homura1650

Most of October 7 was a crime, even without the hostages. Taking the hostages was itself a crime, and continuing to hold them continues to be a crime.

The question of what Hamas "should" do is more complicated. Clearly following international law is not a priority for them, so that justification goes out the window.

In terms of actually advancing their interests, I don't see much benefit to them. Their biggest asset in Israeli domestic politics are the hostages. The political pressure in Israel to free them is real, and the decision makers all know that a deal is the only way to meet that. Further, a not insignificant portion of the population oppose the war in it's current form specifically because of the hostages. The only wins Hamas has gotten has been through hostage negotiations.

In exchange for giving all of that up, Hamas gets a slight benefit in the PR war. It is a very hard sell to say that is a good trade.

If you want Hamas to free the hostages, you need to get to a point where "Hamas should free the hostages" is true from the perspective of Hamas. Then, you can work on convincing them it is true. The good news is that Hamas is very amenable to the idea that releasing hostages is in their interest. That is the entire reason you take hostages: to get some benefit by releasing them.

It's hard to say. With or without hostages, October 7 was extremely traumatic; and came in the context of a population already primed to be suspicious of Palestinians. In particular, the West Bank ethnic cleansing was already well underway with the tacit support of the general population; as although for most people that support was more about apathy than proactive support. Looking at how the US lost its shit for decades after 9/11, it is clear that hostages are not necessary for that to happen. Israel has also to deal with follow up attacks, which has a way of keeping trauma fresh.

Regarding the role of the hostages in this case, the first thing to acknowledge is that the actual response by Israel has not prioritized the hostages. Critical members of Israel's current governing coalition have threatened to leave over prior attempts at a hostage deal. This has lead a serious rift developing between the current government and many of the hostage families.

However, from a propaganda side, the hostages have been a major assesset to the current government (both internationally and domestically). Most people are simply not that engaged in politics. We have heard repeatedly from Israeli military leadership that there are no achievat military goals left in Gaza. However, it is hard for that message to break through when the other side can point to the hostages and say "freeing those people is our goal". Nevermind the fact that everyone paying attention knows that military action is not an effective tool of hostage release [0] and almost all of the freed hostages have been freed as a result of diplomacy.

[0] It can be useful for leverage in negotiations; but Israel is well past the point needed for that.

Must be nice to work work in such an agile company. Around here, we need to produce an updated requirements specification. Review that specification internally. Send the updated specification out to stakeholders for review. Put a bug in the backlog. Wait until someone important files a new bug report (which is now an actual bug report). Actually produce a fix. Hold a change review meeting. Merge the fix. Test the fix. Fail during testing because the tester is new to the project and flags 100 critical bugs that have been sitting in the backlog for years. Ship a release. Receive a bug report that we no longer produce screenshots. Fly an engineer to location to investigate. Advice the customer to update a 5 line script to point to the new location. "We don't have bandwidth to update that system.". Hide the fix behind an obscure undocumented option that defaults to off. Ship an emergency bug fix. Wait for the next bug report. Close bug report as "user error. User forgot to set enable 'screenshots are not videos' flag in tweaks>advanced>video menu ".

I was talking about perception, not legality.

I'm Jewish. The taboo around the swastika does not negatively effect me. If the local Indian restaraunt were to redecorate and adorn their walls with swasitkas, I would stop going there. If I saw someone I didn't know whereing a swasitka necklace, I would avoid them.

I do, however, have enough empathy to recognize that this situation must suck for Hindus, Jains, or any other group for which that symbol has significance.

I also have the capacity to imagine a world where the same exact thing happens to the star of David. One where I cannot go outside whereing it on a necklace. One where we need to censor any artwork or buildings that might be viewed by the general public, lest they misinterpret the symbol. One where Jewish establishments are avoided or vandalized because people see the Star of David and interpret it as a declaration of support for Israel. Or, worse, as a declaration of hate for Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, or whatever other group the state of Israel gets into a fight with.

This is not some crazy hypothetical. The star of David is the iconic aspect of the Isreali flag; just like the swastika is the iconic aspect of the Nazi flag. There is a massive and media savy coalition devoted conflating Judism and Israel. A coalition that includes both pro-Israel members, and anti-Semitic members. In this very thread, just 3 posted my parent, we have someone openly admitting to doing this. I have a friend still in collage who has stopped wearing anything with the star of David on it. He has not taken down the Mezuzah from his dorm room door. He has not stopped wearing a kippah. The only symbol of Judism that has been causing him issues is the one plastered on the Israeli flag.

Not to detract from anything you said, but the swastika is also a religious symbol. The fact today, some 80 years after the Holocaust, it is still viewed visourally as a Nazi symbol does not bode well for us.

I think this is a case of "things can always get worse".

He isn't saying that Israel committed war crimes under his leadership; just that it is doing so now. With the subtext of what is going on now is far worse than what happened back then. Which, as far as I can tell, is accurate.

I keep bringing this up to show how far Israel has slid. Back in 2007, Israel convicted a man for supporting a terrorist organization. In 2022, that man was appointed as the Minister of National Security; and he is a lynchpin holding together Israel's current governing coalition.

His political party, Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) is the successor of the Kach party, which was barred from public office in 1994 under Israeli anti-terrorism laws.

Prior to the 2018-2022 political crisis, the far right parties like Otzma Yehudit were a political third rail and essentially left out of governing coalitions in favor of relatively moderate parties.

The Gaza Ministry of Health systematically undercounts the dead. First, they only attemp to count direct casualties, which excludes preventable deaths from malnutrition, disease, loss of shelter, etc. Second, their capacity to find the dead is significantly reduced due to the war. This isn't unique to this situation. For almost any disaster, casualty estimates continue to go up after the disaster itself is over, and there are resources to spend looking for dead bodies.

Zionism is an ethnonationalist Ideology that says that Israel should exist as a Jewish state. Like all ethnonationalist movements, Zionism also has a strong component of territorial expansionism.

Israel's founding was absolutely a Zionist project. And Zionism has been a large part of Israeli politics since then. However, there is another school of thought that goes "I don't care how we got here, but it is 2025, and the state of Israel is a thing that exists, and I support the right of that entity and it's citizens".

This is a bit muddled in today's climate, because the current Israeli leadership has been thoroughly captured by ultra Zionist. As in, Netenyahu's government is only holding on to power by forming a coalition with far right fringe parties that until a few years ago were a third rail in Israeli politics. Back in 2007, their c now current Minister of National Security, Ben Gvir, was convicted of supporting a terrorist organization.

However, as with every country, people can have a different view towards the country as a whole, and it's current political state.

Literacy is also about English (at least as commonly reported in the US). About 1/3 of functionally illiterate adults in the US are foreign born. I have never seen literacy stats that measure "literate in any language".