The Israeli military is drawing up plans for both the evacuation of civilians from Rafah and a “massive” military operation.... More than a million displaced people are crowded into Rafah, and aid groups have warned against military action there. The United States “would not support” a major Israeli military operation in Rafah under current conditions, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday.
Unmentioned in this story is that humanitarian aid all goes through Rafah, and a "massive" military operation there would almost certainly cut off what little aid is getting through to Gaza now. This is unconscionable.
Is Israel explaining what it is, exactly, that it is attacking? I mean, "Hamas" presumably, but does Israel think/claim that there are military targets there?
The Israelis just rescued two hostages in Rafah. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/12/israeli-hostages-freed-rafah-idf-gaza-report-dozens-palestinians-killed-strikes
I hope this will put an end to puerile maunderings about how the Israelis taking over Rafah is somehow "unconscionable".
Can we call it ethnic cleansing yet?
The article says Israel is planning the evacuation of civilians from Raffah. So, no, it’s not ethnic cleansing.
No, Israel says that they are planning the evacuation of civilians, where "evacuation" means that they have told them to leave. They haven't told them where they can go. There isn't any evidence that they are actually planning anything beyond implicitly pressuring Egypt to take them as refugees.
Which would constitute ethnic cleansing.
Except there is zero chance that egypt will allow them entry.
Which means that there is no plan for evacuation.
People with a shred of honor and honesty would point out that an evacuation isn't possible. Though you could be right in the sense that cutting of all food supplies for the entire 4 million people living in Gaza is not called ethnic cleansing but genocide.
"This is unconscionable."
It's been unconscionable for months already. Where have you been, Kevin?
Why isn't it unconscionable that Hamas is still holding hostages?
Why isn't it unconscionable that Hamas is still harboring and trying to protect the murderers and rapists of October 7?
Hamas can surrender and end this right now. They refuse. Why isn't that unconscionable?
You and Kevin are remarkably selective in who you label unconscionable.
"Why isn't it unconscionable that Hamas is still holding hostages?"
it is.
"Hamas can surrender and end this right now."
Your evidence is...?
Plenty here have condemed Hamas for its Oct 7 atrocities, why can't you do the same for Isreali atrocities?
If Hamas surrenders then who do the Israelis fight? It ends just as WWII ended when the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese surrendered.
As for Israeli atrocities, please point to one specific documented atrocity. For example, how many Palestinians have the Israelis raped? How many Palestinian babies are the Israelis holding hostage? Can you prove one deliberate murder of a Palestinian civilian who was not affiliated with Hamas? (Note that civilian casualties while attempting to attack legitimate targets are not murders.)
Or,
Israel Facilitates Record Aid to Gaza,
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/02/05/israel-facilitates-record-aid-to-gaza/
So, not going to admit you were -- and still are -- wrong, eh? I predicted that months ago too.
You haven't demonstrated I've been wrong about anything and no one has ever thought you did.
But that you can watch tv like a champ, that you've proven.
I get that you don't want to cop to your ignorance concerning the history of Israel and Zionism. But for to deny the actual ethinic cleansin/genocide that eveyone can see in real time, well, I'll be charitable and instead of calling you a monster, I'll just say your're one of those unfortunates who is far too small, weak, and mean to ever cop to making a mistake.
What a pathetic specimen you are.
Your insistent demonstrations of bias on this topic hardly merit response and my often detailed responses have clearly been left unread.
You have a grade school level understanding of the origin and persistence of this conflict and any new information will clearly only serve to make you a worse person in more detail.
I've never said anything about Netanuahu's response in Gaza but you keep responding to me as if I have.
It would be wrong at this late date to give you the benefit of a doubt you may have a clue on this or anything else.
Oh, bother. Here's a short list -- by no means extensive -- of points you've never acknowledged, let alone respond to in a meaningful way:
You seem to be in held in low esteem in these parts what with your latest round of abusive postings, so I suggest you fuck off back to the fundamentalis hellhole you slimed your way out and leave us decent people in peace.
Yes, that's exactly what you can skim out of any timeline of the era.
What I've been pointing out is that that isn't as important as understanding the underlying condition and that timeline is exclusively a Eurocentric framing. There has been no case where any European intercession in any event in the Middle East since the Crusades has led to any outcome except what was going to happen anyway, and always to the bafflement of the Europeans, and there is no reason to see this series of events as any different.
The better, almost directly analogous view, would be to compare the collapse of the Ottomans and the upheavals and dislocations in its' subject territories with the several centuries in Europe following the collapse of the Roman Empire, and that builds on local circumstances and local manners that have been ongoing for the previous two millenia.
Why that is difficult to follow I do not know but nothing the Europeans did, no matter how hard they tried, would have changed a thing.
This is an example of what I mean,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_civil_conflict_in_Mount_Lebanon_and_Damascus
Pay attention to the attempts at intervention by the European powers.
Zero effect, and they have no idea why.
But, the important thing is, they're attempt provides an external scapegoat for whichever losing party needs one.
1a: The Palestinian Mandate created a legal state of Palestine. It invoked Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which makes clear that Palestine is to be viewed as an independent country. Article 7 of the Mandate says that Jewish immigrants are to obtain citizenship in that Palestinian state. Article 28 says that, when Britain leaves, they will hand over to a (singular) Government of Palestine.
This is important because,
5a: The UN did not partition Palestine. Article 2, Paragraph 7 explicitly states that the UN does not have the authority to intervene in controversies internal to a state. Since the Mandate created a state of Palestine, the UN had no authority there. Further, even if they had, a UN Resolution is only binding if it is passed by the Security Council. After the General Assembly passed Res. 181, the Council never even took it up for debate, let alone voting on it.
After that, the Israelis didn't just invade Palestine. They engaged in open and violent rebellion against the legal government of Palestine. This idea that the war started when Arab states declared war on Israel is categorically false.
You're accusing someone else of bias after citing a pro-genocide organization.
CLD on December 9th "The Palestinians are filth".
Why anyone continues to engage with this bigoted POS is beyond me.
https://jabberwocking.com/seeing-israel-through-young-eyes/comment-page-1/#comments
Keep that in mind.
Do you have another less biased source than FDD ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Defense_of_Democracies#:~:text=The%20Foundation%20for%20Defense%20of,a%20decisively%20anti%2DIranian%20stance.&text=Tax%20ID%20no.&text=Washington%2C%20D.C.%2C%20U.S.
"FDD's stated mission was to "provide education to enhance Israel's image in North America and the public's understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations"
Maybe we should all just listen to UNRWA?
Dude, you cited a propaganda organization. Can you at least admit you got suckered? Or did you actually do it on purpose?
It's an organization with a specific agenda in a specific area. Do you reject information you hear from the NAACP, which could be as easily described in the same way?
If that were really the case, then why cite any of them at all? You know, like you just did.
Logic is definitely not your strong point, troll.
Simple reading is hard, I know, but if you try again you can see that's the opposite of what I meant.
No mention of you editing the comment I responded to before your reply, I see. [1] This is so far past you just being in the tank for Israel: You really are a POS.
[1] His original post said that every other source would be just as biased, just in the opposite direction.
Didn't really change the point or your nature.
You said "information", but you meant propaganda.
I'm going to conclude that you did indeed get suckered by them, and file you in the same category as flat-Earthers and Plandemic types.
You're concluding wrong because you want to be wrong.
they're giving you the easiest, kindest way out, you fucking moron.
"specific agenda in a specific area." Yes genocide. And its tool to promote genocide is solely to bald face lie.
In your attempt at peopaganda you left out one important detail
"since the start of the war"
Your comment is like trying to praise an arsonist who lit a place on fire for facilitating a record number of water buckets to be brought in since the start of the fire.
Oh geez, that makes it worse.
Who was in charge of Gaza before the war?
It isn't just that Hamas has failed to change the dire conditions in Gaza, but that they need those conditions to exist.
As with social conservatives everywhere, they want to exploit the failure and incapacity of others but they need to have that failure and incapacity in the first place and so they must work to create it, and to do that they need an existential threat, hopefully with a dramatic just so story of victimization.
Or: Israel has for years demanded all the privileges of an occupying power, but rejected all the responsibilities of an occupier.
How can Hamas change the dire circumstance in GAZA when Israel has imposes a complete and total blockade on the territory after forcing nearly half of the indigenous population of palestine into about 1% of it's territory (i.e. there is almost no land available for growing food for the population.
Except that Hamas is the arsonist that started the fire, not Israel.
The fire started four decades before Hamas was even created.
Wow, you take stupid to a whole new level.
"Sima Vaknin-Gil, director general of Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs, had stated that the FDD works in conjunction with the Israeli government including the ministry"
When you're behind on feeding the people you're starving, having a record day not starving them is hardly fixing it,
Your source is a pro-genocide organization that has never told the truth once in its entire existence. You might as well be citing goebels approvingly.
Those Palestinians haven’t put up much of a fight. How embarrassing. I guess it’s up to the IDF to exterminate them. It’s not unconscionable at all. Revenge. Quite justified as far as I’m concerned and clearly none of the useless Arabs give a crap. Hilarious.
"[I]t's up to the IDF to exterminate them. . . Hilarious."
So, Justin, just for the record, when folks refer to you as a monster, this is the sort of thing they're referring to.
I refer to him as someone who's perfectly willing to soil himself if he thinks that will enable eye contact with random passersby.
Kevin, can we ban the genocidal garbage yet?
How can kevin ban Israel's announcement of genocide.
I was told that bad mouthing any IDF tactic was tantamount to antisemitism.
You're not alone. Everybody has been told that.
It's also antisemitic to claim that Israelis have an agency for their actions. Hamas forces them to respond the way they do, and Israelis are literally incapable of deciding how much force to use.
Also, it clearly follows that every individual that Israel kills was killed ... by Hamas!
Do you really think abandoning their citizens in Hamas's hands is a reasonable choice for Israel?
A false dichotomy, of course, and a rather transpatently poor one at that.
I think that, whatever actions Israel takes, justified or not, are choices made by the Israelis, and that the incessant "Hamas made us do it" line is complete bullshit.
I'm guessing Israel's promise to first "clear" Rafah just means their plan is to kill everybody there. "problem" solved. All made possible by endless arms, ammo, and support from Good Old Uncle Sucker, of course.
Like Susan Collins, the US Government will be "concerned."
"final solution"
Notice how none of us who called it last October are getting any admission from our rapidly pro-Israel commenters that they were wong, let alone an apology for their slurs back then.
They don't do scientist rock.
Israel has said that the IDF is preparing plans for evacuating civilians from Rafa, but has not said to what area they would be removed. Israel had previously designated al-Mawasi as a ‘humanitarian area’, but it is agricultural and thinly settled. Providing food, shelter and medical services there would be very difficult, to say the least.
Unless the IDF changes its methods, we should expect widespread destruction in Rafah. Netanyahu refuses to outline his postwar plans, but actions speak — he intends to make Gaza largely uninhabitable, forcing the bulk of the population to ‘self-exile’. Just don’t call it ethnic cleansing.
This ignores the fact that the vast majority can't self exile. Under Israeli' plans there only choice is to die in place. Israel is truly a monstrous nation.
Anyone with any ideas about what the Israelis should do to get rid of the Hamas elements in Rafah mixed in with the civilian population? Other than nothing?
Can't make an omelette without breaking a few Palesinian skulls, amirite?
How about actually working with elements to police and arrest Hamas, rather than strengthening them by blowing up everyone else's homes?
Thanks for answering, but which elements in Gaza might be willing to police and arrest members of Hamas?
The only even hypothetical candidates in some post-conflict scenario are the Palestinian Authority or some sort of pan-Arab force. But I suspect the PA might turn it into a civil war which they would probably lose like they did last time and the pan-Arabs would not risk their lives doing anything particularly provocative to Hamas.
The palestinian people abandoned the PA because Israel abandoned the two state solution when Rabin was assassinated by a jewish terrorist.
What "elements" are there willing and able to police and arrest Hamas members?
They should start by having an actual strategy, something they have conspicuously lacked for 56 years. Their current operation will not, and literally cannot, eradicate Hamas. In places where they have withdrawn their troops, Hamas has begun to reassert themselves. Conventional military operations are never capable of eliminating guerilla forces.
In the long run, this whole operation will accomplish exactly nothing. Israel will eventually declare it over and withdraw back to the borders of Gaza. They'll widen the buffer zone (while claiming that they are not occupying a place where they designate free fire zones). Hamas, or something very like it, will resume their operations and eventually rebuild the capabilities that Israelis claim they are permanently destroying.
We'll be right back where we were six months ago. Israel will have killed tens of thousands of civilians without making their position any better than it was. They'll have even further embittered the Palestinians, ensuring that their enemies have even more control.
The only way that Israel can accomplish anything meaningful is to have a political strategy for converting this operation into something that has long term value. If they want peace, they have no choice but to work towards a viable, legitimate Palestinian state. The only alternatives to that are massive crimes against humanity that will turn them into a true pariah state, or the status quo and living in perpetual fear of another October 7th.
Unfortunately, they do have a strategy, one they've held to for literally centuries now: Drive off or kill the original populace and steal their land. "From the River to the Sea".
Netanyahu has a strategy. It has been to prevent a two-state solution by keeping the Palestinians divided and creating enough facts on the ground (i.e. Israeli settlers in he West Bank). And wait things out until fundamental conditions change. That is based on the premise that the Palestinians as things are currently configured are incapable of making peace with the Israelis, and there is something to be said for that assumption.
As for Gaza, their strategy has been to "mow the grass" while the Iron Dome kept out Hamas' ongoing effort to eradicate the Israeli state by putting Israel on a constant bombardment where daily life in Israel would become impossible. And perhaps hope that over time, Hamas would moderate as they were forced to operate utilities and administer drive's license exams.
The October 7 attacks made it impossible to continue with the Gaza part at least for a bit. But in the end, I suspect this will go down as the largest mowing of the grass operations yet and something that alienated additional segments of the political left in the West, and things will move along.
Aside from a two-state solution which most Israelis think is suicidal and thus not likely to go along with, I don't see a good strategy available to them other than this grim strategy of locking down security and hoping things are better in a decade or two. I am looking forward to this fighting quieting down, if for no other reason than this entire thing remains, as it has for decades, utterly exhausting.
(Although you really kind of ignored my question.)
The question should be ignored; it’s unreasonable. Of course there are nothing but lousy choices at this point, but Israeli policies played a significant role in creating the mess, and not accidentally. Since the majority of us here have long opposed those policies, we have no obligation to answer for them.
Israelis did not always reject the two-state solution; and US and European governments offered many ideas intended to reduce the risk of a hostile and dangerous Palestinian state. Quite clearly, Fatah has moderated substantially, and was coöperating in nearly eliminating terrorist acts against Israelis, while Israelis were becoming more rejectionist, and continually expanding settlements on the West Bank.
Serious people understand that when you criticize a policy, you need to have an alternative, and that often that means choosing among lousy choices. Because we do not have time machines.
No, this is not actually true in all circumstances. If a destitute person robs a bank, are you implying we have no right to say that is a crime and you can not be allowed to do it unless we offer them another way out of whatever situation they are in?
This is not some wonkish policy debate. Isreal is in the act of the brazzen commission of multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity. No one gives up their right, indeed their obligation, to try to stop them just because we don't have an alternative course of action they find acceptable.
I didn't ignore your question. I said what Israel needs to do to get rid of Hamas: devise a strategy for achieving peace. Your argument is that they will just continue to kill Palestinians in large numbers in perpetuity, while remaining in fear of a major terrorist attack.
It is self evident that you have no idea how Israel should get rid of Hamas, and you just spent several paragraphs arguing that Israel should just live with Hamas and never develop a plan for getting rid of them. You failed to answer your own question.
Israel had a chance to avoid this trap. They could have worked to achieve peace in the wake of taking control of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967. Instead, they opted to illegally seize land and subject the Palestinian population to arbitrary martial law for decades. Now, unsurprisingly, they find that the Palestinians are intransigent and difficult to deal with. Maybe they should have thought through the consequences 56 years ago.
Why would a strategy for achieving peace get rid of Hamas?
Seems to me that Hamas would take credit for any benefits, consolidate gains, and then attack from its new stronger position.
That by definition is not a description of peace achieved.
Actually I asked specifically about what the Israelis should do about the Hamas folks in Rafah and you implicitly answered it with nothing, but no matter.
And you are right in that there IS no good way to get rid of Hamas and at this point the best the Israelis can do is to kill a lot of them and keep them down every so often. And hope that Hamas or what comes after learns a little moderation or at least fears their own deaths and those of Gazan civilians less. Because Hamas as it is now is right up there with North Korea in terms of the worst in the world.
And as for history, the Israelis DID legit seek a two-state solution until about the turn of the millennium, but when that failed according to as the Israelis (perhaps rightly) saw as Palestinian unwillingness to make peace, the consensus grew in Israel that a two-state solution was unlikely for awhile. Which helped propel Netanyahu and his clowns into office for so long...
"They should start by having an actual strategy, something they have conspicuously lacked for 56 years. " The widespread murdering and rape of civilians in 1949 makes clear that genocide has always been the Isreali strategy.
Return to the two state solution they abandoned the moment Rabin was murdered by a jewish terrorist.
Netanyahu's political stranglehold on Israel needs to end. He will literally do anything, at any human cost, to keep power.
There isn't any reason to think that Israel's dealings with the Palestinians will be any different if he is replaced. As much as I loathe Netanyahu and his coalition, all they've really done is make explicit what has been Israeli policy since 1967.
A different government might at least be inclined to end this war sooner.
What else were the arms Biden sent to Israel going to be used for?
Right about now is when Netanyahu should be removed from office.
"Evacuation". I am sooooo sick of Israel's lies and obfuscations.
"Evacuation", Cambridge dictionary.
"the act of moving people from a dangerous place to somewhere safe". That's not it because Israel won't be moving anyone (where are the buses required?), just driving them out, also there is no somewhere safe left in Gaza.
What's left is the other meaning: "the act or process of emptying something of its contents, especially the bowels". That sounds more like the rhetoric coming out of Jerusalem these days.