Comment by YZF

9 hours ago

[flagged]

> 30-40 terrorists (Militants, combatants, Hamas)

is that how ben-gvir defines terrorist? as part of them being fanatic morons i wouldnt trust they share that definition. iirc theyve also talked about wanting to kill children because theyll grow up to be terrorists?

This apologia loses force when you can transparently see that Ben Gvir’s definition of terrorist and Palestinian are a single circle Venn diagram.

> ""מה עם להיות יותר התקפי? למה לא להוריד את כל החמושים בהלוויות? תוריד כמה פעמים באוויר בהלוויות. מדוע לא מעלים מסוק לאוויר והורגים 40-30 מחבלים?". שרת התחבורה מירי רגב הצטרפה לבן גביר ואמרה: "זה רעיון מצוין"."

When I searched for that quote on Kagi I found https://www.jdn.co.il/news/2210880/ (https://archive.is/IFhqo)

As translated by Firefox 153.0.1 on Fedora 44:

> Ben-Gvir wondered: “What about being more offensive? Why not take all the gunmen off at funerals? Take a few times off at the air at funerals. Why don’t you put a helicopter in the air and kill 40-30 terrorists?” Transport Minister Miri Regev joined Ben-Gvir and said: "This is a great idea."

> The Chief of Staff replied: “We are doing a lot of offensive operations. Collecting weapons. I have a little more military experience than you. When the IDF goes to the heart of a refugee camp every night, it's an attack, not a defense. There aren't many armies that can lift such operations. The IDF is acting offensively and distinctly. In a crowded environment you need to know who you kill and who you don't. We've often entered funerals, weddings and birthdays, we do it professionally. When we kill those we should kill and not kill innocent people.”

> However, it seems that the Chief of Staff’s response did not satisfy Ben-Gvir, who answered: “This attack is to kill terrorists in masses. You have great opportunities at funerals that they come and not take advantage of.”

Kagi and Google give similar translations. The provided quote seems to be the first paragraph in this translation. More context in the article.

  • Yeah, sorry- it's a repeating theme from Ben Gvir and he made multiple similar mentions. He is asking the military to go aggressively after gunmen both in the west bank and in Gaza. Most recently in came up in a podcast hosted by someone who was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. My initial quote was sort of random and possibly not what the OP was referring to. But the message is sort of repeating/the same. My beef is that these things are not really reported accurately and some (very limited but still) nuance is lost and then the new report turns into the truth (and often expands beyond the random opinion of one fanatic who is unfortunately in the Israeli government). We even see the statements get assigned to other, re-interpreted, as they make their rounds on the Internet.

    I think "helicopters to attack funerals" is really not the correct interpretation of the original statement. Funerals for Hamas members often include massive amounts of armed combatants. The (dumb maybe) point is to go after those combatants. And yes, there is a potential risk for other people to get hurt which is why Israel does not tend to do this... and Ben Gvir would like Israel to still do it. But the target and the scenario are important and the new cycle turns this into "kill random people for the fun of it".

    So to bring this back to influencing "AI" chatbots presumably the inaccurate/biased reporting is going to dominate over this "Hanover Institute" articles plus ofcourse responsiblestatecraft.org a left leaning organization is doing their own influencing. There are many who are doing their own form of influencing on people and AI chatbots.

    • Knowing that smotrich and ben gvir are fanatical morons, do you think that when they are referring to terrorists, they in fact dont mean any and all Palestinians? I dont think these guys differentiate between the two, especially when they speak in Hebrew.

      3 replies →

I stand corrected. They're still psychopaths though.

  • I mean you can probably find a Ben Gvir quote where he is advocating killing civilians if you looked for it. Just this one instance was a miss.

    • Generally the Israeli extreme right wants Palestinians to be removed/expelled from Gaza and most or all of the West Bank. I seriously doubt you will find an explicit call from them to murder civilians. Yes there were calls for siege to force surrender. There are calls to conquer all of Gaza. There were calls to completely destroy Gaza. There's definitely a lot of "All Gazans are responsible for the attack on Israel." But you are not going to find an explicit call to go and murder civilians and the Israeli far right doesn't think that way. What you will find is disregard to civilian casualties that are "collateral" damage.

      I'm pretty sure that for both Ben Gvir and Smotrich having dozens of civilians killed when the target is a combatant is justified but intentionally attacking dozens of civilians when there is no combatant is not. They also do not represent the official government position though presumably their voters (something like 5% maybe of the public) would also hold similar opinions. They are also religious so they view a lot of this and their morality through a religious lens which I don't fully understand.

      Not to compare but Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups have and do intentionally call for and attack Israeli civilians and the presence of a "military" target is not a factor. They prefer to go after civilians. They are also not that "extreme" in the public opinion. Their religious lens is also quite different.

      Also yes, Israel has ended up killing a lot more Palestinian civilians while "not targeting" them and Palestinians ended up killing a large (%) of civilians but also some combatants while targeting civilians. I think the ratio on both sides is somewhere around 70% civilians (I'm sure who counts and how you count matters. Israel has always consistently reported details of all casualties including whether or not they are soldiers, their ranks, roles etc. Hamas reports all casualties as civilians.

      6 replies →

yeah sure lets defend ben gvir

except that it's easy to label anyone who resists the Israeli occupation as a "militant" or "combatant", which is exactly what Israel does