IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

By now Gaza has been so destroyed that it has become a nation of children. About 40% of people there are age 14.

I love the Jewish community, so I don’t say this lightly, but I view Netanyahu actions as somewhat resembling Nazi Germany in one respect (though certainly not others). He may not believe Israeli Jews have a birthright to the whole world (rather they are trying to strengthen one nation’s borders), but there is no doubt in my mind they are indiscriminately cleansing a people out of existence. That is their aim, beyond simple deterrence or defense.

The October terror attack is not to be defended, but the response is disgusting behavior by the state of Israel. There’s nothing proportionate about this. Rather Israel sees this as an opportunity to strengthen its position and wipe out its enemies - and innocent men, women, and children.

In the United States, we talk about Israel as if it must be protected because it’s the Middle East’s only democracy. It is not a liberal democracy. It exists only to protect the rights of one type of people with one particular type of ethnicity. In America, we wouldn’t recognize this as a democracy.

For our part, it’s important to protect our own interests in the region and so yes, strange bedfellows. But given Netanyahu’s comfort with war crime, given Israel’s weak and distorted democratic institution, and given what nationalism can do to a country, we should be very careful to balance and diversify our interests.

Israel in another 10 years might not be recognizable. It’s cause for alarm.

> As of November 1, Israeli authorities held nearly 7,000 Palestinians from the occupied territory in detention for alleged security offenses, according to the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked. Far more Palestinians have been arrested since the October 7 attacks in Israel than have been released in the last week. Among those being held are dozens of women and scores of children.

> The majority have never been convicted of a crime, including more than 2,000 of them being held in administrative detention, in which the Israeli military detains a person without charge or trial. Such detention can be renewed indefinitely based on secret information, which the detainee is not allowed to see. Administrative detainees are held on the presumption that they might commit an offense at some point in the future. Israeli authorities have held children, human rights defenders and Palestinian political activists, among others, in administrative detention, often for prolonged periods.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/29/why-does-israel-have-so-...

Ok. The parent is the same kind of rhetorical question, whose counter-argument is so evident that it shouldn’t have existed, and it’s disappointing that one side gets the right of way on HN and the other is downvoted, one camp is making use of flaws in your rules to win without merit, aka bullying.

But yes. I’ll speak without snarkiness.

This. Israel demonstrably has the capability for precision warfare.

That they chose to level infrastructure across Gaza instead is indicative.

And it'd be real stretch to assume they did so even for military-economic reasons.

They knew the world community would give them some leeway after Oct 7th, so exploited it as far as possible to militarily achieve their geo-political goals.

To wit, the elimination of anything resembling a Palestinian state: politically, economically, and demographically.

Which is cynical and evil as fuck, given they're smart enough to realize they eventually either have to (a) kill every Palestinian or (b) make a deal.

Instead, they decided killing 50,000+ Palestinians was worth improving their negotiation position and kicking the can down the road.