Conflict between Palestine and Israel escalates
- Thread starter dreng3
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Didn't the ruling say they had a month? So, a few weeks of really intense mass murder, followed by a day or two of quiet before the time is up?
These articles there don't really provide the grounds to argue that the majority of this was down to friendly fire.it's pretty easy to accidentally kill 360 civilians if you are credited for the other side's friendly fire, yes
Israel admits to "immense" amount of "friendly fire" on 7 October
Army's rejection of an investigation appears to be a cover up.electronicintifada.net
How Israeli forces trapped and killed ravers at the Nova Festival
New evidence points to Israeli security forces, not Hamas, for causing the most fatalities at the music festival - civilian deaths that were then utilized to justify Tel Aviv's Gaza genocide.thecradle.co
The first is predicated on statements from the IDF admitting a large amount of friendly fire from them over the day-- which isn't seriously disputed. But (as the second points out) the military didn't reach Re'im for well over an hour: first responders were border patrollers and police. And while the second makes a claim that the response caused "most" of the death that day, the evidence provided doesn't actually support that conclusion.
There's no serious disputing that the Israeli security forces mowed down their own civilians that day. But there's also no serious disputing that Hamas and its allies did too, in massacres focused around several civilian centres alongside the music festival. And frankly, I find it lacking believability that the border patrollers and police, without any military directive or organisation, caused the majority of the carnage at the festival, as opposed to the military organisation that launched the attack.
Because..?
... because..?
Well, that's a nice appeal to incredulity. But it doesn't particularly incriminate Hamas that you find it hard to believe something nor, even if your writing-and-spreading-hasbara-for-free assumptions are correct, does it make involvement in or support for the fighting back by Palestinians displayed on Oct 7 somehow morally unacceptable on its own, nor does it imply an endorsement of inflicting civilian casualties. UNRWA is right to fire the personnel in question only because employing them is less important than the aid they deliver regardless of if they did anything objectionable to those looking for an excuse to starve Palestinians. It has nothing to do with morality or justice. It is also intensely weird not to grant special dispensation to a bunch of people breaking out of a concentration camp. That you feel the need to judge those whom international law plainly does not protect and has not for decades for breaking it is frankly obscene.
It’s funny how Bill can sometimes make a point that has you going, “Yeah you tell ‘em!” like when he called out Tom Cruise and a few others for capitulating to China while promoting a movie during their humanitarian crisis with Taiwan, he goes and reminds people what a hypocritical A-Hole he can really be depending on whom he’s apparently obligated to defend.
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Precedent, footage, survivor testimony, lack of equally/more credible alternatives.
Because they didn't present anything numeric or particularly substantive; there's some damning testimony, but then some sheer speculation about magnitude.
Ditto, since it appears the sole reason you don't want to believe Hamas responsible for civilian death is that you don't think they would do that. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that an organised military group is capable of more carnage over a few hours than scrabbling border guards.
That you continue to equate Palestinian people broadly (whom I did not judge) with Hamas (who organised the attack, and whom i did judge) does not reflect on you well: it's morally not that far different from how the Israeli government cynically equates itself with the Jewish people at large.
Hamas, created and funded in part by the Israeli government and responsible for violently expelling the socialists and secularists from government, remains complicit and heavily involved in the oppression of the Palestinians.
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...
more specifically?
are you expecting every Hamas fighter to be wearing a bodycam or something? Maybe you think the Gaza Ministry of Health should have sent some census-takers to the battlefield?
There isn't any particularly good evidence for it, and it is not generally a good idea to assume the truth of accusations designed to facilitate mass murder. Which you are doing for some inexplicable reason. Especially considering that the people carrying out that mass murder are literally destroying possible exculpatory evidence.
"capable of" is not the same as "guilty of". Nor does it have any bearing on intent. and the Israeli side of Oct 7 included tanks and helicopters bombarding housing in their own settlements. Your perception of the forces at play is odd given that we are speaking of, once again, groups of people escaping a concentration camp against the military force that has killed tens of thousands in the last few months and reduced large portions of Gaza to rubble.
Do you believe that surrounding a concentration camp with idyllic suburbia and a defense plan that involves indiscriminate bombardment of that suburbia would negate the right of the people in the concentration camp to escape? That is essentially what you must argue by equating any praise of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood with support for 'intentional targeting of civilians'. This is not a war of choice on the other side of the world nor the violent enforcement of a colonial occupation: it is a bunch of refugees breaking out of a concentration camp that has been under a strangling blockade for years. Their right to do so is obvious. The circumstances surrounding them are not their choice. Their military professionalism or lack thereof is mostly irrelevant to how we should feel about it. That you insist on evaluating the situation as if it were the American occupation of Fallujah is baffling.
You'd prefer they be perfect; so would I. But that is neither here nor there.
It is plenty different for a variety of reasons, not least that Hamas is engaged in defensive resistance that it and any other Palestinian group has every right to perform rather than the ethnic cleansing and other wanton cruelties that Israel performs in the name of and wishes to associate with all Jews. In any case, Hamas is Palestinian. You are judging Palestinians. Specifically, you are judging Palestinians orphaned by Israeli violence. It does not particularly matter whether you are judging all Palestinians; I don't think anyone is confusing my use of 'Palestinian' for e.g. Palestinian-Americans. Neither do I think you are judging Sammy Obeid or the Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza generally. But you are definitely judging Palestinians, specifically many who have spent their whole lives in a concentration camp. It is also relevant that those who are committing mass murder against Palestinians are making no attempt to distinguish between Palestinians generally and Hamas. The opposite, in fact. You may think that playing the respectability politics game of distinguishing Hamas from Palestine is fruitful, but what is far more fruitful is recognizing that on October 7, Hamas acted against Israel in a fashion that it and any other Palestinian group has every right to do.
None of this is relevant, regardless of its accuracy, completeness, or lack thereof (or its vagueness; 'heavily involved in the oppression of the Palestinians' goodness gracious, how awful-- what must you think of the collaborators in the Palestinian Authority of the West Bank?). Would you think differently about this situation if Al-Aqsa Flood were organized by Islamic Jihad or in some alternate timeline the PLO? Or specifically the socialists and secularists you are apparently so concerned about? If so, I don't think I can take this conversation with any degree of seriousness any longer. If not, why mention it? I, for one, don't think the human rights of Palestinians, including their right to resist by means of armed struggle, are predicated on being socialist or secular. Nor do I think such is predicated on having a liberal democratic government. Nor even an actually democratic government. For what it's worth, the American and Israeli attitude toward democracy in Gaza was made painfully clear when Hamas won their election.
Remember how you often say that we can ascertain the shady, duplicitous actions of (for example) the US State Dept. based on a pattern of behaviour? It's a little like that-- you often don't go into a huge well of detail, because it's so unnecessary. Similarly, Hamas has a long, long, long history of brutality and not giving a shit about civilian life, either Palestinian or Israeli.
But really, there's not a single source I could provide that you'd accept, and we both know that. Whenever a source is posted, regardless of what it is, if it contradicts you (or makes your currently favoured authoritarians out to be bad), you'll assume it's state dept. propaganda. Absolutely anything I could post, whether purely independent or even from America's opponents, would meet the same treatment. So what's the point?
You're right, we must assume that all military actions have been taken with the highest ethical consideration, because it wouldn't be possible for us to prove otherwise. I'm so very glad we didn't apply your approach to American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Inexplicable", is how he describes a course of action he's literally taking himself.
"Capability" doesn't have any bearing on intent, but it has quite a lot of bearing on likelihood of guilt. Remember how we both agreed that the attack on Al-Ahli hospital was more likely to be down to the IAF rather than PIJ, because the IAF has so much greater capability to carry out the attack as it happened? You seemed fine taking capability into consideration then.
Yes, it did indeed. Not at the festival. Your own source literally attested to that.
No, this is some truly rancid hypocrisy. Equating an organisation that purports to represent an ethnic group with the entirety of the ethnic group is rationally ludicrous and borderline racist. These limp little caveats don't change that fundamental fact: judging an organisation, government or policy doesn't reflect on the people as a whole.
"In any case, Likud is Jewish. You are judging Jews" is logically identical to the statement you gave; and that's the despicable line the government trots out to deflect from their genocidal ambitions, and smear any opponents of government policy as racists and anti-Semites. Apply an ounce of principle, for god's sake.
Of course, I don't think their right to resist is predicated on being socialist or secular either, and nothing I said indicated that it was-- this is another attempt to poison the well.
What I can't help but notice, though, is that you yourself are more than happy to list the past evils and oppressions of a given group, when it suits you. You yourself have pointed to American government's involvement in ousting secularists and socialists from power around the world-- you bring it up very often as an indication of where their priorities lie, how little they can be trusted, how little they give a single shit about the people in those countries being represented. Ah, but when it's one of your favoured authoritarians, suddenly bringing up their litany of brutality and abuse is irrelevant! Christ, the hypocrisy is nauseating.
Turns out that dorky *Coexist* bumper sticker was created for an isreali tolerance museum that is located in a home that was stolen from a Palestinian family in 1948. They don't even deny it was stolen from the family, they just don't want to give it back because they think the tolerance museum is more important
www.tumblr.com
Fucked up sluts from the forbidden dimension
i always assumed the infamous ☪oe✡is✝ bumper sticker was american because it was such a quintessential part of a certain era of american politics but when i found out that the image was originally cr…
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The same War Machine that's profiting from arming Ukraine is also arming Israel, while the same Ukraine has political leaders that want to turn it into a big Israel:
www.atlanticcouncil.org
Zelenskyy wants Ukraine to be ‘a big Israel.’ Here’s a road map.
By adapting their mindset to mirror aspects of Israel’s approach to security challenges, Ukrainian officials can tackle their own critical challenges with confidence.
www.atlanticcouncil.org
So you don't have any that are worth a shit. OK.
We shouldn't assume the opposite while that opposite is a rationale used to facilitate a genocide. Obviously. Especially when Hamas plainly wanted hostages in order to trade for Palestinian hostages. It does make sense for some random angry people breaking out of a concentration camp to have killed civilians in a rage, however, though the extent to which that actually happened is unknown. It also makes sense for some of the fighters orphaned by Israeli military action to have taken some misguided revenge against civilians, perhaps, which is also similarly unknown at this point. And it makes sense for Israel to have killed its own civilians, much in the same way it has shown a depraved and reckless disregard for the hostages of Hamas that it didn't manage to kill before they reached Gaza. I tend to think Hamas is truthful that they did not specifically intend for civilians to be killed in Al-Aqsa Flood (though they certainly would have known it was a very likely result) because when Hamas organizes an atrocity, it tends to claim responsibility for it rather than deny it. But that's just a pattern of behavior.
It tends to be relevant in those cases. In this case, we're talking about a bunch of people escaping from a concentration camp in order to take hostages to trade for the release of hostages (or 'administrative detainees' if you're feeling banal). The motivations are pretty clear. And even if Hamas did have some shadowy agenda, it wouldn't matter much to this analysis; UNRWA employees are alleged to have praised or participated in the action presumably in order to further the goals of Palestinian liberation, not whatever cynical agenda you think Hamas may have had when organizing the breakout and hostage-taking.
If the United States were in a situation like Gaza, I promise you I would care more about that situation than George W. Bush and Barack Obama's various crimes when analyzing how they respond to it. That would be a very different world, but hopefully you understand how silly that makes your complaint. Nauseating hypocrisy to foreground the fact that people were escaping from a concentration camp and not the minutia of Palestinian infighting however many years ago.
liberal brain is so weird.
I support the liberation of Palestine. Hamas is one of the groups working toward it. Their actions on Oct 7 are part of that resistance to the various crimes Israel commits against Palestinians; and though the blowback has been harsh, it has also brought needed (though arguably not yet enough) international attention, international attention (and action) the lack of which has been the proximate cause for the violence employed by both sides. I support the striking of that blow regardless of which particular group struck; in my view, they either did it for the cause of Palestinian liberation or they may as well have. Now it is up to the rest of us to stop Israel from using it as an excuse to commit (or accelerate the ongoing) genocide, and part of that is being clear that Palestinians (including Hamas!) have a right to fight back against occupation, ethnic cleansing, and the various other crimes committed against them by Israel and (it is depressing to have to say this) not assuming the worst of a group working toward the liberation of Palestine from Israeli domination in order to try to score points in unrelated arguments.
Border guards have guns too. They're also capable of positioning themselves such that civilians may be caught in crossfire between them and whoever they're shooting at. Analysis of capability tends to be a lot more persuasive when it is done with any amount of detail and, crucially, allows you to reasonably rule out one or more explanations. What you're doing here by speculating on the capability of Israeli border security vs. guys with guns in pickup trucks or hang gliders to be responsible for the killing of civilians... well, it's not either of those.
No one said it did. You are still judging Palestinians for the manner in which they resist-- or that you think they have resisted; the Palestinians you are judging happen to be members of Hamas. As you've all but directly stated that your analysis wouldn't change if it was any other group of Palestinians that did the exact same thing, why are you quibbling on this point? You could instead just admit that you don't know what happened on October 7 and face the fact that you want to assume without firm evidence, and in the face of contrary evidence, that a group of people breaking out of a concentration camp must be guilty of mass murder of civilians-- not accidental killing in the course of fighting other combatants but intentional murder. I don't know why you would have this inclination, but it is something for you to think about. And perhaps to stop bothering me with.
If Israel does something and you object to them doing whatever action that is because the government deciding to take that action is Likud, you would be making the same error you're making here. And it would be entirely correct to point out that your objection is to an Israeli action, not just Likud.
Your meandering here seems more like panicked grasping at straws than anything else. Hamas on October 7 was acting in the capacity of organized resistance to Israeli oppression of Palestine. Of course you're judging Palestinians when you judge that; you're demarcating what is or isn't acceptable for Palestinians to do in the pursuit of their own liberation; or more plainly, you are judging actions that Palestinians took.
Anyway, you didn't engage with the following, so I must assume you have no satisfying answer to it. Especially considering the inventive hairsplitting employed to dispute my other statements.
Nothing you'd accept, because there is nothing. Your litmus test for whether a source is "worth a shit" is whether it agrees with what you already think.
If you dig into it, this line essentially means that if they say/exploit something, we should assume the opposite-- Which isn't rational or useful. Do we assume 9/11 was an inside job because America exploited it to justify invasions and oil grabs?
Circular logic, then-- its not relevant if we assume your narrative of what happened is correct as a starting point.
In essence: an organisation's long history of abuse is highly relevant if its in column A, but if they happen to have done something I like recently, it becomes completely irrelevant and we can't judge them on it.If the United States were in a situation like Gaza, I promise you I would care more about that situation than George W. Bush and Barack Obama's various crimes when analyzing how they respond to it. That would be a very different world, but hopefully you understand how silly that makes your complaint. Nauseating hypocrisy to foreground the fact that people were escaping from a concentration camp and not the minutia of Palestinian infighting however many years ago.
Firstly, when you say you support the striking of that blow regardless, you omit the factor that actually started this discussion and which gives others pause: not merely who did it, but what was involved. If this all turned out to be entirely focused on military targets, then who did it would fade in relevance.
I have no doubt that they did it in the name of Palestinian liberation. I also have no doubt that they knew a blowback of this disproportionate scale would unfurl against the Palestinians afterwards, and considered it a worthy cost to bring international attention. They're epitomising the line of thinking, "many of you will die but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make".
I'm objecting because you have cynically tried to equate criticism of an organisation's military operation with criticism of the demographic as a whole. Its a smear tactic.
I don't know for a fact, and neither do you, though you're speaking with even more certainty than I am. Anywho: you've yet again glossed over that the specific organisation responsible has a long history of intentional murder, of both Israelis and Palestinians. Constantly acting as if there's no difference between that military organisation and Palestinian victims as a whole is disingenuous.
This is as cynically exploitative as boiling down criticism of Israeli government policy to "judging actions that Jews have taken". That's hardly panicked; though i admit to being more than a little surprised you'd quite so openly employ a deflection that you've so vociferously (and rightly) condemned before.
Not really-- its more circular reasoning. "This is what you must believe if you accept the course of events exactly as I've laid it out and then object to them on that basis". Not everything you post is worth the response.
((Though I do find the smug assumption about cutting it because I don't have a good response quite funny-- considering you routinely cut entire posts addressing you and respond to a single line out of several paragraphs)).
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I don't think I can continue this discussion until you review the basic rules of grammar. for fuck's sake.
you are criticizing Hamas. you are also criticizing Palestinians. You are also criticizing humans. You are also criticizing concentration camp escapees. All of these can be true at once! Notice how there is nowhere the word 'all'. This bullshit is emblematic of the inventive hairsplitting I referred to earlier. tedious waste of time.