Israel is a nuclear power. They're not going to be at the mercy of anyone in the region.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-iran-begins-attack-on-israel-launching-dozens-of-drones-thatll-take-hours-to-arrive/

Did you hear about the 14 year Israeli shepherd boy abducted and murdered in the West Bank yesterday? — BitconnectCarlos

Hey did you hear about the 10,000 children murdered the past few months? Oh yeah, you only care when it’s an Israeli kid. :up:

You have no good response to this one. — BitconnectCarlos

:lol: Delusional, as always. But great job plugging your ears along with your eyes.

Are you an American, Mikie? Would you be a fair target for a terrorist angry at America's actions? — BitconnectCarlos

No, see I’m the one against killing innocent civilians.

You’re in favor of it— provided, of course, it’s done with good intentions.

I think that's why Bibi's initial reaction to the attack was so extreme. This was certainly no blessing. — Tzeentch

A blessing for their long-sought desire. But the reality is clearly different, yes. Like making themselves a pariah.

No, see I’m the one against killing innocent civilians. — Mikie

Yet when this happens, as it does repeatedly to victims of islamic terror, you put yourself in a bind: Innocents will die when a country responds militarily.

To insist on zero civilian deaths = no military response permitted to murderous attacks.Especially when the attackers place themselves among the populace as they deliberately do.

To insist on zero civilian deaths — BitconnectCarlos

Nope. Some is expected. 10,000 children? No.

Iran launched a broad aerial attack on Israel from its territory on Saturday, in retaliation for a deadly Israeli airstrike in early April on the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus, the Israeli military and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps said.

Just before 2 a.m. local time, air-raid sirens sounded across southern Israel. The government sent out dozens of warnings about possible missiles and aircraft arriving in the Negev Desert, where there are several military bases.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/13/world/israel-iran-gaza-war-news

This can’t be great. Another bonehead move by Israel.

a) Hamas uses child fighters. Is the IDF allowed to kill a 16 year old firing a gun at it?
b) Hamas's figures are highly questionable.

Hamas — BitconnectCarlos

Exactly. Just blame Hamas.

We had to turn Gaza into a concentration camp and murder 10s of thousands of innocent people — because Hamas.

Yes, I do deeply hate and blame the organization that murders LGBTQ and tortures its own dissidents and indoctrinates its population with virulent anti-semitism and strives openly and boldly to destroy the Jewish people.

Yes, and I do deeply hate and blame the organization that is currently conducting a genocide and has said repeatedly it wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

And on and on we go. Maybe one day you’ll wake the fuck up.

When everything is genocide to you, just response to an attack feels egregious.

I suppose the US committed genocide in Iraq. Or in Afghanistan. Innocents did die. Everything is genocide.

Iran attacked with the ferocity of a cornered rabbit. Looks like the status quo is still in place. The rial is trading at 600,000 to the dollar. The last thing Iran wants is a war with U.S./Israel

Of course, if Iran does manage to kill some Israelis it's obviously genocide, and that changes the situation.

Everything is genocide — BitconnectCarlos

obviously genocide — RogueAI

10,000 children murdered after decades of living in an Israeli-made concentration camp. But definitely not genocide, because — again — Israel doesn’t do that. :up:

You're guilty of genocide of the English language.

A handful of outdated nukes that may not even be there are no guarantee for anything.

Also, the situation just became extremely worrying.

Israel was clearly trying to provoke Iran into doing something like this in the hopes of dragging the US into a war with Iran. It succeeded in the first part, the second remains to be seen.

However, Iran probably understood this and went ahead with the attack anyway, basically showing it doesn't fear escalation either.

https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/palestinians-west-bank-2023-was-deadliest-year-record

I wonder what 2024 will bring.

So Israelis displace, kill, take the land and oppress Palestinians for 75 years, with record numbers of coloniser violence in 2023 in the West Bank and you focus on one poor boy who shouldn't have been on illegally stolen land. Got it.

The attack was pathetic. Israel killed two Iranian generals, a score of their diplomats, and Iran threw crap weaponry at them that got blown out of the sky.

Ohhh Israel strong! Iran weak!

Am I doing it right?

Yes I will mourn when a 14 year old Jewish Israeli shepherd boy is abducted and stoned to death by knuckle draggers. And again one cannot colonise the land to which one is indigenous to. I understand that for you, as an outsider, everything just starts 75 years ago but not everyone shares your European, state-centered perspective of history.

"Israel's military says 99% of weapons fired by Iran intercepted"
https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-04-14-24/index.html

Did Iran's "attack" do any damage? To anything?

ETA:
The assault severely injured a 10-year-old girl, but otherwise caused no casualties
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-strikes-israeli-targets-rcna147407

IOW, almost a genocide!

one cannot colonise the land to which one is indigenous to. — BitconnectCarlos

Yeah I’m sure every American will gladly give up their home and property if and when Native Americans declare it to be theirs. (Despite having a much more convincing claim than Zionists).

IOW, almost a genocide! — RogueAI

Yeah, we all get that you have no clue what genocide means. How hilarious that 10,000 dead children would be considered such. Everything must be genocide— or nothing must be.

True, but Israel can’t always be sure. — Mikie

In an insurgency naturally you cannot be sure who is the "illegal combatant". But that doesn't make the civilian population an enemy". Are all the children enemies? A teen surely can fire again or be a suicide bomber. So all teens are enemies? Old pensioners? Yes, they can too.

To understand how wrong and in fact dangerous talk by @BitconnectCarlos of referring to "enemy people" is really important. "Enemy people" means that there simply aren't any civilians. This is the way to dehumanize whole people, the way to start speaking of human animals. You don't treat civilians as civilians until shown to be a combatant, but the other way around: a civilian is a combatant unless being really proven to be a civilian. And what would that be? That he or she "works for you"? It's a huge change in the whole mental way you handle the conflict.

This blatantly goes the rules of war, and for me those rules of war are important. I would follow them and I would assume my country would do so too. To think that the rules of war hinder your warfighting ability is simply false. It just stains your on justifications and your military.

Perhaps it's a very American way to think and to handle these issues, just like imprisoning all the Japanese Americans during WW2. Naturally American didn't imprison into concentration camps all the German Americans, perhaps starting from general Eisenhower himself, perhaps because they were white or simply there was too many of them. Yet even if there would have indeed been a dozen traitors among those ranks, just how important would have it been not only for the Japanese-Americans (as two-thirds of the inmates were United States citizens.), but also the US for Japanese-American soldiers having fought and died in WW2. So easily all the ideals of American or Western thought are thrown away, because of fear or the urge for revenge.

(It's no wonder that the admins wanted this thread to put into the Lounge and some complained of it being in the lounge).

And now as the war is escalating, it's just going to be worse.

Palestinians are not the enemy, but I do see them as an enemy population in the same way that a highly pro-nazi town in 1945 would have been. The citizens themselves aren't inherently evil and deserving of death, but I would be very cautious of them. — BitconnectCarlos

And what do you think the German people fealt about the Nazis themselves in 1945?

How much had the Gauleiters and the Nazi party taken care of them when the Russian Steamroller broke into Germany proper?

Just ask yourself: how many Germans joined the Werwolf and how did this terrorist group to continue the struggle behave?

Just browsing Wikipedia gives an answer:

In the early months of 1945, SS Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny was involved in training recruits for the Werwolfs, but he soon discovered that the number of Werwolf cells had been greatly exaggerated and that they would be ineffective as a fighting force. Knowing, like many other Nazi leaders, that the war was lost, he decided that the Werwolfs would instead be used as part of a Nazi "underground railroad," facilitating travel along escape routes called "ratlines" that allowed thousands of SS officers and other Nazis to flee Germany after the fall of the Third Reich.

Tells enough how credible the threat of "the Werewolves" was in reality.

Yet here's the problem with when thinking too much about "enemy people". If you then continue to treat the German people as your enemies, your own actions create resistance itself, not that people are loyally following orders of a collapsed state that doesn't exist anymore. This is absolutely crucial. This also is so important in understanding just why the US really won also the peace after WW2 with Germany and Japan and that these countries are truly allies. And just why it was in East Germany where the first revolt against the Soviets erupted.

Now I don't have personally anything against you, but I do find talking about an "enemy people" disturbing, even if you likely make a separation with "enemy soldiers" and "enemy people". But the nuance is there. The enemy is a person that literally tries to kill you, if you are a soldier. That's his job and it's not a warcrime for him or her to do that when being a legal combatant. Hence even POWs are treated with the utmost caution. We aren't living in the 19th Century were you could ask an enemy officer if taken prisoner to give his word that he won't try to flee and he would stick to that. Not so now.

With enemy people, then I guess every child, every grandmother, or anyone could be a possible IED carrier or wants to kill me with a knife, so what's there to stop from killing them if they don't understand to stop at 20 meters from me? Hopefully you do understand how damning this kind of attitude towards civilian population is. It really makes a difference how you treat the people when you are the "occupier".

American soldiers and German civilians in September 1944. This and a few other pictures like it provoked the President (Truman's) order against fraternization:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-iran-begins-attack-on-israel-launching-dozens-of-drones-thatll-take-hours-to-arrive/ — neomac

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/jordans-air-defence-ready-shoot-down-any-iranian-aircraft-that-violate-its-2024-04-13/
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2024/04/14/iran-threatens-to-attack-jordan-if-it-cooperates-with-israel-report

Israel will help settle disputes involving families who were displaced in previous wars. Many Jewish families lost their homes in 1948 and Arabs took over so reclaiming that those homes would actually be decolonization. Zionism is decolonization. These cases go to court and the Arab families are compensated but they are treated individually.

You don't treat civilians as civilians until shown to be a combatant, but the other way around: a civilian is a combatant unless being really proven to be a civilian. — ssu

Again I ask you if you would have strategically bombed German war industries during WW2 if you could do so with 90% precision. If you had been Churchill, what would you have told Bomber Command to do?

Indigenous my ass. That's a convenient excuse for forcibly removing millions of people from their actual homes and denying their return. If Jews have a right to return then obviously Palestinians do as well. At least Begin was honest about it: there's no Israeli village that hasn't been build on an Arab ruin.

Zionism is decolonization. — BitconnectCarlos

:grin: Okay buddy.