My understanding is that no Israeli soldier went on record, it’s all anonymous testimonies. If these were true allegations it’s understandable why they would want to be anonymous, but obviously the Israeli government is going to figure out who was in this documentary, so it would have been more logical for them to just go on the record if these allegations were true.

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iainmerrick 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Okay, one viewpoint is that it's broadly true, maybe with some exaggeration by the filmmakers and/or interviewees. It's very understandable that soldiers would want to stay anonymous in that version.

I don't think many people would buy your "more logical for them to just go on the record" claim -- in this situation, people are scared! And they have conflicted loyalties as well. They want to blow the whistle, but don't necessarily want to directly accuse their immediate colleagues to their faces.

Another viewpoint is that it's partly true but misleading -- the filmmakers and whistleblowers have blown things entirely out of proportion. That sounds entirely possible. But wouldn't the "logical" response then be more transparency, rather than accusations of treason and a witch-hunt for the collaborators?

And another viewpoint is that it's all completely fabricated, malicious lies. Possibly an extreme crackdown might be an appropriate response in that case? That seems very counter-productive to me, as an outsider, but again cold logic doesn't always apply.

Which of those viewpoints do you find yourself agreeing with?

To me, the broadly true one seems most likely from the available evidence; the hiding of evidence and the attempted crackdown support that one too. It also seems like some people genuinely believe (or pretend to themselves) that it's all malicious lies. To me that smacks of sheer paranoia. Understandable after the October 7 attack, sure, but not rational or productive.

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monideas 19 hours ago | parent [-]

My sense given what I’ve read is that it’s partly true but misleading (and there’s probably some outright lies). But even the idea of “misleading” is very difficult to define because we’re talking about moral judgments about how to conduct war.

For example, apparently in the film they recount a NAZA that was done for strikes to assassinate Hamas leaders in Gaza (NAZA is an acronym in Hebrew that means “collateral damage assessment”, these are done before all strikes in order to assess potential civilian casualties). In this particular case, the strike was planned to kill the Hamas leaders in their homes at night which would likely also kill their families, as opposed to some other time to kill them which would have more or less or different civilian casualties.

So in my opinion there is no issue with killing Hamas leaders in Gaza in their homes even if their families would also die but this may offend western sensibilities for various reasons including perhaps blanket opposition to killing or military conduct at all. But then again Western sensibilities have produced Western societies which have below replacement birth rates and various other social ills which Israelis cannot even conceive of because those issues do not exist in Israel. Jewish teenagers do not go and shoot up their schools, that is something only Arab terrorists do and the reason they do that is very obvious, as are the ways of preventing that.

In the most charitable interpretation, the filmmakers chose to make this film as Western liberals trying to influence the Israeli government to adopt more Western liberal values and approaches to conducting warfare. This is still traitorous conduct since they are aligned with a foreign ideology and interests who seek to do harm against their own state and their own people.

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iainmerrick 15 hours ago | parent [-]

You're hanging a lot of weight on birth rates to assert that they are wrong and therefore we are right. A birth rate above replacement isn't endlessly sustainable either, right?

And "the west" isn't really homogenous for these purposes. Most western countries don't have a school shootings problem, only the USA does. The parts of the west most heavily criticising Israel are not the USA, it's places like Spain and Ireland (both of which have interesting historical parallels!) I think the USA has a higher birth rate than the EU, so maybe you'd prefer them on that basis, but then you don't want school shootings, so maybe you prefer the EU. You can probably find a reason to dislike everyone if that's what you want to do.

In the most charitable interpretation, the filmmakers chose to make this film as Western liberals trying to influence the Israeli government to adopt more Western liberal values

That's hardly the most charitable interpretation! Maybe they're trying to influence Israeli citizens, or maybe they're trying to influence Zionists abroad? There's no need to assume some insidious outsider conspiracy.

Surely people are allowed to disagree non-violently with their current government! If that's the kind of "foreign ideology" that you're dismissing out of hand, well, that certainly clarifies things.

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ceejayoz 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> You're hanging a lot of weight on birth rates…

https://knowyourmeme.com/sensitive/memes/the-writers-barely-...

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monideas 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My point about the birth rates is that you need to treat all Western sensibilities as suspect given that they have led to non-viable societies. It doesn’t necessarily mean that every Western sensibility is wrong but that you have to essentially dismiss them all.

On one hand we have a functional society that is growing in wealth and also in population due to native born citizens meeting, getting married, having children.

On the other hand you have stagnant or declining societies (in real GDP terms) where people are not meeting, not getting married, not having children.

The school shootings is just one social ill I bring up, in Europe you have an issue with mass migration and Muslims engaging in mass sex crimes against children. I could go on about others (suicide rates, drug use rates, migration of young native people to other countries).

Does that make sense?

I never claimed there was an insidious outsider conspiracy although of course there is verified flows of foreign money from governments and NGOs to fund leftist causes and groups within Israel. You can look this up yourself, there are ongoing investigations in Congress as far as US moneys are concerned.

In this case I doubt that had much to do with it.

Israelis are well known for disagreeing with their government. This obviously goes beyond disagreement and into traitorous activity and it’s being treated as such by the Israeli government and Israeli public.

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iainmerrick 13 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think we are ever going to see eye to eye, but thanks for trying to explain.

	▲	monideas 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Fair enough, hopefully you and your society get a nice footnote in a history book somewhere