Condemnation of Israeli Government Action

[Ophiolite]

This is an extract from this BBC Article:

Yair Golan, a left-wing politician and former deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), sparked outrage on Monday when he said: "Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don't return to acting like a sane country.

"A sane state does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set itself the goal of depopulating the population," he told Israeli public radio's popular morning news programme.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back, describing the comments as "blood libel".

But on Wednesday, a former Israeli minister of defence and IDF chief of staff - Moshe "Bogi" Ya'alon - went further.

"This is not a 'hobby'," he wrote in a post on X, "but a government policy, whose ultimate goal is to hold on to power. And it is leading us to destruction."


I cite it in support of my conviction that being opposed to the Israeli actions in Gaza is not necessarily anti-semitic, or even anti-Israeli. It is simply about being opposed to actions that are inhumane.

 

[Desk trauma]

I cite it in support of my conviction that being opposed to the Israeli actions in Gaza is not necessarily anti-semitic

A wasted effort. Opposition of any kind to anything the state of Israel does or US subsidizes for it will be called antisemitism.

 

[Matt5]

How did America defeat Japan in WW2? By nuking civilians. Meanwhile, America has lost every war since.

Militaries just regenerate themselves from the civilian population unless you kill a lot of the civilian population too. Failure to devastate the civilian population is why the West will never win another war again.

Peace will come to Israel but only after it devastates the enemy civilian population. That means wiping out most civilians.

 

[BCP1928]

How did America defeat Japan in WW2? By nuking civilians. Meanwhile, America has lost every war since.

Militaries just regenerate themselves from the civilian population unless you kill a lot of the civilian population too. Failure to devastate the civilian population is why the West will never win another war again.

Peace will come to Israel but only after it devastates the enemy civilian population. That means wiping out most civilians.

You may be right. That's certainly the way we handled our own troublesome indigenous people: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."

 

[Larniavc]

You may be right. That's certainly the way we handled our own troublesome indigenous people: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."

Can’t they just be enslaved? They would have free lodging and board and be given a purpose in life.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

 

[DaisyDay]

How did America defeat Japan in WW2? By nuking civilians. Meanwhile, America has lost every war since.

Militaries just regenerate themselves from the civilian population unless you kill a lot of the civilian population too. Failure to devastate the civilian population is why the West will never win another war again.

Peace will come to Israel but only after it devastates the enemy civilian population. That means wiping out most civilians.

You don't get that many calls for committing war crimes. Times change. I guess.

 

[DaisyDay]

Can’t they just be enslaved? They would have free lodging and board and be given a purpose in life.

What could possibly be wrong with that?

I believe Trump opined that they might be useful as labor in clearing the rubble and building the Kushner Condos and the Ben-Gurion Canal. Otherwise, they can be sent to mine in the Congo and pay off the enormous war debt they've accrued.

 

[Dustoff]

Here is another point of view of what is humane and what isn't.​

Hamas’s Human Shield Strategy

The world’s wilful blindness​

For 18 months, the global media, the United Nations, and the NGO industry have engaged in a colossal act of wilful blindness. They have covered the war in Gaza with a grotesque, almost deliberate omission: Hamas, the terror group that started it, is treated as if it doesn’t exist.
Every day, the headlines howl about Israeli airstrikes, civilian casualties, and the destruction of Gaza. Israel’s name is dragged through the dirt. At the same time, Hamas, the group that has spent 20 years building its army under Gaza’s hospitals, schools, and apartment blocks, vanishes from the narrative. Hamas, the group firing rockets from playgrounds and bedrooms, filming itself fighting the IDF in civilian clothes, and boasting about using human shields, is somehow never blamed for the carnage it has engineered.
Until now.
My new Henry Jackson Society report, written with Salo Aizenberg, forces Hamas back into the spotlight. It is a forensic demolition of the comfortable lie that Gaza’s destruction is merely the outcome of Israeli aggression. It illustrates, in brutal detail, how Hamas intentionally transformed Gaza into a death trap: rigging civilian infrastructure with weapons, tunnels, explosives, and fighters, fully aware that every dead civilian would constitute a propaganda victory.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/38599924-8392-4c61-8c70-07d25e07546a_1255x1763.png
This was not some unfortunate by-product of war. It was the plan. It always has been. Hamas leaders have proudly declared that they “desire death” and that civilian blood is a “necessary sacrifice” to advance their cause. They have openly admitted to using hospitals and UN schools as bases, booby-trapping children’s bedrooms, and preventing civilians from fleeing combat zones.

Astonishingly, the United Nations has issued 367 reports on Gaza since October 2023 and has barely mentioned Hamas’s human shield tactics, not once in a serious analysis. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other NGOs have produced hundreds of pages accusing Israel of genocide while entirely airbrushing Hamas’s crimes out of the narrative.

Why? Because acknowledging Hamas’s strategy would dismantle their preferred storyline. It would reveal that Hamas, not Israel, bears primary responsibility for much of Gaza’s suffering. It would demonstrate that civilian casualties are not solely a tragic outcome of Israel’s actions, but a deliberate result of Hamas’s grotesque military doctrine: to hide behind its own people and dare Israel to respond.

Meanwhile, the media have largely ignored the reality of the fight. Over 400 Israeli soldiers have been killed, and more than 2,500 have been wounded. Hamas itself has published over 300 videos of combat with the IDF. It has been an industrial-scale war concealed beneath the rubble. Yet, to listen to most news coverage, one would think the IDF was bombing empty cities, not fighting a fanatical army hidden under civilian homes.

There is a reason why Hamas puts civilians in harm’s way: because it works. They understand perfectly that when a civilian is killed, the world will not blame them for using human shields; it will blame Israel for daring to fight back. In doing so, the international community is not just complicit in their crimes. They are encouraging them.

This report shatters that indulgence. It is the missing chapter in every UN report, every NGO indictment, every dishonest editorial. It shows that Hamas’s entire battlefield is Gaza’s civilian population, and it exposes the cowardice of those who refuse to acknowledge it.

If we continue to erase Hamas from this war, we will see the same tactics repeated again and again, not just in Gaza, but by terrorists around the world. The time for cowardice and selective outrage must end. Tell the truth: Hamas built this war. Hamas built this suffering. Until we confront that fact head-on, the bloodshed will never stop.

You can read his report here: Hamas's Human Shield Strategy in Gaza - Henry Jackson Society

 

[Desk trauma]

I believe Trump opined that they might be useful as labor in clearing the rubble and building the Kushner Condos and the Ben-Gurion Canal. Otherwise, they can be sent to mine in the Congo and pay off the enormous war debt they've accrued.

It would be antisemitic to make Israelites clear the territory they acquired of the rubble they created.

 

[mindlight]

This is an extract from this BBC Article:

Yair Golan, a left-wing politician and former deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), sparked outrage on Monday when he said: "Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don't return to acting like a sane country.

"A sane state does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set itself the goal of depopulating the population," he told Israeli public radio's popular morning news programme.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back, describing the comments as "blood libel".

But on Wednesday, a former Israeli minister of defence and IDF chief of staff - Moshe "Bogi" Ya'alon - went further.

"This is not a 'hobby'," he wrote in a post on X, "but a government policy, whose ultimate goal is to hold on to power. And it is leading us to destruction."


I cite it in support of my conviction that being opposed to the Israeli actions in Gaza is not necessarily anti-semitic, or even anti-Israeli. It is simply about being opposed to actions that are inhumane.

The solution here is that both sides accept Christ the Messiah and break down the dividing wall of hostility between the two of them. However, that will probably have to wait for the Second Coming.

So right now the work around here is not to condemn Israel but to remove the Palestinian population entirely from Gaza and the West Bank also if necessary and rehouse them in Arab countries. They have lost, pure and simple and to continue this fight is to incur hundreds of thousands more deaths.

Besides the Jews have a Divine right to the land.

 

[Ophiolite]

So right now the work around here is not to condemn Israel

I did not suggest condemning Israel. I specifically rejected that option. I explicitly recommended condemning inhumane actions and implicitly identified the current Israeli government as the one who should be so condemned.

remove the Palestinian population entirely from Gaza and the West Bank also if necessary and rehouse them in Arab countries.

Is that you Donald? Donald?

They have lost, pure and simple and to continue this fight is to incur hundreds of thousands more deaths.

The majority of those deaths being caused by the IDF under orders from the current Israeli government. I have no solution. I made this thread to express my discomfort (disgust?) over those who assert that there is an equivalence between anti-semitism and opposition to the current actions of the Israeli government.

Besides the Jews have a Divine right to the land.

Even if this were so, it would not justify the present acts of inhumanity.

And to make my position clear, Hamas and every other organisation and individual who engages in violent acts against Israelis and Jews is also to be condemned.

 

[BCP1928]

Besides the Jews have a Divine right to the land.

That's all very well for Jews to believe if they want, but there is no reason anybody else should. For a Christian to use it to use it excuse for Israeli behavior in Gaza is blasphemous.

 

[mindlight]

I did not suggest condemning Israel. I specifically rejected that option. I explicitly recommended condemning inhumane actions and implicitly identified the current Israeli government as the one who should be so condemned.

Is that you Donald? Donald?

The majority of those deaths being caused by the IDF under orders from the current Israeli government. I have no solution. I made this thread to express my discomfort (disgust?) over those who assert that there is an equivalence between anti-semitism and opposition to the current actions of the Israeli government.


Even if this were so, it would not justify the present acts of inhumanity.

And to make my position clear, Hamas and every other organisation and individual who engages in violent acts against Israelis and Jews is also to be condemned.

Netanyahu may well be using the current conflict to hang onto power but fundamentally this is not what this conflict is about. There is little grace or mercy to be seen on either side here but over time the Israelis have been the more tolerant of the two. The Palestinians, especially under Hamas have a clear vision of Palestine ruled by themselves 'from the river to the sea.' That vision is utterly incompatible with a two-state solution and indeed a free Jewish state. So it comes down to a choice and picking a side. Since the Israelis always win these conflicts and best represent Western values in the region there is no choice for Western governments they must support Israel. The most humane solution for the Palestinians that is available without Divine intervention is to simply deport them to local Arab countries where they can get on with their lives. This is a time for leadership in Western governments but European leaders especially are just wimping out and going with the flow of the noisiest elements of public opinion. They are missing the fact of a silent tacit support and sympathy for Israel in the bulk of the European population.

Hamas started this and Israel will finish it through the IDF. This is not a perfect solution, will cost more lives but in the long run may save many more.

You are pretending a middle ground in the way that you talk taking potshots at anyone who disobeys the rules of normal human behavior. Western governments also in the main cling to the two state solution which really does the same. But the fact on the ground is that there is no longer any hope for that compromise and those who sit in the middle are in a nomans land being fired on by both sides. Real Politik demands a choice here, so pick a side.

 

[mindlight]

That's all very well for Jews to believe if they want, but there is no reason anybody else should. For a Christian to use it to use it excuse for Israeli behavior in Gaza is blasphemous.

It is the human shield policy of Hamas that is directly inflating the body bag count. They built their tunnels under hospitals and homes and do not care about their own people.

The violence and the loss of life are sickening and any Christian should feel that and I do. But that does not change the basic facts about the situation in which Israel find themselves.

Is the slaughter of unbelievers blasphemous - is Islam suddenly a religion that saves? Is the book of Joshua missing from your bible? Is the promise made to Israel also missing from the text you read? A messianic Jew who prays or fights for Israel can claim the land in the Messiah's name. It is a promise given specifically to the Jewish people and a Messianic Jew, washed in the atoning blood of the Messiah, cannot be told he does not have a right to the land based on his actions. It is the main reason the Muslim world and the Palestinian people must quite simply back off. They have no right to be there at all.

 

[BCP1928]

It is the human shield policy of Hamas that is directly inflating the body bag count. They built their tunnels under hospitals and homes and do not care about their own people.

The violence and the loss of life are sickening and any Christian should feel that and I do. But that does not change the basic facts about the situation in which Israel find themselves.

The basic facts are that Israel is a western-oriented secular state imposed on the indigenous inhabitants of the former Ottoman Palestine and populated with European immigrants.

Is the slaughter of unbelievers blasphemous - is Islam suddenly a religion that saves? Is the book of Joshua missing from your bible? Is the promise made to Israel also missing from the text you read? A messianic Jew who prays or fights for Israel can claim the land in the Messiah's name. It is a promise given specifically to the Jewish people and a Messianic Jew, washed in the atoning blood of the Messiah, cannot be told he does not have a right to the land based on his actions. It is the main reason the Muslim world and the Palestinian people must quite simply back off. They have no right to be there at all.

Are you suggesting that as Christian doctrine??? Even if it was, there is no reason that it should form part of the foreign policy of the United States.

 

[Ophiolite]

You are pretending a middle ground in the way that you talk taking potshots at anyone who disobeys the rules of normal human behavior. Western governments also in the main cling to the two state solution which really does the same. But the fact on the ground is that there is no longer any hope for that compromise and those who sit in the middle are in a nomans land being fired on by both sides. Real Politik demands a choice here, so pick a side.

Wherein am I pretending a middle ground? The closest I come to it is in noting inhumane actions on both sides.

I remind you, again, the point of my OP is that codemning the actions of the current Israeli government is not necessarily antisemitic. Approaching a century of efforts by politicians and diplomats, armies and terrorists, have all failed to produce a solution. I lack the arrogance to think that I could come up with a workable one. Third reminder: that's not what my OP was about. If you feel, as you apparently do, that you have the knowledge, the expertise and the intellect to do so, go for it. Of course, you've already offered your solution. You'll understand if I pay it the same heed I would were it to come from any other random person on the internet.

You have accurately defined one of my principles. I take potshots at those who disobey (or condone the disobyeing) of the rules of normal** human behaviour. I'm obliged to do so, in following my moral compass.

You ask me to pick a side. I take the same I side I always take when confronted by tribal squabbles. I choose humanity, an idea I picked up from a story said to have been told about certain Samaratin, by Jesus of Nazareth.

**I have retained your usage of the phrase "normal human behaviour" so that the reference to your post is clear. I would have preferred to us "decent human behaviour" or similar. Unfortunately what the agression and blooshed we have witnessed in the Middle East for decades is all to normal.

And, as an aside, I'll do a mea culpa for the role of the UK in contributing to the debacle, starting more than a century ago. I'm sure Balfour meant well, but then so many catastrophes are caused by well meaning people.