Comment by kelthuzad
3 days ago
> It’s horrible. But that’s war.
Was the holocaust just war? Was the Warsaw ghetto uprising a war against Germany? It takes 2 armies to have a war, not a colonized people locked up in an open air prison fighting against a sophisticated army, armed by one of the world's superpower, in flip flops while the colonizing army can't even bother to focus on the fighters and so just drops 2000 pound bunker bombs on entire families over and over again for 15 months straight.
South Africa has compiled dozens of pages documenting explicitly genocidal intent from high ranking israeli officials for its ICC case.
"UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war"
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-c...
> Was the holocaust just war? Was the Warsaw ghetto uprising a war against Germany?
Not a fan of creating caste systems of victimhood. But in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, how many German civilians were killed?
And I never said "just" war. I said it's war. Russia is killing children [1]. We've killed children [2]. There are multiple live conflicts in which children are being targeted and killed [3]. This isn't okay. My point is we haven't found a way to do modern war without this sort of collateral damage.
> a colonized people locked up in an open air prison fighting against a sophisticated army, armed by one of the world's superpower
Hamas is armed by Iran. Not a superpower, but certainly a capable regional power.
Apartheid. Gandhi. Hell, M. L. K. It's a lot harder to claim the moral ground when both sides are committing war crimes.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/08/europe/ukraine-russian-strike...
[2] https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/27...
[2] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/least-21-children-repo...
> how many German civilians were killed?
You’re saying that if they had the capacity to bomb Berlin and other German cities they would have decided not to do that?
> You’re saying that if they had the capacity to bomb Berlin and other German cities they would have decided not to do that?
No, I'm saying if they had the capacity to bomb Berlin--and did--the moral case wouldn't be so clear cut.
I'm also saying that if they had the capacity to bomb Berlin, they would have been well advised to focus first on strategic military or final solution targets.
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>But in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, how many German civilians were killed?
You mean like the 25000 Nazi civilians which the UK and US brutally murdered in Dresden? The civilians were the explicit target of the Allied bombings. Or do you mean like the Palestinian civilians, women and children, whom Zionists brutally murdered in the Nakba and Tantura with its mass graves to establish their apartheid state?
>And I never said "just" war. I said it's war. Russia is killing children [1]. We've killed children [2]. There are multiple live conflicts in which children are being targeted and killed [3]. This isn't okay. My point is we haven't found a way to do modern war without this sort of collateral damage.
It's not collateral damage, Israel intentionally targets civilians, they are not collateral damage, they are the target: "The Biden administration has quietly continued to supply arms to Israel. Last week, however, President Joe Biden publicly acknowledged that Israel was losing international legitimacy for what he called its “indiscriminate bombing."[1], "Israel/OPT: New evidence of unlawful Israeli attacks in Gaza causing mass civilian casualties amid real risk of genocide"[2] "Damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza"[3]
This is only a fraction of the clear evidence proving that Israel targets civilians intentionally and most of these are from months ago. Since then, Israel has become even more brazen in their targeted murder of civilians and entire families[3] and extermination of entire bloodlines.
>Hamas is armed by Iran. Not a superpower, but certainly a capable regional power.
That's a laughable comparison and I should have not even dignified it with a response. There is a world of difference between receiving a bunch of shitty rpgs and receiving $100+ Billion dollars, F-35 fighter jets and 2000 pound bunker buster bombs that wipe out entire families.
>Apartheid. Gandhi. Hell, M. L. K. It's a lot harder to claim the moral ground when both sides are committing war crimes.
Both siding an almost century old brutal colonial occupation and a 15 Month long Genocide is extremely absurd. Jews who took revenge on Nazi civilians were not judged by it because people with common sense knew the full context and trying to "both sides" that would have been seen as absurd and as Nazi apologia. The Gaza prison break was the first time in Palestinian history where Israel has tasted a fraction of its own medicine and they couldn't handle that and whipped themselves into a genocidal frenzy and by that shown the world their real face without its diplomatic hasbara mask.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/israels-military-campaign...
[2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/israel-opt-ne...
[3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evide...
> You mean like the 25000 Nazi civilians which the UK and US brutally murdered in Dresden? The civilians were the explicit target of the Allied bombings.
Not the Holocaust or Warsaw Uprising?
And there is recognition that strategic (conventional) bombing of civilians in WWII was (a) useless and (b) cruel.
> only a fraction of the clear evidence proving that Israel targets civilians intentionally
"Indiscriminate bombing," "mass civilian casualties," "risk of genocide" (emphasis mine), and "wip[ing] out entire families" are not evidence of "target[ing] civilians intentionally." And as I said, even if they are, that's something every great power has done when it went to war in the last half century.
Again, that doesn't make it okay. It just makes it deeply precedented. You (and I) have a problem with war per se.
> a world of difference between receiving a bunch of shitty rpgs and receiving $100+ Billion dollars
Hamas has received something like $20bn of aid from Iran. That's roughly what the U.S. has provided Israel in the last few years. Of course Israel is a superior fighting force to Hamas. But Hamas wasn't defenceless. (It was still allegedly firing rockets this week.)
There are a set of evil-slash-stupid people in this story. Hamas' leadership is among them. If you're going to cite South Africa and the ICC, you can't clip out the parts that you don't like without either compromising yourself or the source (the ICC).
> Both siding an almost century old brutal colonial occupation and a 15 Month long Genocide is extremely absurd
Excusing one side's war crimes undermines the argument. Like, one of Netanyahu's racists could construct a similar argument about the millenia-old persecution of the Jews and Hamas' explicit aim of not only destroying Israel but exterminating Jews. If war crimes being criminal depends so deeply on context, they're no longer open-and-shut cases that can be judged from afar.
> Jews who took revenge on Nazi civilians were not judged by it
There was no armed-resistance equivalent to Hamas among the Jews.
A better example might be found among the Native Americans. (Or La Résistance.) Even there, the practical lesson is attacking civilians at best doesn't work. (At worst, it galvanises the population against you.)
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