Three weeks ago Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel. Multiple thousands of rockets were launched at Israeli targets, killing hundreds, but I suppose that to some people this seemed unremarkable. Rocket attacks? It's happened before and it will happen again. That's what Iron Dome is for, isn't it?
Of course the attack was far more brutal and monstrous than that. But even at this late date I wonder if everyone entirely understands the nature of the hundreds (or thousands) of war crimes committed by Hamas during their attack:
- Thousands of Hamas soldiers swarmed into Israel and slaughtered everyone they could find. Many of the bodies showed signs of torture and rape.
- Among the dead were children and babies, some of whom were burned alive.
- Soldiers in paragliders and pickup trucks attacked a music festival and methodically gunned down nearly every person there.
- Hamas fighters have taken more than 200 civilian hostages who are currently being held in Gaza.
I'm not sure why I'm writing this. Everyone already knows all about it, don't they? I wonder. Maybe not.
Now, as sickening as this all is, it doesn't justify Israel's ongoing campaign to deprive two million civilian Palestinians of food, water, and fuel. And God only knows what they're going to do when they finally start their ground offensive in Gaza. I can only hope it's less barbarous than I suspect it will be.
There are—and have been for decades—plenty of recriminations to go around on all sides for the endless cycle of war and killing in Israel and Palestine. There are no clean hands here. That said, Hamas started this war, and did so in the most brutal and repellent way imaginable. We can all plead for a certain level of restraint from Israel, but we can hardly be shocked that they're committed to destroying Hamas once and for all. The blame for that is easy to place.
This is such a complicated and fraught situation, but you are absolutely right: the attacks by Hamas were grotesque. I don't understand people tearing down posters of Israeli hostages on American streets and campuses. I can't comprehend the phrase "queers for Palestine." There are a lot of crazy things happening in the world, and this is one of the most confusing.
Gay Republicans are endorsing a man who thinks they should be imprisoned if they have sex with each other. You can only shake your head.
I can certainly understand tearing down the posters in *some* cases. Like the case of the clown who believed he was entitled to paper over every possible exposed surface on the exterior of a Target store in Aventura, Florida, of all places. That guy was clearly trying to bait the store's employees into correctly removing his posters from their store's private property, and he certainly succeeded at his mission after one of them lost their cool at his berating them, gave him the finger on camera, and promptly got fired after a thousand screaming banshees started tweeting at Target about it!
Other cases are less cut-and-dried than that, but I do not think we should dismiss out-of-hand the kind of insecurity that many Arab-Americans feel, especially after what they went through after 9/11. It is very easy for us to say "well, it's absurd that anyone would see activists blanketing cities with posters as threatening to Arabs when the posters merely show photos of the kidnapped." It's quite another to be certain of that when 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume could have been your kid, stabbed to death by a lunatic landlord who'd been constantly mainlining rightwing propaganda.
And there you go... people on the left justifying tearing down pictures of babies kidnapped by Hamas because some lunatic killed a kid in the US.
I think it's understandable because I literally read their own explanations for it.
***The attorney for ElKoussa told NBC6 on Wednesday that the dentist was afraid the posters would spark conflict and talked to police before taking them down.
"He wanted to ensure that there’s no conflict here in Florida. And when he saw those posters, he was just concerned that they may lead to an escalation in conflict," attorney Hassan Shibly said. "He removed them after speaking to law enforcement, saying, 'listen, there’s a lot of tension in the country right now. I don't think there should be pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli posters hanging around, they may spark conflict. So what should I do?' They said, 'listen, you can remove them if you feel unsafe.'"***
So this guy politely tells the cops beforehand that he thinks that the postering is functioning as agitation against his community. They tell him it's OK to take them down if he feels unsafe.
So he does, and what does he get for his trouble? The fanatics who put them up film him doing it, get a viral video out of it as was their real intention all along, and get him fired from his job even though the cops gave him permission to do it.
1. I think you expose yourself as the kind of person you are by calling people who post pictures of kidnapped babies "fanatics".
2. We have not yet heard any confirmation from the police of what they told this man. It is quite possible they told him that pulling down the posters was not illegal. OK... no one claims it is illegal.
3. Being legal does not mean being socially acceptable. It is equally legal to put up posters saying "Obama is a [N word]" but I doubt you would complain if someone was fired for doing so. On that point, XKCD put it well... https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1357:_Free_Speech
1. I think you expose yourself to children.
What is hard to understand?
Anti-semitism has long been a core tenet of much of the radical left. The left wing of the Democratic Party has now merged with the radical left. They have also absorbed that anti-semitism.
Right! I'm constantly hearing about George Soros from the radical left! /s
+1
George Soros funds a whole bunch of left wing causes I despise. I strongly dislike him. The fact that he and I are Jewish is irrelevant to that.
The vast majority of people who despise Soros and complain about Soros seem to have no problem with right wing Jews and to strongly support Israel. This strongly suggests they are not anti-Semites. IF they are, they are doing it wrong.
You forgot the "/s" tag?
No, this person really believes the left is anti-semitic.
Yes, MF is a troll. Please don't feed the troll.
He certainly has an honest Username.
I guess this rally organized by the Democratic Socialists of America (the party of AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Jamal Bowman, Ron Dellums, and John Conyers to support the Hamas terrorist massacre and kidnappings was an expression of the left's deep love for the Jewish people?
https://news.yahoo.com/socialist-rally-in-times-square-praising-hamas-terror-attack-draws-widespread-condemnation-204123785.html
Please don't feed the troll.
Remind me which Presidential candidate had a nice lunch with Nick Fuentes and said the Nazis are "very fine people?"
After that, remind me which party condemned him?
well, sure. it's real easy to condemn the antisenites in the other party.
But we've got our own. and no amount of whattaboutism will change that.
That's not whataboutism. He specifically said the Democratic Party had absorbed the bigots. That's true of the Republicans. It's a lie to say that's true of the Democrats. Neither of those statements says there's no bigotry on the Left, only that it hasn't been mainstreamed as he claimed it has.
Yeah... so there you have a neo-Nazi White Supremacist group run by a Latin-American Hispanic? Again... seems clear that if that is what they are trying to be they aren't doing it right.
There are some groups on the right I don't like, but it is pretty silly to call them all Nazis when some are run by people who would have been sent to the death camps in WWII Germany.
For SURE Palestine is NOT "for the queers".
Israel may be committed to destroying Hamas, but they will fail, especially if the plan is to go back to the pre-atrocities status quo. Every Palestinian child they bomb will generate a dozen new recruits to Hamas or Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad. They will get vengeance, but victory is pretty much unattainable unless they are willing to kill everybody.
>> They will get vengeance, but victory is pretty much unattainable unless they are willing to kill everybody.<<
You could say the same thing regarding Hamas too, couldn’t you? Except Hamas has shown they are willing to kill everybody.
Yes. And Hamas wants Israel to over-react to trigger a larger conflict. In the mean time Israeli settlers in the West Bank are using this conflict as an excuse to push out more Palestinians from the West Bank--which serves Hamas's purposes.
It’s not that I disagree with you, because I don’t. But what do you think would be an appropriate reaction?
But what do you think would be an appropriate reaction?
1) Strengthening its defenses to ensure no attack by Hamas again succeeds. 2) Long-term, narrow targeting of Hamas leadership for assassination similar to post-Munich project by Mossad; 3) A rapid, precision attack by jets/drones focusing on Hamas facilities that would have ended eight or nine days ago. 4) A vigorous diplomatic effort to recognize a Palestinian state on the West Bank combined with unilateral withdrawal to '67 border (or thereabouts, with accompanying land swaps). 5) Ultimate status on issues like water rights, final borders, arms control, Gaza governance, etc subject to a long term treaty.
That's not the reaction that's happening. Israel is entering a quagmire, and possibly igniting a regional war. And Joe Biden is only too happy to join Bibi in this monstrously stupid idea.
But this or something similar is what should happen.
I think you are wrong about Biden. I think he is doing what he can to tamp down the reactionary anger.
I think part of the current problem is that Israel thought it had #1. With regard to the rest, I ut I also think it takes two to tango. I don’t think anything is going to happen without an agreement with the Palestinians.
I think you are wrong about Biden. I think he is doing what he can to tamp down the reactionary anger.
I hope I'm wrong. But he seems more eager than Nixon in 1973 to intimately involved the US in Israel's latest war. I'm seeing headlines about US airstrikes against Syria.
Xi Jinping is absolutely licking his chops.
I have respected read that Biden has been urging Bibi not to overreact which is why they delayed the invasion of Gaza. He explicitly told Bibi not to make the same mistake we did when we overreacted to 9/11. He has also told Bibi to follow the rules of war. He has also repeatedly expressed concern for the plight of the Palestinians.
Here is just one example:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/18/joe-biden-urges-israel-not-be-consumed-by-rage-pledges-support-netanyahu-gaza-hamas
Air strikes in Syria are because Iranian proxies have been attacking US forces in Iraq. This does not directly affect Israel, AFAIK.
And as far as #4 and #5, too soon.
But I hope it happens as soon as it can.
(4) and (5) not in the cards after what went down. Probably ever
The Hasidic dudes have taken over Israeli politics too much, and they like settling on Gaza
And the hundreds kidnaped and held hostage by Hamas? Not even worth a mention in your plan?
The issue here falls back to the West Bank, a place the Palestinians never wanted to live in, a place which was Jordanian until they renounced sovereignty, as Gaza was Egyptian until they renounced sovereignty.
And that issue is the Palestinians never wanted to be there in the first place, it happened by chance, and --look at the map. From a point of view of security the West Bank is simply unacceptable for Israel. It's like a dagger in the chest, and from a Palestinian point of view it's unacceptable because it divides them. They've never had a nation of any kind of their own, and, divided in half, --or, actually, into four or five parts when you factor in the gulags they're trapped in in other Arab countries, --they can't create one out of nothing when the only thing they have is the ideal of exterminating Israel. As the foundation of a nationality it seems wanting.
My point then is that the population of the West Bank has to be relocated to some area adjacent to Gaza.
Without that as the key element of a settlement leaves everything in exactly the status quo it has enjoyed for decades.
Jordan’s 1950 annexation of the West Bank was opposed and not recognized by other Arab states, much less by the rest of the world. It took almost 40 years, but Jordan finally recognized the PLO as the legitimate authority there, and renounced its claim.
Not going to happen, but, the first action is to acknowledge how "settlers" have literally taken property from Palestinians and either return the property or compensate the Palestinians.
Return Israel to 1946 boundaries as much as feasible Stop the apartheid.
The 1948 border isn't on the table. But maybe, just maybe, the 1967 border could be revived as a feasible goal. Buf if not, at very least the United States should disengage from its tied-at-the-hip relationship. Lots of countries violate international law, and I don't wish Israel ill any more than I wish ill of Uruguay or Madagascar. But the current nature of America's relationship with this illegal occupier is expensive in both diplomatic and financial terms.
The tied at the hip relationship is based on many reasons but unlike Uruguay or Madagascar Israel is a nuclear power with adjacent countries that would like to destroy it militarily and have tried to do so pretty recently. If Israel were defeated militarily what do you think would happen to the current inhabitants? Do you doubt that an attempt to do so that appears to have a chance of succeeding won’t be met with a nuclear response? How do you think that would end up?
but unlike Uruguay or Madagascar Israel is a nuclear power with adjacent countries that would like to destroy it militarily and have tried to do so pretty recently.
The fact that Israel has nuclear weapons is all the more reason to cease aid and cut military ties. Israel doesn't need the US to defend it. But if it wants US help, it should start obeying international law: being tied to the hip to a rogue, colonizing state creates significant diplomatic problems for America.
Israel does need military aid outside of the use of nuclear weapons. If their only resort is to use those weapons they will. The reason Israel is a “colonizing state” is their current government. I view Netanyahu as Israel’s Trump. This country has no ability to criticize Israel while Trump exists as our possible next President.
the 1967 borders were on offer in 1967 and it wasn't good enough then.
consider this proposition: when you appeal to force to settle a dispute, you implicitly accept the legitimacy of settling your dispute by force. when that war doesn't go your way, shouldn't the rest of us consider the matter settled?
No. This is grotesque. "Your war failed, so the rest of regard your existence under the yoke of conquerers to be a settled matter" is appalling.
From the river to the sea /
East Prussia will be free
Not a good reference. Germany gave up all claims to lands east of the Oder-Neisse line. Not only East Prussia, but also the Memelland, Silesia and my ancestral homeland of Pomerania. Land for peace.
I don't see what's grotesque about it. The arabs have launched at least three wars now to annihilate Israel. That's a very strong endorsement of the principle that the matter of ownership of that land shall be decided by force.
And every time, the verdict has gone against them. They submitted to the court of force. Why shouldn't we regard that court's verdict as binding upon them?
That's a very strong endorsement of the principle that the matter of ownership of that land shall be decided by force
What you're cheering on is illegal. Full stop. I admittedly don't lose sleep over every illegal action by every country on earth. Israel has plenty of company. But if that's the way it wants to go it shouldn't get $4 billion in US taxpayer largess to do so.
Let's be very clear here; the precipitation of this conflict was the nakba, the ethnic cleansing of the late 1940s.
Your position to me seems to be "the Israelis started this, so that means when they won, the matter is settled."
For that matter, your general statement of "whoever wins the war shall be regarded as correct and justified" is just grotesque in general.
The Court of Force wasn't illegal in the middle ages and that's the planet the Middle East still lives in.
the 1967 borders were on offer in 1967 and it wasn't good enough then.
That was nearly 60 years ago. Israel hadn't normalized relations with Egypt and Jordan at that point. Israel was far poorer then, too, and didn't possess nuclear weapons. There's zero doubt Israel could make those borders work in the 2020s.
But sure, whatever, if Israel wants to keep military conquests, I'm not going to lose sleep. But this particular bit of imperialism violates international law, and US money and implicit military backing should thus play no role in this.
For that to work Israel and the Palestinians would have to reign in their extremists. I would like to see that happen but I don’t hold out much hope for it. I don’t even hold out much hope for the Republicans in this country to reign in their extremists.
‘Rein in’, please …
>> ‘Rein in’, please …<<
Think-o-graphical error.
The 1967 border? So you want Egypt to give up the whole Sinai? The land Israel traded to Egypt for peace? (Which is kind of an odd move for a "colonizing state")
Of course I know that's not what you meant. That bit of history is just another inconvenient fact that doesn't fit into your simplistic solutions, so you ignored it.
If by apartheid you mean Arabs are treated as second class citizens by Israel, then you are wrong.
If you mean people in an occupied territory that is historically violent towards Israel are not treated like Israeli citizens, then I would agree. But I don't think that is what apartheid means.
There are clear ways to describe the situation that are not inflammatory, Apartheid is not one of them.
The appropriate reaction would be to finally, after 56 years, develop an actual strategy. Instead, Israel is doing the same thing it has done for decades, and expecting different results.
That's the core problem, isn't it? Two peoples have strong claims to the same patch of land. it looks like they can't share. The people who've lost the land and several wars since won't accept any defeat short of annihilation. and the people who've won those wars won't annihilate the people they've defeated.
so: stalemate.
Two peoples have strong claims to the same patch of land. it looks like they can't share
Israel has no legal claim whatsoever to its post 1967 conquests, much less a "strong" claim.
What is the law on land won in a defensive war?
What is the law on occupied territory when there is no legitimate authority to return it to? Israel tried to return the WB to Jordan. Jordan refused.
That law you're searching for is, "winners keepers, losers weepers."
Though it may not be codified, it's the basic law of war that everyone has supported throughout human history, despite what they say on paper.
Do not pretend that the two people's claims are equal. Jews had not lived in that land in significant numbers since 70AD.
Palestinians say the land is theirs because their forebears have lived there for centuries. Israelis say the land is theirs because religion (or conquest).
The US shouldn't be taking sides in this at all. But if we are going to intervene, it should in favor of the Palestinians.
From what I can gather it was approximately 30%. Also, after Israel was formed it’s my understanding that many Middle Eastern Jews migrated to Israel by choice or by force.
And bought the land, and improved it.
And much of the land was public land owned by the Ottoman Empire, then the British Empire, then the government authorized by the UN to take control.
At this point they've been there for generations. And, not for nothing, have won three wars in which the aggressors intended to settle the question of the land's ownership by force. It's pretty rich that, having brought their case to that forum, the aggressors refuse to reject the thrice-returned verdict.
Both sides have strong claims to the land. That's just a fact on the ground.
Strictly speaking, Israel struck first in the Six-Day War.
Strictly speaking, if someone holds a gun to my head and threatens to kill me, I am striking first by knocking the gun out of their hand.
But practically speaking, that statement conveys the opposite of what really happened, and only serves to support the attempted murderer.
I think it would be more accurate to say "Hamas started this battle" rather than "Hamas started this war". The war has been going on for a long, long time.
This is probably the correction that needs to be added the most.
It all feels unsolvable. Even if Israel were able to totally destroy Hamas, what then? There is no obvious person or group who can run Gaza without igniting more conflict. Hamas cannot be left in power, but there is no real alternative to it, either.
This is probably why it’s a bad idea to give land that already belongs to a bunch of people to another bunch of people. I will never understand the hubris Britain had in taking land that they already promised to the Palestinians and then regifting it to the Jews. I mean, wtf did they think was going to happen? (They did the same geopolitical fckery with Hong Kong, and that looks like it’s going well too.)
I believe that a lot of these land give-aways and divisions of territory into "countries" that had never before existed was a deliberate choice. It kept the new "countries" from consolidating as independent powers and kept the divided peoples fighting with one another.
While the "wogs" fight amongst themselves, the European powers can move in and exploit more cheaply and effectively, with very much less resistance.
Britain promised part of Mandate land to the Jews. Then they gave 70% of it to Arabs/Palestinians to form Jordan. Then the UN split the remaining 30% up and gave about half to the Jews, and half to the Palestinians.
Some new Hamas-like organization will surely appear in its place. All the conditions that created Hamas 1.0 are still extant. Hamas 2.0 will probably make Hamas 1.0 look like the peace corps. Bombs create more terrorists than they kill.
I recommend this article by an Australian journalist to people who would like to get a deeper understanding of the situation in Gaza. Frankly, I see no value whatsoever in trying to frame the conflict in terms of war crimes and blame and "civilians" vs "official" fighters. The violence was inevitable. More violence in future is inevitable unless a circuit-breaker is found. Responsibility will rest on all those who could have looked for it, but failed. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-23/gaza-most-miserable-place-israel-fear-tragedy-cannot-go-on/103002648
Yep. And the only way out is to propose a cease-fire that parallels the restarting of the 2-state implementation with a firm date.
But, as I said from the start, Israelis have determined to get rid of Hamas first before anything else.
I have a hard time finding reasons to oppose it, on account that post 9-11 the US public absolutely wanted to get rid of Al Qaeda, and any politician who proposed otherwise would have been marginalized.
Al-Qaeda, and ISIS, were both pan-Sunni Islam groups; most were foreigners in the lands in which they fought. The Palestinians are on their own land, though they do not control it, and they have nowhere else to go. ‘Eliminating’ Hamas will be an order of magnitude greater challenge. ‘Eliminating Hamas’ and not embittering a new generation of militants is a delusion.
1. Israel is not blocking water. They are just refusing to supply their water to Gaza. I am not aware of any law of war that requires a party to provide water to enemies it has not captured.
2. Cutting off fuel is perfectly justifiable unless the UN can clearly show how it will prevent Hamas from using that fuel to power the generators that ventilate its tunnels. Israel wants to force Hamas terrorists out of their tunnels so Israel can kill them. This is totally legitimate.
3. Why aren't you asking why Egypt is not admitting women and children from Gaza as refugees? Let's get rid of the innocents so Israel can kill the terrorists with as few innocent victims as possible.
Great initials there.
I’m not aware of any wars that were lost because the other side had access to and/or was able to somehow weaponize drinking water. Stopping civilians from having drinking water leads in what way to Hamas having a military advantage over Israel? (The rules of war don’t require supplying drinking water to your enemies, but very few wars are fought in which one side owns all the drinking water apparatus in the other side’s territory…)
Why would Israel provide drinking water to Gaza? Should the Allies have dropped fire extinguishers along with the incendiary bombs on Japan and Germany during WWII? Hamas would make sure their fighters have their fill of water before any civilian gets a drop. It would be nice if Israel agreed to a brief cease fire so civilians can escape to Egypt. But, Egypt doesn't want to accept them and Hamas would probably block as many as possible from leaving anyway.
True and since Hamas would use water in its water balloons even allowing enough water in to feed the whole population wouldn't be enough.
(And the reason that Israel should provide water is that as the occupying power it is has the legal responsibility to provide water. But it might be enough if it just let other countries provide water through Egypt.
Are you really this ignorant? Israel does not occupy Gaza.
If Israel reoccupies Gaza it will be obliged to provide water to the extent possible.
Israel does occupy Gaza legally. And it uses that fact to justify a cruel blockade of Gaza which did not begin with this terrorist attack. It also is the basis by which Israel rejects Egyptian requests to provide aid, for example water, to Gaza.
It is true that Israel does not fulfill the obligations of an occupying power, but it certainly claims the rights of an occupying power.
You're right. From this point forward, whatever you can carry into prison with you will be your only provision...
It’s also not Egypt’s job to accept refugees from a war that it’s not party to. I mean, I personally think they should accept women and children. But, there is no mechanism to compel them to. Lots of refugees are generated from every war, and no country is ever required to take them in.
The demands that neighboring Arab countries take in Gaza's population are absurd - it's just more of the same from the hasbara crowd that is constantly demanding as a supposed moral imperative whatever happens to be maximally convenient for Israel at every given moment. (If Egypt is morally obligated to shelter these people from the horrors of war, why isn't Israel morally obligated to take them in as well? The fact that the question is treated as if it's self-evidently crazy only reflects how racist the underpinnings of the original argument are - a fellow Arab country is just assumed to be the natural caretaker of Palestinian Arabs, as if they're all the same anyway.)
Israel's neighbors, especially Jordan, have longstanding and valid reasons for not absorbing millions of Palestinians into their polities. One out of twelve people in Egypt is already a refugee, mostly from Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and Libya. If Egypt actually wanted responsibility for Gaza it would have been demanding it for years.
So if I'm the water company and I shut off your water, and you don't have anywhere to go to get potable water... I'm not blocking your access to water? Get real.
You're also missing the part where collective punishment is a war crime. Israel is collectively punishing millions. That's a pretty big war crime.
That's some fiiiiiine whataboutism with Egypt there, and a nice fancy red herring about the UN.
Israel is not trying to punish civilians. They have no reason to do so.
If Hamas would agree to move all civilians to a safe location and agree to procedures to make sure no Hamas members or weapons are hidden among them, I am sure the Israelis would be ecstatic - it would let them go in hard with bigger more indiscriminate weapons so they could kill all Hamas members without harming civilians and getting negative PR.
Israel claims the rights, but not the responsibilities of an occupying power in Gaza. Egypt has not allowed humanitarian aid into Gaza beyond what Israel has allowed as the occupying power. But the occupying power is responsible for providing things like water, and Israel has been failing at that responsibility since long before this Hamas attack. They have only increased the cruelty since then,
That is why every group that cares if Israel is committing a war crime has not problems identifying that it is. The problem of course is that most people don't care, and haven't for decades.
+1
We know why. They already have refugee camps and do not want more in them. Also, there's no love lost between Hamas and Egypt.
Ok, but if Hamas is obviously the bad guy here, then it’s worth asking why they were so obvious and blatant about it and if they were setting a trap for Israel to walk into by invading. As I understand it, the argument is that Hamas was not only brutal but clever. Is it a good idea to reply to a clever enemy with brute force?
This interview with Rashid Khalidi has been generating much discussion. I read it with an open mind, trying to understand the Palestinian perspective (one person's view, anyway). I learned a few things, and I objected to a few things, but rather than get into that I'll quote the end section, which seems to be getting the most attention. It's his advice for pro-Palestinian activists in "the metropole."
I'm not sure I buy his construct. It's his way of looking at it though, and if the job of activists is to win the metropole, I'd suggest that the first thing they could do is demonstrate the kind of compassion for innocents victims in Israel that they want us to express for Palestinians. Maybe I missed it, but where was the outrage? Where was the condemnation of Hamas?
What's not going to persuade anyone is praising Hamas for the attacks, as a professor at Columbia did, or forcing Jewish students to barricade themselves for their own safety at Cooper Union.
No one "wins the metropole" by proving the righteousness of their cause. You win sympathy by showing that your concern for humanity and decency exceeds your concern for your cause, however righteous it may be.
The US is not the colonizing power controlling Israel. Israel is a sometimes ally of the US, but if the Palestinians succeed at chasing Israelis out of Israel, they have no place to go. Certainly they're not Americans.
The far Left is just generating confusion comparing Israel and Palestine with France and Algeria.
The only peaceful solution to Israel and the Palestinians requires gradually increasing trust. But both sides have spent the last quarter century destroying any basis for trust, with the result that today, Israelis rightly believe that many Palestinians would be happy to kill any Jews they can get their hands on, and Palestinians believe, also rightly, that Israel has no intention of ever letting them control any part of a Palestinian state.
This is what happens when you squander 23 years of opportunities for peace. There's no short path to peace, because the predicates for peace have been systematically destroyed.
"Israel is a sometimes ally of the US"
No. Israel is a dependent of the US.
+1, sadly
Good interview.
I took Khalidi's comments about winning the metropole as condemnation of the people who praise Hamas.
And so Michael Collins was assassinated for making peace with Britain, likewise Sadat and Rubin...etc, etc, being a peacemaker is a dangerous business.
Be that as it may, a few notes:
1. I had a vision for Gaza, there are many countries smaller than Gaza that are quite successful...Malta for one, Lichtenstein, Monaco, a bunch of the Pacific Island nations, either side of Cyprus for that matter....there was a successful model and road for Gaza...there is even oil off of its shores.
They threw this all away...at least in part because Arafat was certain, and maybe correctly so, that himself specifically and probably his family also would be assassinated if he made peace with Israel....and who is to gainsay this pretty logical assessment of his?
I will reiterate that we did not leave the Nazisin control of Germany and insisted only on the removal of Hitler, or Tojo in Japan...it may have taken years and years but both Osma Bin Landin and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi alive and ISIS as a governing body anywhere.
I am a bit tired of Palestinians shouting into news camera, "Why is this happening to us?"
And no says back to t hem that they know perfectly well why this is happening to them...They allowed if not encouraged that all aide and monies being given to them by Arab Allies to not build a functioning successful society but rather into a war machine. Israel was severely criticized for try to block the importation of cement...they probably today wished they had done better at this blockading business....all this cement is holding up underground tunnels.
Likewise, all these cries from NCO's re fuel...the UN has armed peace keeps from all over the world, they, maybe understandably, refuse to take this step to protect fuel deliveries to hospitals...but you can't blame Israel for not wanting this fuel to be stolen by Hamas, as has already happened, and turned into more rocket fuel to rocket Israel more.
I enjoyed they West Bank, I like Palestinians, but living for decades a false narrative is deadly. Criticism of Israel is legitimate....murdering Jews is not. Best Wishes, Traveller
Applies also to Israelis who believe that Palestinians will accept losing more and more land, having no political rights, being subject to travel restrictions, searches, and other reminders that they do not control their destiny.
In some ways, Hamas' worst war crime is deliberately hiding themselves among Gaza civilians. They know full well that Israel would have to respond and that there was absolutely no way for Israel to respond without killing Gazan civilians no matter how hard they tried not to. It's as if they WANT civilian deaths, the deaths of their own people, for political purposes. And it's not just in this incident; it's what they have always done. The blood of those dead Gazans is more on Hamas' hands than Israel's in my opinion.
Not a big fan of the Israeli cut off of food to the place though, not seeing what good that is doing in the campaign to destroy Hamas, nor am I a fan of what the Israelis are doing in the West Bank. Netanyahu makes it hard to be sympathetic to Israel.
This is how extremists work. They provoke the other side to react, to get more public support for their side. In this case, Bibi needs Hamas to commit crimes to provide cover for expanding settlements instead of allowing the creation of a Palestinian state. And Hamas needs Israel's relatively indiscriminate bombings to provide it with new recruits.
+1, again, sadly
How can Hamas NOT "hide among civilians"? Gaza is a tiny place to have 2.4 million people stuffed into it.
Agree 100% Salamander. Any army/military force is going to try and hide the location of its troops (note how the IDF asked Google to turn off real time traffic updates to obscure the movements of its troops). And Hamas doesn't really have anywhere to go except within the civilian population.
Turning off traffic alerts, or throwing camouflage nets over vehicles is not the same as hiding in apartment buildings, storing weapons in schools, and launching rockets from hospitals.
Look at Google Maps, Gaza is not wall-to-wall apartment buildings.
Exactly Steve! Couldn't have said it better.
Hamas committed atrocities and can only expect atrocities in return. This is the Mideast we're talking about. My main hope is that Iran's other proxies stay out of it and realize that Israel, backed by the US, will return such attacks with disproportionately severe responses.
I wonder if an attack like this would have occurred if Netanyahu had dealt honestly with the Palestinian Authority toward seeking a two-state solution, intead being an arrogant. conniving, mendacious asshole who clandestinely supported Hamas in order to prevent true progress from occurring.
Reuters January 6, 2023:
"Israel said on Friday it would take retaliatory steps in response to a Palestinian bid to involve the International Court of Justice in the decades-old conflict.
"The measures decided on by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing security cabinet include using Palestinian money to compensate victims of Palestinian militant attacks and imposing a moratorium on Palestinian construction in some areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
"This comes as a 'response to the Palestinian Authority's decision to wage political and legal war against the State of Israel,' said Netanyahu's office."
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-take-steps-response-palestinian-moves-world-court-2023-01-06/
Israel had -- and for decades has had -- the ability to wage their conflict with the Palestinians as a "political and legal war" -- which types of war are notable for the absence of death and destruction -- but they chose, and for decades have chosen, not to.
This doesn't justify murdering children and innocent civilians, but Israel decided against a course that in all likelihood would have avoided the atrocities it has suffered.
Personally I'm just out of F's to give about the Israel/Palestinian conflict. Maybe I'm a monster but this thing has been going on for my entire life and I'm just weary of hearing about it. Don't get me wrong, I think all of the deaths and atrocities are horrible, but at this point, at the macro level, there are no good guys and everyone has a legitimate beef that they can use to justify doing terrible things. It's a horrible, intractable conflict and there is no possibility of a good or just outcome
As one person has already noted, to say that Hamas started the war with their recent attack is to miss that the Palestinians have been under a constant state of war, perpetual occupation, since 1967. That war has been brutal for the Palestinian side both in Gaza and the West Bank. The only notable the concessions the Palestinians have gotten they have gotten through violence. The first intifada led to Oslo. The second intifada led to the removal of settlements from Gaza. At least since the death of Arafat, the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank (except of course for the settlements and in limited degrees the land outside of narrow ghettos) has followed a plan of cooperating with Israel in the hopes that this will lead to peace. It has lead to a great expansion of settlements by the Israelis and the world accepting that there will not be peace. Faced with cooperation Israel has decided it does not need to pursue peace after all.
The point is that there was a lot of suffering from Hamas' attack, and there will be a lot of suffering from Israel's response. But the biggest difference between this period and the period before the attack is not that there is a lot of suffering, only that the suffering is not entirely on the side of the Palestinians. There are many impediments to peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but one of the biggest has been that Israel is doing quite well as the occupying power and has little reason to want to give anything up.
This is not meant to justify the Hamas assault (although they may well have launched it expecting it to have much less effect than it did. Like the Mouse that Roared, they probably expected their fighters to be slaughtered when they crossed into Israel only to find that Israel had moved its troops to the West Bank to protect the settlers who are expanding territory and committing pograms against Palestinian villages) but it is meant to show why Hamas may not have considered the attack unreasonable. And why the attack is hard to understand if one accepts that since things were peaceful for the Israelis there was no war before the attack.
Well said! Thanks!
Yeah, it's strange how many people think the world began on October 7th, 2023.
Eh. About as many think that history began on May 14, 1948.
The solution is to end the reasons FOR Hamas. Of course, you won't hear much about that, because the military bang-bang is so much more fun.
Israel has never talked about making peace by treating its Palestinian people fairly and with dignity. Hey! When the United States took a lot of western-state territory from Mexico, one of the treaty points was to accept the former Mexicans/Spanish as US citizens with full rights, and to respect their property rights. The New Mexico Constitution even codifies this.
Israel needs to grow up and take its head out of the 18th century. And the United States should stop enabling Israel's archaic, conquest-based attitudes. You don't get lifetime immunity from war crimes prosecutions just because your ancestors were victims.
The Israelis had agreed to a reasonable peace deal with Arafat in 2000 but he rejected it. So no, I don't think your thesis stands.
What court of law decided that the peace deal offered to Arafat was reasonable?
They really didn't. Anything without a right of return and full sovereignty is by definition unreasonable.
Anything with a right of return is the end of Israel as a Jewish democracy.
No worries, then; if Netanyahu remains in power, democracy will end anyway.
"by definition unreasonable"? It appears that your dictionary's definition of the word "reasonable" is not the one normal people used. Your comment is about as ill-based as the guy above you who talks about courts of law defining what is reasonable.
Israel had not agreed to a reasonable peace deal with Arafat in 2000 and it is revisionist history to think so. Israel made an offer on Jerusalem that people (Particularly the American Jews who were advising Clinton) took to mean that they would be open to accepting a peace deal with Arafat if Arafat offered it. They did this because the American Jews advising Clinton desperately wanted peace and so assumed that Jewish Israel did as well.
That this was not confused as an actual offer of peace is shown by the fact that the Clinton next move was to put forward parameters of how to get from what Israel actually offered to an actual peace deal.
Since that time a couple of the American Jews advising Clinton have acknowledged that they may have been too optimistic in thinking Israel was ready to accept an actual peace deal. But they were not confused about whether Barak offered peace. He did not.
Your references to "American Jews" smells suspiciously like old anti-Semitic tropes... makes it hard to take your comments seriously.
I suppose it might if there was an anti-Semitic trope about Jews really wanting peace and so assuming that other people do to. As an American Jew who wanted peace, I find it hard to take seriously the idea that that is an anti-Semitic trope. It is actually something that American Jews should be proud of. Maybe the naivety of thinking that therefore Israeli Jews think the same is less laudatory. But if you think the idea that Jews want peace but can be naive is an anti-Semitic trope then you really don't understand anti-Semitic tropes.
To be fair, that condition was pretty easy for the Americans to accept, because the newly-added citizens weren't going to significantly change the demographics of the nation as a whole.
Look to the American South after the civil war for an example of how Americans will treat a newly-enfranchised minority that they've learned to fear and despise and which is numerous enough to threaten their political power.
While I agree completely with you about Hamas the problem what is the strategy for taking them out?
I don't know, I think if I was a top Hamas leader I would hiding somewhere in the Sinai right now, knowing what Israel was going to do. And even that said Hamas leader was killed there hundreds if not thousands ready to take their place. It's hard if not impossible to kill an idea or any kind of popular resistance.
Ergo the best choices facing Israel in this situation are still not good ones but they are the only ones that area feasible from a strategic point of view:
1). Re-occupy Gaza and allow the Palestinian Authority to run it at some point in the near future, providing security against Hamas incursion. Or...
2). Let Egypt re-occupy Gaza or have some sort of joint-administration if the Egyptians are willing along with the PA.
3). Israel must stop the settlements in the West Bank. If you want a serious partner to help rule Palestinian areas in two-state solution (which is the only feasible way out of this conflict) then have got to stop underminding them which Israeli government have stupidly done since the turn of the century.
Again, not good choices but better than invading Gaza, leaving and then letting Hamas come back in as they have done so many times since 2005. No "blockaid" of Gaza is going to work anymore.
Of course folks are outraged at Hamas' attack. Almost all Western media focuses exclusively on that. To the point that when someone tries to point out IDF attacks which they know are going to kill civilians, they're accused of being ignorant, antisemtic, or don't understand how it's "justified". No one is allowed to be outraged by Hamas' action and IDF's response. Get in line or you're ok with what Hamas did.
Hamas isn't in the West Bank, but that hasn't stopped the IDF or settlers from killing Palestinians there. Palestinian civilians are killed whether Hamas does something or not. Hamas exists in part because Israeli govt supported them in an effort to create disunity within the Palestinian community. The last thing they want is a singular unified authority.
There are many types in Israel. Zionist, non-zionist, and a mix of both. For much of their existence, the zionist have driven govt policy and it works from the basis that all Palestinians need to be removed and a "pure" Jewish state be the end result. By any means possible. Even involving the assassination of the Israeli PM.
When you treat a population as essentially prisoners this is the result. SAfrica's apartheid state is a an excellent example. Everyone imagines Mandela as a gentle fatherly figure, but he was someone who after many peaceful protests were met with violence decided to call for fighting back. Predictably violence exploded across the country and he became a terrorist to the State. The ANC was in many ways no different than the PLO, Hamas, etc. The largest difference being the injection of religious extremism (Hamas) versus communism (ANC).
I see little hope for the Palestinians. No one really cares about them. Various Middle Eastern state only view them as a tool against Israel. The West falls in line behind Israel and turns a blind eye to anything "uncomfortable". Eventually the Palestinians will be ground out of all their land and become another people who only exist as refugees.
Thank you Samgamgee. You said exactly what I wanted to say. Israel has created this monster all by themselves. The abused have become the abusers.
It's a big world, and peoples get driven from their homes sometimes. It doesn't HAVE to be a calamity that afflicts many future generations. We don't, for instance, see a bunch of Prussian refugee camps on the outskirts of Kaliningrad, raising their children to hate Russians and dream of the day that they can someday murder every last Russian in that exclave.
It's done. It's settled. It sucked for a bunch of people. And their grandchildren today are mostly living happy, secure, productive lives.
But note that it is settled because Germans at last decided to cede territory for peace. And the East Prussians, Pomeranians, Silesians had all the rest of Germany to flee to. The Palestinians don’t have the option of fleeing to a larger Palestinian state.
That's rather the point. the people of East Prussia were Prussians, but also they were Germans, and they found homes elsewhere in Germany.
Similarly, the Arabs of Palestine were ... well, when calamity struck, the rest of the Arab world decided that suddenly these Arabs were, first and foremost, Palestinian, and couldn't resettle elsewhere in the Arab world.
this perverse decision turned one generation's defeat into a calamity that consumes the lives of all their descendants to this day.
imagine the fast-approaching day when lost of Florida is uninhabitable due to rising seas. and then imagine that the rest of America decides that what we have is a Floridian refugee crisis. The people of Florida are, first and foremost, Floridian. and they'll have to muddle along in blighted refugee camps along the border until the day comes that they defeat the sea and return home. and the rest of America sends them thoughts and prayers and occasionally a bit of fuel and food.
I will be so happy when folks stop blaming the Palestinians for the slaughter by the Hamas fools. They must remember. we Democrats are not the repulsive party. We must not put everyone in the same bucket. Ditto for Russia. Not every Russian is a friend of Putin. Folks need to start doing some critical thinking.
Did the U.S. blame Saudi Arabia for 9/11? No, because most of the people in Saudi Arabia had nothing to do with it despite the fact that almost all of the 9/11 perps were Saudi.
What Israel is doing right now is carrying out the Final Solution, which is ironic given their history.
What do you think would have happened if the 9/11 terrorists were acting on orders of the Saudi Government and took American hostages to Saudi Arabia?
Final Solution?
Do you know that the population in Gaza doubled in 25 years?
Do you think the population of Jews in Europe doubled during the Final Solution?
The IDF hit the start button for the Final Solution on 7 Oct. The population history prior to that point is irrelevant.
About 65% of European Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
If you want to play that game, the IDF is up to 0.3%, many of them combatants. And that is the number provided by Hamas.
That is a tragic number, but roughly 200 times less than what you are comparing it to.
If you want to complain about 7000 dead, we are in agreement. If you choose to do it in an inaccurate and inflammatory way that ignores any nuance or history, I will point that out.
Thanks! This is one of those issues that cause knees to jerk all over the world. But as humans, we should be overcoming our "relfexes" and ... reflecting.
You ignore the fact that Hamas is broadly popular among a lot of Palestinians and that they are not exactly lining up to denounce Hamas' recent outrages. The Palestinians are not exactly innocent of blame here.
Hamas is the group that "won" control of the prison that Gaza is. As the controlling power they're entrenched throughout life in Gaza. Overly object to the fundamental extremist Hamas and you end up thrown off buildings like their political opponents. "Broadly popular" is not the term one should use, unless it's to equate all Palestinian as Hamas.
First you have to accept that Gaza isn't a country or city that popularly elects these groups. It's a prison where one group eventually takes control. And for a Palestinian just trying to get by, when they look around and watch the IDF repeatedly kill their neighbors while Hamas brings in items to make life barely live able, what do you think their perspective is going to be.
Every "ordinary Palestinian" I hear on NPR says something on the order of "Joos had it coming." And this is an organization that, near as I can tell, would like to help Palestinians put their best selves forward.
I get why they're pissed. And I get why they're radicalized. Nevertheless, that's radicalized. It sure sounds like the bulk of the population of Gaza is okay with mass murder.
And, honestly, that tracks. From a population of, what, two million-ish? Hamas was able to raise an army of a couple thousand young men ready to sacrifice themselves for the chance to murder Israeli civilians before dying. That wouldn't be possible unless the civilian population was deeply and widely radicalized.
The Laws of War don’t make a distinction between civilians who express hatred of their enemies, and those who don’t. You can hold them blameworthy, but that doesn’t make them combatants.
Can you quote what these Palestinians actually say? The idea that every Palestinian interviewed on NPR supports Hamas' terrorist attack is about as plausible as every Palestinian interviewed on NPR saying that commentator Laertes is a genius.
It is not implausible that every Palestinian interviewed on NPR described the conditions in Gaza, and that those conditions make Israel sound bad. But any accurate description of Gaza would have that effect. That should not be confused for thinking that Jewish civilians deserve to be murdered.
It's a good point. People should not equate Hamas and the Palestinians.
Some people blame Palestinians for the Oct. 7 attacks. That's wrong. It was Hamas.
Some people fail to condemn Hamas, citing their solidarity with Palestinians, as members of the Squad did in Congress. That is wrong too. The attacks were unjustified, inhuman, and deserve condemnation, no matter how righteous anyone thinks the Palestinian cause may be.
The actions of men live on long after they are dead.
The Zionist idea gained in the European Jewish intellectuals in the late 1880's. They were locked out of polite society. Another idea of the time was back to the earth movement in European Jewish society. The Kibbutzum movement.
Then WW1 happened and Britain needed access to funds to pay for the war. The unfortunate Ottoman Empire sided with Germany. Then the British Navy started covering to oil from coal. Guess who had oil.
The saying goes: Britain sold the same horse twice; once to the Jews and once to the Arabs.
And so it goes.
Hamas replicated the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943. Israel's response to Hamas uprising was the same as the Nazi response, claiming the attackers were terrorists and then destroying the Warsaw Ghetto and the people living there. The only way to eliminate Hamas is to eliminate the US subsidized apartheid in Occupied Palestine.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising happened when Nazi soldiers came into the ghetto to take even more Jews to death camps.
The population of Gaza has doubled in the last 25 years. No Gazans have been sent to death camps.
While there are similarities of Gaza to a ghetto, the analogy of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is very poor.
You have really been earning your pay this week, Steve C!
Lack of a substantive response to my comment and ad hominem attack duly noted.
Yes, because resisting the attacks of the Nazi SS is exactly the same as murdering and raping babies.
Your argument is despicable.
The Israeli regime gets up to some truly monstrous shit. But you don't do anyone any favors by drawing weak analogies that only make you and the people standing near you look ridiculous.
Nobody here knows whether the IDF is doing enough to prevent civilian deaths. The number of dead does seem excessive but perhaps there no other way. My only take is that Israel needs to realize that to prevent this from happening again they will need to alter many of their approaches.
There absolutely is.
Lot of people seem to be taking the stance of "if this is the only way to get at Hamas that makes it ipso facto justifiable."
It doesn't work like that.
Then how does it work? What should the IDF be doing to destroy Hamas and recover Hamas' hostages?
You claim absolutely certain knowledge of another approach they should be taking. I'm quite leery of folks with absolute certainty about *anything*. But I'm desperate enough to ask what secret approach you've discovered that everyone else has overlooked.
Well, carpet bombing apartment buildings isn't a viable, valid, or effective way. Putting all of Gaza under siege isn't a good way. Also, the Israeli "peaceniks" who claim to be entirely concerned about "human life" demanding that all the hostages be released before the bombing and ground invasions halt ... that's hypocritical and crazy.
Israel has refused to negotiate or talk with Hamas, pretty much from Day One (back a few decades ago now!). That's got to end.
This does not have a military solution.
I'll buy your last line "This does not have a military solution." I just don't see any other solution. Saying that Israel should try to peacefully co-exist with an organization that has as is raison d'etre the destruction of Israel is another non-starter.
Hamas starts from a denial that "Israel" (the scare quotes are in their charter) exists: "19. There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity. Whatever has befallen the land of Palestine in terms of occupation, settlement building, Judaization or changes to its features or falsification of facts is illegitimate."
Not too surprising that Israel hasn't sat down to peacefully discuss things with a group that intends their destruction.
(And note that this is the revised, "kinder gentler" charter, that skips the bit about "We intend to kill the Jews")
None of which is to say that Israel has not done horrible things. I don't deny that. But blandly asserting "there absolutely is" a way to prevent civilian deaths, as Murc did is asinine.
Israel showers leaflets all over areas it plans to attack and telephones the residents of buildings it plans to target.
There is no other military anywhere on Earth that has ever done such a thing.
For the Nazis this only makes them worse.
'Please leave your shelter and stand where bombs, bullets, and fiery debris may come raining down, so we may destroy your homes'
So polite. Also, the US drops leaflets regularly in airstrikes. And has since at least WWII.
So you know which side you're on, then?
"Hamas no more started this war than Putin started the war in the Ukraine."
(Can you tell I have Twitter?)
I have tried to find unbiased info on how the Israel/Palestinian situation got to where is it. First, there has to be a Jewish state. Jews died in WWII because no country would take them in. If they let in every Palestinian, they would eventually no longer be a Jewish state.
As to whether they took land that was not theirs, European countries did this all over the world. Pakistan and India, many countries in Africa, etc. It is done. In 1948, the UN called for a Jewish state, a Palestinian state, and for Jerusalem to be administered by a separate entity. The Jews were not happy with the boundaries, but accepted them. The Arabs refused the proposal and declared war on Israel. They have never accepted Israel's right to exist. They forced Jews in Arab countries to leave and many Arabs living in the borders of Israel left. When Israel withdrew from Gaza, the Palestinians had an opportunity to prosper as an independent state. Instead, they elected Hamas, who used their power and position to attack Israel. So Israel took back some control. If the Palestinians accept Israel's right to exist, and Israel stops taking any more Palestinian land, maybe they could co-exist.
You have to start with the Ottoman Empire and that it was completely medieval, and that all the people in it reflected a completely medieval polity, and that when it collapsed no one had any sense of an independent nationality aside from ethnicity, and then they all had civil wars to expand their control, rhetorically founded on a romanticised idea of pan-Arabism, which played out nowhere.
And the Jews of Palestine were the only minority group who resisted successfully.
There does not have to be an ethnostate. There does not have to be racism.
eh. the idea of an ethnostate is pretty sketchy. but one can see why Jews might want one anyway. they're often treated poorly in states where they're a minority.
You did not succeed in finding unbiased sources. It is true that in 1948 the 1/3 of the population that was Jewish was granted 2/3s of the available land and accepted it, although there was evidence that the acceptance was temporary rather than permanent.
It is true that there is a long history of colonialism in which awful things were done by Europeans to native populations under the misguided beliefs that the natives would be grateful to them for bringing civilization with them. Israel was born at the time that it was becoming clear that this was racist idiocy, so I don't think the Israeli side does well by pointing to this history.
Israel never gave up its occupation of Gaza, it only changed its nature. Prior to 2005 it had a hands on occupation with a small number of settlements which consumed an obscene amount of the water available in Gaza. In 2005 in acknowledgment of the difficulty in policing Gaza in this way they pulled out the settlements and chose to control Gaza by controlling the borders, including the sea and the border between Gaza and Egypt. And to punish the Gazans for pushing them to remove settlements they left Gazan produce to rot on the border between Gaza and Israel.
Gaza was never allowed to be a state, and was not given a chance to prosper. Silly people sometimes pretend that Gaza was given the opportunity of being the Singapore of the Mediterranean, but Singapore controls its borders. It could not be what it is with a foreign power claiming the rights of an occupier of it. The whole Singapore model depends on there being no risk that products will not be allowed to get to market.
I would say other than that your sources are fair, but I am not sure there is anything in what you presented that is left other than that.
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, so their whole purpose has been to keep that narrative alive, at any cost.
They don't create those conditions, nor do they have any control to change them.
Gaza has been under siege for over twenty years. They can't use their beaches, their farms, trade for foreign goods except that which Israel allows.
Because Hamas, a terrorist organization, took over. And it isn't just Israel that's blockading them, Egypt blockades them just as harshly.
It isn't ultimately about Palestinians it's about how they're manipulated and who manipulates them.
In the months before they attacked there was rising resentment and antagonism toward Hamas among the residents of Gaza generally and I've been thinking a lot of the motivation for this attack was to distract from this --to get the Israelis to do the work of repressing their own population for them.
Couldn’t give a flip fuck about Israel or Gaza or any of those religious fanatics. How awful that the adults subject their children to this violence. But that’s what religious fanatics do. Best result is that they manage to exterminate each other so fully that there aren’t any left to complain. Secular people, if there are any, should abandon this shithole place and let the useless ultra orthodox fight the jihadists on their own.
Do not care. Send all that aid to Ukraine where people deserve our support.
And the UN can go fuck itself.
The UN isn't responsible for protecting the people of Israel, so they've got the luxury of taking a limited view of the conflict and making cheap feel-good performances.
One thing is for sure… Biden just lost to trump with his support for Israel. He lost the far left, the Arabs in Michigan, and the Muslims (if they vote!) all over. Live by identity politics and die by it too. He probably lost the Jewish vote too since they are feeling abandoned by the so called left. Oh well. Hilarious.
This is a particularly stupid and ignorant comment, and you should be embarrassed.
To start with…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/27/michigan-arab-american-voters-biden-israel
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/20/us/politics/progressive-jews-united-states.html
And then…
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/biden-polling-israel-palestine-gaza-hamas-war-youth.html
Perhaps you are just scared to admit it. I’ll still vote for him.
You're dishonest, insulting, and unserious. Those articles are fine, but you're extrapolating absurd conclusions from them about an election a year away. Your comment about "identity politics" implies a certain hostile and ignorant perspective. Your comments about Muslims, the insulting "(if they vote!)", and the Jewish vote (who went for Biden 77% to Trump's 21% in 2020) are childish. Go sit at the kids' table.
Lots of Muslims aren’t citizens and can’t vote. Maybe those that can stay home. Some seem sympathetic with the republicans anti gay / trans hatred.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/6/19/muslims-opposed-to-lgbtq-curricula-for-their-kids-arent-bigots
Yeah… not bigots at all! Just religious fanatics like their new Christian friends.
Why are you being bigoted?
Those Muslims and Christians hate you in particular. Anyway their beliefs are a choice. And I consider them the enemy. If they renounce their silly beliefs I’m all good. So, not any bigotry, just a well founded judgement of their foolishness.
Some on the left are expressing their disapproval of Biden's comments towards Israel. But do you seriously think that they are going to vote for Trump when he is trying to revive his Muslim Ban? The idea that Biden will lose the Jewish vote may actually be sillier. Are they going for the guy whose response to the terrorist attack was to call Hezbollah smart? I would be surprised if Biden's Jewish vote is not even higher this time around. That is the advantage that Biden has in running against such a loathsome individual.
The IDF has self reported that over 6000 individual munitions were deployed in Gaza by the 12th. The campaign continued afterwards and I can't find an update. Equivalent to the almost two month period in 2014, the last major combats.
Beginning in 2006, the Allies in Afghanistan made records available from then until withdrawal: during all that time 36,791 munitions we're delivered by 16,541 sorties. Across the whole of Afghanistan. During the initial 76 days of bombing in Afghanistan at that ended in December of 2001, some 6,500 strike sorties were flown, with 17,500 munitions dropped on over 520 targets. Across the whole of Afghanistan.
Do you see the point I'm getting at? And I think I now know why no updates have been posted since the 12th.
And that doesn't strike you as the scale of wrong confronted?
In no way did Hamas start this war. The IDF and settlers had killed about 10x the Palestinian civilians in the last twenty years as number of Israeli civilians killed on 10/7.
The week before 10/7, the IDF was caught shooting at unarmed civilians again.
And the IDF has, with current conservative estimates, killed another 10x the civilians since those were killed in Israel on 10/7.
This is not to minimize their crimes, but let's not lie and say it was in a vacuum.