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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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Hey American here. From our perspective, the #1 thing the Nazis are known for is for killing Jews.
So if you want to have an argument that actually holds in American politics, at least think about what the mainstream opinion is and how it plays into things.
If you invoke Hitler in this argument, it will only increase the people's resolve to fund Israel more as it will remind people of the Holocaust. This line of argument does not go the way you think it does over here. Its a hopeless misplay.
The nazis didn't just kill jews. What the nazis are most known for is being racist and trying to exterminate entire groups of people...
Ummmmm.
You know the USA had a segregated army and literal internment camps holding Japanese "traitors" around our country, right? We literally can't hate on the Nazis for being racist because we did that shit.
USA didn't get rid of segregation for at least 3 decades after the WW2 era. My Dad grew up in the segregated south: Virginia in the 1970s. I think you're underestimating how much racist culture is still around here.
What is taught in American schools is that the Nazis tried to kill all the Jews. Its not wrong, but its a big emphasis on Judeo-Christian culture and the mainstream of American thought. You're not going to get the typical American to think that Israel is Nazi, you're just not.
You'd be surprised to learn that the concept of lebensraum was derived from "manifest destiny" and learned a lot of their pre-Holocaust oppression from the US.
Yes, we literally can. Racism is always bad. It's bad in the US, it was bad in Nazi Germany, it was bad in South Africa, and it's bad in Israel. People are capable of extrapolating beyond the group being oppressed to recognize when a comparable group is receiving a comparable type of oppression. In this case, Israel is committed to a genocide comparable to the Holocaust.
I think I can agree that removal of racism and all that would be nice, and we're entering a political reality where this is possible. But you're asking for something more: for Americans to understand your weird-ass argument about calling the Israeli government a Nazi regime.
Which will not work. That's the core crux of this issue. Its an entirely insane argument by American standards. As I said earlier: the left has made a ton of rallying cries over the past decade. Some worked, some (like "Defund the Police") utterly failed and instead made Republicans stronger. If this "The Jewish state of Israel is Nazi" argument actually reaches meme status, you'll destroy the credibility of the left.
Okay, go tell the American people that. They'll get confused. I promise you. The politics will not work the way you expect.
Nazis == Holocaust. That's the #1 focus in our schools. You're going to be working against like, our culture, if you try to go deeper than that. As I said earlier, this line of discussion will not go the way you expect.
The internet is not American
Any government is capable of fascism and capable of genocide. If that's too complicated for you, go sit at the kids ta-... Don't talk to my kids go sit outside.
There's an explicitly fascist and genocidal player in this conflict. And spoiler alert, it isn't the Israelis.
I think you might want to check on the people who had an election on 25 January 2006, seized power after that and refused any further elections. Explicitly run a Muslim ethno-state and terrorist tactics, and wish to kill the Jews from "River to the Sea".
It isn't Israelis. It's Israel, though, as a country. An apartheid country.
Hey ding dong, not every Palestinian is a member of Hamas and the average age of Palestinians is 19. The average Palestinian did not vote in 2006.
Yet Israel cut the power, food, and aid for the entire nation because of terrorists that live among them. Then they proceeded to murder over 20,000 civilians (almost certainly an undercount). And in their bloodlust, they managed to execute 3 people waving a white flag with their shirts off... Hostages.
You want to talk about how terrible Hamas is when the IDF is indiscriminately killing everyone they find? Dropping bombs in the most population dense regions of the world?
The world isn't black and white, there can be two terrible actors. And right now, the IDF has already killed 20x the number of people killed by Hamas on Oct 7. With no signs of wanting to stop.
And for someone that wants to "school" people on history, perhaps take the 5 seconds to Google what "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" means. Hint, it's not "kill all the Jews in Israel".
Hmmm. I wonder how we can solve those problems.
Maybe Hamas should get uniforms and follow the international rules of War so that Israel knows who to bomb and who is a civilian. Hmmmmm?
Without uniforms, without a regular army, Hamas is causing this problem to occur to their own people.
Geniva conventions don't just apply to Israel. They also apply to Hamas, and Hamas is breaking a metric ton of rules here. The natural result is that Israel doesn't want to play by the rules either.
You should reread what you just wrote. Because Hamas is immoral, Israel can be immoral.
Really reflect on that. Sit with the fact that you just cheered on Israel for murdering Jewish hostages.
Perhaps you might understand why you and everyone that thinks like you are being called a Nazi. You don't care about wonton killing because the dirty Palestinians have it coming. After all, they aren't human, they are animals that are breeding too heavily. Correct?
Stuffing words in my mouth isn't a debate yo. But if it makes you feel like an adult feel free to do it I guess.
In the meantime,. Simply pointing out that genocide is a term above and beyond Israel's conduct and y'all go fucking nuts over the simple fact.
As I stated before: USA killed way more Japs during the Firebombing campaign of Tokyo and 2x nuclear weapons upon cities. There is a huge difference between brutality (and what is forgivable in war) vs genocide, the unforgivable.
But y'all are apparently unstudied in History and everything is just black and white to you. Life is more than just Nazi / not a Nazi.
Erm. Geniva conventions.... Like rules on how to surrender or wearing uniforms is about protecting your side.
If a soldier shoots at the enemy and then runs into a Hospital, and keeps on shooting, Geniva Conventions are rightfully suspended and you are legally allowed to shoot at the Hospital.
Do you know how war works? We have rules. If you don't follow the rules the enemy doesn't have to follow the rules.
Hamas is an irregular army that fights using dishonorable tactics. They do not deserve Geneva Conventions because they themselves do not follow them.
It's like how the Russians attacked those surrendering Ukrainians on camera. That's a war crime. What does that mean? It means that Ukrainians don't feel like performing official surrender routines as per war conventions anymore.
There's no one out there who enforces war crimes. It's all just a code of honor. But if the enemy doesn't follow the code, then the code is rightfully suspended.
It has nothing to do with humanity and everything to do with practicality.
Gotcha, so because hamas isn't playing dress up, it's ok to murder children. After all, it's very practical to just shoot and bomb everything. A final solution of sorts.
This saddens me because my right wing buddies warned about how dumb y'all were with the Nazi comparisons. I didn't believe him, but you've convinced me.
Last word of advice: stop proving my far right friends correct. What you are doing right now is such a hilariously bad argument that it's literally pushing me to agree with the far right.
Fortunately, there are other, smarter, people to discuss this issue with around here.
I highly suggest you talk with someone with war experience by the way. It's clear you are ignorant on those matters. There are plenty of veterans who can tell you about the importance of uniforms and how/why uniforms protect civilians.
War goals will be met by warring parties. The point is to give fair fights to differentiate civilians from military. If you forget military uniforms then yes, it basically condemns the local population to getting shot up by the soldiers. No one likes it when this happens, but yeah, you need to dress differently and highlight yourself as a legitimate target as per modern rules and conventions of war.
That's the rule. That's the Geneva convention. If you don't like it, then change the rule I guess or something, but good luck getting the United Nations to agree on a new set of rules.
These conventions and agreements are far bigger than you or me. It's not about like or dislike of the rules. I'm just letting ya know what the rules that have been established are.
Perhaps if you even just fucking acknowledge that killing civilian children is a bad thing we'd stop viewing you and your rightwing buddies as nothing more than fascists cheering on a fascist government.
Then why haven't you ACTUALLY addressed it? Your argument is "Killing children is fine so long as we are fighting terrorists". That's not addressing the morality of what Israel is doing, it's giving them a blank check to do whatever in the name of fighting the bad guys.
Oh, fuck right off with this. I absolutely have friends with military experience and there is such a thing as "rules of engagement". Guess what wouldn't have happened in the US military? We would not have shot unarmed civilians with their hands up waving a white flag. Perhaps go talk to someone with ACTUAL military experience and not your far right commando buddies who larp as military officers in their camps. You don't shoot until you are shot at. Unless you are israel and you are just trying to kill arabs.
You sure? You don't seem very upset that this is happening.
You like to talk about the Geneva conventions, so how about you fucking read them.
Article 3 https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/geneva-convention-relative-protection-civilian-persons-time-war
Do you see the line in there that says "unless the other side isn't playing dressup, then all bets are off". Because I sure as fuck don't. Israel is killing unarmed civilians. A fact that is undisputed because they fucking killed their own unarmed hostages.
The Geneva convention does not have a "you don't have to follow this if the other side isn't" clause. Or if it does, actually cite it rather than continuing this thread repeating that dumbass line over and over again.
Sure its a bad thing.
Lulz. You can't even read. The passage you're quoting is about prisoners. Please man...
Seriously, talk to a soldier. Your ignorance is really obvious at this point. And doubling down by copying/pasting random text from the Geneva Conventions isn't doing you any favors.
Oh, where does it say "only about POW"s? Can you actually quote the line that says "this only applies to POWs". I'll wait.
Perhaps before you go off about reading comprehension you pull the mote out of your own eye. That'll surely help you read.
Fair. Looking at your post above and it seems like you've put more work at it and it was unfair of me to brush it off entirely.
So I'll give you that.
Hamas literally stages ambushes by waving white flags in this conflict. They're incredibly despicable people.
Even US Troops didn't have to deal with this level of depravity in Iraq or Afghanistan.
It's important to keep the white-flag conventions a convention. Otherwise, the other side becomes more brutal. Shooting at people while waiving white flags isn't the norm, but when the norm is broken my combatants like Hamas life gets harder for everyone.
Do it enough times and yes, even a regular trained military will lose their ability to differentiate.
How gracious of you. So now that you admit "Trust me the Geneva convention says this" rant which was actually completely uninformed garbage, Why should I believe you are actually educated at all on the topic and not just spewing memes from your right wing "army trained" buddys?
Can you actually call out Israel for committing war crimes or does the Geneva convention no longer matter because it's inconvenient to your argument?
Sir, my inbox has been filled with bullshit liberals who don't know the first thing about Geneva conventions. I got confused between posts and suddenly, your post popped up. Yes, I made a mistake ignoring your post and your thought out statement. I'll try to remember your name next time because it is clear that you actually have a degree of understanding of this conflict.
Why should I believe you're doing nothing but dogpiling upon the one person who stuck up to discuss in this thread? Give me a break, its not easy to push back against a dogpile on online discussion. There's a lot of dumb shit being said in this thread, and I got confused between you and some other people. But that's fine, I'll take my L here, its a calculated risk when I lash out like that.
Geneva conventions are just conventions dude. No one exists to prosecute war crimes and you know it. The thing about the Middle East and what makes it so difficult is that so many geneva conventions have been broken that no one seems to care about them anymore. Building back the peace and trust to even do normal warfare is difficult as a result. Now taking the article at play here: Hamas isn't supposed to take hostages of peaceful civilian populations (ie: attendees of a music festival) to begin with. Do you care about that? Or are you just randomly meming left-wing pro-Hamas statements and ignoring the war crimes they commit?
I'm perfectly fine and find it acceptable for this discussion to end with us both agreeing that Geneva Conventions are a joke in the context of Hamas vs Israel btw, if you want me to fast forward for a bit.
My point remains clear. No one enforces Geneva conventions in practice. They're conventions of honorable fighting in practice. If one side breaks a Geneva convention, it simply invites the other side to also ignore the convention. That's how it works, and that's how it always has worked.
LMFAO. You were JUST talking about the sanctity of them as rules that everyone has to follow and how they gave Israel carte blanch permission to kill civilians. With "What are you going to do about it, get the UN to update their policies?". This is what fascism looks like. You are a fascist propagandist.
Well... that's fine.
Thanks for the discussion I guess. Apologies for confusing you with someone else posting here. There's plenty of people still dogpiling on me right now so if you don't mind, we can wrap up this discussion between you and me here.
A reasonable discussion requires trust. If my earlier mistake broke that trust then that's my mistake.
Hamas also plays recordings of Hebrew in order to draw in IDF soldiers.... who are then ambushed. Hence the shooting at the people waving white flags. Hamas has intentionally turned the entire strip into a conflict zone. They need civilians dead in order to keep their supporters riled up and ya, we're all really worked up about it.
American here. Would you care to explain to me how Israel can be compared to Nazis? My stupid brain can only understand Good guy vs bad guy movie tropes. Please give me a break.
I went to public school and can clearly see the comparison between a far-right Zionist Israel and Nazism without getting tripped up on the Jews being the largest target during the Holocaust. Not only that, but with the shrinking of Palestinian owned land and illegal Israeli Settlers I can also make the comparison to Manifest Destiny and the relocation of Native American people, even though Palestinians aren't Cherokee.
Attempting to expand Israeli lands for Israeli jews and pushing out Palestinians with no source of aid for those displaced, as well as blocking aid and giving extremely short timelines to escape the encroaching Frontlines very much falls in line with Nazi ideology.
The Nation of Islam and the American Nazi Party had common goals despite being mutually exclusive. I don't think it's that far of a stretch to compare Israel with the Nazis.
In particular, Israeli borders have been set since 1967 and they even returned the Sinai peninsula after the 7 day war.
So please, show me where Israeli conquest in the past 50 years (1973 to 2023) led to expanded Israeli territory.
Ah right, there wasn't any expansion of territory at all. It's like they aren't invoking Lebensraum at all.
Yes. This is a problem. But they are as you put it, illegal. The issue here is not one of law or even the Israeli government, but instead the people at the bottom trying to reclaim their lands. Or so they think anyway, everyone has a claim here so it gets rather complex.
Israel needs to punish those illegal settlers in the West Bank more. But guess what? The West Bank settler issue is in the West Bank, not Gaza.
So if you are talking about Gaza specifically, you've already lost the settler debate because there are no Israeli Settlers moving into Gaza.
"invoking Lebensraum" sounds so awfully off. You apporach this discussion in a condescending fashion, yet you sound rather... superficially informed. "Lebensraum" is not a program that gets "invoked". It's the German word for "habitat" or "living space" and was not as prevalent in Nazi ideology as especially US-discussions make it seem. Furthermore, "Lebensraum" alone is not a Nazi-thing. It's "Lebensraum im Osten". "Lebensraum" is a word that's common in German today. "Der Lebensraum des Pandabären ist in Gefahr" "The habitat of the pandabear is in danger". So whenever someone starts yelling "Lebensraum" and starts to act smug in Nazi-debates, they actually disqualified themselves to German ears.
Okay cool. So tell me when the Israelis have called for it.
You're begging the question and avoiding the crux of the issue, because you know you this entire line of discussion is bullshit. And I don't blame you. I'm just calling yall out on it.
Even if it's not effective the comparison still holds true. I honestly don't know the best way to approach people who deny genocide. But I think not calling something for what it is is a mistake.
Okay. Give me the Bibi's quote where he's willing to genocide the Gaza people.
Bibi is enough of an asshole that we can defeat him just on what he has already done. There's no point making up crimes to bring this man down. Just use the facts, the real life facts and actions hes done, and don't exaggerate.
In 1989, Netanyahu lamented that Israel missed the opportunity presented by global attention on China’s repression of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen square “to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the (occupied) territories”.
Deporting Jews was one of the steps in the holocaust.
Bibi is trying to pretend it is voluntary while also trying to make Palestine unlivable to that they 'voluntarily' leave to avoid it being so obviously the same thing, so we might not have a recent quote of him literally saying it but we have his intended outcome and the actions he has taken.
Gosh, you know, I didn't want to debate you but for the love of fuck, just admit you are wrong for one second.
What? Tell the American people history? Really? Ugh. Somehow you seem to believe that what you were taught as a kid is necessarily true because you got taught that, no other reason whatsoever.
You keep saying WE, and OUR, but I doubt that most Americans would associate with you.
I thought you wanted to leave the debate yesterday?
Whatever. I'm wrong. Happy? Feels shallow doesn't it? That's probably not what you wanted.
If you actually want to pick up where the discussion left off, my latest post and point-counterpoint is over there. Not here. We already covered this post.
Edit: I'm fine picking back where we left off. But if you want to rehash and replay our debate yesterday, just reread what we already wrote. I'm not wasting my time replaying the same conversation.
Yeah, I'd be happy if you meant it. /:
I ain't American but you should probably try not to speak for everyone like that. I have two American friends and I doubt they'd be this ignorant about history.
Fucking top kek. If that's all your learned about Nazis then I don't think you paid attention in school and just read the cliff notes.
You should think concentration camps that work people to death in order to fund a warachine that teaches the "chosen few" that they are superior in every way because it's nice to have a scapegoat and free labor.
That starts to sound really familiar to a country that has relied on pretty much the same sentiment to keep its place. And pictures of mass graves is gonna do more to remind people of the Holocaust and the people of Gaza aren't standing outside the pit.
Also it should really teach you to be cautious of people who offer simple plans and assume victory is granted for simply wanting it.
Guess you didn't hear about the time Israel was administering long term birth control to Ethiopian immigrant Jews without their consent? That's classified as a form of genocide.
Also American. You conveniently omitted attempted conquest of Europe (with plans to continue to Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the rest of the world) under the initial excuse of lebensraum, as well as the systematic torture and murder of the elderly, sick, socialists, communists, homosexuals, trans, dissidents, Roma and other european ethnic minorities, asians, africans, and anyone else who was not part of the in group.
Also, it's a fun fact that, in America, Nazis literally have more legal rights than communists. Nearly all federal labor laws exclude communists and those associated with a communist party from being protected. There have never been such restrictions placed on Nazis, despite their failed attempt to organize the overthrowing of the US government prior to US entry into WW2.