Comment by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE
2 years ago
I never understood why the argument that only war can bring hostages back, or that it is the most reliable way, was allowed to be propagated in public for so long.
> but I imagine the residents of kibbutz be'eri and the 100+ hostages still held in Gaza would disagree that Isreal is fighting for "basically no reason."
On the contrary, I think that those exact people would agree the most. Do you think that they do not wish that Israel did a hostage exchange instead of starving and bombing them together with their captors? To bring the "low hanging fruit" example, do you think that the three hostages who were waving white flags nearly entirely naked, and who were subsequently murdered by the IDF; do you think that they or their families prefer(preferred) this devastation that lead to their deaths instead of a simple hostage exchange?
What do you think would happen if IDF killed most of Hamas and had their last few forces cornered with no escape, and were getting close to them? Do you think the hostages would not be killed by either their captors or by IDF as collateral damage in such a scenario?
Claims that the systematic destruction of Gaza and genocide(-lite?) serves the goal of bringing back the hostages is such an obvious cover for bloodthirst that it is honestly intellectually-insulting to keep reading it over and over again.
> the argument that only war can bring hostages back
The war has explicilty been about removing Hamas from power for a while now. To the degree there is opposition within Israel to the war, it's in the hostage-retrieval prerogative having been subsumed.
Its not even "lite" genocide...
In 1999 Yugoslavia killed ~12 thousand Albanians and displaced ~85 thousand more. Bill Clintons secretary of defense had no problem calling that genocide: "The appalling accounts of mass killing in Kosovo and the pictures of refugees fleeing Serb oppression for their lives makes it clear that this is a fight for justice over genocide.". This led NATO to drop bombs on Yugoslavia [0].
In this conflict Israel has killed ~31 thousand Palestinians and displaced ~2.3 million more [1]. For all its tough talk the Biden administration has responded by selling Israel jet planes [2].
I'm not saying bombing Yugoslavia was justified. But there is plenty of historical precedent to call this conflict genocide.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_invasion_of_the_Gaza_S...
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-administration...
From what I recall of Yugoslavia - Milosevic was rounding up civilians explicitly.
Here we have a war. You cannot compare the two, not to mention the 31k number being unhinged from any credible source.
I, at least, had sources. I tried looking evidence of this new fact about Yugoslavia you presented but could not find any.
It was called the Kosovo war. Why can we not compare the two? They seem VERY comparable to me.
But if Wikipedia and Al Jazeera are not good enough for you then you will see the following orgs also posted these numbers: NPR [0], BBC [1], NYTimes [2]. And if your worried those numbers are inflated there is an article in the Lancet that shows if anything it is the opposite [3].
[0]: https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ6Ny8_QViY
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/world/middleeast/gaza-dea...
[3]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
What is the war you talk of?
I have, from the UK, seem zero presence of any war in 2024.
Seen plenty of what looks like vile and indescrimate killing of random civilians by Israel.
Is the war the one that's killing multiple aid volunteers, or something else?
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