Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

Useless except if the following done on the US side:

Remove exception to AIPAC political status

Reevaluate AIPAC non profit status entirely

Replicate EO 14046 for Israel which adds the entire ruling party and head of state and spouses and military and affiliated business to the OFAC list

all of this is easy and doesn’t require Congress

but nobody is close to considering those actions with regard to Israel. Notably, other nation’s organizations do not enjoy this courtesy

(Don’t sorry guys, Hamas is already on these lists too)

Voters can take a stand and refuse to vote for anyone complicit in this atrocity.

In the US, both parties were supportive in the last election. Not many choices.

One party had a long leash. The other cut the leash and yelled attaboy.

Now acting mildly concerned when the neighbour downstreet (Qatar) got their chickens bombed.

> Now acting mildly concerned when the neighbour downstreet (Qatar) got their chickens bombed.

Thing is, what was bombed there was Hamas leadership, not some rank-and-file goons.

Yes, and at this point I'm not arguing for or against that action. I'm saying the current and previous US administration have very different foreign policy.

Why shouldn't Hamas leadership be bombed wherever they may be? They're the leaders of a terrorist organization. The US takes out terrorists wherever they may be (or, works with local authorities to get them first). But, when local authorities are siding with the terrorists, we go in there and do it ourselves. October 7th was Israel's 9/11 - we went and got bin Laden in Pakistan, without dealing with the Pakistani government. Why shouldn't Israel do the same thing? I say - kill all the Hamas leadership, and leave the random Palestinian citizens alone.

I can write in “free Palestine”

And it's gonna get seen by one (1) vote counter who'll then put it away/throw it in the bin

As long as it doesn’t go to a genocide enabler I could care less where my vote goes

Oh I just don't vote instead, it just feels performative now

There was only one bin Laden, and we didn't use missiles for that one.

We have bombed their leadership. This is an entirely different war. Hamas was/is the government of Gaza. They're part of the people there, not outside it.

You're trying to fight an organization that is part of the civilian population, not above it or outside of it. And that organization is deliberately using human shields to blur the lines even further.

It's not easy to figure out who's a random Palestinian or who's going to fire a rocket into Israel five years from now. If we want to keep bombing our way to victory, that's going to continue down the road of genocide.

Humanity needs to be better than this. We need to be better than this.

> both parties were supportive in the last election. Not many choices.

Primaries.

The truth is that foreign policy rarely flips American elections. Particularly when we don't have our troops on the ground.

> Why shouldn't Hamas leadership be bombed wherever they may be?

Israel wouldn't be nearly as criticised if they're restricted themselves to surgical strikes on Hamas. Hell, they could have done exactly what they did until hostages started being exchanged, and then switched to surgical strikes, and I suspect--while folks would grumble--leaders would have better things to focus on.

I can turn anyone, including you, into "someone who will fire a rocket in 5 years". Give me US backing and I can do it in 4

Surgical strikes is mostly a myth presented to make the war on terrorism look better than it is. The US military defined anyone killed above the age of 15 to be a terrorist regardless of situation, and thus by definition had almost zero civilian deaths. It was one of those things that got leaked through the war logs.

The war on terror is estimated to have killed 4,5 million people. Surgical strikes is not a good description for that, nor was the war on terror a good model for how to behave in a war.

> Surgical strikes is mostly a myth presented to make the war on terrorism look better than it is

Even if they are, which I don't grant, myths matter in the fog of war.

More pointedly, surgical strikes would mean serially decapitating Hamas and destroying its infrastructure from the sky. It would preclude messing with aid flows. (Even if Hamas steals all the food, you can't turn most food into weapons. And Hamas amassing fighters they have to feed isn't a strategic threat to Israel in the way their ports and tunnels are.)

> war on terror is estimated to have killed 4,5 million people

One, source? Two, the U.S. obviously didn't prosecute a surgical war on the Taliban or Al Qaeda. We invaded, occupied and attempted to rebuild two nation states.

Out of curiosity, how would you plan to do that?

You know nothing about me.

> the U.S. obviously didn't prosecute a surgical war on the Taliban or Al Qaeda. We invaded, occupied and attempted to rebuild two nation states.

Which is why holding Israel to a higher standard than we hold ourselves is odd, to say the least.

Do you accept Washington post as source? https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/15/war-on-terro...

>I can turn anyone, including you, into "someone who will fire a rocket in 5 years". Give me US backing and I can do it in 4

Echoing OP's point, I can turn you into a person who'll fire a rocket in a year, even. Go read through B'Tselem's reports of Israel's torture camps [0] where tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians are systematically raped, murdered, and abused as a matter of state policy. By the time you undergo that from youth, with half the people in your family gone for years, imprisoned in such camps, while half the kids you grew up with have died in senseless state-sanctioned murder, you'll be ready to do something worse that firing rockets.

Of course, you'll argue, from a sheltered perspective that you wouldn't ever do something like that. So, what will you do instead of fighting back? Sue? LMAO. Protest? You'll get shot. Just focus on building a family? Your home will get demolished or bombed just because.

[0]: https://www.btselem.org/publications/202408_welcome_to_hell

Last election the democrats didn't have a primary, and the republicans barely had one. Political change requires more than one day at the polls; it demands large scale sustained effort by many people, including those in positions of prominence, and even with that success takes time and luck.

Part of being in a leadership position is taking responsibility for what happens on your watch. The electorate can't be blamed for its leaders not doing their jobs when the their leadership is needed.

That is the Post reporting on a report. Do you know who wrote the report?

To be clear, the estimate doesn’t sound incredulous. I’m just curious to see how they are estimating.

Turn your electricity off for days on end when someone in your country does something that other country disagrees with.

Hell, turn your fresh water off too.

Bomb your only airport into non-functioning rubble, and tell you that if you try to rebuild it, the same thing will happen. Keep that up for 20 years.

Park destroyers in your harbors to ensure nothing gets in or out of the country without their say so. Keep that up for a few decades as well.

Keep your land border effectively locked down so you can't even leave that way.

Bulldoze your neighborhood and childhood home because a rocket was suspected to be launched from nearby.

When the other kids in your neighborhood throw rocks at the armored bulldozers, watch as they have rubber bullets shot at them by an army. When they throw rocks at the army, watch as those soldiers return fire with live ammunition.

No, I know nothing about you. But don't pretend that having that as the only existence you've known is not going to make you increasingly angry and willing to fight back in any way, shape, or form, against the boot on your throat.

> Last election the democrats didn't have a primary, and the republicans barely had one

Now do down ballot.

> electorate can't be blamed for its leaders not doing their jobs when the their leadership is needed

Pro-Palestinian voters who swung for Trump explicitly endorsed the war. Even if they thought they were just throwing a tantrum. That includes the war’s repercussions, including the dissolution and incorporation of Palestine.

If you care about net effect, the answer is obvious. If how one feels reigns supreme, yes, that voting bloc is excused. (But still irrelevant.)

I fully understand the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness with this situation. Lots of people like to imagine what they'd do in certain situations, historical or otherwise. We no longer need to imagine what most people would do in the HOlocaust. We now know: nothing. In WW2, most people could reasonably claim ignorance. Even a lot of Germans could claim ignorance. Now we have livestreamed 4K 60fps evidence that is impossible to ignore.

There's a phrase that's widely attributed (arguably misattributed) to Lenin:

    "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen"

So while the US could end this entire thing with a phone call, it's not true to say that things aren't changing. US support for Israel continues to plummet to new lows [1], to levels I never thought I'd see. Small things like blocking a cycling event in Spain, the future of Eurovision being uncertain, European states recognizing Palestine, problems for the port in Haifa due to changes in shipping because of Houthi rebels, ICC?ICJ investigations, these genocide findings and so on... it all adds up. It all matters. It all compounds to political and economic pressure on the actors involved.

[1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/692948/u.s.-back-israel-militar...

couldnt you instead, run for government? if its something voters care about, either youll win, or the competing candidates will change their tune

I don't feel hopeless by pointing out that the UN report is a small piece of a puzzle, despite the high level of energy used to collectively create it.

It's easier to talk about these things and seeing consensus shift on consensus driven forums like this. My prior observations about that state's policies and supporting culture have been similar, but seen as extreme and "cancellable" at one point. Espousing my observations would have been conflated with ideas of physical harm to Jewish and Israelis, which I don't harbor. My ideas are much more similar to Jewish Israeli residents that protest their own government within Israel. And it's been nice to see many stateside Jewish people distance themselves, and now even second guess Zionism, which Jewish community leaders initially denounced 120 years ago by foreseeing these specific issues and its inherent extremism.

When it comes to my country's involvement, it's a complete aberration in US foreign policy. The reasons require a contorting ourselves for no real practical reason that isn’t already fulfilled by other countries in the Middle East, it’s just money moved from one account to the account of our politicians and appointed representatives.

So I am happy to see piece by piece, people re-evaluating the state narrative on that country. The politicians with discretion on all the levers are unfortunately a far cry away from changing anything.

They tried that last November and wound up worse off than if they hadn't.

hamas sits in estimated 350-450 miles of tunnels below cities. deepest known tunnels are ~230ft deep. entrances to tunnels are in buildings

how do you see surgical strikes on this ? and what kind of munition ?

or what is surgical strike when you have hamas team with rpg in the window of the building ?

Let's imagine that a political opposition leader from Russia were to take refuge in the US. Now imagine that Russia performed a "surgical strike" bombing in the US to kill what they viewed as a terrorist leader. Can you imagine the outrage that would occur? That's exactly the situation that Qatar has just experienced.

It's an act of war. One country bombing another country means they are at war.

Now, the power dynamics in this region mean that they'll probably get away with it, and Qatar is more likely to let it slip than not, but it's still morally reprehensible.

The parties have already decided their position on a variety of issues so if you're going to get nominated for the party you'll be against them on that issue.

And the system is designed to exclude independents. The last nationally visible "I" candidate was roughly H Ross Perot. The system made sure that didn't happen again.

Hilarious. 9/11 was used as a false pretense for invading Iraq, killing millions, for geopolitics and oil.

Never let a good crisis go to waste they say

> Now do down ballot.

As I stated before, changing a political party from the bottom up takes time. While a good endeavor, it doesn't affect who is currently in the drivers seat. Either Harris or Trump were going to be making the decisions about the current Gaza situation regardless of what the electorate did.

> Pro-Palestinian voters who swung for Trump explicitly endorsed the war.

Pro-palestinian voters didn't swing to trump. Virtually no one swang to Trump; his election results in 2024 were basically the same as in 2020 plus the increase in population of areas that voted for him in 2020. Exit polls indicate that Trump voters were overwhelmingly pro-israel. I'm sure some individuals did, but not enough to make any difference one way or the other. Trump won because 6 million democrats who showed up in 2020 stayed home in 2024. If they had gone out and voted for Harris, and then Harris supported Israel's efforts, as she publicly said she would, you would still be saying they endorsed the war.

the atlantic article from almost exactly year ago: https://archive.is/wKScw

Brett McGurk would push back against the complaints, invoking his stint overseeing the siege of Mosul during the Obama administration, as the U.S. attempted to drive ISIS from northern Iraq: We flattened the city. There’s nothing left. What standard are you holding these Israelis to?

It was an argument bolstered by a classified cable sent by the U.S. embassy in Israel in late fall. American officials had embedded in IDF operating centers, reviewing its procedures for ordering air strikes. The cable concluded that the Israeli standards for protecting civilians and calculating the risks of bombardment were not so different from those used by the U.S. military.

When State Department officials chastised them over the mounting civilian deaths, Israeli officials liked to make the very same point. Herzl Halevi, the IDF chief of staff, brought up his own education at an American war college. He recalled asking a U.S. general how many civilian deaths would be acceptable in pursuit of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the jihadist leader of the anti-American insurgency in Iraq. The general replied, I don’t even understand the question. As Halevi now explained to the U.S. diplomats, Everything we do, we learned at your colleges.

But in your example, the unstated premise is that the opposition leader is not in fact a terrorist, so his killing is wrong.

In the case of Hamas, they are in fact terrorists. So the analogy fails.

Well, one huge difference is that the UN was allowed to set up camps for refugees during the Mosul offensive.

In Gaza, people are just herded from one kill box to another, back and forth.

You left out a lot of things. You are trying to make a point. I don’t expect you to put in all the things that go against your point, but you left out so many that maybe your point is not worth making.

i believe official un position about setting any refugee camps in gaza it's that it will be forced displacement of population. or something like this. going back to days when Israel setup camps for evacuation of population from Rafah.

I don't remember UN asking to setup refugee camps or helping them to evacuate out of war zone

and you ignored the middle, which says that IDF using same procedures like USA (and in other words entire NATO)

No, that's not the point. Whether someone is a terrorist is subjective. Russia could (and likely would) define their opposition leader as a terrorist.

My point is that if Russia were to conduct a bombing on US soil, regardless of who it was targeting, the response would be severe and the reasonable onlookers would not blame the US for being "upset" about it. Yet that is exactly what Israel has done to Qatar.