I'm late to the party, but found this essay particularly insightful and valuable: thank you for publishing it. I hope that we'll be able to continue to share Mr. Alkhatib's thoughts here from time to time.
@ the mods: I think it would be helpful to point to this tweet from Fuad where he’s very explicit about memorializing 10/7 itself. Irrespective of the debate about SlowBoring running his piece today (I’m fine with it but I understand the disagreement), it should at least help readers to know that he is certainly not trying to sweep the 10/7 massacre under the rug.
As a rare anti-Zionist among Matt's subscribers, I greatly admire his decision to run a Palestinian perspective today. This is why I keep reading this newsletter, even as the gap between my politics and Matt's grows wider -- he never stops challenging his readers, morally and intellectually, and he doesn't take the easy road. It is very admirable.
Just to let you know, Alkhatib wrote about the need for Palestinians to accept that Israel is a Jewish state and homeland. That essentially is what Zionism is…the idea that there should be a Jewish state and homeland in some borders in the land of Israel.
Anti-Zionism is the idea that there should not be a Jewish state or homeland in any borders.
Alkhatib may not identify with Zionism. But what he’s describing is Palestinians come to terms with Zionism and developing a constructive vision for their society not principally characterized by anti-Zionism.
I’m glad I read this, after initially feeling annoyed at it being posted on the first anniversary of 10/7. It was very fair, if a bit overly optimistic. It’s a reminder to me that it’s usually the people who are the closest to the situation on the ground and who have more contact with the “other” that are the least extreme. The moronic “from the river to the sea” protesters I saw yesterday in Harvard Square, as well as AIPAC supporting Jewish Americans, would do well to read this. But of course they won’t. The appeal of moral outrage is just too strong for many.
I may not agree with every claim or the timing of this article. But I’m glad that MY platformed Alkhatib.
We need to platform more Palestinian voices with a constructive vision of building Gaza into a functioning, prosperous society. We need more Palestinian voices who can clearly in no uncertain terms say they support Palestinians coming to terms with Israel being a Jewish state and homeland. And Alkhatib describes well what Gaza needs to do going forward. Come to terms with their own agency. Become a model of Palestinian self-governance. Build institutions. Build an economy. Refuse to become pawns of destructive ideologies of regional players. And end the struggle to dismantle the Jewish state.
It takes courage for a Palestinian to vocalize these important ideas and I hope he spreads his message far and wide.
War is a collective activity, and collectively speaking the Palestinians have consistently rejected compromise and waged war to kill Jews for a century now. If you reject compromise and chose war, the consequences are entirely on you.
The Palestinians have been cursed with an unbroken succession of tyrannical, bigoted, and venal leaders since the rise of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini in 1921, have rarely had free elections, and have never been offered real alternative from which to choose freely. Collective guilt is never a sound position, morally, ethically, or philosophically, but it's especially unjust when applied against a people who have never been free from their own native tyrants, tyrants who controlled the educational systems and communications media. The "Palestinians" have no more "consistently rejected compromise" than the "Russians" chose to colonize, exploit, and oppress Eastern and Central Europe for over 40 years: those were decisions of leaderships over which the people had no effective control, and that oppressed them, first and foremost.
Our bombs on Dresden and Tokyo didn't distinguish between supporters and opponents of those regimes. The firestorm raids on Tokyo in the spring of 1945 killed 100,000 Japanese in a single night; rivers of melted human fat ran boiling in the gutters. That's considerably more than in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, btw.
The survivors of the "Rape of Nanking" were probably cheering when they heard about it. Nanking was a mass atrocity and it was perpetrated by ordinary Japanese soldiers doing what they wanted. Which was to rape, torture and kill -- rather like last October 7th.
As for the tyrannical, bigoted and venal leaders of the Palestinians, that's about par for the course for the Arab world, isn't it?
Once can be happenstance, twice can be coincidence, the third time it's a pattern. That's the part of the world that has produced countless Saddam Husseins, the al-Assad dynasty in Syria and so forth and so on.
The people of Gaza freely elected Hamas -- and while Hamas certainly didn't allow free elections afterwards, they did win one.
On a program of "genocide for the dirty Yids".
Palestinians have gotten the leadership they supported -- and hence the leadership that, collectively speaking, they deserved.
True. People always suffer for the decisions of their leaders. The fact that there are innocent Palestinians doesn’t distinguish this war from any other war in human history. There were innocent Germans, Japanese, and every other enemy nation in history.
Quite right. For that matter, we killed about 250,000 -French- civilians in the course of driving the Germans out of France in 1944-45. Even de Gaulle didn't complain, and if there was one thing he wasn't shy about, it was complaints. Too bad, so sad, c'est la guerre.
That Matt doesn’t think it fitting to feature an Israeli Jewish perspective on the first anniversary of the greatest atrocity the Jewish people faced since the Holocaust is despicable. He lost me as a subscriber. Not that it would matter to him. He will be fine with his millions of dollars and secure privileged life allowing him to pretend he is some neutral observer while his brethren are facing existential crisis. Still, should should history remember him (which is doubtful) it would not look kindly on him.
P.S.
I’m only sorry to say goodbye to this fine and rare online discussion board. Still, one has to put one’s money where one’s mouth is. Matt’s line on Jewish matters has been problematic for a long time but this crosses a line. Today is not the time to be too clever by half.
Your criticism of the timing of this post is valid, as have been your criticisms of MY’s handling of certain Jewish matters (which have been both nuanced albeit sometimes bit tone deaf). I think your voice in this community been valuable.
Even though I agree with your criticisms, the reason I’m less upset is that it is refreshing to see a Palestinian voice argue for Palestinian agency and a constructive vision for the future (even if I disagree with the timing and some of the framings in the article). I wish it were featured on a different day, but it is so rare to hear such voices coming from the Palestinian side that I do appreciate attempts to amplify moderate constructive Palestinian voices who have come to terms with the existence of a Jewish state regardless. On the Jewish side, it doesn’t take courage to accept the possibility of Palestinian self determination (in fact it’s a pretty banal statement in many Jewish circles), but on the Palestinian side it does take courage to accept Jewish self determination.
Hope you reconsider because having your voice here has been valuable.
"Indeed, the people of Gaza are done with Hamas and want nothing to do with Islamism, terrorism, or future suicidal adventurism, all of which have set their just and urgent aspirations back by decades."
Unfortunately, this strikes me as wishful thinking. Is there any indication that Gazans are in fact "done with Hamas and want nothing to do with Islamism"? Why should we believe that a truly independent Gaza and West Bank wouldn't become another autocratic theocracy like the vast majority of Middle Eastern Muslim countries?
To all the people saying, "OMG, x% of Palestinians's still want y instead of just nothing but peace" acts like a massive amount of American's wouldn't be acting the same way if put in the same situation. That's just humanity. Hell, I'd argue America is extremely lucky that due to some good political choices and the general wealth of the country, that the African-American community in the US isn't as radicalized as Palestinians are.
You are right. The problem with that thinking is that Israelis also are justified in loathing people who fired rockets at them every night prior to 10/7.
Any case for Palestine has to be made on the grounds of human rights and a will to end human suffering.
Lolwut? Yes, Black Americans have suffered horribly due to slavery and Jim Crow, and racism continues to be a thing. But present day Black Americans aren’t crowded in a tiny strip of land under economic blockade, with a fanatical death cult government and almost zero prospects for a better life. Their situation and the Palestinians’ plight are completely different. Why would both be equally radicalized?
Yes, that's why I said due to good political choices and the general wealth of the country they aren't, but in a situation where the pre-World War II situation held fast, which is more likely than people want to admit, I could see a radicalized A-A population. We were seeing that to a certain extent in the 60's, even as progress was being made.
But in a world where say, FDR's assassination attempt works, Garner becomes POTUS and the conservative wing of the Dem's remain powerful, I can easily see things going Bad. Maybe not modern Palestine bad, but pretty bad.
But my larger point is we saw much wealthier, much more secure people worldwide radicalizing because they couldn't go to Applebee's for a few months. The median wealthy by global standards Westerner went through 0.1% of what frankly Palestine or I'll be fair and say Israel has gone through and a healthy amount of them would've support terrorism against the libs keeping them locked down or whatever in 2021 if given truth serum.
I respect the author of the post and have immense admiration for him, but I would be surprised if he represents more than 5% of the Palestinians. You don’t even need to know Arabic for this. Just ask in a Palestinian subreddit in English if they see a solution with a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state as a possible end to the conflict. Even among English-speaking Palestinians, the answer will be unequivocally negative.
Very thoughtful and humane article. I am a Jew and a Zionist and don't mind it being shared today. It's hard to know what % of Palestinians oppose armed struggle, but it seems clear that the % is too small for that group to have a monopoly on the use of violence. It has to be way higher than 50% for them to be able to overpower the terrorists.
I object to the characterization of the war in Gaza as a campaign of annihilation. Gaza's people have suffered tremendously, for sure. But how was Israel supposed to neutralize the threat from Hamas, which has advertised its desire to carry out more 10/7 massacres, without a major military campaign? Israel needs to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, but this is extremely difficult to do when Hamas routinely uses ostensibly civilian infrastructure for military purposes.
In regard to the ProPublica report - do people agree that the findings of the two USG reports indicate that we are breaking our own laws by providing continuing military assistance to Israel? What are we to make of Blinken's actions? Should Kamala replace him as a way to press restart?
Good note! I imagine that guy could use a four year vacation.
I am on one level disgusted by him/ the administration baldly lying about this, but on the other hand it's not necessarily out of character for the USG. When there was a coup in Niger we didn't recognize it as a coup (or at least it took a while), not because it wasn't, but because recognizing it as a coup would legally force us to do things that we didn't want to do. It's not clear what good legal guardrails are if we can just avoid them by denying reality
Ahmed, thank you for the article. Can you give us an idea of what you think the US should be doing? It’s not clear to me what the right answer is, especially given our domestic issues at this time.
"Israel’s entire military strategy seemed to be based on the hope that the people of Gaza could be expelled en masse through the north-to-south strategy, with over a million people in northern Gaza told to move south for safety."
It's ridiculous to pretend that there is serious support in Israel for the plan to transfer out 2.3 million Arabs. Perhaps 5% of the country supports that. According to this brilliant analysis, this pipe dream is the basis of Israel's military strategy.
"The Israeli army would often strike targets that had no military significance but caused numerous casualties among non-involved combatants, especially children who have paid the heaviest price throughout this war. "
There is zero evidence offered for this assertion. The historically low ratio of civillian to combatant deaths in this war - the lowest ever recorded in urban combat, puts the lie to this nonsense.
"It didn’t help that there were hard-to-watch and shameful scenes of hostages being paraded around Gaza and abused by some civilians. This footage was used time and again to proclaim that all of Gaza is Hamas, that no innocent civilians exist in the Strip."
You see, it's not the civillians yelling "G-d is great" as a woman with blood oozing from her rape wounds is paraded through the streets that are the problem, it's the people who "use this footage" that are the problem.
“The Israeli army would often strike targets that had no military significance but caused numerous casualties among non-involved combatants, especially children who have paid the heaviest price throughout this war. "
There is zero evidence offered for this assertion. The historically low ratio of civillian to combatant deaths in this war - the lowest ever recorded in urban combat, puts the lie to this nonsense.”
Where are you getting this information from? I don’t have a personal stake but would simply like to know how this has been the lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths…it seems frankly rather impossible to be able to make such a claim.
The Hamas claims - which are patently ridiculous - put the ratio at about 2:1, which is in line with the modern urban warfare numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Hamas is lying, and the ratio is likely closer to 1:1, which would be a record low number. At any rate, the author's claim that "The Israeli army would often strike targets that had no military significance but caused numerous casualties among non-involved combatants,"
IDF doesn’t seem to agree with you (from your Wikipedia page):
According to the Israel, an estimated civilian to combatant ratio of 1:1 has been reported, which Prime Minister Netanyahu has claimed to be the "lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in the history of modern urban warfare."[80][81][82] The Israeli Defence Forces' own reports seem to contradict this figure, estimating that approximately 15,000 to 17,000 Palestinian militants have been killed as of September 2024, which would suggest a civilian to combatant ratio of about 2.5:1 to 3:1.
The person who wrote the Wikipedia page obviously can't do math. (Or they are relying on the assumption that there are an additional 10,000 deaths that are all civillians, for some reason. And then just randomly stretching the ratio from 2:1 to 2.5:1. Or they are just lying, and hoping that people like you don't bother doing the calculation.)
The IDF number of 24,000 civillian deaths to 17,000 combat deaths is 1.4:1
Sure but you told me to go to Wikipedia. In any event your methods are to constantly minimize. It’s pretty clearly not 1:1, and instead somewhere between 1.45-1.79:1.
"would simply like to know how this has been the lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths…it seems frankly rather impossible to be able to make such a claim."
I assumed that you meant that you didn't understand how such things could be calculated, for which I referred you to Wikipedia.
I believe that, if all things would be tallied up and you would include teenagers who carry messages for Hamas, and people who store their weapons as combatants, as they would be in any military struggle, the ratio will be close to 1:1.
But, maybe I am wrong, and it is 1.5:1, or even 1.9:1 or even 2:1
The author's claim that
"The Israeli army would often strike targets that had no military significance but caused numerous casualties among non-involved combatants, especially children who have paid the heaviest price throughout this war."
is clearly delusional.
The Israeli army has sacrificed hundreds of its own soldiers in this war, to fight in a way that limits civillian casualties.
The authors claim is a lie, a sick lie that causes people like you to believe that Israel is genocidal. It's worth calling out that lie.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and views. I agree with you and look forward to a legitimately free Palestinian people coexisting with their neighbors without fear.
I'm late to the party, but found this essay particularly insightful and valuable: thank you for publishing it. I hope that we'll be able to continue to share Mr. Alkhatib's thoughts here from time to time.
Let us hope that Mr. Alkhatib's optimistic vision for the future of Gaza comes to pass.
@ the mods: I think it would be helpful to point to this tweet from Fuad where he’s very explicit about memorializing 10/7 itself. Irrespective of the debate about SlowBoring running his piece today (I’m fine with it but I understand the disagreement), it should at least help readers to know that he is certainly not trying to sweep the 10/7 massacre under the rug.
https://x.com/afalkhatib/status/1843053362113093685
As a rare anti-Zionist among Matt's subscribers, I greatly admire his decision to run a Palestinian perspective today. This is why I keep reading this newsletter, even as the gap between my politics and Matt's grows wider -- he never stops challenging his readers, morally and intellectually, and he doesn't take the easy road. It is very admirable.
Just to let you know, Alkhatib wrote about the need for Palestinians to accept that Israel is a Jewish state and homeland. That essentially is what Zionism is…the idea that there should be a Jewish state and homeland in some borders in the land of Israel.
Anti-Zionism is the idea that there should not be a Jewish state or homeland in any borders.
Alkhatib may not identify with Zionism. But what he’s describing is Palestinians come to terms with Zionism and developing a constructive vision for their society not principally characterized by anti-Zionism.
I’m glad I read this, after initially feeling annoyed at it being posted on the first anniversary of 10/7. It was very fair, if a bit overly optimistic. It’s a reminder to me that it’s usually the people who are the closest to the situation on the ground and who have more contact with the “other” that are the least extreme. The moronic “from the river to the sea” protesters I saw yesterday in Harvard Square, as well as AIPAC supporting Jewish Americans, would do well to read this. But of course they won’t. The appeal of moral outrage is just too strong for many.
I may not agree with every claim or the timing of this article. But I’m glad that MY platformed Alkhatib.
We need to platform more Palestinian voices with a constructive vision of building Gaza into a functioning, prosperous society. We need more Palestinian voices who can clearly in no uncertain terms say they support Palestinians coming to terms with Israel being a Jewish state and homeland. And Alkhatib describes well what Gaza needs to do going forward. Come to terms with their own agency. Become a model of Palestinian self-governance. Build institutions. Build an economy. Refuse to become pawns of destructive ideologies of regional players. And end the struggle to dismantle the Jewish state.
It takes courage for a Palestinian to vocalize these important ideas and I hope he spreads his message far and wide.
War is a collective activity, and collectively speaking the Palestinians have consistently rejected compromise and waged war to kill Jews for a century now. If you reject compromise and chose war, the consequences are entirely on you.
The Palestinians have been cursed with an unbroken succession of tyrannical, bigoted, and venal leaders since the rise of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini in 1921, have rarely had free elections, and have never been offered real alternative from which to choose freely. Collective guilt is never a sound position, morally, ethically, or philosophically, but it's especially unjust when applied against a people who have never been free from their own native tyrants, tyrants who controlled the educational systems and communications media. The "Palestinians" have no more "consistently rejected compromise" than the "Russians" chose to colonize, exploit, and oppress Eastern and Central Europe for over 40 years: those were decisions of leaderships over which the people had no effective control, and that oppressed them, first and foremost.
As I said, war is a -collective- activity.
Individuals just don't matter much.
Our bombs on Dresden and Tokyo didn't distinguish between supporters and opponents of those regimes. The firestorm raids on Tokyo in the spring of 1945 killed 100,000 Japanese in a single night; rivers of melted human fat ran boiling in the gutters. That's considerably more than in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, btw.
The survivors of the "Rape of Nanking" were probably cheering when they heard about it. Nanking was a mass atrocity and it was perpetrated by ordinary Japanese soldiers doing what they wanted. Which was to rape, torture and kill -- rather like last October 7th.
As for the tyrannical, bigoted and venal leaders of the Palestinians, that's about par for the course for the Arab world, isn't it?
Once can be happenstance, twice can be coincidence, the third time it's a pattern. That's the part of the world that has produced countless Saddam Husseins, the al-Assad dynasty in Syria and so forth and so on.
The people of Gaza freely elected Hamas -- and while Hamas certainly didn't allow free elections afterwards, they did win one.
On a program of "genocide for the dirty Yids".
Palestinians have gotten the leadership they supported -- and hence the leadership that, collectively speaking, they deserved.
True. People always suffer for the decisions of their leaders. The fact that there are innocent Palestinians doesn’t distinguish this war from any other war in human history. There were innocent Germans, Japanese, and every other enemy nation in history.
Quite right. For that matter, we killed about 250,000 -French- civilians in the course of driving the Germans out of France in 1944-45. Even de Gaulle didn't complain, and if there was one thing he wasn't shy about, it was complaints. Too bad, so sad, c'est la guerre.
That Matt doesn’t think it fitting to feature an Israeli Jewish perspective on the first anniversary of the greatest atrocity the Jewish people faced since the Holocaust is despicable. He lost me as a subscriber. Not that it would matter to him. He will be fine with his millions of dollars and secure privileged life allowing him to pretend he is some neutral observer while his brethren are facing existential crisis. Still, should should history remember him (which is doubtful) it would not look kindly on him.
P.S.
I’m only sorry to say goodbye to this fine and rare online discussion board. Still, one has to put one’s money where one’s mouth is. Matt’s line on Jewish matters has been problematic for a long time but this crosses a line. Today is not the time to be too clever by half.
Your criticism of the timing of this post is valid, as have been your criticisms of MY’s handling of certain Jewish matters (which have been both nuanced albeit sometimes bit tone deaf). I think your voice in this community been valuable.
Even though I agree with your criticisms, the reason I’m less upset is that it is refreshing to see a Palestinian voice argue for Palestinian agency and a constructive vision for the future (even if I disagree with the timing and some of the framings in the article). I wish it were featured on a different day, but it is so rare to hear such voices coming from the Palestinian side that I do appreciate attempts to amplify moderate constructive Palestinian voices who have come to terms with the existence of a Jewish state regardless. On the Jewish side, it doesn’t take courage to accept the possibility of Palestinian self determination (in fact it’s a pretty banal statement in many Jewish circles), but on the Palestinian side it does take courage to accept Jewish self determination.
Hope you reconsider because having your voice here has been valuable.
I hope you'll stay. I enjoy your posts. Matt has written a lot of pro-Israel pieces.
I hear people on timing, but I think in the spirit of Slow Boring, this was thoughtful, nuanced, and maybe challenging content.
I will miss your voice and hope you reconsider.
We will miss you!
"Indeed, the people of Gaza are done with Hamas and want nothing to do with Islamism, terrorism, or future suicidal adventurism, all of which have set their just and urgent aspirations back by decades."
Unfortunately, this strikes me as wishful thinking. Is there any indication that Gazans are in fact "done with Hamas and want nothing to do with Islamism"? Why should we believe that a truly independent Gaza and West Bank wouldn't become another autocratic theocracy like the vast majority of Middle Eastern Muslim countries?
To all the people saying, "OMG, x% of Palestinians's still want y instead of just nothing but peace" acts like a massive amount of American's wouldn't be acting the same way if put in the same situation. That's just humanity. Hell, I'd argue America is extremely lucky that due to some good political choices and the general wealth of the country, that the African-American community in the US isn't as radicalized as Palestinians are.
You are right. The problem with that thinking is that Israelis also are justified in loathing people who fired rockets at them every night prior to 10/7.
Any case for Palestine has to be made on the grounds of human rights and a will to end human suffering.
Lolwut? Yes, Black Americans have suffered horribly due to slavery and Jim Crow, and racism continues to be a thing. But present day Black Americans aren’t crowded in a tiny strip of land under economic blockade, with a fanatical death cult government and almost zero prospects for a better life. Their situation and the Palestinians’ plight are completely different. Why would both be equally radicalized?
Yes, that's why I said due to good political choices and the general wealth of the country they aren't, but in a situation where the pre-World War II situation held fast, which is more likely than people want to admit, I could see a radicalized A-A population. We were seeing that to a certain extent in the 60's, even as progress was being made.
But in a world where say, FDR's assassination attempt works, Garner becomes POTUS and the conservative wing of the Dem's remain powerful, I can easily see things going Bad. Maybe not modern Palestine bad, but pretty bad.
But my larger point is we saw much wealthier, much more secure people worldwide radicalizing because they couldn't go to Applebee's for a few months. The median wealthy by global standards Westerner went through 0.1% of what frankly Palestine or I'll be fair and say Israel has gone through and a healthy amount of them would've support terrorism against the libs keeping them locked down or whatever in 2021 if given truth serum.
I respect the author of the post and have immense admiration for him, but I would be surprised if he represents more than 5% of the Palestinians. You don’t even need to know Arabic for this. Just ask in a Palestinian subreddit in English if they see a solution with a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state as a possible end to the conflict. Even among English-speaking Palestinians, the answer will be unequivocally negative.
Very thoughtful and humane article. I am a Jew and a Zionist and don't mind it being shared today. It's hard to know what % of Palestinians oppose armed struggle, but it seems clear that the % is too small for that group to have a monopoly on the use of violence. It has to be way higher than 50% for them to be able to overpower the terrorists.
I object to the characterization of the war in Gaza as a campaign of annihilation. Gaza's people have suffered tremendously, for sure. But how was Israel supposed to neutralize the threat from Hamas, which has advertised its desire to carry out more 10/7 massacres, without a major military campaign? Israel needs to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, but this is extremely difficult to do when Hamas routinely uses ostensibly civilian infrastructure for military purposes.
In regard to the ProPublica report - do people agree that the findings of the two USG reports indicate that we are breaking our own laws by providing continuing military assistance to Israel? What are we to make of Blinken's actions? Should Kamala replace him as a way to press restart?
https://www.propublica.org/article/gaza-palestine-israel-blocked-humanitarian-aid-blinken
Blinken already said he would not continue as Secretary of State if Harris wins
Good note! I imagine that guy could use a four year vacation.
I am on one level disgusted by him/ the administration baldly lying about this, but on the other hand it's not necessarily out of character for the USG. When there was a coup in Niger we didn't recognize it as a coup (or at least it took a while), not because it wasn't, but because recognizing it as a coup would legally force us to do things that we didn't want to do. It's not clear what good legal guardrails are if we can just avoid them by denying reality
Ahmed, thank you for the article. Can you give us an idea of what you think the US should be doing? It’s not clear to me what the right answer is, especially given our domestic issues at this time.
"Israel’s entire military strategy seemed to be based on the hope that the people of Gaza could be expelled en masse through the north-to-south strategy, with over a million people in northern Gaza told to move south for safety."
It's ridiculous to pretend that there is serious support in Israel for the plan to transfer out 2.3 million Arabs. Perhaps 5% of the country supports that. According to this brilliant analysis, this pipe dream is the basis of Israel's military strategy.
"The Israeli army would often strike targets that had no military significance but caused numerous casualties among non-involved combatants, especially children who have paid the heaviest price throughout this war. "
There is zero evidence offered for this assertion. The historically low ratio of civillian to combatant deaths in this war - the lowest ever recorded in urban combat, puts the lie to this nonsense.
"It didn’t help that there were hard-to-watch and shameful scenes of hostages being paraded around Gaza and abused by some civilians. This footage was used time and again to proclaim that all of Gaza is Hamas, that no innocent civilians exist in the Strip."
You see, it's not the civillians yelling "G-d is great" as a woman with blood oozing from her rape wounds is paraded through the streets that are the problem, it's the people who "use this footage" that are the problem.
“The Israeli army would often strike targets that had no military significance but caused numerous casualties among non-involved combatants, especially children who have paid the heaviest price throughout this war. "
There is zero evidence offered for this assertion. The historically low ratio of civillian to combatant deaths in this war - the lowest ever recorded in urban combat, puts the lie to this nonsense.”
Where are you getting this information from? I don’t have a personal stake but would simply like to know how this has been the lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths…it seems frankly rather impossible to be able to make such a claim.
You can read about it here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio
The Hamas claims - which are patently ridiculous - put the ratio at about 2:1, which is in line with the modern urban warfare numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Hamas is lying, and the ratio is likely closer to 1:1, which would be a record low number. At any rate, the author's claim that "The Israeli army would often strike targets that had no military significance but caused numerous casualties among non-involved combatants,"
is clearly delusional.
IDF doesn’t seem to agree with you (from your Wikipedia page):
According to the Israel, an estimated civilian to combatant ratio of 1:1 has been reported, which Prime Minister Netanyahu has claimed to be the "lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in the history of modern urban warfare."[80][81][82] The Israeli Defence Forces' own reports seem to contradict this figure, estimating that approximately 15,000 to 17,000 Palestinian militants have been killed as of September 2024, which would suggest a civilian to combatant ratio of about 2.5:1 to 3:1.
The person who wrote the Wikipedia page obviously can't do math. (Or they are relying on the assumption that there are an additional 10,000 deaths that are all civillians, for some reason. And then just randomly stretching the ratio from 2:1 to 2.5:1. Or they are just lying, and hoping that people like you don't bother doing the calculation.)
The IDF number of 24,000 civillian deaths to 17,000 combat deaths is 1.4:1
Sure but you told me to go to Wikipedia. In any event your methods are to constantly minimize. It’s pretty clearly not 1:1, and instead somewhere between 1.45-1.79:1.
You said that you
"would simply like to know how this has been the lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths…it seems frankly rather impossible to be able to make such a claim."
I assumed that you meant that you didn't understand how such things could be calculated, for which I referred you to Wikipedia.
I believe that, if all things would be tallied up and you would include teenagers who carry messages for Hamas, and people who store their weapons as combatants, as they would be in any military struggle, the ratio will be close to 1:1.
But, maybe I am wrong, and it is 1.5:1, or even 1.9:1 or even 2:1
The author's claim that
"The Israeli army would often strike targets that had no military significance but caused numerous casualties among non-involved combatants, especially children who have paid the heaviest price throughout this war."
is clearly delusional.
The Israeli army has sacrificed hundreds of its own soldiers in this war, to fight in a way that limits civillian casualties.
The authors claim is a lie, a sick lie that causes people like you to believe that Israel is genocidal. It's worth calling out that lie.
Thank you for sharing your experiences and views. I agree with you and look forward to a legitimately free Palestinian people coexisting with their neighbors without fear.