whYNOT

What to watch out for is slipping into: 'This has nothing to do with us; it is Israel's problem; they brought it on themselves; the Palestinians are the innocents; condemn Israel for being overly 'self-defensive''; let Israel simply disappear, and all will be peaceful". The oiled Islamist propaganda machine was designed, to press all the right buttons with the 'right' masses of people, in tandem with and anticipation of the initiation of brutal force in October. Beyond arguing over the rights of national self-defense and un/justifiable force, objective intellectuals could be reminded: what we see is a combined Islamist/neo-Marxist global ideology. Force doesn't stamp it out. It cannot be appeased. It has spread and appeared everywhere it finds purchase with intellectual and moral weaklings. Palestine-Israel is just the ideological front line. A spark to set off the blaze, one symptom of the universal disease, not the cause. Even a kid: :https://nypost.com/2023/12/14/news/boy-13-charged-with-planning-mass-shooting-at-synagogue/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site buttons&utm_campaign=site buttons

Once again, you need "to identify". What is its "character"? Is this fictional "Israel" a terror state, with an ideology and active history of anti-Western and anti-American belligerence? Was it a lone wolf "Israeli" attacker, an anomaly? Hamas blatantly published its mission statement to eradicate Israel - and has substantiated this with aggressive and murderous acts for over a decade. Everyone treats the matter as if it began Oct 7. Thar was the culmination. It was not the beginning. All is a rush to judgment lacking or evading the context and evidence.

It is a specious question. Replied to well by EC. One terrorist does not (necessarily) represent his/her nation. One attack does not call for a nuclear response. And to draw any slight equivalence, you'd have to pose a great number of such Israeli attacks on the US which would necessitate a great(er) retaliation on that country. Vast numbers of missiles and rockets - almost daily - and many ground assaults have been carried out over many years by Hamas, and several wars of (Israeli) self-defense erupted. You need to identify the nature of 'the beast'. It did not start 'operations' in October and will not stop until forced to do so. I told you: what you are condemning - as many others pretend to do - is "disproportionality". They 1. pretend to want "a fair fight", by which the IDF would limit itself in its effectiveness and be limited by humanitarian concerns and 2. wish for an Israeli defeat by Hamas et al. "River to the sea..." A is A. Anyone or group or nation provokes a justified reprisal from a hugely more powerful country, and reality dictates the outcome - they will suffer.

"Creating a monster". The clip to supply background. But did you think tmj the then Israeli Gvt. could have foreseen the consequences and is now complicit in/culpable for Hamas' terrorist nature? Any sinister motives, like this speaker suggests? Or indeed, satisfied with the results? Guilty true, of political maneuvring and social engineering as any Gvt's. are prone to do. I don't think they were out to scupper a 2 state, but just to reduce PLO's/Arafat's power monopoly with an alternative party

See, this mode exposes the wrongful thinking and altruist doctrine of Israel's critics; This operation in Gaza is not about vindictive punishment and payback. This is how - they - think. No, its major purpose is ending an ongoing and future menace. (besides the point, a Hamas leader swore weeks back, their Oct attack was the beginning of more). What the critics ~say~ they want: a "proportionate" response from Israel, and no further. Hamas killed xyz Israelis, lsrael should have stopped there also. These excess casualty numbers signify genocide! * An eye for an eye has penetrated even the secular leftists. Who believe war is like a football match with set rules. What many of the critics ~actually~ want: Hamas to survive to be able to keep assaulting Israel . *Noted by observers and me, crowds were massing around the world yelling about Israel committing genocide, in that short lull ~ a few days before~ Israel even attacked. No Gazan casuaties at that point. The timing of the global propaganda campaign vilifying "Zionists", i.e. Jews, designed in advance and orchestrated by Islamists was a little premature.

And how, it isn't a violation of their rights! But it stops short. The poster's original statement: "You must absolutely always respect the rights of those trying to harm you". A bizarre misinterpretation. As the victim of an attack, it is your "moral imperative" [Rand] to defend yourself, and -- as far as you're concerned --you will not have a remaining iota of respect for his rights, he has renounced them. Rights are not held (or granted) by the government; Gvts exist only for their protection. One's *respect* for others' rights is like an unspoken compact, individual-to-individual. Individual rights are absolute - while one's respect for a specific person's rights, may not always be absolute.

Rights come from one's right to "freedom of action". But your attacker must be permitted - by you - his freedom of action to hurt or kill you? Ridiculous contradiction. He lost his right by starting the act of violence.

It would appear the consensus is Israel must commit self-immolation in order to preserve "humanitarian" sentiments. Rather be ethnically-cleansed than risk being seen as "the genociders". This is also the central message on socialist websites. Rather Israel should "go" - than the Palestinians/Gazans begin to wake up to their reality. And learn to take value in their own lives. Learn to get past their hatred and envy of Jews. The rational aspirations for proper freedoms will not be stopped by Israelis, conversely - the Palestinians would be aided and financed in finding their independence. It would be a relief to Israel. But not the PLO nor Hamas wanted that. Whatever the faults of Israel, the "faults" of the Palestinians and their leaders, is evidently on another level. So double standards are rife. But "equal" legitimacy -and value of life - of the respective regimes and governments and societies predominates. Such self-sacrificial evasions promoted on an Objectivist forum, I am surprised. I will try to put it down to lack of knowledge and the shock of images and statistics of war and why you don't start one, or (by diplomacy means) allow one to start -- ever--until directly attacked or threatened.

Dunno what "rights" playbook you refer to, but it's not the O'ist political-individualist one. Someone comes to harm you, they abnegate their rights. You, on the other hand, retain the right in justice, to physically defend yourself (to death, if necessary)--until/unless the police arrive and take over. The Gvt holds the monopoly on retaliatory force, and thereafter is bound by due process and the (delineated) rights of the arrested-accused. I.e. "Justice". This "crime" was committed in broad daylight in front of many witnesses/victims and numbers of video recordings and statements of intent , leaving no doubt about the identity and guilt of the "accused". You mix up "human" rights with the "rights" of an enemy force that came to harm your citizens. The Gvt. - must - without equivocation - defend its citizens to remove the danger and prevent further harm, conducting the selfsame retaliation back to the source, into enemy territory to overthrow the regime's leaders, if they deem it essential. If (e.g. Hamas) has not a care about their own citizens' lives and "human" rights, in fact, welcome numerous deaths for vile purposes, they are not just legally complicit, they are morally responsible for their deaths --when a clearly stronger country (Israel) retaliates to an initiation of force. One might relate Hamas' acts and the predictable outcome to the colloquial "suicide by cop". To say again, Hamas knew with 100% certainty what the consequences would be - many dead Gazans. Likely, they underestimated the intensity of Israel's response and assumed the international community, as on every occasion previously, would pressure Israel to curtail the war. For that mistake the terrorist entity will most likely cease to exist in Gaza.

And who must uphold and protect those "rights"? Which are founded upon man's nature, one's "right to life", therefore the right to the freedom of action to pursue one's life as one sees fit. Another government? One's own lawful government - right? An unlawful terrorist 'Govt' - a self contradicton - which abuses its own people's rights and the rights of another nation's people is criminal, contra reason and human value. Like a common criminal, it automatically loses its rights. I have no obligation to regard "the rights" ("freedom of action") of someone who comes to harm me, and my government/police/army has the single imperative to defend its citizens' rights. In the case of Israel, not to only end the immediate threat, but preempt all possible future threats. The terrorist/terror group has a *prerogative* to defend himself--a cornered rat will usually fight back--but that is not his "right". In combating them, a Gvt. and Army might select to be as humane as possible towards non-combatants, by rational choice (with little self-sacrifice) not by their rights.

That fine and forthright intellectual, James Lindsay on UnHerd

The thoughts and experiences of one "radical" Muslim woman (a FOR Israel radical).

Hamas' single modus operandi/tactcs is and was, on countless occasions - to incite and provoke the IDF to enter Gaza. Any way they could. Take a soldier hostage, a suicide attack inside Israel, a lethal barrage of rockets, etc. The bait and trap. They could predict the outcome. With retaliatory force, the Air Force bombards key buildings (nearly always with advance warnings) and Hamas sites preparatory to ground troops entering this dangerous, dense warren of streets and tunnels, and in the bombing and fighting, naturally civilians are killed. Hamas gets to "heroically" kill a few soldiers - but primarily - gets world news coverage vilifying the "brutal" slaying of civilians, turning millions against Israel and world Jews. 1. 2. 3. The entire point of the operation was purposefully that: to get Israeli forces into Gaza, killing civilians. When they are inside the territory, the tunnel system is self-evidently - offensive. That use of their civilian lives - literally, the more dead the better - for propaganda (that has reached new heights presently), is an evil fact innocent Westerners who value life, balk at accepting, seemingly. But all Arabs in the region and Israelis understand the strategy, and some of the former have publicly condemned the terrorists for that. The overwhelming military power of the IDF, Hamas could not oppose in open battle. This way, they keep military/psychological pressure on the Israelis to the satisfaction of their Iranian overlords. Here the fundamental fact both the moderate or fanatic Muslims are long intimately familiar with - it's not Israel that had "laid siege" to "concentration camp" Gaza, as pro-Palestinian useful idiots proclaim, but the reverse. Israel has been under permanent siege. When they dropped their guard in October, that was what they received.

"This is the most documented atrocity humanity has known", she told me. Seldom the BBC backs up and verifies Israel's side. The Islamist fanboys want the story brushed over, i.e. "Zionist propaganda". [Graphic warning] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181

Again on that disingenuous propaganda uncritically accepted by all, from the Gazan "ministry of health", conflating civilians and Hamas deaths for international effect. Below, the first credible Hamas casualty figures, from the IDF in a Times of Israel article. If not my estimated one-half (of the claimed "16,000 people"), this number about meets one-third (allowing for deliberate and certain falsification, the bare minimum). Another raw guess from previous conflicts: I suggest to divide the reported child casualties by half to a third. "The rising death toll and unfolding humanitarian crisis in Gaza have sparked outrage in much of the world. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says Israel’s military campaign, in response to the terror group’s murderous attacks, has killed more than 16,000 people so far, most of them women and children. Those figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both Hamas terrorists and civilians, and people killed as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. "According to Israeli military estimates, some 5,000 Hamas members have been killed in the Gaza Strip, in addition to more than 1,000 terrorists killed in Israel during the October 7 onslaught". [ToI] https://links.timesofisrael.com/ss/c/T8uDqR_8XwdjetGlfDilNAIYq3pOnIpuKkgofiebABPqFpDbbmMnbBzZVKFcyfAK3W7ZkmXYrvCZoZvGFtTjShV5buu6cdXx6XH4gFbG3CKbSv_KlGJKhO0tp66SEqwQGmtWOdb4hq7RhVzkFUtWgkHI83nrIi-sQKme6LlUxmI/41w/GusJ-ERaTdmu5TBqtp1r1g/h40/l7hw1dDhzFXrlgFDMaNpL1UtL2VVfbhQARaQuxVfbK8

If not by "surprise", what then? An attack contrived with Israeli help? (Gives them justification for entering Gaza...etc.etc.) Denialism of the horrors will arise predictably - the blame will shift onto the victims. An eyewitness account to put the record straight https://rumble.com/v3za1om-warning-graphic-description-of-the-massacre-by-the-gazan-arab-muslims.html

The common talk is of what cause justifies what response. And then descending into "proportionality", and moral equivalence - and legitimacy - of the two parties, where there is none. I think it's true that part cause of Israel's reactions is retributive by nature, but its enemies mistakenly and deliberately see only this quid pro quo. Anything more has to be deliberate "genocide". The greater cause is to ensure that this (and the earlier hostile outbreaks) will not be repeated - permanently. To also send a signal to Hezbollah forces waiting in the wings, testing for irresolute weakness from Israel and its allies, to invade. The tunnels are offensive/defensive. As the IDF is discovering (and always knew). Apart from command posts, caches of arms, training and building rockets etc., for these many years, terrorists can emerge from one of them within the civilian population, assault, ambush and hide. Taking them out in advance of troops requires huge ground demolition. All to the good for visual propaganda. (and still no official word about Hamas casualties - as one would expect, they have to be extensive, at least half of the given numbers: so far, the Gazan "ministry of health" lists all deaths within "civilian casualties" - and mostly women and children - in order to signify Israel's genocidal intent. Believe the figures of an organization under terrorist control, you will believe anything)

https://sonar21.com/the-west-pushed-ukraine-to-war-and-now-it-is-paying-the-butchers-bill/ How, in fact, with the cover-up emerging, the Western bloc's total evasion of reality - those all too-predictable consequences we can see - directly caused massive self-sacrifices and the sacrifice of a country. They could have made and received Russian concessions from early. But their priorities and ambitions lay further afield.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/the-truth-about-the-hostages-and-the-israel-hamas-ceasefire-colonel-richard-kemp-atlnow-5539835?utm_source=NS_ATLNewsletter&src_src=NS_ATLNewsletter&utm_campaign=2023-12-01&src_cmp=2023-12-01&utm_medium=email&est=fQLt0pnGRFRXAGYFrmNp3XzkzKanyTCSq9sQSwOGCFTYxGaXyUTobiRU4VmrS78DNNoPDQ%3D%3D?utm_source=ref_share&utm_campaign=copy

Good basics on 'Rules of War' from Onkar Ghate.

Their not-so-secret weapon against Israel. The "human shields" element - one that's vehemently denied by Islamic militants and scorned by their virulent supporters, despite all evidence- has lost its impact in the usage. The pattern repeats from several previous go-rounds against Hamas provocations that intentionally invited Israel's retaliation. The "shield" has two parts. 1. Self-protection: placing terrorist positions (etc.) alongside or under civilian infrastructure (knowing that the IDF has been always reluctant to injure/kill innocents, even when that means suffering casualties to their own soldiers' operations - which in itself is a tacit admission by these nihilists of the higher Jewish respect for any lives). More importantly, 2. PR propaganda: Collaterally killed and rescued children (some of it pure theater, posed for the news cameras) make for compelling pictures and headlines (as in previous wars, numbers falsified), the inversion to the perceived moral high ground for a provably barbaric terror gang and an outpouring of sympathy, which translates to world support, the mass vilification of Jews anywhere, and pressure on Israel to cease/suspend hostilities while Hamas (in a desperate state at this moment) can take the opportunity to regroup, set up fresh assaults and ambushes, or escape. "Babies" cold-bloodedly used as human "sacrifices" is more to the point.

https://jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby112023.php

Thank you, but way off. My first consideration was for Ukrainians and what I anticipated could only be great bloodshed, however the war turned out. I could never have predicted its present scale. If only those "defenders of Ukraine" had had their best interests at heart. It apparently has not occurred to many. Ukraine was set up to be the convenient "punch bag" on which Russia would eventually ~have to~ expend itself, so "Weakening Russia" was always the motive. The largest propaganda coup in history, convincing everyone that an insane Putin could not be reasoned and negotiated with and his invasion was unpreventable, even 'fated', with Russia's aims on wider invasions and occupations. Russia and Putin were/are not a terror gang, to which there is only one response and zero diaogue.

https://click.mlsend.com/link/c/YT0yMzQyMjY1NDI0MzA3MDI5Nzc3JmM9bjZzNyZlPTIxNDYmYj0xMjM0OTI1Njg1JmQ9ZzNwMGQxYQ==.voazWm3K59_hy0m7qMtBhK-U980UNQxgKovJ88puAws Those fabricated and deceiving figures

That poison was the product of people being treated with a few 1000 years of racial-religious contempt, repression and murderous cleansing. Jews obviously felt "set apart", for all that they had been (in recent centuries), the most assimilated and loyal French, German, Polish, British, etc., subjects. Right, "based on blood", born into by (maternal) ancestry and not simple for outsiders to convert into. That most (Leftist) Jews politically and socially, are or purport to be non/anti-racist is a contradiction in convictions. Earlier Christians of course condemned the Jewish faith's perceived 'selfish arrogance'. Like the Fundamentalist Muslims now, as we know, they were aggressively proselytic, explaining why race was unimportant to them: They want ~everyone~ converted eventually, by preference or force Anyway, if one is to observe individual rights, a person's "freedom of action" and choices is not one's concern and business. One can and will blast religion, as religion, and equally respect a person's right to practice one. Rationally, the Zionists wanted their invaluable freedom to act within their self-determining nation, it seems to me: For the religious Jews - and atheist/agnostic Jews - and any other types. Who were ALL without distinction - as now - treated with bigotry or in danger for their lives In Europe -- merely "by virtue of blood". First, they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew and did not speak up, then they came for the Christians, but I was not.., then they came for the collectivist non-believers, but ..., then they came for the individualist non-believers ... and there was no one left to speak out.