(Comment 1 of 2)

It’s critical we work through this because I see no discernible difference between:

• Accepting that executing 3-4 civilians for every 1 Hamas target is okay (which is the ongoing trend).

• And leveling a building knowing civilians are inside to eliminate an alleged Hamas target. (again at a 3-4:1 ratio).

Fundamentally zero difference. If you’re justifying the latter but not the former, then I highly encourage you to truly reflect on this for a little longer, for this is the heart of what I see is your cognitive dissonance. (a) In both instances, there is a willingness to execute civilians — whether that’s pulling the trigger behind their heads, or releasing the payload of a large bomb from above them. Either way, the calculus was made that their lives are worth trading. The only thing that changes is how visceral and close the action is. The calculation was always there (and further below I’ll respond to your other point with a source to provide evidence of this).

When Israel begins targeting civilians simply for the sake of killing civilians. Like Hamas does.

So to be clear: You’re okay with plausible deniability behind them claiming they’re NOT going out of their way to kill civilians, but are rather being so reckless that they are killing civilians in great droves either way? That is, if the number of civilian deaths incurred remained the same, but instead of them going, “oops we dropped a JDAM sorry we tried!” they went, “yeah we’re going to kill as many as we feel like” — the former is perfectly A-Okay to you, but the latter is not… Even though the amount of actual innocent human suffering remains identical? It’s merely whether the murderer tried is how you distinguish good from evil?

This is a false dilemma. You can’t put a precise number on how many civilians should be allowed to die vs. how many Hamas fighters need to die, when it isn’t even clear how many of them are civilians and how many are Hamas fighters.

Per AP and Reuters in corroboration with the UN and WHO — historically, the Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers have been quite reliable. But why can’t you put a precise number?

Another confounding factor is the fact that Hamas is actively using its civilian population as a human shield. If they’re allowed to continue doing this, then they’ll just be able to kill every Jew with impunity by strapping babies to themselves, walking through Jerusalem, and shooting anyone they see. Quite

Will they? We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Pretty sure you’re putting the cart before the horse, considering, you know that would necessitate them to find a way over the border and iron dome that I originally provided as the easy solution to this problem. At this rate, it seems far more likely that Israel is going to commit genocide on Palestinians than the other way around, don’t you think? All the while claiming to be the good guys.

Obviously Every measure should be taken to minimize civilian casualties, which Israel has been doing by warning people before the bombs fall and giving them a chance to evacuate.

Is every measure being taken? Because it doesn’t seem that way. After all as I’ve pointed out they’ve killed Humanitarian aid convoys, bombed refugee camps, killed their own hostages no less. In fact, it’s the worst conflict in history for humanitarian aid workers and that’s largely due to Israel. Forget the contradictory information for where the civilians are supposed to go, the miscommunication breakdown and the unfeasible logistics of moving people who are on the brink of famine and under disease to move from one side to another — all the while humanitarian aid is restricted in the first place.

I mean much of the world is beginning to turn against Israel. At its core, Bibi is a far right wing nationalist little different than the neoconservative far-right nationalist Bush administration who invaded Iraq and little different than the far-right nationalist government of Putin. Ultimately, this is an exploitable crisis for (what went ignored in your post) Bibi to escape active criminal charges as he maintains immunity in his position of power. You seem intelligent but I’m astonished that you cannot see this.

At this point, a nuke is uncalled for.

I mean why not? Since you seem to believe that ends justify the means and that you’re unwilling to commit to a ratio of civilians to Hamas target deaths, why not just be done with it? Evidently there IS some point in your mind that you seem to begin to question the morality and I wonder why bombing mosques and apartment buildings and so forth with an alleged (albeit rarely proven) Hamas target inside, all the while people like the father who loses his wife and 3-day-old newborn twins as he’s registering their births must suffer — is okay. But after all, like you said using your logic, isn’t nuking Gaza simply an extension of the same logic you’re already using for their blatantly indiscriminate use of large bombs in densely-populated areas with obvious civilian casualties worse than any recent conflict, including what Putin is doing in Ukraine? After all, can’t your conscience be assuaged by your own logic in saying, “Hey, the nuke was necessary; after all, Israel wasn’t going out of their way to target civilians; rather Gaza was simply a collective human shield for Hamas that we simply could not ignore!” Herein lies another instance of what I view as cognitive dissonance in your defense of Israel’s alleged war crimes (as per the ICC who also has charges against Sinwar and Putin for the record).

As far as I know, the Israeli military is not just going “Hey, let’s kill a bunch of civilians today, it’ll be great.”

Yeah… About that. Here IDF whistle-blowers (multiple) report specific targeting of civilian infrastructure and ignoring collateral damage asessments.

But if the Israeli government allows Hamas to kill Israeli civilians with no retaliation whatsoever, then they’re going to do just that, until there are no more Jews left to complain about the genocidal government next door.

When have Jews or Israel been under any sort of threat like that that isn’t profoundly exacerbated by the actions of Netanyahu as of recent? What I mean is that now you’ve only fueled the fire of Lebanon and Iran and created the next generation of pawns to do their bidding. You’ve only sowed the seeds of resentment; and congratulations, you destroyed civilian infrastructure… That does nothing in terms of permitting Hamas to regroup. It just ensures that civilians are radicalized in greater numbers. Remember, we Americans tried this in Afghanistan and Iraq only to let Taliban take over and ISIS to come out of Al Qaeda. You should learn from the mistakes of Americans that this is utterly failed strategy, not to mention your extremely low value for the alleged human shields that Hamas is using (though in fairness, Bibi has shown he doesn’t even care about the Israeli hostages all that much either).

But if Hamas holds the children in one hand and spraying bullets from a rifle in the other, then it is ultimately Hamas’s fault if the children get hit with return fire.

That’s quite not happening when they’re bombing these densely-populated buildings, though. Hamas bullets cannot reach Israel from Gaza; their rockets can be shot down as they routinely are. This is falsely analogous.

Nobody said anything about, “Let jews die.” I simply said, "1) Listen to your intelligence reports 2) Secure your 25-mile border, and 3) Double your Iron Dome defense system. 4) Ditch the far-right war criminal leader and put someone competent who knows how to actually negotiate in good fait. Doing this, another October 7th is quite likely impossible.

Hamas didn’t attack by tunnels. There are also incredibly easy methods of detecting underground tunnel networks via sonar systems that are already employed around the world. I’m giving you real, functional solutions to problems that don’t even exist yet. Israel is resourceful; they could certainly do this.

That was a bad snap decision made out in the field, not by Bibi.

Who put those soldiers on the front-line in a situation where that was a risk of that occurring? Who sent those IDF soldiers to attempt a high risk operation where it was obviously a risk that Hamas would execute hostages? Who chose to do that instead of agree to the ceasefire brokered by other middle east nations and the US? The buck stops with Bibi as leader, and I frankly find it wild that you’re trying to deflect responsibility.

No ceasefire with Hamas has ever been permanent.

This one could’ve been. We’ll never know.

Places with no radicalization are places who have agency, prosperity, and space to breath and prosper in the manner of their choosing. Gaza under routine territorial annexation, sieges has never had this. Israel hasn’t even been able to support a 2 state solution, after all.

(Comment 2 of 2)

1. Just as to whether the scale of the Israeli response was unjustified — No.

2. Yes. There is a shared responsibility between the hostage taker and the person willing to shoot the hostage(s) alongside the hostage-taker. To me it speaks more of the “good guy,” who is so willing to level the hostages than it even does the terrorist for whom we already know lacks moral values. To me it (a) makes zero logical sense in stifling radicalization in the long-term, and (b) it undermines a fundamental western philosophy that actually underscores our entire judicial philosophy: That “it is better that 10 guilty persons go free than 1 innocent person be imprisoned.” It’s the same reason the US negotiated with Russia to free innocent people in exchange for giving them back scum. The value of our innocent people is greater than their scum. Naturally, I would respect Israel more if they actually cared about civilians of all types a little bit more as opposed to justifying what is, on paper, far worse than the original attack.

3. I’m not sure a ratio, but I’ll say up to but not exceeding 1,200 total or whatever the official toll of October 7th was. As Robert McNamara once said, “Proportionality should be a guideline to war.”

4. Ideally, none.

5. There is no real government of Gaza; and there is no national identity. There is a gang and that gang like a pimp offers protection to the Goliath next door who is equally no friend but rather a right-wing nationalist state with an obvious interest in creeping territorial annexation that can be tracked going back decades. Both sides of shown an unwillingness to compromise ultimately, which again dates back to the assassination of Israel’s former prime minister. My direct answer: Studying how radicalization occurs; why some humans radicalize and others do not. The answer isn’t all that difficult in my view.

6. I’m not sure I buy the premise; there were countless times where IDF has murdered and yes, even raped in between truces; established blockades and invoked clear provocations in their own right.

7. To make this analogy work, you need to move these people across the border and into the streets of Israel. For that to happen, they need to get through a heavily-defended border, and yes, if that’s going to happen, then sure. But I’ll tell you what’s really happening: You’re leaving your home and deciding to wander into an adjacent city of people holed up in their own homes with babies on them and deciding, “Okay we’ll just blow you up where you are even though you are not clear and present danger to the civilians of OUR city — nor ever would be if we actually took adequate measures to secure the bridge to our city properly.And in fact, we don’t even fully know for sure IF there is a target in this area but we’re just going to level it on a lead anyway.” Quite a bit different, no? I’m going to also take a wild guess and say that Hamas isn’t going so far as to do that and is simply hiding wherever they possibly can because Gaza isn’t even that big, and that if they were strapping babies to themselves then they probably would face quite a bit of backlash even from those whom they try to oppress.

8. Russia basically is doing this with their mobilization and obvious attempts to purge ethnic minorities and other undesireables inside Russia. Unfortunately Ukraine has no choice given the the threat. But again, notice the difference in that Ukraine is legitimately playing defense.

I’ll conclude with a reiteration of my original point: that in being Pro-Civilian, I cannot in good conscience believe that Israel is making a concerted effort to reduce civilian casualties; nor can I see how this will ever prevent further radicalization in the future without invoking genocide itself. The amount of civilian murders by Israel in their calculations to kill Hamas is on a scale that Hamas could not achieve for 50 or even 100 years. And within that time frame, I’m certain we could’ve figured out a better solution.