Dude, you brought up the comparison between Hamas and Israel and you brought up the IDF investigation. Now you’re acting condescending while trying to straw man the things I said (hint: I never said the IDF is just, nor is it relevant to my argument).

Don’t really see a point continuing the discussion any further, but thanks for answering some of my questions. I do have one more question though - would you say your opinions are representative of the “Pro-Palestinian” crowd in your country?

Counteroffer - try to read what I said with the understanding there might be a difference between what you think “Zionism” is and what Zionism actually is. Not all Zionists would agree with what I said, but then again that’s also one of the thing you probably don’t understand.

First of all, you didn’t address the main point I was making, or answered my question (just wanted to point that out).

The way that Hamas treats Palestinians is partially the responsibility of Netanyahu and the Likud given that they provided Hamas with material support to take power in the first place.

Not really. Netanyahu didn’t provide material support for Hamas, rather allowed Qatar to materially support them (Yet somehow I don’t see anyone condemning Qatar…). Also, this began about a decade after Hamas took over Gaza. And, really, it’s an extremely weak argument even if what you said were true. Saying Israel is partially responsible for the way Hamas treated the people in Gaza doesn’t mean it treated Palestinians worse than Hamas.

Also, the fact that Israelis stormed an IDF base in protest of the punishment of IDF thugs that anally raped innocent Palestinians to death with rifles

That’s not what happened. The IDF detained some soldiers who allegedly anally raped and perhaps killed Palestinian detainees as part of an investigation. After hearing that, some extreme right wingers stormed the base in something raging from protest against the way soldiers were detained to the mere fact they were detained (depending on who you ask). The act was condemned by a huge majority of the Israeli public. Judging Israel by that is like judging the US by the proud boys of the Jan 6th Capitol riots. But let’s go back to your point of Israel treating Palestinians worse than Hamas - could you point out an example of Hamas investigating it’s operatives for mistreating detainees? If not, is it because you think Hamas doesn’t mistreat its detainees?

What “should”? The context of the discussion is the screenshot, and it said "if “Zionism is defeated like the south was defeated in the civil war”. The comparison to the US civil war might be a bit weird, but it’s pretty obvious he means “If Hamas were to win the conflict and treat Israel as it saw fit” (like what happened in the civil war).

Also, it’s a bit weird for me you’re phrasing your scenario as a “Zionist defeat”, as I know many Zionists (myself included) who would view that as a “Zionist win”, at least in the long run (as long as you’re for equal treatment of Hamas and Palestinians).

Secondly, I belive Hamas would treat Israeli the same way Israel treats Palestinians.

That’s a bit funny to me, as I think Hamas treats Palestinians wore than Israel treats Palestinians, but there’s probably no point going into that. Regardless, do you think this would be worse, the same or better than the current situation?

You think Hamas would treat Israelis the same as the allied forces treated Germans? Based on what?

To answer your question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_October_Hamas-led_attack_on_Israel#Reported_atrocities (as well as the mass murder of civilians that for some reason aren’t mentioned in the section)

That’s like saying German citizens during WW2 should be killed, raped and tortured. Black and white is usually the wrong way to go about thinking.

Without commenting on whether I agree with the screenshot, I’d like to ask a question - what do you (as in, the people who would like to see “Zionism” defeated) think will happen if “Zionism” will be defeated?

And those Hezbollah operatives can lose their pagers

And you can lose your car keys. But if someone asked you where they were, you wouldn’t say “Oh, they’re in a random place”.

or they themselves can move randomly through populated areas with the hidden bomb strapped to their hip

The explosive charge was small enough to seriously harm only those who are in direct contact with it. There’s a video of one charge going off in the middle of grocery shopping (speaking of your next point) with a person standing maybe 20 cm next to the explosion. That person was able to run away without apparent harm.

They never go to buy groceries, or stop at a hospital or school, or have their devices stolen or lost in some random location

There’s no method of warfare that would never harm civilians.

a manner that has absolutely no mechanism by which to control where they actually are and who else is in proximity to them when detonated.

The pagers being bought by Hezbollah is the mechanism. Did you mean a real-time mechanism? Is this what it boils down to? Edit: Sorry, I misread what you said. Changing my reply to: As you can see from the video, where they are and who is next to them isn’t really a factor. I would agree that if they are in very close proximity to another person (hugging them of maybe riding in a crowded public transport), the explosion will probably harm the other person. Once again, relative to other methods aimed against targets operating among civilian population, this seems more selective, not less.

No one is forcing to to reply. I’m continuing it because to me the operation was extremely selective in which people it targets relative to modern warfare among civilian infrastructure, and I’m trying to understand the counter argument.

I did

OK, it took me a while to understand this, and I’m assuming you meant “I do have some criteria”. If you meant something else, I can’t even guess what it was.

after the bit you cherrypicked.

Ah, my bad. I mistook the “pagers that will randomly move around a populated area” part as a purely rhetorical statement and my brain kinda swept it aside. Sorry. The explosives weren’t planted in a random batch of pagers. It was in a batch specifically meant for Hezbollah operatives. You could make the argument that some of the pagers got into non-Hezbollah hands (and obviously they did), but what you said is a gross and unfair exaggeration. Your criteria doesn’t apply here.

I don’t care in the least if anyone thinks I’m in cahoots with anyone; it won’t change that I’m in cahoots with no one.

Sorry, I was trying to say - Please don’t imply I might be willingly misunderstanding you when you’re not communicating clearly. Even your edit is somewhat unclear, as it isn’t evident if the part before the edit is still relevant.

how absolutely heartless and tragic […]

Wait, what? The prevalent criticism against the exploding pagers (both on Lemmy and other places) is that they’re akin to mines and are essentially terrorist attacks. Both of these thing are (at least somewhat) specific and objective, and that’s where we started the conversation. Going from that to “It’s heartless”, which is a very subjective description, seems to me like moving the goalpost.

Yes, of course it’s heartless and tragic. War is heartless and tragic. How else would you describe taking a kid who was in high school a few months ago, putting a rifle in his hand and telling him “See that other kid who’s just like you? go shoot him because he happen to be living on the other side of an imaginary line”?

Saying “Well, this heartless and tragic thing is acceptable but I don’t like that heartless and tragic thing” is arbitrary unless there’s an actual criteria. Either way you’re entitled to your own opinion, it’s just that earlier I thought you have some criteria or test.

You: So the pagers were ordered by Hezbollah…

Me: “The pagers were used by Hezbollah, not Hamas.”

You: “I realize that, I was drawing a parallel between the two circumstances.”

Me: asking for clarification.

You: “you seem not to (or have chosen not to) understand [the parallel?] the first two times […] Edite: I see I typed Hamas when I meant to type Hezbollah in one place”

It seems you’ve mistyped, then misunderstood me when I fixed it (though I attributed it to a lack of knowledge) and now you’re insinuating I might be misunderstanding you willfully? If that’s the case, you’re making it so easy for me other people might think we’re in cahoots[1].

Anyway, Just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I didn’t understand the argument. And I’m pretty sure I did understand at least one of your points. I’ve explained why the pagers aren’t like landmines and why the rational behind the treaty to ban landmines seems to agree with me. If that’s the only argument you made (“It’s been one argument the entire time”), you can simply reply to what I said instead of reframing anything.

[1] Speaking of other people, are people downvoting me as a dislike button, or is there a specific reason? I don’t mind the downvotes, just wondering if they’re because people don’t agree with me or because they think there’s something wrong/harmful with my messages.

I realize that, I was drawing a parallel between the two circumstances.

Err… what circumstances? What was the purpose of drawing a parallel between Hamas and Hezbollah? What insight was I to gain by it? Asking seriously.

And again - when you drop a bomb, you can credibly have made an attempt to ensure no one is in the vicinity who you don’t intend to bomb. (Not that israel seems to do this) - this is especially true with modern technology.

Sorry, were you making two arguments or one? You asked about the difference between landmines and what Israel did. I thought the rest of what you said was to show how planting bombs in pagers is like landmines, not a new argument. If there were two arguments, you didn’t respond to my answer regarding landmines.

I can talk about the difference, and you’ll respond with a counter argument etc. Ultimately, it’ll come down to me saying Israel is able to reasonably predict who’ll carry the explosive and you saying they can’t. The bottom line for me is this:

Some weapons have been banned from warfare while others haven’t. The banned weapons follow certain criteria for being banned. exploda-pagers don’t follow the criteria under which landmines have been banned. If you know of other weapons or tactics that are banned and are akin to exploda-pagers, we can discuss that. Otherwise, I’m left with the conclusion what Israel did falls within the bounds of a legitimate military operation. You can, of course, think differently.

The pagers were used by Hezbollah, not Hamas. They are two different entities, and while it doesn’t make any difference in the narrow context I’m replying to, it’s really a basic detail that anyone voicing an opinion on the matter should know.

How is this argument different than defending the use of landmines?

From the Wikipedia entry about landmines: “The use of land mines is controversial because they are indiscriminate weapons, harming soldier and civilian alike. They remain dangerous after the conflict in which they were deployed has ended, killing and injuring civilians and rendering land impassable and unusable for decades. To make matters worse, many factions have not kept accurate records (or any at all) of the exact locations of their minefields, making removal efforts painstakingly slow.”

Planting bombs inside pagers specifically used by Hezbollah isn’t indiscriminate (unless by “indiscriminate” you mean “when they go off, they harm anyone in the proximity”, but going by that definition everything with an exploding charge is “indiscriminate”, yet only mines are banned). And obviously exploded bombs don’t remain dangerous and aren’t difficult to remove.

First off, I think we should contextualize what happened - according to some news sources, the bombs were supposed to go off in the first days of an Israeli attack that would probably start an all out war (Some Hezbollah operatives became suspicious). The operation wasn’t intended to create an “escalation where Hezbollah will answer”, rather opening a full out attack against Hezbollah to force them to stop firing missiles at Israeli civilians and abide by the UN resolution.

Israel didn’t send “thousands of bombs God knows where they land”. They planted bombs in hardware that is used exclusively by Hezbollah operatives and their accomplices to evade gathering sigint. Yes, civilians got hurt. That’s the nature of war, and what makes it so horrible - people who might hold no malice nor pose any threat to the other side get hurt and die. The modern rules of warfare aren’t designed to eliminate civilian casualties, rather mainly to deter the warring parties from using civilians as a tool of war. That’s why an army can’t hide behind civilian population, but given an army that’s hiding behind civilian population, it’s acceptable for the other army to fire at them as long as they take proper measures to minimize civilian casualties (this in meant only as an example, not directly relating to Hezbollah or Hamas). If any act that results in civilian casualties is not “proper defense” I don’t think there has been a single case of “proper defense” in large scale armed conflict in modern history. People in the west might not realize it because for the last decades wars are fought away form their boarders, so it’s easier to view civilian casualties as optional.

And you know what? I’d WISH all civilian casualties in war would be confined to people who are in direct proximity to enemy personnel. If I could press a button and replace all Hezbollah attacks against civilian targets with bombs sent to IDF personnel, I’d do so in a heartbeat.

Regarding Netanyahu - right now, he’s slowly climbing in the polls. His plan is to keep his coalition from falling apart till the next election. Anything that disturbs the current situation is not in his interests (and, on the whole, the last time Netanyahu was proactive in anything other than a political capacity was about 2 decades ago). If Netanyahu wanted a war, he would have the public’s support for it months ago (in fact, the public very much supports a large scale conflict in order to stop Hezbollah targeting Israeli cities). His hand is being forced by other parties in the coalition. The obvious “culprit” are the far-right parties, but I personally think the main catalyst are the ultra-orthodox parties. This gets a bit complicated, but bear with me: The ultra-orthodox parties need to pass a law that’ll exempt their constituents from military service (long story short - they were exempt for years but due to court rulings, need a new law to keep that privilege). Galant (the minister of defense) is the one stopping the law from passing. Netanyahu was about to replace him and sell it to the public as Galant being the one who was against a war against Hezbollah. Actually, I’ll go as far as saying Israel being forced to activate the bombs prematurely, thus stopping Galant from being fired, makes  a war a bit less likely (Though obviously other factors have also been put in play, so the government can’t just do a U turn).

During the last month there were not 1, not 10, not 100 but 807 alerts in Israel for missile attacks. Some of them weren’t fired by Hezbollah, and some might have been the same alert in different areas, but that’s still about 7 missile PER DAY even if we assume only 1 in 4 alerts was due to an attack by Hezbollah (side note: during the entire war, about 2,000 missile were launched from Lebanon to Israel, that’s an average of about 6 per day). In addition to this, there were 452 aircraft intrusion alerts. Most of these attacks are against civilian targets.

Right now, there are about 79 thousand people (around 0.8% of total population) who are still evicted for nearly a year from northern Israel.

And just in case it needs to be said - the first attack was made by Hezbollah (on Oct. 8th) and without any provocation by Israel.

Not only is this a situation no sovereign country can stand, but it’s also a violation of the Lebanon-approved UN Security Council’s resolution 1701, that was the basis for ending the 2006 Lebanon War. Hell, just having missiles in the area is by itself a violation of the resolution.

Regarding political reasoning - A war in Lebanon is actually bad for Netanyahu. His interest is a slow-burning war so he can prolong the current situation as much as possible (once the war is over, the pubic will demand an election). In fact, that’s probably the main reason you had “a missile here and a bomb there” and not an actual war.

Obviously, it would depend on which country you’re asking.

No idea about the US, but what you’re describing has kinda been done. The PIs were hired for a set amount of time to track some politicians during the day, and were supplemented by freedom of information requests and data from public sources.

Most of the findings were what you would expect (Some parliament members barely came to the parliament, some had days with mostly political activists/lobbing/business magnate). There were a few “out there” examples, as one parliament member was doing grocery shopping etc. Thing is, this method is pretty good to figure out what politicians work for the public and who works for private interests, but it’s nearly impossible to actually uncover anything that’s even skirting on the illegal. A PI can’t wiretap or search private property.

A tangent, but In the same spirit, there’s a crowdfunded lobbying agency called Lobby 99.

OK, I’ll just answer plainly, and if I misunderstood you, feel free to correct me:

OP asked about the difference in Israel’s response to Munich and Gaza. I tried answering that to the best of my ability, as it seems most other answers didn’t correct the implicit assumption that Israel doesn’t go after Hamas’s leaders. If you think someone is “obsessed with Munich”, you should respond to the OP.

However, I get the feeling some people here took the question as “let’s use this question to further convince ourselves/others that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza”. In this context, your reply makes more sense when it’s addressed to me.

Err… did I misunderstood the question, or do (nearly?) all commenters have no idea what they’re talking about?

You’re asking why Israel doesn’t assassinate Hamas’s top leaders, right? Or did I misunderstood and you asking Israel doesn’t ONLY assassinate Hamas’s top leaders? Or are you asking why Israel responded differently to Munich?

To answer the first question, well… they are. Hamas’s top leaders according to BBC are:

• Ismail Haniyeh - Killed.
• Mohammed Deif - Probably killed.
• Marwan Issa - Killed.
• Mahmoud Zahar - Alive. is 79 years old and might not be active/influential in the leadership.
• Khaled Meshaal - Alive.
• Yahya Sinwar - Alive.

Also, keep in mind that the response to the Munich massacre took about 2 decades.

As to why Israel dosen’t ONLY assassinate Hamas’s leadership, the simple answer is that it won’t solve anything. It won’t bring the hostages home (It will probably have opposite effect as a. it will leave Israel without a centralized entity with whom to negotiate and b. Sinwar might be using hostages as human shields, which also might explain why he’s still alive), and it will still leave Israel with a terrorist entity next door. The official Israeli version is that the assassinations, among other things, serve as leverage on Hamas leaders to secure a deal. Obviously, this is only effective if there is some leadership left.

If you’re asking why Israel responded differently to Munich, it’s because the situation is totally different in numerous ways. But the question itself is also factually wrong - Israel didn’t only assassinate the leaders of Black September. Firstly, the goal was to “assassinate individuals they accused of being involved in the 1972 Munich massacre”, not just the leaders. Not only that, Israel also responded with raids and bombings (for example: 1973 Israeli raid in Lebanon).

I have two main moral guidelines by which I try to live:

A. Try to leave everything better than it was before, or at least avoid making it worse. It doesn’t have to be by much, but if every person makes things just one tiny bit better, the culminating effect will be great. Do your part.

B. The difference between a moral person and an immoral one usually doesn’t lie in the ability/inability to know right from wrong, rather in the ability to rationalize their immoral actions. Therefore:

• Doing bad things once in a while does not make you a bad person, it makes you human.
• Avoiding doing bad things 100% of the time will make you a bad person, as you’ll inevitably fail and will be forced to rationalize your actions, making it easier to do more bad things.
• What makes you a good person is the ability to know when you’re acting wrong.

From there, there are a few rules that help me along the way:

1. Everyone are wrong. Assume you’re wrong about some important things/core beliefs, you’ve just yet to discover which ones. Don’t hesitate to act according to what you think is right, but understand you’re probably doing something wrong somewhere. Look for signs that show that’s the case.

2. Making mistakes is fine and inevitable. Reflect on your mistakes and try not to make the same mistake twice.

3. Use everything as an opportunity to learn. The best way to learn is from other people’s mistakes - it provides a visceral lesson without you having to pay the price.

4. People’s opinions of you are their business, not yours. Though you should choose to use them to improve yourself when applicable.

5. Admitting being wrong or admitting a mistake will not only improve things, but is a sign of strength. Not doing so is a sign of weakness. This is true both for yourself and for other people.

6. Give people the benefit of the doubt and don’t be quick to judge them. Wait until you have enough data and then come to conclusions.

7. No rule is correct in all situations.

8. External rules (and laws) exist for a reason. If you’re going to break one of them, first understand why it’s there in the first place and why it should be ignored. Do not assume you know better than the people who came up with it.

9. Blanket statements can be correct or incorrect for the most part, but they can’t be used to solely justify an action or an opinion.

It’s not necessarily a matter of subjective vs. objective. There’s a difference between appreciating art and enjoying watching something. IMO, Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room” is utter garbage, but it was extremely enjoyable to watch.

You can use LLMs to, well, do what they’re designed to do - generate text. Need to write a marketing text? Summersie a meeting or make a summery more readable? Rewrite an “about” page to incorporate something new? Just be sure to read through the generated text and make sure it’s correct.