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The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

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Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#391

Post by defrost »

C6JEsQeQa5fCjE wrote: post #388
orionsbelt wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the U.S. entering WW2 after Pearl Harbor just systematic barbarism in retribution?

Honest question — how else would you describe dropping a nuclear bomb each on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cities full of civilians, causing "between 129,000 and 226,000" deaths (source: Wikipedia)? Those were not military targets.

Honest contextual answer:

.. a rush job to test two different designs for a new weapon, snuck in before the very same cities were destroyed much more cheaply with conventional heavy explosives and incideriaries, just as 72 Japanese cities had already been destroyed.

That answer because you asked about the nuclear bombs rather than the total destruction of complete cities in the European and Japanese theatres.

You can compare the death toll from the Tokyo firebombings to that in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, you can look up the names of the other 71 cities destroyed and you can find the full list of planned targets (now long forgotten save for H & N) in the archives.

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#392

Post by TheChaplain »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #218
FireBeyond wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, if Gazan citizens learn the lessons of their mistakes, they still have a future. Mistakes? To be clear, before I continue further: Hamas is a terrorist organization. Hamas also has a lot of support within Palestine. Now then, scenario 1) how, realistically, do you propose that the regular non-Hamas supporting Palestinian works to eradicate Hamas? Hamas have arms. (Let's not also forget how hard right Israel…

> how do you prevent legions of new Hamas supporters being 'born' every day? Fully open the border with Egypt and provide documents usable internationally. Then many educated Gazans would happily leave for better opportunities elsewhere. It would make a dent large enough in Gazans’ demographics that Hamas would not longer be able to extract the same level of material support from the civilian population and camouflag…

> Fully open the border with Egypt

Israel haven't closed the border, Egypt did.

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#394

Post by [deleted] »

TheChaplain wrote: post #392
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how do you prevent legions of new Hamas supporters being 'born' every day? Fully open the border with Egypt and provide documents usable internationally. Then many educated Gazans would happily leave for better opportunities elsewhere. It would make a dent large enough in Gazans’ demographics that Hamas would not longer be able to extract the same level of material support from the civilian population and camouflag…

> Fully open the border with Egypt Israel haven't closed the border, Egypt did.

[deleted]

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#395

Post by edanm »

kingofpandora wrote: post #349
invalidname wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also included offices for the Hamas and was a symbol of its power. That was the main motivation for removing it.

Remember that an advisor to Natanyahu tweeted that the Al-Arabi Hospital was bombed by Israel because it was being used by Hamas. No, I'm not saying that the hospital was actually bombed by Israel; I'm saying that everything that Israel bombs is labelled with the "used by Hamas" tag as justification for what this really is. No one actually believes that all or even most of the buildings destroyed in this campaign was…

> No one actually believes that all or even most of the buildings destroyed in this campaign was "used by Hamas" if you are being honest with yourself. It's obviously collective punishment and revenge with a little bit of show ("we dropped leaflets" or "we sent warnings by SMS") for those who need it in order to go to bed at night.

Sorry, no. I don't believe that.

Granted, I'm Israeli, and have far more trust in the Israeli public and soldiers than most people in the world. But it really is true that Hamas uses human shields. It really is true that they place bases in places like hospitals.

And it also is really true that many, hopefully most Israelis, wouldn't comply with an order to bomb a building only to kill civilians with no military value.

I understand why that might be a statement that outsiders wouldn't trust. And I'm sure there have been plenty of mistakes and even many times where people did do the wrong thing, like in every conflict in the world. I just don't think that as a matter of policy, Israel is bombing buildings with no military reason.

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#396

Post by edanm »

jacquesm wrote: post #58
bhouston wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the horrendous Hamas attacks of October 7 a portion of the Israeli public sort of lost it and have outright called for retribution. I worry that this indiscriminate bombing campaign combined with a near complete blockade of food, electricity, water of the last two weeks is reflective of that. Now with a lack of communication, I worry about Palestinians. You can never be sure what will happen, but the ingredient…

> You can never be sure what will happen, but the ingredients for something really bad are all here. Something really bad has been happening there for the last decades, but it's so messed up and mixed up in past mistakes, revenge and religion that there is no more ability to reason with either side. What really galls me is that we were so close to finally solving this and then Rabin was murdered (by his own side, go…

> and then Rabin was murdered (by his own side, go figure)

I don't think you can really call the lunatic who killed Rabin (or worse, the lunatics that urged him on and enabled him) part of Rabin's side.

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#399

Post by edanm »

culi wrote: post #65
bhouston wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the horrendous Hamas attacks of October 7 a portion of the Israeli public sort of lost it and have outright called for retribution. I worry that this indiscriminate bombing campaign combined with a near complete blockade of food, electricity, water of the last two weeks is reflective of that. Now with a lack of communication, I worry about Palestinians. You can never be sure what will happen, but the ingredient…

> have outright called for retribution When Israel invaded Gaza in 2014 they killed 2,310 people. 70% were civilians. In return they lost only 67 soldiers. They also destroyed 7-10k homes and damaged 87k other homes. Between 2005-2008, 1,754 Palestinians and 117 Israelis have lost their lives due to the ongoing occupation. Between 2008-2023 2,329 more Palestinians and 308 more Israeli people lost their lives. The vas…

> When Israel invaded Gaza in 2014 they killed 2,310 people. 70% were civilians. In return they lost only 67 soldiers. They also destroyed 7-10k homes and damaged 87k other homes.

You say "in return" 67 soldiers died. That's not how any of this works. In conflict, you try to kill as many of the enemy soldiers as you can, while getting the least amount of death on your side as possible. You're not trading some number of kills until everyone is even.

More Palestinian civilians die because the Israeli military is far stronger than the Palestinian's "soldiers", and because Hamas uses human shields.

> Now in the span of just a few days Israel has killed over 7k more Palestinians. This isn't "retribution". This is an ongoing genocide

Please, I've asked this of many people - in what sense is this a genocide? Provide some definition of genocide that this falls under. There is none, because this isn't a genocide. Israel's goal is not the eradication of Palestinians. It never has been. The way we know this is that the Palestinian population has basically doubled in the last 50 years.

And despite the terrible, terrible civilian cost on the Palestinian side (which is horrible, and which any decent person should be appalled at), the amount of dead in Palestine is basically a tiny blip compared to any other conflict in the world, including several going on right now.

Any dead civilian is too much, but the amount of dead in Palestine is just the opposite of indicating a genocide.

But like I asked, if you have a different way of thinking about this, please, tell me what you mean when you say there's an ongoing genocide.

Re: The destruction of Gaza's internet is complete

#400

Post by edanm »

C6JEsQeQa5fCjE wrote: post #388
orionsbelt wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the U.S. entering WW2 after Pearl Harbor just systematic barbarism in retribution?

Honest question — how else would you describe dropping a nuclear bomb each on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cities full of civilians, causing "between 129,000 and 226,000" deaths (source: Wikipedia)? Those were not military targets.

I'd say that in times of war, the goal is to win. The war continuing longer would cause far more deaths than ending the war quickly. More importantly for the US, the war ending in victory is more important than basically any other consideration, given what would happen if they lost.

That doesn't mean dropping those bombs was the right thing to do, neither militarily or morally. But at the end of the day, that's what war is, and people thinking differnetly is why Germany was able to conquery several countries in WW2 and trigger a war that caused 50million deaths.

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