The Israeli Goverment Has Become The Monster

[Cristiano]

It absolutely sickens me that the US continues to provide arms to Israel, and other than some stern words, keeps letting Netanyahu act with impunity. Biden is failing here badly.

 

[Cristiano]

Analysis: Six months into the war in Gaza, Israel has no exit strategy and no real plan for the future | CNN

As the death toll in Gaza rises, it’s becoming increasingly clear Israel has no viable plan for how to end the war and the patience of its allies is running out.

www.cnn.com

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

It absolutely sickens me that the US continues to provide arms to Israel, and other than some stern words, keeps letting Netanyahu act with impunity. Biden is failing here badly.

Need to redirect those arms to Ukraine... It's a damn shame we aren't doing a lot more to help Ukraine against Russian aggression. Of course, the Republican controlled house has a big boner for Putin but doesn't care about the innocents in Gaza.

If nothing else, we should stop giving Israel bombs and heavy artillery. I think those have been abused too badly. That would send a much bigger message than words.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

If nothing else, we should stop giving Israel bombs and heavy artillery. I think those have been abused too badly. That would send a much bigger message than words.

Of course, if our government did that, then we're obviously antisemitic. We're kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place on this issue, with no path forward.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Of course, if our government did that, then we're obviously antisemitic. We're kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place on this issue, with no path forward.

I'm not even saying we totally stop giving them ammunition; just the heavy weapons that should honestly never be used in a populated area anyway since they inevitably kill civilians.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Analysis: Six months into the war in Gaza, Israel has no exit strategy and no real plan for the future | CNN

As the death toll in Gaza rises, it’s becoming increasingly clear Israel has no viable plan for how to end the war and the patience of its allies is running out.

www.cnn.com

Well if I do remember the stated goals of some high ranking military back then when the whole thing started not having an exit strategy is wrong. Israel's strategy was to wreck havoc upon the Gaza strip until the Palestine civilians have enough of Hamas, and do kick them out on their own. Then install some new government with infrastructure in place to do patrols in Gaza with the IDF if something happens, otherwise pull out.

Obviously this doesn't work. Time for Netanyahu to go, because he failed to deliver his promises.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

The IDF absolutely has no exit strategy. The are, unfortunately, not dissimilar from the US in that regard.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Evernote link

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Question is if Hamas really believed it or just pretended to believe to motivate their followers. So far every of Hamas' attempts led to terror, but nothing more than that.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Evernote link

Hamas' attack was shocking to Israel but wasn't even close to something that would take over Israel. I feel like this must leave a few things lost in translation since I don't think they are THAT delusional. I do think they really believe everyone in the world will eventually be Islamic, but they have got to know it won't be that easy. I think they fully believe they will EVENTUALLY destroy Israel, but I don't think they really literally believed the October 7th attack would be that conquest.

The quoted statements in the article maybe come off as more rhetoric and dreams than literal hopes.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Hamas' attack was shocking to Israel but wasn't even close to something that would take over Israel. I feel like this must leave a few things lost in translation since I don't think they are THAT delusional. I do think they really believe everyone in the world will eventually be Islamic, but they have got to know it won't be that easy. I think they fully believe they will EVENTUALLY destroy Israel, but I don't think they really literally believed the October 7th attack would be that conquest.

The quoted statements in the article maybe come off as more rhetoric and dreams than literal hopes.

Though it seems that they were offering people jobs as heads of the cantons into which they intended to divide the new Palestinian state.

One would have thought that nobody could have been so delusional as to believe that the Iranians would greet the US and British forces as liberators after the successful invasion of Iraq and turn the place into an Western-friendly, liberal democracy, but I still remember the horror with which friends serving in the British forces at the time realised that the US leadership not only believed this but had actually planned their post-invasion strategy on that basis (seriously, a very close friend was, at the time, a counter-insurgency specialist with British military intelligence and she was in despair).

Similarly, you'd think that nobody could seriously believe this Christian Nationalist, Seven Mountains nonsense, but lots of very wealthy and powerful people seem to, and appear to have a sporting chance of trying to put their demented views into practice if things go the wrong way in November.

I find it difficult to accept that any reasonable and intelligent person could believe in young age creationism and the literal truth of the Bible or the Koran with as much conviction as I believe in evolution and the second law of thermodynamics, but some people clearly do, and I think we have to accept that, and act and plan accordingly.

 

[Cristiano]

Chef José Andrés says Israel engaging in ‘war against humanity itself’ in Gaza

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I find it difficult to accept that any reasonable and intelligent person could believe in young age creationism and the literal truth of the Bible or the Koran with as much conviction as I believe in evolution and the second law of thermodynamics, but some people clearly do, and I think we have to accept that, and act and plan accordingly.

Actually that's quite simply done: restrict access to science, cripple education at school and put fear into the hearts of people. The Quran is for really pious muslims the Word of God. It's not just a book like a bible, but God himself send a messenger to dictate his words to mankind, so an angel told this Mohammed. God also spoke Arabic. Meaning you cannot translate the Quran, because its only language is Arabic, you can only translate its meanings.

With that type of groundwork it's quite easily done to put whatever weird idea in the heads of people.

So as consequence in Islam doubting the Quran is doubting god's own words, so god himself. A sacrilege, a blasphemy.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Actually that's quite simply done: restrict access to science, cripple education at school and put fear into the hearts of people. The Quran is for really pious muslims the Word of God. It's not just a book like a bible, but God himself send a messenger to dictate his words to mankind, so an angel told this Mohammed. God also spoke Arabic. Meaning you cannot translate the Quran, because its only language is Arabic, you can only translate its meanings.

With that type of groundwork it's quite easily done to put whatever weird idea in the heads of people.

So as consequence in Islam doubting the Quran is doubting god's own words, so god himself. A sacrilege, a blasphemy.

How does that work for fundamentalist Christians or Jews, though, in the US or Europe, who hold similar views about the literal truth and authority of their own holy books? They aren't all home schooled or educated at religious institutions.

ETA: It's a bit like people believing, despite all the evidence, that Trump won the 2020 election, that vaccinations are bad for you, or that the world is run by cabals of blood-drinking elites and/or lizards. Believing something isn't the same as simply being misinformed about the actual facts.

 

[Ellie]

The two world religions involved are not the most important factors in this conflict, but are being used to justify horrors, just as US far right Christians are being used to usher in anti-abortion laws and other legislation disadvantaging anyone who's not rich & can therefore work around them, in the service of chasing profits for the few.

Extremists among Zionists & islamacists perform mental gymnastics and skew religious laws in an attempt to justify the killing of innocents. The rest, who know these actions are against their religion, are often tarred with the same brush, leading to more antisemitic & antimuslim attacks.

The Zionists appear to want to eliminate & drive out all the Palestinians, then develop their real estate and gas reserves.

Israeli Real Estate Firm Used Genocidal Rhetoric — Then Politico’s Parent Company Put Them in a Trade Fair

In Gaza, “They require state authorization to build,” he said. “Even more so in the West Bank, where the vast majority of land has been expropriated from Palestinians and is controlled by Israel’s civil administration.”

The likelyhood Palestinian will ever control or use of any its land or resources is very low due to the continued Israeli campaign to eliminate Hamas and block all resources able to benefit them in any way. Everything, including all aid.

The Israeli response to the 7 October 2023 killings of 1,400 Israelis, has, so far, killed 30-34,000 Palestinians, including over 10,000 children, and nearly 100 jurnos & media crew members, and, most recently, the 7 World Central Kitchen aid workers.

Both sides seem to be engaging in terrorism to me, though one side is vastly better equipped, supported, and has killed far, far more of the enemy.

The massive Western press coverage, including the infamous 40 beheaded babies (now debunked by Israeli press, among others) claim cited by Biden, is heavily complicit in the slaughter in Gaza, including by repeating the propoganda put out by the Israeli govt. to justify killings.

Joe Biden Keeps Repeating His False Claim That He Saw Pictures of Beheaded Babies

Many other claims about Hamas actions on 7 October originated from Zaka ultra-Orthodox group members who retrived the bodies, used as a main source for many articles. One ZAKA board member, Stuart Seldowitz, is the guy with a viral YT showing him committing hate crimes against Muslim street vendors in the US.

()

"Anat Schwartz had a problem. The Israeli filmmaker and former air force intelligence official had been assigned by the New York Times to work with her partner’s nephew Adam Sella and veteran Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman on an investigation into sexual violence by Hamas on October 7 that could reshape the way the world understood Israel’s ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. By November, global opposition was mounting against Israel’s military campaign, which had already killed thousands of children, women, and the elderly. On her social media feed, which the Times has since said it is reviewing, Schwartz liked a tweet saying that Israel needed to “turn the strip into a slaughterhouse.”

“Violate any norm, on the way to victory,” read the post. “Those in front of us are human animals who do not hesitate to violate minimal rules.”

The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé

This conflict didn't begin on 7 October 2023, but around 1948, with the massacre of civilians by Israeli troops, when hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated, as related by both sides in the documentary Tantura.

Many share the blame for this most recent massacre; the justifying cry of "terrorism!!!" is far less effective when one side has terrorized the other for decades.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I posted about this earlier in the AI thread, but here's a lot more about how Israel is using AI to target suspected Hamas fighters and their families for assasination:

‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza

The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.

www.972mag.com

Inside Israel’s Bombing Campaign in Gaza

The Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham on his investigations of the I.D.F.’s use of A.I.-backed targeting systems and the dire cost to Palestinian civilians.

www.newyorker.com

Evernote link

But I would say that the main changes in this operation were the scope and how automated things became, and the automation is very much related to the scope. The military has this term called “human targets.” What it meant in the past was that these are particular individuals, who are senior-ranking commanders in Hamas or Islamic Jihad military wings, and that because of their military importance, the I.D.F. international-law departments made a decision that civilians can be killed alongside these people. So usually what this means is that they will be bombed inside their houses, killing not only them but often entire families in the process. And this, sources told me, used to be quite a small list because it’s quite a brutal way to kill somebody. You’re dropping a bomb and destroying the entire house that that person is in.

After October 7th, higher-ups—and we don’t know if they were people in the military or on the political side—made quite an unprecedented decision to mark everybody in those military wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as human targets, meaning that going forward, anybody in those groups, regardless of age, regardless of military importance, not only can we bomb them but we can bomb them with civilians present.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

This conflict didn't begin on 7 October 2023, but around 1948, with the massacre of civilians by Israeli troops, when hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated, as related by both sides in the documentary Tantura.

Nope, it started way earlier. Also if I have learned one thing about this conflict then it is that easy explanations about it always get it wrong, because its a multi layered type of conflict with many actors in it, also each one with their own point of view, which makes it really hard to understand at whole.

 

[Ellie]

To me, it's very simple. The Israeli govt. excessive response over decades to their problems with Palestinians has turned far more deadly of late and must be curbed.

That the Palestinian death toll is massive is undisputed except by some right-wing asshat Faux News types.

I may not have a full comprehension of the entire history of the region, but this is surely a major and early cause of today’s conflict.

“The central facts of the Nakba during the 1948 Palestine war are not disputed. About 750,000 Palestinians—over 80% of the population in what would become the State of Israel—were expelled or fled from their homes and became refugees. Eleven Arab urban neighborhoods and over 500 villages were destroyed or depopulated.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

The disparity involved in this conflict is a major cause of the Israeli govt. global loss of sympathy. The recent murder of 7 WCK aid workers added to this.

Hamas were responsible for 1,200 Israeli deaths on 7 October 2023*. The Israeli govt. retaliated by killing 30-34,000 Palestinians.
Hamas took over Israeli 200 hostages on 7 October 2023. As of 1 November 2023, the Israeli authorities held nearly 7,000 Palestinians.**

The Israeli hostages garnered massive major outlet press coverage and generated far more outrage than has the Israeli govt. long term detention and abuse of Palestinians.

* I chose ‘responsible’ due to the Israeli use of the Hannibal Directive meaning Israeli shelling, etc, was almost certainly the cause of death of some of the Israeli hostages.
"...estimates indicate the killing of about a thousand terrorists and infiltrators in the area between the towns near the Gaza envelope and the Gaza Strip. The number of hostages killed due to the activation of this order has not been clarified yet.”
Israel ordered ‘Hannibal Procedure’ on Oct. 7: Report

** Israeli administrative detention of Palestinians from the West Bank & Gaza is a decades-long human rights issue.
During the first Intifada (1988-1992), Israeli internal security service Shin Bet used systematic torture against Palestinians and regularly lied about it, according to an Israeli govt. report. Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem estimates thousands of Palestinian detainees (85%) were subjected to torture.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/feb/11/israel

Both sides hold hostages, commit terrorism. Both sides lie.

One side is vastly better at playing PR games, has immense resources at its disposal, and so far, is mostly winning the online war, despite losing a few battles along the way.

IDF claim it found a list of terrorist names in Arabic under the Al-Rantisi Children's Hospital in Gaza, proper translation shows it's a calendar.
Truth or Fake - IDF found a calendar in Arabic, not a Hamas ‘names list’ at hospital

No beheaded babies, mass use of SA by Hamas.
Joe Biden Keeps Repeating His False Claim That He Saw Pictures of Beheaded Babies
American Media Keep Citing Zaka — Though Its October 7 Atrocity Stories Are Discredited in Israel

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

To me, it's very simple. The Israeli govt. excessive response over decades to their problems with Palestinians has turned far more deadly of late and must be curbed.

That the Palestinian death toll is massive is undisputed except by some right-wing asshat Faux News types.

I may not have a full comprehension of the entire history of the region, but this is surely a major and early cause of today’s conflict.

“The central facts of the Nakba during the 1948 Palestine war are not disputed. About 750,000 Palestinians—over 80% of the population in what would become the State of Israel—were expelled or fled from their homes and became refugees. Eleven Arab urban neighborhoods and over 500 villages were destroyed or depopulated.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba

After WWII around 12-15 million Germans were expelled from their homes like in Poland and Czechia, forced to flee as refugees. Have you ever heared about these people turning to terrorist measures to enact revenge on it? No, because it did not happen! So people always do have a choice to make. Also their refugee status is not devisisable like the one of the Palestines.

Nobody doubts the Nakba, that's true, but: you have not explained why there was this Nakba. And why did it happen? Because Israel's neighboring countries immediately started war after it declared its independence, that's why. And they lost. The initial plan of the UN was to have two sovereign states in that area, Israel and Palestine. After the Arabs then lost the war they didn't found their own country for a long time. But the movement of Jews back in to the area started at the end of the 19th century. Back then a mixture of Arabs and 5 digit number of Jews were still living in that area.

What you've also totally not mentioned is that as reaction to that war around 950.000 jews globally were expelled from their former muslimic majority countries, and around 600.000 settles then in Israel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world

But local armed clashes and conflicts between Arabs and Jews were constantly a thing since that time.

BTW this was the original partition plan, with Jerusalem being under international administration, a plan to which Israel in the beginning abided.

The disparity involved in this conflict is a major cause of the Israeli govt. global loss of sympathy. The recent murder of 7 WCK aid workers added to this.

There is always a disparity in this type of conflict, and the Israeli government frankly said just doesn't care about that loss of sympathy. What the Jews in that area have learned right from the beginning is that they are surrounded by enemies, and for their own survival can only rely on their own state and fighting power. So they are always doing what they think must be done to ensure their survival, because they have not the luxury to care about being loved by everybody. The 1948 war became their founding myth.

Both sides are guilty and both sides lie, true, like the beheaded babies. This doesn't make the other dead Jewish people though suddenly become alive again, nor revert how Hamas attacked these people and killed them.

The thing is that the Palestines had some chances to improve, and always blew it. Control over that strip was handed over to the Palestines in 2005, they could have done whatever type of development they wanted with it. They decided to make it a shithole for their people and turn it into rocket firing base at Israel, instead of a prospering piece of land.

And today the Palestines are Pariahs, even to their own muslimic neighbors, because they are so fanatic that nobody wants them, not even as refugees. There's a reason why Egypt refused for such a long time to take in Palestinian refugees, despite having a border in the south with Gaza strip.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Just for completeness the different layers of the conflict, which often overlap:

1. Territories: Both sides make demands on the same territory, namely the British mandate area of Palestine. This dispute includes the location of borders and terrirotial sovereignity. This conflict also includes access to ressources, meaning drinking water, farmable land areas, stone pits and gas in place in the sea.
2. Ethno-nationalistic dimension: we do have zionism on the one side with the Jews, who made their ambition 1948 a reality with the foundation of Israel, and palestinian nationalism on the other side. Despite the Palestines have several times declared their own state, and it is acknowledged by 140 countries world wide the Palestines are unable to govern their state territory. Additionally this has an interior component for Israel as well, since about 20% of its population are Palestinians.
3. Religious dimension: we've got Judaism and Islam. Both sides often announce that the area is their home since millenia, they also do strengthen their stance with godly promises to their people. For orthodox Jews "Judaa and Samaria" is the West Jordan bank, while Palestines do call historic Palestine as "Waqf", which is a gift given to them from god - and therefore cannot be given away. This often leads to clashes in Jerusalem at the Temple Mount, which members of all religions can enter, but only Muslims are allowed to pray there.
4. Regional dimension: the conflict between Israel and Palestine is embedded in the Israelic-Arabic Conflict, which means that most neighboring muslimic countries didn't acknowledge the state of Israel for a long time. First major country to do so was Egypt with its peace treaty in 1979, later Jordan in 1994. In 2020 the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan acknowledged it, with Saudi Arabia still in the process to do so. Saudi Arabia, which for a long time opposed Israel, entering normal diplomatic relationship with Israel would be another, major step back from Palestine point of view.
5. Different constructions of identity, which are incompatible: For Israel 14/05/1948 is a positive date, since it marks the erection of the state of Israel. For the Palestines it marks the begin of Nakba instead, which they do view as catastrophe. Another example is the Juni war in 1967: while Israel is proud of its preemptive strike in just 6 days, for palestines it is another step back because it marks the occupation of the rest of "historic palestines" by Israel and destroyed the hope of the palestines, that Arabic armies would liberate them once and for all.