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The objection I have with that is that it's reductive.
"It's not *so* bad" is different than "it's not *entirely* bad", and my objection stands, whether or not "someone else could achieve good results"
To hold a strong opinion on whether those terms apply, I'd need more information than is available to the public, and go on a case by case basis.
For example:
The IDF claims Hamas use civilians as human shields. Hamas denies it.
Hamas claims the IDF targets civilians. The IDF denies it.
And I, with no access to internal IDF communications, and no access to internal Hamas communications, don't know what to make of all the videos and articles supporting and debunking both claims.
If the goal is to determine whether Israel actually is guilty of genocide then that approach isn't useful.
The sensible position is to be conscious of what one doesn't know.
It's less satisfying than believing that one side is just evil, like the person to whom I originally replied: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45766601
If the Israelis are committing genocide, it's of a people obsessed with destroying them.
If it's colonisation, it's colonisation with about a dozen caveats.
That doesn't make things any better for Gazans, for whom I also have sympathy.
The aspect of the original comment that I was poking fun of is that it is reductive.
That's the same justification used by a certain failed Austrian painter.
Genocide is never right.
The situations seem quite different to me, but maybe there is an outrageous gap in my knowledge of Weimar Germany.
By your logic, false flag attacks can be used to legitimize genocide. I am not saying those attacks were false flags. But, malicious actors aware of your logic can plan false attacks, “sacrifice few for greater good” and you will then support a genocide because it satisfied your conditions.
I should also note that the tactic itself dates way back before Israel became an independent state. Here's one honest Zionist writing it like it is:
Is there any subject in particular I am meant to address from that link? Quite a lot happened between 1923 and the founding of the modern state of Israel. As the letter itself implies, zionists had diverse goals and attitudes.
It should also be noted that the ruling party, Likud, is specifically a Revisionist Zionist organization, with an explicit historical link to Betar, and founded by Begin who was a Jabotinsky disciple. So this isn't just some kind of random coincidence; what we're seeing Israel doing in Gaza today is a direct consequence of taking Jabotinsky's main premise and running it to conclusion.
- when the colonists began colonizing, there were already a minority of jews in the region
- many of the colonizers believed themselves, with some reason, to be native to the land
- most israelis today, through no fault of their own, were born in israel
- when zionists came to colonize israel, it was already colonized (twice over)
- the initial colonization was carried out 'legally' (though, in hindsight, what that means is questionable)
- many of the colonizers were fleeing persecution and, especially around the holocaust, had no nations willing to accept them as immigrants
So they take over someone else's land and massacre and displace the locals? Sounds about right /s
For me Zionists for Palestinians are fair game, the same as Germans Nazis were fair game to German Jews.
The fact that Nazis are backing up Zionists in the West tells all the story.
That's not the fault of palestinians, and so it does make zionists 'fair game' through a pro-palestinian lens.
On the other hand, it does make it hard to say either side is in the wrong.
And I don't attach significance to which side nazis support today. There are far-right movements who claim to support gay rights, too. It's meaningless.
I hope you meant to say something like militants, otherwise this is justifying unlawful violence based on the victims' political beliefs.
It certainly wouldn't have been fair game for Jews to massacre random German civilians at a music festival, for example, irrespective of any speculation about their victims' political ideology.
Nazis in the West are actually divided quite a bit on this. Old-school Nazis were often anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian; some even converted to Islam from going down that path (e.g. Johann von Leers, Ahmed Huber). Support for Israel and Jews as "more white" than Arabs is a more recent phenomenon, and those two groups often fight each other.
Without taking a position in the underlying claim, which I am not interested in debating either way, I think you are conflating the Hannibal directive [0] and its alleged invocation on October 7 with the practice of hasbara [1] here.