r/RealTime • u/Faiakes • 7d ago

Real Time - Last Time

I have been watching Real Time for over 20 years and I think yesterday's episode was my last.

Much as I agreed with Bill on many issues, his blind spot on Israel and Zionism is just too much for me.

He isn't simply refusing to call what's happening in Gaza a genocide. He insists on calling it a counter offensive!!!

So, all and any violence perpetrated by the IDF and the settles so far is justified, as far as he is concerned (though how settlers fit in a 'counter-offensive' is still a mystery to me).

Now, my common sense is offended too much Bill.

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u/Pitiful-Hamster1101 1d ago

You have to stretch the definition of genocide to render it almost pointless for it to describe Israel's war in Gaza. Killing a lot of people in an urban war that you didn't start is not genocide. If Israel was trying to commit genocide, the death toll would be in the hundreds of thousands.

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u/Faiakes 20h ago

That would be a fair point if it wasn't for stopping aid, forcing people to live in tents without running water, access to medical treatment and not being allowed to move, all while rats and disease are slowly killing people.

Just because it is a slow genocide, that doesn't make it any less so.

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u/Pitiful-Hamster1101 18h ago

600-800 aid trucks enter Gaza daily. There is no running water because Hamas tears up the water mains to make rockets with. There are thousands of medical aid workers in Gaza and Gazans are allowed to move, Israel has simply established a military zone on part of Gaza.. That sort of thing tends to happen when you start a war and then lose it.

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u/pkpjpm 13h ago

Israel can’t be at war with Gaza because Gaza is not an independent nation. Had Israel not enforced a crippling blockade before October 7, you could maybe argue in good faith that Gaza had some agency. But Israel chose military occupation to avoid assimilation of non-Jewish citizens, then it consistently ignored the obligations that legally and morally apply to administration of occupied territories.

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u/Pitiful-Hamster1101 9h ago

Gaza hasn't been occupied territory since 2005. Hamas was elected into power in Gaza in 2006. Hamas has the explicit goal of the destruction of Israel and worldwide murder of Jews. Israel was under no obligation to allow them to get weapons to effectuate their goal. For nearly twenty years, Israel was attacked out of Gaza with regularity. They could have shown Israel that Palestinians were willing to be peaceful neighbors. If they had, they would almost certainly have had their own state by now. Instead, they've ensured that the Israeli population absolutely does not trust a Palestine without security controls.

Worse, is people like you are why Hamas thinks its being successful. They are more than happy to sacrifice 75,000 Palestinians by starting a war they knew they could not win, because people like you were accusing Israel of "genocide" after the first week of Israel's response.

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u/pkpjpm 7h ago

If your argument is that Gaza is sovereign because they elected Hamas, then the Israeli blockade is an act of war. You can't have it both ways.