I’ve put off replying to this for a bit (11 days says the counter) because I have trouble figuring out how to engage with this respectfully. I think there are factual details here that it could be interesting to discuss, for example that neither the US nor Iran appear to have clear leadership in how they approach this war.
The MoU was clearly not popular in much of the US administration, and yet Trump signed it, and I think he did so as earnestly as he is capable of. As for Iran, the messaging from Mojtaba Khamenei’s office were also critical of the MoU, saying that they approved it because it was the will of the parliament and apparently the public at large, but that they disagreed.
These circumstances of course make a deal like this fragile and it may have motivated people in charge of various aspects of upholding it, to instead provoke the other side in order to make it fall apart. I do not blame the USA alone for that.
Anyway, that’s not the problem I’m having with this exchange. What gives me pause is this:
Yeah you’d have to be childishly naive to believe or at least act the part to claim that that is up for interpretation
regarding the idea that Hezbollah was not honoring the ceasefire, and this whether the use of preemptive strikes by Israel against Hezbollah were justified. I find that difficult to engage with, because I don’t want to play along with the narrative that one side needs to be completely annihilated for the other to know peace.
Israel has a long history of this exact behavior. They have a decades-old pattern of “preemptive” strikes, where they claim to have intelligence or knowledge that they were going to be attacked, and just destroy a place with impunity. I think the naïve interpretation is that those claims are always accurate. It requires us to never question Israel’s narrative, which is that they’re the victim even when they strike first - they’re just a “smart” victim because they didn’t wait to be victimized. I don’t think that disposition helps us understand the world we live in and it prevents any kind of peace from forming.
The facts are simple: there was a ceasefire agreement, and one side honored it while the other didn’t. You can’t claim to be justified in that, because you had a hunch the side that was honoring it was only doing so as some kind of trick. It doesn’t work that way. We as outsiders can’t play along with accepting that.
If there’s no active military conflict between two countries and one strikes the other, we’d need overwhelming evidence to accept that the country that carried out the strike was justified in their actions. You can’t just bomb infrastructure, bridges or even barracks/hangars out of nowhere and say “well they were looking at me shifty, I’m the victim, they started it.” No. When you’re the first, or the only one to use violence, then it is almost certainly you who are the aggressor.
one side needs to be completely annihilated for the other to know peace
The people making up Hezbollah do not need to be annihilated for that. Hezbollah needs to retreat above the Litani and surrender their weapons to Lebanon
because you had a hunch the side that was honoring it was only doing so as some kind of trick
Well that’s, indeed, where we differ. And why I posted that article of Hezbollah boasting that they used the previous ceasefire to do exactly that.
Imagine your neighbours attacked your family and when you fight them back into their basement they shout “Time-out! Ceasefire!!”.
Sure, you might want to give peace a chance and act righteous.
But now imagine that this already happened numerous times before. After you agreed to a ceasefire last year, they’ve been posting on facebook how they tricked you and restocked their ammo. How eager would you be to, again, agree to a ceasefire in that scenario? How (un)reasonable would it be to at least make them move a few blocks (so they can’t shoot your family as easily) part of that ceasefire deal?
No, you’re factually wrong here. Israel is not fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, they’re fighting the Lebanese people. They have declared the south of Lebanon as a “Shia-free” zone. They are trying to commit a genocide exactly as they are committing genocide in the West Bank and in Gaza. Retreat past the Litani will not stop them.
In any case. You have now openly admitted that you do not believe in a ceasefire, so I don’t know what the point is of arguing whether it was one side or the other that refused to honor it. I think you perfectly exemplify the reasoning of Zionists - you don’t need to honor an agreement, because the other side wasn’t going to honor it so you were just smart and broke it first!
And by the way, MEE isn’t the Media wing of Hezbollah, so the article you linked says 0. And even if it was threir official news channel, so what? Oh they said something that triggered you so now you have to bomb schools?
Sounds exactly like the apologism for America’s war. Some Iranians said “death to America,” and that somehow justifies the use of actual violence.
It is impossible for a reasonable person to engage with this kind of actual mental illness in good faith. I’m sorry. Fuck you and your shitty genocide apologism.
That is the only way to read your post. You’re holding a London-based editorial article as “proof” that a different organization wasn’t doing what they were literally doing. Hezbollah honored the ceasefire for a month while Beirut was being bombed every single day, but your editorial article makes it okay.
I’ve put off replying to this for a bit (11 days says the counter) because I have trouble figuring out how to engage with this respectfully. I think there are factual details here that it could be interesting to discuss, for example that neither the US nor Iran appear to have clear leadership in how they approach this war.
The MoU was clearly not popular in much of the US administration, and yet Trump signed it, and I think he did so as earnestly as he is capable of. As for Iran, the messaging from Mojtaba Khamenei’s office were also critical of the MoU, saying that they approved it because it was the will of the parliament and apparently the public at large, but that they disagreed.
These circumstances of course make a deal like this fragile and it may have motivated people in charge of various aspects of upholding it, to instead provoke the other side in order to make it fall apart. I do not blame the USA alone for that.
Anyway, that’s not the problem I’m having with this exchange. What gives me pause is this:
regarding the idea that Hezbollah was not honoring the ceasefire, and this whether the use of preemptive strikes by Israel against Hezbollah were justified. I find that difficult to engage with, because I don’t want to play along with the narrative that one side needs to be completely annihilated for the other to know peace.
Israel has a long history of this exact behavior. They have a decades-old pattern of “preemptive” strikes, where they claim to have intelligence or knowledge that they were going to be attacked, and just destroy a place with impunity. I think the naïve interpretation is that those claims are always accurate. It requires us to never question Israel’s narrative, which is that they’re the victim even when they strike first - they’re just a “smart” victim because they didn’t wait to be victimized. I don’t think that disposition helps us understand the world we live in and it prevents any kind of peace from forming.
The facts are simple: there was a ceasefire agreement, and one side honored it while the other didn’t. You can’t claim to be justified in that, because you had a hunch the side that was honoring it was only doing so as some kind of trick. It doesn’t work that way. We as outsiders can’t play along with accepting that.
If there’s no active military conflict between two countries and one strikes the other, we’d need overwhelming evidence to accept that the country that carried out the strike was justified in their actions. You can’t just bomb infrastructure, bridges or even barracks/hangars out of nowhere and say “well they were looking at me shifty, I’m the victim, they started it.” No. When you’re the first, or the only one to use violence, then it is almost certainly you who are the aggressor.
The people making up Hezbollah do not need to be annihilated for that. Hezbollah needs to retreat above the Litani and surrender their weapons to Lebanon
Well that’s, indeed, where we differ. And why I posted that article of Hezbollah boasting that they used the previous ceasefire to do exactly that.
Imagine your neighbours attacked your family and when you fight them back into their basement they shout “Time-out! Ceasefire!!”.
Sure, you might want to give peace a chance and act righteous. But now imagine that this already happened numerous times before. After you agreed to a ceasefire last year, they’ve been posting on facebook how they tricked you and restocked their ammo. How eager would you be to, again, agree to a ceasefire in that scenario? How (un)reasonable would it be to at least make them move a few blocks (so they can’t shoot your family as easily) part of that ceasefire deal?
No, you’re factually wrong here. Israel is not fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, they’re fighting the Lebanese people. They have declared the south of Lebanon as a “Shia-free” zone. They are trying to commit a genocide exactly as they are committing genocide in the West Bank and in Gaza. Retreat past the Litani will not stop them.
In any case. You have now openly admitted that you do not believe in a ceasefire, so I don’t know what the point is of arguing whether it was one side or the other that refused to honor it. I think you perfectly exemplify the reasoning of Zionists - you don’t need to honor an agreement, because the other side wasn’t going to honor it so you were just smart and broke it first!
And by the way, MEE isn’t the Media wing of Hezbollah, so the article you linked says 0. And even if it was threir official news channel, so what? Oh they said something that triggered you so now you have to bomb schools?
Sounds exactly like the apologism for America’s war. Some Iranians said “death to America,” and that somehow justifies the use of actual violence.
It is impossible for a reasonable person to engage with this kind of actual mental illness in good faith. I’m sorry. Fuck you and your shitty genocide apologism.
They said something so now I have to bomb schools? I’m sorry if that’s what you read in my post
That is the only way to read your post. You’re holding a London-based editorial article as “proof” that a different organization wasn’t doing what they were literally doing. Hezbollah honored the ceasefire for a month while Beirut was being bombed every single day, but your editorial article makes it okay.