> There is no context that justifies UNESCO focussing on criticism of Israel's self defence, as opposed to focussing on Hamas's attrocity that started the war (or Putin etc)
Sure there is. Only one is still actively happening, and it's the one that's killed 20-60x as many civilians, depending on whose estimates you follow.
> There is no context that justifies UNESCO rebranding Jewish holy places as “Palestinian World Heritage sites.” Jews existed in the region for more than a thousand years before the violent Islamic conquest and colonisation.
The context there is simple; quite a few places are holy to more than one religion. Some are holy to Palestinians; some are in Palestinian territories, like the Church of the Nativity.
> Only one is still actively happening, and it's the one that's killed 20-60x as many civilians, depending on whose estimates you follow.
Firstly, I hope we can agree that estimates by the designated terrorist (and Iranian proxy militia) government of Gaza, Hamas, cannot be relied on.
Secondly, are you aware that 2 million German citizens were killed in WW2, versus only 70,000 UK citizens?
By your logic, should we have chastised the UK, prevented it winning the war (which Germany started), and allowed Germany to continue to invade its neighbours and exterminate Jewish people?
Israel disputes the proportion of civilians to some extent, but not that tens of thousands are dead. Last year: https://www.voanews.com/a/israel-publishes-new-civilian-deat... "Earlier this month, Israel's government offered its first estimate of the operation's death toll, saying its troops have killed 14,000 terrorists and 16,000 civilians." That's 10x what Hamas killed on Oct 7, and that's a year old estimate from an involved source with motivations to keep that number low.
> Secondly, are you aware that 2 million German citizens were killed in WW2, versus only 70,000 UK citizens?
In both cases, the counts indicate technological / logistical / war outcome differences. They don't automatically infer morality of those deaths, and comparing the era of saturation bombing to that of precision weaponry is pretty desperate of you.
> In both cases, the counts indicate technological / logistical / war outcome differences. They don't automatically infer morality of those deaths, and comparing the era of saturation bombing to that of precision weaponry is pretty desperate of you.
It certainly indicates war outcome in both cases (Germany and Gaza). Both these antagonists started wars which they then lost.
One major logistical difference is the propensity of Hamas to use its citizens as human shields. It's on record calling on its citizens to "bare their chests" against Israel, as it is wise to the fact that the World is watching, and there are plenty of Westerners on the Left who would be useful idiots to the Hamas agenda (which is the annihilation of Israel, as stated in the Hamas Charter).
> This is what happens when your neighbours wall you off because they don't want you in their countries…
Ah, so now context matters.
> keep training your children to hate them
As do Israeli settlers.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/clip-of-israeli... "An Israeli organization calling itself The Civil Front has sparked controversy on social media by producing a song in which children fete the “destruction” in Gaza and say “nothing will be left there” in a year’s time."
> you deliberately fight using civilians as human shields
> An Israeli organization calling itself The Civil Front has sparked controversy on social media by producing a song in which children fete the “destruction” in Gaza and say “nothing will be left there” in a year’s time."
That sounds like extreme Israelis, or the average Palestinian. If this were normal, Palestine would just be bombed to dust
Yes, that is bad. But that doesn't remove the other thing. Stop thinking in sides and start thinking in principles. If you hide behind civilians in a war then you get to have sympathetic journalists write pieces about the natural results of that practice, but you also clearly don't care about your civilians.
> Is that actually what happened?
I don't know - I'm responding to earlier in the thread, as that didn't seem to be challenged before. Here[0]'s an example of what they mean, I think.
It's squarely in the middle of the West Bank. The list is categorized by physical location; for similar reasons, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/529 is Bolivian, not Catholic.
That's not bombing. Bombing is generally from the air. I mean they went house to house and tried to clear things out and airdropped warnings at much greater risk to personnel than bombing. To minimise civilian casualties. Now the reality of that is painful still, because war is painful, but their strategy clearly wasn't just to level Gaza or they'd have never done it this way.
> Both should make you angry.
So don't bring the other thing up when I mention the first thing. You address the first thing instead of this whataboutism.
> More skeptical?
The pro-Palestinian take is the most credulous one, most likely to be adopted by children and young adults. I'm not saying it's wrong for that reason, but you absolutely need to be a sceptic to even consider Israel's position at all.
"By October 2024, Israel said it bombed 40,000 locations in the Gaza Strip (which is 360 km2). By one estimate, as of April 2024 the bomb tonnage dropped on Gaza was more than 70,000 tonnes, surpassing the combined bomb tonnage dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London in World War II."
That is, on average, almost a ton of explosives per acre. (360 square kilometers is ~89k acres)
> So don't bring the other thing up when I mention the first thing.
==There is no context that justifies Hamas using schools as weapons hubs.==
Hamas isn't a part of UNESCO, nor should they be. I don't think we should let the KKK, Proud Boys, or Gatekeepers into UNESCO either based on their domestic terror activities.
