Most people here, majority pro-palestine it seems, refuse to acknowledge that on Oct 6, we had a ceasefire. And for Israel "just taking the stream of rapes/rockets with no response" is not an option. But the extremists are responding with genocidal actions, so also not acceptable.
Specifically: - If you were a benign Israeli gov, how would you deal with a constant stream of gleeful terrorist campaigns of rapes, ongoing rocket attacks. - If you were a benign Palestine gov, how would you deal with the slow suffocation and arguably genocide of your people?
Disagree there. I think 'the government, led by extremists is using evil tactics' applies pretty much equally to Israelis and Palestinians (but they are using very different and hard to compare evil actions). What many people here fail to answer me is what they would do instead.
To be clear I agree Israel is going too far, but if you are "King of Israel" how would you respond to the massive scale terrorist attack on Oct 7 and the ongoing rocket attacks? Write a strongly worded letter? Israel is chasing Hamas where they are hiding, which is reasonable 'in theory'.
"Salting the earth with genocidal intent" or "trying to drive the hamas terrorists out of their tunnels by flooding them". Genocide, or collateral damage. People on either side of the argument pick whatever explanation paints the other side as monsters. The truth, is perhaps somewhat inbetween?
Nice pigeonholing there. That was 6 months ago. The situation is different now. I still say that if Israel wanted they could've wiped Palestine off the map, but since my comment back then the UN has called it genocide so I'll accept that as authoritative if you demand binary rather than nuance.
You should've said '... While standing your ground in context of 2A' ..
Mmm. IMO that's too simplistic. You don't have to deny Israel's horrors to still feel Israel also has a few reasonable 'points' on their side. I haven't yet been moved to believe 'all Israeli are evil' - the binary conclusion some people seem to want me to arrive at.
Suggest they take heart from the insight of Sam Harris: he never convinced anyone in a direct debate, all about the human need to win, humiliation etc. But the amount of onlookers that can quietly change their mind is large. Thank you for doing this work.
Just fyi I hadn't heard the term decolonisation used before in discussing Palestine. My assumption was it's about the British leaving the region. I now understand this to mean the Israelis to withdraw to some previous border layout (1948?), but imo people who use the term define it precisely.