invalidname

The article is sensational and deeply misleading.

Yes, the plane has a lot of bugs. It's got complicated software and hardware. You can't compare it to the relatively simple older designs that didn't deal with stealth.

Yes they don't need to test dogfights because war isn't a video game. When the enemy sees the f35 it is after it already sent the missile in your direction. You don't need to dogfight if you're an invisible ghost that can kill from a distance.

The f16 had a ton of bugs such as flipping over when south of the equator. It's a much better machine now and the f35 has all the makings to be a similar leap forward.

In "Preferences/Account/Account Settings/Move to a different account" I can redirect to a new account in a different server. That means I can turn my current account to a ghost account and everything will move to that new account.

It isn't perfect but it lets you migrate while still keeping people engaged.

It is not but strings are cached (interned) in Java which is a different thing.

I'm not so concerned about that. Yes, a server might go down but so can a social network. You can easily redirect to a new account in a different server (there's a builtin feature) and it's easy to export/transfer your data. If you really have an issue here you can host your own server which isn't an option on other social networks.

To me the main hassle was small UX issues like following users from different servers, search etc. It just isn't as smooth.

My TL;DR is this: Microsoft did some hacks to get the fonts to look good on lower resolution machines e.g. relying on the way the pixel Red Green and Blue colors were positioned to improve font smoothness. This paid off in the short term.

Apple just did the "right thing" in calculating fonts accurately and increasing resolution consistently to get every pixel to the right place. They have one consistent engine that renders fonts the "right way" where Microsoft has a messy set of pipelines delivering inconsistent/outdated results.

It was Sun Microsystems. She worked there. Her regret is about her husband being a bit annoying about it.

This is for bootstrapping. After the code is generated you need to use it.

We used JHipster (mentioned in the post) a few years back. It let us get started with a lot of boilerplate and best practices. I don't know if it was the best approach but we had a fantastic demo in no time and the basics were pretty good.

We did fix a lot in the code after as the product kept growing.

I do a lot. E.g. I was sure Harris would win by a landslide. Shows my news source bias (here, Reddit etc.).

This is a post about determining a specific narrative while conveniently ignoring facts that don't fit said narrative. Confirmation bias is a problem for everyone, both of us are subject to it.

And to keep consistency with Wikipedia and the "one right opinion" people downvote this 100% correct comment. When asked later on why Harris lost they claim "the right is stupid"... Ignoring facts and opinions that conflict with your world-view is stupid.

People formed a narrative and are forcefully trying to make the bricks fit.

Exactly. I mostly sit. When I move the desk to a standing position it lets me walk around a bit while working. Press compile and then walk a bit back while thinking. It is a wonderful tool.

Static standing all day is horrible, that isn't news.

No bidi or Arabic script complexities? Calculating the line break in an RTL situation is just terrible...

I was recently using IntelliJ to write some HTML. I suddenly noticed a wayward & character. It was blue so I assumed that was syntax highlighted... I quickly changed that to a valid entity and committed without really reviewing the code (i know I'm an idiot).

Turns out that JetBrains format the entity as the resulting character... a feature that was meant to make code readable had confused me. I had similar issues with clion which presents weird notations on the code with no indication of their purpose. This is a double edged sword.

> I also have no idea how you'd get the Palestinians to have hope either. Even if Israel were willing to do a two state solution, they would undoubtedly ask for a very limited sovegerenty that would require the Palestinian state to be demilitarized, which would mean that Israel would have to control ports and border crossings to check for weapons, which means they could also do things like they have done in the past like prohibit the import of concrete.

I'm pretty sure a demilitarized state is the only option for everyone involved. I think that seeing the destruction in Gaza might be the incentive that lights a fire under both sides to compromise.

Israel will control border crossings regardless. The west bank can bring in products from Jordan but I'm guessing Israel would demand oversight. That would probably force Israel to tame its expectations. Also as time moves and the deal proves itself Israel could relax, I doubt Hamas will let it relax too much but I'm hopeful on that front.

I hope this can be done as part of a wide region Saudi deal. Biden has been pushing for that and it's the smart move. A Saudi peace agreement will change the region and validate Israels right to exist, it would put a huge damper on Hamas's ambitions.

> What the Palestinians see is the Israelis constantly expanding the settlements, and so they see that their only alternative to losing their land inch by inch is armed resistance, futile as that may be.

That conflates the two situations. Palestinians in Gaza don't have settlements. Palestinians in the west bank (who specifically aren't joining in the war), have settlements.

That's part of the insanity of the Israeli right wing... Hamas is evil so they get no settlements and what is effectively their own country. West bank is mostly moderate so they get settlements and restrictions. This is obviously over simplified but just bonkers.

The Palestinians in the west bank understand the violence when you're the weaker side eventually hurts them. That doesn't mean there are no attacks there (there are), but they are driven by Hamas offshoots and small forces. Palestinian resistance in the west bank is mostly political which makes a lot more sense and IMHO far more damaging to Israel in the long term. I hope Israelis will be able to climb out of their bubble and disassociate the two approaches.

Settlements in the west bank get constructed as response to violence from Hamas. That's an insane policy by an insane government. Things like that can be reverted though, most of these settlements are illegal by Israeli law.

> As an American, I don't really see how the U.S. is positively influencing the situation, or can positively influence it. If you look at what's happened in Gaza, yes, Israel is legitimately furious over Oct 7, but the response has killed something like 28,000 noncombatant Palestinians. For all of that, they've managed to get the release of, or rescue 60 or so hostages.

I see that and I mostly agree (although none of us know the exact number of noncombatant casualties but even one is tragic). That's why Biden's pressure for a hostage deal is so important. I wish pro-Palestinian protesters would march with both flags calling for a deal which is in everyone's interest at this point.

> As an American and as a Dad, I don't want to buy bombs so that Israel can kill Palestinian kids. The sense in the media is that Israel expects us to view Israeli lives as being worth 1000x as much as Palestinian lives, but as a gentile American, I view them as equally valuable.

Don't cast that as a racist war. Yes, Israel has racist just like any place. Also no one on the Israeli side is targeting kids. It's also not about balance (and the number isn't 1000x right now even based on larger estimates it's around 20-40x).

> If there were some credible plan that would lead to a resolution of the issue from the Israeli side, it would be a different matter, but all I can see is endless carnage, and I do not want to be a party to it.

That is understandable, neither do I. But picking up and going home can lead to far worse consequences as the USA saw in Afghanistan. That was tragic on a whole different level and is a continuing disaster to everyone who lives there. America broke the middle east on multiple occasions, right now the options are between bad and worse.

If the USA stops weapon shipments this will:

* Force Israel to use more less accurate armaments

* Let the right-wing claim that "Jews are abandoned again", "we can trust no one"... Then proceed to do whatever they want to do with no concequences

* If it runs out of weapons it might use nuclear weapons for deterrence

As a parent myself I always threaten my kids with punishment if they misbehave. The problem is that when you actually punish them (e.g. throwing away a toy or deleting a game), then you're fed. You no longer have the leverage of the threat and need to either move to more extreme threats or lose any control over them.

Biden is in that position. Obviously threatening Israel with war isn't on the table... But if he does anything, it can seriously backfire. Furthermore, the impact is *much* bigger. Israel is part of a proxy east/west war against Iran/Russia/China. If there's even a hint Israel isn't getting the full support of the USA it can have dire consequences to Ukraine/Taiwan.

Yes, bad people within the Israeli government are abusing that and the US elections to get away with terrible stuff. I very much liked the Biden set of sanctions against settlers. I think they can go further with action like that but it's a delicate needle to thread.

> Israel took U.S. money and tech to develop that F-16 level jet (the Lavi),

Its development was started based on prior Israeli Jets so the technology was Israeli. Funding was given to keep an eye on the project and control. Israel had far superior avionics which eventually went into US jets as a result.

> and then covertly sold the design to the Chinese.

It's unclear if it was sold or stolen. Regardless the technology is ancient by today's standards. This was 20 years after the project was disbanded and possibly had reduced classification by then.

> Meanwhile, when the U.S. wanted to send Israeli produced, U.S. owned SPIKE missiles to Ukraine, Israel blocked the transfer.

I agree that's pretty terrible. Israeli governments did a lot of shitty moves like that and still does. But it's not alone in that sense.

First, this is pretty standard stuff when selling weapons. You can't sell them to 3rd parties without permission. This is true for US weapons that are sent to Israel and any country selling weapons.

The main logic behind this is that Israel is concerned about escalating against Russia. There are many Jews in Russia which might be on the receiving end of retaliation and there is deep Russian presence in the middle east (notably Syria). I can understand that concern and we don't know all the facts since a lot of it has to do with information that isn't exposed to the public.

But I'm 100% with you that Israel should have been more helpful to Ukraine. It set up a field hospital and helped later on with some knowledge transfer but not much beyond that. At least not publicly.

Back to the main subject though. Israel is sharing a ton of information with the USA using spy networks. There's a lot of collaboration in preventing nuclear armament in Iran, Syria and Iraq.

Israel did a lot of the dirty work the USA just can't do. After Afghanistan and Iraq it is pretty clear that the USA is losing its deterrence and Israel can do the stuff the USA doesn't want to do officially. It can wag its finger publicly but approve of the result in some of these cases. E.g. the Hezbollah people that Israel killed in Lebanon had US bounties on their heads. Furthermore, the level of destruction is indeed horrible, but it's deterrence. The US can then enjoy both sides: It has the higher moral ground of avoiding the dirty work and chastising Israel. But it still gets the impact of "you mess with the west and we can get you anywhere".

> Yes but the settlement with Egypt where land was returned was 45 years ago. Israel is not the same country it was back then.

The settlement with Jordan was 30 years ago. The Oslo accord with the Palestinians is still in effect today.

Yes, I sadly agree Israel moved to the right. That is exactly what I would like to fix. The problem is that a lot of the well meaning people are doing more damage than good.

You can't stop a war by taking weapons, it will just make the war FAR more violent since you need to make every bomb count. I very much agree there should be pressure on Israel but it needs to be the right nuanced type of pressure.

> > Israel wants a Palestinian state and tries to achieve that. > > Based on Israel's actions, and the statements of Netanyahu and a couple of ministers, I don't believe this. I think that they've given up and intend to remove the Palestinians from the occupied territories.

Sadly that might make more sense in the past tense at the moment. Still, despite all the violence and terrible government there are still Israelis who have hope for a two state solution.

This is exactly my point. How do we change things back so Israelis will have hope again in a two state solution?

The first ingredient is time. Right now we've got a war going on. It's terrible for everyone and should end as soon as possible. If Hamas survives this war in any functional way then the Palestinians will be f*ed. It will do this all over again and things will end up worse. It's in its nature.

But if it's a shell of its former self then there is a chance. There's now a border wall which keeps Israel out as much as it keeps Palestinians in. There are offers such as the Saudi deal which can pave a way for a long term deal. Netanyahu is old by now and since he eliminated any competitor on the right, there is no heir apparent.

> the demographics of Israel have changed and continue to change in a direction towards more right-wing nationalism.

Sadly this is very true. Even worse... Due to the success of the Oslo accord young Israelis don't meet Palestinians and vice versa. It creates a detachment between the people and lets both sides develop antagonism.

Unfortunately when speaking to foreigners the opinions are either you're evil or you're 100% right. Both are the wrong answer. E.g. a friend of mine was living in Ashdod which gets lots of Hamas rockets. About a decade ago we had lunch and he was furious. He told me about the panic in his kids eyes, the started bed-wetting from the fear. They lived like that for a decade with no end in sight.

He said something along the lines of "I don't care what they bomb in Gaza, they're coming after my kids". My answer was roughly "you're right, but that would only make a father in Gaza feel the same way". That worked well.

Looking at things like US funding contributing to the war is problematic. Israelis blame the US for this whole mess. It left Gaza because of US pressure. It didn't go back in because of US pressure. Cutting funding or weapons would be the ultimate betrayal and authorization to do "anything". I think it will make everything worse.

I'd like to know that rather than ignore their existence. I worked with companies that swear by Azul for huge workloads, I'm curious if that expense is still justified.

It's 3 years old in a field that sees a lot of work. It also only focuses on free/OSS GCs. E.g. there's some pretty innovative stuff from Azul.

It's tempting to look at GC benchmarks and pick. But the only solution is to benchmark production with observability tools. Fine tuning GC parameters can completely change the performance picture. Also, priorities can be completely different once in production. E.g. performance or even memory overhead might not be as important as pause times.

> The idea that sending weapons to Israel is some sort of economic or military advantage to the U.S. is sophistry. We could simply take those same weapons and add them to our own inventory and use them in ways that actually benefit the U.S.

A huge number of US politicians disagree. It's fashionable to claim that they are all stupid but the fact is that this just isn't true. Looking at Israels success in missile defense and similar technologies it shows where the R&D collaboration with the US has made both more successful.

If the US won't send weapons Israel would just make its own and in the past made fantastic weapons. Including great fighter jets that were approaching F16 level in the 80s.

> One is as a carrot to continue the peace process.

That is true too.

> The second reason is that a lot of people that support Israel live in the U.S. and they vote.

That is also true. Today that's mostly the evangelicals though.

> If Israel no longer desires peace, the first reason doesn't exist.

This isn't true. First it assumes Israel doesn't want peace which is detached from reality. Peace exists with Egypt, Jordan etc. Israel returned territory it captured at war and signed a peace deal. All sides abide and this works well.

It can very well be argued that the current war is because of peace pressure against Israel. Israel left Gaza under US pressure to do so with no deal. Despite repeated attacks from Hamas it didn't go back in and maintained status quo. US pressure worked but created a powder-keg in Gaza that blew up eventually.

US pressure using the weapons as incentive worked very well, but you can't just wish peace to happen and force it on some people.

> Yes, Netanyahu stopped the settlements in Gaza, but again, sophistry.

Netanyahu has one ideal: Netanyahu. He has no morals, no backbone and no principals.

> While the settlements in Gaza were dismantled, the settlements in the West Bank were being expanded, as they continue to be.

As you can see from my other answers here I 100% agree that this is indeed a huge problem. The right-wing used the violence of Hamas as a means to attack the Palestinian authority for the past 3 decades. To be fair the Palestinian authority isn't great (e.g. lynching Israelis by tearing them limb from limb) but I agree that this is awful. The only way to solve this is to remove the two zero-sum entities: Hamas and the current government of Israel. The latter might not be removed in the next election, but the pendulum will eventually swing back...

Without Hamas things would hopefully calm down for a while.

> It very much is a "both sides" scenario.

No. The fact that there are bad people on both sides is true. But that simplifies the situation. Israel wants a Palestinian state and tries to achieve that. Yes, it has some lunatics but unlike Hamas even in the current government they can't do anything.

Hamas just wants to kill all Israelis. No law other than Sharia law. No civilian differentiation.

But the real horrible thing about Hamas is that they don't care how many Palestinians die as part of their Jihad. They consider the death of their own children as a bonus, they would go to heaven as they die heroes. Israel has never been like that. If Hamas had the firepower of Israel there would be no Israeli left. The reverse isn't true despite everything.

> If Israel wants to turn Gaza into rubble, leave millions of people homeless, and year after year take more land in the West Bank, I suppose we can't practically stop this, but personally I don't want want any part of it.

The thing is that Israel can do it and doesn't.

Furthermore, once the war is over it will help rebuild Gaza as it did in the past. The war isn't against the people of Gaza, it's against Hamas whose an enemy of the people of Gaza. It's a terrible organization that murders gays, believes domestic violence isn't a crime and brainwashes children to commit suicide bombings.

Yes, the war is terrible and violent. But what's the alternative?

Leaving the hostages to die?

Letting Hamas regain power and do another round of the same thing?

Violence is terrible. Always. But sometimes the avoidance of violence doesn't work. It just shoves it into a pressure cooker; it will be worse later on. We saw that with the 2005 deal. Israel left Gaza and tried to mostly ignore Hamas, that didn't work out well for anyone.

> I think the end of WW2 was when people REALLY tried to catch a breather and try to build a newer, better world.

I think discussing history is irrelevant. None of us were around back then so blaming some ancestor for something is just stupid posturing that doesn't solve anything.

The bottom line is that there are millions of people on both sides who were born in the region. They have nowhere to go and the idea that some would "just leave" is just stupid. There's only one solution and it's a two state solution, blaming history is redundant since both sides did some bad things.

We can review history to see what we can learn from it. Here the pattern is clear: Jews unified and strengthened their moderate base. Palestinians fragmented and moved towards violent approaches which didn't work well for them. With the exception of Oslo, but even there their leadership failed to compromise.

> When you refer to Jews "coming into the area", do you mean the post-WW2 immigration, or some other timespan?

19th century when the initial Jewish militias were formed.

> > Palestinians didn't have that capability of unity. They have very little in common other than hate towards Israel. > > Where does that hate come from, though? It didn't coalesce in a vacuum.

I'm not saying that Israel doesn't deserve some hate. But it's much easier to blame others for your problems instead of blaming yourself. Jordan and Egypt did pretty evil things to the Palestinians and didn't give them a country when they controlled these regions. Yet you don't see the same level of hate.

> I'll be perfectly honest, it's really hard not to interpret that as anything other than "Holocaust denial" level delusion

That is nonsense. You claimed "Palestinians were already fleeing from murder, and they couldn't return to homes which had been demolished by the Zionist militias".

Were there homes destroyed during the war?

Sure. Was it by Israelis? Possibly.

Was it with the purpose to prevent people from coming back? Maybe.

But you're presenting this as if all the Palestinian refugees or a significant amount of them escaped because of such actions. That is not something anyone can claim. The common narrative on the Israeli side is that the armies of surrounding countries orchestrated a strategic retreat. No one knows because there was no actual army in 1948. It was being formed from a militia and there was no organized standard/hierarchy. Also that particular war was remarkably deadly/violent for both sides. Record keeping wasn't exactly something you can count on.

Regardless, this is irrelevant. The fact that Palestinians keep going back to 1948 is part of the toxicity that prevents them from compromising on proposals for a Palestinian state.

> Some of them tried to return (refugees from Huj, in one example from mid-late 1948), and were refused, after internal debates by the Israelis over whether it would "set a precedent".

Could Jews who had to flee Arab countries and territories within that region return? Could they get their assets back?

This is not something new see: https://www.news18.com/opinion/opinion-why-muslim-world-shou...

"Ukraine was given territory from Poland, and the Polish minorities were expelled from Ukraine. In turn, Ukrainian minorities were expelled from Poland. While the Polish had to leave Lithuania and Belarus, the Lithuanians and Belorussians had to leave Poland. Also, Poland was given land from Germany, and the Germans were expelled from Poland. Many Hungarians had to leave from the Transylvania region of Romania. The Italians were expelled from what is Croatia today. In May 1945, the President of Czechoslovakia called on his people to “eliminate the German problem.” Nearly 2 million Germans were expelled from the country, and thousands of Germans died in the process."

Wars reshape regions and demographics. Especially in the 40's. Jews were victims of that through history too. I'm not excusing it, but it's not something special or unique in any way.

> > But Israel didn't choose that war, it was forced on them. > > Actions have consequences. As an aside, I constantly see this use of the passive voice in discussing this conflict. Israel never does anything, it just has stuff happen to it. Once you notice it, it's a really obvious form of shaping the information environment to condition people to think that nothing could ever possibly be Israel's fault, that no one making decisions in Israel has ever done so with malicious intent. Things just....happen.

Instead of proving that something is wrong you try to twist it. When the facts don't work in the favor of your argument then obviously the argument is redundant.

The fact is that Israel did seek peace and made a great deal of effort in that direction. But the standard Israel is held to is a standard that no country on earth would be able to hold to.

> I watched a man hooked up to an IV bag in a field hospital BURN ALIVE after an Israeli airstrike. The perpetual victim complex just doesn't resonate with people anymore.

You mean the hospital to which civilian hostages were taken and murdered there? Where Hamas literally had a base of operations?

I agree, it's awful. But what is the option here?

From now on firing rockets is OK as long as you do it on top of orphanages?

By accepting that narrative you're encouraging Hamas. Every time people talk about children dying in Gaza it creates a terrible incentive for Hamas. They use children as couriers because they know the IDF doesn't want to shoot them, but if they die they also win: https://www.timesofisrael.com/encouraging-our-children-to-ki...

> Yeah, because Turkish airstrikes haven't killed FORTY THOUSAND PEOPLE in less than a year. What a ridiculous deflection.

40,000+ most of which were Hamas terrorists. This was a response to an attack that killed 5 people. This is besides all the stuff that Erdogan is doing in Syria etc.

> At any rate, I hope this discussion has provided enough material for other HNers to educate themselves. The available Israeli sources are detailed and surprisingly candid.

The fact that you're surprised that Israel is honest indicates a lot about your core bias. Israel is a liberal democracy and tries to do better all the time. Its history isn't perfect, whose is?

Try criticizing Hamas in Gaza. You might get buried alive by your brother using a spoon...

> Okay. Wow. I hadn't realised you were on board with Hamas killing more Jews.

That's a ridiculous strawman argument. Do I seriously need to explain how wars work?

It's fair to be a pacifist, but it's unrealistic and deadly. PLO killed many Israelis, children etc. But their goal was statehood so they stopped and moved forward. Hamas's goal is ending Israel. Wars work towards goals.

> Currently there's a lot of legit credentialed journalists being killed with evidence that some are being specificly targetted.

That is terrible. But you know what's also terrible? Hamas literally kept hostages in the house of a Journalist. Many so called Journalist were part of the October 7th attack. They used UNWRA as a puppet as part of their attacks and money laundering.

They used ambulances, hospitals etc. as cover. There's some point where using an ID as a get out of jail free card is a problem.

> That's a straight up war crime .. although as unlikely to be prosecuted, just as Kissinger skated.

That is a huge problem. Unfortunately the UN has zero credibility at this point. It came up with more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined. More than Russia, Sudan, China, Iran etc.

That's a problem because I would like to know if Israel is committing actual war crimes and I would like an objective body to be in control of that. The UN is not objective by any stretch of the imagination.

Luckily the US has Leahy. If there is actual evidence of a war crime being committed then a lawsuit against Israel in the USA can stop financial support for Israel. Even if the lawsuit is thrown out the facts would still be out. Yet such a lawsuit isn't prosecuted.

> > Guess what enables them... > > Is the answer Netanyahu and his scaly mates? They do seem to offer a lot of incentives.

How did Netanyahu get into power and keep it for so long?

During the 90's Israel tried to go through with the Oslo accords. Hamas blew up busses filled with civilians in the middle of Tel Aviv. Many busses. They shot up coffee shops and did everything they could to stop the peace process.

Netanyahu used that and built his power base around it. He went to every such attack site and gained traction. Without Hamas he would have been an anonymous secondary "also ran" politician. Hamas made him. This symbiotic relationship continues to this day to such an extent that the right-wing extremists defined Hamas as an asset. Following October 7th they expanded settlements in the West Bank as "retaliation" which is stupid and evil. But again, zero-sum entities act like that.

The difference here is that Israel is the stronger side. When Palestinians pick a zero-sum approach to solving a conflict it is a suicidal death cult.

> > What do you expect Israel to do? > > Act in accordance with the people that have acquired power ..

That isn't an answer. Israel tried to do that. It tried to offer statehood. It tried "just leaving". You can argue that this wasn't "genuine" or wasn't enough... But baby steps are required in this case and Hamas proved the problematic nature of this approach.

> years of pushing limits have rebounded much as many predicted and now those that sought permission to go all out have that in spades.

This shows deep misunderstanding of the situation. Hamas is a zero-sum player, it wants an all out war because it wants everything from the river to the sea. It objects to the very notion of peace with Israel.

See https://twitter.com/ABZayed/status/1784565074964664531

> It'd be nice albeit a little fanciful, if the people of Israel could put better people in power .. but that's a whole other slice of alternative history.

Israel did put better people in power. Notice how the whole world including Europe and the states are seeing a surge in the right-wing?

Why is that? Because unfortunately the extreme left has become delusional in its extreme stances.

There's a huge difference between wanting peace and refusing to fight a war. You're completely dismissing Israeli attempts at peace and mis-labeling Hamas attacks as territorial when they are religious, fanatic and proxy driven.

In the US the majority of people want to deport all immigrants. These are people who contribute to the economy and do nothing wrong. Is it a surprise that Israelis moved to the right as a result of Hamas attacks?

Is it a surprise that these right-wing politicians use that to further their agenda in the west-bank?

I think Israel is naturally liberal and will move back to the left when it is no longer under threat. The problem is that as long as Hamas is a threat this just can't happen. One of the reasons the settlements are expanding is to block such motion to the left, this is where US pressure could help but it's a delicate needle to thread. If the UN had any credibility it could help, unfortunately it doesn't when it comes to Israel.

> We can also contract Jews to IDF and perhaps discuss how they kill 10x more than Hamas by most accounts.

Why is killing more of the enemy a "bad thing"?

> The killing is the extreme behaviour.

Yes. However, you fail to offer an alternative. Israel left Gaza, Israel made attempts to form a Palestinian state. Palestinians had the opportunity to end the cycle and Israel made that step...

Last time Israel left Gaza Hamas took over. It killed MANY Palestinians then started preparing for war, building rockets, tunnels etc. Israel didn't return to Gaza and tried to limit retaliation. That clearly didn't work.

> The insidious cause is the constant slow creeping pushing out of the other, the dispossesions and land captures that continue unabated.

This I actually agree with. I think the settlements in the west bank, especially the deep ones are a huge mistake. Guess what enables them...

> Some see it. Other refuse to acknowledge it.

Goes both ways sir. What do you expect Israel to do?

I wish the current conflict wasn't as violent. I wish more planning was given for "the next day". I wish Israel worked with the Palestinian authority and used this as an opportunity for that. I wish it would clear the deep settlements in the west bank instead of expanding them.

Unfortunately, Israel has a terrible government and Hamas/Iran knew that when they initiated Oct 7th. I hope that after this is all over Israel would elect a more reasonable government. It would probably still be very right-wing since violence tends to push people in that direction, but hopefully it would be reasonable. A right-wing government cleared settlements in Gaza, made peace with Egypt etc. So everything is possible.

> So you're using Amin al-Husseini as a stand-in for all Palestinians

Nope, not what I'm saying. I'm saying you can pick any historical point in time and show why things happened in a particular way. Palestinians bemoan that Israel exists and that Jews were "given" statehood (I quote given because there was a war and it was paid for with blood). But if you look at the history it's pretty clear why the UN felt Jews deserved a home in Israel. They were on the right side of history in this particular conflict and fought besides the allies.

This is a repeating pattern for Palestinian leadership. Unwillingness to compromise and victim-hood, that doesn't work well for them. I'm not saying they're not victims or even not saying that Israel isn't to blame for a lot of their problems. I am saying that their leadership bares a LOT of that responsibility too, the choices they made brought them to this point and they continue to make similar choices which make matters worse.

Right now it's obviously too late since the last big choice they had was in 2008 when they rejected a statehood deal. Hamas had a choice during that time of recognizing Israel and negotiating, but it's Hamas so it obviously wasn't much of a choice.

I hope there will be another such fork in the road, I doubt they will get anything remotely as good as the 2008 offer. Knowing history I doubt Palestinian leadership will take it and again they will blame Israel.

Sure. Lehi and Shamir are indeed awful and that's why the Hunting Season was justified. There was no similar ability to unify against the extremist voices in the Palestinian side which is the main point I'm making here.

This isn't history. You see the same patterns happening right now. Arafat and Abu Mazen were unable to control Hamas in the same way the Jews were able to control their extremists.

You could argue that the Irish were unable to control the IRA which would be a very accurate comparison. But the scale would be different. Hamas killed in one day more than the IRA killed in its entire existence. Hamas enjoys the backing of Iran, Qatar, Turkey and others. It's used as a puppet to force a regional war that goes against the interests of the Palestinian people. At least the ones who don't want to die in a holy war.

> If Israelis want something different they just have to vote differently in the next election.

So 54% of Americans (which includes a lot of Democrats) support deporting millions of Mexicans. These are law abiding non-citizens who are contributing to the economy, yet most Americans want them gone.

Is it surprising that a Trump like demagogue is successful when the people in question actually do commit mass murder and want to destroy the country?

The reaction to violence is never, OK I was wrong... Let's settle. It's always violence in response and the weaker side always suffers.

> The U.S. cannot just pretend Rabin is still in power and send money and weapons with the idea that Israel desires peace at the end of the day, because that faction is (as you say, for many reasons) no longer a majority in Israel.

The first part is 100% true. Things changed. The problem is that your base assumption is completely wrong. You need to understand why the US sends weapons to Israel and that has a complex and long history. First, it sends weapons because it gives jobs to Americans. Israel demonstrates the quality of the weapons and improves them.

Back in the day, Israel was completely embargoed. In the 60s it would buy French weapons and collect money to afford that. It developed its own industry but on the eve of war the French cut off Israel. Despite that Israel won, big time. It then started making the best weapons on earth. Guns like Uzi became the hot tool for everyone. Even its planes started selling everywhere and were pretty good. The US started selling weapons to Israel both to eliminate the competition and to improve its own. When Israel got its early shipments of US made planes it would rip out all the avionics and push in its own. US made avionics and weapons systems at the time were crap. They no longer are, guess who made that happen?

But Israel is also a powerful ally. E.g. Sadam Husain would have a Nuclear weapon were it not for Israel. So would Assad. Israel killed quite a few terrorists on the US most wanted lists and provided a lot of support in the middle east on things where the US would rather stay neutral. It enabled keeping countries like Egypt and Jordan on the western side of the fence and serves as a balancing tool/lightning rod in the region. That has value.

The more interesting thing is what would happen if the US would stop weapon shipments. This would be very bad for everyone. Most Israelis would see it as proof that they are alone again. This would mean Israel would need to show deterrence. It still has a massive security industry and still makes some of the best weapons around, it still has stocks of weapons but would now need to make them all count. It would mean a massive aggressive attack.

Why?

Without US support Israel would be concerned that this would serve as a signal for Iran or even Jordan that Israel is now "fair game". That can quickly deteriorate to nuclear war to keep deterrence clear.

Finally, look at countries like Turkey which just bombed many civilian Kurds. They are a member of Nato and no one is even talking about it... Obviously no one cares just like no one cares about Sudan, China etc. None of those causes have TikToks or advocates since they have no sponsors.

Both Turkey and Israel have similar problems. Authoritarian leaning leaders who are slowly dismantling democracy. The solution in both cases is difficult, most aggressive action can accelerate this process and make things worse for everyone. There aren't any good answers here.

> As for Hamas, yes they were elected, and that does have significance, but also that was 18 years ago, and most of what would be the current electorate wasn’t even old enough to vote back then.

As I said, I think it's a silly argument but don't expect a different result prior to the war. Hamas controlled UNRWA completely and was teaching pretty horrific stuff. If anything I'm afraid the situation is worse.

See Egypt, given democracy they instantly picked the Muslim Brotherhood which is a fanatic organization. The education in these countries is mostly comprised around religion and a pretty extreme perception of said religion.

> Ultimately as it stands though I believe both sides of the conflict wish to conquer the other, and the U.S. should just decline to support either side.

It isn't a "both sides" scenario.

Israel has a law that disallows settlements in Gaza, signed by Netanyahu. The IDF specifically stopped settlement attempts there. Yes, there are extremists in the government who want to revert that law. But they don't have the votes for that. Biden has drawn a red line related to that and to violations of Leahy. There is a status quo, it might seem more extreme than in the past and Bibi is indeed stretching the boundaries but there is a line.

No or not exactly. What's missing is the nuance and in this case it's everything. Netanyahu voted 4 times for the law that bans Jewish settlements in Gaza. This law is still in effect.

Yes, he has coalition members that want to repeal that law and are actively trying to resettle Gaza, but the IDF stops them because it's against the law. Yes, they want to repeal that law but even within their extreme coalition that would be tough.

Saying Israelis should elect someone different is even worse than saying Americans shouldn't elect Trump. This lacks nuance and understanding in how elections and parliamentary systems work. This is also the exact argument Israelis make about Hamas: the people of Gaza voted for them. Both are bad arguments.

Netanyahu got roughly 30% of the vote in Israel. He built a coalition based on many conflicting parties. On the one hand he has the fascist extremists. They got a large number of the votes thanks to unification within their ranks. Then he has the Hasidic Jews, they don't care about anything as long as they get paid. This coalition brings him to roughly 50% of the voting populace, he won in a landslide by a 3000 vote difference in the last election. The reason is mostly due to the collapse of the left due to electoral complexities in the way votes are tallied.

Netanyahu himself lacks ideals and is practically made of Teflon. He switched ideological sides multiple times, charged with crimes etc. Prosecution of his crimes just solidifies his base which chucks all of that to "leftist persecution". It's remarkably hard to break that cognitive bias. Guess what helps that cognitive bias?

A sense of persecution. "Everyone is against us" is his greatest slogan. The "pro-Palestinian" rallies were the biggest gift Netanyahu could receive and have bolstered his grasp over Israel. He's pointing at them as "we can't trust western countries", he isn't wrong. Every time Biden tried to pressure Israel politically or by leveraging weapon shipments this actually boosted support for Netanyahu. It's stupid, but it's a fact.

Biden understands that which is why he showed strong support to the Israeli people. Unfortunately, the leader at that time was Bibi and it's really hard to show support for Israel while attacking its elected leader directly. It is a very tight rope and I don't think Biden could have done much better. Especially given the recent claims that Trump has been calling Bibi and encouraging him to avoid a deal.

I wish people abroad would understand this nuance, but it doesn't play well on TikTok. It also doesn't have a nice slogan or rally. We need people to support both Israel and the Palestinian people while demanding their respective far-right factions get out of power.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_river_to_the_sea

من المية للمية / فلسطين عربية, "from the water to the water / Palestine is Arab"

Notice that this is nitpicking since the intention is clear to Israelis/Palestinians even in the moderate version of the slogan.

This hurts Palestinians because it discourages their leaders from compromises that might have ended this conflict (see the 2000 and 2008 statehood rejections). It also strengthens the sense within Israelis that there's no partner for peace on the other side.

It's like using the N-word. Once you said that you have that label and feeling, nothing you say will matter to any side.

> However, he "official" versions (for example from the PLO)

The PLO recognizes that Israel has a right to exist and has abandoned official "armed resistance" approaches. They understand that this never worked and ultimately only hurt the Palestinian people.

I'm explicitly talking about Hamas and making a clear distinction between them and the Palestinian people at large.

> use the phrase to call for a single democratic state for Arabs and Jews

That was suggested in the past and has gone back in vogue for some extreme liberals but it's probably not what any side wants. I don't think it's something that's workable. See Lebanon as a case in point where three different conflicting cultures are constantly violently clashing.

> This is of course also in line (albeit in somewhat simplified form) with the version one sees almost uniformly on the streets these days, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", and if you ask people what they mean by that, most of them will tell you something equivalent to the PLO version.

Well... What *some* people mean doesn't really mean anything. There was a Nordic Journalist who recorded pro-Palestinian demonstrations and the Arabic slogans people yelled were VERY different.

But even without that. Hamas is looking at these protests and seeing them as Israel losing support. So they keep fighting, keep holding hostages and keep sending children as carriers. Netanyahu points at these demonstrations as how the world is turning anti-semetic so Israelis MUST fight for their home. And yes, Israelis 100% hear "Palestine will be free of Jews". Trump is pointing at them as a failure of the liberals...

These protests are only helping bad people and increasing strife. If they were indeed pro-Palestinian they would carry both flags in support of a two state solution. They would also support the cause of returning the hostages. They are now for peace, they are anti-Israel protests.

> Meanwhile since 1977 Likud has used essentially the same slogan, but in reverse, minus any aspirations of democratic equality, and with racial supremacy baked in: "Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."

That was not an official slogan but yes people on the more extreme right did sing it. People still do and also say worse things. There are several big problems with whataboutism... Palestinians are the weaker part of this situation, violence will always end up worse for them. That's why the PLO abandoned that approach (at least officially excluding lynch mobs), it doesn't help Palestinians to keep that rhetoric.

Also the Likud was the party that voted to leave Gaza. That included Netanyhau who signed that law. A PM who originated from the Likud offered a Palestinian state in 2008.

There were two separate offers made by Barak to Arafat in 2000 and by Olmert to Abu Mazen in 2008.

A solid majority is for peace and has been for a while. Oct 7th might have screwed the numbers, but they will bounce back. The Oslo accords wouldn't have happened with out a solid majority. Netanyahu himself had to make a speech where he specifically supported the idea of a Palestinian state in order to get elected (see the Bar Ilan Speech).

There are many peace activists on both sides but also a lot of fatigue and disillusionment. Don't let that get you down too. I think once the dust settles things could change. The pendulum always swings to the other side, we just need patience and to set an environment receptive for that. If Trump wins this election things will probably get much worse before they get better. But I think that they will get better even in that worst case scenario.

I used to be of that mindset and no longer am. Hamas killed more people in a single day than the IRA killed in its entire existence. The Irish conflict which is more similar to the conflict Israel has in the west bank, is mostly a territorial conflict.

If it were true that violence breeds violence then Jews would have blown up post war Germany with suicide vests. It was still filled with Nazis and their collaborators.

Hamas is a different story, there's no amount of negotiations or compromise that will placate a fanatic. They will probably keep doing these things forever just like Isis didn't fully go away. But once the leadership got cut down Isis found it much harder to pull off the same level of terror.

I agree that this needs to be a dual motion. Young frustrated people are kindle for these organizations and this won't work without a peace process that would give hope to the people. That's why I don't have any faith in the current Israeli government. I hope it can be replaced so there would be a parallel process that would help rebuild and pave a way for peace again.

This is often repeated but is historically VERY incorrect. Yes, Israel does lobbying in the states and does influence (like every other country). The current Israeli government is indeed terrible and blatant at that.

However, Israel left Gaza in 2005 with no deal as part of US pressure (which led to the current situation). Israel offered a Palestinians a country which included east Jerusalem twice based on US pressure. Israel left Lebanon alone due to such pressure.

Israel didn't attack Lebanon for a year and tried to settle due to US pressure despite an average of 25 rockets per day towards civilian population.

Imagine a country being attacked and fired on for nearly 20 years (by Hamas) and keeping reposes "moderate". That's US pressure and influence right there. Israel delayed going into Rafah due to US pressure, it turns out Sinwar and quite a few hostages were there...

The reason it seems that US pressure isn't working is mostly because no one knows what to do exactly. Hostages are still held by Hamas. Hezbollah is still firing rockets/drones even now. I'm 100% for a hostage exchange but right now there's no deal, part of that is because of Netanyahu (who is terrible) but not all of it. The US can't fire Netanyahu (I wish they could...), and that's a problem. They want to strengthen anti-Netanyahu forces within Israel while still moderating its actions, that's a very tight rope to walk on.