Yes, Iran's funding of terror groups must be removed entirely, and the International community should sanction Iran to achieve this. This is the only way to limit Hamas and Hezbollah's capabilities. The problem then arises that when I say : And Israel needs to stop expanding in the West Bank, and the International community should sanction Israel to achieve this, your responses are not strong.
As I understand it, fundamentally, the contrast in our arguments is that:
a. (I am led to believe that) you believe that military action will lead to victory, and criticism of the IDF is an attack.
b. i believe that military action perpetuates the conflict and that no entity - IDF or otherwise, is above criticism. I accept you cant or wont say certain things, but this hurts your argument.
(as an example: re: Palestinians as human beings. Rather then address my point, you flip it around saying Hezbollah and Hamas refuse to view Palestinians as human beings, sidestepping Israels collective punishment in Gaza; the 2 years of bombing. the West Bank etc.)
In addition:
c. (I am led to believe that) you do not subscribe to the notion of certain Israeli actions are acts of aggression, and are instead all acts of defense.
d. I believe that Israels actions, particularly in the West Bank, are acts of aggression. The bombing of Iran in 2026, the bombing of Qatar, also acts of aggression (Bombing Iran in 2025 would be considered a defensive action however).
and finally:
e. (I am led to believe that) you do not subscribe to the notion of proportionate response.
f. I believe that disproportionate response (and Israel is not alone in this, the United States is the same) is not in Israels long term interests. The US can get away with it because its so big, isolated and has an ultimate army.
At the end of the day Israel is a small country with a tiny population and it is not isolated, it is smack bang in the middle east. Yes it has a highly advanced and trained military, it has some very intelligent people, but there is a glaring problem with the relationship with the Palestinian people and the relationship Israel has with it's neighbors.
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I accept your country suffers repeated terrorist attacks, and I acknowledge that for a variety of reasons Israels responses will always be disproportionate. Iran has funded Hamas and Hezbollah for decades, this is a fact. If you cut the funding from Iran the effectiveness of Hamas and Hezbollah will be greatly reduced. i.e. you will reduce the degree to which people you are oppressing, in Gaza and the West Bank can operate or resist Israel's will. However, you are still left with Israel doing bad things to Gaza and the West Bank (and its neighbors).
The slow creeping death which is the West Bank is a topic that has to be acknowledged as wrong.
you’ve laid out a long list of assumptions about my positions instead of dealing with the stark strategic reality of the region.
You state that Iran's funding must be removed entirely via international sanctions, and that if you cut the funding, you 'reduce the degree to which people you are oppressing... can resist.' Look at what you are admitting here. You are explicitly defining Hamas and Hezbollah's actions massacres of civilians, suicide bombings, and firing tens of thousands of indiscriminate rockets at cities as 'resistance.' This completely exposes the flaw in your argument. The West Bank settlements are a deeply contentious political issue with plenty of internal Israeli debate and criticism. But to imply that a border dispute in Judea and Samaria is what drives a fundamentalist jihadist group in Gaza or Lebanon to launch a war of annihilation is completely false. Hamas and Hezbollah do not fight for a two-state solution or a frozen settlement line; their stated goal is the complete eradication of the Jewish state. Furthermore, relying on 'international sanctions' to stop Iran is a proven failure. Iran has been heavily sanctioned for decades, yet they still managed to fund a multi-billion-dollar regional terror network. Expecting Israel to outsource its survival to international committees while missiles are actively raining down on its citizens is not a viable security strategy.
You claim Israel’s responses are disproportionate. Let’s define what 'proportionality' actually means in international law. It does not mean an equal body count. It does not mean that if one side is bad at killing civilians because the other side invested billions in bomb shelters and Iron Dome, the victim has to pause and let more of its citizens die to make the numbers look 'fair.' Proportionality in warfare means that the military force used must be proportional to the military objective which is the permanent elimination of the threat. When an enemy embeds its entire military infrastructure inside civilian apartment buildings, hospitals, and schools, the tragic reality of urban warfare is that eliminating that threat requires massive force. If your definition of 'proportionate' means Israel must leave the terror infrastructure intact to avoid civilian casualties, you are giving a permanent immunity shield to any terrorist who hides behind a child. No sovereign nation on earth would accept those terms.
You label Israel's strikes across the region as 'acts of aggression.' This is an incredible inversion of reality. Israel is a small country surrounded by an Iranian-led 'ring of fire' consisting of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and radical militias in Syria and Iraq. Over the past two years, all of these groups have been launched into a coordinated, multi-front war against Israel. When Israel strikes long-range assets in Iran, Syria, or anywhere else, it is not launching a war of expansion. It is striking the head of the snake that is feeding the proxies on its borders. Calling a defensive strike against an active launchpad 'aggression' is like blaming a person for punching back after being surrounded by five attackers.
You conclude by saying Israel is a small country with a glaring problem regarding its neighbors. We know exactly how small we are. That is precisely why we cannot afford to lose a single war. If Canada or Mexico explicitly dedicated themselves to the total erasure of the United States and launched thousands of rockets at American cities, the U.S. would completely flatten those threats within weeks, and no one would lecture them about 'restraint.'
I never said the IDF or the Israeli government is above criticism. There are fierce, daily debates inside Israel about our borders, our leadership, and our future. But there is a massive difference between criticizing a government's domestic policies and demanding that a state apologize for refusing to let its enemies butcher its population. Rather than sidestepping the humanity of Palestinians, I am acknowledging a harsh truth: Hamas and Hezbollah are the ones who weaponize Palestinian lives by using them as human shields to enforce a permanent state of war.
Israel's military actions aren't born out of a desire to 'oppress' they are born out of the absolute necessity to ensure that when our children go to sleep, they don't wake up to air raid sirens or terrorists breaching their windows