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Deep Zionism

scottaaronson.blog

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Re: Deep Zionism

#31
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gaza still occupied because of the amount of control Israel exercised on it. What you think in this respect, or your ignorance of the facts, has no relevance on the matter. So can you please tell me what control Israel exerted? I see a land where Palestinians had an elected government, police, health system, army and so forth. That's exactly the definition of independence. What I do not see is Israeli troops anywhe…

> So can you please tell me what control Israel exerted? Haha, no. The international community, international organisations and law experts have already established the consensus that Gaza was still under occupation. If you have a problem with this, it's a problem between you and, well, reality- I'm not wasting my time discussing it here. > As was tried word for word in Gaza No. I said "retreat within the 1967 border…

> Haha, no. The international community, international organisations and law experts have already established the consensus that Gaza was still under occupation.

I'm sorry, you can quote the UN human rights commission claiming that the sky is red as everyone perceive color differently but that doesn't change anything.

Quoted from the 1907 Hague Convention

Art. 42. Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.

> No. I said "retreat within the 1967 borders"- did Israel retreat within the 1967 borders?

And when this happens again who will prevent a massacre? Would you come help?

I know debating this conflict is worldwide entertainment by now, but seriously do you think that is acceptable to anyone living there?

> "2023 marks deadliest year on record for children in the occupied West Bank"

Surely hundreds of dead is more peaceful for both sides than the 10ks in Gaza, and you are focusing on a specific very bloody outlier year, you can compare other years (how many died in 2020?)

Like it or not, but the west bank has been far less dangerous for both Israelis and Palestinians even though both live in sometimes extreme proximity and with some very extreme elements on both sides

The reason is that because Israel has troops on the ground (occupation) it is able to prevent attacks and the extreme Palestinian organizations could never muster an army-sized force like in Gaza.

When Israel started retreating in Oslo is exactly when mass-killings started in Israeli towns. A sacrifice Israelis were willing to make, until it was proven that the Palestinian leadership was hardly interested in peace (repeated rejections of peace offers and initiation of hostilities)

Re: Deep Zionism

#32
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source on birth data is the un. You can Google it, they actually say 180 births per day in some documents, I'm using their figure. Yes, conditions are bad in Gaza, and yes there have been many deaths, but it's not a genocide if the population is rising.

No, I really can't find any documents like that. Could you post a URL to the document you're referring to? Additionally, your claim of 60,000 deaths is an extreme underestimate. The dataset provided by data.techforpalestine.org lists more than 60,000 deaths, despite only including people whose corpses could be identified and directly linked to an Israeli attack. In other words, this does not include deaths from starv…

It's hard to get good data on current birth rates in Gaza, but the recently published preprint of a demographic study of the death toll in Gaza (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v...) provides some evidence that the death toll in Gaza is approximately balanced by births. Specifically, the project directed in-person interviews of Gazan citizens representing ~2k households and ~9k people in them, and recorded ~390 violent deaths and ~360 births in that cohort, both from 10/7 and until January 2025.

Re: Deep Zionism

#33
post #32
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I really can't find any documents like that. Could you post a URL to the document you're referring to? Additionally, your claim of 60,000 deaths is an extreme underestimate. The dataset provided by data.techforpalestine.org lists more than 60,000 deaths, despite only including people whose corpses could be identified and directly linked to an Israeli attack. In other words, this does not include deaths from starv…

It's hard to get good data on current birth rates in Gaza, but the recently published preprint of a demographic study of the death toll in Gaza ( https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v... ) provides some evidence that the death toll in Gaza is approximately balanced by births. Specifically, the project directed in-person interviews of Gazan citizens representing ~2k households and ~9k people in…

Thank you for providing a source! That data certainly contradicts @richardfeynman's claim, in that it suggests a shrinking population. Additionally, since total deaths will be greatly in excess of violent deaths, I would say it suggests a rapidly shrinking population. I would not call the birth and death rates "approximately balanced" in this case, but I suppose that's a matter of opinion.

Re: Deep Zionism

#34
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gaza was only considered occupied by Hamas and related propaganda, internationally it was not considered occupied This is false, all relevant international organisations (the UN, the ICC, the ICJ, the WHO, the Red Cross, all the human rights organisations), an overwhelming majority of legal experts considered Gaza still occupied because of the amount of control Israel exercised on it. What you think in this respect…

> Gaza still occupied because of the amount of control Israel exercised on it. What you think in this respect, or your ignorance of the facts, has no relevance on the matter. So can you please tell me what control Israel exerted? I see a land where Palestinians had an elected government, police, health system, army and so forth. That's exactly the definition of independence. What I do not see is Israeli troops anywhe…

> Israel still maintains direct control over Gaza's air and maritime space, six of Gaza's seven land crossings, a no-go buffer zone within the territory, and the Palestinian population registry

Re: Deep Zionism

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to 10/7, more gazans travelled abroad each year than Indians on a relative basis. There was no open-air prison.

Additionally, when Israel gave Gaza to the Gazans in 2005, it wasn't fenced in yet the Gazans still attacked Israel, demonstrating the attacks weren't being about fenced in, but rather a visceral hate towards the yahood. The fences were built after the second intifada.

> when Israel gave Gaza to the Gazans

You’re so deep in propaganda you don’t even see how this sentence demonstrates the entire issue huh?

Re: Deep Zionism

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, when Israel gave Gaza to the Gazans in 2005, it wasn't fenced in yet the Gazans still attacked Israel, demonstrating the attacks weren't being about fenced in, but rather a visceral hate towards the yahood. The fences were built after the second intifada.

> when Israel gave Gaza to the Gazans You’re so deep in propaganda you don’t even see how this sentence demonstrates the entire issue huh?

This is an accusation without meaning. You don't know what information I see, so you don't know whether I see propaganda at all. The reverse is true as well; I don't know what information (or propaganda) you see. But no, I don't see how Israel giving Gaza to the Gazans (something Egypt never did) demonstrates "the entire issue," whatever you happen to mean by that.

Re: Deep Zionism

#37
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, up to a few minutes ago you were unfamiliar with the accurate statistic I quoted. Noting your reaction to this new information: to double down and cast shade. Sorry you dont like it. And yes, with roughly 6.6 percent of gazans population traveling abroad each year, it's the exceptional gazans that travels abroad, much like it's the exceptional rural alabaman that travels abroad each year. (The statistic I…

I'm not trying to cast shade, just trying to critically analyze information. Again, could you provide a source for that figure of 6.6% of Gazans "travelling abroad" each year? As I previously mentioned, that article does not actually support that figure at all, so I'm not sure why you insist upon it. We could obtain a better estimate for the number of distinct exiting Gazans by counting the number of exit permits iss…

Thanks for this comment. I'd like to acknowledge that as you point out the 6.6% figure refers to exits from Gaza via Egypt using documented means, and may include people who exited multiple times, so the actual people exiting would be slightly lower. Similarly, it'd be nice for you to acknowledge that this figure doesn't include undocumented exits via tunnels in Rafah, or the 424,000 documented exits from Gaza via Israel.

In those conditions, it's hard to pinpoint an exact figure, but whatever the precise figure is--5%, 6.6%, 10%--it's clearly higher than zero, which is what one would expect in an "open air prison," the central point I was arguing against.

Aside from the exit rate, the "open air prison" claim is a lie for many other reasons, not least of which is that the guards patrolling the so-called prison (Hamas) are also the people who were claimed to be inmates, something one doesn't see in prisons.

The claim for Israeli persecution is not false (or "trivially false" as you put it). The odds of a gazan dying from an israeli weapon in 2022 was essentially zero: hamas claims 49 were killed that year, of which 22 are verifiable. The odds of a gazan dying from Hamas on the other hand was appreciable, in the thousands. After hamas's genocidal massacre on october 7, obviously this changed.

Re: Deep Zionism

#38
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to cast shade, just trying to critically analyze information. Again, could you provide a source for that figure of 6.6% of Gazans "travelling abroad" each year? As I previously mentioned, that article does not actually support that figure at all, so I'm not sure why you insist upon it. We could obtain a better estimate for the number of distinct exiting Gazans by counting the number of exit permits iss…

Thanks for this comment. I'd like to acknowledge that as you point out the 6.6% figure refers to exits from Gaza via Egypt using documented means, and may include people who exited multiple times, so the actual people exiting would be slightly lower. Similarly, it'd be nice for you to acknowledge that this figure doesn't include undocumented exits via tunnels in Rafah, or the 424,000 documented exits from Gaza via Is…

[deleted]

Re: Deep Zionism

#39
post #33
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to get good data on current birth rates in Gaza, but the recently published preprint of a demographic study of the death toll in Gaza ( https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v... ) provides some evidence that the death toll in Gaza is approximately balanced by births. Specifically, the project directed in-person interviews of Gazan citizens representing ~2k households and ~9k people in…

Thank you for providing a source! That data certainly contradicts @richardfeynman's claim, in that it suggests a shrinking population. Additionally, since total deaths will be greatly in excess of violent deaths, I would say it suggests a rapidly shrinking population. I would not call the birth and death rates "approximately balanced" in this case, but I suppose that's a matter of opinion.

Source: https://www.who.int/news/item/03-11-2023-women-and-newborns-... "There are an estimated 50 000 pregnant women in Gaza, with more than 180 giving birth every day. " - WHO

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_humanitarian_crisis_%2820...

"On 18 January 2024, Natalia Kanem, the executive director of the UN Population Fund, spoke at the World Economic Forum at Davos, stating the situation was the "worst nightmare" the UNPF representative had ever witnessed, as there were 180 women giving birth daily, sometimes on the streets of Gaza, as the territory's health system collapsed"

Source: https://www.savethechildren.net/news/about-130-children-born... "About 130 babies will be born in Gaza every day over a month into a healthcare system driven to the verge of collapse, where some may not survive complications at birth. "

The 60k death count is likely an overcount, not an undercount, but this one I won't google for you. However you cut the numbers, and even if you believe in nameless ghosts under the rubble, there's been no population collapse.

Re: Deep Zionism

#40
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for providing a source! That data certainly contradicts @richardfeynman's claim, in that it suggests a shrinking population. Additionally, since total deaths will be greatly in excess of violent deaths, I would say it suggests a rapidly shrinking population. I would not call the birth and death rates "approximately balanced" in this case, but I suppose that's a matter of opinion.

Source: https://www.who.int/news/item/03-11-2023-women-and-newborns-... "There are an estimated 50 000 pregnant women in Gaza, with more than 180 giving birth every day. " - WHO Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_humanitarian_crisis_%2820... "On 18 January 2024, Natalia Kanem, the executive director of the UN Population Fund, spoke at the World Economic Forum at Davos, stating the situation was the "worst nig…

Thanks for providing sources! They estimate 180 giving birth every day, but over what time frame? Without a time frame, it's not really possible to estimate the total born.

As for the 60k count, every single source I have found suggests that 60k is a massive underestimate. You'll need to provide some very strong evidence to back up your claim to the contrary.

Regardless of the balance of birth and death rates, multiple sources have reported a significant decline in Gaza's population this year. So far, all evidence you have provided contradicts your own initial claim.

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