1y ago

Calls to reform UN Security Council after US vetoes Gaza ceasefire

www.aljazeera.com Calls to reform UN Security Council after US vetoes Gaza ceasefire

Calls are growing for the UN Security Council to be reformed after the US used its veto power to block a Gaza ceasefire.

Calls are growing for the UN Security Council to be reformed after the US became the only member to use its veto power to block a Gaza ceasefire resolution, a move welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The UN chief says he will keep pushing for peace.

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Things just dont make sense. Hamas, a very weak power, sneak attacks Israel, a relatively strong power, then hides amongst the civilian population with military targets scattered throughout neighborhoods and municipalities.
Is Hamas surprised by the mass civilian casualties or are you (the reader) the one who is surprised? Is Hamas actually weaponizing their civilians by showing the world how many are dying and being an agent of change in the UN?
Is Hamas considering these civilian deaths as martyrs? Because martyrdom is not the same as innocent death.
- You’re god damn right I’m surprised.
  If terrorists hid in your family’s basement and then your family home and all those in it, plus their whole neighborhood, was wiped off the face of the earth, you’d sing a real different tune then.
  Try to imagine Palestinians as real people, instead of faceless terrorists who “sealed their fate” when they “supported the wrong side” (basically just by existing).
  
  Yeah I'd be pretty fucking pissed at the terrorists there, ngl
  
  Unfortunately the residents of Gaza are prevented from importing weapons
  
  I mean that's an extremely strong positive right now.
- Picture a bank hostage situation. Police officer comes in with a fully loaded gun. A bank teller is being held at gunpoint by the robber. Never once in the history of ever has the police officer shot the bank teller.
  That's what Israel is doing.
  
  It’s more like the cops throw a grenade at the robber and teller, and when they kill the teller, the officers try to imply the teller’s complicity because they allowed the robbers to control the bank to begin with.
  And then when the robbers rationalize the bank teller’s death as martyrdom for their cause, should we really feel bad for the teller?
  
  Closer to the usaf bombing the entire neighborhood that the bank is in.
  
  No police in the world would say “ok, go free, and keep the hostages”. And by the way, a murderer would be better analogy than bank robber.
  Also, hostages did die in real world hostage situations too, while police was targeting those hostage takers.
  
  You are an ill little man. I wish you better help.
  
  disgusting
  
  Yes, when your own analogy fails attack a person who showed this to you. Never reevaluate your position.
  
  Thanks for clarifying for me. Didn't realize it was such a simple scenario like a bank robbery.
  
  You clearly can't grasp the real complicated scenario so he gave you a simplified version to make it easier to understand.
  Anyone with even an ounce of empathy understands why Israel bombing children is always unacceptable. Nobody should need to explain it to you really
  
  So, which is less acceptable:
  Hamas, a military threat to Israel who hides behind children.
  Or
  Israel, a country with a military who is responding to military threats in a way a military would.
  BTW, my original post is asking questions, but you Lemmy Users just keep making it seem I'm pro Israel just for asking.
  
  But is Israels actions appropriate? Indiscriminate bombing across all of Gaza? Collective punishment? If they really wanted to A) save hostages and B) take out those responsible, they could do a surgical strike with special forces. Raining hellfire upon innocent people just because their might be hamas there is absolutely disgusting.
  
  Before I answer your questions, you answer mine. Which is less acceptable?
  
  Israel commiting genocide is awful. Hamas is just a response to that.
  
  As you laid out your question, probably (cynically), hamas. The world has been happy to tolerate some incredibly awful governments - especially if you start looking at African dictators.
  
  If you look at Nelson Mandela and the ANC in South Africa you'll find they did the same thing as Hamas to get rid of the Apartheid.
  When asking nicely didn't work they started asking less nicely.
  
  Both are unacceptable but clearly Israel is more so. In a hostage situation, you don't bomb the neighborhood. I'd also like to point out that nobody is really defending Hamas, which is more acceptable is missing the point entirely.
  Israel has serious military advantage, they can basically force a cease fire at any time. They aren't under threat and tbh, probably let the events that started all this happen for causus belli.
  The article talks about a mostly symbolic UN vote that was vetoed by the US at the request of Israel. They don't want a ceasefire, they don't want their hostages back, they don't want a solution.
  They just want to keep bombing.
  
  I'll agree israel is worse in hindsight, but Hamas kicked this off with this sneak attack that has led to this situation, so I'd say that is worse. Hamas was so successful in causing an Israeli intelligence disaster, which I feel like caused their military to lash out. All militaries do is destroy, they are not nation builders. Surgical special force operations can take a long time to plan and wouldn't work since there were so many hostages and they kept moving them around.
  
  What about the decades before this where Israel had been killing people, imprisoning without charges, and forcing them off their land? When that's added for context, Israel is the one who kicked this off.
  
  All militaries do is destroy
  This is a fundamental misunderstanding of violence generally. The purpose of destructive capability is deterrence, and hence the protection of things. This is really crucial to get in order to understand anything about violence at all.
  This is why a mother cat bares her fangs when she’s cornered. She’s not attempting to destroy, but rather to prove that she can destroy, in order to deter an attack.
  Weapons, by existing and being visible, send signals that make violence less likely to occur.
  When weapons are being used actively to destroy, it’s because their initial purpose failed.
  
  Stop trying to wash Bibi's ass and depose him already. You are going to get Israel destroyed if you don't.
- Why are you acting like Hamas and Israel are the only parties in the conflict? That makes no more sense than talking about a war between Palestine and Likud.
  Pretending Hamas is the same as Palestinians is anti-Palestenian, which to any person with a moral compass is just as bad as antisemitism, the same as being hateful towards any ethnic group.
  
  It's black and white thinking, just like the whole mindset of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Hamas and the Israeli regime are enemies. The people of Palestine and the Israeli regime are enemies, therefore Hamas and the people of Palestine must be friends. Also people opposing the actions of Israel must thus be friends with Hamas.
  I'm just not sure how much of it is in bad faith because they support the evil actions (possibly even including the evil actions of Hamas that they believe gives justification for the evil actions of Israel), or because they are just stupid and don't understand that people fit into more than two categories.
  
  It's interesting how just asking critical questions of Hamas entails that I support Israel's response.
  
  "just asking questions" is the excuse for assholes to be assholes. It's never "just asking questions" it is always "asking misleading questions to evoke an emotional reaction out of someone".
  
  It’s never “just asking questions”
  Do you have any evidence of this claim? Because that doesn’t make any sense to me. People do, indeed, ask questions to clarify things. It’s a crucial part of communication and thinking.
  Labeling all questions as attempts to troll sounds like the sort of knee jerk reaction of a person who doesn’t want their beliefs questioned. And someone who doesn’t want their beliefs questioned probably hasn’t developed them very thoroughly.
  You should be asking yourself questions all the time. When I said it’s a crucial part of communication and thinking I mean that if you don’t ask questions about things, then you don’t communicate or think. And that’s very bad.
  
  Sure. With that logic, you can win every argument. Done talking to you now, thanks
  
  I see you Likechecker. I know you’re not just here to be an ass. Just wanted you to know this hate isn’t universal.
  
  Thanks for noticing haha
  
  Boo hoo. With your "just asking questions" you try to absolve yourself of the type of questions you are asking. And if someone calls you out on it, you run away because you know what kind of questions you are asking.
  
  Calling someone on something they didn’t do is antisocial
- iS hAmAs SuRpRiSeD!?
  Who cares what Hamas even thinks for fucks sake. Innocents are dying. If you're all so "civilised" then maybe you should realize that indiscriminately killing innocents isn't right, no matter who does it.
  
  Stop Israel oppression of Palestine so Hamas doesn't have a cause to recruit people behind? They're already not supported by the majority of people in Gaza, but if someone is left an orphan because Israel bombed their block, of course they'll be easier to recruit to Hamas.
  
  They have a cure already. They have giant walls, the iron dome missile defense system, hundreds of drones patrolling Gaza, supposedly a state of the art intelligence apparatus, mass mandatory recruitment (well... Except for the orthodox Jews), large towers, fences, etc. There's a reason this is unprecedented. They just had their resources positioned to take over West Bank settlements instead, and ignored warnings from multiple sources about an imminent attack. Their leadership fucked up. And are continuing to fuck up by positioning the rest of the world against their genocide.
  The thing is more genocide won't fix the cancer. The US figured that out in Vietnam, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. It just makes the survivors want to kill you more. That doesn't fix the cancer like you think it does. It was fine for the US to fuck up those other places because we can just leave and we often make a bunch of money during the conflict, but Israel can't. They need to learn to coexist, take lessons from places like South Africa, or the UK and IRA. It was actually negotiating that stopped the attacks in those places. They tried the killing everyone thing for awhile but it doesn't work.
  Personally, I think the cure is teaming up with a local alternative secular group, like the PLO, and empowering them without undermining their authority and support by doing things like the shit they do in the West Bank, or preventing travel between the two sectors from, or controlling their water, power, food supply, etc, or giving up on negotiations because Hamas does an unrelated terrorism. It's like negotiating with MLK, Jr so you don't have to negotiate with Malcolm X. Hamas has negative popularity but no one has the resources to stop them, and no random civilians are going to bother trying to while Israel controls more aspects of their daily life in a more obviously negative way (electricity, water quality, incoming supplies, travel, work visas, drone buzzing, etc.). And to demand you do before helping them even though you have all the power in the relationship is like the cops telling a mom and pop shop to try fighting the mafia first before they do something about the mafia extorting them.
  
  My solution would be to remove the blockade on Gaza. Let the people there exercise their human right to be armed.
  Then they can either overthrow Hamas, or join them.
  The only problem with my plan is the time lag between the Gazan population being armed, and when to hold them responsible for their government. As they exist now, Hamas exists without their consent. There’s no internal check against that “government”.
- You left out the part where Israel, of their own accord, goes in and kills these civilians to retaliate against what you've stated as a "very weak power."
  
  What? I was asking questions and they are not rhetorical.
  
  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
  
  Gotcha. Asking questions is the new wild accusation these days. It's a good way to avoid critical thought.
  
  Yes now that some wiki somewhere has published it, it is now a fact that those asking questions are troublemakers.
  
  No. There's a big difference between asking questions and asking pointed, leading questions. One is Socratic dialogue, the other is JAQing off.
- Hamas wants dead civilians. That's how resistance/terrorism movements work (your choice of descriptor, it's the exact same thing).
  IRA, Tamil Tigers, Viet Cong, etc. They all benefit from civilians on "their" side dying, that's just the game they are choosing to play. Acting like you're pwning somebody by pointing out an obvious fact won't get you far.
  And for the record, fuck Hamas.
- Hamas might be, but the millions of non-terrorist Palestinian's lives are worth more than to end as collateral damage.
- Hamas is evil. Wanting to get rid of them is understandable. Commuting mass civilian death to remove them is still a war crime.
  
  What's ironic is that I thought you were talking about Hamas, wanting to get rid of Israeli authorities. It just highlights how similar the two are. The IDF and Hamas both have no qualms about killing innocent people to further their agenda.
  
  The difference between the IDF and Hamas is that the IDF serves a civilian population that is heavily armed and almost 100% veterans.
  Hamas forcibly rules a civilian population that is unarmed.
  Given Israel actively prevents the people of Gaza from being armed (as is their human right) they are completely wrong to hold Gazans responsible for Hamas, given the Gazans have no power to consent to or reject Hamas’s rule.
  
  I don't disagree at all. I see Palestinians as a completely separate entity. I also see Israeli civilians as a separate entity from the IDF, however. Netanyahu isn't universally supported. No civilian in this situation is culpable.
- For decades we had the IRA and we didn't level Northern Ireland. The IRA were a terrorist organisation and repeatedly bombed civilians in UK.
  
  True but they were still hidden and helped by the local population. Point is though that the vastly superior British army didn't level NI.
  
  The IRA didn't target civilians though, they targeted the military or they tried doing economic damage.
  
  Nah they killed plenty but I was trying to draw attention to the fact that the British army were vastly superior but didn't level NI.
  WIKI has a list of the bombings.
  
  Point taken. However Hamas isn't just a terrorist organization, they are the elected political party of Gaza. They are the government. So not really apples to apples.
  
  Elected years ago, by people who are mostly dead?
  
  Answering that question is a whole rabbit hole I will not go down. Just wanted to point out that comparing Hamas with any other terrorist organization is imo not really possible.
  
  Comparing them to the Taliban or Hezbollagh is pretty possible.
- Maybe we should look at parallels between the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the Gazan resistance.
  
  Yeah all those Holocaust survivors who flooded the nearby villages to rape murder and kidnap random folks back to the ghetto oh wait that parallel actually makes no sense whatsoever.
  
  What about collaborators?
- You are being downvoted, but Hamas said exactly this on international TV.
  
  People are downvoting because it's a dumb ass take. Not because of what hamas said or not.
  Killing civillians en mass is not right. You're no better than hamas if you do that, no matter how "civilised" you claim to be.
  
  ...except that was literally Hamas' goal. I didn't say it wasn't stupid.
- What's surprising to me is that Hamas was able to succeed in the attack in the first place.
  Also that people are actually starting to think for themselves and find nuance in a situation that is filled to the brim of it.
- Hamas isn't surprised by the casualties, because the casualties are a desired goal for Hamas. They shot civilians who tried to flee south at the start of the war. They tell civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings that have been "knocked."
  Mass death is their goal, because they know it will do shit like manipulate the UN into protecting them.

203 comments