>A SMALL GROUP of volunteers from Israel’s tech sector is working tirelessly to remove content it says doesn’t belong on platforms like Facebook and TikTok, tapping personal connections at those and other Big Tech companies to have posts deleted outside official channels, the project’s founder told The Intercept.
>The Intercept was unable to independently confirm that sympathetic workers at Big Tech firms are responding to the group’s complaints or verify that the group was behind the removal of the content it has taken credit for having deleted.
An actual concern would be if this "backchannel" turned out to be messaging an insider who acts outside of policy. We know the Saudis and other state backed groups had insiders in Twitter at least, but I'm much less inclined to believe there are any pro-israel insiders in say, TikTok.
> Iron Truth members have flagged thousands of posts for removal, from clearly racist or false content to posts that are merely sympathetic to Palestinians.
(emphasis added)
If you aren't connected enough to get Google to fix your email, your business is disrupted. It's unfair but life moves on. Maybe next time you don't use Gmail.
The stakes are much higher here in an actual war / genocide. People are starving, dying, having their homes stolen, etc. and this is an attempt to deny them a voice.
Also FTA:
> I copied the URL of the video and sent it to a team in [Facebook parent company] Meta, some Israelis that work for Meta, and I told them that this video needs to be removed and actually they removed it after a few days.”
American companies should not engage in propaganda for a foreign country. I find it reprehensible that foreign nationals from a nation currently engaged in conflict are deliberately working together to push a foreign agenda on the people of the entire world.
This is way, way different than not being able to use Google apps for business.
I often see posts in technical groups im in from people asking for help re-opening their hacked instagram or facebook accounts. Apparently there is an internal-only form for Meta employees to speed up the process for friends/family
That former twitter employee was found guilty of acting as an agent of a foreign government. So far the Israeli lobby has a free pass to meddle in without triggering the same treatment. See https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-twitter-employee-found...
Edit:
> Most of them are product managers, software developers. … They work with the policy teams with an internal set of tools to forward links and explanations about why they need to be removed.
The press are bad enough at coming up with verified claims from the right people. Social media is 1000x worse.
Of course our current American social media dictators are pretty lax on doing anything positive for society as a whole while it benefits them.
The hard thing about "getting politics out of X" is that every time people are involved, politics is involved. Politics is just what people think the group should be.
> The press are bad enough at coming up with verified claims from the right people. Social media is 1000x worse.
No doubt. One of these days we might successfully drill into people's skulls "Stop getting your news from social media; that's not news that's rumors."
Does anyone know if that’s a lot? I don’t know either way. I just have a gut feeling that compared to the number of posts made by bots on any political matter it barely matters.
I wonder if it wouldn’t be more efficient to counter with more bots going in the other direction with likes and posts.
But, there’s a power law distribution for virality, so removing the top 1000 most viral posts might still be impactful.
How far people are actually influenced and in which direction... that's anybody's guess.
Yes, all social media have open channels with law enforcement. That's because social media have legal obligations and when someone comes to a moderator claiming to be a law enforcement officer working on a kidnapping or preventing a terrorist attack and needing time-sensitive help to save lives, you don't want the moderator to have to guess whether that's a real emergency or a hoax.
It's... not a secret. If you live in a democracy, you can quickly find out the name of these channels, they have websites.
Source: I've been part of a moderation team. Not on something that large, though.
It's much worse than rumors: it's often deliberately misconstrued/out of context, or outright lies.
Rumors I don't mind so much, since they're usually pretty obvious.
The sheer volume of pro-palestine, pro-hamas (those are not the same), pro-islam and anti-jewish sentiment[0] I am bombarded with on Tiktok tells me that either:
* there is no moderation
* There is absurdly overwhelming pro-terrorism and racist sentiment
* The bot/spam farms are in full war mode.
I find it hard to believe that content is being moderated with any pro-israel bias on tiktok.
You can also sleep with those employees to speed it up [1].
[1]: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/kittylixo-onlyfans-instagram-em...
It could be 100,000 posts and this would still be near meaningless without actual context on what is being reported. 1000 posts is a joke.
Everything is a shit show.
Here is a great example, this Chris Hayes of MSNBC news segment on the MSNBC YouTube channel where he is incredibly critical of what Israeli leaders are saying:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WTHVseqZdw
Notice the warning says:
"The following content may contain graphic or violent imagery"
There are no such warnings on the official MSNBC website on this video, thus it is specific to YouTube: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/chris-hayes-the-war-in-...
I've seen this happen on another video, one calling on the games industry to be supportive of the Palestinian struggle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDB_wYdn5f4
You can find a ton of videos on YouTube with similar content or worse that the Chris Hayes's video that is critical of Israel, but they are allowed: https://www.youtube.com/@msnbc/search?query=israel
Here is probably the best example, here is an official IDF video that shows clearly dead bodies and there is no YouTube content warning, just a warning that the IDF put in their video - thus allowing this video to still go viral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta7ScT67vQ0
I was a mod of a few semi-popular subs back then and we'd get bombarded by requests to remove comments critical of israel in those threads. A few times messaged by state employees under their real names making their case for a pro-israel mod stance. This was like circa 2008-2011, real ron paul le bacon atheism obama days.
Stranger things have been admitted to news organizations.
People who don't agree with what their coworkers are doing and want to be whistleblowers.
Getting those people to reach out to you is a huge part of investigative journalism.
You work at one of these companies for enough years and someone will accuse you of supporting terrorists eventually.
What you learn working for a multinational corporation is that as an international community, people don't agree on much. Including definitions of "terrorism," fairness, geopolitical borders, or the law.
It's a weird feeling. If you ever wonder how companies can stray so far from "obvious" morality... That's how. Things get a lot less obvious when you're in the position that everyone has an opinion and the opinions often conflict.
So to answer your question more directly... It doesn't take long for outsiders accusing you of supporting terrorism to be met (if only in your own internal filters) with "Oh you have a problem with my approach? Get in line."
(On the flip side, a lot of the training for people acting in that capacity in a big corp is how not to get phished. When you are in the front-line of moderation / customer interaction / etc., bad actors will attempt to use you to compromise third parties. There's a reason there are formal processes for dealing with law enforcement, for example).
If this is confirmed it's bad news, and not just for the Palestinian cause. 'They all work together as part of a cabal' in one of the big anti-semitic tropes. This will harm the cause of Jews everywhere, not just Israeli Jews.
The mere existence of intelligence agencies is proof, sending aid to others is also proof (which we know gets intercepted all the time), having military bases or consulates, even more.
If all of the above, and more including the recession of all foreign aid would make me believe its a sin again, doubled with strong isolationist thinking and very strict border control.
People can make documentaries all they want, it doesn't matter, they're crying about things their country does all day, every day, and probably even better than those they're accusing. They just don't want egg on their face. I definitely don't really feel bad for hypocrites.
Just one instance of that is one too many in my books.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/beheaded-babies-how-uk-media-...
https://electronicintifada.net/content/inside-israels-millio...
Usually it is aimed at “correct” targets so nobody cares.
This is a grassroots organization doing this and in fact its funding and support mostly comes from Americans, such as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and the Israeli-American Council.
Iron Sting Mortar | How it Works | Israel Gaza https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UueA6HIA0Pg
Rarely mentioned by the media is that Hamas builds command and control centers under hospitals intentionally putting civilians in harms way.
every side is saying “but you never see it happening to them!”
“why is nobody discussing this! I know, it’s because they are secretly wishing for our annihilation!”
like get a therapist lol. algorithm driven echo chambers going to echo.
One incident stands out because we received far more messages than I'd ever seen, it was the time we posted a news story about Netanyahu blaming a Palestinian for the Holocaust. We got several messages about what horrible lying racists we were, that was common to all the messages, but they had one main difference. About half the messages claimed Netanyahu never said what he said. The other half claimed he did say it, but he was right.
James Bamford has written at least 3 good articles about Israeli government influence of US civil society (social media) and elections (the leak of the DNC hack materials), all in the last year or so, at The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/authors/james-bamford/
And until extremely recently, the IDF and associated arms of the state have been engaging in even more deceptive actions, such as creating sock-puppet accounts to bolster support for government policy, targeting Israelis themselves: https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-admits-psychological-warfa...
It's impossible to be certain of anything related to these highly unaccountable and secret operations, but the "grain" of truth runs very much in the direction of Israeli state interference, with quite wide scope -- but effectiveness unknown.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us-public-support-israel-drops...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/31/us/politics/us-israel-ham...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/12/united-nations...
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/10/congress-mem...
Virtually all information about the current conflict in the near east between Israel and Palestine might be considered "unverified rumor", whether the entity relaying the information is a state or a person with a camera. For better or worse, this is a standard of information we need to deal with.
Perhaps the idea of a "fact" is something that needs revisiting as a concept....
Please stop spreading misinformation.
This does not preclude the effective operation of an astroturfing operation. I would be absolutely shocked if the site were not a target of such a campaign given its reputed influence.
Here's an article from 2008, from the Jersualem Post.
https://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/ADL-YouTube-l...
Their primary target is anti-racist criticism of the state, the apartheid, the war and the genocide. All labeled as anti semitism despite being fundamentally antiracist and running counter to a racist Israeli narrative.
Yes, of course. Content management is the expected standard when dealing with crowdsourced content. This includes any data coming from social media. This is subject to essentially private, subjective concerns.
I don't generally disagree with your point, but I suspect the relentless pursuit of profit above all other values figures more relevant to this narrative than cultural drift.
Who gives a damn about affiliation? What matters is the material effect on the world, and it's hard to find a more notorious propaganda movement in the world than hasbara
In terms of specific reasons to doubt the Gaza Health Ministry numbers specifically, I could go on forever about that, but I don't see the point of doing so on HN. It's not a tech-related question.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-officials-have-gro...
I'm not going to try to enumerate Israel's mistakes, but when you decide to invite a coterie of journalists to the hospital you destroyed to provide proof of your claims that it was actually a hive center of terrorist activity, and all of them come away basically saying "this evidence isn't good enough," then that should be a sign that it's not PR that's the problem of Israel, it's Israeli actions that are the problem that needs addressing.
And on a personal level, I'm ashamed that my government is giving such unconditional support to a country that is acting in that manner.
It feels more like an Israeli attempt at using fog of war and the masses ignorance on the matter to soften the reaction and spread doubt about the real numbers. As this talking point was continously used by Israeli spokespersons even after US officials believed these numbers to be fairly accurate. I would be happy to be corrected, I wish the numbers are actually less, and would want this to be the reality.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-officials-have-gro...
https://nitter.net/paulg/status/1733146138226614465 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1733146138226614465
Edit: judging by the way the votes keep going up and down there's a yin to the gatekeepers of inflammatory content's yang. These are actions of a rogue state y'all.
None of this has any bearing on whether or not Israel's word is actually worth anything (...or Hamas's word, for that matter).
If you ask me how Israel calculates its death toll the answer is pretty simple: they use archaeologists, forensic medical teams, and more
One of the most obvious examples of a prior discrepancy was the Health Ministry claiming that ~500 innocent civilians died when Israel bombed al Ahli hospital. Of course, we later discovered the hospital wasn't bombed, the parking lot was, the bomb wasn't dropped by Israel but was rather an errant rocket from Hamas, and that far fewer people died. In other words, a series of lies. The Health Ministry never corrected the death toll and kept adding from that.
Beyond this, here's one of many analyses casting shade on the Health Ministry's statistics: https://twitter.com/Aizenberg55/status/1744381711993946209
You can google around for dozens more. As I said to the prior commenter, I'd rather not have a debate here about whether the numbers are accurate (not because I'm not confident but rather because of the famous XKCD) and I simply mean to point out that Paul Graham has one standard for China's COVID death toll and a completely different standard for Hamas's Health ministry figures.
There was no such thing in the Twitter files.
The field of epistemology is ancient. The problem of what can be known and how we can know is even older. I don't think this conflict raises any fundamentally new questions on an epistemic level.
I predict Congress will invite Bibi to a joint session of Congress to bolster support and let him trash a sitting Democratic President just like they did to Obama.
Then Bibi can visit Elon again and address any Trump talking points to the enjoyment of alt-nazis on X.
1. Regardless of the method, it was fairly accurate for years, and matched closely to Israeli estimates of casualties in prior conflicts.
2. The US, Israeli's largest ally, is not doubting those numbers. This alone says alot given that the US from a strategic perspective would want to present Israel in the best possible light they can given the majority of the globe is heading towards leaving Israel in isolation.
3. The Israeli claim against Almamadani hospital incident is placing the blame on Islamic Jihad (not Hamas) (pedantic point)
4. The issue of Almamadani hospital incident is still not settled, especially as the Israeli claimes have been debunked by multiple entities most notably the New York times. [1]
5. Ignoring the questionable numbers of this specific incident, because you might be right, but its interesting that the US's admission that the death toll coming from Gaza is accurate came at a date way after the Al mamadani hospital incident (my claim would be that this incident has been taken into consideration by the US officials when they admitted the accuracy of the death toll coming from Gaza). This paired with the US's strategic support of Israel makes their admission that the death toll is accurate is way more trust worthy than possibly exaggerated COVID death tolls, as in one case its an admission playing against the admitter, whereas the other case the admission is in favor of the admitter.
But thank you for sharing the Twitter thread, I'll investigate it and look into other sources as well
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/world/middleeast/gaza-hos...
With Netanyahu and other far right parties in power I'm not sure this is argument you think it is.
Also not great numbers with the free press either:
Better than some in the region, but not great.
And the refrain gets old when used as a cover for Israels terrible actions, but it actively makes me ill nowadays, maybe not as ill as "IDF is the most moral army in the world" when I think about the tens of thousands of kids they have blown up (killed and injured) I suppose.
Some commenters here ask, "is this guy lying," but I can't help but wonder... was there any correlation between him flagging the post and Facebook's internal misinformation police taking it down on their own? They take down a lot of content every day. It would be pretty funny if the whole crusade was made up of people who could find doomed posts a few minutes before the moderation system does, and so think they're the ones taking things down.
Losing US support? In what circumstances? We are printing billions to send to Israel with zero oversight.
They launched a $100 million fund to oust “the squad“ & offered $20 million to people to run against them.
Now take a look over on Maui, in La Haina, where US citizens are still having to pay mortgages on the houses that were burned to the ground. Dust & Ash. Where are our aircraft carriers from the pacific fleet bringing infrastructure, supplies, Seabees, Army Corps of engineering and the best minds to rebuild OUR OWN GOD DAMNED communities?
Between AIPAC & DMFI they have hands on most politicians.
Look at the amount of money they’ve spent on Biden—-who proudly states his is a Zionist. Look at Blinken & his background—Google him and his family.
There is zero means to even cobble up a group of politicians to vote against anything regarding Israel.
39 US STATES have laws outlawing BDS or any boycott of Israel if you work for state funded positions. Why? Who funded those laws?
There is zero neutrality & how on earth does our American government portray themselves as diplomats or influencers towards Israel? Or earnest negotiators?
Between our secret military bases there and arms depots and unlimited funding for weapons & aid.
The American public is not aligned with that at all, but that doesn’t matter. PACS & Dark money controls this. Feeding the military industrial complex.
It will take other governments & international courts to change this. We’ll see what happens on Thursday & Friday.
The US has rendered the UN impotent with their security council vetoes.
AIPAC & DMFI should be regulated as foreign lobbyists.
I wonder if they see how the whole thing backfires. “Look how we conspire with our secret workers integrated into the larger media and tech companies…”
I suppose the idea was that it wouldn’t be made too public.
Israeli law allows news censorship by the IDF. Currently, if you are a news outlet working in Israel, you have to pass your war coverage by them [1,2] even the CNN is forced to do this [3]. I don't know, but you seem to have a strange definition of free press. Should I list some of the series of scandals of IDF caught laying in the past to complete the picture? Just remember that they tried to convince people that the words [Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday] in Arabic are Hamas members names [4].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Censor
[2] https://theintercept.com/2023/12/23/israel-military-idf-medi...
[3] https://theintercept.com/2024/01/04/cnn-israel-gaza-idf-repo...
[4] https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20231116-...
October 7 was a barbaric act of murder, torture, rape and kidnapping, involving men, women, children and babies. Women were forced to watch their children burned to death before themselves being burned alive. Men had fingers, toes, hands and feet removed before being shot in the head. I couldn't care less if the rumour of beheaded babies is false because there were enough atrocities at the same scale which have been confirmed. Shame on you for deflecting from this fact. Shame on you.
And what is the "racist Israeli narrative"?
It's just a divisive topic.
FWIW: when replying with purely facts to add context I am often reported, sometimes automatically it seems.
Not that I have a pro-israeli stance, I just think these topics are so divisive that we need to at least have some common understanding.
And no one gets fired for working in secret for dubious, shady groups. No internal rules were broken, no laws were broken.
Telling the truth is going to always be against someone's interest. If that someone can control the medium, he will do it.
Netanyahu is not electable. I mean, Israelis do not "elect" their Prime Minister, but still.
> I predict Congress will invite Bibi to a joint session of Congress to bolster support and let him trash a sitting Democratic President just like they did to Obama.
They'd be helping Biden's reelection chances.
You can read more here if you are interested https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/benjamin-netany...
Does that still exist? If you do investigative journalism maybe you win the admiration of the public. If you align with the powers that be, no nasty things happen to you and maybe you earn some money.
One crime doesn't justify or deflect from another. Simple as that. And to exploit the victims of the Hamas attacks to commit ethnic cleansing is not honoring them, it's really just exploiting them for jingoistic purposes, and to dehumanize all Palestinians. We've seen so much of that we won't forget for decades.
Epistemology hasn't changed; but the engineering of how one ensures they are probably reliably informed sure has.
On the flipside, we have a lot more information about how brains tend to process and weigh information to form beliefs.
How many Palestinian journalists have been murdered or had their families targeted and extended family bombed by the IOF?
The IDF have targeted & murdered more journalists in 2 months than in any other conflict.
The IDF is the only military on the planet that has a military court for juveniles and imprisons them by the thousands. You can search this all out on YouTube & see footage of it. They were holding boys in open air cages in the winter. Their parents not even knowing which military prison their kids were in.
We see the US bombs falling 24/7 on all of Gaza. We see what is going on every single day.
We know the Israeli policy of “mowing the lawn” every few months.
We SEE it. You should own it and be revulsed by it, just as you should by the Israeli Apache gunships emptying their machine guns at Israelis at the concert or the tank rounds. Or shooting unarmed Israeli civilians hostages waving a white flag.
What policy is that called by the IDF again? Oh yeah, The Hannibal Directive. Only now they target their own.
Mutilation. False. Burnings (except by Israeli tank shells and Hellfire missiles). False. Beheaded babies (the one thing you did admit to). False.
You just PROVED the entire raison d'etre of the article, and of the poster you responded to.
It was a predictable as its failings to alleviate prejudice in any form. It is because of the bad ideas, not political allegiance.
It was clearly shown in the Twitter files that there are many relations deep into social media companies and that is very likely true for every larger platform.
It would be surprising if there weren't backchannels, because they have become relevant, sadly.
> The bare, white-tiled rooms showed no immediate evidence of use — for command and control or otherwise. There are no signs of recent habitation, including litter, food containers, clothing or other personal items.
> “This room was evacuated, and all the gear was evacuated. I guess it was evacuated when they knew or understand that we were going to enter Shifa Hospital,” Hagari said in the video.
Sadly if the Undertale soundtrack was aggressively content ID'd/DMCA'd, that would have been a way to take it down. But that would penalize everyone who uploads footage of that game, so obviously that's not done.
If you have to label everyone who goes against the narrative that Palestinians are "human animals" that must to be wiped off the Earth, and other things Israeli politicians said while the IDF is doing it (or even just anyone who cares about factuality full stop) a Hamas supporter, that should tell you something.
As Bernie Steinberg said here https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/29/steinberg-weap...
> If Israel’s cause is just, let it speak eloquently in its own defense. It is very telling that some of Israel’s own supporters instead go to extraordinary lengths to utterly silence the other side. Smearing one’s opponents is rarely a tactic employed by those confident that justice is on their side.
The same principles that condemn the crimes of Hamas condemn the Israeli atrocities. It's really not complicated once you strip away all the labels of pro-this and anti-that.
Of acclaimed, established and renowned independent journalists, ...
with collectively decades of experience reporting on this very issue, ...
using direct Israeli sources, ...
to debunk the claims of any mass, organized campaign of rapes, beheading, mutilation, etc, etc, etc
https://youtu.be/RmhrRknUwtUsi=Bo851vbgprjsOdlo
https://youtu.be/WEyVdHL09vY?si=QaRCkr5TVKiinny
https://www.youtube.com/live/CPMf3CIa_BAsi=jzNZfD76KlK_7Oel
There's one unshakable truth emerging g from this genocide.
Israel TELLS you what happened, and it has been caught lying so much that it barely registers an upturned eyebrow any longer.
Palestine SHOWS you what happened, with 100s and 100s and 100s and 100s of videos, testimonies, etc, etc.
And that's why the vast majority of the world no longer believes you.
And why one side (guess which one?) is busy massacring journalists into the 3 figures now. If that side had the truth on their side, then they wouldn't be doing that.
It really is that simple!
I find this article failed to verify this claim at all.
I can find nothing elsewhere about 'iron truth'. It seems to be a creation by this website.
Then I goto their main page right now.
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/11/dnc-biden-israel-palesti...
Also multiple entries of 'Israel's war on Gaza'
Which is simply not factually correct. The palestinians are the ones who declared war and invaded Israel. Israel is in a defensive war.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-intercept/
I would say they being far left and low factuality seems to have been proven here.
When there is a school shooting, should it be punished by a massive bombing campaign on the town where the perpetrator lives?
These atrocities are just plane wrong, no matter the motivation. Pointing out the crimes of Israel is not the same as supporting violence by Hamas. Both sides are in the wrong for their treatment of innocent civilians, however Israel is entirely to blame for their illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
Even if it can't be confirmed as of yet, I have no doubt that they are working on or have actually achieved the connections to make this possible.
I don't see it happening. Israel has some kind of connection to the US that overrides pretty much anything that Israel does. If you look at any presidential address, Israel's flag is there. I don't think that is just because Israel is our partner. Israel must have something pretty important that we depend on.
https://archive.is/ERHPN#selection-2055.97-2055.288 https://archive.is/BR10K
Because it does. https://archive.is/ERHPN#selection-2055.97-2055.288 https://www.mintpressnews.com/israels-teen-troll-army-hasbar...
You are right about anti-semitic tropes, and it's a serious accusation, but if it's happening it's a problem. Not that official endorsement should be the standard to follow. Crowdsourcing a troll army for positive coverage is deceptive, regardless of whether support is official or shadier.
Interesting. Do you have a link of him coming into the whitehosue and trashing Obama? I assumed that relationship was fairly neutral after Obama gave him $40 Billion over the next 10 years.
There are plenty of philosophers that rejected the idea that objective consensus is possible, even more so when faced with assigning a truth value to arbitrary phrases. Off the top of my head, both Hume and Kant noted the impossibility of true posteriori certainty. You're quite correct that this is well-tread territory, but you're wrong to think that there's some widely agreed-upon, well-defined theory of truth or knowledge.
Pragmatically, we're completely immersed in floating signifiers and appear to rely on them for fundamental communication, so I'm more arguing for a move to discussion of degrees of certainty & consensus rather than a binary understanding of knowledge.
(...and this is even before diving into gettier problems!)
1. No it wasn't, despite the link PG shared. See: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28688179 . This won't surprise you but the Gaza Health Ministry also put out false data during COVID.
2. The American government's position has shifted over time from outright denial of the Health Ministry numbers to "we don't know, but we do know there are too many deaths." Let's see how it continues to shift as the conflict evolves.
4. Remember the context. You asked for an instance of the Gaza Health Ministry lying and I provided one. Are you now saying the 500 dead figure was accurate? Because if so, you're wrong that the matter is unsettled. While the exact estimates vary from as few as a dozen KIA to ~300 KIA, the entire open source intelligence community, all western intelligence agencies, and most publications agree the initial death toll was wrong. Also--not to be pedantic--but the NYT retracted their early coverage of the al Ahli hospital incident; the piece you link to was widely panned by open source intelligence experts; and it doesn't actually question the incident -- it just calls into question one particular piece of evidence.
5. I don't think you're following the narrative. Israel has said that the total death toll may be roughly 30% lower than what the Gaza Health Ministry asserts, but they also argue the list is NOT accurate. The list says almost everyone dead are women and kids, whereas Israel claims that roughly 8,000 militants have been killed and 1,000 captured.
- Israel has not carpet bombed gaza. They've used a higher portion of smart bombs than any other military in history and use F16s to guide their dumb bombs. Israel has dropped more than 25,000 bombs, and according to the high estimates fewer than 25,000 palestinians have been killed, meaning each bomb kills less than one person. Israel also establishes humanitarian corridors, drops leaflets, sends evacuation warnings, allows in aid, establishes safe zones, and much more.
- Nobody knows how many Palestinian journalists have been murdered. Gaza does not have a free press. What we do know is that many militants posing as journalists have been killed. See: https://www.camera.org/article/using-journalists-lives-as-cu...
- You're upset that Israel imprisons minors like these guys? https://www.wionews.com/world/are-hamas-resorted-to-training... Save some of your outrage for Hamas using child soldiers. Also, plenty of other countries, including the United States, imprison minors.
- I can see you've been listening to lots of Norman Finkelstein? Israel does not just wake up one day and say "let's mow the lawn" - each time they bomb gaza it's been in response to something like a suicide bomb or stabbing, which has happened for decades in Israel.
- I see you think you're familiar with the Hannibal directive. Can you link me to the text of this directive? The principles are tactical rather than strategic and followed by many other militaries, including the US.
How are the numbers generated?
Not sure if you're a Hebrew reader, but you don't know what you're talking about with regard to journalism in Israel. Have you ever read Gideon Levy? There is tons of criticism of the government and its conduct in this war in Israeli media.
Sorry these facts make you ill. Get better soon!
The very link you present even states that the army and Shin Bet do not request help from act.il.
It's in the very next sentence from the one you chose to highlight.
Your second source has nothing to do with act.il
This is a bold claim to make considering the evidence. We have satellite photos of Gaza and many estimates are that over 60% of the housing stock in the entire Gaza strip are damaged or destroyed[1] (some estimates up to 70% [2]; the lowest I could find was 45.3% [3]). Entire neighborhoods have been leveled in all parts of the Gaza strip. At least 29,000 bombs dropped on the strip have targeted residential areas. Over 65% of the population is displaced. More than 200 heritage and archaeological sites have been destroyed in the Israeli bombardment[2].
The bombings are not uniformly distributed, so if we focus on the most destroyed areas, which is norther Gaza and Gaza city, the numbers are much worse. Looking at this map[4] published by the BBC you can see that every part of Gaza city, Jabalia and Beit Hanoun have been targeted. Between 70% and 90% of all housing stock in these areas are damaged or destroyed[5]. Khan Younis south of the evacuation line has also had most of its areas targeted in Israeli bombardment and with an estimate 50% of all housing stock damaged or destroyed[5].
Here is what wikipedia has to say about carpet bombing[6]:
> Carpet bombing, also known as saturation bombing, is a large area bombardment done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land.
You have to be extremely selective in you consideration of reports on the evidence to deny that Gaza has been—and is currently in to process of being—carpet bombed. So selective in fact, that you would not just be wrong, but obviously wrong.
---
1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-is...
2: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/31/israeli-bombardmen...
3: https://menafn.com/1107703299/ICJ-Should-Consider-Damaged-Ho...
4: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/89CD/production/...
The second link is also about a crowdsourced online influence program affiliated with the Israeli government. I never restricted my concern to just one program. Care to claim Hasbara is not affiliated either?
Have a nice day.
I'm not trying to say there has been little damage to Gaza. There's been lots. But that doesn't mean it's been carpet bombed. There's lots of damage because there was lots of military infrastructure.
In every explanation and definition of carpet bombing I find online the focus is on the destruction, not the method. Yes, historical examples of carpet bombing has used unguided bombs, and the targets have been indiscriminate. However what is important is the damage and the time period. That is, the damage has to be massive, involve every part of a large area, and it has to happen progressively (as opposed to all at once; this excludes the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima). The bombing of Gaza checks every one of this criteria.
What doesn’t matter is the bureaucratic process before a target is selected, whether the bomb is guided. If a military specifically targets over half of all residential building, many historic and cultural sites, civilian infrastructure, etc. runs this through lawyers, who approve the bombing, then uses precession guided bombs to destroy these targets, and does so over every area, than that is carpet bombing.
And just to hammer the point home. Hamas still to this day retains the ability to fire rockets over to Israel, despite this vast damage of civilian area. However Israel is picking their target, if they indeed intend on destroying military targets, than they are certainly doing a lousy job.
Regardless, our (USA) parties are in fact the biggest blockers to our functioning correctly as a liberal democracy. One is desperate for votes from anyone, the other party is terrified to pass anything or imagine any kind of future that isn't a slightly less grim version of what the republicans offer. Just by our ability to come to a consensus and do things as a country, we seem to have ground to a complete halt. So yea, people should be a lot more critical of whether or not we're actually espousing the democratic ideals we claim.
So people are asking you to be scientific and critical rather than to uncritically repeat the claims of a belligerent in combat.
Finally, I'm not sure if you're saying this facetiously or if you genuinely don't know what Israel is capable of, or the lengths its gone to to reduce civilian harm but Israel is not doing indiscriminate mass slaughter. That's what Hamas did on October 7.
I mean completely seriously that Israeli occupation forces are engaging in deliberate mass slaughter, including widely reported upon declarations of certain zones as safe for civilians followed by the bombing of those zones (https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-01-03-2024-...).
Maybe this is semantics to you, but to me carpet bombing implies indiscriminate bombing, which is the opposite of what Israel has done, despite its having dropped many bombs.
While you rely on authorities, I'll do what enlightenment thinkers do. Ask questions like "how" and "what is their method."
Bombings can still be indiscriminate even when you carefully select and hit each and every target. The indiscriminateness is just moved from an imprecise bomb to a non-discriminatory target selection method.
But fine, don’t call this carpet bombing. Call it something else. The level of destruction is on the maps, and has been documented to be extremely severe. More severe than in any other bombing campaigns since World War 2. Perhaps this amount of destruction warrants a new name that accurately depicts the horrors of something worse than carpet bombings.
None of this is to defend any of the Netanyahu administrations actions in Gaza. I think these discussions on HN are largely cursed, and nobody is going to persuade anybody to "switch sides". You don't have to agree that the UN is, as Israel's supporters would say, so clearly biased against Israel as to be fatal to their credibility. But I don't think you can dismiss the charge easily. If you dig in, you're going to read some uncomfortable stuff.
Yes, there is lots of destruction. Yes, that's regrettable. No, that doesn't mean Israel is carpet bombing.
Also, with regard to the beheadings, I know this is uncomfortable, but it's worth looking into a bit more than you have. There is lots of evidence that would pass muster in any court.
Maybe flagging reasonable comments is what winning looks like to you. Given your defence of an organization crowdsourcing coverage manipulation that's not so surprising. But it is how you know you're on the wrong side. I'm embarrassed for you.
And needless to say, he wasn't allowed to take the footage away with him, so that a careful forensic analysis could be done.
All of which FURTHER UNDERLINES what I said above.
And then there is the IDF just going into civilian buildings, villages, rigging them up and blowing them up, singing about moving into Gaza and all that. The idea that it's only about military targets does not hold a drop of water.
And it links to an article at https://www.972mag.com/the-israeli-government-is-paying-for-... "Another large sum (from the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs), around NIS 2 million ($570,000), was budgeted for building the Act.il website and producing multi-media content for it."
You're strangely confident that act.il getting government funding is "simply false" when you're simply wrong.
So explain just how the post was misleading.
"not none" would be acceptable for me.
https://speakupeg.com/2023/12/30/nyts-disgraceful-investigat...
> “She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast. “One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road.”
If people accept that at face value from a party that calls people "human animals" and turns off water for civilians and all that, while prepping to take over occupied territory it doesn't even consider occupied but theirs, well.
> Also, with regard to the beheadings, I know this is uncomfortable, but it's worth looking into a bit more than you have. There is lots of evidence that would pass muster in any court.
If it would pass in court, you can link to it here. Because, again, so far it's been claims accepted at face value, then attacking those who ask for evidence (it's in the OP article even, someone asking for evidence being flagged as "terrorist/fake"), then still no evidence.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/beheaded-babies-how-uk-media-...
This issue includes the second paragraph of the comment your replied to.
The concept that needs revising is our understanding of social media posts as being automatically considered 'facts'.
If it can't be proven, if we can't trust any vehicle to independently verify its veracity, then we simply have to check as many sources as we can and consider it as a possibility, not a fact.
That's a little glib though, since it's fundamentally not how the UN works.
> Watchdog The Seventh Eye revealed that Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs spent almost $2 million on one propaganda campaign in 2017 – part of which was allocated to Act.IL.
> A global influence campaign funded by the Israeli government had a $1.1 million budget last year, a document obtained by The Electronic Intifada shows.
> In its annual report, from January, Act.IL says its goal is to “influence foreign publics” and “battle” BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
I think that's a reasonably credible source, but you may disagree. The EI piece is a compilation of other people's work, in particular, The Seventh Eye, affiliated with +972.
On your point about "affiliation", that is clearly false, based on the OP article, and numerous other (more universally credible) sources, such as Forward[1], and Haaretz[2].
[1] https://forward.com/news/388259/shadowy-israeli-app-turns-am...
> The Herzliya headquarters is the base of Act.il, a hybrid Israel advocacy effort and online information operation. A joint project of two Israeli not-for-profits, it is led by former Israeli intelligence officers and has close ties to Israel’s intelligence services, its Ministry of Strategic Affairs and American Jewish casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Act.il’s leaders frame the program as an effort to counterbalance anti-Israel attitudes online.
> “We know each other,” he said of his group’s relationship with members of Israel’s intelligence community. “You don’t get [sent] a link to [a specific video]. We talk with each other. We work together.”
[2] https://archive.md/newest/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-new...
> A pro-Israel social media advocacy app that partners with the Israeli Strategic Affairs Ministry is asking activists to influence Googles search results for the term BDS.
> Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) told the plenum that “boycott organizations are spread out geographically and act in different areas. The organizations built a network of activity and act in coordination with the Palestinian Authority. There is a campaign of falsehoods fueling hate.”
> ”Since this is a battlefront like any other, the ministry put together a strategy for running the campaign against this phenomenon,” Minister Erdan stated.
> ”One of the principles for success is keeping our methods of action secret…Since most of the ministry’s actions are not of the ministry, but through bodies around the world who do not want to expose their connection with the state, we must protect the information whose exposure could harm the battle.”
The fact of the affiliation and funding being somewhat opaque in official records must also be balanced against the fact that it is government policy to enforce this opacity: https://archive.md/20190611095349/https://main.knesset.gov.i...
> Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) told the plenum that “boycott organizations are spread out geographically and act in different areas. The organizations built a network of activity and act in coordination with the Palestinian Authority. There is a campaign of falsehoods fueling hate.”
> ”Since this is a battlefront like any other, the ministry put together a strategy for running the campaign against this phenomenon,” Minister Erdan stated.
> ”One of the principles for success is keeping our methods of action secret…Since most of the ministry’s actions are not of the ministry, but through bodies around the world who do not want to expose their connection with the state, we must protect the information whose exposure could harm the battle.”
I don't know whether the specific legislation went into effect. Regardless, it clearly states that "actions [...] not of the ministry, but through bodies around the world" is an ongoing strategy for their success (in their view).
Since the org is huge, multipurpose and multifaceted (and often less than the sum of its parts), I'd say it's best to stay as specific as possible both when using some UN thing to buttress an argument or to critique the thing - so, what is the thing, by what org, person, representative, etc.
In this case, the specific thing is
an interview with a UN relief director who explained the retrospective examination of past casualty reporting that had happened
Which doesn't seem to be linked? From there the whole thing swerves into a discussion of 'The UN' which turns to vague generalities that are mostly (I think often unintentionally) recycled talking points. 'Israel seeks to discredit the UN' is a recycled talking point itself, of course. But I think 'HRC has bad members' is too - the UN is full of bad members. The Security Council has an aggressor state on it with veto power and everything! UN has a lot of orgs and items dedicated to the conflict? Sure, but Israel and the UN were almost born together and the conflict is one of the closest things the UN has to a foundational, OG issue - state formation, genocide, wars of aggression, right to defense, refugees, it's all there. Special Rapporteurs are kind of unserious (and why is there no Special Raconteur)? A real thing but doesn't seem clearly related to whatever interview the poster read.
Anyway, sorry for the grumptone, I just think substantive UN critique is such a fecund orchard of low hanging fruit there's not much point in settling for the frozen trope concentrate stuff.
Thanks for checking me on this!
https://www.jpost.com/Features/In-Thespotlight/Want-to-help-...
> According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 26 out of the 35 hospitals across Gaza are non-functional because of damage sustained during the Israeli military assault or the lack of power.
Reporters Without Borders are a widely recognised and reputable organisation. Here's the direct link to the entry on Israel:
"LERS is a system in which a verified law enforcement agent can securely submit a legal request for user data, view the status of the submitted request, and download the response submitted by Google.
If you are a sworn law enforcement agent or other government official who is authorized to issue legal process in connection with an official investigation, you may submit your request through this system."
--is not the height of transparency, though.
Yes, there have been particular government officials who've said they want to make Gaza unlivable, just as there are crazies in the US congress and senate who say things like we should nuke the middle east.
In terms of the earth going around the sun, the point I was trying to make is that at first glance it does look like the sun goes around the earth, just as at first glance it looks like Israel is trying to reduce Gaza to rubble, but after careful observation and adherence to scientific thinking we learn that the earth goes around the sun -- and that Israel is not carpet bombing gaza.
At this point, I think enough of us have lived through being vaccinated that this canard fails to hold water.
(Nothing is 100% safe, and the deaths due to vaccine reaction were tragic. The vaccine was orders of magnitude safer than COVID ripping through the population unchecked).
And the rhetoric matches the actions of the IDF. It's not "just" the bombing, it's also just blowing up whole villages demolition style, before/after making selfies and TikToks making fun of it. Just turning off water, plowing up the asphalts of streets, etc. etc.
Also, not sure how much of an expert you are in the Genocide convention, but Israel allows free speech and like the United States it does not prosecute legislators for saying wild things.
There is a massive gulf between your confidence and knowledge.
Also, reporters without borders is not at all reputable. Here is one of countless rebuttals to their position: https://www.camera.org/article/using-journalists-lives-as-cu...
I do not agree with Israel's policies on the West Bank, but the issue is more complicated than I suspect you think and I encourage you to read Israeli perspectives on it.
(2) The USA consistently vetoes UN resolutions which would bring back the hostages. So (3) is obviously valued higher then the lives of the hostages.
(3) Do you honestly believe this is achievable via militaristic means?
Israels stated goals—if we ignore those who say the goal is genocide—seem rather vague and/or unachievable. And in the case of (2) Israel (or rather the USA) is self sabotaging.
No, I choose to believe the officials who claim ethnic cleansing is the goal. The reality from the ground seems to support their narrative.
What could be weighed against it could be protest against and prosecution of the genocidal statements and actions. Nothing else, not ever.
There still are Israelis with conscience who are against this. But they're in the minority, as shown by Israelis demonstrating in front of the house of Ofer Cassir, tearing up a Palestinian flag with a scissor, grinning from ear to ear -- the first member of the Knesset they want to expel for supporting having this brought before the ICJ.
And there is the translate button. We can translate audio, too. Everybody speaks Hebrew. And whatever change in tune from here on out, while not changing the actions, will not change what Israel showed the world. Just like cutting off Internet access to Gaza will not make the world forget about Gaza.
But since we will simply not agree on this anyway, I want to ask, did you march with "Free Palestine", or with Palestinians? As in, in those 20 years, did you make Palestinian friends? If so, what are they saying?
2) I repeat: The IDF, Netanyahu, and other leaders have said a zillion times that the goals are to neuter Hamas, bring back the hostages, and provide a Hamas-free future for Gaza. These goals are consistent with their actions, which include dropping leaflets, sending text messages, doing roof-knock warnings, establishing humanitarian corridors, safe zones, allowing in aid, and more.
3) Yes, I have many Palestinian friends, and while I would never march with the current #freepalestine movement, which I think is highly antisemitic, I did march with the movement for years. Most of my Palestinian friends are afraid to speak up for fear of career damage. I encourage them to speak up and tell their side! I can guarantee you I've donated more to Palestinian causes than you or almost anyone on the thread has.
4) Do you think when Israel goes into a West Bank town they just do so for fun or malice? I mean, seriously! What a weird conception of the world. They go in and risk their soldiers to get terrorists, of which there are many.
5) I encourage you to browse Israeli media and hit the translate button! Based on your limited knowledge, I would guess you're not doing this at present. If you were, you would never claim Israel's goals are to make Gaza unlivable.
6) Yes, there are bad apples in the Israeli military who destroy stores and worse, but that is illegal in Israel and those soldiers get punished and face the military justice system. The same thing happens in every war, including US wars. Remember Abu Ghraib? That was far worse.
2. Israel will not accept a future in which Hamas, which has vowed to repeat October 7, remains in power. So any resolution that calls for a ceasefire (meaning Israel puts down its weapons but Hamas doesn't) without a return of hostages will not pass muster.
3. Yes, I do believe it is possible to achieve with military means, and moreover I believe it's impossible to achieve without military means. And I believe it already has been achieved in Northern Gaza. I'm not saying Hamas will go away completely, just as Nazism didn't go away completely, but just as the allies crushed the Nazis, Israel can crush Hamas. I think it's unlikely for Israel to get many more hostages back, but I'm glad it's trying.
Interesting to me that you believe the officials who claim ethnic cleansing is the goal rather than the 100x more numerous officials, including the head of the IDF and Netanyahu, who say the three goals are what I stated. Also, there is no ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on the ground. The net reduction in the Palestinian population since the start of the war has been roughly 6k people if you believe Hamas's death toll claims (22k deaths, 16k births).
B) Apartheid South Africa used the same excuse. That black people lived in independent bantustans who were self governing and therefor not apart of South Africa.
C) You are ignoring the fact that Israel very much controls Gaza, including every border crossing, the airspace and sea access, imposes a blockade, controls the registry, etc. Unlike apartheid South Africa, Israel does not recognize independent Palestine, let alone independent Gaza.
That you invoke the historical example of the Nazis seems interesting to me. World War 2 is the most devastating war in human history. About 3% of the global population died in that war. You may think Hamas is that frightening but I think this level of destruction is not proportionate to the actual threat imposed by Hamas.
Instead I would like to invoke the historic example of the IRA. Another resistance group that did horrible acts of terrorism, causing countless civilian civilian casualties. IRA was not defeated militarily, instead the Catholic population of Northern Ireland were granted equal rights, and the system of oppression was dismantled.
Israel seem very reluctant to even consider a peaceful solution as an option. So far in the current conflict peaceful solutions has save over a 100 hostages, military options has saved a single hostage (and killed at least 3).
The point with these three goals you—and Israeli officials—claim, is that they are vague or unachievable. Genocide is hardly ever stated as a goal, instead it is hidden by a rhetoric such as these. Particularly the promise of security.
B) The apartheid in South Africa was based on race. By contrast the different policies in the West Bank reflect the historical and cultural context there: that it used to be part of Jordan, that the people there want to be separate from Israel, etc.
C) Israel does not control Gaza's border crossing any more than the US controls Canada's border crossing. Israel is an independent, sovereign country, so of course they get to control who goes in from Gaza. The other border gaza has is with Egypt, and Egypt has the same policies.
Pro-Palestinian rhetoric on this site goes off the rails in so many directions, and because it seems to be the majority opinion on the site, there are many more examples of off-the-rails comments from that side. But this assertion of Gaza's independence from Israel is one of the reliable off-the-rails pro-Israel sentiments I see here.
Gaza was blockaded. Israel tried to control who and what goes in and out of Gaza (to try to limit the weapons Hamas has). But Israel had no control over what the Hamas Gaza government did in Gaza, how they spent their budget, what they built, what they taught in schools, what their military was planning.
Palestinians in the occupied territories may not be Israeli citizens, but neither were the South African residents of the bantustans, so which passports the subjects of Israel holds doesn’t matter. What matters is that Israel controls most aspect of their lives and imposes different rules and condition depending on whether you are Israeli or Palestinian. However you separate the population doesn’t matter either, the fact that Israel does is all that counts.
There is a different legal system on the West Bank, true, however the Israeli settlers living there get charged in Israeli courts, and so do Palestinians, except that Palestinians get charged in a different court system, namely military court. This is a double justice system, and there is no other way of describing it. Modern liberal democracies don’t have those, only apartheid states do.
I started off this thread by disputing the claim you made that Gaza is not being carped bombed. To circle back to that point here is an interesting article by the Washington Post Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars in Gaza[1]. Of particular interest is the comparison to the bombing campaign of Aleppo and Raqqa.
ISIS is without a doubt one of the worse terrorist organizations we have ever seen. What makes ISIS particularly bad is that—unlike Hamas, IRA, Mau Mau or the Viet Cong—they are not resisting oppression of an occupying state but for their fight—like the Nazis—are for their own fascistic ideology and dominance. Their strength and brutality was also far worse then Hamas has ever been. And yet, they were defeated in Syria with far less damage and destruction then what the IDF has already imposed (without success) in Gaza.
I want to be absolutely clear though that the people suffering both the ISIS rule and then later the bombing campaigns which successfully deposed them, were indeed horrendous.
Another point of argument here is that there was no peaceful solution to ISIS. There is one for Hamas. ISIS wasn’t resisting oppression, Hamas is—just like IRA, FLN, etc. before them.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...
Gaza was reliant on Israel for water because Hamas not only didn't invest in infrastructure, but literally dug up water pipes to make rockets. Why the heck should Israel be responsible for providing Gaza with water, food, fuel, or electricity? Do you also believe Ukraine should provide this stuff to Russia?
It would be a "breakaway province" situation, except that:
a. Israel intentionally got all its citizens out of that place and
b. Israel had no intention of taking control and forcing Gaza to join back into Israel.
Israel mistakenly thought Hamas was transforming into a national government that is busy governing its territory.
Gaza was mostly an independent country at war with Israel and not even a little bit an autonomous province of Israel. The war could not be resolved and so it was stuck in a state where Israel thought it prevented Hamas from bringing in heavy weapons but did not want to commit to conquering a city.
I think some people thought that after Israel pulled out in 2005, and Gaza became autonomous, it would become a normal independent country, and people still treat Gaza of 2023 as if it's the Gaza of 2005.
Having control over a territory is what makes it occupied. And Israel very much has control over Gaza. The government and the legislator is one of few things which Gazans them self control, almost everything else is controlled by Israel, including the population registry, what goes in and out, etc.
> Israel mistakenly thought Hamas was transforming into a national government that is busy governing its territory.
They never thought such thing. There were regular bombing campaigns which Israelis described as “mowing the lawn” (talk about dehumanization) where the Israeli military went into Gaza—sometimes with groundtroups—including in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2018 and 2021. In 2018 the Israeli military indiscriminately shot at unarmed protestors inside Gaza. Israel always assumed Hamas to be a terrorist organization first, and an illegitimate government of Gaza second.
I think if someone is going to raise the "Gaza isn't Israel it's an independent country" argument, the facts lining up against an natural reading of that kind of statement make it incumbent on the speaker to lay out the qualifications and contingencies, rather than counting on other speakers on the thread to do it for them. It's not a thing you can just say and pretend is clear; it's more or less an extraordinary claim.
I'd entertain the argument if someone wanted to explore it in a curious fashion. But, like, it's not true. Gaza is occupied territory in the intuitive meaning of the term.
> I'm not going to try to enumerate Israel's mistakes, but when you decide to invite a coterie of journalists to the hospital you damaged to provide proof of your claims that it was actually a hive center of terrorist activity, and all of them come away basically saying "this evidence isn't good enough," then that should be a sign that it's not PR that's the problem of Israel, it's Israeli actions that are the problem that needs addressing.
Free to criticize but get jailed by the 100s: https://cpj.org/reports/2024/01/2023-prison-census-jailed-jo... (that's not free press)
For instance, Aizenberg55 discounts the fact that over 10,000 bombs were dropped in the first 10 days, which resulted in higher casualties than in the later stages of the war, with fragile lives that of infants and young kids dying of shock and fear. It is also easier to count the fatalities when an entire building is reduced to rubble and everyone in it is either buried or dead. You don't need archaeologists and nuclear scientists to count.
> What do you think of their methods?
Their methods have been known to be robust. IDF, in the past wars, have arrived at similar numbers to those presented by the Gazans.
> One of the most obvious examples of a prior discrepancy.
Just like the discrepancy of 40 beheaded babies? Or the murder of a fictional Holocaust survivor? https://twitter.com/yairbrill/status/1748836323908346359 Applying your own logic, why do you even trust IDF or Zaka, then?
> Paul Graham has one standard...
- First, people are allowed to be wrong and change their minds when presented with facts. There is no need to hold them to prior beliefs and beat them for it forever.
- Second, if you don't personally know Paul Graham, I doubt you're in a position to judge whether he's willfully accepting ordinary claims just because he's a closet anti-semite, when the fact is, a wide number of independent institutions also accept those claims.
One look at this "Hebrew" account and your assurances fall flat for the lies they are. https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou
It has: https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/200203_trigge... (2002). It probably (orgs yet to verify) still does: https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/... (2023)
> The IDF, Netanyahu, and other leaders
Pray tell, what are the Minister for National Security and Minister of Finance calling for?
As for everyone else, here are the receipts: https://twitter.com/KintsugiMuslim/status/174301442945995164...
> I've donated more to Palestinian causes than you or almost anyone on the thread has.
It is solidarity that is in short supply.
> They go in and risk their soldiers to get terrorists, of which there are many.
Of course. All 2m of them at some point must be killed or punished because terrorists: https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/... Oh, and the violent Settlers... They are "security", too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duma_arson_attack No one mistake them for terrorists, please.
> encourage you to browse Israeli media
I mean, they've been calling for genocide since ever: When Genocide is Permissible, Times of Israel (opinion, 2014), https://archive.is/EuUdc
> The same thing happens in every war, including US wars. Remember Abu Ghraib?
One crime doesn't excuse another. Genocide has also happened, as has ethnic cleansing. Those are not the Pandora's Box the World wants to open again, and rightly so.
