Sure and I don't argue that. But it also wasn't fully there. This past couple of weeks Codename One introduced some big missing pieces:
* Level builder/game designer
* Proper 3d that works natively everywhere (direct 3d on windows, metal on iOS/Mac)
* Support for native win32, Linux and mac - real native with no JVM, 5mb binary
* Native performance for some edge cases (low level SIMD API etc.)
You're right that mindshare is a huge part, but there were also many important missing pieces especially on the deployment front. I think that with good tooling and a royalty free pitch this might open some doors that were previously closed to Java.
Getting to major studios would be an uphill battle but since they acquire indie studios the path goes through there.
They give us Dell Linux machines from work. They suck so bad and we have so many problems. Overheating, camera is terrible, performance is bad relatively to the huge weight of the device. Everything is a huge step down from Macs.
Whenever I see Linux people comparing Linux and Mac I'm amazed at the audacity. They are not in the same league. Not by a mile. Even the CLI is more convenient on the Mac which is truly amazing to me.
As a maintainer of a medium size OSS project I agree. We've been running the produce for over a decade and a few years back Google came out with a competitor that pretty much sucked the air out of our field. It didn't matter that our product was better, we didn't have the resources to compete with a google hobby project.
As a result our work on the project got reduced to maintenance until coding agents got better. Over the past year I've rewritten a spectacular amount of the code using AI agents. More importantly, I was able to construct enterprise level testing which was a herculean task I just couldn't take up on my own.
The way I see it, AI brought back my OSS project that was heading to purgatory.
EDIT: Also about OPs post. It's really f*ing bug bounties that are the problem. These things are horrible and should die in fire...
Predicting the future is futile, but I would guess this would be exactly the opposite. LLMs make it remarkably easy to generate a lot of code so they can easily generate a lot of Rust code that looks good. It probably wouldn't be, and for us it would be unreadable when something goes wrong. We would end up in LLM debugging hell.
The solution is to use a higher level safer, strict language (e.g. Java) that would be easy for us to debug and deeply familiar to all LLMs. Yes, we will generate more code, but if you spend the LLM time focusing on nitpicking performance rather than productivity you would end up in the same problem you have with humans. LLMs also have capacity limits and the engineers that operate them have capacity limits, neither one is going away.
Well... 64kb isn't exactly enormous for the type of functionality it offered. It did support copy and paste you just had to enter editing mode. The underlying APIs didn't offer access to copy and paste directly.
Having said that, it doesn't really matter if you didn't like it. It was a pretty big part of the J2ME ecosystem at the time and it's a huge omission.
Cloud companies will charge you if you use their features without limits: news at 11...
Observability solutions of this type are for the big companies that can typically afford the bill shock. These companies can also afford the routine auditing process that makes sure the level of observability is sufficient and inexpensive. Smaller companies can just log into a few servers or a dashboard to get a sense of what's going on. They don't need something at this scale.
Pretty much every solution listed lets you fine tune the level of data you observe/retain to a very deep level. I'm personally more versed in OneAgent than OTel and you can control everything to a very fine level of data ingestion.
> I'm not anti-immigration as you accused me of, far from it
Nope. I asked if you would be as judgemental towards any other ethnic group. Notice that the immigration in question (in massive numbers) happened for the most part in the 19th century. There was a big push when the country was formed but it was related to the existing WW II displacement of population.
> but I think you need to accept the fact that emigration en mass to any part of the world is not natural and will definitely causing instability.
Sure. But it happened. My ancestors didn't have much of a choice and neither do I. It happened and people need to get over it.
> The situation in Israel cannot be justified similarly as if the Muslim want to emigrate en mass back to Spain. However you never answer my questions what's your personal opinions regarding this similar hypothetical situation?
Why would I care about Spain?
You're trying to create a false equivalency and renegotiate history. Those are mute points. I get exactly why the Palestinians didn't want Jews to return to Israel, I don't blame them for that. Did I give a sense that I did?
I also understand why they started the war in 1947/8. It was objectively stupid on their part as history shows.
> I'd really appreciate if you can provide the valid references of the verses for the dubious promised land narrative in the Quran and Bibles with respect to modern Israel (not ancient Moses time).
You must have me confused with someone else. I'm an atheist. I don't give a crap about the promised land and neither do most Israelis. We were born here, it's as simple as that. Our lineage was displaced a lot through history and we don't claim ownership of everything that was stolen from our ancestors.
You're debating as if you're in the 1940s. This debate is mute. Almost all Palestinians were born outside of what is today's Israel and most Israelis were born here.
> Another interesting potential fact is that most of the current Palestinians are actually the descendents from the original Jewish people living in the ancient Judea time that have converted to Islam.
That is nonsense. Since Jews were literally murdered by Romans that would not have been the case. Islam didn't exist at the time. Notice that you're grasping at straws trying to invalidate an entire people, would you feel OK trying to invalidate the history/ethnicity of any other race other than Jews?
> I think Israel govt can and should check the Palestinian people ancestry based on DNA test accordingly.
There is actual DNA relation between Jews and Palestinians, but DNA doesn't work like people think it does. It doesn't tell us anything much. We do call Arabs/Palestinians cousins in Hebrew because religious people do believe we are related and descendants from the same line.
> If that's true it will make the current Israel govt as self-hating Jews or self-hating Semite.
Nope. Not a thing.
> Potentially, some of the Palestinians may have higher Jews ancentors percentage from the ancient Judea Jews population than the emigrants themselves.
There is no way of knowing that. What we do know is where some Palestinians came from and its often Sudan, Yemen etc. There's a strong genetic connection between them and the north African/Yemenite population though... A huge amount of them were work immigrants who came to the region in the 1920's and encouraged by the local population as a contrast to the Jewish immigration. This goes both ways.
> According to reluable sources only a few percents or around less than 3% of land properties were legally bought by the Israel Jewish community from the Palestinians.
Your mistake is that you assumed incorrectly that Palestinians owned the land. They did not, half of the land was purchased from other owners.
> But honestly, even if we take your inflated claim of legal land purchases at 7%, do you honestly think the Palestinian would sell the Jews the remainder of the 93% land if the British and the Palestinian authority had not stop the land purchasing exercises?
Again no. You assume Palestinians owned the other 93% of the land which again isn't how territories work. The number is much much lower. Most of the ownership was by public land, churches, mosques, etc. The actual number is open to debate but is indeed in the 40+ percent. Here's the thing: most of it wasn't in the area where Israel was originally formed. Even after 1947, most of the Palestinians were still on their owned land. In fact, they often still are if they didn't run away during the war.
I agree it's terrible that people got displaced and lost their land. Hell, it happened to my family dozens of times. It sucks. But I don't expect to go back to Morocco, Lativa, Germany (the list goes on) and ask for the lands back. Its gone.
> I cannot recall any incidents where the South Arican black news broadcasting stations, people houses, schools, hospital, house of worships, etc were indiscriminately and systematically decimated from the air by the South African govt at the time.
You're again confusing Gaza and the West bank. It seems there's too much information for you to process.
Gaza is on its own. That's a war.
The west-bank is where I would argue there's a far more severe problem. Unfortunately, the government is using the mess in Gaza to make matters worse in the west-bank.
> Do you not know that throughout history for over more than a thousand years never ever have any Muslim authorities totally expelled or decimated the Jewish population.
That is far from accurate but the point is true that Christians have been far more murderous towards Jews in history. That's part of why we're paranoid and rightly so.
Just to correct the false narrative I suggest looking up: Almohad Caliphate (12th century). Orphans Decree under Zaydi Imams in Yemen (20th century) and Mawza Exile in the 17th century. Allahdad Incident 1839 in Persia and Safavid Era Forced Islamization in the 17th century (and another incident in the 14th century). In Morocco through many centuries and as late as 1790 there was forced conversion.
But yes, the Christians were far worse. This is all before the formation of Israel when things got really bad and Jews had to escape.
> I'd strongly suggest you read the The Hundred Years' War on Palestine book
What makes you think I haven't read that and countless others on the subject?
I'm amazed that you're trying to explain my history to me and assume we don't all know this stuff. We live this stuff every day and are exposed to the "other side". I'd argue that you are not, you think of this entire conflict in simplistic two dimensional terms. You overweight facts that have absolutely no relevance to the current situation and mix two completely different situations/narratives. You also look at the situation in the completely wrong way.
This isn't about Palestinians vs. Jews/Israelis. It's about moderates vs. extremists. The moderates are a huge majority here and just want peace/compromise. However, extremists keep burning everything down and forcing us into conflict that we don't want.
Hamas is a death cult, it will never surrender its purpose to destroy Israel. If it survives it might be able to strike a blow that will give the extreme right in Israel the power to do the unthinkable.
The problem is that most westerners are acting as chaos agents by providing unintentional support for Hamas. This strengthens the Israeli right-wing and is ultimately bad for the moderates on both sides, but mostly bad for the Palestinians. Those are the facts that you're conveniently ignoring.
> > Some would might consider it racist.
>
> How come whoever pointing out the fact that those who're emigrated later to modern Israel for the past century since the Israel - Palestinian conflicts started are actually outside immigrants, they themselves can be considered racist?
I explained it. It ignores the fact the Judea/Israel existed historically. It ignores the fact that Jews were prohibited from immigrating back to their homeland. It classifies Jews as immigrants and ignores the fact that Palestinians also immigrated mostly in recent centuries on the wings of the Ottoman empire. You effectively define a start/end date for homeland validity that conveniently leaves out Jews.
> Actually most people would consider artificial emigration en mass based on the dubious promised land claim of the holy book of one single race religion in this case Jewish, is the act of racism itself.
Again, deeply problematic. First off, there's historical facts that show the Jewish land in Israel. It's evident in the archeology and history, it isn't up for debate.
The "promised land" narrative and relation between Jews and Israel is in the Quran and Bible. I suggest reading them. In fact when talking to people from Muslim countries they sometimes don't connect the narrative of Israel and Judea etc.
Do you even know why Jews lost their land? Why it was called Palestine which was never a country?
The Roman emperor got tired of the rebellions coming out of Judea and decreed that every Jew in the area would be put to death. For the final f*ck you to the Jews he renamed the territory and picked a name based on the old enemies of the Jews: Philistines. Based on Jewish writings from the time roman horses waded in rivers of blood up to their necks... It worked.
> However, when the new immigrants govt started forcefully displacing
Again. Deeply false narrative.
First mistake is that a government displaced people. Nope. You're mixing between the occupied territories which are not a part of Israel and Israel. The Palestinians who stayed within Israel after 1948 are Israeli Arabs and have full citizenship. Not displaced. Those who ran away due to the war aren't the responsibility of Israel, that was a war Israel didn't choose and the consequences of the war aren't its fault.
> the original native people
Second mistake. They are not. They try to claim it and some people back that claim, but there is no evidence of that. There is no archeological evidence and no Palestinian people in history. They have no history in common and that's one of the big problems they have. Unlike Jews who unified and came together despite the long exile, Palestinians still slaughter each other to this day. Looking at them as a single people is deeply ignorant of who they are. If they were a single people they would have had a country ages ago. They would have followed a leader just like Begin yielded to Ben Gurion and enabled unity.
> out of the home without proper land purchase transactions and agreements of the local native populations
Third mistake. When Jews started immigrating to Israel they bought lands en-mass. 7% of the land was purchased until Palestinian leaders and the British put a stop to that.
Most of the land had problematic ownership history during those times. After the war and the formation of Israel the status of many areas became in flux as many people were displaced on both sides. Due to that war Jews who were living in Muslim majority countries had to flee their homes and come to Israel while losing everything. That's 40% of the immigration to Israel. They too lost everything. Not to mention the Jews who were displaced/murdered in the holocaust.
> This very act is even more problematic beyond racism and under international law it can be considered apartheid
You provided the wrong link. It also very clearly states that this is not the case:
"inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them."
When Israel was formed in 1948 all Arab residents that remained instantly became citizens with full rights. So there's no racial aspect here. Was there discrimination? Sure. But that's not apartheid and not systemic.
Notice that after that and most following wars Palestinians still had most of the territory the UN assigned to them. But they were occupied by Jordan and Egypt. In the 6 day war Israel was surrounded with the purpose of obliteration, the running joke in Israel was "The experiment is over, the last one out turn off the lights" (there are still people living today who remember the level of existential dread this brought). Instead of crumbling Israel attacked and took over the occupied territories. But unlike historic cases it didn't annex them because the Arab population was much larger. This is the source of most of the problems we have today.
Had Israel been an apartheid state or interested in ethnic cleansing the Palestinians would be gone in 67. It wasn't interested in that then and isn't interested in that now although there are people in the extreme right-wing who are pushing for that and getting traction because the attempts at peace failed.
In the occupied territories you could try and argue an apartheid based on that definition. But that's not technically true. It's not a part of Israel and Israel literally left Gaza (removing its citizens) and tried to leave the West bank. There's a problem there for sure, but using existing terms like that is intentionally misleading.
> Since your ancestors are from Morocco, imagine if the Jewish and the Muslim of Morocco in the near future start claiming back Spanish lands by emigrating en mass, and forcefully displacing the local native Spanish just because their ancestors have once lived and ruled Iberian peninsular for several hundreds years. Is this hypothetical situation is fine with you?
Jews came back to Israel when it was ruled by the Ottoman and British empires. Unlike your example, there was no country to "invade". It seems that you accept hate toward immigrants... Are you OK with hate toward other immigrant populations that aren't Jews?
Are you comparing Palestinians to MAGA?
> Fun facts, now Spain is allowing and inviting the expelled Jewish descendants in Morocco to come back to Spain and become Spanish citizen [3]. Why do you think that they're not extending this goodwill offers to Muslim descendents that were also expelled alongside Jewish population from Spain?
This was old news and has ended by now. You should ask the Spain why they didn't provide it to Muslims. I don't see the relevance here. Spain/Portugal etc don't have enough birth rate to sustain population and needs immigration to keep the economy going, this is an incentive for that.
Why do you think this is relevant to the situation in Israel which is radically different in every regard?
> We've presented solutions: a one-state solution with complete emancipation for the Palestinian population.
That is the one thing no one wants and is literally the worst idea ever!
Israel has a large Muslim population, but it's a secular state with an ethnically Jewish majority. It is not a colonialist state since it was formed by migration and war, not by a colonial empire.
Lebanon OTOH was formed by the colonial empires as a "fantasy land" based on their lack of understanding in the region. The result was decades of civil war and a failed state due to the diversity of the populace. Syria was another colonial state that slid into a similar situation more recently. Without the Assad family killing all opponents Syria is a damn mess.
A single state is a ridiculous colonial level thinking. We differ too much on a cultural level.
> The problem is the Jewish demographic refuses to accept this, because population trends will soon lead to Jews becoming a minority, which the Jewish population, traumatized by a history of persecution, refuses to accept.
Palestinians don't want it either. You're wrong about the population trends as the fastest growing population in Israel is Hasidic Jews.
> Plan B would be to lift the Gaza Blockade and allow foreign investment to build up Gaza's transport links and offshore natural gas resources
The "give them money for peace" is the exact strategy we tried for the past few decades. Literally gave them suitcases of cash. Hamas leadership hold billions which they steal from their own people, living it up in Qatar.
Before Oct 7th I was working with guys from Gaza. Lots of tech companies in Israel (including Nvidia) were working with people from there. There are great people there. But as long as Hamas exists this sort of strategy just won't work. They will pretend to be onboard and will use that to arm up.
You can't remove a blockade of someone who actively says they want to kill you.
> Combine this with expanded UN peacekeeping patrols (maybe some sort of joint patrols, with one European Christian and one Pakistani/Indonesia/etc. Muslim) to try to keep violence to a minimum until both sides get past their collective traumas.
You mean the UN troops that stood in Lebanon for a year while Hezbolla fired rockets into Israel constantly?
You mean the UN troops who had Hezbolla tunnels dug under their bases and firing posts right in-front of their bases?
Or do you mean the UN troops who held Hamas weapon caches in their offices. Who taught schoolchildren that committing suicide bombings against Israelis will send them to heaven?
Those UN troops?
Sure. The UN is a great body for most countries on earth. Except Israel. The UN came up with more anti-Israel resolutions than all other countries combined. That includes Russia, Saudis, Sudan, NK etc. Israel is apparently worse than all of them. So no, we won't get a fair deal from the UN.
> You removed your ground troops, but you destroyed the Gaza airport before you left (why?), destroyed the foundations of the Gaza seaport as well (why?),
Imagine October 7th with proper weapons and tanks. That's why. Israel left unilaterally due to US pressure. There was no peace deal. The fact is that had Israel not done these things everything would have been so much worse.
> The population has no transportation links to establish meaningful trade relationships and economic prosperity.
That is not true. In the past you could get whatever you wanted in Gaza it just had to go through Israel for security reasons. They still made rockets out of construction pipes.
The problem is that you're confusing two things, the normal people in Gaza who just want to live... For them economic prosperity is great. And the psychos from Hamas who won't be swayed by anything.
You think that people get radicalized by harsh times, that's true. But no amount of economic prosperity will sway Hamas. That is a deep misunderstanding of who they are and their mindset. Bin Laden had all the money in the world and chose to do the terrible things he did. That is not an isolated case. Sinwar was in Israeli prison for murdering other Palestinians (had a guy bury his brother alive with a spoon), he had cancer and Israel cured him then released him.
Still he led the October 7th attacks as he saw that as a weakness. These guys are not "normal". They are a fanatic death cult. The problem is that the people hurt the most by them are the Palestinian people. The only hope the Palestinian people have is if Hamas is destroyed as completely and thoroughly as possible.
> The young men who make up the backbone of Hamas foot soldiers circa 2023 were probably all the children you traumatized in ~2006. That's how you got here.
100% and we're making more of them right now arguably.
You incorrectly assume though that if we stop that will reverse the situation. It will not. It will just happen again and will be FAR worse. The only way out of this is through to the other side. Notice that I'm not in favor of that anymore, I've already resigned myself to the fact that Hamas won't be defeated in this round and that we will probably have a followup clash with Hamas. But next time it will be far more deadly.
> I work with Marines who have fought house-to-house in Iraq and Afghanistan and they are more well-adjusted and humane that what I hear from the average Israeli internet commenter, even on a fairly "enlightened" site such as HN (this place isn't a dumpster fire like Reddit or 4Chan).
Separate Internet comments from the general populace and the soldiers in the field. But I also don't think it's fair to compare our situation to US soldiers.
It's a small country. To put it in perspective the scale of death on Oct 7th is comparable to a 9/11 that killed more than 40k people. We all know someone who died on Oct 7th. Everyone. We all know someone hurt by terrorism. Everyone. It's very personal when you keep running with your kids to shelters and when their earliest memories are of missiles flying overhead.
We all served in the army. Whenever a soldier dies it's the death of a child or a friend. My kids are too young for Army conscription but it's the thing that keeps me up at night more than anything. I don't want them to be a part of an endless war, if there's a risk to soldiers we get the fire first ask later mentality.
Israelis see this as "we tried to do the right thing". We tried to give them a country, we tried peace and signed peace accords with multiple countries (we gave back territory 3x the size of Israel for peace).
But then we get hate online and we take it very personally. Especially when Jews parrot Hamas narrative. That hurts and pushes a lot of Israelis further to the right.
We're also still under deep national trauma that we can't heal. 52 Israelis are still held in Gaza and we feel the absence of every hostage deeply. My spouse would sit with the families of hostages every week until she just broke down mentally. There's a Hebrew saying: Don't judge a man in sorrow.
Our entire nation is in trauma and isn't acting rationally. When you had a similar national trauma you demolished two middle eastern countries and contributed to the current situation.
I split my reply to two parts since it's too long.
> Twenty years of military service, and I've worked with Fallujah veterans. Even we in the notoriously heavy-handed Marine Corps somehow manage to not annihilate as many families as the IDF does in Gaza. Don't think we have a systemic history of using human shields either: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-arm...
That's interesting. It's also missing a few very important details.
Israel was never this violent prior to Oct 7th. Things escalated and Israel wasn't the one who started the escalation.
Unlike America who can just break the middle east and leave, Israel has to stay. Your guys destroyed Afghanistan and then blamed the Afghani people for "not fighting for themselves". Israel tried to fight this gently and morally, and a lot of Israelis see that as a failure.
The main problem here is that there's widespread Muslim delusion surrounding Israel. In early 2024 a missile hit my home (not much happened thanks to Iron Dome) I posted a photo on LinkedIn and got confronted by a Moroccan living in Europe. We had a lively albeit heated discussion similar to the one I'm having with you.
He was sure that all Israelis will "run back to Europe" and kind of fumbled when he found out my ancestry is Moroccan too (he was pretty sure they were great to Jews, which admittedly they weren't that bad). But he was adamant that within 5 years Israel will be gone. Cease to exist. I asked him if it's legitimate to wish for the death of me and my family which is something he avoided.
There's widespread delusion within the Arab world that Israel will topple. Even supposedly intelligent western Muslims are influenced by this delusion. They have an image of the country that doesn't represent it in any way.
Add to that the justified Israeli paranoia e.g. in the 1950's the UK drafted plans to bomb Israeli airbases and leave Israel without defense against its enemies. If Israel were wiped out in any time during its existence the Jews would end up like the Armenians. Fed. We're seeing this in the states right now where the hate towards Israel is one of the few bipartisan issues. We saw America abandon allies in the past.
Sure. How many Israelis were killed by Hamas and similar terrorist groups?
Prior to Oct 7th Israel tried to be more surgical when targeting terrorists. That worked. The PLO was a deadly organization that murdered children, hijacked planes and killed athletes at the Olympics. Israel was deeply violent chasing them to Lebanon and Tunis. That broke them. They finally understood that Israel will never surrender and took up the low bar of recognizing its right to exist/stop terrorism.
That led to the one positive thing in Palestinian history: The Oslo accords.
But Hamas couldn't have that and sabotaged that with help from the extreme Israeli right-wing.
This can't be solved by peaceful means, as much as I want that. In order to have peace we need to also stop the people who are trying actively to sabotage the peace and we also need to squash that delusion that Israel could collapse.
> Working as an Aviation C2 officer, I understand the killchain of air support missions, which is why I'm highly critical of how much ordnance is landing on the heads of entire families. The Israeli air force has a reputation for competence, so the only rational explanation is malevolence.
The assumption your making is about civilian death ratios published by Hamas controlled sources. The fact that other organizations put their stamp of approval on these sources doesn't make them true. Israel doesn't publish numbers since it's impossible to get them accurately, but they estimate a ratio of 1 to 1 in terms of civilian casualties which is far better than what any US campaign ever achieved.
> The implication in this statement is that you aren't making every sortie count now....which is coherent with the conclusion that you are bombing the population as punishment, not judiciously targeting actual military threats.
Israel is using more accurate smaller bombs right now. Are some decisions made by soldiers biased and vengeful, sure. I mean Abu Ghraib didn't appear out of a void and Israel still is a country of laws, it prosecutes war crimes. Yes, the current right-wing government is terrible in that regard and tries to sabotage due process/military standards. But the army is still a separate branch with its own chain of command and judicial oversight. Every airstrike is reviewed, by oversight and requires justification.
I can see why the level of destruction is terrible, but I also understand the necessity. Imagine as a soldier walking into a neighborhood with snipers in every building. The army chose the brute force approach in many cases to reduce casualties.
> It's not the quantity of aid that is significant, it is the purpose, process, and optics of aid delivery.
I agree that holding the food trucks was terrible. No excuse, even if it helps Hamas that was a terrible call. The floatila nonsense was just constructed to make Israel look bad on social media. It was stupid to begin with.
> Members of the international community are attempting to relieve human suffering
They are not. They are virtue signaling which is a very different thing. Ultimately they are only increasing hostility and making it harder for everyone.
Greta Thunberg is the perfect example of a person who celebrated Oct 7th right after it happened. The way we see it is that no one gives a fck about dead Israelis. The problem is that the moment she put herself as the person who's for "bringing aid" she made the whole thing toxic. That means that when we say we want aid to go in we're on "her side". She damaged the cause rather than helped in the name of social media "likes".
> and you are boarding their ships, shooting them, and attacking them with drones.
You're mixing several different floatila's. The first one had armed personnel trying to break a legal blockade. They shot Israeli soldiers and found out. That was legitimate.
The drone thing tried to prevent a similar occurrence. No one was hurt and the message was received.
The latest floatilla was just stupid social media idiots. They got due process and a flight back home. Those who want their day in court will get due process like everyone.
It looks bad, but it's people trying to make Israel look bad. Not an objectively bad or evil thing.
> We have a lot of criticism because you are killing women and children
Not actually true. The ratio of women/children is faked.
> using OUR taxpayer dollars, protected by OUR diplomatic influence with the UN/ICC/etc.
That's partially true. Yes, Israel does get US aid which is given in the form of "store credit". It provides a lot in return for the financial/political aid. In fact the whole situation in Gaza is because of you guys...
In 2005 Bush pressured Israel to leave Gaza and clear the settlements. It did just that because of your political pressure. The results of that terrible decision are in front of us right now. For the past two decades Israel didn't re-invade fully despite constant escalation and rockets. Again, the reason is pressure from the USA not to do anything too harsh.
Removing US aid and international support will be a terrible problem to Israel. That is literally what Hamas wants. The problem is that this would imply that the leash is truly off. It would send Israel to the extreme right and would probably create a "shock and awe" scenario for Palestinians.
I hope the US aid stays but I'm pretty sure it will be gone within a decade. I hope we can have peace before that happens.
> they're saying in fewer words "watch what leaders say, not what they do"
Didn't you reverse it? Didn't you mean to say what they do not what they say?
Iran conducted a terrorist network against Israel for decades. It's behind Lebanon, Syria etc. They also called for death to Israel and countless other examples. It's pretty clear what they want to do.
Would they use nuclear weapons against Israel?
No idea. Don't want to know. Just like I'm glad I don't know what Saddam or Assad would have done with their nuclear weapons (had Israel not bombed them away).
> even now when iran has responded to israel's attacks, you still seem to care more about iran's threats than iran's missiles.
Right now Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons. They were able to kill quite a few Israelis (thankfully not as much because the strikes took down a lot of their launchers/missile caches). I'm concerned about what they say because I know where they are headed if they do somehow gain the weapons to kill everyone.
When someone says they want to kill you and your family: believe them.
> on your very long aside, you are mislabelling the positive sum behaviour as zero-sum.
Nope. Death to Israel is very much zero-sum.
The reason for your confusion is that Iran didn't attack Israel directly and mostly through proxy. That doesn't mean they aren't trying to destroy Israel, they are just cautious about it. Their goal is still the same.
> you might see the point in putting at least equal blame between israel and hamas
Nope. Israel tried to have peace with the Palestinians. Hamas blew up that peace by blowing up busses and coffee shops in the middle of Tel Aviv until that collapsed. They are a zero-sum player who won't settle for peace.
Israel built defense systems and shelters for its people. It ignored Hamas built rockets launched constantly at its cities and tried to "let them be". But they miscalculated. They saw Israeli tolerance as a weakness and assumed Israel doesn't have the stomach for a painful war. They are 100% at fault here and brought about the whole thing.
The fact that this is Hamas's fault doesn't absolve Israel of the brutality of this war and some of the awful things it did. It's just context.
> israel is in a mutually beneficial escalation and continuation of violence with hamas.
It's pretty bad that you lump all of Israel together but make the distinction for Hamas. Hamas made a choice to open a can of worms when Israel had one of the worst governments in its history.
> an extreme right wing populace in israel is a win both for hamas and for israel. neither care about the palestinians, nor the israelis.
I mostly agree, but it will be far worse for the Palestinians. Israel will survive regardless of the outcome. Palestinians don't have that privilege. As such Hamas is far worse, it is a suicide cult.
> This is a bit of semantics, though - "if it's us or them it should be us" is advocating genocide
I don't think it is. When your family and life is threatened you make different choices. This is the definition of war not genocide which is deliberate.
> I think this is one of the problems for Israeli society, especially post-Oct 7 - the only group with a coherent picture of what they want and how to get there is the extreme right
I tend to agree. Israeli liberalism is perceived as detached "do gooders" who live in a bubble.
> and they're pushing for genocide
That's in the very edge and they're mostly pushing to ethnic cleansing which means "relocating" the Palestinians to Jordan/Egypt. That is obviously stupid and unworkable. It won't solve any problem and will make things worse.
> The semantics and the nuance of the conversation inside Israeli society isn't making it to the outside world, but the actions of the right wing hardliners are
Yep. It's pretty horrific and when it gets reported in local media the commenters gang up on them being "anti-Israel" and "self hating Jews".
Recently an Arab village was hit by an Iranian rocket and women died as a result of that. Some people online celebrated that disaster which was indeed horrific. Luckily, we're still not there. The overwhelming consensus attacked those a*holes. But 20-30 years ago it wouldn't have been as bad.
This goes both ways. People in Palestinian villages watch the rockets landing in Israel and celebrate that too. Unfortunately, people in the right encourage that level of hate and use it as a tool.
> one was that Fatah was viewed as broadly corrupt and ineffective
Yes. I know. They also didn't get an absolute majority etc. I get that.
But for many Israelis it was a watershed moment, they had a choice and they chose wrong.
> The history of the Hamas government, especially in the early days, is an interesting one - the group made real signs that they were willing to de-escalate and move towards peace.
Israel was attacked by Islamic Jihad a bit earlier and Hamas very explicitly stood down. They wanted to facilitate a sense within Israel that they are interested in calming things down. Due to that Israel ignored intelligence that showed the preparation for October 7th.
> Regarding the road to peace, I think this is something that Israel needs to invest in if there's hope of a genuine two-state solution
Hopefully... I tend to be an optimist although it is challenging sometimes.
The extreme-right fascists in the government are indeed using Oct 7th as an excuse to make the west-bank worse. I hope we can kick them out of office in the next election but the Iran thing shuffles the deck a bit and reduced some of the hate against Bibi.
> I think a basic problem for Israel here is that some relatively small percent of the population wants genocide, and they're the ones who've been driving the cart for the last decade or so.
I don't think they want Genocide. They look at the Palestinian extremists and say that they will never change. No matter what we try they will always try to kill us. So if it's us or them it should be us.
I get what they are saying. The fact that Palestinians voted for Hamas shocked us all back in the day. The problem is that Palestinians don't have stable leadership that we can talk to and trust. We also have pretty poor leaders since Rabin.
> What, to you, is the realistic road to a two-state solution?
I used to think there is no other option. That we might take a detour and get there eventually after all the pain since there's no other realistic option. Now I'm afraid that the Israeli extreme right might rise to power. The anti-Israel sentiment is actually fueling it which is pretty horrifying.
I hope calm voices will take the Saudi deal which can truly revolutionize the middle east. But right now I think we need to calm down. We've been in nonstop war since 2023 and it puts you in a fight or flight mode. People are picking up extreme stances as a result.
> With regards to the hostages - to an outside eye, Israel's bombing campaign doesn't really seem to indicate they're overly worried about the health and safety of those 53 remaining hostages.
Bibi doesn't want them back and Hamas don't want to release them. He knows that if they will be back he will have to end the war and then might lose his government. Now with the Iran campaign it might finally give him the incentive to close on a reasonable deal.
Well... It isn't. It's a big port. We're doing perfectly fine and the shops are full.
> Does Israel have an undeclared nuclear arsenal? YES.
Probably. But assuming it does, did it ever threaten anyone with it even when it was under attack? Nope.
> Does Israel occupy territory in multiple neighboring countries? YES (in both Syria and Lebanon
Lebanon shot rockets into Israel for a year at an average of 10 rockets per day targeting civilian population killing children etc. They dug huge tunnels in an attempt to do a full out invasion/massacre on the north border. Israel responded "gently" at first. Gave them a year to back down.
Israel is there to protect the family members of Israeli Druzi minorities and make sure they aren't murdered by the new regime.
> Well if we want to get technical, Israel is conducting a genocide, as ethnic cleansing is not precisely defined.
> 1. Killing members of the group; - Israel doesn't satisfy that criteria. There is a war which Israel didn't start. It's targeting Hamas which is in a specific region still holding hostages. People don't die because they are Palestinians.
Yes, civilian casualties happen a lot and it's tragic. But that isn't genocide by even the most lax definition of that.
> 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Again, war isn't that.
But let me help you with the arguments. First there's the ethnic cleansing which essentially means displacement. Initially when Palestinians were cleared from the north there were fears that they won't be able to return home. Some right-wing extremists even advocated for that. However, they have since returned.
The second claim is about starvation which I agree is terrible. Unfortunately, it's not as clear cut. Israel did plenty of stupid/evil stuff in that regard (cutting water, electricity and holding aid trucks). These were indeed bad. But they got restored.
The logic they had was that this is stolen by Hamas and then resold on the black market to fund their operation. This is also 100% true. That's why Israel is trying a different way around Hamas to bring down the organization for good.
That's horrible, but so are the other guys.
> > There are many civilian casualties and that is indeed horrible and tragic, but blaming Israel for it is contributing to the death toll.
>
> Why are you using passive language?
Because I never killed anyone and always voted for peace. I didn't do this, Hamas did it. I feel terrible for Palestinians. I can (and do) demonstrate against my government, I hope they will get a deal to release the hostages and end this.
A Palestinian who tries to do the same thing in Gaza will find himself in a shallow grave and the people who will put him there are his own countrymen.
Ideally, if Israel had a decent government this war should have been about freeing Palestinians from the clutches of Hamas. But with the current government it's unfortunately just terrible.
> Why are there civilian casualties?
There always are in war.
But mostly because of you. Hamas believe that without western support Israel will collapse. So they are making the war as brutal as possible for their own populace in the hope of de-legitimizing Israel. The Israeli extreme right-wing is actually for it, they think that if western support is no longer an option then no one will hold them back from forcing Palestinians out of Gaza entirely.
> They don't just magically appear on their own.
In a war zone people don't carry flashy signs indicating their civilian status.
> There would be no civilian casualties if Israel wasn't dropping bombs on peoples' homes.
> There would be no civilian casualties if the IDF wasn't ambushing convoys of first responders.
There were several cases of Hamas using Ambulances to drive around and move troops. There were cases of mistaken identity by the IDF. It's horrible and that's exactly what Hamas wants.
> I will not allow you to deflect from the core issue at hand by pivoting the conversation to Hamas.
Why is that deflection?
You're pretending that Israel is there shooting civilians while ignoring the reason it's there to begin with.
> The point is to compare and assess the two principle STATE ACTORS, one of which sits on a nuclear arsenal while massacring civilians,
Again. Not murdering civilians, you have no concept of what war is.
> and one of which is on the receiving end of "preemptive strikes" while not possessing equivalent weapons.
They didn't receive a "preemptive strikes". They were the people behind the rise of Hezbolla in Lebanon who attacked Israel repeatedly. They funded the Huttis who attacked the Saudis and shipping. They blew up embassies and were behind countless terrorist action. They are the trigger, training and a major driver for the October 7th attacks.
Once they gain nuclear weapons it would be too late and WWIII will start. This strike was essential to prevent that.
> > Hamas sees Israel as a western nation. It believes that without western support Israel will collapse.
>
> Hamas isn't wrong, which is probably why Israel spends such a massive amount of treasure and effort on propaganda directed at western audiences.
Israel is one of the worlds largest manufacturers of weapons. Why?
Because we were under embargo before and it helped us build up our economy and technology. When we first got American aircrafts we had to strip that junk down and rebuild it. Thanks to us Americas aircrafts are now far better. Missile defense systems actually work.
An embargo will hurt Israel a lot. But would probably be far worse to the Palestinians.
> The Israeli air force would have been grounded months ago if not for a blank check to get fuel and ordnance from the US. Israel's jets drink more aviation fuel than Israel can ever refine itself.
If Israel can fly fewer missions it would just have to make every bombing count.
> Hamas aren't the ones intercepting aid shipments in international waters. Israel is.
The amount of aid in these flotillas is minuscule. They are for show only. Aid comes through trucks. Gaza has no port large enough for a ship, Biden tried to build one and failed.
These flotillas try to present the Israeli blockade as illegal. It isn't. Hamas is a threat and blockades are legal. Starvation tactics are illegal, but whether Israel is at fault here is debatable.
The problem I have with people like yourself is that you have a lot of criticism but no actual solutions. It's really easy to blame Israel, but what would you have Israel do exactly?
Go nicely and ask Hamas kindly to return the hostages? Stop firing rockets?
You say don't kill civilians, which school of urban warfare did you study in?
Give Palestinians a state: Israel tried it twice, arguably three times (leaving Gaza).
Leave Gaza: tried that before. That's how we got here.
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