It's not an opt-out in the literal sense. Everyone is conscripted, and then based on ability people are placed into different units. If you were talented, wouldn't you try to avoid getting put on patrol in Gaza or the West Bank?
Pretty sure military aged males aren't allowed to just leave Russia at this point without prior approval. And sometimes are forcibly conscripted on the street
The notion that everyone conscripted into a war is guilty by default is absurd, but always inevitably comes out to play during the height of moral outrage.
So Russians who are dragooned into a war to destroy another country are victims of poverty, but Israelis who are conscripted and fighting a defensive war are not given the same benefit of the doubt... because they have businesses and families they have to leave for months at a time to defend their own existence?
Leaving aside your warped sence of pity, which one's a society you'd rather live in?
I don’t think your comparison works because Israel does not have a comparable anti-war movement that the US had during the Vietnam War. In fact, if the media is to be believed, there has been enthusiasm on the part of Israelis to take part in the fighting.
Wouldn’t that only make vietnam vets more blameworthy? There was a whole movement against it and they still chose to not give up their home/family and choose exile even when it was less stigmatized to do so.
Your comparison doesn't work because Vietnam War didn't start with Vietnam attacking USA, holding many hostages, the group leading the charge having religious ideology viewing Americans as second class citizens as well as people to ethnically cleanse, all while bordering USA.
Maybe we should be thinking differently about those too then. Or maybe the environment is different where one generation should “know better”, having lived through another 50 years of human development and ubiquitous access to information.
10s of thousands of scum flew from all around the world from their comfy lives to Israel to enjoy participating in an attempt at total destruction of a nation composed in half from children, by starving them, bombing them, shooting them, and burying them alive.
These were not conscripted in any way whatsoever. These 10s of thousands deserve full blame, and fuck them all.
Humans build identities around their homes. It’s why any plan that involves relocation implicitly or explicitly requires violence.
It’s absurd to suggest Israelis should effectively “self deport” from their homes. It’s unrealistic to the point that it’s effectively dismissing the problem instead of honestly engaging it.
Sure. Not great. But also not relevant to charging individuals.
If we’re to learn from Sykes and Picot, a good place to start would be in acknowledging the primacy of the living over the dead, and those on the ground over ideals from abroad. One conclusion from that is we shouldn’t be condemning men we’ve never met for actions they are only affiliated with.
You can think killing someone is justified without thinking they are morally culpable. There’s a reason the laws of war don’t endorse summary execution of surrendering combatants, beyond the practical benefits of encouraging more humane conduct towards your own troops.
right guys, it’s only like 80% of that population that has the ideology we don’t like
and in the other 20%, many of them don’t get conscripted due to a religious exemption that includes being in a totally different ideology that has always disagreed with the other
odds not looking good, speaking as a betting man, not one with any actual opinion just need my prediction market bet to hit
What is the ideology we don’t like? I think it is easy to throw stones when the reality is that if your nation suffered a similar attack, many many people would get swept up in anger and outrage and retaliatory madness.
What Israel is doing is wrong, but I don’t think it would be unique among
developed states experiencing something similar.
Zionism is the belief that there should be a Jewish ethnostate, it should be called Israel, and it should go in the geographic location where Israel now is.
That definition would exclude half of the early Zionist conference attendees, who would have accepted any region where refugees could gather, and seriously considered multiple locations.
The formation of Israel was a shitshow. The region has always been a shitshow, it’s the coast closest to the cradle of civilization. But it’s unfair to refer to the Nakba as peaceful. (Though it’s no less peaceful than the nutters calling for the destruction of Israel in response.)
I don't believe I referred to the Nakba or anything else as "peaceful" - of course the Zionists engaged in (non-peaceful) violence, before and during and after the war. But the point is that, contra the claims that ethnic cleansing is "at the core" of Zionism, violence wasn't the Zionist starting point and unlike the Palestinians they were content with a peaceful solution; neither of those things would've been the case if violence was fundamental to their project.
No, I'm not. Really frustrating to have to explain this repeatedly.
While ethnic cleansing undoubtedly occurred, it wasn't the original intent "at the core" of the Zionist project. Rather, the intent at the core of the project was - precisely as always stated - desire for Jewish self-determination, and (once again) they initially set out to attain that through peaceful and legal means and were happy to accept an internationally supported solution that did not involve ethnic cleansing.
I'm really not sure how to make this clearer: there was an entirely workable plan that would have gotten the Zionists what they wanted without ethnic cleansing, they accepted it, no further violence needed to occur. The proof is in the pudding: if ethnic cleansing was core to the project, such a plan could not have existed and/or the Zionists would not have accepted it.
Instead, the Arabs refused this, had zero interest in trying to negotiate any kind of peaceful solution, began to ethnically cleanse Jews throughout the Arab world [0], and launched an international war effort to subjugate or oust the Jews from the region.
The Israeli defense and retaliation ultimately included ethnic cleansing of its own. That's undeniable. But even here it wasn't core to the project; it wasn't a war goal at the beginning. Per Wikipedia [1]:
Initially, the aim was "simple and modest": to survive the assaults of
the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states. "The Zionist leaders deeply,
genuinely, feared a Middle Eastern reenactment of the Holocaust, which
had just ended; the Arabs' public rhetoric reinforced these fears". As
the war progressed, the aim of expanding the Jewish state beyond the UN
partition borders appeared: first to incorporate clusters of isolated
Jewish settlements and later to add more territories to the state and
give it defensible borders. A third and further aim that emerged among
the political and military leaders after four or five months was to
"reduce the size of Israel's prospective large and hostile Arab
minority, seen as a potential powerful fifth column, by belligerency
and expulsion".
It's tragic that they arrived at that "third and further aim"; I'm looking back on this with 80 years of both distance and hindsight, but I can at least conceive of a world in which they didn't.
I don't mean to whitewash what the Israelis did in the war - any more than Palestinian supporters want to whitewash what the Arabs did and intended to do, I suppose. But I was replying to someone asserting that the State of Israel simply could not exist without ethnic cleansing, that to be a Zionist fundamentally means to support ethnic cleansing. This is what I'm disputing.
> Zionists purchased land in the region and immigrated legally
Colonial Britain famously sold a lot of land they didn't control, occupy or reasonably administrate. The Raj comes to mind.
The Balfour Declaration, in context, was like buying a car title from the impound lot. The slip of paper might say you own it, but nobody ever notarized it at the DMV. And now the person who put 50,000 miles on the odometer is going to see you in court for the rest of their life.
> thus ethnic cleansing is at the very core of Zionism
Ethnic cleansing is absolutely not at the core of the existence of a Jewish state. This rhetoric is particularly unhelpful since it seems to suggest that Palestine needs to be ethnically cleansed if Israel is to exist, which is absurd.
> Ethnic cleansing is at the core of every ethnostate
What makes Israel an ethnostate? (Versus a nation state.)
Demographically, and structurally, Israel doesn’t look dissimilar from e.g. China, India, Russia or most European countries. None of them require ethnic cleansing.
> You can't have, say, a racially German state
Race is a social construct. What constitutes a “true” German has been debated annd fought over among the tribes since before Cæsar.
And I’m not even sure how one would go about defining an Israeli “race” without being incoherent. (Which is fine. Plenty of races are defined in a way that is internally inconsistent. But none of that requires ethnic cleansing as a consequence. Just periodically redefining racial boundaries to broaden what being X means, the way American whiteness has evolved over the centuries.)
You just called it a Jewish state and now you're pretending that a Jewish state isn't an ethnostate by definition. A purposefully created white state is an ethnostate; a purposefully created German state is an ethnostate; a purposefully created Jewish state is an ethnostate. Ethnostates are very very bad. And it doesn't matter who's a "true" member of the group; it matters only that there is a group. There could be an ethnostate for people with brown hair and that would be bad regardless of whether or not people with black hair were counted as brown-haired.
> you're pretending that a Jewish state isn't an ethnostate by definition
It isn't. Certainly not in a way that requires ethnic cleansing.
What definition are you using? Are all Arab states ethnostates? What about monoethnic countries [1]?
> Ethnostates are very very bad
Because they arise from ethnic cleansing. Nobody has a problem with Egypt or Finland being monoethnic, and I think it would be incorrect to call them ethnostates.
If Egypt and Finland (and Iceland and Palestine) are ethnostates, then we've broadened the definition to where they seem to be fine.
> it doesn't matter who's a "true" member of the group; it matters only that there is a group
Of course it does. If you can expand the group, you don't have a problem. The very act of nationhood is an exercise in defining groups of people.
One can have a liberal, democratic, Jewish state that isn't an ethnostate. Nothing about Israel's existence requires ethnic cleansing. That's just a weird own goal that argues for it.
> suggest you look up the definition of an ethnostate before trying to argue about it
I’m literally asking for the definition you’re using. Because none of the ones I’m seeing match what you’re saying. And the way you seem to be defining it turns “ethnic cleansing is at the core of every ethnostate” into tautology.
Every single russian at the front has signed a contract. Some might be force and most of them are dumb, but they are still volunteers and they could all have said no.
"People in EU" are Hungary and Slovakia for pipeline gas and crude oil. Belgium, France and Netherlands for LNG. Most see a huge problem with it and pledge to phase it out by 2027.
So EU nationals can’t even phase out their fully voluntary usage of gas for 5+ years because it would cost a bit more despite financing Ukrainian deaths, but conscripted soldiers are blameworthy because they didn’t abandon their home and everything they know to become a fugitive of their state rather than get conscripted?
It's not (only) a matter of cost, but availability. People need fuel to heat their houses. In order to fully replace Russian gas, other facilities (like LNG container terminals) need to be built. That has been done and is being done, but is complex and not instant.
Should it have been done before February 2022? Yeah, probably.
To be fair, conscripted people did not take part in a war. The ones who take part are those involuntarily mobilized in 2022, well paid volunteers and convicts who get a pardon after serving for a certain time.
I see a huge problem that the annexation of crimea started in 2014, escalated in 2022 to a full war and invasion, and eu countries can’t be bothered to move off Russian gas before 2027.
Calling a population that you forcibly displace from their homes “refugees” is certainly a choice. Not a correct one, but certainly a choice nonetheless.
> But I’d hope you’d fight for the safety of your family and neighbors. Thats literally all it means to be in the idf for most.
This is a perpetual situation, given that Israel's pattern of territorial expansion is always military control over a new area, followed by settlement building. Since now there is a settlement with colonists living in it, now the same starting argument of "defending family and neighbours" applies, since you now need a "buffer zone" to keep the colonists safe, requiring more military control over a new area. Rinse and repeat, and Israelis are always in a situation to be forced to fight "for the safety of their family and neighbours". How convenient.
The way things are going right now, the IDF is trying to cause the total destruction of Israel. Making more enemies when you're already surrounded by enemies (that you made) is rarely a way to any kind of survival. There is only one thing still standing between Israel and complete annihilation, and that's an endless flood of US taxpayer dollars that is at risk of stopping any month now.
It might be a reference to Netanyahu and other high ranking people of Likud who has supported of Hamas for decades, both directly and indirectly via Qatar. It is uncontroversial and there is even a well researched Wikipedia article, but for obvious reasons only include what has happened in the open.
Not taking part of Israel's politics, it was a bit surprising that this hasn't been more controversial but politics in the entire region is complicated, I guess. After all, the corruption in the prime minister's office did cause protests when it was exposed so clearly people care.
respectfully, there is no real evidence that Netanyahu (not Netenyahu) ever said this. if you're not familiar with the politics of the region prior to Oct 7th, a lot of this will be difficult to place in context.
i think Netanyahu is awful, but there are other reasons for support for Hamas -- i say this as someone who studied this extensively prior to 2023.
There are plenty of people horrified with both Israel and Hamas, and that while sympathizing with the plight of the Palestinians, think Hamas is hurting their chances of a peaceful solution.
Many people think Israel's right-wing and Hamas need each other, a kind of symbiosis. (Netanyahu certainly needs Hamas to exist).
Of course, the Israeli right wing wants to paint any opposition as pro Hamas anti semites. It's a time tested tactic.
No, virtually no one is supporting Hamas. Stop parroting that. Please allow me to be against genocide without accusing me of supporting a terrorist regime. It's dishonest. Thanks.
They’ve made peace with: Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi. Hamas started the war because they were threatened by that. So no they don’t cultivate enemies. Islamists that hate Jews for not being part of their empire hate them.
Of course the other side of that is that Israel hasn't exactly been kind to the Palestinians. They've been Annexing land in the West Bank and blockading Gaza for what now seems like forever. I can certainly understand why Palestinians might be pissed, even if some of their tactics are abhorrent.
this is true, but i find it difficult to earnestly believe there would be some sizable decrease in violence in the counterfactual with no Gaza blockade. Settlements, sure.
Well since their land got invaded, houses stolen and demolished, burial grounds defiled, poisened with chemical weapons, ethnically dispelled, and crammed onto a piece of land the size of a city , I'd get why they'd still be pissed at the current state of affairs. This did not start on October 7th.
Arabs invaded and colonised Israel in 650. You can easily learn this from any textbook you like.
Their land is 22 countries, the nearly entire middle east and north africa you can learn that for many map.
Jews that were exiled to Iraq or Persia or Syria will be killed. You can learn this from any media you like that covers current affairs.
You can also see that Gaza has many wide open spaces by looking at the satellite view on Google maps.
People that wish to make a 23rd arab state and destroy the only Jewish state - as they proudly chant in the streets worldwide - generally propose doing this through violence you can learn this by looking at your own account history.
Israel are setting up international Arab governance for Gaza. And yes they’re understandably wary of anything coming from the UN, which as I’m sure you’ve aware runs schools teaching children to kill as many Jews as possible even if they potentially die in the process.
It didn’t. Arab league told arabs to leave the new country while they destroyed it. There were some notable skirmishes but no widespread forced evictions like the Arab nations did to the Jews. That’s why there’s 2M Israeli arabs.
They made peace with Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon by invading their lands (and attempting to annex them!) and then US forced their hands to make peace. Please mention the context of this great "peace" Israel has made. Israel's neighbors don't hate it solely because of antisemitism.
Saudi didn’t normalize because Hamas prevented it. October 7 was designed to radicalize and prevent normalization of relations. You’re helping them by reframing a justifiable war of self defense against terrorists as a “genocide”.
> Saudi didn’t normalize because Hamas prevented it. October 7 was designed to radicalize and prevent normalization of relations
Hamas prevented it because Israel has no free will? Israel is doomed to only react to Hamas?
Israel had an option to preserve their normalization and gain and keep the sympathy of the entire world. Instead they prefered to do annihilation and genocide.
Yes, they didn’t normalize, so they’re irrelevant to the peace equation floated by the person I replied to.
So a genocidal campaign to level Gaza and cleanse it of its human anima- oops, I meant people, expand settlements in the WB, and occupy southern Lebanon and Syria in pursuit of a “Greater Israel” is self-defense. Makes total sense.
It's the opposite, the most talented in every sense volonteer to fight in combat units in Gaza. Everyone who ends up in 8200 or any other non combat unit has some sort of reason health or family. Later there is some selection, so smart but most importantly extremely valuable experience that acts as a spring board into the startup world later on(cybersec or anything else).
He's talking about the military filtering process. Who the military considers as "the best" depends on its needs. Simply put, if needs more fighting bodies, so that takes precedence.
The Knesset is fighting over public opinion - who gets conscripted in the first place. It's who gets put through the funnel in the first place.
