I hate wars, and I would love to see peaceful resolution. But we have a war already, most recently started by Hamas in October 7th. The sad reality is that civilian casualties are unavoidable in a war. Horrendous civilian casualties during American and British bombardment of Nazi Germany didn’t stop Allies during WW2. Israel conduct is nowhere near what Allies had done.
The point of Jew/Arab comparison is to contrast the consequences of two theoretical extremes: Israel victory and Gaza victory. Gaza victory would lead to extermination of Israeli Jews. Israel victory would lead to peace for Gaza’s Arabs.
I am defending no one. Grandparent comment was asking for OP assertions that I find biased. Deir Yassin quote was a one such assertion. Extremely well researched - books have been written about it - but presented in a very biased manner. Paul cherry-picked the worst description of the events.
> Iran had the means to bombard Israel, but they are not doing
I was not talking about bombardment. I was talking about means for genocide and extermination. Out of your examples, only USA and Russia have the means. Iran is not there yet.
> Can do, doesn't mean should do.
This is ridiculous, I never claimed Israel should exterminate Gaza. I claimed the opposite - Israel never did, thus it will not do that now either. Contrast that with official Hamas 1988 Charter [1] arguing for exterminations of all Jews.
> Why did you bring this topic?
I've brought the topic to demonstrate a way to judge various claims about the war.
> People ... are getting integrated into [USA]. Can't say same about Israel
This is incorrect. 2 million Arabs [2] are living in Israel proper: 20% of the whole population. They are perfectly integrated. For example, Knesset has 10 Arab members. Compare with Gaza before October 2023: 0.0% Jews. Iran: 0.009% Jews.
Point (2) provides a helpful framework for evaluating various assertions about the war. It doesn't exempt Israel from criticism. However, the original post extends far beyond mere criticism; it seems more aligned with a propaganda narrative, unfortunately.
Point (1) aims to highlight a counterpoint to a comparable yet opposing claim - the expulsion of Arabs in 1948. The claim from 1948 continues to fuel hostilities to this day.
The entire article seems quite biased. Using footnotes after every sentence doesn't necessarily indicate a well-researched piece. I won't delve into recent events due to the challenges posed by the fog of war effect. A clearer example of Paul's bias is his choice of quotes regarding past events.
In reference [19], discussing the April 1948 Deir Yassin massacre, Paul presents the following quote:
"Women and children were stripped, lined up, photographed, and then slaughtered by automatic firing and survivors have told of even more incredible bestialities. Those who were taken prisoners were treated with degrading brutality."
This quote originates from a UN report just 11 days after the event, posing two critical issues: firstly, insufficient time for a thorough investigation; secondly, an erroneous casualty count of 250, later revised through subsequent investigations to a total of 107, inclusive of non-civilian casualties.
Furthermore, there's a significant omission. The Deir Yassin events didn't occur in isolation; they were part of a broader context — a battle during the Arab-Jewish civil war, where Jewish militias aimed to break the blockade of Jerusalem enforced by Arab militias.
The Deir Yassin incident has undergone extensive scrutiny, exemplified in Eliezer Tauber's book.
The “woke” angle was raised later on. JT brought up it up:
“It was JeanHeyd who called Rust out for having no Black representation among Rust conference speakers. Rightly so, as both the Rust organization and the conferences had little to no Black representation.
When I saw an organization that not only could act so coldly to an expert in the field, but also to one who was a vocal critic of Rust's lack of diversity, it was hard not to see the additional context.
Systems have memory and biases. If the people that make up the system don't work to fight against these, they are perpetuated.
As my buddy Aman pointed out, the context that this would have also been the first keynote by a person of color at RustConf should not be lost here.”
Seems to be the case of some influential toxic person(s) in the Rust Project. They can’t even be named apparently. (Yeah, like the He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in the Harri Potter series.)