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How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

reuters.com

171–180 of 265 posts

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#171
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "team A did bad thing X" is an argument for anything, could I counter that team B did X too, and more? You're complaining that Hezbollah kills civilians... So does the IDF. Now if you tell me that one is intentional and the other one isn't the I know you're not being honest, because there's plenty of evidence that the IDF is really casual about collateral damage.

> Now if you tell me that one is intentional and the other one isn't the I know you're not being honest, because there's plenty of evidence that the IDF is really casual about collateral damage. Casual about collateral damage and purposefully targeting civilians are different things.

Remember when Israel shot at that car with a family in it? Hind Rajab.

Or when they sniped that journalist and attacked her funeral, Shireen Abu Aqleh?

Or when they bombed the AP building in 2021 with no evidence.

Or when the IOF threw a baby in an oven in front of the father during the Deir Yassin massacre? Hussein al-Shareef and Abdul Rauf

Or when they bombed refugee camps? Or when they told people to evacuate south and then bombed the Rafah border crossing so they couldn't escape?

Or the Goldstone Report where the UN found that the IOF was forcing Palestinians at gun point to enter buildings first to make sure they're clear? https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g09/158/66/pdf/g09158... Page 22

Very demure, very mindful

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#172
post #58
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's the definition of a terror attack. The really bad part is how lauded the Mossad was for it's 'precision' by the western media. Geneva convention violations, random children killed because Hezbollah militant were shopping/walking nearby, really 'precise'... On the other hand killing only 5 children for two hundred opposants, and not at least twice as much is proof that Mossad is a hundred of time more preci…

A terror attack definitionally targets civilian noncombatants, deliberately.

Not necessarily. The attack on USS Cole is considered a terror attack despite its explicitly military target.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#173
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care about the moralizing in either direction. I don't care that Israel believes Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, I don't care that Hezbollah believes Israel is an illegitimate occupier. I don't care if Hezbollah felt justified in indiscriminately lobbing rockets at northern Israel. I don't care because it doesn't matter. They struck, Israel responded; they are near-peer military adversaries, and they a…

> There is no such thing as a right to military strikes without counterattacks. I'm not "moralizing" I'm citing the UN, and nobody is saying that ^ Israel is a colonist apartheid. It doesn't have a right to occupy Palestine and Palestine does have the right to fight back. It's not that Palestine can bomb and Israel can't, it's that Israel must dissolve. Israel has neither the right to bomb nor the right to exist. Pal…

>It doesn't have a right to occupy Palestine

So where is it supposed to go? Israelis go home back to Israel?

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#174
post #173
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no such thing as a right to military strikes without counterattacks. I'm not "moralizing" I'm citing the UN, and nobody is saying that ^ Israel is a colonist apartheid. It doesn't have a right to occupy Palestine and Palestine does have the right to fight back. It's not that Palestine can bomb and Israel can't, it's that Israel must dissolve. Israel has neither the right to bomb nor the right to exist. Pal…

>It doesn't have a right to occupy Palestine So where is it supposed to go? Israelis go home back to Israel?

Move it to Uganda. /s

But I answered this an hour ago. A one state solution does not mean the mass deportation of Jews. They should become equal citizens of Palestine.

And obviously the Israelis who stole Palestinian homes at gun point would have to return the property they stole.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#175
post #171
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now if you tell me that one is intentional and the other one isn't the I know you're not being honest, because there's plenty of evidence that the IDF is really casual about collateral damage. Casual about collateral damage and purposefully targeting civilians are different things.

Remember when Israel shot at that car with a family in it? Hind Rajab. Or when they sniped that journalist and attacked her funeral, Shireen Abu Aqleh? Or when they bombed the AP building in 2021 with no evidence. Or when the IOF threw a baby in an oven in front of the father during the Deir Yassin massacre? Hussein al-Shareef and Abdul Rauf Or when they bombed refugee camps? Or when they told people to evacuate sout…

Yes, you can make a list of terrible acts committed by almost any military, especially if you go back 76 years to before it was a state. It is very clear that some soldiers in the IDF, like in any army, have committed war crimes.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#176
post #163
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A two-state solution is a fever dream if the occupier is uninterested in it. We’ve seen that repeatedly for the past 75+ years in actions and literal words. So the question is, if you were the subjugated population, what would you do?

> A two-state solution is a fever dream if the occupier is uninterested in it. We’ve seen that repeatedly for the past 75+ years in actions and literal words. First, the Palestinian territories have not been under occupation for 75 years. Second, there was a real effort at arriving at a two state solution made by Israel. It's often debated who is "at fault" for no solution having been reached, but without rehashing i…

My understanding is that every major attempt at getting to a two-state solution has been encumbered by pre-conditions set by Israel that have made the negotiations a non-starter.

For example, any deal that would have Israel give back territories it has been occupying since 1967 has never even been on the table.

The Oslo accords, perhaps the most serious of these, were deeply unpopular on both sides.

Also, any and all attempts by Palestinians to get formal recognition in the UN have been repeatedly vetoed by the United States.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#177
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A two-state solution is a fever dream if the occupier is uninterested in it. We’ve seen that repeatedly for the past 75+ years in actions and literal words. So the question is, if you were the subjugated population, what would you do?

Find a way to leave, at any material cost.

That, perhaps, is the end goal.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#178
post #169
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Israel is a colonist apartheid. It is not a colonist by any standard definition. Apartheid - more complicated. Many people dispute this. I think it's plausible to make a case that there is an apartheid in the West Bank, though it's not completely obvious (mostly because the people there don't want to be under Israeli rule, they want their own government). > It's not that Palestine can bomb and Israel can't, it's th…

> It is not a colonist by any standard definition. Yes they are. It's true that before the British Mandate of Palestine the population of Syria Palaestina was 3-11% Jewish (Mizrahi Jews) but most of the Jewish population of Israel is not indigenous to that region of the world (like how the Ashkenazi Jews are from Europe and Eastern Russia). > Apartheid - more complicated. It isn't, Amnesty International and the Human…

> It's true that before the British Mandate of Palestine the population of Syria Palaestina was 3-11% Jewish (Mizrahi Jews) but most of the Jewish population of Israel is not indigenous to that region of the world (like how the Ashkenazi Jews are from Europe and Eastern Russia).

Firstly, Jews are originally indigenous to that part of the world, they were ethnically cleansed from that area by Rome. This is not even disputed.

Of course Palestinians are also indigenous to the land! Many of them more recently.

And of course, multiple generations have Israelis have now been born and lived their entire lives in that land.

But none of this really matters. The standard colonial pattern is of a country sending its population to colonize a new land. That is just emphatically not what happened. Israel was largely founded by refugees who were fleeing persecution, or by Jews ethnically cleansed from their homes. That is just not what most people are thinking of when thinking of colonialism.

Hence the standard outcome that happens in colonies is that the people leave and return to the land they are "from", which is just irrelevant here, because the children of refugees have nowhere else to "return" to.

> It isn't, Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch recognize it is Apartheid. As do Ireland and South Africa (countries who have both been victim to Colonist Apartheid violence).

Yes, and many groups disagree with this, including the US and EU iirc. Human Rights Watch in particular is a very problematic organization that has a lot of complaints against it of being biased against Israel.

That said, I'm pretty sure that what I said is consistent with what they say in their report - there's a plausible case for apartheid in the Occupied Territories. They think it has now crossed the line to being legally apartheid, others disagree. This is relevant for the OT but not the rest of Israel.

Israel has a lot of discrimination and other issues with its Israeli Arab population, but it's almost entirely not legal discrimination.

> Israel literally has a two tiered society, Israeli Arabs do not have the Right To Return like Jewish Israelis do.

That is actually a very untrue example. Right of Return is a right of citizenship, the fact that some people have a right of return and others don't is not a discrimination against existing citizens.

I don't have the right to become a British citizen, that doesn't mean Britain is discrimination against me. It is just doing what every state does - defining who its citizens are via some metric, usually by being born to parents who are citizens, though different states define this differently. Israel is doing similarly.

> 50% of Arab Israelis are under the poverty line because of wage discrimination and other factors.

Wage discrimination does not prove apartheid or any systemic discrimination.

Let's remember that Israeli Arabs can vote, can be any profession they want, a large percentage of the doctors in Israel are Arabs, there are Israeli-Arab supreme court judges, members of the Israeli Congress, etc.

> Nobody is asking for them to be deported. I mean obviously people like Yaakov Fauci would have to give back the houses they literally stole but a "1 state solution" does not require the deportation/killing of the Israelis.

That is exactly what Hamas is asking for. Deportation and/or killing of all Israeli-Jews.

A one state solution is a ridiculous idea that is not what anyone in the region wants, not what anyone who has ever seriously considered what to do in the region that has had any power has advocated, and would almost certainly lead to the death of one or both of the ethnic groups in the region.

Even if not, what country would ever agree to double its voting population with a population that is completely culturally different?

What do you tell Israeli members of the LGBT community, that it's totally ok to have a one state solution by adding 100% more voters that come from a society that wants to make homosexuality illegal? Do you think they should agree to that idea?

> Elsewhere in this thread I linked the Oslo Accords, I suggest you read about them, peace is possible.

Great! I'm in favor. Like any other serious solution, this process aimed to create two states for two people. As I said elsewhere, this process largely died, in my opinion, because sincere efforts of the Israelis were met with refusal to sign an actual deal from the Palestinians, and then met with violence and terror attacks.

And the last ~17 years have seen Israelis completely convinced that there is no partner for peace and never will be, while ignoring that Israel itself is causing the conditions for there being no partner for peace!

Both sides have to just accept the fundemantal reality - there are 7 millions Jews and 7 million Arabs on this land, neither is going anywhere, the only solution is to reach a peace agreement. This will not happen through violence, only through a negotiated deal.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#179
post #176
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A two-state solution is a fever dream if the occupier is uninterested in it. We’ve seen that repeatedly for the past 75+ years in actions and literal words. First, the Palestinian territories have not been under occupation for 75 years. Second, there was a real effort at arriving at a two state solution made by Israel. It's often debated who is "at fault" for no solution having been reached, but without rehashing i…

My understanding is that every major attempt at getting to a two-state solution has been encumbered by pre-conditions set by Israel that have made the negotiations a non-starter. For example, any deal that would have Israel give back territories it has been occupying since 1967 has never even been on the table. The Oslo accords, perhaps the most serious of these, were deeply unpopular on both sides. Also, any and all…

> My understanding is that every major attempt at getting to a two-state solution has been encumbered by pre-conditions set by Israel that have made the negotiations a non-starter.

I'm sorry, not sure how else to say this - you're simply wrong. Pretty much everyone involved in the negotiations at the time disagrees with this idea. Whether the "final" offer that Israel gave to the Palestinians was "enough" or not is of course a matter of some opinion, though many at the time, both Israelis and Americans, thought that they were given an incredibly generous offer. In any case, the Palestinians never came back with a counteroffer of what they would accept, so it's hard to say how close or far Israel was from the "minimum" that Palestinians would consider acceptable.

> For example, any deal that would have Israel give back territories it has been occupying since 1967 has never even been on the table.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Literally every deal is that the West Bank and Gaza become part of a Palestinian state, that's the territories that Israel has occupied since 1967. One other territory, the Sinai, was given back to Egypt as part of the peace deal with Egypt (and is, btw, 4x the size of all of Israel).

And the Palestinian authority, as part of Oslo, did get a limited sovereignity over parts of the West Bank. Israel also completely left Gaza in 2005, though it still had some control over it, and imposed a blockade when Hamas was elected (together with Egypt).

So again, I'm not sure what you mean - literally every deal starts with Israel giving the pre-1967 land to the Palestinians, with some land swaps for land that Israel prefers not to give (btw, you call it "giving back" the land, which is inaccurate - it was never the Palestinian's land, it was part of Jordan and Egypt when it was occupied).

> The Oslo accords, perhaps the most serious of these, were deeply unpopular on both sides.

They are probably deeply unpopular now, but I don't think they were deeply unpopular at the time on the Israeli side. Indeed Israel elected multiple people trying to pursue peace after the Oslo accords, and while none of them had overwhelming public support, they had enough support to form majority coalitions and actually try to negotiate.

They're unpopular now because the result of what to Israelis looks like serious attempts at achieving peace with the Palestinians, ended with violence, terror and refusal to cooperate on the side of the Palestinians.

Re: How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

#180
post #168
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a misleadingly small part of the story of why there's no peace today. Israeli went on to elect multiple other PMs to continue working towards a peace deal. Rabin was assassinated in 1995, but Barak met with Araft in 2000, 2001, Olmert was trying to make a deal all the way up to 2007. And in the meantime, famous military hawk Sharon actually withdrew all settlements and military presence from Gaza, supposedly g…

> withdrew all settlements and military presence from Gaza, supposedly giving them what they wanted - no more settlements. No settlements != No occupation

OK. Can we agree that withdrawing all settlements and the military means less occupation than before?

I think the basic logic of "we're doing a move that gives them, at least directionaly, what they say they want, and they use it to wage even more war" is the guiding logic here, whether you call it occupation or not.

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