Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
No, the IDF Didn’t Massacre Israelis on October 7
While swimming in some of the vileness that counts as debate these days, I came across a video arguing that Israelis were responsible for the massacre of Oct. 7. The case rested on two key points. First, the presented claimed that Hamas only brought over light arms and no explosives (which I doubt). Second, the presenter showed Israeli press reports indicating that helicopters may have killed concertgoers while Israeli soldiers also shelled some homes in the Gaza envelope area.
The second contention is accurate. The Hebrew press has reported that the IDF shelled some homes and that the helicopter gunships might have killed people at the music festival. However, rather than making Israelis look evil, the fact that this happened actually undermines the anti-Israel crowd’s argument that deaths in Gaza are proof that Israel is a European Colonialist State conducting genocide against Palestinians.
The European Colonialist State
In the middle of the battle, Israel deployed helicopters. However, the pilots may have killed some civilians. Why couldn’t they tell who the civilians were? Because this isn’t an apartheid race war. Israelis and Palestinians are often indistinguishable. Visit https://www.idf.il/59780 and you’ll see a diverse mix of fallen Israeli soldiers. Some look Russian, some look Yemini. Some look African. Some look Arab. That’s because they are. A majority of Israelis are either refugees from Muslim countries or the descendants of such refugees. 99.5% of the Jewish population of those countries was simply erased in an ethnic cleansing whose geographic scope exceeds any other in history.
The ‘European settler colonialist’ narrative ought to be put to rest simply by the reality that helicopter pilots couldn’t easily distinguish between concert-goers and terrorists.
In fact, the Palestinian population is far less diverse than the Israeli population. Critically, it is no more ‘brown.’ While Israel has whiter people, we also have darker people. Palestine isn’t so welcoming. Black people in Gaza are called “Abeed” – which means ‘slave’. If you want to make a diversity comparison, visit the Children of Gaza Memorial Page on Facebook.
Collateral Damage = Genocide
The IDF reportedly shelled some homes and almost certainly killed some civilians. However, no country cares more about its own people than Israel – we exchanged 1,000 violent prisoners to get Gilad Schalit back. We’re about to release hundreds of Hamas prisoners to return some of our children. We care deeply. This is a small and very tightly-knit country. And yet Israeli citizens probably suffered as collateral damage from IDF actions on Oct 7.
The video argued that this meant the IDF was culpable for the killing of Israelis. That is where they get it completely wrong. The guilt, even for these collateral deaths, lies entirely with Hamas. If Hamas hadn’t invaded and hadn’t tried to use Israelis as human shields, those deaths never would have happened.
Where the video presenter was essentially saying: “the IDF killed Israelis, so the IDF conducted the massacre,” a more accurate statement would have been: “the IDF probably killed some Israelis while trying to stop Hamas crimes.”
Put another very simple way: the world shouldn’t be surprised when Palestinian civilians aren’t allowed to stop us from shutting down Hamas. After all, Israeli children and hostages weren’t enough either – and nobody cares as deeply about their own people as the Israelis do.
Conclusion
This one vile video arguing that the IDF killed its own civilians is actually tremendous evidence that:
- Israel is not a European Colonialist State
- Deaths in Gaza do not mean that Israel is conducting genocide against Palestinians
May G-d grant us peace.
Published in Terrorism
Well-stated post. I think many people equate the Israel/Palestinian quagmire as a White/Black race issue. Also, you can’t be colonialist when you are an indigenous people.
A lot of people are fools. Your perception is not wrong, but theirs is.
I could hardly believe I was seeing people actually stating this as if it were fact. Goebbels at work that business. Thank you for exposing it here. Everybody: Fight this vile lie everywhere you encounter it.
Yes, what does “indigenous” mean if it doesn’t mean it was your national capital 3,000 years ago?
Yes. Amazing how quick you can go from sharing your orgy of rape and murder on live video to denying it ever happened to blaming the victims for it.
Put the Darth Putin way: The problem with propaganda is that the past changes so quickly you can hardly keep up with it.
Corporate media never seems to complain about disinformation when they propagate it.
–
So in other words, the IDF actually did kill a significant number of Israeli civilians, but that just proves they’re not “racist”.
As to your two conclusions, firstly I’d agreed that Israel isn’t a European Colonialist State.
It’s a nasty terrorist state currently run by dangerous fanatics and engaged in a territorial dispute with another bunch of fanatics. A dispute which would be of little relevance to the rest of the world if the Israeli lobby didn’t own most of the US Congress.
To re-state your second conclusion, “the fact that Israel is killing thousands of civilians in Gaza doesn’t mean that Israel is killing thousands of civilians in Gaza”.
I didn’t say significant. Neither did the Israeli press. The situations would have been extremely limited and focused on saving lives in the moment. I could imagine a few dozen at most.
If your people were ethnically cleansed from 1/4 of the earth’s surface and then the people who did it promised to genocide you from the land you were driven to… what the actual heck would you do? It isn’t a territorial dispute – it is an existential fight for survival by a people who other peoples seem intent on eliminating.
We withdrew from Palestinian population centers and withdrew from Gaza and signed worthless peace treaties and offered all the pre-67 Jordan on the Western Side of the Jordan river to a new state. Every attempt at peace was met with war.
The goal, after all, is genocide.
Despite this, Arabs and Muslims sit in the Knesset and even headed the tremendously powerful Supreme Court. While there is the sorts of day-to-day discrimination any country has too much of, there is no legal discrimination. Also, the Muslim population has exploded while basic quality of life metrics for Arabs in Israel far exceed those of neighboring countries. Even those in the territories are on par or better than those of neighboring countries.
For a terrorist state with a massive army we do a crap job of killing Arabs. Assad Sr. managed 40,000 in a weekend. Israel could have killed 300,000 in a weekend – without nukes. But we didn’t.
Not terribly fanatic or terroristic, you know?
The U.S. doesn’t make the dispute relevant; the world’s obsession with Jews does. See the BBC, AFP etc… giving every skirmish in Israel more attention than the the war in Yemen or mass killings in Nigeria. You guys are fixated on us. It might be nice if you weren’t. I am thankful that the U.S. recognizes what’s right and helps us – and I’m thankful we use the tools we have to make that happen.
We almost certainly aren’t killing thousands of civilians. Hamas makes stuff up. The big operation to rescue 1000 wounded Gaza children by the UAE brought out 7 kids.
First flight, sure – but 7 kids is all you could manage given all the claims?
Ahh, it’s our resident 9/11 troofer once again. I haven’t seen you in a bit, Tom. Did the home just reinstate your wifi privileges? Or were the sneaky Joooooos jamming your access?
I would be very happy if I could get through the rest of my life without hearing another word about Jews or Israel.
I didn’t ask your people to buy up nearly every American politician and most of the US media, and then use that influence to get the USA ( and much of the English speaking world ) to do whatever seems to be in Israeli / jewish interests.
The neocon Iraq war and Nuland’s Ukraine war are just two examples, but as you well know there are rather a lot of others I could give.
Well, that’s easy! Start by not opening/commenting on articles about Israel. I heard news organizations respond to the profit motive. Articles get promoted, because people want to read them.
So just stop. Just like that, the most you’ll encounter is a headline.
Inner peace discovered.
You do realize that ‘Israeli/Jewish interests’ is a term so broad as to be meaningless. You did notice that we had massive political infighting here in Israel not long ago, and will again once Hamas is gone? You did notice that most of the Jews on this site are conservatives, while most Jews are liberal? You do notice the media we ‘own’ has long been highly critical of Israel – suggesting ‘media Jews’ and ‘Israeli Jews’ don’t exactly see eye-to-eye?
Jews don’t even agree on whether we should continue to exist – judging by U.S. assimilation rates and the prominence of Jewish Voices for Peace – an anti-Israel organization.
But you must have known that, right?
Sure AIPAC lobbied on behalf of the Israeli government prior to the Judicial Reform crisis.
Then again, AIPAC spends $2.8 million/yr on lobbying, 1/10th of the Saudis and 1/20th of the Chinese. AIPAC actually spends 1/2000th of all lobbying dollars.
If we can buy Congress with that, there must be a special Jewish Dollar to U.S. Dollar exchange rate I don’t know about?!?
Darn Jewish Conspiracy – letting me down again!
While the Israeli government was generally in favor of the second war in Iraq, that isn’t why the U.S. attacked. The first time was Kuwait and oil. I personally think the second time was national and family honor after the US/Bush Family abandoned the Kurds in the aftermath of the first war.
I guess you should blame the all-powerful Kurdish lobby, right?
In Ukraine? Man, you must be smoking somethin’ powerful to imagine that the Jooos started that one. I mean, whose side would we be on? The Jewish leadership of Ukraine or the Jew-friendly Putin? While we’ve said nice things in support of Ukraine, we’ve gone so far as to prevent countries from supplying Ukraine with Spike missiles. Also, we are the only ‘Western’ country with flights to Moscow.
I’m really confused about how the Jooos benefit from the Russian invasion. I even heard that lots of Ukrainian Jews have died in combat – and we didn’t even give them air defense. I mean, we just can’t stay consistent can we.
I guess a man without blinders will need to show me the truth.
But he should take his time. I’ll gladly wait until after he selflessly decides to give up on his inner peace and spend time talking about Israel and the Jews.
!!!
Saudi: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/10/saudi-arabia-ramped-up-foreign-influence-operations-in-the-us-during-bidens-presidency/
AIPAC: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2021&id=D000046963
China: https://www.axios.com/2021/05/11/china-foreign-influence-spending
Total: https://www.statista.com/statistics/257337/total-lobbying-spending-in-the-us/
In some sense, all that’s needed is this, again:
Civilians die in war.
Israel’s goal is to minimize this. Palestine’s role is to maximize it.
If you cannot see this I do not know how we can reasonably talk about what you don’t like talking about but are still talking about.
As with Russia and Ukraine, there are no good guys and bad guys. There have never been good guys and bad guys on the face of the earth. There are instead better guys and worse guys.
Obviously there is utility in a pr/disinfo campaign during wartime to demonize your enemy and angelize yourself. Special pleading is in the mix and you can use it to get cash prizes and materiel.
But if you look at numbers, videos, RoEs, efforts at peace, and efforts to keep people from dying and still come away thinking that Hamas are in any way justified – you’re probably never going to hear the end of it because almost no one will agree with you.
You Hasbara types sure do have your misleading statistics close at hand. If I just bought one bottle of wine with cash every month to take home, but ran up four-figure bar tabs every night on a company expense account, I suppose I could claim I only spent a fraction of 1 percent of my income on booze, but that wouldn’t exactly be the whole picture would it.
Isn’t it funny how US politicians can pretty much openly call for war with China for example, but getting on the wrong side of the Israeli lobby is fatal to their career. The total amount of “jewish” money in politics, from all sources, is an overwhelming influence.
And yes, no doubt there are various factions in Israel and among American Jews ( “should we just shoot a few Palestinians or slaughter ’em all” for example ). You miss the point because you have such a selfish and ethnocentric worldview. It shouldn’t matter to Americans what 2% of the US population and a mendacious foreign country think about anything.
Because people like me will vote their sorry butts out of office.
I keep hearing this, but nobody has ever cut me a check. Maybe it’s something else then. Maybe it’s just because whereas I’ve known quite a few admirable Jews, I’ve yet to meet an antisemite who wasn’t a repulsive, conspiracy-obsessed swivel-eyed loon.
Not all trolls are self-aware.
I actually agree with you in a way. One thing I find annoying about American commentators, even those I generally agree with, is their tendency to talk about opponents/enemies as the “bad guys”, as if conflicting interests could be resolved by just seeing who’s wearing a black hat or a white hat.
I do think you have perhaps too rosy a view of Israel. At least two former Israeli Prime Ministers ( Begin and Shamir) would meet any reasonable definition of being “terrorists” when they were young, and if things had worked out differently would have been hanged for murder. ( And to avoid doubt, I think they should have been ).
Where I disagree with you is that I simply don’t believe anything the Israeli government ( or Hamas ) says about anything.
Well thank you for that useful comment, which has added greatly to the sum of human knowledge.
Feel free to send me a private message, where you can no doubt explain how the laws of physics, like Larry Silverstein, took a day off on 11/9. ( I’m in a bar in Mayfair at the moment running up an enormous bar tab, so I’ve used the British date ).
You can’t rebut evidence with hyperbole, though I suppose it feels good to try.
Also, ‘Hasbara types’? Really? That’s just what an Alinskyite would say.
Probably because American Jews are aware of history, and know that the US has long backed their ally Israel while American Chinese are aware of history and know that they are lucky to not live in China.
The vast majority of Jews don’t want to shoot anyone, and weren’t shooting anyone until a certain recent event which changed the dynamic.
I’m not Jewish. I favor killing until Hamas is no more. I favor disarming Palestine and increasing embargoes. As time goes on the idea of slaughtering ’em all is becoming more appealing.
Israel is a democracy and our ally. China is not a democracy and is in many – but I hope not all – ways our adversary.
I am plenty interested in what sub-populations of Americans want.
Because Americans.
How about what our state department says?
2022 $615 million in dark money spending.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/06/record-contributions-dark-money-groups-shell-companies-flooded-midterm-elections-2022/
2022 $4 billion in lobbying, year in and year out.
I’m looking at the bar tab, buddy. The dark money spending is far far smaller and LOTS of people pool that money together. Tea Party, corporations, unions, Ricochet members….
Hmmm.. Maybe China being a communist dictatorship intent on competing with the US by undermining US institutions has something to do with it?
The secret to Jewish influence isn’t the Jewish money, it is the Jewish integration into American society. Not only society in general, but influential society.
Take the Nobel Prize. We are only 0.2% of the world population, our scientific contributions shouldn’t matter. But we keep picking up awards that mark acts of contribution – we have 26% of all the science prizes. I got it! The Nobel Committee must be rigged by Jewish money.
We contribute, we make friends. As a result, powerful people in the US know Jews and don’t happen to hate them – which is nice.
That’s influence money can’t buy.
Of course, there are only 16 million Jews on the whole planet. You’ll have to admit that we simply don’t have the manpower to rule the whole world. I bet if you had to lay your bets, you’d pick the countries we secretly control. Say, the US, Canada, the UK, Western Europe, Australia. You know, the ‘West’.
If you believe this, and you want to live a life truly free of Jewish influence, just move outside our sphere of influence. Maybe Africa appeals to you? Or China, Russia, Southeast Asia or Yemen? They are all wonderful places largely free of Jewish influence. And you can pick the racists you want to hang out with! They come in all colors!
Of course, if you believe this you probably have to admit that we’re also really gifted at secretly controlling countries. Those other places are unfree basket cases.
I bow before your superior knowledge. Have you see the Jewish Wokists campaigning against Israel recently? They are debating how best to help Hamas decolonize Israel – as in kill every Jew who lives here. I guess they’re just faking. Oh, and nobody is calling for Palestinians to be slaughtered. Not even Meir Kahane (who wanted expulsion). They are calling for Hamas to be ended.
I have a particularly wide worldview. That’s the reason I would have supported Yezidis fighting back with vigor against ISIS – if they had the chance. Same thing – a people facing elimination gets to not be eliminated. Kinda basic.
I also want to see a truly free Palestine. I just don’t think Hamas is the way to get there.
I know. I’m writing a response not to convince or to teach him. But to share thoughts with you. Heck, I surprised people with the lobbying data :)
So the only reason an American politician would support Israel is if he’s been bought off? What about the 95% of the Ricochet membership who are anti-Hamas and pro-Israel? Nobody is paying us. I take Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib at their word that they are anti-Israel, I don’t suspect that they have been bought off. Give people some credit for having arrived at their own conclusions.
You want to see a conspiracy when what’s actually happening is a diverse group of American patriots see Israel as a key democratic ally in the region. An ally that provides great technological support in the high-tech, medical, agricultural and military fields.
It is a win-win for the United States and Israel, just like alliances with the UK, France, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and others. I really don’t know why Japanese, Koreans or Taiwanese, who are a tiny percentage of the US population should have such a powerful influence. Hmmm? Maybe because they are democracies on the borders of unfree and threatening states?
Oh, and do you know what Israel asks for through its vast influence campaign?
Not soldiers stationed on its territory like all of Western and Southern Europe as well as every East Asian and Arab ally. There are no American bases here. Your boys shouldn’t be put at risk for our people.
Not a formal treaty of mutual defense, like all of NATO.
No, we ask for military material (in the form of money we have to spend in the US) and the occasional veto at the UN Security Council – an organization even more obsessed with Jews than you are.
Funny, isn’t it? Israel gets $3.8 billion in military aid from the US. But the way you tell it, Israel is spending far more than that to secure that aid – you know, buying all the politicians and media and such.
I guess those sneaky Jews just aren’t that good at math.
Given that, I wonder how they made their money in the first place?
This is such an awesome argument!
It must be great to be an Israeli. You can kill women and children in Gaza, and it’s the fault of Hamas. You can kill your own people in Israel, and it’s the fault of Hamas.
Killing your own people even proves that you’re not racist! Who knew?
It must be so great to be a Jew. The rest of us are so unworthy.