Personally I think that defensive technology like this is fantastic. It means that innocent citizens will be protected from constant bombardment or thread of bombardment by cheap mass produced rockets or drones. Israeli civilians have faced bombardment by tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza for the last 20 years [1].
Outside the Middle East there's many areas threatened by combatants with similar cheap missiles. Perhaps Ukraine is an obvious one. We're seeing rises in conflicts across parts of Africa, Cambodia/Thailand, Pakistan/India. Many governments are looking into buying these to protect their countries.
This technology hopefully can protect populations from destabilizing forces funded on the cheap by foreign powers. Machine guns changed warfare [2] and drones have been a similar massive change in warfare making it cheaper and easier to attack and destabalize regions. Though of course there's downsides as well [3].
Colombian narcos have been using drones against the state, they tally 58 dead, 400 injured. This is a big problem that is going to get a lot bigger quickly. Colombia likely can't afford many fancy defenses and anyway they are likely to be of limited effectiveness where there are no front line.
Country A attacks vastly more powerful neighbor. They have no defensive infrastructure (for civilians), no plans for minimizing civilian deaths, no hope of actually winning the war they started. There strategy is to fight in a dense urban environment among their own civilians while firing thousands of unguided rockets at their enemy, knowing the retaliation is going to be horrific with no way for them to stop it (other than surrendering, but they would rather all die).
Country B has possibly the best missile defense system in the world; mainly because their neighbors shoot unguided rockets into their city. They work to defend their citizens at all costs even with expensive missiles and a protracted military campaign. They design cutting edge laser missile defense to help them alleviate the burden of protecting their citizens. The only reason they do not have to completely annihilate their neighbor who's shooting rockets at them is because they are able to intercept most of them. If those rockets were actually landing and causing tens of thousands of civilian casualties their retaliation would have to be far more deadly.
People on the internet: "actually its the civilians from country A who need defenses"
Country A is resisting a 75 year violent occupation and apartheid (see stats posted earlier) and currently suffering genocide. Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible. But everyone somehow seems to conveniently forget that part. Don't take my word for it, list of apartheid and genocide reports below.
The reason this doesn't make the discourse, even on communities like Hacker News which are supposed to be "smart", is because of decades of the West being brainwashed to the point where Islamophobia is normalized and ubiquitous.
> Country A is resisting a 75 year violent occupation and apartheid (see stats posted earlier) and currently suffering genocide.
Apartheid is race based discrimination, not citizenship based like what happens in Israel/Palestine. Making an accusation of genocide does not mean there actually is a genocide.
> Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible.
Comparing the holocaust(an actual genocide) as something "equally vile and reprehensible" to the situation in Israel/Palestine is equivalent to a form of holocaust denial IMO.
Claims like these are a rather overt display of antisemitic propaganda.[0]
> Don't take my word for it, list of apartheid and genocide reports below.
There is a long list of organizations that have thrown away their credibility with dubious accusations for various reasons.
> The reason this doesn't make the discourse, even on communities like Hacker News which are supposed to be "smart", is because of decades of the West being brainwashed to the point where Islamophobia is normalized and ubiquitous.
It seems you're trying to downplay the very real threat from Islamic extremists that Israel faces.
How about you and I stay out of it and let international organizations whose job it is to monitor this have their say? Are you ok with that? You trust Amnesty and the UN?
The sign of a brainwashed person is to equate this occupation with Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, you have fallen to propaganda by even bringing that up. Jews and Muslims have lived together peacefully for hundreds of years prior to 1948. There has been nothing but respect between those two religions going back for as long as one can remember. The change is Zionism. That’s what the problem is, not radical Islam or radical Judaism. Zionism != Judaism.
> How about you and I stay out of it and let international organizations whose job it is to monitor this have their say? Are you ok with that?
Why would I blindly trust the conclusions of "international organizations"? Especially ones that have shown themselves to have very little integrity?
> You trust Amnesty and the UN?
The same Amnesty international that has shown to have serious issues with bias across multiple conflicts?[0][1]
The same UN which has thrown away essentially all of their credibility when it comes to anything related to Israel?[2]
Obviously I would never blindly trust these organizations.
> The sign of a brainwashed person is to equate this occupation with Islamic terrorism.
There is an occupation because the Palestinians have refused to negotiate a final peace agreement, Israel clearly can not unilaterally end the occupation as they did in 2005 with Gaza and expect a positive outcome.
> Jews and Muslims have lived together peacefully for hundreds of years prior to 1948.
Where have they lived together peacefully as equals for hundreds of years prior to 1948?
> There has been nothing but respect between those two religions going back for as long as one can remember.
There's a long history of conflict between Jews and Muslims throughout the years, obviously in recent years it has been worse in a lot of ways.[3][4]
> The change is Zionism. That’s what the problem is, not radical Islam or radical Judaism. Zionism != Judaism.
So Jews wanting to have a state where they wouldn't have to live as second class citizens[5] and have a right to self determination was the problem? Why would it be so hard for Muslims to accept the existence of a Jewish majority state when there are plenty of Muslim majority states?
After the holocaust it's entirely reasonable that Jews would reject being forced to live as a minority in a Muslim majority state.
Alright, good luck with doing your own “research”. You’re in the same category of conspiracy theorists as MAGA. Nothing I can say will change your mind.
> Country A is resisting a 75 year violent occupation and apartheid (see stats posted earlier) and currently suffering genocide. Anyone denying that is no different than anyone denying the holocaust - equally vile and reprehensible.
You stated what Israel is doing is as "equally vile and reprehensible" as the holocaust, this is an absolutely insane comparison.
The Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews, they wiped out something like half the worldwide population of Jews...on the other hand during the Israeli occupation the Palestinian population over the years has increased drastically.
The holocaust has very little in common with the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and one certainly can't realistically claim Israel doesn't have the military means to exterminate the Palestinians if they wanted to either. Israel clearly doesn't have that sort of genocidal intent towards Palestinians. You can probably make an argument that some of the more extremist elements in Israel want to ethnically cleanse Palestinians but that's not remotely equivalent to the holocaust.
By making this comparison you're effectively denying the holocaust by downplaying it and saying it's somehow equivalent to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Making this comparison is a well known antisemitic trope.
Why would he be one of the New Historians? Norman Finkelstein isn't really even a historian, he's more of a activist/political scientist if anything AFAIU.
> watch their debate hosted by Lex Fridman.
I've seen it, it's pretty clear if you dig into the facts that the accusations of genocide against Israel are not supported by the evidence.
It's also quite clear that people like Norman Finkelstein like to cherry-pick facts(often from books written by Benny Morris) to support a particular narrative. Benny Morris tends to take a more balanced view of the history in general which has a lot of nuance.
The guy actually said "Israeli historians", not "New Historians", which means he's probably not reading the people the New Historians were responding to. He's just looking for legitimation propaganda for antizionist politics.
> The guy actually said "Israeli historians", not "New Historians"
The 3 historians he listed were 3 out of the 4 most well known "New Historians", but him leaving out Benny Morris(arguably the most well known of the New Historians and the one who coined the term itself) was a bit of a red flag to me that he's cherry-picking sources to support a particular narrative. Technically the "New Historians" are a subset of "Israeli historians".
> he's probably not reading the people the New Historians were responding to.
Yeah, I'm sure he isn't, although I'm probably also less familiar with those original historians myself as well since I was born after the point in which the "New Historians" had access to the declassified archives.
Even amongst the New Historians there's a lot of disagreements on things like which side has been more of an impediment to peace and a number of other key issues, with Benny Morris often being highly critical of say Ilan Pappé.
My own views of the history of the conflict and Zionism in general are probably broadly in line with those of Benny Morris. It's important to at least try and understand the history/perspectives of both sides of these conflict. At the same time it's worrying that even a lot of otherwise intelligent individuals would fall for rather overt antisemitic propaganda.
I've taken courses and read books on this subject and lived it in-person. Don't name-drop propagandists at me. Make a substantive point about what statute you're claiming makes it legal to invade Israel in an attempt to conquer it and wipe it out.
Comparing the holocaust to Gaza is insane. What the allies did to Axis citizens during the course of world war two is far worse than what Israel is doing to Gazans (let alone what the Nazis did to Jews or Japanese to Chinese citizens) and the Allies were fully justified.
You know, both sides can be bad. They're both led by bad people who do bad things and some good things. I've watched the Oct 10th attack videos. They're horrific. I've also watched the videos of civilian buildings in Palestine being have their roofs "knocked on" by a missile, followed shortly after by demolition by additional missiles.. And the Israeli solders dropping grenades on tents.. And the firsthand accounts of doctors talking of children and infants being shot through the head with sniper rounds.
Both country's governments are in the wrong and their civilians are suffering because of it.
And how do you know the building is actually civilian?
If Israel used a roof-knocker it's because they believed there was Hamas infrastructure or supplies in the building.
And there's something inherently wrong about a grenade on a tent? Do soldiers not use tents??
As for the firsthand accounts--all reporting from the ground in Gaza is highly suspect. But it doesn't matter anyway--yes, we have clear evidence of civilians killed by long range fire. We have *zero* evidence of the identity of the shooters.
Hits caught on conveniently rolling cameras. Not hidden cameras, anyone picking targets would have known they were there. What possible reason does Israel have for doing that? Absolutely none. What possible reason does Hamas have for doing that? Framing Israel. Those cases make far more sense as Hamas rather than as Israel.
In the video, it was clearly children and other civilians. I can't find it at the moment.
Here's an article from Reuters about the civilian deaths. You can also pull up satellite images and see for yourself that the country is being levelled. That's not something you do if you're seeking specific individuals. There's just no excuse for killing civilians.
It's insane to compare Hamas and how they treat their citizens with Israel. Can you name a single thing Hamas has done to mitigate its civilian casualties?
Nobody else comes close to Israel in protecting civilians in combat zones.
And let's take a critical eye to that data you linked. I'm having a hard time with the filters but we can see enough without: The fatalities are nearly 90% male. That implies that probably 80% are in some fashion combatants or combatant-adjacent.
And note that the death toll for the recent war includes all deaths. Natural causes, internal combat, rockets falling short (historically, ~25% of Gaza deaths, but probably not this time), combatants and civilians. As well as some that are fake.
And Hamas had the power to end the war at any time--return the hostages, the world would quickly have stopped Israel. Thus we can conclude that Hamas wanted the war despite what it did to their population.
Tell me, given all adult, non-ultra-orthodox, Jewish Israelis, regardless of gender, must mandatorily serve in the military and remain reservists for decades, does this mean most Jewish adults are “combatant adjacent”?
War has a huge logistics tail. That logistics tail is a completely valid target, often considered the primary target in western tactics. (Look at the original Russian attempt to seize Kyiv--Ukraine didn't attack the tanks, it cut them off. The guy driving the fuel truck for those tanks is combatant adjacent.)
Were all the dead women and children “combatant adjacent”? You implied most of those killed were. I’m challenging that assertion. If you keep shifting the definition of your own terms there’s no point having a conversation.
> "Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war"
The way they came up with this 83% figure is insane, they are essentially claiming everyone killed that hasn't been identified as a named fighter in one specific Israeli military intelligence database is assumed to be a civilian, this logic is of course blatantly misleading as one would not expect Israel to have the capability to identify the name of each and every enemy combatant in a war zone. On top of that the total number killed is a figure published by the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry which is well known to have major accuracy issues.
That list was of those both identified to be terrorist and identified to be dead. Thus, not only does it not count the unidentified dead but it also does not count the identified but not established to be terrorist.
Defensive weapons technology is how you get less conflict though.
When some idiot in the ME decides to shoot something at Israel, the character of the response demanded by the population depends heavily on whether any Israelis die or property is destroyed.
Israel didn't aggressively bomb Gaza till October 7 killed a lot of Israelis, even though they were regularly shooting down Hamas launched rockets with Iron Dome.
There is a practical gulf in political and diplomatic options depending on if an attack lands or does not, so much so that whether or not someone can shoot down incoming weaponry is a factor in some diplomatic decisions (I.e. Iran firing missiles at US bases in Qatar).
> Defensive weapons technology is how you get less conflict though.
I'm not convinced. Responding purely defensively allows your attacker to systematically probe every weakness in your defenses without risk of harm to themselves (e.g. how Russia is playing cat&mouse with the EU).
Frankly where's the evidence of this? My country of Australia has no fear of being attacked, yet we haven't launched an endeavor of conquest of South East Asia.'
Real life doesn't break down into simple narratives. The facts in the Middle East are that post-October 7 Israel aggressively bombarded Gaza at a scale and intensity where it did not previously, and a substantial chunk of the population supported that. In particular, it felt compelled to significantly escalate kinetic action against Hamas and Iran where it had not previously.
Post 9/11 the US aggressively invaded 2 sovereign nations it otherwise had little interest in and occupied them for 20 years.
These are all scales and levels of military action which were precipitated by successful attacks that killed civilians. If 9/11 hijackers had been stopped in the planning stage, does the US still invade Afgahnistan? Probably not - it wasn't on anyone's cards. Iraq maybe but the conditions were set by that strike hitting the way it did.
> My country of Australia has no fear of being attacked
You should watch some Sky News Australia; at least once a week there is a special report on how to prepare for China's invasion - which is never more than two weeks away.
You encourage war and murder. What you just said is that while the Palestinians in Gaza aren't strong enough now to kill and enslave the Jews and Arabs in Israel they will be in the future. And once they are they will do that. And the thought of that makes you hopeful.
Israel invests in defending their civilians with technology like Iron Beam.
In contrast the Gazan government strategically uses humans shields [2, 3] and despite this the majority of Palestinians still support starting this war by attacking civilians on Oct 7th [1]. Defense technology doesn’t help if you don’t want it unfortunately.
Hamas also has hundreds of miles of tunnels which civilians aren’t allowed to use.
To say that israel invests in defense is at least 1/4 untrue, since the US sends billions every year. The US gave them about 7b cash last year, which is around 1/4 of their defense budget, and doesn’t include things like stationing carriers nearby, or doing airstrikes on houthi blockades.
That the US contributes doesn’t take away from the billions Israel did and does invest. The US defense contractors also get a big chunk of that aid.
The US also gives similar levels of military aid to Egypt as well. The EU and US give billions to Ukraine.
Gaza also receives billions in aid; substantial amounts of which has been hihacked and looted. For example this lady summer the UN reported that 88% of their aid trucks in Gaza were looted [1].
> That the US contributes doesn’t take away from the billions Israel did and does invest
Actually it does? It takes about 1/4 away.
> The US also gives similar levels of military aid to Egypt as well. The EU and US give billions to Ukraine.
Yes, the US uses defense aid to further their own agenda internationally, and funnel public dollars into private hands.
> Gaza also receives billions in aid
Food, medical, and infrastructure aid is not the same thing as weapons.
> 88% of their aid trucks in Gaza were looted
Ok? This tells me that both food and food aid are in short supply, if people are willing to take it by force. If myself and my family was starving, i would hyjack food trucks too. Wouldn’t you?
>> That the US contributes doesn’t take away from the billions Israel did and does invest
> Actually it does? It takes about 1/4 away.
It literally does not. The way that every English speaker uses the word "invests" is exactly the opposite of this. If you're going to speak English, you use words as native speakers use them and you don't make up your own definitions.
There is no way any group other than Hamas could be operating at that scale. It's Hams taking the aid to use it to control the population. It's not like they were actually starving--Hamas never managed to find a legitimately starving person to point a camera at. Every single person they paraded in front of the cameras had medical issues that were the cause of their problems. Just go look inside a hospice, should we conclude they are starving people?
Reminder the UN said it could feed the millions in Gaza more than the 1200+ calories per person Israel was letting in. The UN at the same time only fed the 400,000 Sudan refugees 400 calories per person per day.
This doesn’t pass a basic plausibility test. It’s a war zone where food is super scarce and aid workers are there voluntarily. Between people wanting to feed their communities, and humanitarian aid workers who’ve already shown they are willing to risk life and limb, and gazan truckers with basically no other work, someone is going to be able to move goods for free or very cheap.
IPC had to ignore their own definition to declare a famine though. An actual famine involves at least 2 starvations per 10,000 people per day, among other requirements. According to Hamas' own data, Gaza was always several orders of magnitude short of that.
First, the IPC famine scale is a scale in phases, not a simple yes-no binary.
Second, yes there is a war going on - solid data is hard to come by. But that’s a lack of data, not a change in their criteria. You can read their full mortality analysis and reasoning starting on page 24 https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/I...
The conclusion is:
>Considering the available evidence, and in line with
the IPC Guidance Note on Famine Classification,64
the FRC infers from the available data that mortality
thresholds for Famine have already been exceeded in
Gaza Governorate. Based on expert judgement, we also
conclude that the Famine thresholds for mortality have
not yet been crossed in Deir al-Balah or Khan Younis
governorates.
No goalposts moved. Based on the data we have, people are dying of malnutrition.
They made up that claim. Hamas never even claimed anywhere near the number of deaths that would comprise famine. And Hamas never managed to point their cameras at anyone starving for non-medical reasons. We have a very clear case of a dog not barking.
> To say that israel invests in defense is at least 1/4 untrue, since the US sends billions every year.
This is factually incorrect. The amount of money that the US gives Israel is completely and totally irrelevant to whether or not Israel also invests their own money in defense.
The fact that the US has a problem with foreign influence literally does not matter for the statement above.
To be clear, I don't agree with the GP's implied suggestion that Israel is more defensive than offensive, but making objectively incorrect statements is not a valid way to refute that.
> To say that israel invests in defense is at least 1/4 untrue, since the US sends billions every year.
That statement is completely false, and is very different than what you said just now.
If you're going to walk back your words because you were proven wrong, that's fine, but don't claim you're "rephrasing" when you're actually changing your claim.
I’m not walking back anything. I said something, you misunderstood, i clarified. I stand by the original wording, as i believe most people are be able to understand my meaning. At some point I have to assume willful misunderstanding on your part
OK, now you're just lying. In the parent thread you said:
> To say that israel invests in defense is at least 1/4 untrue, since the US sends billions every year.
You are clearly claiming that because Israel's defense budget isn't entirely their own spending, that that claim is not entirely true.
Then someone else responded:
> That the US contributes doesn’t take away from the billions Israel did and does invest
If that hadn't been your claim, then you would have agreed with this. But you didn't - you responded and doubled down and made it extremely clear that that was what you were saying[1]:
> Actually it does? It takes about 1/4 away.
Given how incredibly clear you were about your claims, the "revised" statement:
> The defensive and offensive capabilities of Israel is about 1/4 larger because of american tax dollars not their own spending.
...is objectively and factually different.
It's not me who's misunderstanding - given not only the repeated statements that reinforced exactly the same point, and other commentators interpreting it actually the same (because they can read) - it's you who are lying about your original words.
I am saying the same thing in every post I have made about this, and you’re getting tripped up by something and i can’t figure out what. Anyway, nothing more to say here.
usa aid is typically around $3b-$3.5b . 2024 higher aid is one off due to the war. also (unless i am wrong), good chunk of aid that Israel got from usa during war was in form of loans/guarantees for loans and such
Their military budget is wayyy up due to the war, so if you’re ignoring recent giving you should also be ignoring recent spending.
In 2020 their military budget was ~21b. In 2020 the US gave 3.8b - so 21%, or 1/5. My number was based on 2024 budget and spending, which is why i said 1/4, but you’re probably right that pre-war numbers are more accurate if we’re talking about their long term spending trends.
The 2021 budget framework for the "Ministry of Defense" includes an expenditure budget of NIS 62.357 billion, in addition to NIS 14.972 billion in income-contingent expenditure and authorization to commit in the amount of NIS 36.3 billion.
In 2022, the framework for the budget includes an expenditure budget of NIS 59.833 billion, in addition to NIS 15 billion in income-contingent expenditure and authorization to commit in the amount of NIS 42.9 billion.
Wish you’d included your source. I can’t find anywhere that says numbers that high for 2020 or 2021. NIS 62b is less than 20b USD so what I said, and it’s unclear what of those optional portions were actually spent.
> the Gazan government strategically uses humans shields
This just means Israel knows they're hitting women and children every time they send a bomb their way.
> the majority of Palestinians still support starting this war
Palestine isn't a democracy with well documented preferences. Israel is though, so why don't you say that a majority of Israelis are fine with the killing of women and children in Gaza?
elcritch, you're beating around the bush but strongly suggesting there's a reasonable justification (not just an explanation) for killing women and children if it suits someone's needs. Does this apply just to Israel killing people in Gaza or universally valid? Because I distinctly remember the US going to war over WMD that never existed. So elcritch, are you saying US women and children are fair game now?
> there's a reasonable justification (not just an explanation) for killing women and children if it suits someone's needs
The Law of Armed Conflict specifies exactly when it considers such a reasonable justification to exist, which is not "never". You don't get to plop down women and children in front of military installations and go "neener neener" like you're a child on the school playground.
Sure Eli, and I'm sure you're not biased at all, but when you find so many "reasonable" reasons to kill thousands and thousands of civilians, women and children included, and you never ask yourself any questions, there's nothing more anybody else needs to know about you.
The comparison writes itself and when it doesn't, you make it obvious. You wouldn't be the first person who finds justification for something like this.
1) The average death per bomb was less than 1. Strikes mostly hit things which had already been evacuated.
2) When human shields get hit we blame the side that put them in harm's way, not the side that harmed them. Just look at the criminal trials in police actions--a hostage dies when SWAT hits a place, the murder rap lands on the person who took the hostage even if it turns out to be a police bullet in the hostage.
And your note about WMD--said WMD existed. On paper. We read the paper, didn't realize it was underlings lying to Saddam.
> a hostage dies when SWAT hits a place, the murder rap lands on the person who took the hostage even if it turns out to be a police bullet in the hostage.
The murder wrap doesn't fall on the SWAT shooter even when they shoot completely unarmed, innocent people, in their own home. So all your example says is that SWAT gets gets a free pass for murder no matter what. All it takes is for someone to anonymously say "LorenPechtel is a terrorist, he's planning to blow up some children at this address right now" and your chances are slim.
Lasers need a straight path through clean air. Israel is a favorable location because Tel Aviv gets 200 or so sunny days a year, but if there are clouds this won’t work or will have to fire at the last moment.
As for drones, they’ll fly lower to the ground to reduce the line of sight.
I have no idea how this hypothesis ("guns protect from oppressive governments") is still holding people's minds captive. The current regime in the US disproves this every day, constantly eroding civil rights and not even being subtle about it.
And the people with guns mostly either cheer it on or pretend it's not so bad (until they themselves feature in /r/leopardsatemyface).
In the fall of USSR, no one was "afraid to shoot". No one was motivated to do so. Or do anything for the completely failed system that no longer worked for anyone, inside or outside it. By 1991, no one cared for good ol' Union. That's the only reason it died so peacefully in its sleep with virtually no violence - it was so rotten, no one could care for its survival.
And indeed that is how the Shah fell in Iran - the regime was so rotten that even the military elite no longer saw it as worth defending. Will the current regime face the same eventually?
Just like in Soviet Union's case, trick isn't how to topple a regime, a sufficiently rotten one will fall by itself, but how to make sure the country that remains is sufficiently neutered to not become a menace again. It was simply overlooked by the West in 1991: they foolishly fell under the influence of their own propaganda and believed that Communism was the problem and with it gone, there was nothing left to worry about. As it turns out, Russia itself, was the problem. It was easy to solve in 1991 and extremely hard now.
Hopefully it won't be repeated with Iran.
>Israeli civilians have faced bombardment by tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza for the last 20 years [1].
There's a reason that's been happening, and it's not technical in nature. Technical solutions are thus unlikely to successfully address the root cause.
Technical solutions can lead to diplomatic solutions as it changes the power dynamics.
Will it solve the "root cause"? Probably not, but that's because there's no single "root cause", but it still might lead to some diplomatic resolution.
This does not change any power dynamics. The only time the iron dome has ever come close to failing on a systematic level was when they ran out of interceptors during their own unprovoked war against iran.
When Iran directly, materially, and openly, supports groups or organizations that have as an overt stated goal to destroy Israel, and actively work towards it (both with indiscriminate attacks against civilians, and building infrastructure for future invasions/attacks), I don't think the war is necessarily 'unprovoked'.
We may say that it was unproductive, badly conducted, or a lot of other things, but saying it was unprovoked is like saying that Ukraine has no reasons to attack Iran and/or Belarus. They do have those reasons, because both of those countries directly and materially support their attackers. It just might not be productive to do so (and indeed, Ukraine seems to believe it isn't).
And they didn't provoke a war with Iran. Israel struck those arming Hezbollah. They got somebody high up in the Iranian chain of command. Iran responded with major Geneva violations.
Imagine a scenario where israel doesn't need bomb shelters or sirens since rockets are destroyed almost instantly. Right now even if iron dome works it still greatly disrupts the day to day life in israel (not to mention the pure financial burden of interception)
Now I doubt the technology is anywhere close to that now, but in 10-20 years alongside other technological advancements? Who knows.
Their constant warmongering is why they constantly are being bombarded with rockets.
That you're primarily concerned with disruption to life and financial burden rather than casualties and infrastructure indicates that iron dome is already capable of preventing these rockets from being a serious threat.
The absolute asymmetry of every war they fight is proof enough that the only real solution is a commitment to negotiations and diplomacy. Palestine has under constant siege since long before I was born and they still haven't given up despite having the worst kdr of the last 80 years. They don't care about the laser dome, they will keep fighting.
Also I have doubts about this laser boondoggle, its far more susceptible to atmospheric disturbance and flack than a surface-to-air missile and it relies upon having access to a stable source of electricity during an air raid.
Israel desires to avoid a continuation of the Holocaust.
Iran desires stirring up trouble as a means of taking over countries, and uses the conflict with Israel as a justification. It's working fine for Iran, why would they agree to peace? They never have, just some stuff playing us for fools. I don't support The Felon but tearing up the Iran agreement was a stopped clock thing.
The left thinks everything can be solved with enough jaw, jaw. The right thinks everything can be solved with enough war, war. Both are wrong.
Except it is...? Jews were living peacefully in Palestine long before the establishment of a judeo-supremacist apartheid state, to the point you had entire refugee boats of Ashkenazis seeking safe harbor from the holocaust, who ironically became the cornerstone founding population of the Jewish state after the Nakba in 1948 killed and forcefully expelled hundreds of thousands of people (it's the ultimate cautionary tale on unchecked immigration lol).
You start to have a problem when you try to forcibly alter the demographics of a region to become majority Jewish, in a region where the majority were not Jews. This is quite literally Zionism 101. If you don't think this is the root cause, what pray tell do you believe it is?
No. The attacks were normal, not news. Think Jim Crow.
And the "Nakba" is mostly illusion. Lots of Arabs left at Arab behest, getting out of the way of the intended destruction of Israel. Oops, didn't work. Israel didn't ethnically cleanse Israel, most of it's neighbors did ethnically cleanse their areas.
And where you go wrong is thinking it was forceful. They bought land and moved to it.
And the root cause is that the Jews threw off centuries of oppression and the Muslims can't stand that. They considered the land conquered. As normal, when a victim throws off the abuser the level of violence goes way up.
There was a lot of inter-community conflict in the years (decades) preceding the formation of Israel, so it wasn't exactly peaceful. That there were some groups (on both sides, though the Jewish ones were far more effective, well-trained, and well-funded) that exploited those conflicts for escalation does not deny that the conflict already existed.
I would also argue that imposing the jizya/dhimmi status, creating "second class citizen status" for non-Muslims was, in and of itself, a form of Muslim-supremacist society in Palestine before Israel existed. Either convert to being a Muslim, or be stuck as a second-class citizen.
> I would also argue that imposing the jizya/dhimmi status, creating "second class citizen status" for non-Muslims was, in and of itself, a form of Muslim-supremacist society in Palestine before Israel existed. Either convert to being a Muslim, or be stuck as a second-class citizen.
100 percent. I've gotten the impression that this not being the case anymore is extremely irritating to extremist Muslims. This issue alone will fuel the conflict forever.
Zionist settlement started in the 1870’s on legally purchased land. Most of that land was uninhabited. Tel Aviv was founded on literal sand dunes in 1908 and is Israel’s most populated area. Jaffa was the closest Arab city which is still predominately Arab. Northern Israel become majority Jewish without military force under the Ottomans and then British empires.
However even then there were regular pogroms and killing of Jews by the Arabs as there had been for centuries before.
The British Mandate also turned away ships full of Ashkenazi Jews Holocaust survivors as well.
Don’t forget the nearly 850,000 MENA Jews expelled from across every Arab country after Israel was created.
Perhaps not, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who was vaguely favourable towards Israel before the invasion, and now, having watched what's been done in the name of "safety" with horror, considers the country a rogue far-right state run by corrupt criminals guilty of a very long list of crimes, just one of which was the creation of one of the most organised sex trafficking and sex abuse networks in recent history.
Quite the record.
But I don't see this as a specifically Jewish thing. There is clearly a cabal of extremely wealthy people who consider themselves above the law. The cabal includes factions of different ethnicities, and they seem to enjoy - and profit from - promoting nationalism and race hate and getting the peasants to wage war on each other.
We seem to be in one of the regular cycles where these crazies get out of control.
I'm sure it's all very entertaining. But no doubt modern PR and astroturfing techniques will make sure no one's opinion becomes so unfavourable that personal accountability becomes a real risk for these criminals.
Even so. It's really not a very satisfactory situation.
Your version is plenty uncut and soggy as well. A significant amount of land buys involved evictions of peasants. There was plenty of violence in the arab revolts against British rule, when Jewish militia acted as British auxiliaries. Pogroms were very rare in pre-modern Arab lands, and usually related to factional politics, since jews often had significant political rights and power. The British suck. Most MENA Jews migrated voluntarily, and there's clear evidence that mossad had projects to heighten tensions in those countries, including even planning the bombing of synagogues.
This is silly... what mass migration happens "voluntarily" lol. MENA Jews weren't even Zionists until they force-became Zionists.
But yeah, good-faith debates should steer clear of the "legally purchased" bit, it's kind of absurd to ignore that buying land from absentee rich landlords and evicting the longstanding residents is not going to (rightfully, IMO) create a lot of animosity.
- Jewish flight/migration to Palestine, neglecting the reality to one extent or another that Palestinian Arabs were there and had aspirations to form a state
- Arab /Muslim nations forcibly ejecting their Jews to Israel in the 50s-70s (ashekenazi Jews are a minority in Israel, most are from Arab counties and Iran), thus fueling the Jewish population there. I can't think of a greater strategic failure from the Muslim perspective here, because Israelis from these countries ended up by proportion being the most extreme right-wing of Israelis (see crazy statements by the chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel as examples, his family is from Iraq I believe). These folks are not going to relocate to Berlin or Vienna any time soon.
- Muslim leaders using the conflict for their internal political purposes-- think Arab nationalist Egypt or Syria or Iraq, or Islamist Iran. I find it had to believe that the leaders of any of these countries care at all about the plight of the Palestinians, in fact, the more Palestinians suffer, the more these political entities gain. Up to a point though-- it wasn't enough for Asad, and Iran will fall too, because people want more than an enemy to focus on
- Muslim chauvinism. This one is underappreciated in my opinion! But in my opinion, a huge driver of the conflict. Muslims just don't want to let go of Jews, Christians and other minorities not being dhimmis in what used to be Muslim land. Muslims demand to be the top dogs in the levant. That's the reality they want to restore, as much as Jewish religious extremists have similar biases.
- ongoing cycle of violence since the 1920s
- organizations like Hamas that exist to resist peace initiatives and, for example, sabotaged the oslo accords by blowing up buses in Israel. Similar extremists exist on both sides, but Hamas was founded explicitly to resist peace and pursue maximalist goals. NGOs like UNRWA also have a stake in the conflict continuing, sadly.
No other conflict like Israel Palestine exists in the world for a reason. Even Ukraine is willing to cede land unjustly to Russia to end that war. Palestinians have been alternating between euphoria and great tragedy for 80 years now and refuse anything but the most maximalist vision, and suffer as a result because it drives away good faith actors that would otherwise support them (for example, liberal Israelis, many successive US administrations). Palestinians are really bad a picking their battles and strategic thinking. October 7th did not go as they envisioned, and only an irrational person would pretend the illusory gains there were worth it, which was pretty clear to me in real time on October 7th, while many Gazans were inexplicably celebrating in the streets.
> Jewish flight/migration to Palestine, neglecting the reality to one extent or another that Palestinian Arabs were there and had aspirations to form a state
I don't think there was any aspirations to form a state in 1880-1900 or at least I haven't seen it.
Yeah, "form a state" isn't relevant. It's the remains of the Ottoman Empire. People were reorganizing into new countries but the Palestinians were in no way a separate population.
After 1948 Egypt and Jordan stepped in and annexed Gaza and the West Bank specifically to avoid the formation of a Palestinian state.
PLO was established in 1964 with purpose to fight Israel. Not to liberate west bank/gaza which according to you were occupied to prevent establishment of palestinian state.
lovely quote on this topic from one of PLO commanders that shows actual state of mind of Palestinians
The Palestinian people does not exist … there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation [...] Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons[...] Once we have acquired all our rights in all of Palestine, we must not delay for a moment the reunification of Jordan and Palestine
> Palestinian society is deeply propagandized and radicalized
What definition are you using that trips for Palestinians but not Israelis (or practically any other group in the Middle East outside e.g. cosmopolitan Gulf cities)?
Were the Japanese Kamikaze pilots terrorists? No--their targets were clearly military in nature. Likewise, was the US pilot that kamikaed a terrorist? No. (His plane had no hope of making it back to the carrier, he could have bailed out but the only possible rescue would be from the very fleet he was attacking. No path with a meaningful chance of survival, as soldiers in hopeless situations often do he chose to take as many enemies with him as he could.)
The point was regarding how to ascertain a population had been deeply propagandized and radicalized and tell them apart from others. Terrorism is, as you point out, not necessarily relevant to that.
The example of kamikaze pilots also works like suicide bombers to distinguish different groups on those terms.
All in all, what you’ve written has the sense of a rebuttal but is acting as support for my point.
Using one's own children to suicide bomb is no less barbaric than firing a missile? That's not even true in a mathematical sense, let alone a moral one.
Stop using your thought-terminating clichés about terrorism and look at actual stats:
> As of 19 November 2025, over 72,500 people (70,525 Palestinians and 2,109 Israelis) have been reported killed in the Gaza war according to the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including 248 journalists and media workers, 120 academics, and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, a number that includes 179 employees of UNRWA.
How is killing tens of thousands of people less barbaric than killing thousands of people? What kind of twisted morality do you use to excuse mass murder by missiles but not through suicide bombing?
1) It's the total death toll from all causes, including natural causes.
2) The majority of those "journalists and media workers" were Hamas propaganda people.
3) UNRWA had a higher proportion of it's people identified as terrorists than the population at large.
4) It's what Hamas claimed, without any means of verification. Israel showed about 4k were unquestionably false. Hamas also claimed 10,000 buried in the rubble--which never changed. Then when they started digging after the war only some hundreds were found--and Israel caught them planting bodies to be found.
And, fundamentally, the death toll proves nothing. Blame war on the side that chooses to fight, not on the side that is successful at fighting. Typically they are one in the same as most countries will not launch a war they don't expect to win. But when a little guy goes and tries to beat up a big guy and gets pounded it's still the guy who started it that's in the wrong.
1) It's not. In fact, most scholars agree these numbers are way lower than the real one, as those are only the confirmed deaths.
2) Source? The only places where I can read about it are in far right Israeli or American communications.
3) Source? It seems like Israel was interested in labelling UNRWA as a terrorist organization at some point, but there is no evidence to back up their claim. After all, the IDF is known to shoot at journalists and humanitarian aid workers in their strategy to starve Gaza, so it makes sense they would try to discredit the org.
4) I can't find what you're talking about.
I think it would be more honest if you simply stated that you are fine with the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, rather that argue about who started what while ignoring the century that Israel's settler-colonial project has existed. This isn't country vs country, this is well-funded colonizer vs colonyzee. More akin to the American expansion over natives territory. Did native American attacks back then justify the US in killing them all? Of course not. Same thing here.
Hamas's existence is at least explainable (if not excusable) in the light of a Palestinian population that feared for its lives, and was vindicated in the last few years in thinking that Israel was out to kill them all. Because it is.
1) What scholars? Because everything I see is garbage. Prime example--they compared two different lists of the dead in Gaza. A capture/recapture model to estimate what percent was actually captured. But capture/recapture inherently requires your captures to be independent and the second list was specifically an attempt to catch those missed by the first. Thus the two lists were not remotely independent.
2) Unfortunately, most sources are not willing to report things Hamas does not want reported--reporting things Hamas doesn't like would interfere with their ability to report anything. Thus you're stuck with mostly Israeli sources. But Israel has published lists. And, notably, nobody comes along and shows any problems with the Israeli reporting. It's always dismissed without evidence--and that is pretty strong indication that it's true. In discerning the truth between competing sides look at how each side responds to the claims of the other.
3) Once again, Israel has published lists. And note that you are presuming your conclusion in your argument. You can't claim Israel shoots innocents because Israel shoots innocents. And you also are presenting without evidence the claim that Israel was trying to starve Gaza.
I will not deny that Israel shoots "journalists"--because the propaganda people pretend they are journalists. And, likewise, "humanitarian" aid workers--the aid system was basically controlled by Hamas and used to maintain control over the population. It's the unfortunate reality of almost all "aid" operations--the aid is controlled by the very people who cause the situation and is used to maintain control. Gaza is normal, not an outlier.
4) Israel put out some stuff showing "dead" that weren't. Things like a group of "dead" where the identity numbers were sequential, the names were different, the rest of the details were the same. Really, now, a bunch of people with sequential ID numbers die together???? Especially when sequential ID numbers aren't possible with their system. (The ID numbers have a check digit.)
I am decidedly not fine with ethnic cleansing in Gaza, I just do not think it's going on. Hamas engineered an atrocity to make you think Israel is evil.
Firstly, I haven’t mentioned terrorism, nor Palestine or Israel in particular (though that was obviously mentioned by others). What I have given is a way - I maintain - that will separate any groups based on how far or deeply they have been propagandised. Using suicide attacks is clearly one way to do that.
It can be used with and without numbers, so referring to the volume of death or the means is not entirely relevant. Firstly, because if we accept that the suicide attacker has been deeply propagandised and radicalised, then there is an argument that they are innocent (at least in the sense that they are also a victim) which only increases they younger they are.
Secondly, it is possible to fire a missile at a group containing only people it would be straightforward to justify using force against (e.g. military targets). That is difficult with suicide attackers given the point about innocence made above, and also given the targets for attacks that suicide bombers often choose or have chosen for them (which is why they are associated with terrorism, to the point that you actually misread my comment to such an extent that you replied with a clumsy straw man).
So, take your time when responding in such situations, it will benefit your response and everyone involved.
Are you fine with the mass killings of civilian populations in Gaza, yes or no?
War is ugly, I'm not trying to make the Palestinians into saints, but the other guy is advocating the insane position that Israel can do no wrong, and that them using excessive force is completely justified.
I feel like I'm losing my mind, why is it so hard to say "killing tens of thousands of civilians is barbaric"??
> why is it so hard to say "killing tens of thousands of civilians is barbaric"??
Because it’s not true unless we’re just saying war is barbaric. Which I agree with. But it’s not useful when trying to delineate justified versus excessive force.
I agree Israel is using excessive force in Gaza. I also think Hamas is a terrorist organisation that seems committed to continuing to do terrorism. I genuinely haven’t figured out how to balance thsr equation, though I think discussing it without calling someone engaging in good faith a monster/genocider/anti-Semite is a good start.
At some point, you have to call out a genocide for what it is. Many are still quick to rationalize it away, or relay Israeli propaganda about the many killed journalists being Hamas terrorists, or humanitarian aid workers also being Hamas terrorists, or the UN orgs also being Hamas terrorists, etc. You get the gist.
This doesn't excuse any crime that Hamas has committed, but anyone still not calling for Israel to move out of Gaza, in light of the many exactions committed by the IDF, is not engaging in good faith, in my book.
The continued killings of civilian populations in Gaza is vindicating the Palestinians in their belief that Israel is legitimately out to kill them all. Because they are. This in turn will create a new generation of "terrorists" who see violence as the only escape. This is also how Hamas was created.
Israel is interested in cleansing the Gaza strip. Whatever the solution to this cycle of violence is (two states, one state...) it first involves stopping Israel immediately and getting the IDF out of Gaza. There is no equation to balance here.
> At some point, you have to call out a genocide for what it is
Maybe. I’ll admit, on this first day of 2026 I am thoroughly confused as to the boundary between hybrid/guerilla warfare and genocide.
More pointedly, the debate becomes alienating when we’re calling each other genociders and anti-Semites.
> This in turn will create a new generation of "terrorists" who see violence as the only escape. This is also how Hamas was created
This is not a great argument for peace in Palestine. One, lots of oppressed populations don’t resort to terrorism. Two, it suggests an independent Palestine would continue to be a security threat to Israel.
> Israel is interested in cleansing the Gaza strip
Let’s be blunter since “cleansing” has similarly been semantically obliterated. Members of Israel’s leadership have expressed views that sound like they want to exterminate Palestinians. Others want to move them to away places, which is bad, but categorically different from the first. Plenty of others, however, just don’t want their kids kidnapped at raves or are angry and polarised in the face of violence.
We can do the same for Hamas. Exterminating Israelis and Jews is an explicit aim of Hamas. I don’t think that means everyone in Gaza who supports Hamas is bent on genocide. I do think that makes them—like Israelis pushing to keep bombing Gaza—relatively unsympathetic. (Them and them specifically. Not their whole group.)
> it first involves stopping Israel immediately and getting the IDF out of Gaza. There is no equation to balance here
Israel has a security imperative. If getting out of Gaza means Hamas reärms over a population that supports another October 7th attack, withdrawal is not in their interest. (If you aren’t using violence, which to be clear, means people continent away deciding—again—how borders in the Middle East should be drawn because they know better than the folks on the ground, you need a solution that’s in both parties’ interests. I don’t think Likud and Hamas are interested in negotiating. I do think Gazans and Israelis are.)
It's normally easy to tell apart war and terrorism.
Look at the person who selects the target. What do they believe is at that point? Civilian--it's terrorism. Military/government, it's war or insurgency. Look at the pattern--taking out a guard post to get to the civilians behind does not make it legitimate.
Note that you need to look at the person who selects the target--a soldier in the field often knows little of what they're shooting at. And what do they *believe* is there? When we hit that Chinese embassy it was an intel failure, not terrorism--the bomb was dropped on what used to be in the building. Being wrong doesn't make it terrorism. Missing doesn't make it terrorism.
But when Iran drops a missile on an Israeli hospital and claims they were shooting at a "nearby" (no, there was nothing military within many CEPs of the impact point) military facility it's either terrorism, or since they are state actors, a Geneva violation. Especially as they did not apologize, nor even admit the hospital was hit.
> Look at the person who selects the target. What do they believe is at that point?
We rarely have access to or even knowledge of who this person is, let alone their mens rea.
Any metric based solely on intent is (a) impossible to objectively adjudicate and (b) corrupted by the crazy, who will legitimately believe in fantasies if it serves their ends.
I don’t think you’re wrong. Just that this metric is inadequate. (For what it’s worth, I don’t have a good alternative. My takeaways from the last couple years is that the civilian-military boundary has been irretrievably blurred by hybrid war and non-state actors; the term genocide irreversibly blurred by activists; and the term warm crime rendered irrelevant by the world’s great and regions powers—without exception— explicitly rejecting it as a constraint on themselves. All of this means that the vocabulary we once relied on to make sense of the moral aspect of geopolitics no longer works, which makes discussion a bit confusing.
While we don't have access to their minds we do generally have access to what they say. They think they are shooting at bad guys, the claim is innocents hit without military advantage--if they considered the target valid they'll generally either say what they were aiming at or that the ones hit aren't actually innocents. The Chinese embassy case illustrates what I'm talking about--we admitted we made a mistake and indicated what the intended target was. Nobody challenged the validity of the intended target. Or, multiple times, Israel hits some high profile "innocent", in response to the criticism they release pictures that show the person wasn't an innocent.
Israeli society is no less radicalised, so this is irrelevant. What's relevant is that Israel illegally occupied Palestinian territories under international law and instituted a regime of apartheid on those territories.
You'd be amazed at the amount of radicalization Israeli society gets if you'd bother to look with unbiased eyes. Attacking aid trucks? Spitting at Christians, even tourists? Stealing houses of West Bank people? (Oh must be for that Lebensraum)
Maybe that's one goal you should add to your 2026 list...
>Don't even start with what they did with the Indians.
At least we paid for our own damn genocide. It takes a ot of nerve to complain about americans having a "blind spot" on a country whose military receives at least 15% of its revenue from American taxpayers who are compelled against their will.
No. Yes, there were a few attacks on aid trucks. People who saw aid going to those who were holding Israeli hostages. You realize Israel was under no legal obligation to permit the aid? Don't chant "Geneva", it only requires allowing aid to non-combatants. When there is even a reasonable threat of diversion to military purpose the obligation goes away--and there was not only a reasonable threat, but the vast majority was being diverted.
The only appreciable Geneva violation that Israel engaged in is not sending notice of suspected misuse of civilian things--but this is of no actual importance as the rule exists to avoid mistakes. It wasn't written with a situation where civilian cover was used to the greatest extent possible. For them to have simply said "everything is being misused" would have been a pretty good approximation of the truth.
Thanks for citing the laws that legally clears the starvation of civilian children and elderly, amongst others! Since it's legal, that means it's also morally ethical? Right?
Ok, case closed, let them rot to death! Next problem?
How about next we argue why it was perfectly acceptable to crash 2 planes into 2 civilian buildings. Seems to be in the same ballpark!
How about recognizing who is actually causing the "starvation" (hint: it's never actually been demonstrated)? Israel lets aid in, Hamas seizes it and then points to the people who didn't get it.
Does the "modern world" mean watching their children get deliberately sniped time and time again (confirmed by many 3rd party sources)? Let alone their homes destroyed, land usurped, and then treated as non-humans. Yet again, comments like this shows how they are being dehumanized.
History teaches that genocide, ethnocide or ethnic cleansing is the only way ethnic conflicts truly end.
For Israel/Hamas conflict, genocide of either party is the only way. So hopefully, there will never be a solution and they will just continue kicking the can indefinitely, because it means slaughtering millions.
Part of the issue is that it makes it more possible to launch a first strike attack without fear of suffering blows in retaliation, and gives one side of conflict the overmatch that enables leaders to start a conflict thinking they can win without repercussions
Missile defense doesn't really help much for mutually assured destruction scenarios, for Israel it makes more sense due most conflicts they are involved in being much more asymmetric.
1. Just to repeat myself from another comment on this thread, there is no such thing as a defensive weapon. Were it not for the various missile shields, the Israeli state wouldn't act with wanton abandon against its own citizens and its neighbours. All of the various war crimes and terror attacks are a direct consequence of the effectiveness of a "defensive" missile shield.
Let me pose this question to you: if these were purely defensive technologies, why don't we give them to everyone, including the Palestinians? and
2. Israel has already ruled out giving Ukraine the anti-missile (and assumedly anti-drone) defenses [1]; and
3. Many people, yourself included it seems, need to examine these conflicts around the world through the lens of historical materialism.
Take the genocide and conflict in Sudan. The SAF are arguably the ones with the "cheap rockets" here. Should we be giving the RSF anti-drone technology? The RSF are backed by the UAE using US weapons. Why? To loot Sudanese gold.
Why did Russia invade Ukraine? Territory, access to the Black Sea, resources and to create a land bridge to Crimea that had otherwise become extremely expensive to maintain as a colonial outpost. Like, just look at a map of controlled territory.
But why is it in a stalemate? In part because Russia is a nuclear power but also because the West is unwilling to let Ukraine do the one thing it could do to defend itself properly and that is to attack Russian energy infrastructure. Despite the sanctions, Russia is still allowed to sell oil and gas to places like Hungary, Slovakia, France, Belgium, India and China.
Back to the Middle East, we have Yemen, who was devastated by war and genocide at the hands of another US ally, Saudi Arabia.
The solution to these conflicts isn't more weapons, not even "defensive weapons". It's solving the underlying economic conditions that created that conflict in the first place.
> Were it not for the various missile shields, the Israeli state wouldn't act with wanton abandon against its own citizens and its neighbours. All of the various war crimes and terror attacks are a direct consequence of the effectiveness of a "defensive" missile shield.
I'm not sure that's true, before Iron Dome, Israel would respond to many rockets from Gaza by firing mortars back at where the rocket was launched from, often the roof of an apartment building or similar, causing civilian casualties.
After Iron Dome, a lot of rockets were simply intercepted and ignored, because there was no longer political pressure from Israelis seeing rockets land in their villages and wanting to hit back.
I think you have it backwards. Israel tolerated something like ~30k rocket attacks from Gaza (between 2005-2023) before finally launching a major military campaign that sought to remove Hamas from power.
It would normally be absurd to expect a state with military superiority to tolerate ~30k rocket attacks from its weaker neighbor. That was only tenable because Israel's air defenses mitigated the bulk of the damage.
If Israel's air defenses and bunkers suddenly disappeared, Israel would be forced to respond far more aggressively to each terrorist attack.
> The solution to these conflicts isn't more weapons, not even "defensive weapons". It's solving the underlying economic conditions that created that conflict in the first place.
Collectivism will not save us. The day after we abolish markets, prices, and capitalism, there will be as many disagreements about resource allocation as there were the day before. Some of those disagreements will spiral into conflict.
Palestinians have a right to defend themselves. Israel is an illegitimate state, there is not "defensive technology" as far as they're concerned. Anything that perpetuates Zionism, is by definition offensive and a violation of human rights.
you have the audacity to play the victim card for Israil after the whole world -including you- witnessed live and in HD for over two years what they have done to Gaza poeple?
Do you think Israeli civilians shouldn't be able to defend themselves from Hamas' rockets? If yes - why? If not - what exactly is it that you find so problematic with the parent post?
What you don't understand is the carnage in Gaza is self-inflicted. Hamas attacked knowing what would happen. And knowing that every dead Palestinian was a weapon to use against Israel in the propaganda war. Thus they did everything they could get away with to maximize dead Palestinians.
The only similarity between Golden Dome and Iron Beam is in their branding. An orbital conventional launch platform shares almost nothing with a land-based small-arms directed-energy one.
It's Trump's version of Reagan's Star Wars - it's all bluster that we will not see any result of, and it will be quietly shelved by future governments.
Outside the Middle East there's many areas threatened by combatants with similar cheap missiles. Perhaps Ukraine is an obvious one. We're seeing rises in conflicts across parts of Africa, Cambodia/Thailand, Pakistan/India. Many governments are looking into buying these to protect their countries.
This technology hopefully can protect populations from destabilizing forces funded on the cheap by foreign powers. Machine guns changed warfare [2] and drones have been a similar massive change in warfare making it cheaper and easier to attack and destabalize regions. Though of course there's downsides as well [3].
1: https://www.mideastjournal.org/post/how-many-rockets-fired-a... 2: https://online.norwich.edu/online/about/resource-library/how... 3: https://claritywithmichaeloren.substack.com/p/iron-dome-part...