[1] https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHEvpbppx_4rgC8q0TVMf...
Well, well, well. That felt coordinated. Turns out it was.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1733146138226614465?ref_src...
If anything the skew within the platforms is to prioritize pro-palestinian views https://twitter.com/committeeonccp/status/173279243496103143...
It also seems like these platforms create (rather than support) anti-Israeli views: https://twitter.com/antgoldbloom/status/1730255552738201854
US views skew pro-israel, and GenZ is closer to 50/50, so if there's something going on online, it's not in favor of Israel.
It's probably relevant that there are 1 billion Muslims to 16 million Jews, and that the largest relevant population of pro-Israeli internationals is India and Indian Hindus, and they are not on TikTok (blocked in India).
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
As this is probably the most divisive topic that exists right now, the comments should be as thoughtful and substantive as commenters can make them. At a minimum, that means no flamebait, no name-calling, and no snark. Thank you.
Is that even legal under US law? Apparently it is in some states. Federal law does not, apparently, prohibit political discrimination. But some states do - California, New York, DC, Colorado, and North Dakota.[1]
This should be reported to the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force.[2] Anyone involved in such suppression activities may be considered an "unregistered foreign agent".[3] Anyone or any organization attempting to influence US policy on behalf of a foreign government is supposed to register. Here's the database.[4]
[1] https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/political-aff...
[2] https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/foreign-...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...
[4] https://search.justice.gov/search?affiliate=justice_fara
> Another possible explanation for this skew is that TikTok and IG are primarily *video* platforms [...] The *videos* of destruction and death in Gaza are far more horrific than corresponding *videos* in Israel
TikTok's "Community Guidelines" [0] read:
> We do not allow gory, gruesome, disturbing, or extremely violent content.
If a video depicting torture and killing wasn't taken down, either the poor moderators stuck viewing all this stuff just hadn't gotten to it yet or it was a failure in some way to enforce the TOS; not an indication that the TOS allows it.
[0] https://www.tiktok.com/community-guidelines/en/sensitive-mat...
I should revisit the guidelines and the FAQ sometime.
Also, here is a link that explains undocumented features and behaviors of HN for anyone interested:
The current Israeli government has espoused their views that Palestinians should not have their own state, that all Arabs are terror supporters who are the enemy of Israel, who should be exterminated or removed. And this was happening regularly long before October 7th. I wonder why some Palestinians don't see Israel as a viable partner in peace or that they feel their only option is to destroy Israel before they are destroyed themselves?
As an example, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are among the top 10 countries in terms of Twitter users.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-active-...
Politico has some coverage of the current Israel-related lobbying push.[2] There are a lot of players. "An unsanctioned coterie of pro-Israel quasi-lobbyists has descended on D.C." Some have formally registered as agents of Israel. Some haven't.
The big issue here is when activities go beyond lobbying. Anyone can lobby Congress; that's a constitutional right in the US. Getting people fired on behalf of a foreign power, though, is a legally questionable activity.
[1] https://thediplomat.com/2023/11/the-rise-and-fall-of-confuci...
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/22/pro-israel-lobbying...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
Anyway, we can make a similar argument about the Netanyahu regime: it is actively making Jewish, Israeli, and American people around the world less safe. It is almost treasonous that our elected officials are supporting this dangerous regime so uncritically.
[1] https://twitter.com/NikkiHaley/status/1720501916088590704
1. https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hres894/BILLS-118hres894i...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Israel#Suppressio...
Of course, Elon Musk decided to visit Israel after he came under criticism for agreeing with a blatantly anti-Semitic Tweet,[0] so some may question how sincere Musk's sudden change of heart is.
0. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/27/tech/elon-musk-isaac-herz...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/05/0...
https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/06/israel-netanyahu-denounc...
If Israel has its way, even thinking about Gaza as a concentration camp would be anti-Semitic.
"anti-Semitic" has been thrown around so much that it has lost its value. A red balloon, a walrus, or a nice cup of tea can be anti-Semitic nowadays.
I'll be as polite as I can about this, and take it one step at a time.
> Okay - then what should be Israel's response?
The world has been clear about this. Stop killing civilians and treat Palestinians as humans with rights.
> what they are doing is the bare minimum with the minimum casualties from the options they have.
That's not remotely true. Human rights groups and genocide experts around the world are screaming at world leaders to take action. Schools and refugee camps and humanitarian corridors and civil infrastructure and entire residential blocks are being vaporized without warning.
> Hamas is Gaza's government
The last election was in 2006, so this talking point is real stale.
> Hamas has intertwined the civilian and the military infrastructure.
The only proof that has been offered of that has been incredibly shoddily made, as if daring people to believe it.
> Hamas has made sure that the civilian Palestinians will suffer if you target Hamas.
That doesn't excuse war crimes, and it's highly fucked up to think that it does somehow.
> And it was Hamas that made sure with organized rape, torture and atrocities on Oct 7 that it can't be overlooked or forgiven.
The only evidence of organized rape that I've seen presented turned out to be a 10 year old photo of Kurdish women [0]. Torture? No evidence. By atrocities, do you mean the debunked beheaded babies? Or the debunked babies in oven claim? The debunked pregnant women cut open claim?
What Hamas did was atrocious, killing civilians and kidnapping people. So why embellish so devilishly? Only to excuse genocide, and grab land.
> Here is a good rule of thumb - if you are going to stir shit - stick to just killing. Don't livestream torture and rape, so diplomacy will have something to work with.
Again with the claims of "livestreamed torture and rape", which no one has actually seen.
You know who can be documented to have tortured and raped people in the last couple decades? Israel and the US. On many, many occasions. But in your view, at least they're smart enough not to livestream it - they only took photos.
0 - https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1724688009293873502
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15721106
The documentary "Boycott" explores the legislation passed in several U.S. states, including Arkansas, Arizona, and Texas, that requires individuals to pledge not to boycott Israel as a condition for receiving government funds. This legislation emerged in response to the Palestinian-led BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel. The film follows individuals who challenged these laws, including a publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona, and a speech pathologist in Texas, highlighting their legal battles and the implications for free speech
The establishment of “Israel” is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and goes against their will and the will of the Ummah ... There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity. ... Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967.
Again, people may use it trying to say something else, but slogans do not exist in a vacuum. Saying "from the river to the sea" means that all people should be free is akin to saying "arbeit macht frei" is a call for the financial independence of working people.
As for your second question, calls for ceasefire appeared while Hamas terrorists weree still in Israel, by no less than U.S. representatives [2].
[1] https://irp.fas.org/world/para/docs/hamas-2017.pdf
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ceasefire-in-gaza-mirage-is...
Then you have not been paying attention. Add this fact to your knowledge: US Republicans really ARE that ignorant. They certainly have an agenda, but they are most certainly ignorant to have such an idiotic agenda, too.
House Declares Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitism, Dividing Democrats
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/world/middleeast/house-an...
>More than half of House Democrats declined to back the Republican-written resolution, as some argued that equating criticism of the state of Israel with hatred of the Jewish people went too far.
>House Democrats splintered on Tuesday over a resolution condemning the rise of antisemitism in the United States and around the world, with more than half of them declining to support a measure declaring that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.”
>The resolution denouncing antisemitism, drafted by Republicans, passed by a vote of 311 to 14, drawing the support of all but one Republican. Ninety-two Democrats voted “present” — not taking a position for or against the measure — while 95 supported it.
>That reflected deep and growing divisions among Democrats between those who have offered unequivocal support for the Jewish state and its actions, and others — especially in the party’s progressive wing — who have been critical of Israel’s policies and its conduct in the war with Hamas.
>“Under this resolution, those who love Israel deeply but criticize some of its policy approaches could be considered anti-Zionist,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the longest-serving Jewish member of the House, said in a floor speech before he voted “present.” “That could make every Democratic Jewish member of this body, because they all criticized the recent Israeli judicial reform package, de facto antisemites. Might that be the author’s intention?”
Back in Oct about a week after the attack Bloomberg 's reporting on the attack and the beginning of the ended up being flagged on NH and only has 23pts: >>37910148
It seems that anti-Israel propaganda is way more successful than this pro-Israel information war.
75% of Palestinians "support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th." 76% have positive views of Hamas (other armed terrorist groups have even larger support).
https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20...
> https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
Then the Times of Israel is on the record with articles accusing Netanyahu of being anti-semitic. I don't think those things you list are anti-semitic - they just happen to be politically bad for Jews right now. There is a difference (an important one) between policies-bad-for-a-group and being motivated by an unreasonable hatred of a group.
Only about a thousand jewish refugees were let into the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/nyregion/oswego-jewish-re...
The US could provide humanitarian aid, but not military aid. Cut military aid to Israel. Maybe still provide Iron Dome reloads, but that's about it. Bring in a hospital ship off Gaza, to care for the injured. Send a few frigates to protect it from all parties. Discourage outside interference. Then wait to see how this plays out. It's not the US's fight, after all.
Creating a lot of noise over the issue tends to force people to choose a side and eliminates middle options. That may be part of the intent of this campaign. "Are you with us, or against us". No, we're fed up with both of you.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/why-a-sta...
Approximately 600,000 people died in the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia in the two years from November 2020 to November 2022. 40% of the Ethiopian population is children.
The Yemeni civil war (2016-present) had killed at least 377,000 people, as of two years ago. By now, many more than that.
There are mass graves in Mali and Sudan where hundreds of bodies are just piled up on top of each other, visible from space, thanks to collaboration between Wagner Group and the local regime.
Syria is bombing their own population once again at this very moment, in continuation of their 10 year civil war which has killed at least 300,000. Notably, many, many images from the Syrian civil war have been recycled as supposed footage from Gaza (https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/12/08/images-of-syrian-...) for propaganda purposes - not that there isn't plenty of legitimate horrible footage from Gaza too.
Basically every human rights org has come out and declared it an apartheid state based off how non-Jews are treated within Israel proper and in Israeli-occupied territory.
https://www.afp.com/en/inside-afp/journalists-killed-and-inj...
Anecdotally, all of my friends here in the EU are pro-Palestinian, and none of us is Muslim. It's also relevant to consider the context of Israel's occupation of Palestine and illegal settlements in light of the UN General Assembly's pro-Palestinian votes.
One of the examples from before current conflict[1]: Approve 128 nations. Against 9 nations: Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Togo and United States.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
Today, there was another vote in the UN Security Council regarding a ceasefire. Thirteen nations voted in favor of it, the UK abstained, and the US vetoed.
Posted under a throwaway because I am legitimately afraid for my employment for touching this issue.
Did you know about the Israeli killer drone sales demo for the Azeris that practiced on live Armenian soldiers?
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-08-15/ty-article/is...
Here you go, 30 seconds on Google: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/08/middleeast/israel-arab-citize...
Will you stop spreading misinformation now? Or will you start splitting hairs, "Oh it's not due to the law, probably a coincidence haha"?
https://www.youtube.com/@CoreyGilShusterAskProject/videos
It's fascinating to hear opinions on the ground from both sides. Some things I've learned or concluded:
Young Palestinians are much more radical than older ones, who seem more flexible.
I personally think the two-state solution is a non-starter, and watched these videos to see if a one state solution is at all viable (meaning make Palestinians into Israeli citizens with full rights- basically the Zionists conquered the land, but they must also take the people). The problem is that neither side wants this.
Many Jewish Israelis think the Arabs would outnumber them due to birth rate, but recently Ultra-Orthodox Jews have an even higher birth rate, and Palestinian birth rate has fallen (I speculate due to increased education). Extremist settlers absolutely won't have it, and there is rampant racism. Palestinians want the Jews gone from their lands, but when pressed would probably accept those of Palestinian descent.
Sadly, I think we are going to continue with the one state with Apartheid. And, an interesting thing has happened in post-Apartheid South Africa: the realization that they are collectively poor, and not a rich first world country. One example from SA is that the electrical infrastructure was sized for only the whites, now that the full population is counted, there is just not enough, it's a big current problem. Any per-capita measurement of Israel should include the Palestinians to see the depth of this problem.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-afghani...
It has been a relatively prominent issue in Ireland, and especially Northern Ireland for some time. You can find plenty of images over the years of republican murals with Palestinian flags on them (e.g. 10 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/189yeg/o... ), or conversely unionist bonfires with palestinean flags on it: (e.g. last year https://nitter.dafriser.be/M_AndersonSF/status/1542523209311... )
Yes, Nakba was an ethnic cleansing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
Yes, they sniped peaceful protesters at the March of Return: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_...
I encourage people to read these links for themselves.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/18dp0jp/mental...
> [The belief that] the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way
This is very different from "Israel must be destroyed".
Similarly, your interpretation of "From the river to the sea" is extreme. It's only really been a scrutinized slogan since Hamas started using it in 2017. Its previous ~60 years of use were consistently about creating a secular, multi-ethnic, democratic state for all the people inside its borders.
There has never been an official Palestinian position calling for the removal of Jews.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/11/hamas-attacks-isr...
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/12/08/images-of-syrian-...
I feel like we had this war's WMD moment and its just not being covered!
The Al-Shifa hospital is a pretty interesting place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_Hospital
In 2014 it was called "...a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices." From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/while-israe...
The US and Israel claim that the hospital is again being used by Hammas: https://web.archive.org/web/20231205215049/http://www.reuter...
"Hamas is using bunkers built by Israel under Al-Shifa Hospital, former Israeli prime minister says" From: https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-wa...
Israel takes the hospital: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67436154 and this is one of the few reports from the time. I find it odd that there is more coverage on getting there then on everything they found (or did not find).
It takes almost a week to get footage of the "tunnel" that they found: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/19/idf-israel-arm...
I have yet to see a diagram, or some solid on the ground reporting. I hear mixed messages that the tunnel is on the "hospital compound" or was found "Under a wall" that the tunnel is under the hospital or to a pharmacy next door. I get that there is a fog of war, but the BBC and CNN and all our other normal news sources just quit covering or explaining at that point.
Israel has a history of bombing hospitals (2014): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/gaza-crisis-un... so not exactly the first time this sort of thing has gone on.
I would love for someone to COVER this, to explain what happened, what went right and what went wrong. To put all the peices in one place and paint a more accurate picture, because right now there isn't one, and I think that's indicative of this entire war.
Ras Al-Naqurah, I think, is Rosh HaNikra [1], the current northern border of Israel. Umm Al-Rashrash is now Eilat [2], the southernmost Israeli city. For me, both were the first google links.
> Optimally, we'd need information on the Palestinian public now or before Oct 7, when the issue was less politicized and information more reliable.
You can check the polls from July 2023 [3]. For example, 50% thought that Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction.
> Again, the document is significant, but generally, something in a document doesn't reliably tell us the beliefs of the public.
Would you use a slogan actively used by some racist organization to call for white supremacy because it also meant something else you believe in?
> Warfare, including as currently conducted by Israel, is not the only means of Israel defending itself.
I don't see how else you can possibly defend yourself from armed people killing your citizens in their homes. Again, this specific call happened while Hamas was still killing Israelis in Israel.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_HaNikra_Crossing [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eilat [3] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-sh...
You have to go back to the 4th century, and earlier, for Judaism to have a significant presence in Palestine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...
Note: The original European Zionist Jews called their own project settler colonialism back then, and they were opposed by Orthodox Jews, at the time.
[1] https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-official-ghazi-hamad-we-will-...
1. https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1729487180630786219
To say nothing of conflating anti-Israel sentiments with antisemitism.
> US views skew pro-israel, and GenZ is closer to 50/50
The latest Gallup[1] says it’s about 50/50 in the US across demographics and almost 70% disapproval of Israel in the 18-34 age range (so a little bit of Gen Z and a little bit of Millennials). No polls specifically and exclusively break down responses to the exact Gen Z age range, but I doubt that would bring it closer to 50/50.
Now, there’s, of course, the chicken and egg debate. Still, explicitly on TikTok, I’ve seen Goldbloom-esque studies that document that the algorithm is led by the user’s preferences instead of the other way around. I’ll see if I can find the URLs in my history.
0: https://github.com/antgoldbloom/tiktok_israel_hamas/blob/mai...
1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/545045/americans-back-israel-mi...
https://www.societyofeditors.org/soe_blog/the-first-casualty...
I'm not sure what you are opposing. I wrote that majority of the world is against Israel's occupation. And it's not only West Bank, this is map showing all the lands occupied by Israel with timeline https://i.stack.imgur.com/0xM5P.jpg
> The October 7th attack was carried out against civilians in their homes living on land that is internationally recognized as Israel by an overwhelming majority of countries.
Pro Palestine doesn't mean pro Hamas or pro terrorist. Here is another general assembly vote, from 26th October where majority of the world voted differently than Israel, and in favor of Palestine:
I'm not sure the source of the English, if it's an official English version or was translated by a third party.
Among other things, it calls for the "obliteration" of Israel by Islam, asserts that "death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of [the Islamic Resistance's] wishes", and cites noted anti-semitic text "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" among other conspiracy theories. It also says:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."
Anti-Zionism and antisemitism are orthogonal ideas. Conflation of them is pure propaganda.
[1] "Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionism
Citation needed. Nearly 2M people called Palestine their home in the 1940s, the majority Muslim.
We also know that the Palestinian villages bulldozed by the Israeli European Jewish settler colonialists over the last 75 years had existed for many hundreds of years-- many of the parks in Israel are built on top of the ruins of these destroyed Palestinian villages, to hide these crimes from the world. We know that the Palestinian olive orchards bulldozed by the Israelis were filled with trees that were hundreds of years old. Gaza itself, was a prosperous ancient city that once stood upon a crossroads of trade. Besides the 10s of thousands of civilians majority women and children murdered by Israel (war crimes) in this latest massacre of the many massacres by the Israelis, the Israelis are destroying all the buildings and civilian infrastructure in Gaza (war crimes), there may be no more Gaza when the Israelis are finished.
Short version, you are spreading falsehoods in defense of genocidal behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palesti...
Israel needs to first admit that it's establishment was on the expense of another people that are still suffering until today, without that, it's difficult to move forward, as well as continuing this conversation.
> Don't you think it may be useful to use a different slogan from the people who mean and do that?
Maybe, I don't know what else can it be! the slogan is not calling for killing anyone, FREEDOM = Dignity, Human Rights, I personally just want to be able to go to the beach and travel from an airport nearby.
> But we can't. There won't be a one-state solution that satisfies everyone....
Why not?
>The right of return for every descendant won't work
Why not?
I'm genuinely clueless. Possibly, you mean something different from what I'm talking about. What other ways of defending against ongoing military action (mostly against civilians) are you thinking of?
> Don't trust any opinion pieces - they are all liars, on all sides, is my strong opinion
I've cited it because it is the first link on Google. I can cite statements themselves [1] [2]. And I don't focus on it; I've given an example of prominent people calling for a ceasefire (basically letting the terrorists run away and prepare next attack) very early in conflict.
[1] https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/press-releases/stateme...
- Israeli Prime Minister (!!) Benjamin Netanyahu: "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember." [1]
- IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari: "we're focused on what causes maximum damage" [2]
- Israeli defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "I have ordered a complete siege on Gaza: no electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly." [3]
- Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir: “As long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands - the only thing that needs to enter Gaza are hundreds of tons of explosives from the air force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid” [4]
- IDF Reservist Major General Giora Eiland: “The State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in" and "Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal." [5]
- Israeli President Isaac Herzog: "It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true." and "Of course there are many, many innocent Palestinians who don’t agree to this — but unfortunately in their homes, there are missiles shooting at us, at my children." [6]
- IDF Reservist Ezra Yachin: "Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live." and "Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbour, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him." [7]
- IDF Reservist Major General Giora Eiland: "The international community is warning us against a severe humanitarian disaster and severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this. After all, severe epidemics in the south of Gaza will bring victory closer" and "there’s no reason why the Hamas generals in southern Gaza wouldn’t surrender when they have no fuel, no water, and when plagues will reach them and the danger to the lives of their family members will increase" [8]
- Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: "Hezbollah is close to making a grave mistake. The ones who will pay the price are first of all the citizens of Lebanon. What we do in Gaza we know how to do in Beirut" [9]
- Israeli Minister for Agriculture and former head of Shin Bet Avi Dichter: "We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba" [10]
- Likud Knesset member Galit Distel-Atbaryan: "Invest this energy in one thing; Erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth." and "A vengeful and cruel IDF is needed here. Anything less is immoral." [11]
- Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz: "Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water pump will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home" [12]
- IDF Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, in response to Wolf Blitzer asking if the IDF knew there were civilians in Jabalya refugee camp before they bombed it: "This is the tragedy of war, Wolf — as you know, we've been saying for days, move south." [13]
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/benjamin-netany...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/right-now-it-i...
[3] https://twitter.com/marwasf/status/1711392643908071789
[4] https://x.com/davidrkadler/status/1714362716565979534
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/15/opinion/israel-united-sta...
[6] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-gaza-isaac-herzog_n_65...
[7] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-vete...
[8] https://twitter.com/hahauenstein/status/1726326606782984506
[9] https://twitter.com/alihashem_tv/status/1723369208191287738
[10] https://twitter.com/hahauenstein/status/1723441134221869453
[11] https://twitter.com/GalitDistel/status/1719689095230730656
[12] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/energy-minister...
[13] https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/171941227835150748...
> Hamas [...] an acronym of its official name, the Islamic Resistance Movement
- Amichai Eliyahu, Israel's heritage minister: "that "there are no non-combatants in Gaza," adding that providing humanitarian aid to the Strip would constitute 'a failure.'" [8]
In the same interview: "When asked by the interview whether a nuclear weapon could be used on Gaza, Eliyahu responded: 'That's one way.' " [9]
[8]https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-05/ty-article/ne...
[9]https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-minister-suggested-nu...
You mean what's in the Lukud 1977 charter which was reiterated by Netanyahu recently after 10/7?
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/its-time-to-confront...
To claim that Israels use of this phrase (which explicitly calls for the removal/elimination of Palestinians) is ok while the Palestinian one is not is hypocritical.
- Is TikTok Really Boosting Pro-Palestinian Content? [1]
- TikTok: ‘The biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis’ says actor Sacha Baron Cohen [2]
- Apple, Disney and IBM to pause ads on X after antisemitic Elon Musk tweet [3]
- How Bad Is Antisemitism Online? It’s Increasingly Hard to Know. [4]
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/right-...
[2] https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/11/20/tiktok-the-bigge...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/17/elon-musk...
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/technology/israel-hamas-w... [4]
They've selectively[1] searched for multiple Palestine hashtags, which all show up under the same base hashtag[2], but then count all of the hashtags as separate data points -- and then compares them to a singular Israel hashtag that includes an emoji, which won't include most results regarding Israel. What's worse, is that including a Palestine hashtag doesn't remotely guarantee that the post is pro-Palestine or anti-Israel, and the same is true for posts including Israel hashtags not necessarily being pro-Israel, which can also be seen in [2]. In reality, the #palestine hashtag is used in pro-Israel posts all the time, so the sweeping generalizations made by Anthony Goldbloom aren't based on any legitimate statistical methodology.
Instead of echoing Goldbloom's manipulation of data as factual, it should be used as an example of pro-Israel disinformation and entirely backs the article's claim. In fact, even Goldbloom admits that he made mistakes[3], and the other graph was made by him and not the company who conducted the survey, who actually disputes his claim.
I think it could even be argued that your comment, without any supporting facts other than a very pro-Israel Twitter pundit who already debunked himself, is contributing to the misinformation discussed in the article, even if you're doing so unintentionally.
[1] https://twitter.com/antgoldbloom/status/1721561226151612602/...
[2] https://www.tiktok.com/@kituuuub/video/7298048299905355041?q...
[3] https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2023/tiktok-antisemiti...
But if you don't believe these numbers, here is one from the Washington Institute in July 2023:
"Overall, 57% of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas"
"But it is organizations like Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Lion’s Den that receive the most widespread popular support in Gaza. About three quarters of Gazans express support for both groups, including 40% who see the Lion’s Den in a “very positive” light, an attitude shared by a similar percentage of West Bank residents."
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/polls-sh...
Israel actually ranks very high in the happiness index, so they are mostly happy, doesn't mean they don't like to complain about stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2023_re...
> But these days the Israelis have opposed a two-state solution for many years.
Yeah, which makes me sad. But also i believe the younger palestinains have also moved to the right and are less accepting of a two state solution. That's why you need strong leaders on both sides that aren't just pandering to the people, but are willing to go against the public will - and sadly i don't think we will see such leaders in the current generation (and probably not the next one either)
> And the argument is novel in international relations
Not sure it's very novel, israel's recognized international borders are fairly clear, legally there's just dispute over the west bank and some part of the north, but israel proper isn't disputed.
https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2018-12-13/ty-article-opi...
> To methis is one of the most abohorrent conflicts in earth in this day and age.
He agrees with you.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/26/gaza-and-the-cr...
https://www.amazon.com/Zionism-Creation-Society-Studies-Hist...
For a couple of hundred years prior there were tens of thousands of Jews in the region, including at one point 30,000 counted just in Safed by the end of the 16th century.
Also keep in mind that in 1800 populations were an order of magnitude smaller than they are now.
The US has huge military presences in both countries, and if they really wanted to shut down funding to those institutions they could do it tomorrow.
We know that Netanyahu deliberated supported these groups to shut down opposition in Gaza by his own accord and that he has even recently asked to send more funding[1]. The talking heads also want you to believe that this is some sort of protection money out of goodwill for the poor civilians in Gaza.
I listened to some Palestinians on twitter spaces the other day and they told explained to people how the political landscape is actually a lot more complex than we are led to believe from media.
One person breaking down Hamas really well has been Brian Berletic from the new atlas[2]. Some people here might not like him, because he very much in favour of China, but I still urge everyone to take a look at his Palestine analysis.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/mossad-chief-top-general-visit...
What you hear instead are thinly-veiled justifications. Oh, we had to bomb those hospitals because there were tunnels there. So sorry about the civilian deaths at a refugee camp, but we just wanted to get that one commander.
Let’s be real here. Israel shut off food, water, medicine and electricity to Gaza. They’ve damaged over 2/3 of the buildings there [1]. As of a month ago, they’d dropped almost 2x the amount of explosives the US delivered to Hiroshima [2].
These are not the actions of a country “going after military targets even at some cost to civilians”. Israel is doing exactly what Hagari said: inflicting maximum damage.
[1] https://x.com/tksshawa/status/1732447886237974898
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/11/9/israel-att...
> this is map showing all the lands occupied by Israel with timeline https://i.stack.imgur.com/0xM5P.jpg
1. The geographical area of Palestine, also often called The Holy Land among other names, that was not inhabited by Jews.
2. The area that the UN Partition Plan designated for an Arab state.
3. The areas that the Palestinian Authority has both civil and military control over.
The problem with the first definition is obvious: It displays a geographical area with a racial modifier. That would be like showing a map of France with all the areas where French people live highlighted, then assuming that 100% of the remaining areas are "Immigrant Land". In reality, the far majority of the land was not settled by Jews nor Arabs in time frame of this map - it was so empty that the Ottomans created laws specifically to increase both Arab and Jewish settlement in the area, they didn't care so long as the taxes were paid.
The UN Partition Plan was not perfect, but it for the most part proposed an Arab state in the areas that were Arab majority, and a Jewish state in the areas with a Jewish majority. The Arabs rejected this plan in an attempt to conquer more land - so complaining that the borders changed from these borders is disingenuous. The Arabs started a war (well, more than one) with the specific intent of changing these borders.
So what exactly is your solution then? To create 10-20 times the suffering that has led to the growth of Hamas to begin with?
But let's say, for the sake of the argument, that that line of reasoning is justified, which for the record, I don't think it is. How does that then justify the violence, and the killings happening in the West Bank? How does it justify shooting Palestinians in the US?
Nobody here wants to hear it, but the only country that has gotten a hold of its Islamist terrorism problem without mass bombing is China. And contrary to what people in the US like to hear the Organization of Islamic Cooperation which comprises dozens of Muslim countries, have praised Chinas efforts to build infrastructure and schools. The US shouts about Uyghur rights all the time and then bombs them the moment they hang out with the Taliban for training[1].
Even the guy who came up with the Uyghur genocide says that the people working in the factories are treated well, and yet that's somehow a bad thing[2].
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-targets-chinese-uighu...
[2] https://twitter.com/adrianzenz/status/1732406580623098274
Zionism is and was a European project. Here is a challenge for you, name a single Mizrahi in a position of power in Israel; it is all Europeans.
> On 9 October 2023, Israel imposed a "total blockade" of the Gaza Strip, blocking the entry of food, water, medicine, fuel and electricity.
Interestingly, the idea that Mandela called Israel an apartheid state was debunked on Stack Exchange, you can read that here: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/50771/did-nelso...
What Mandela did say about atrocities was directed at the US:
> If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care for human beings.
- Nelson Mandelahttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/unrwa-continues-to-teac...
* There really isn't any better deathrates when the other side is explicitly based on indifference to its own civillian casualties. Mosul had 40K civillian deaths in a 2.5x smaller city (by population)[0]. I fail to see why Israel can't use the same legal tactics** the US used to defend itself versus jihadists, except the Israeli death rate is lower and the US had far less justification.
* Focusing on the Likud is a mistake. Every Israeli political party would have counterattacked at Gaza, with about the same (legal) tactics, but probably much more aggressively. Leaving next door to a genocidal terrorist regime was unacceptable, actually moreso to the Israeli Left. After all, what's the point of two states if the other side can do _anything_ and get support afterwards?
And I mean anything - the attack was into 1967 lines, deathrates much higher than in Gaza. The irony is that many people that say they support 2ss are trying to enshrine impunity here, basically destroying any hope that either side will support 2ss. That's why Bibi was the pretend 'cautious' here, because of very cynical calculation - Hamas staying weakened but alive lets Bibi kill 2ss - WB Palestinians flock to 'victorious' Hamas, while Israeli Left approach is discredited - but his hand was forced.
* Focusing on Hamas is also somewhat of a mistake, given polls show widespread crosscutting Palestinian support to Hamas action[1].
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/mosul-m...
[1] https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20...
** When we ignore scaremongering about 'starvation/disease at a massive scale' when it's not happening, the only thing the list has are actions into hospitals which even the US believes are used by Hamas.
You mean by not bombing rafah crossing in violation of international law as they did several times already?
> I think Israel's actions in this context constitute a blockade that is legal in times of war
> Israel's actions here are legal.
At least provide any sources during your quest to defend isreal actions. Even if it is straightout lies like that one [1]
Hint : the story is about Israeli military releases footage of a secret terrorist ‘roster’ that turns out to be a calendar (that was very obvious for any one with basic arabic knowledge) and that was their justification for bombing and taking out a children hospital bt force.
[1] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/israel-gaza-hospital-calendar...
This is an oversimplification. A few months before the election, Israel pulled out all its forces/settlements/infrastructure from Hamas-dominated Gaza, while keeping them in place in the West Bank where Hamas was stronger. This was a huge victory handed on a silver platter to Hamas, by the administration of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon (who the Palestinians call the "Butcher of Beirut" [0]).
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
QUOTE
The phrase was popularised in the 1960s as part of a wider call for Palestinian liberation creating a democratic state freeing Palestinians from oppression from Israeli as well as from other Arab regimes such as Jordan and Egypt.[6][7] In the 1960s, the PLO used it to call for a democratic secular state encompassing the entirety of mandatory Palestine which was initially stated to only include the Palestinians and the descendants of Jews who had lived in Palestine before the first Aliyah, although this was later expanded.[8][9] Palestinian progressives use it to call for a united democracy over the whole territory.[10] while others say "it's a call for peace and equality after ... decades-long, open-ended Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians."
/QUOTE
Even in the most charitable interpretations about what happens to the Jews living there, it is a call to replace the state of Israel with a completely different state.
On the contrary the IDF is pretty open about its online media budget, spend, and goals. So isn't it natural that people would study it more?
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/social-media-is-a-warz...
https://twitter.com/sama/status/1732925866836210151
"for a long time i said that antisemitism, particularly on the american left, was not as bad as people claimed.
i'd like to just state that i was totally wrong.
i still don't understand it, really. or know what to do about it.
but it is so fucked."
The reason Arabs supported the British against the Ottomans was because they wanted to create a unified Arab nation: https://awayfromthewesternfront.org/campaigns/egypt-palestin.... And Arabs got the overwhelming majority of the territory they wanted (notwithstanding the many minority groups they had conquered in the Levant), with the exception of what became Israel. Put differently, you could say that Arabs got 0% of Israel, and that’s technically true. But it’s not an accurate description of what they got in comparison to what they actually wanted.
When Israel imprisons Palestinians for years without charging them with crimes and there is documented proof of them raping and torturing them [1] why doesn't Palestine have the right to defeat Israel to make sure that never happens again?
Why isn't everything Israel wants also allowed for Palestinians?
[1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231205-resigned-us-state...
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protes...
* Illegal Settlers living in Palestine can vote in Israel but not Palestinians; Israeli settlers all the rights of being a citizen of Apartheid Israel while the Palestinian neighbour doesn't have any. Apartheid South Africa did the same, they put the people in their own "country" and so couldn't vote. Israel doesn't want 2 states as that would mean millions more voting.
* There were 5,248,185 Palestinian refugees neighbouring countries in 2020; that's equal to half the population of Israel. Israel is committing genocide in trying to ethnically cleanse the land.
* Israel has ethnically cleansed and fragmented areas into [isolated cantons divided by Israeli settlements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_enclaves), and implemented [lebensraum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum) tactics. This was called [Bantustans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan) in South Africa.
* The Apartheid Separation wall - https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d0/73/81/d07381fffef632350bcb...
* The settlers killing in the West Bank, and burning homes to get rid of people and destroying olive tree groves.
* They control the water completely - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...
* They get 12 hours of electricity a day - https://www.ochaopt.org/page/gaza-strip-electricity-supply
* Palestinians didn't have 3G until 2018, their access is also spied on and restricted.
* Segregated road system - https://s3.amazonaws.com/VP2/visuals/en/4db97391fe7cb2462249...
* 50% of Palestinians are children.
As someone from South Africa, I've seen ethnic cleansing and Israel is doing worse. Israel is absolutely an Apartheid state. Various human rights organisations have already stated this.
Not to mention the Israeli government's rhetoric of calling Palestinians rats and that their lives are less important than an Israeli's. Hamas wouldn't exist if not for Apartheid Israel's actions, in the same way uMkhonto we Sizwe doesn't exist now that Apartheid has been disbanded in South Africa.
And it seems in the comments here and elsewhere on the interent, Zionism is conflated with antisemitism. Zionism is extreme nationalism (at the expense of innocent Palestinians), not anti-Jew.
This was not a calendar. The first day was Oct 7th. It had the operation's name as the title "Al Aqsa Flood". https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1724245759174791626
It's true that Hagari incorrectly said it was a "roster". But it's not a calendar. It was a mistake, not a lie. He shouldn't have done that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IsraelPalestine/comments/17zu5x8/di...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaz...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...
Fatah had more support in elections (yellow) in areas with former Israel settlements.
To put another way, the oldest generations are in 98% agreement that the Holocaust happened, compared to 50% of young adults.
[1] https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabRepor...
Hardliners in the current Israeli government (e.g Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Amichai Eliyahu) want to "annex Judaea and Samaria". There seems to be a bit of ambiguity about whether they mean only Area C, or the whole of the West Bank (or even annex Area C now as a precursor to annexing A and B later.)
If they did that, what would happen to the Palestinians living in those areas – would they become Israeli Arabs? Would they first have to request Israeli citizenship? Would they be entitled to it, or would it be up to the Israeli government to decide whether to extend it to them?
"One state solution" is an idea primarily associated with Israel's peacenik far left, but maybe the best way to achieve it might (paradoxically) be to let the Israeli far right get a big chunk of what it wants?
> If you want more radical ideas then if all Palestinian Arabs convert to Judaism we can also solve the problem pretty quickly...
Speaking of radical ideas, I find the "cantonization" proposals [0] for the future of Israel rather fascinating. Basically convert it into a federation of different "cantons" representing the different sectors of Israeli society (secular, religious, Haredi, Arab). These cantons might be partially geographical and partially personal – i.e. every citizen belongs to a canton personally, the canton also controls the territory where its members are a majority, but has to protect the rights of minorities from other cantons in its territory; individuals will receive some government services from the canton of residence (e.g. public utilities), others might be provided by their personal canton (e.g. education, family law)
[0] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-05-05/ty-article-ma...
The implicit assumption is that any place with a majority of "Arabs" would ethnically cleanse all the Jews or become an Islamic theocracy, so we must view everything through the lens of competing ethno-states. It's important to challenge this assumption. Ethno-states are inherently violent because every population is a mixture of different ethnicities, and an ethno-state needs to maintain a majority of a certain population. If the "wrong" group's population grows in an ethno-state, it becomes a "demographic problem" that the government needs to "solve". This is why carving up the world into such states is never a lasting solution for peace.
Aside: "Arab" and "Jew" are not mutually exclusive. You can be an Arab Jew in the same way you can be a Hispanic Jew - Arab is a distinction based on one's mother language not one's religion. This is why the Arab League includes countries in north Africa where most people aren't descended from ancestral Arabians. The history of and literature of Judeo-Arabic is an interesting rabbit hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Jews
Very much on the margins if any. The overwhelming consensus ignored these considerations.
>The current laws of war do not allow, for instance, strikes at medical facilities.
This is wrong. Medical facilities can be struck if they are used for war.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/08/504815234...
Moreover, this is not what happened in Gaza - there were raids but not dropping bombs from airplanes, the former being much less destructive.
Nobody gets confused about what is what:
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-fi...
> Even though the current Israeli government may be more conservative than the ones previous, I see few possibilities for a more socially liberal government if Israel were to combine with the more-conservative majority-Muslim Palestinian states
According to some forecasts, roughly 50% of all Israeli children born in 2065 will be Haredi. [0] If that's right, Israel could well end this century with a majority of the population being Haredi, and Haredi parties in control of the Knesset and Israeli government. I doubt a socially liberal Israeli government could be possible in that circumstance; whatever remains of the secular minority may not be "strong", it may be politically weakened, demoralised, and increasingly diminished by emigration and a low birth rate.
And all that's assuming there is no change to the relationship with the Palestinians. So maybe a change won't do as much as you think – it might just hasten the inevitable.
[0] https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-05-22/ty-article-opinio...
In fact, less Israelis support the war than any of the American groups you mentioned. Only 29% support the war, with 49% against.
(Note: the poll you cite doesn’t allow for unsure, making the numbers incomparable. I worded the above to count unsure as “not supportive of”. If you count them as “supporting”, then Americans are still about as supportive as Israelis.).
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-poll-finds...
The permanent members of the UN's Security Council do not abide by laws they force other members to abide by. This is because there really are great powers in the world, which, despite being difficult for people in the West to understand, is very obvious in the rest of the world.
I don't know where you are getting this from, it isn't true. The League of Nations Palestine Mandate [0] granted the UK "full powers of legislation and of administration, save as they may be limited by the terms of this mandate" (Article 1). You will not find any limitation preventing them from making permanent laws within it.
The UK imposed its own legal system on the Mandate, as Article 1 allowed. It ended up mostly abolishing Ottoman law, although it retained it in certain areas (especially family law, inheritance, religious affairs and real estate). The laws it imposed were not necessarily those of the metropolitan UK – the criminal code was largely copied from colonial India. The starting point of Israeli law is Israel's decision at the time of independence to continue the British Mandate's legal system, until such time as the Knesset decided to alter things. It wasn't until 1977, for example, that Israel completely replaced the British-imposed penal code with its own. Palestinian law has the same fundamental starting point, although with the added complexity of being overlaid with Egyptian and Jordanian legislation (in Gaza and the West Bank, respectively), and then a mixture of Israeli and Palestinian legislation laid on top of that.
- Uniformed Gazan fighters (not just Hamas/Al-Qasam, but also PIJ's Saraya Al-Quds, PFLP and some others) breaking the fence infrastructure (cams, remote controlled sentry gun towers, fence walls, fence itself, drone footage, preparations the night before - it shows that fighters of various groups commingled quite a bit). Fighters attacking Israel's military installations (border crossings, destroying some stationary military vehicles not manned at the time, etc.)
- Gazan fighters running around, or riding on motorcycles and pickup trucks, shooting at people and vehicles from small arms, and kidnapping people. This is the bulk of actual action in available footage.
- Footage of masses going from Gaza and looting settlements in Gaza envelope.
- Some grenade throwing into enclosed spaces with people inside.
- Almost no footage of fighters fighting with Israel army's armor, almost no footage of torture.
- No footage of child killings (there's some footage where only parents were killed and children left living). Small children were ~1% of killed victims on Oct 7, so lack of footage is not surprising.
- IDF killing a group of people that was apparently surrendering.
- Videos of IDF attack helicopters shooting at crowds of people and cars.
Footage of aftermath:
- Lots of footage of dead, burned bodies, either in cars or in houses. It's not clear who these people are a lot of the time, or who caused the fire, or how they died. (Israel overcounted its casualties by ~2 hundreds, due to misidentification of burned bodies.)
- At least 7 videos of corpse abuse by Israelis in the aftermath.
Oftentimes it's clear who's doing what, whether fighters or mob. Sometimes it's not.
Lot of "barbarity" of "Hamas" as portrayed in the media or even by some politicians, is made up/overblown (oven baked babies, 40 beheaded babies, children/people collected together tied and burned alive intentionally, ...). It seems to be designed to show that Hamas is way different in humanity than IDF, or whatnot, but it just ends up throwing doubt on other eyewitness descriptions of gruesome things that may be truthful.
There's an article in Haaretz about this problem: https://archive.ph/2023.12.03-221527/https://www.haaretz.co....
From Wikipedia: > The Palestinian legislative election took place on 25 January 2006 and was judged to be free and fair by international observers.[18][19] It resulted in a Hamas victory, surprising Israel and the United States, which had expected their favoured partner, Fatah, to retain power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007)#2006_Pal...
I think being anti-Zionist means being against both prongs, meaning that there should no longer be a Jewish state. Given the practical implications of that, it seems hard to justify without antisemitism.
Wikipedia has a whole section [1] on "View that [anti-Zionism and antisemitism] are not interlinked", but those supporting that view seem to be using an overly-broad definition of anti-Zionism.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionism#View_that_the_two...
That's like saying the Nazis just wanted Jews "gone", gassing them wasn't a priority.
Here is a German phrase you must learn:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorauseilender_Gehorsam
People murder -- to not mince words, some people act and think like Nazis, as Yeshayahu Leibowitz so very correctly pointed out -- and they know they'll get away with it. There are rarely "explicit explicit" orders, the general atmosphere, the words and deeds you saw others get away with, is enough.
[1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231024-security-minister...
[2] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17327731468585127...
[3] https://twitter.com/NimerSultany/status/1731736295666282707
[4] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17330661183302657...
Is it? In Spain we still call them "gitanos", heck, they even call themselves that: https://www.gitanos.org/
- Israel did displace a lot of people. Partly for their own safety while Israel attacks the area they live in. I think your number are correct.
- We already covered the "cut off" in another thread so I (edit: didn't want to but I guess I did anyways) want revisit it. Water was off, and then on, food and medicine are allowed in but maybe not enough, Internet access is on most of the time in this war zone, electricity is mostly cut off (partly because the power station ran out of fuel I think, not strictly because Israel cut it off). This is a snarky comment but I'm pretty sure the tunnel vents still have power. Northern Gaza and Southern Gaza are also different (with more restrictions on Northern Gaza). I would call this statement misleading.
- Israel did drop a lot of bomb tonnage on Gaza but we can't really compare this to the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima. There were 60-80 thousand dead in Hiroshima which was much less populated/dense than Gaza (total population was about 350,000). As a piece of trivia, between 241,000 and 900,000 people died in Japan in the bombing campaigns of WW2. I would fact check this statement as misleading.
- There is plenty of press access from the Palestinian side. I think we're getting more footage from the war zone compared to many other war zones. Israel does review footage of press that embeds with the IDF in Gaza for operational-security reasons. I think that's pretty normal. I don't recall large complaints from the media about this, but they do note it in their reports. So correct but misleading.
- Do you have a reference for "dozens of murders by settlers prior to Oct 7th"? Are you going all the way back to Baruch Goldstein? Even with that "dozens" seems incorrect to me. There's no room for any violence by settlers but let's get the facts right. My very quick research has failed to substantiate this claim.
- Reference for "paraded them through the streets"? Also do we know they're all civilians? Israel strips people they arrest (to their underwear) to make sure they're not suicide bombers. I have seen those photos/videos as well. I agree it's pretty humiliating (and) the pictures didn't look good. I hope the people that are uninvolved will be released quickly. I know you're going to take issue with what I say here, but this was in Northern Gaza where civilians have been asked to evacuate and Hamas combatants operate in civilian clothing. Hamas has a lot of history with suicide bombers so it's not unreasonable to expect this tactic. I would call this partly misleading.
- I also take issue with "kidnapped" and "tortured". I would say arrested Islamic Jihad and Hamas activists. Torture is illegal in Israel (maybe allowed if there's a "ticking bomb", I don't recall) and while it's possible there have been cases I don't think it's systemic, any evidence to the contrary?
- You're technically correct about the move south and bomb the south but I think it's important to note there was significantly less bombing in the south than the north and Israel has said specifically they will still bomb the south if they have clear targets. Israel never said it won't bomb the south. It just said it's safer. And if you check the statistics you'll see that's true. This is where "technically right" can be misleading.
- West bank settlers have had weapons forever pretty much. Most of the handing of weapons these days is to people in Israel proper.
- I think there was a single incident with an ambulance where Israel claimed it was being used for a military purpose. There is a long discussion about the status and usage of ambulances here: https://lieber.westpoint.edu/attacks-misuse-ambulances-durin...
- I'm pretty sure "bombed every hospital" is false. Reference? We had the possible Islamic Jihad rocket falling in a hospital parking lot, we had some bombings close to hospitals, we had fake news from other conflicts presented as Israel bombing hospitals, but "bombed every hospital" is new to me. I think "did not bomb any hospitals" is closer to the truth. How many people were killed by Israel's bombing of hospitals?
- I've seen different accounts for the percentage of buildings damaged. 2/3 seems on the high side. References?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-adopts-divisive-la...
Or this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaization_of_the_Galilee
These are simply not normal things for a country to do in the 21st century. That doesn't mean I don't have massive problems with what these other countries are doing, or what the US is doing, but to say they're ethno-states like Israel in my view is a false equivalency.
> but navigating that transition while preserving it as the safest place the Jews of the world can go
Is it though? I know Jewish folks in the US with family in Israel, and it doesn't seem like they'd feel safer in Israel. These policies don't seem to be making Jews safer.
> Saudi Arabia is named after the Arabs.
nit: It's named after Arabia which is a geographic region that's been named after the Arabs for centuries. The disturbing part of the name Saudi Arabia is that it's named after a specific family of despots, not that it refers to Arabia. But even being named after an ethnic group doesn't make your country an ethno-state.
https://time.com/3035937/gaza-israel-hamas-palestinian-casua...
Why are we playing this numbers game? If Hamas hypothetically had killed 30,000 Israels would you be saying that Israel still has 12,000 to go? Every person matters and in a war there are no targets for how many people are killed, in wars people get killed for achieving some other objectives. I would imagine that even if Hamas had only killed 150 people in Israel we'd be in exactly the same place and the ratio would be 100x because there's a point where Israel has to (well, at least they think) reoccupy Gaza at any cost. Israel was almost there in previous conflicts, but backed off.
There is no war in history, as far as I know, but willing to be corrected, where the measure or who is wrong and who is right, or when the war should end, was some threshold or ratio in the number of dead people. A war continues until both sides agree to stop it. Wars have a terrible human price. I think something like 400,000 people have died in the war in Yemen. I think there are hundreds of thousands of dead in the Russian-Ukraine war (mostly soldiers but they're people, and young people, too. Many civilians.). Sudan is pretty bad. 600,000 killed in the Syria civil war.
I agree.
And I'm not saying that any countries are better or worse at being an ethnostate than Israel, just that there are many countries where racial identity is prominent. China as an ethnostate is complicated (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Dream for some examples), but 91% of people in China are Han Chinese. That culture is predominant and the Chinese state has an official language associated with that identity. Likewise, foreigners make up just about 2% of the population in Japan (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Japan). Japan is known to be an insular country that has a reputation for xenophobia. That's what I meant by de facto. Both countries have a dominant culture in a more pronounced way than the United States, for example. China also practices ethnic clensing with things like the Uyghur cultural genocide, which could be compared to some of the policies you linked.
Some of us have direct memories of the time and it was very much true...
>I certainly wouldn’t refer..
They weren't even aware they weren't any patients. And it's not the only hospital attacked at Mosul. Most hospitals there were attacked:
https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/iraq-rebuilding-hospital-r...
If you want the legal brief, see Article 8.2.e.iv. with an explicit carveout ("provided they are not military objectives"):
https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf#page=...
No evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
and numerous others.
Are you saying the IDF has had troops on the ground in Gaza verifying the M&M stats? Or are you simply stating that you believe the IDF?
Either way, as neither of us are an expert here I suggest you take this up with The Lancet and the UN, etc.
I have stated as a simple matter of verifiable fact that vastly more precision is both possible and achievable today in 2023 than was the case in WWII night time bombing.
The IDF are hitting the targets that they have chosen to hit.
If they have poor intelligence then perhaps they should not fire their weapons.
But the mistakes happened way before by moving troops away from the Gaza border to West Bank to protect illegal settlements and also supporting Hamas as an opposition to PLO. Don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong the world would be a better place without Hamas however your policy has to be strategic and not emotional (i.e. revenge)
Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin is professor of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University. He criticises Zionism, and promotes binationalism as an alternative–the idea of a single state shared equally by two nations (Arab and Jewish)–also known variously as the "one state solution" or "Israeltine" or "Isratin". [0] Obviously if he had his way, there would no longer be a Jewish state–if by that one means an exclusively Jewish state. But, I find it hard to take seriously the idea that a Jewish Israeli academic is antisemitic – his views may well be impractical and overly idealistic, but where is the evidence he's an antisemite? And I think this is just one example of the several different forms of contemporary non-antisemitic opposition to Zionism.
[0] https://www.forum-transregionale-studien.de/kommunikation/de...
https://abcnews.go.com/US/uproar-university-presidents-remar...
Legit question and there would have been negotiations happening to exchange hostages for prisoners (like it was done in the past)
> What about border security?
What about it? I didn't say that Isreal should not secure its border. The entire reason why Hamas was successful in the first place was because the border was not secured because the troops were moved and Israel's security services didn't take the warnings and threats seriously that Hamas was planing such an attack.
> The game theory is absolutely clear here. When an attack of this magnitude is carried out, you need to respond with overwhelming force to cutoff the possibility of further escalation. Stop it cold
First, I don't think game theories applies in this conflict and second when did this ever work in the past? At least I would argue that the "war on terror" after 9.11 was anything but successful. Actually compared to the current reaction of Israel the reaction of the US after 9.11 looks very restraint.
> Restraint here is the significant effort that has been taken by the IDF to minimize civilian casualties.
That's a bold claim, looking at the number of civilian deaths in that relative short period of time. Yes I know that the numbers come indirectly from Hamas but they were relatively accurate in the past when they were confirmed afterwards. Most people say Hamas to blame for this because they hide behind civilians. However I would argue that it's neither morally right nor strategically smart to killing dozens of civilians for one Hamas operative. Also Israeli officials were quoted with: "We’re focused on maximum damage and not accuracy" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/right-now-it-i...).
1. I am not sure if you are saying that extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich are not in charge, but their rhetoric and speech has made it clear they do not care for Palestinian deaths, and rather would like to carry out more killings. If you didn't know about the people in charge of your government, I implore you to look into their history.
2. I would ask you to look more critically at the IDF, after all that B'Tselem has shown them to have committed. I would look to what the IDF did during the peaceful 2018 Great March to Return where they shot and killed hundreds of unarmed civilians, including women and children, and severely injured thousands of others. Only one Israeli soldier was slightly wounded in the whole conflict. They have also been killing children indiscriminately in the West Bank, what would justify that? There are dozens to hundreds of other cases where the IDF has been incriminated for unjustified violence but I am not able to collate them for you at the current time. If that is not enough evidence to change your stance on the IDF, that nobody can help to change your mind.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/28/west-bank-spike-israeli-...
“If they would tell the whole world that the [Islamic Jihad] offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it,” the source added.
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
The destruction levied in Gaza is not about achieving any military aims. It is about satiating the Israeli public's monstrous appetite for blood. The primary goal of the government is ensuring that it wins the next election too. Benjamin Netanyahu wasn't joking when he said "remember Amalek".
[1] >>38581205
Well, the only way to claim something absolutely idiotic like that is to have absolutely no clue:
During the fifty days of Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, Israel bombed and shelled the Gaza Strip, causing massive damage to civilian infrastructure and homes. About 18,000 residential units were either completely destroyed or heavily damaged, leaving more than 100,000 Palestinians – some 17,000 families – homeless. [...] Today, more than four years later, about 20% of the homes are still unusable and some 2,300 families – about 13,000 people – remain homeless. Some 1,600 of these families had been receiving rent subsidies from UNRWA at rates ranging from 200 to 250 USD per month, depending on the size of the family. In July 2018, however, following US funding cuts, UNRWA was forced to halt financial assistance, leaving families out in the cold. Families that are still renting are having trouble making payments.
https://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20190303_13000_gazans_hom...
The Gulf states you think are generous have changed their allegiances and are now Israel's friends. The current Israeli government has radicalized even further since 2014 and revel in the suffering of Palestinians and will likely prevent any future reconstruction efforts.
The number of refugees from Ukraine is 6.3 million or 14% with up to 30% of its infrastructure damaged. This is less destruction in TWO YEARS than Israel has inflicted in 60 DAYS.
https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-russian-invas...
"A United Nations-led aid consortium estimates that more than 234,000 homes have been damaged across Gaza and 46,000 destroyed, amounting to about 60 percent of the housing stock in the territory, which is home to some 2.3 million Palestinians."
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/11/29/as-truce-holds-...
You do make a utilitarian justification with your claim that attacking al Qaeda helped to prevent another 9/11 attack. I haven’t studied it enough to know whether it did that. There have been similar terrorist movements since then. Perhaps increases in airline security did more against that particular attack?
Also, al Qaeda was hiding in the mountains, not under a city. The consequences for civilians are different enough that I don’t think it’s a fair analogy.
For historical background about changing attitudes towards civilian casualties, Bret Devereaux’s latest post [1] seems pretty good.
[1] https://acoup.blog/2023/12/08/fireside-friday-december-8-202...
Meanwhile, half of the population of Gaza is under the age of 15, in one of the most densely populated areas of the world. It's unadulterated genocide in service of an expansionist, right-wing extremist government. Another difference is this media (and social web, down to HN) effort to silence and smear any and all criticism of it, to turn it into a dichotomy of who you're for (rather than what international law and basic fucking human decency would require), while Joe Biden talks about having seen photos of beheaded babies. Contrast to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_war_in_Af...
[1] https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/misc/634kfc....
[2] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17330661183302657...
[3] https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17328125940611608...
[4] https://twitter.com/NimerSultany/status/1731736295666282707
[5] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231024-security-minister...
You can't just do random shit and say "it's for X" and that makes it okay. I can't just take everything you own and say it's to achieve world peace, you know? Or nuke the world to prevent car theft since no more world means no more cars means no more car theft. That's the level of the argument you have; zilch, backed by brutality and nothing else.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/civilians-are-israel-un...
[0] https://bnn.network/politics/erdogan-pledges-to-rebuild-gaza...
P.S. What you wrote about Ukraine just confirms what I wrote above.
> The war had two main phases, the first being the 1947–1948 civil war, which began on 30 November 1947,[19] a day after the United Nations voted to adopt the Partition Plan for Palestine, which divided the territory into Jewish and Arab sovereign states, and an international Jerusalem (UN Resolution 181). Partition was accepted by the Jewish leadership, but rejected by Palestinian Arab leaders and the Arab states.
'The comparison' in fact varies according to what defenders of Israeli disproportionate violence against Gazan civilians actually say. That particular example is one I saw made on television: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewLx9XN8sLc
And indeed the comparison was made specifically to justify the measures that Israel has taken which indisputably affect primarily civilians (the siege, which there is very wide agreement constitutes a war crime). And the Israeli politician in the video does in fact react with opprobrium to the suggestion that the Allied bombing of civilians in WWII might not have been one of the just elements of the war.
- Re: Hiroshima, can we compare it to the amount of explosive the US dropped in the entire country of Afghanistan over a much longer period? The point is that this is an insanely high amount of bombing, even with respect to other wars. https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-dropped-as-many-bombs...
- Re: West Bank violence, I said settlers have killed “dozens” as a lowball number because I was too lazy to find a link. The actual number (including by Israeli security forces) is 192: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/22/while-fire-rages-gaza-we...
- Re: stripping prisoners, I imagine “paraded” is another word we’d disagree on like “targeted”, but Israel itself has said that it stripped “military aged men” and a number have been recognized by friends and family as noncombatants: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-images-p...
- Here’s a tweet from someone who recognizes a journalist firsthand. This is sexual violence, by the way: https://x.com/dima_khatib/status/1732797311846064541
- Re: abducted — yes, of course Israel will claim there’s a pretext for abducting people (although over 2,500 have been held without charges on “administrative detention”). This is kind of like someone in the antebellum US south saying “those runaway slaves were arrested in accordance with the law” — maybe true but not the point! Do you think the police are fair to Palestinians? The courts? https://www.npr.org/2023/12/01/1216643555/thousands-of-pales...
- Re: torture, I don’t know what you happens in prison. I guarantee it’s not better for political prisoners in apartheid regimes. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-ho...
- Re: bombing the south, there have been so many reported instances of Israel telling people to evacuate and then bombing the escape route. https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/16/middleeast/israel-palestinian...
- Re: arming settlers, this already sounds real bad, so if they’re handing out more guns in addition to that, it sounds… worse. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231011-far-right-israel-...
- Re: attacking the ambulance, of course the IDF says that there was Hamas there — that’s what they say about everything! I’m not going to look up a source here. If there’s any evidence that corroborates the IDF’s claim from an independent source, feel free to post it.
- Re: “bombed every hospital”, you’re using quotation marks but not actually quoting me directly. As of a month ago, Israel had issued evacuation orders for 22 hospitals in North Gaza and half of the 36 hospitals in Gaza had stopped operations. Unclear how many the IDF actually attacked but it’s a lot more than zero! https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/14/gaza-unlawful-israeli-ho...
- Re: 2/3, it was reported in the Financial Times. Also note that the damage the US inflicted on German cities in a matter of years, Israel has inflicted on Gaza in a matter of weeks. https://www.ft.com/content/7b407c2e-8149-4d83-be01-72dcae8ae...
I don’t know why you are so fixated on how Israel defines their own borders. They very much control much more areas then what is formally considered within Israeli borders.
Here is a map of West Bank settlements in 2020 [1] These have de-facto expanded since then even before October 7th, particularly in East Jerusalem which is fully controlled by Israel. Pay special attention to the blue area of the map,area C, which is fully controlled by Israel, home to almost 500,000 Israel settlers who vote in Israeli elections, adhere to Israeli laws, pay with Israeli Shekels, etc. Israel is under international oblegation to cede this area to Palestine, but instead have been moving more settlers into it at accelerating pace.
Also look at where the border infrastructure are in this map, this is fences, walls, checkpoints, etc. It is not on the West Bank borders like you would expect if Israeli borders hadn’t expanded, but instead almost completely within it, and in some cases very deep within it (see e.g. South of Ramallah, North of Salfit, and around Bethlehem) also notice how East Jerusalem is completely cut off from the rest of the West Bank with border infrastructure, almost as if East Jerusalem has been completely annexed by Israel.
In this map you also see they plan to build a lot more boarder infrastructure very deep inside the West Bank. The only way to interpret that is that they are moving the boarder even further and annexing even more land. Even if they claim these settlements and these areas aren’t part of Israel, they very much are.
1: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/West_Ban...
I don't think changing "settlers" to "security forces" or conflating "issued an evacuation order" with "bombing", or "torture" vs. "things that happen in prison" is having a discussion in good faith. Many of those killed by the security forces were killed while they were attacking Israelis or during combat or clashes. If you're willing to have a discussion in good faith I'm happy to engage but you'll have to stop doing that. This is not helping some of the valid points you're making. "But what about the west bank" is a common anti-Israeli propaganda tool on social media. There's a lot to unpack there but I think it should mostly be an orthogonal discussion to the war in Gaza.
https://embassies.gov.il/UnGeneva/NewsAndEvents/Pages/Hamas-...
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/israel-middle-east/hamas...
I think specifically with ambulances there's a few ways to think about this:
- What is the benefit that Israel derives from attacking ambulances?
- What would be a reasonable standard of proof here? If forces come under attack from an ambulance, they bomb it, and it's destroyed, how do you expect Israel to prove that?
- Is the Hamas a signatory to the Geneva convention and are their methods typically in line with the laws of war? Are they generally honest? Moral?
- Did Israel order evacuation of those areas and give ample time for this evacuation to happen in accordance with the laws of war?
I think if you answer these honestly you'll say that Hamas would certainly use ambulances if they felt that was to their advantage and that Israel would not generally target ambulances intentionally. Is there a large gray area? Sure. Is it possible that Israeli forces would have a "light finger on the trigger". Sure. It's a war and it's their lives. Do I think that allowing Ambulances to operate within combat areas is a high priority for Israel? No. There's a big difference between actions that are within reason and actions that are intentionally evil. The goal of many people saying "Israel attacks ambulances" is to paint a picture of Israel being evil. They want to take a single ambulance that was attacked in a major scale conflict and use it as a propaganda weapon against Israel. That said Israel should be expected to follow the laws of war and we should demand that it does.
If our goal is to end the war and to make some sort of progress for the benefit of everyone involved I don't think inflammatory language or evoking anti-Israeli emotions is the way to get us there. I can get behind that goal if the methods are different.
"Would you be willing to share land equally with Jews in peace?"
"Would you compromise with Israel for peace?"
"Do you want to expel the Jews?"
"Why do you reject all peace offers?"
"Should Iran nuclear bomb Tel Aviv?"
"Is killing innocent Israelis heroic?"
"What is your solution to the conflict?"
"How do you explain Jewish archeology sites?"
Etc
After watching that it's instructive to listen to Israelis answer the question "Why can't you admit there is an occupation?"
Then "Did Israel steal Palestinian land?"
Israel should not use ambulances for military purposes. Israel is far far from perfect and you can find many examples of things we can agree on being "wrong". Perfection is not the right measure though, Israel doesn't do things like: https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p451 The question is compared to what its peers in the "free democratic west" would do in similar circumstances how does Israel measure. We know that most of the world doesn't even try to hold up the same standards.
Second of all, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Why do the Arab countries care so much about Palestine? It’s not like they go around spending their blood and treasure to protect other oppressed groups. Saudi just bombed the shit out of Yemen. The reason they want to get rid of Israel is because they view this as a matter of Arab territorial integrity.
My Bangladesh family is posting the paratrooper meme on my FB. Why? Because they view the existence of Israel as an affront to territorial integrity of the Islamic world. You cannot understand the situation Israel is in from a western secular point of view.
Also, since you mention civilian vs militant casualties, it might be worth mentioning that hundreds of the Israeli casualties on Oct 7 were Israeli soldiers.
Less of an issue than it used to be. The US is now a net oil exporter.[1]
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
https://www.memri.org/reports/hamas-leaders-our-goal-establi...
Note: 'killing children indiscriminately' usually means 'not taking adequate precautions to avoid killing children' - which means that children as collateral damage is part of the problem. On the extremes I believe it's easy to agree on this: nuking Hiroshima hit some military targets but also killed unconscionable numbers of children and civilians as collateral damage.
To continue: What counts as evidence? Do these stories from Amnesty International of bombed civilian residential buildings with no warnings to the inhabitants fit your section 3? Or do they not meet the bar of being systematic, because it's possible they are e.g. hitting the wrong target, or being targeted based on incorrect information?
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evide...
The reason I’d expect Israel to justify the war to an international audience isn’t to satisfy me, but rather because Israel needs allies. PR is part of that.
You might have noticed that opinions on Israel among Americans are heavily skewed by age [1]. The old guard isn’t going to last forever. If they lose the US, what then? They need to be able to convince young people that what they’re doing is justified, and written articles are part of that.
So I’m somewhat surprised that there aren’t more things like that being shared in places where I’d see them.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/12/08/views-of-the...
I have not met anyone who supports Hamas, or even read that on this forum (though I have seen a couple eyebrow-raising comments here and there), yet there are so many people only justifying the actions of the IDF and try to convince the rest of us that what it has been doing to the Palestinians is ok. Think about that.
(Which is not to say that partisans on the Palestinian side of this are somehow angels or anything--if anything, I think it's disappointing there aren't more Muslim or Arab groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, etc.)
Anyways, if I continue arguing like this, I am part of the problem, even if I am right. I don't want to pass up the opportunity in another one of these threads to try to plug these guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGZlR_h96ek
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/09/business/upenn-board-of-trust...
Doesn't seem coordinated to me...
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/stefanik-applauds-resignati...
I get the viewpoint from the Palestinian-American side. My problem isn't with their natural response, which is to do whatever it takes to protect their families and friends. My problem is with the demonizing rhetoric they use and the real world consequences of that. They have mass protests with calls for genocide against Jews. As a Jew in North America this makes me feel less safe. In the real world, Jewish businesses are getting attacked, Jews feel threatened and are threatened. There is a connection between the demonizing and antisemitism. There is no other context or way to look at attacks against Jews everywhere other than antisemitism. "The Jews" and "Israel" are used interchangeably in online discourse and on the street. Another real world consequence is IMO more Palestinian suffering in the middle east, not less. I also want my family in Israel to be safe, I don't go marching in the streets calling for all Palestinians to be expelled from the region or killed.
There are many Palestinians that support Hamas. In previous surveys it's been somewhere around 50% or more. In more recent surveys it's 75% ( https://thehub.ca/2023-11-27/amal-attar-guzman-palestinian-s... ). We also need to separate the question of support for Hamas from the question of supporting the goals and methods of Hamas. Many Palestinians believe in violent struggle until Israel is dismantled. Basically either kill all the Jews or force them to leave. I don't have a survey handy but that view is prevalent. I would challenge your assertion of "not met anyone that supports Hamas". People don't come out and say "I support Hamas" (well some do, but it's not exactly politically correct) but they act in support of Hamas. In my view if you're chanting "from the river to the sea" you support Hamas because that is Hamas ideology. A recent survey found many of the chanters don't know what's the river and what's the sea and once told many changed their minds but ignorance does not absolve. People have a choice of calling for peace or calling for violence and we see too many people calling for violence. A call for peace should be a call for peace for everyone. I am convinced the root cause of violence in the region is the Palestinian pursuit of indiscriminate violence as a means of solving their historical injustices.
I have no problem saying that I support the IDF and Israel. I think the IDF's actions are as moral as any other military in war. Israel didn't choose this war. It was forced on it. At the same time I do feel for the Palestinians. There is no conflict. I wish Israel's security could be achieved without this massive price in lives. I am as sad as anyone by the scenes of destruction, children being pulled from rubble, etc. I just don't make my moral decisions based on appeals to my emotions and attempts of the media to manipulate me. Whenever I see the IDF acting in ways that I feel are wrong I do add that to my overall evaluation, there might be a point where I reconsider. I also lived in Israel during Hamas' suicide bombing campaign against Israeli civilians. There are many injustices from the Israeli side. You need to form a complete picture though.
I feel like most of your message is emotional. This is a normal response to many things we're seeing. I'm not sure it's a way to make progress. I think likely you're also being manipulated. There could be a different media and social media narrative that would make you feel different given the exact same facts on the ground. Think about that. There's plenty of evidence to support this thesis.
EDIT: I also love cats...
> Two decades on, Israel has sounded alarms over the growing number of gunmen in Jenin and their stockpiling of munitions. Israel says the camp is a hub for planning and preparing militant attacks as well as a safe haven for fighters funded by Hamas or the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad group.
> Israel also says more than 50 shooting attacks have been carried out by Jenin-area militants since the beginning of 2023 and that almost half the population is affiliated either with Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/why-is-israel-atta...
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-cr...
“If they would tell the whole world that the [Islamic Jihad] offices on the 10th floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high-rise with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations, this would itself be seen as terrorism. So they do not say it,” the source added.
https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
I would say you are right about this. Maybe what is so shocking in this particular situation (at least for many people) is how little relative value Israel places on the civilians of their adversary. The recent reporting by +972 Magazine[0] on the Israeli decision making process for selecting bombing targets makes this clear.
[0] https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
And btw https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11543891 - Jews are not any less indigenous than Palestinians.
Palestinians as a people and identity only started to exist in the 1900s - please learn your history, these are basic facts.
Suppose an American president had said "I've killed lots of blacks in my life and there's no problem with that". Or that the US largest newspaper published essays arguing that America would have failed if it ever got a black president. Or that congress enacted laws saying that the right to national self-determination in the US is unique to white people. If the US was like that would you say that blacks had equal rights?
https://web.archive.org/web/20210201162924/https://www.jpost...
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/31/17623978/israel-jewish-n...
And yes, we agree to the facts of military aged men, in a combat zone where civilians have been asked to evacuate, stripped (EDIT: to their underwear) and arrested. That's what I also said in my reply. I explained why Israel strips potential Hamas combatants/activists ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at... ). I took issue with the "paraded" part. It is most certainly not sexual violence.
Apparently there are new instructions to the IDF to provide them with clothing immediately.
Do I think the police and the courts are always fair to Palestinians... Nope. But at least they have some legal recourse. The Israeli Supreme court, which is independent (so far), can intervene and has intervened in the past. You can read one case here: https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/israel-detention-unlawf...
By the way extreme right Jews have also been held under administrative arrest.
I still think "arrested Hamas and Islamic Jihad members" is closer to the truth than "abducted random Palestinians".
Are you a parrot or something?
No, I am a person and you are exploring limits of my famous patience which is allowed only to my students as long as they wish to learn.
Also I am very persuasive in following logic and being responsible for own words. The only sensible way to discuss hard issues and to keep being in sync in conversation.
>Do you not understand that NOT killing 20k Palestinians in 60 days is an option (and answers your question)?
Help me understand what you suggest exactly and what outcome you expect after Israel does it? Make your statement so we would be on the same page to discuss it. Then it actually would be possible to discuss it.
Don’t you think you should be responsible with your words and understand consequences of things you suggest before opening your mouth about such sensitive topics? I am getting sick of irresponsible people spreading BS around without ever stating what they say or thinking through the consequences of the things they suggest.
>I've posed several questions to you and you keep not answering them.
This is because you didn’t answer one and only question I ever asked you in the first place.
Number [1] does not show anything, except a group of people trying to flee and then turn around after some load bangs. The bangs might as well be from unrelated firefight we don’t know. We have to believe the interpretations from the Israeli propaganda machine to conclude your claim of Hamas snipers firing at them is true. If you are a Palestinian, you are very unlikely to do that. Conveniently the IDF has a recording of a Palestinian doing exactly that [3]. However this is material recorded and distributed by IDF them self. IDF has been shown to release plenty of material of questionable origin. And if you are a Palestinian you are not going to take them at their words.
Note I’m not saying Hamas hasn’t done any atrocities, of course they have. As did FLN, IRA, Mau Mau, Viet Cong, ANC, etc. before them. However how we view these atrocities depends very much on whether you justify the colonizer or sympathize with the colonized. If you are part of the colonized and living their oppression, you are very unlikely to justify the colonial enterprise. And you are very likely to justify any actions against them, even the most horrible ones. In many cases history has joined the colonized and indeed justified the resistance.
1: https://twitter.com/alexhiggins732/status/172294287253666242...
2: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/viral-video-appears-to-...
3: https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-gaza-resident-says-hamas-p...
There are waivers allowed from the executive branch and I believe Pakistan got one after 9/11 with some antiterrorism benchmarks (conditional aid).
As I understand it the US doesn't acknowledge Israel is nuclear armed and so doesn't give them a waiver congruent with the law.
There is a phenomena in genocides called "Accusation in a Mirror" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror The side that is committing a genocide genuinely believes, or cynically accuses, the targets of their genocide of perpetrating genocide. Right now you believe that is Israel. Right now I believe that is Hamas.
In your favor: the ratio of Palestinian civilian deaths to Israeli civilian deaths.
What I find alarming about all of this, is that there is genuine, physical and video evidence of genocide where the only explanation is genocide and its perpetrators admit that it is genocide. The world dismisses this as lying, or playing the victim.
In Israel's favor, these assertions:
"We are not targeting civilians intentionally." Dismissed as lies.
"Hamas is using civilians as human shields." Dismissed as lies.
"The high ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths is an artifact of Hamas policy." Dismissed as lies.
"Our women were raped." Dismissed as lies.
"Babies were burned alive." Dismissed as lies.
Every single assertion that Israel makes about its intentions are dismissed as lies no matter the evidence. The only acceptable explanation for people (such as yourself?) is that Israel wants to commit genocide and is lying to do so.
By contrast, Hamas explains to the world that they intend genocide and will try for it as long as Israel exists.
I don't know how much clearer it can be. What am I missing?
Admittedly, some of this could credibly be attributed to some aspect of Japanese culture and its approach to defeat. On the other hand, we made a point not to bomb Kyoto because of its status as an important historical and cultural treasure. Meanwhile, in Palestine: https://www.npr.org/2023/12/09/1218384968/mosque-gaza-omari-...
The absurd claim was always based on testimony from one single guy (Eli Beer), with nothing else.
Why were you so convinced it was real? Try and justify it however you like; it was always absurd, and there was never any actual evidence.
Israel are running targeted assassinations on journalists, poets, academics, health workers. Ten thousand very real children have been murdered. And you're all worked up over a baby that never existed. Explain it to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Yacoub_Abu_Al-Qia%2...
https://www.hrw.org/news/2007/11/19/gaza-israel-blocks-670-s...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/palesti...
From a cursory reading[1], it seems Israel had for a long time the ability to veto any human's exit from Gaza through the Rafah crossing in Egypt. Seems to only be the last 5 years where they were not able to do this and that border crossing was open. I graduated from University in 2017.
Israeli people must jail Netanyahu and his gang and negociate seriously for a two-states solution. There is no other way out. Military retaliation has exactly zero role to play here. It only creates more hatred and more Hamas militants to come.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-two-state-solution-is-still...
I hope that's enough proof for you:https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/06/middleeast/rape-sexual-vi...
