What the Israelis are doing now is no different from what the Romans did to quell various rebellions, what the British Empire did in their colonies, or what the Nazis did to the Warsaw ghetto after the uprising.
I speak Hebrew and I listen to a broad range of voices coming out of Israel. Do you?
If you tell me what country you're from I'll try the same trick on you, take some selective voices from your "leadership" and present them as if they're policy or the official position of your country.
Punishment or retribution is not Israel's policy here and is not what's being executed on the ground. Are there some crazy voices in Israeli politics. Yes. That proves nothing. Also many of those voices were heard in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7th that was so brutal, barbaric, and shocking, that "blood was boiling" and emotions ran high.
What you're saying here is basically blood libel. To take your analogies, it's not different than the stories about Jews drinking the blood of Christian children. It's an antisemitic lie in the form you present it. That people have the audacity to draw comparisons between what the Nazis did to the Jews and what's going on in Gaza is mind boggling.
How can you claim that what a minister says is not indicative of
government policy? How come you are in a better position to interpret
government policy than the ministers themselves?
"I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no
electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed ... we are fighting
against human animals" - Israel's defense minister. "You must remember
what Amalek has done to you" Israel's fucking prime minister. "It is
an entire nation out there that is responsible" Israel's president.
It is very clear that what is going on is fueled by vengeance. Israel
knows it can't destroy Hamas, but it can make the civilians suffer
which it thinks will act as a deterrent. "Was it worth it?" they ask
and hope that future Palestinians will answer "No".
You can accuse me of blood libel all you want, but this is exactly
what the Nazis did to resistance groups in the territories they
occupied. And the German people cheered them on, just like the
Israelis do now.
I can claim it because it is true. A minister (that is part of a coalition of many parties in Israel) is not indicative of government policy. There are some pretty whacky ministers in the Israeli government right now with some pretty weird opinions. This is not Israeli policy. Policy is determined by Cabinet and broader government votes, not by what people are saying (responding emotionally or trying to appease some political base). It's also what's executed on the ground. Israel's government is also subject to judicial oversight, the government can't just do whatever it wants. You just don't understand Israel's political system and how it works, and you're taking statements either made under extreme emotional states or by extremists and presenting them as official policy.
You're taking the Israeli defense minister quote, a snippet of it, made at the height of shock, as factual policy, when you know this is not true on the ground, e.g. Israel is letting food and fuel in and has not laid a complete siege on Gaza since Oct 7th. It also supplies Gaza with water. I'll concede that in the immediate shock after the barbaric Oct 7th attack there were some very strong statements made but actual policy has been within the laws of war. Gallant was also mostly referring to what Israel supplies Gaza but Israel has no direct control over the Gaza-Egypt border. His referral of "fighting human animals" was referring to Hamas's Oct 7th rape, mutilation, murder, torture, etc. Maybe not the best choice of words.
I am going to maintain that this is a blood libel.
I do think I'm in a better position to interpret government policy because I actually listen to the broader voices and understand how the system works. You're obviously not exposed to the broad public discourse in Israel but rather to highly filtered/cherry-picked views.
"Israel is doing all it can to get civilians out of harm's way as it battles Hamas in Gaza, including dropping leaflets warning them to flee, but its attempts to minimize casualties were "not successful", Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.": https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-not-success...
"“We don’t seek to govern Gaza, we don’t seek to occupy it. But we seek to give it and us a better future … and that requires defeating Hamas,” he said. “I’ve set goals, I didn’t set a timetable because it can take more time.”: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/netanyahu-says-not...
"The PMO said that when Netanyahu used the biblical quotation “Remember what Amalek did to you,” he was using it as a way of describing the savage Hamas attack of October 7, and certainly not as a call for wanton killings.
The PMO pointed out that the same phrase appears in a permanent exhibit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, as well at a memorial in The Hague itself for Dutch Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
The IDF spokesperson has said hundreds of times in his daily briefings that the war is not against Palestinians, it's against Hamas:
"“I’ve seen, personally, many types of targets that we have. The resolution of the intelligence, as in whose house it is, which Hamas commander uses the facility or what the offices in a certain building are used by Hamas for,” Conricus said. “I can tell you that the intelligence is solid and it is focused and that we are striking targets that are directly related to Hamas and not targets that don’t have anything to do with them.” https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4250823-tapper-presses-id...
""I want to be clear from the beginning, there is not a single drop of cynicism about Palestinian civilian casualties. We do not want and we are not trying to achieve any casualties. Our fight is against the evil terrorist organization Hamas. It is them that we are targeting, not the civilian population. But unfortunately, because Hamas hides behind them, unfortunately, civilians get caught in the middle," he said." https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/hamas-prefers-t...
EDIT: and again, the comparison of Israel to the Nazis is ignorant and disgusting.
Your argumentation is a form of damage control. Just like modern
neo-Nazis either downplay, minimize, or try to justify atrocities
committed by the Nazi regime you try to downplay, minimize or justify
atrocities committed by the Israeli regime. The neo-Nazis say that the
number of victims of the Holocaust is grossly overstated. You will say
that there is no grounds for accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. The
neo-Nazis say that ordinary Germans had no idea about the
concentration camps. You will say that ordinary Jewish Israelis do not
revel in Gaza's destruction. Neo-Nazis spreads the myth of the clean
Wehrmacht (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht),
just like you will spread the myth of the clean IDF. Neo-Nazis
downplay statements from leading Nazi leaders just like you downplay
statements from leading Israeli leaders. They say "Yeah, Hitler said
he wanted to exterminate Jews but he didn't mean it!" and you say
"Yeah, Gallant said Gaza should be starved but he didn't mean it!"
While Golan is a minister without a portfolio, she wouldn't be in her
position if she was not a popular politician or if her views were not
aligned with those of the rest of the government. And she certainly
has power to affect government policy. Although these ministers may be
"whacky" to you the very fact that they are ministers prove that they
aren't wacky to most Jewish Israelis. After all, they were elected.
Children are starving to death in Gaza and your country is on trial
for genocide. While you try to excuse these crimes and justify calls
for genocide (Amalek). Whine about anti-Semitism all you want, in my
eyes you are nothing but an Israeli neo-Nazi. You have learned nothing
from history and had you been German you would have justified the
Nazi crimes too.
Your argument is that Israelis are Nazis and therefore Israelis are Nazis. You refuse to entertain the possibility that the literal Nazis here are the Hamas and their supporters despite all the evidence and their rhetoric saying so.
Your comparison of Israel to Nazis is disgusting, ignorant and antisemitic.
You're taking natural emotional responses when your people are brutally raped, mutilated, kidnapped, slaughtered in their homes and comparing it to the deliberate calculated murder of 6 million Jews that did nothing to the Germans over years.
EDIT: You are the one who is "downplay, minimize, or try to justify atrocities committed by the Nazi regime". What does that make you by your own definition? A lot of people have died, I'm not happy about it. There's been a lot of destruction. I blame Hamas for starting the war. There are starving children, yes. These are nothing compared to the Nazis. Nothing. Israel is within its rights to wage this war, it has good reasons, it is persecuting it within the norms for similar wars. It is not committing genocide and "your country is on trial for genocide" is bullshit and you know it.
No, the argument is that Israeli Jews are acting exactly like Germans
did during the Nazi era. They either don't care or they cheer on the
slaughter of innocent civilians. The destruction of Gaza is more
complete than the destruction of Dresden during WWI or of
Warsaw after the ghetto uprising. Yet more than half of all Jewish
Israelis think their army is using too little force! This and many
other frightening statistics indicate that Jewish Israelis are just as
genocidal as the Germans were or the Hutsi.
The difference is that Jewish Israelis have access to contrarian
views. The Germans and Rwandans had no free press and no internet to
access alternative opinions on. That the Jewish Israelis have, but by
and large still choose fascism and murder is despicable.
> You're taking natural emotional responses
This bullshit makes you complicit. You're not in uniform, perhaps, but
you are here online debate-lording your way to the last word. The
Spanish government did not call for genocide after the 2004 Madrid
attack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings), nor
did the French government after the 2015 Paris attack
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks). Neither
Spain nor France took revenge on the Islamists by carpet-bombing
civilians.
> Israel is within its rights to wage this war, it has good reasons,
it is persecuting it within the norms for similar wars. It is not
committing genocide and "your country is on trial for genocide" is
bullshit and you know it.
No, I don't know it and neither does the court that decided to accept
the case. No, Israel is not "persecuting it within the norms for
similar wars". It currently has displaced almost all Gazans, destroyed
over 50% of all buildings (that much more than Japan and Germany
during WWII), and is starving children to death. If you can't see how
fucking evil that is, you are a lost cause.
""I am personally proud of the ruins in Gaza. [...] every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did."
https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1760548502348701804
What the Israelis are doing now is no different from what the Romans did to quell various rebellions, what the British Empire did in their colonies, or what the Nazis did to the Warsaw ghetto after the uprising.