Quote:
Originally Posted by Icky Thump
This incident started with a holocaust-style massacre. I'd support anything Israel did to wipe Hamas the fuck out.
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So do I. I'm not criticizing Israel's response. I'm arguing against the notion that any criticism of Israel or its response is antisemitic.
There is a lot of antisemitism bubbling up in these protests and many criticisms of Israel, but it can be separated from rational, thoughtful critiques of Israel's reaction to October 7. In fact, a lot of people in Israel are arguing against the way Israel is prosecuting the war. That's fair. People can differ in their views of that and it does not aid understanding and clear discourse to assert that all such good faith arguments are antisemitic. I think that is a crude expansion on par with the facile progressive definition of racism in recent years. Not everything that takes issue with Israeli policy is automatically antisemitic.
That said, anyone arguing Israel's response should have been anything other than scorched earth is simply not informed. The atrocities of Hamas on 10/7 are similar to those of ISIS, perhaps worse. You don't respond to a death cult that uses its own as human shields with weak measures.
Hamas understands one thing alone - strength. All Israel can do is blast them so far back to the stone age that it will take them decades to recover any semblance of prior strength.
And if one thinks this is a particularly cruel Israeli policy given the collateral losses to be suffered by the Palestinians, consider what the countries around Gaza think of its residents. Egypt and Jordan won't allow them in, and the Saudis pretend to care about them, but that's a front for their covert support for Israel. Hamas is aligned with Iran because the rest of the Arab world in the surrounding area couldn't care less about the Palestinians. And given that Gaza is run by Hamas/Iran, the surrounding Arab nations are more hostile to Gaza than is Israel. Israel would rather Gaza leave them alone and vice versa. The Saudis would prefer Gaza, an outpost of its nemesis, Iran, disappear, along with everyone in it.
