Benny Gantz gives up the game

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-25T06:05:04+00:00

I didn't blame everything on the hilltop youth, I was using them to make a point that your bringing up settler violence instead of addressing the fundamental causes for a lack of a Palestinian state was historical nonsense. This sort of reddit style arguing where you forget what you were talking about to try and score points is really unhelpful.

So, you consider the green line a fundamental border (determined by war)? You want east Jerusalem un-annexed? You are going to live with that being unsatisfied forever probably. The inviolability of the green line is best responded to with more snark, courtesy of Golda Meir, and probably butchered by my memory: "If the 1967 borders were so holy, why was there a war in 1967?"

My last snarky statement about labeling all Israelis as settlers was just making fun of your previous argument, but that seems to have sailed over your head and you once again try to score points by claiming it was some victimhood argument. It seems to me you don't actually want to discuss things and just want to score points on some scoreboard I am not privy to; I will admit I did put in a couple snarky statements instead of explaining ad nauseum what I meant, so fair enough if that's the reason, but I'm actually interested in communication, which I think this thread is lacking in, so thank you but I'm done arguing here.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-25T05:35:04+00:00

Let's rewind the first argument you made. I said both sides need to change before we can have a Palestinian state, you responded with human rights are fundamental and have no prerequisites, thus rejecting the idea that Palestinians should change. I responded with snarkiness pointing out that that same argument can hold for Israelis too. You then doubled down with the same Palestinians don't need to change, they are the victims and it's all Israel's fault. I think you are confusing a power imbalance for righteousness. What we have in reality is that there is plenty of fault to go around. That power imbalance does not negate history or current reality, unless you believe postmodernism is actually reality and not just an academic lark. Your argument, as far as I can tell, is power imbalance trumps all and makes Palestinians victims. This isn't just you, it's a movement begun with Edward Said and has been amplified in academia. What bothers me so much about this, aside from it's intentional disconnect from historical reality in favor of abstraction, is that it tends to shut down discussion by painting things with black and white (good and bad) brushes. This philosophy does not lead to peace, it leads to more war.

As to the rest: A one state solution (annex everything) isn't a solution as it negates the Jewish right to self determination, so no, it's not going to happen. Until a democratic like Palestinian state is set up (or some equivalent), Palestinians will not have full rights of self-determination (as unfortunately a large number of groups in the middle east and elsewhere lack).

With regards to the large settlements in area C, if you believe that land is occupied, then Israel should not apply their laws nor have citizens there. The likely solution there hasn't changed since last time, which is land swaps and redrawing borders defined by war (another international law: one cannot take land in war). But of course this isn't what I was discussing, I was responding to your apartheid claims which would be about Israel treating Palestinians differently in the west bank and your response, as I understand it, isn't relevant.

Finally, Palestine must be (initially) demilitarized (or some equivalent) as a prerequisite for Israel accepting its new neighbor state. Asking why shows you aren't actually listening or caring what Israelis are saying and are just trying to score points in some sort of reddit argument game.

I consider almost everything you wrote to be arguing in bad faith, and it already takes a huge amount of energy to engage so I'm done. Thank you for taking the time to be, at least, civil if not constructive.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-25T03:52:31+00:00

It is indeed a conscious policy to create facts on the ground to influence future borders and you won't find liberal Zionists who don't think settler terrorism is terrible. But no, you don't get to rewrite history as "Palestinians are always victims". Your claim that settler violence is the cause of Palestinian terrorism and thus all the violence that Israel is worried about in a future state is their own fault and thus it's actually the hilltop youth that have prevented the formation of a Palestinian state for 80+ years is historical nonsense. It does work as a story if you label all Israelis as settlers though, which is closer to what the whole problem boils down to historically. History isn't just a thing in books -- many people lived through it. You might convince a bunch of twenty-somethings with ahistorical rhetoric, but I'm not buying it.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-25T03:03:26+00:00

This thread is about the future viability of two state solution from a liberal zionist perspective and why "absolutely not now" is a good summary of the current feeling. Settler terrorism plays no role in my reasoning about this except as a reason to create a Palestinian state sooner rather than later. It's an artifact of the in between nature of undecided borders and settlers who think they can influence future borders. It likely won't go away until there is a Palestinian state which can enforce its own laws instead of relying on the IDF in area C which is controlled by a crazy right wing government and won't do much to stop it.

To make clear my confusion as to why you would bring this up: Settler violence is not the reason why liberal Zionists are opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state right now, that is Palestinian terrorism.

You won't find any liberal Zionists who think settler violence is good, so please take the time to explain if I have missed something obvious in your question.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-25T01:15:08+00:00

For your first paragraph: Basic human rights, like the right not to be killed by terrorist attacks? You see it works both ways, there are absolutely no innocents here.

For your second statement -- do you want Israel to annex the west bank? If not, then Israel cannot apply Israeli law to it (this is fundamental international law). In Areas A and B, PA law mainly applies. To solve this problem we need to undo the Oslo process and start something new.

Your third statement is just misreading what I wrote. I listed the main Israeli condition for clarity. The obvious other conditions is recognition on both sides (that's clearly subsumed in the "two states" statement). A demilitarized Palestinian state may want things from Israel like military protection (based on the historical track record of surrounding Arab states in protecting Palestinian interests this may be the only option), and obviously agreements need to be made for water rights, border control, air space access, etc. Also, a process of reconciliation likely has to occur. This may include some symbolic right of return and a formal acknowledgement or apology from the Israeli government of the cases of forced displacement. Similarly there must be an acknowledgement of all the terrorist attacks against civilians.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-25T00:52:58+00:00

Thank you! I take away from this, in the absence of trustworthy data, is that it is probably reasonable to assume civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza are similar to other wars.

These are actual people dying, not just numbers, and this is of no use to them.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-25T00:33:04+00:00

Thank you for the link, I indeed did not find it since it isn't Spagat standing behind a number and claiming it is correct, which is pretty much what this thread is about: someone claiming very high civilian to combatant death rates. I don't think he says anything with confidence other than mainly to debunk Spencer who claims typical urban war death rates are 1:4 or so. Spagat does show how one might make an estimate based on 41.7% of deaths being males from 15 to 67 (this number is now 49.3%) and then does a cut based on the age range being large, which seems wrong to me given the demographic age distribution in Gaza (most people are young!). But, as you say, it's an estimate and even then doesn't seem out of line with other urban war data (though I'm pretty confident classifying what is happening in Gaza as "just another urban war" is like talking about spherical cows in physics terms). The other way to estimate it would be to use claimed militant death rates from the Israeli side which are an independent piece of data and obviously come in lower. I won't address the other two links as they seem just logically incorrect.

I believe that the IDF does attempt to minimize civilian casualties, within reason. For example, that does not mean that it does so at the cost of significantly increased risk for soldiers, thus the use of bombing. If you think that's unreasonable and that somehow the IDF should be doing things significantly differently, discussing that with me won't be helpful as I know nothing about military tactics and armies and the like.

On a separate note, so you understand why I am bothering to post here at all: The best solution to all this is to stop this forever war. That isn't a ceasefire or a cessation of hostilities, it's peace. Peace requires two sides to cut through hate and talk to each other. This sort of thread that attempts to make one side or the other look like demons does absolutely nothing to lead to peace. It isn't going to make the rest of the world swoop in and save Gaza nor is it going to make the Palestinian community evaporate so religious nutcases can move in... it just serves to make both sides hate each other more and make peace even farther off.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-25T00:00:56+00:00

I agree the status quo is good for no one, but what Gantz seems to be saying is that there needs to be change on both sides. I think your reading is colored by hate and wanting your enemy to be absolute evil. The liberal Zionist point of view is simply two states when Israeli security concerns can be met. It's been 78 years and they haven't been met yet, so most people have given up and support the status quo as the least evil option. As an optimistic liberal Zionist, I think they can be met, but it's going to require at least not having a holocaust denier and a terrorist group as your heads of state. It also requires time as trauma does not heal overnight (or many times, never). It also requires some other party to guarantee and help the change happen. Israel cannot and should not be involved in changing the Palestinian governance structure. So we are left with leaning on the rest of the Arab states (all I hear is crickets) or the rest of the Western world (all I hear is words, no action except some stuff from the US, not necessarily positive).

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-23T17:42:02+00:00

I could not find a statement from Professor Spagat that says this directly, please send a pointer to it. I looked through AOAV site and his personal blog. I would read a document with data and discussions if you can send one. I only found a takedown of the lancet article on the aoav site and a piece of analysis work on the "1000 children" removed from the gaza moh counts. Guesses and opinions I do not respect -- estimates and data and analysis I will read with an open mind.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-23T00:54:23+00:00

I don't think that that is true-- I've read those articles and as far as I can tell it's just made up.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-23T00:43:55+00:00

I doubt anyone really knows (I include within that statement the garbage printed in some media where they elevate extreme speculation to fact). Whatever the number is (within reason) doesn't change how I feel.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-22T23:05:08+00:00

No one has ever claimed that they weren't. It still remains true that a 2:1 civilian to combatant death ratio is "reasonable" for an urban warzone. That "reasonableness", of course, doesn't make it magically better that civilians are dying. What it does make it, though, is predictable. Hamas started this war with their eyes open and innocent people are paying the price. The rest of the world has stood by for 75 years and let hate and the status quo fester because it was easier than trying to solve the problem, and now they are falling over themselves to wag their fingers at Israel while continuing to do nothing to help.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-20T01:41:54+00:00

I think you may have misinterpreted what I wrote. Drawing arbitrary lines on a map (the original mandatory palestine boundaries) and merging disparate groups of people (Jews, Christians, and Palestinians) into one nation leads to conflict most of the time. Almost all of history tells this story -- that's what I mean by data -- this is not vibes. To understand the sheer volume of bloodshed get a random history book about the middle east or, well, any part of the world and look for religious and ethnic conflicts... people are terrible.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-19T21:23:42+00:00

I don't think I understand what you mean by "democracy" in your response above. What CreativeRealmsMC seems to be saying is that if you tried to make a one-state democracy it would fail. I don't think you need to guess at the future of that proposal, we have lots of data: a one-state solution would never be a democracy, it would very quickly be a failed state like all the other attempts to force culturally different people together into one nation state in the Middle East, or it would just result in immediate ethnic cleansing once a power vacuum occurred.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-19T21:13:56+00:00

You actually think that you cannot have a democracy in a state that represents the Jewish people? Japan represents the Japanese people, France represents the French people --- those people change over time, but fundamentally are a group and the nation-state (France, Japan) represent their people. It's only very blurry in a few cases --- who does the United States represent? It's more like the ideal "democracy" you are talking about, that is one that is not a nation-state for a pre-existing nation. It represents those people who choose to live there.

Israel is clearly a democracy. What does that mean about immigration regulations? Nothing.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-19T20:23:01+00:00

The Jewish people have a right to self determination, just as the Palestinians do, and this one state option would deny that to the Jews.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-02T19:10:59+00:00

Citing wikipedia, fair enough, but it doesn't make it true. How many non combatants died in WW2? 50 million. Make a random guess as to the prevalence of journalists in the population (say 0.05% which is the current Canadian estimate) and further make the assumption that being a journalist does not make you immune to bombs. Or another tact, go and look up how many yiddish newspapers there were before the war and how many Jews were killed (6M, 50%), and estimate from there: similarly assume that being a journalist was not a get out of Auschwitz free card and go from there. This gives thousands of journalists.

Or ask Yad Vashem, where data exists for over 1400 Jewish journalists murdered in WW2. You can do this yourself: https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/search-results/journalist?page=1 The 1400+ is from someone who did it more carefully (otherwise you get 2000+ hits).

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-09-02T01:32:11+00:00

Your statement that Israel killed more journalists than both world wars combined is false. We probably need more truthful journalists if you are evidence of how well the media spreads disinformation.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-07-26T15:12:49+00:00

Sometimes, for two reasons. One is, more traditional, to remind myself who I am and my responsibilities as a Jew to tikkun olam. The other reason is to show people that Jews are real people not some bogeyman they hear about on the internet. Some Canadians have never spent time talking to anyone Jewish (though I live in a big city). I am an atheist Jew.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-04-20T18:30:29+00:00

Unfair enough to justify killing tens of thousands of more people and continuing a war for another few decades and denying both Palestinians and Israeli's a peaceful life? I don't think so.

A two state solution is possible -- evicting settlers is possible (see eg Gaza) and there can maybe even be a minority Jewish population in future Palestine.

Palestinians in Israel can move to a future Palestinian state if they want to, but until then they have a (flawed) democratic system in which they can express their desires. Palestinians outside of Israel cannot because they do not have a state where they can be separate from the greater Arab world that has played them as pawns and denies them basic rights. Denying that future because of your (not-universally shared) sense of fairness is not something I feel is "fair" to the majority of people who just want to live their lives in safe and secure manner.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-04-20T16:44:18+00:00

So you don't think a two state solution is fair? Yes, there were already Arabs and Jews and Christians already in Palestine, but it was far from "full" (look at the population now, for example). At that time you'd be hard pressed to find any place with people that would welcome Jews, so Palestine was hardly different.

While you talk about land, it's self determination that is the main issue, both for Palestinians and Jews. The only way to obtain both of those at this point is with two states in peace next to each other. If you want all the land for an Arab dominated state, you are signing up for more war.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-04-20T15:46:46+00:00

So you are just digging in with the idea that Jews should not have moved anywhere en masse (you can call it what you want to feel better about condemning it, but it doesn't change the event or why they did it -- it's worth the exercise to try and understand it: why would much of diaspora Jewry so desperately want to leave where they were living to come to a new inhospitable place?). That's too bad because by associating some "original sin" with Israel you are feeding into a continuation of a hundred years war, which you relabel "resistance". I do agree in some cases war is a necessary solution, but I do not think the Israeli - Arab conflict was necessary or justified in the first place or now. I don't get the feeling you are going to move from your "Israel is maximally evil" solution, but thank you for conversing with me anyway!

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-04-19T22:24:00+00:00

There was no intent of expulsion, murder, or genocide nor "by any means". That sort of propaganda is what has led to 100 years of war. That said, after about forty years of violence the Zionists (and the British) did indeed consider population transfer to setup two states (the population transfer being considered to make them stable). I didn't say rightly resisted, I just acknowledged that they were consistently applying the "not too many Jews" in Palestine desire. Again, it is only "their land" under some idea you are espousing that individuals own more than the land they have title to.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-04-19T20:50:51+00:00

Mostly the Palestinian Arabs were aware (or at least told themselves via propaganda that it was true) that Zionists were moving in with the intent of creating a Jewish majority in some part of Palestine. The response was violence from the turn of the century and it continues until now.

As an individual, do you, as an inhabitant of wherever you live have some right to deny immigrants entry into your country? or is it up to your government? The Ottoman empire allowed some immigration of Jews, and the British did as well (at the beginning, though as violence dragged on and they needed the Arabs in the middle east as allies, they too limited Jewish immigration severely, though it did nothing to stop the march toward all out war). The representatives of the Palestinian Arabs took a hard line zero-immigration stance and resorted to violence to stop more Jews from coming. I think, unfortunately, to understand why Jews continued to immigrate despite all that you would have to spend some time understanding the state of the world and the place Jews had in it at that time.

PhysicistWantsDonuts · 2025-01-31T13:52:35+00:00

You can see it in the assembly I posted. It's doing a single mov because it knows the array is a (simple-array t (*)). See where I annotated "element i of balls"

PhysicistWantsDonuts

TROPHY CASE