malandrew

Can't think of any particular sources off the top of my head. It shows up from time to time in different places.

> I think blood-and-boden arguments for territory are bad, full stop.

I generally agree. I generally argue for reciprocity and even handedness. If someone else claims a certain argument as legitimate, then it's fair to use that same argument for counterclaims. In this case, the person I was replying to was making the "blood-and-boden argument", which means it is fair to apply that same argument to the counterclaim for those against whom they feel entitled to the same territory.

Me? I have no dog in this fight as my ancestry is so far removed that I can't claim it. My take is that if you go back in your ancestry and you can't point to a single named ancestor in your family tree (unbroken. you have to know everyone between you and that person), then you really can't claim connection to a place as you can't physically place a specific ancestor in a specific community (town, city, village), much less a controlling interest or other form of ownership. I've researched my family tree back to about the 1500s. That's about as far back as 99% of people can claim because written records largely dry up in the 1500s, with the exception of some folks with ties to nobility.

In your opinion, what is a good argument for territory?

> To the best of my knowledge, the overwhelming scientific consensus considers Ashkenazi Jews descendants of Levantine ethnic groups.

> And if what you are trying to claim is true then where is the footage from Hamas that shows that?

Who do you think released the footage from the Hamas combatants? They were using GoPros and other cameras with local recording and when the militants were killed, the IDF took possession of the recording devices. How many devices were being used? How many minutes of footage were there from these devices? What aren't the contents of these devices released unedited in their entirety. To date all we have is basically a selectively edited 46 minute video released by the Israeli government that compiles everything they want us to see from October 7th and nothing they don't want us to see.

Between the myriad lies that have been debunked (40 beheaded babies, baby in an oven, rapes, etc.), every one should be demanding more primary unedited evidence of what happened so we can actually pass judgement based on evidence. A link to a video of testimonies from people that almost certainly served in the IDF at some point and possibly could still be reservists, is something that should be taken with a grain of salt. These interviews also came out in the days following the festival after such folks had been questioned about what happened and possibly prepped about what they should and should not say to the media.

In that 7 to 8 minute video, there's like 1 maybe 2 minutes of video showing actual actions of Hamas operatives. You have video of them shooting at something in the distance (at who is unknown). You have video of them shooting at cars driving towards them where you don't know who was inside and who was shot. You have video of them throwing grenades in a car and them being tossed out by the occupant of the car. You have video of someone being taken prisoner with zip ties. All of these are very short clips taken from longer footage and selective edited/disclosed. Where's the rest of the footage? What does the rest of the footage show?

Furthermore, the conceal carry license rate in Israel is estimated at 10%. This even exceeds the rate of 8.4% for the US. Approximately 6 to 7% of Americans served in the armed forces. 69% of Israeli men served in the IDF and 56% of women (2019 figures).

In the US, in the event a violent event involving firefights, there's a pretty good chance that a non-trivial portion of Americans of fighting age represent an armed threat or a potential threat with military training (e.g. initially unarmed but could pick up a rifle from a slain combatant and then present a threat). That likelihood is far greater in Israel than in the US.

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto lamented that “there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass” when explaining why Japan would not consider trying to invade the US in WWII. That same sentiment applies to Israel and makes identifying friend or foe or non-combatant very difficult.

Compulsory military service is a double-edged sword. There are the obvious benefits for national defense, but it also creates a liability for all individuals of fighting age in the event of an armed conflict. Trying to judge an armed conflict in a country or region from a lens of a country of region where most folks are unarmed and have no small arms training is a fools errand. For example, if you're in California, you're from a region where 0.31% of the population has a conceal carry license. I would suspect that those with military experience and/or small arms training is similarly low.

It's pretty much impossible to judge how an armed conflict unfolded in a place with a wildly different reality in these respects. Just using the United States as an example, if an armed conflict were to occur some place like the Idaho panhandle, it would be very different than an armed conflict in San Francisco. Or pick any two places in the US with wildly different rates of conceal carry permits, firearm ownership, military service and small arms training.

With all this in mind, the firefight videos I've seen are not really out of line with what I'd expect in any region with very high rates of conceal carry permits, firearm ownership, military service and small arms training.

> Hamas has all the incentives to show that it didn't commit war crimes, and yet we've seen nothing from them, which should raise an even larger suspicion.

Assume for a moment that they didn't commit war crimes (I don't actually believe this, but the hypothetical matters here). How do you demonstrate something that didn't happen? Selective video footage disclosure can only show things that did happen, not things that didn't happen. Only with holistic mass disclosure of all available video evidence existence can you actually start to infer what likely didn't happen.

What you could ask that is totally reasonable is why they haven't released footage showing what the IDF did that day? Did any of the Hamas combatants recording GoPro footage make it back with footage that shows the actions of the IDF. I think this is reasonable question to ask.

Where's the footage from the AH-64 Apache helicopters that engaged? Did the helicopters distinguish between Hamas combatants and festival goers? How can they distinguish between the two since Hamas combatants don't really possess uniforms beyond the green headbands that make positive identification of enemy combatants very difficult during a firefight?

In another comment I just made I raise a question about the makeup of the 251 hostages. I'm genuinely interested in knowing how many of them were civilian hostages and how many are IDF soldiers and therefore prisoners of war.

This same question applies to the hostages that Israel has taken as well. They are portrayed as prisoners/detainees, but other than the legitimate combatants, all others are effectively hostages as well.

1195 people were killed on October 7th. My understanding is that 815 of these were civilians. This means that 380 were IDF. This is a ratio of 2.15 civilians killed for each combatant.

The IDF considers a 2:1 ratio "tremendously positive" [1].

Now this ratio largely depends on the belief that the Israeli civilians and IDF combatants were all killed by Hamas combatants.

If, however, the evidence (all the video footage) were to demonstrate that Hamas was far more measured and actually killed far fewer civilians, then it starts to look a lot less like terrorism and more like military action between two combative forces with unfortunate civilians caught in the crossfire in a combat zone.

For comparison, let's take Pearl Harbor. 2341 soldiers and 68 civilians were killed. Was it an act of war? Absolutely. Was it an act of terror? No. Pearl Harbor had a ratio of 0.03 civilians killed per combatant. None of what I'm saying is defense of Pearl Harbor. I'm just objectively describing what occurred for the sake of comparison to the conflict at hand.

I can't seem to find a breakdown of the 251 hostages that were taken on October 7th in terms of how many were civilians and how many were active duty or reserve IDF. Is it terrorism to take civilians hostage? Yes. Is it terrorism to take enemy combatants as prisoners of war? No. (That said, all POWs should be treated with dignity while in captivity. It's pretty clear that one side has treated their POWs with far more dignity than the other side in this conflict.)

October 7th didn't happen in a vacuum. This is an ongoing conflict spanning almost 80 years. How the Hamas combatants collectively conducted themselves on October 7th absolutely changes the framing on how to interpret what happened that day. If the majority of the civilian death were in fact caused by the Hannibal Directive, then it looks a lot more like a act of war than an act of terror. Not saying it can't be both. There's a spectrum here. But up until now, we've largely been led to believe one interpretation while a LOT of evidence that would provide a much clearer objective picture of what happened has been withheld.

Furthermore, Israel is a country with compulsory military service. This largely blurs the distinction between combatant and civilian. Citizens serve in the IDF at age 18 and you can be a reservist until 41 for soldiers and 46 for officers. Both men and women serve. The compulsory service pretty much creates a condition where every man and woman between 18 to 46 may be either active duty or a reservist. My guess is that approximately 34% of Israeli society is a potential combatant and that this ratio would be higher the closer you are to military bases, as was the case with the kibbutzim near the Gaza border.

> The point is you are going lengths to try and prove what exactly?

Anyways, I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm demanding that what folks claim happened on October 7th actually be proven using all the available evidence. The entire justification for relation and the initial acceptance of that retaliation by Israeli was largely based on what we have been led to believe happened on October 7th. What actually happened matters. US involvement in the conflict was predicated on the current belief of what happened. We've sacrificed our nation's national security and reputation on the international stage based on beliefs about what happened. Thank God we at least haven't sacrificed our warfighters in service of this conflict.

I've honestly been shocked that no one really demands all the evidence be presented before believing any of the claims made. Nothing about October 7th is black and white and the discussion would be a lot clearer if we actually had all the evidence of what actually happened that day and we weren't basing our opinions on what we've been lead to believe by propaganda and the intentional omission of evidence that most certainly exists. "Truth is the first casualty of war"

> And will you also do the same to investigate and see how many Gazans did Hamas kill with failed rockets and explosives?

If you've never seen it, these videos from a banking conference in 2023 are "enlightening":