ICJ orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, stops short of ordering ceasefire

This is looking at the conflict from western eyes. Religious fundamentalists don't think like that

We could have said this about Germany and Japan after WWII.

Every human no matter their race and religion cares about having food, water, safety, opportunity, live in a law abiding society where their rights are respected and they get “some” choice to vote for their future.

Germany and Japan were conquered and unconditionally surrendered, after massive civilian casualties. Nazis were tried and executed. If Israel is should model itself on those examples, it's doing the right and moral thing in waging war until Hamas is destroyed, or unconditionally surrenders.

Germany and Japan were occupied after WWII. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/united-states...

If Germany or Japan is your guideline here, maybe Israel should get a Bomber Harris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Harris#Second_World_War) or a Truman (see nuclear weapons dropped on Japan) on the scene?

People are saying that what Israel is doing right now is a genocide. You have seen nothing yet: With either of them at the helm, there would either be an unconditional surrender by Hamas or no Palestinian alive anymore - and by November 15, last year.

We don't do such things anymore, and for good reason, but that means that these past situations are unsuitable as example for the present.

I think the allies (largely the US) were able to effect massive cultural changes in Japan and Germany after WWII from aggressive, totalitarian, racist societies committed to military victory by any means necessary to relatively peaceful, even pacifist societies only via:

1) Forcing unconditional surrender on Germany and Japan, whereby virtually every citizen of those countries was convinced that they had lost the war and that resorting to armed struggle for their goals was a complete failure for Germany and Japan, and,

2) A lengthy occupation in those countries that accomplished many things, including the "de-nazification" of educational system.

The notion that the problem is religious fundamentalists is itself propaganda. The people are just people; the problem is a brutal racist occupation that has gone on for far too long.

And yet, women in Afghanistan were happy going to university until we let the fundamentalists back in.

Ethnically cleansing a population is not right or moral in any case whatsoever.

The point is that it’s possible for relations to improve over time even when previous generations were bitter enemies. There are plenty of other examples in history apart from WW2.

Investing heavily in Palestine is likely Israel’s cheapest option for stability in the long term. They certainly aren’t going to bomb their way to stability.

If they had gone after Hamas leadership specifically with targeted operations while increasing humanitarian aid, rather than terrorizing the entire population of Gaza, they would have had the world and likely a decent percentage of Palestinians on their side. Instead they have utterly and completely botched it and put themselves in a terrible situation strategically.

> Germany and Japan were conquered and unconditionally surrendered

Israel has already done that to Palestine, many decades ago, but they failed to do anything like the Marshall Plan to invest in the occupied lands and create a lasting peace.

If we hope to learn from WW2, we should consider the postwar history of Eastern Europe. Like Israel, the Soviets also failed to invest in the lands they occupied, instead trying to suppress rebellions with violence. Now all of those nations are Russia's enemies.

Germany and japan returned to their pre war borders after the war. Gaza does not have the land or resources to sustain its population. It literally needs to expand to have any amount of stability.

All major conflicts and wars are fundamentally economic and have been so throughout history

Were they occupied or was it an open-air prison? Just throw everything out there and see what sticks.

Such a statement seems, at best, a controversial view. For example, I’m pretty sure that the religious aspects of the crusades are generally accepted as the primary cause.

Worth pointing out that both sides have extreme religious fundamentalists.

Also worth pointing out that peace was achieved between Egypt/Israel but it took leaders like Carter, Sadat, Begin to transcend the conflict. Sadly, Biden is no Carter. And there are no Sadats or Begins anymore.

This myth that Hamas can be destroyed and that if they are, everything will be alright, is completely disproven by the fact that there is no Hamas in the West Bank and Israeli extremists continue to perpetrate crimes there.

I think the WWII example is really useful here - completion of hostilities and post-war work. Expansion of Gaza may be not necessary at all, looking at Singapore example, not to mention West Bank.

It is unimaginable to me for Gaza to ever resemble singapore. Singapore had massive advantages that took hundreds of years to create and its biggest continues to be its position along the straight of malacca. If singapore was not along the straight theres no doubt in my mind that it would be in a much much worse position today. Singapore actually has long standing hostilities with Malaysia. The only reason it exists today in its current form is the economic advantage given by its location.

What Israel is doing right now should be viewed from the point of view of the goal of removing the Hamas threat as such. The logic here is "Hamas should go - what's the best way to make that happen?" and from this POV the situation is not too grim. It's obviously best to avoid casualties as much as possible, but we are far from perfect wars.

Ask Carter what he thinks about that. I think he'd at least admit that Biden has a huge hindsight - the world today is so different from 1970-s.

Germany was reduced to rubble, their population submitted to complete and total surrender, and their leaders were all executed. Japan was firebombed into oblivion and then had two atomic bombs dropped on their civilian population. And both were then completely occupied and had their government dismantled and replaced by their conquerors.

What Israel is doing right now seems to be far closer to what happened in Germany and Japan after WW2 than whatever diplomatic solution you are proposing.

With the support of IDF collaboration (and funding from private US organizations). Downvoters don’t like the facts I guess.

Lack of imagination can prevent us from seeing solutions. Gaza certainly has advantages - location, population size and age, attention of the world in XXI century among them.

There are two ways to get peace. One is for one side to completely dominate the other at massive cost, and with risk of blowback even after domination. The other is for cooler heads to prevail. Plenty of examples from history of both. And supposedly we had, as a modern world, decided that we prefer the latter path to peace over the former. Hence the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, etc.

This only worked because enough was invested into the defeated countries for their populations to prosper. Case in point, after WW1, we got WW2.

The prospects Palestinians are faced with, as proven by the West Bank, are very bleak, making any peace very very unstable.

And the world decided we didn't want to have wars like that ever again, and gave the defeated countries a path to prosper. Sadly, Palestinians have no such path.

Carter's approach tells us what he would think. Carter was willing to give the Israelis and the Egyptians massive amounts of aid, conditioned on peace. That is very different than offering one side unconditional support despite that side allowing extremists to formulate and shape plans.

Where are you getting the idea that tbere is no Hamas in the West Bank? There are very much Hamas militants there that would love nothing more than to commit another Oct. 7th.

Hamas's stated aim and goal is to destroy Israel and ethnically cleanse Palestine of the jews "from the river to the sea".

When somebody tells you they want to destroy you, over and over for years, and then builds up terror factories and uses it to intentionally target women, children and elderly civilians on Oct 7, maybe -- just maybe, Israel has no choice other than to deal with Hamas as they are.

> Investing heavily in Palestine is likely Israel’s cheapest option for stability in the long term. They certainly aren’t going to bomb their way to stability.

Even that is non trivial. Money going into Gaza first goes through Hamas. After buying arms and building expensive tunnels, and paying its men, the leftovers go to the rest of the population.

There's also the myth that settlers are responsible for all Palestinian grievances. There are no settlers in Gaza since 2005.

Hamas has spent the aid and all their funds on funding terror. It's no wonder they have no path to prosper. Hamas made it this way.

Yes people are just people and for some people religion is a big deal. It kinda defines their whole world.

There's no Hamas in the West Bank and no path to prosper there.

Gaza has been effectively under blockade since then too. Maybe that's a contributing factor? Or maybe there are other common factors?

Hamas is trying to kill as many Israelis as it can, maybe that's a contributing factor to the blockade.

> gone after Hamas leadership specifically with targeted operations while increasing humanitarian aid, rather than terrorizing the entire population of Gaza

The aid was going first to fighters, then to stockpiles, then to the people. To the extent it could be traded for weapons it was. Now we’re seeing allegations UNRWA employees participated in the October 7th attacks [1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/world/middleeast/un-aid-i...

>Like Israel, the Soviets also failed to invest in the lands they occupied

Don't know about Israel, but you definitely know nothing about the Soviets.

I don't think it's too Western-centric to imagine that Palestinians want freedom, which is a universal human desire. Freedom means statehood and self-governance.

Oppression is fertile soil for religious fundamentalists, and radicals of every stripe.

That's rather similar to what we have or going to have. Both Israel and Gaza may receive - keep receiving - external aid. The difference is that peace around Gaza, today's and tomorrow's, is going to be enforced more elaborately.

Their borders were restored.

The West Bank and Gaza are two different locations. The West Bank is occupied and "open air prison" doesn't seem like a bad description of Gaza.

Hamas are active in the West Bank and have significant support and influence. If an election were called (there hasn't been one for more than 18 years) it is overwhelmingly likely that Hamas would win.

Fatah are somewhat less politically extreme than Hamas, but they are scarcely any less corrupt; within the West Bank, the PA is widely viewed as illegitimate.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/29/palestinian-authori...

It’s their prime minister who has no choice. As soon as war ends, he is out.

Oct events could have been prevented by military presence at the border.

The "people are just people" argument is rarely (if ever) applied to domestic politics. Democrats and Republicans may often loathe each other, but at least they have enough respect to recognise that their differences in opinion are meaningful and sincerely held.

Many Palestinians are just ordinary people who want to get on with their lives, but some are fanatics. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it is the fanatics who are in charge. Of course, the same could be justifiably argued about the current Israeli government; the crucial difference is that Netanyahu and Smotrich can (and likely will) be removed at the next election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_I...

> Freedom means statehood and self-governance

That second bit is a magic variable.

Please omit swipes from your comments here, as the guidelines ask. If you know more than someone else, you're welcome to provide correct information, but please don't post putdowns.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

They support Hamas because they can't see any other potential path to prosperity.

If you want to quell extremism in a country, you have to give them a genuine alternative to extremism. If all of the moderate options get them nowhere, they will reject them.

This is a vital lesson we learned from WWII. Incentives matter.

It's not propaganda. It's a dispute about land with each side not willing to give up land because it's a holy land that God bestowed upon them

Except where they weren't. The German borders after 1945 or after 1990 are unlike any other shape of any German nation (or collection of German states) before.

> They support Hamas because they can't see any other potential path to prosperity.

Prosperity through Hamas? Only for a select few who live in other countries. With the amount of aid and money thrown at Gaza, any third rate politician could have achieved prosperity if only they were genuinely in it for the good of the people.

Hamas didn't, because their priority doesn't lie in the welfare of the Palestinian people but in the eradication of Israel.

(and potentially not even that: there are more billions to amass while living in the safety and comfort of some emirate when the situation on the ground remains volatile and the Palestinian people miserable. In that case, Palestinians don't even have a "way out" of their misery by completing Hamas' mission, because their misery _is_ Hamas' mission.)

I don't grasp the analogy

>and gave the defeated countries a path to prosper.

You're not very familiar with the history of the countries behind the Iron Curtain, are you?

So you're telling me they have an easy way to bait Hamas into exposing themselves by using humanitarian aid as a honey pot?

If the humanitarian aid organisations themselves are Hamas, then you could just arrest them.

I think the Gaza war doesn't fit you hypothesis for a start. The Gaza residents could have made it into another Dubai but they prefered to follow a route that resulted in the current situation.

<< Israel has no choice other than to deal with Hamas as they are.

Maybe. Recent drone strike in Lebanon suggests that Israel is rather capable to strike surgically if it is so desires. In Gaza, it does not appear to strike surgically suggesting it made that choice for a reason.

There is always a choice and few would fault just plain self-defense. Based on the existing rubble, current situation is closer to overkill, which does not win Israel support.

Something to consider.

They're in a different territory that has no Israeli presence. That's like saying the US could've just arrested the members of ISIS..

No they didn't. Germany lost a large chunk of its eastern lands that was "given" to Poland (but in reality conytrolled by the Soviets) and Japan's large prewar empire in northern China and Korea (since the early 1930s) was taken away from the Japanese leaving them only the home islands. A bit of basic historical knowledge is good if one is going to argue.

As for Gaza not being able to sustain its population, i'm doubtful. It's a tiny territory almost devoid of material/natural resources, but then there are many places and enclave countries in the world that are similar in size, heavily populated and with good standards of living. The reason why: They're not unremittingly belligerent with their neighbors, run by a government explicitly dedicated to the erasure of one of those neighbors, and overall allowed to exchange with the rest of the world fully.

With that said, the hardline stance of Netenyahou and those who support him is doing little favors to Israel either, if a path to peace is what Israel wants.

Because Gaza is famously known for its oil wealth. Why pretend like completely different circumstances should lead to the same results?

Hamas are people who kidnap babies and hold them hostage. Something to consider.

Yes, it is an extremely low bar.

But from the perspective of someone living in the West Bank, Hamas is the least horrible of the options. It is the only organization that looks like it might eventually push back Israeli settlements and give West Bank Palestinians back their homes.

If we want don't want people on the West Bank to support Hamas, give them a better alternative. The PA is utterly failing to resist the encroaching settlements. Of course they're going to turn to Hamas!

If there was a third option that wasn't a corrupt terrorist organization, but had the teeth to remove Israeli settlements from the West Bank, you would see support for Hamas fall.

> Soviets also failed to invest in the lands they occupied

Soviets occupied lands more developed than them. They did not fail to invest, they looted the lands, for example the Uranium from Czechoslovakia [1].

[1] https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-historiques-de-l-electr...