist and they will strike them down.  We have it on video, we have the official policy.

From there, what do you infer about Israel's actions?

[DGuller]

One of the differences between the Ukraine war and the Gaza war is that civilians are directly targeted in the Ukraine war.  It seems to be a Russian strategy to force Ukraine to defend all its assets, not just its military assets, from bombardment.  Israel is not doing that, because for one their enemy is not exactly the kind to compromise their military assets to protect their civilians.  They're actually fond of doing the reverse.