Israel Halts Electricity Supply To Gaza

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The New York Times is reporting that Israel knew already one year ago about Hamas' attack plans quite in detail, but officials dismisseed it as aspirational, too difficult for Hamas to carry out and ignored the warnings.

Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago

A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.

www.nytimes.com

 

[detrius]

Looks indeed like Israel's 9/11.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

More bad and concerning news from Israel: the IDF is now using AI (!) to determine the targets to bomb. The home grown platform named "The Gospel" has increased the number of targetsdrastically, from 50 targets identified in a year to 100 targets a day.

Aviv Kochavi, who served as the head of the IDF until January, has said the target division is “powered by AI capabilities” and includes hundreds of officers and soldiers.
In an interview published before the war, he said it was “a machine that produces vast amounts of data more effectively than any human, and translates it into targets for attack”.
Aviv Kochavi in his role as head of the IDF in 2019. Photograph: Oded Balilty/AP
According to Kochavi, “once this machine was activated” in Israel’s 11-day war with Hamas in May 2021 it generated 100 targets a day. “To put that into perspective, in the past we would produce 50 targets in Gaza per year. Now, this machine produces 100 targets a single day, with 50% of them being attacked.”
The target division was created to address a chronic problem for the IDF: in earlier operations in Gaza, the air force repeatedly ran out of targets to strike. Since senior Hamas officials disappeared into tunnels at the start of any new offensive, sources said, systems such as the Gospel allowed the IDF to locate and attack a much larger pool of more junior operatives.

[....]

A separate source told the publication the Gospel had allowed the IDF to run a “mass assassination factory” in which the “emphasis is on quantity and not on quality”. A human eye, they said, “will go over the targets before each attack, but it need not spend a lot of time on them”.
For some experts who research AI and international humanitarian law, an acceleration of this kind raises a number of concerns.
Dr Marta Bo, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said that even when “humans are in the loop” there is a risk they develop “automation bias” and “over-rely on systems which come to have too much influence over complex human decisions”.
Moyes, of Article 36, said that when relying on tools such as the Gospel, a commander “is handed a list of targets a computer has generated” and they “don’t necessarily know how the list has been created or have the ability to adequately interrogate and question the targeting recommendations”.
“There is a danger,” he added, “that as humans come to rely on these systems they become cogs in a mechanised process and lose the ability to consider the risk of civilian harm in a meaningful way.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/01/the-gospel-how-israel-uses-ai-to-select-bombing-targets

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

The New York Times is reporting that Israel knew already one year ago about Hamas' attack plans quite in detail, but officials dismisseed it as aspirational, too difficult for Hamas to carry out and ignored the warnings.

Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago

A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.

www.nytimes.com

This smells like hindsight bias. The article says they didn't know an exact date for an attack and anti terrorism intelligence officers are drowning in false warnings. It's like if someone predicts the storm of the century every day, they are kind of useless. In hindsight they sound like fools, but I'm not convinced they actually "knew" this attack was coming. The NYT article says the document doesn't have an exact date for the alleged attack which probably makes it harder to stand out vs tons of false warnings. The article also notes that all militias write fanciful plans that never materialize.

I'm not saying Israeli intelligence didn't drop the ball, of course they did, but it's probably not right to say they "knew."

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Greta Thunberg has published an op ed piece about her stance with Gaza. It has been published in Swedish as well translated into English in "The Guardian."

It's named: "We won’t stop speaking out about Gaza’s suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights. Young climate activists haven’t ‘been radicalised’ – solidarity with marginalised people has always been at the heart of our message."

This is the whole thing:

More than 15,000 people, of whom at least 6,000 were children. That’s how many people Israel has reportedly killed in the Gaza Strip in a matter of weeks – and those numbers are still rising. Israel has bombed basic societal infrastructure and civilian targets such as hospitals, schools, shelters and refugee camps. Israel has imposed a siege, preventing food, medicine, water and fuel from reaching the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the occupied Gaza Strip, leading Oxfam to accuse Israel of employing “starvation as a weapon of war”.

Dozens of United Nations experts have described the situation as “a genocide in the making”, hundreds of international scholars have warned of an unfolding genocide and prominent Israeli genocide expert Raz Segal has called it “a textbook case of genocide”. But most of the world, particularly the so-called global north, is looking the other way.

Despite these horrors, some have chosen to focus the public debate on attempts to delegitimise statements about Gaza made by young people in the climate justice movement. Contrary to what many have claimed, Fridays for Future has not “been radicalised” or “become political”. We have always been political, because we have always been a movement for justice. Standing in solidarity with Palestinians and all affected civilians has never been in question for us.
Advocating for climate justice fundamentally comes from a place of caring about people and their human rights. That means speaking up when people suffer, are forced to flee their homes or are killed – regardless of the cause. It is the same reason why we have always held strikes in solidarity with marginalised groups – including those in Sápmi, Kurdistan, Ukraine and many other places – and their struggles for justice against imperialism and oppression. Our solidarity with Palestine is no different, and we refuse to let the public focus shift away from the horrifying human suffering that Palestinians are currently facing.
Due to the amount of misdirected attention on us, as well as the number of misinterpretations of our position, we would like to once again clarify our stance. All Fridays for Future groups are autonomous, and this article represents the views of nobody but FFF Sweden.

The horrific murders of Israeli civilians by Hamas cannot in any way legitimise Israel’s ongoing war crimes. Genocide is not self-defence, nor is it in any way a proportionate response. It also cannot be ignored that this comes within the broader context of Palestinians having lived under suffocating oppression for decades, in what Amnesty International has defined as an apartheid regime. While all of this alone would be reason enough to comment on the situation, as a Swedish movement, we also have a responsibility to speak up due to Swedish military cooperation with Israeli arms companies, which makes Sweden complicit in Israel’s occupation and mass killing.

We are now seeing a sharp increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic statements, actions and hate crimes in Sweden and the world. The leader of the largest member of Sweden’s rightwing governing bloc is speaking of demolishing mosques, and the Israeli flag was burned in front of a synagogue in Malmö. This is unacceptable. We unreservedly condemn all forms of discrimination, including antisemitism and Islamophobia. Everyone speaking out on this crisis has a responsibility to distinguish between Hamas, Muslims and Palestinians; and between the state of Israel, Jewish people and Israelis.

We grieve the lives lost over the past several weeks and are appalled by the fact that those numbers have been allowed to continue to rise. The death rate in the Gaza Strip is at a historic high, with thousands of children killed in just a few weeks. This amount of suffering is incomprehensible and cannot be allowed to continue. When UN experts call upon the world to act to prevent a genocide, as fellow humans, we have a responsibility to speak out.

Demanding an end to this inexcusable violence is a question of basic humanity, and we call on everyone who can to do so. Silence is complicity. You cannot be neutral in an unfolding genocide.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/05/gaza-climate-justice-human-rights-greta-thunberg

 

[Free]

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Guy Katz, an ex IDF officer, citizen of Israel and jew living in Munich, created a video response to Greta Thunberg's op ed piece in German.

Here's the English transcript:

Hello, Greta. Hello. Greetings. It's me, Guy from Munich. I'm also Israeli. You know, I read your article yesterday in The Guardian. I have a few remarks about it. You write about the suffering in Gaza and that you need to talk about it. That's great. Really great. It's really, really a shame that people in Gaza have to suffer. Really. But not because of Israel, but because of Hamas. You write about 15,000 people, including 6,000 children. By the way, where do these numbers come from? Is it the Ministry of Health? The so-called one? Because it's under Hamas or maybe they come from the United Nations, because they or their employees have also had hostages in their homes. So I don't know if you can really trust them.

Then you say Israel has bombed societal infrastructure, civilian targets like hospitals, schools, shelters. Yes, why? Maybe because there are and were weapons there. Maybe because there are or were hostages there. But you know what you forgot to write? That the people who lived there, the so-called innocents, had time to get out, to leave, so that these so-called civilian targets could be looked at. And those who stayed there. Well, it's a bit difficult to distinguish whether they are Hamas fighters or not, because you know, they don't wear uniforms. But already for the videos, when they free hostages and wave nicely, then they have the Palestinian flag on them. And then? Of course, it's about the siege that prevents the 2.3 million Palestinians from being trapped, receiving food, medicine, water, and fuel.

Do you know who has been feeding them for years and providing all this? Who also gave them work, where it later turned out that these people, who could earn three to four times more in Israel than in Ex-Gaza, were giving news to Hamas and had marked houses, people, even dogs, that could be killed. Well, Israel. And a very, very short geographical lesson for you, because there is another border to another country, called Egypt. Nothing comes from there. But I don't even see the word Egypt here. Of course, only Israel is to blame for Gaza and not the brothers and sisters in Egypt. And then you write three or four times that a genocide is happening in Israel. Genocide, genocide? Do you know what genocide is? I like to quote. A genocide or genocid is characterized by the special intent to completely or partially destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such.

Israel does not do that. Israel helps. Israel tells people to leave because there are terrorists. Israel says Hey, we actually don't want any innocents to die and do everything for it. Everything, everything. And I know, I was there myself. But you know who definitely wants to commit genocide? Hamas. They even write that on their charter. Article seven. You can read it yourself and they say it over and over again. October 7th will happen again and again until all Jews are annihilated. You can read it. Listen to it. They say it very, very officially. Israel certainly does not say that. And you know what's crazy? The Jews are the first. Sure, but then you and your friends, the other infidels, the Christians or atheists, and all those who just don't live according to the rules of Sharia, Islam. Hey, you know, maybe even in Sweden.

So I don't know. Actually, Israel is also fighting your fight. What else did you write nicely? Yes, climate justice. It's primarily about people and human rights. And you always speak up, no matter where in the world something unjust happens. That's great. Really. I think it's super. Uh, where were you but when Assad, so in Syria, annihilated half a million people? That was really genocide, very deliberate. Where were you? Were you there? I didn't hear it. And there are a few more examples from the Western world. And you know what I didn't find at all? In your whole article. And believe me, I really searched. I found nothing about all those in Israel who have died.

So, you talk once about the burning of the Israeli flag, but many, many women, for example of your age, were killed at the Nova Peace Festival. I can imagine many of them were or would have been climate activists. Probably not anymore. And you know what happened to these women? Well, I can't describe it here, but even the Americans now say that some women hostages are not being freed because they have so much to tell, because they would tell so much about what Hamas has done to them. In captivity and before captivity.

And you know what Greta? Believe me, you wouldn't have fun if you were there. Or if it was your family. So, proportionality, genocide? All these accusations? They should not be directed at Israel, but at Hamas. And by the way, 'Free Palestine' is of course very nice. Do you know against whom Hamas has also committed genocide? Well, of course, the Christians who are no longer in Gaza, for example. Or just Fatah. Because in Gaza, if you belong to the wrong party or religion, you are simply immediately annihilated. But of course, that's no problem for you, because Israel and the Jews, us, we are the problem.

https://www.focus.de/experts/thunberg-klagt-israel-an-israel-experte-katz-schockiert-greta-weisst-du-eigentlich-was-voelkermord-bedeutet_id_259467339.html

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Countries issuing threats at Israel, this time: Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Israel on Wednesday that Israel would “pay a very heavy price” if it attempted to eliminate Hamas members in Turkey.

Erdogan’s warning came several days after recordings were revealed of the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency saying Jerusalem is determined to kill leaders of the Palestinian terror group “in every location” around the world, including “in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar.”

Following the publication of the recordings, Ankara warned Israel on Monday that there would be serious consequences if Hamas members were assassinated on Turkish soil, a threat that Erdogan underscored on Wednesday.

“They do not know the Turks. They don’t know us… If they commit such a mistake, they should know that they will pay a very heavy price for it,” he said ahead of his departure from Qatar, where he had been conducting high-level talks.

“If they dare to take such a step against Turkey and the Turks, they will be condemned to pay the price, never to be able to stand up again,” he added. “Those who attempt such a thing should remember that the consequences can be extremely serious. There is no one in the world who does not know the progress Turkey has made in both the field of intelligence and security.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/erdogan-warns-israel-of-very-heavy-price-if-hamas-members-harmed-on-turkish-soil/

 

[Essence Lumin]

Israel Is Losing This War

Despite the violence it has unleashed on Palestinians, Israel is failing to achieve its political goals.

www.thenation.com

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Here's an op ed for peace from a jewish mother who lost her son during this war:

The idea that seven million Jews can rule millions of Palestinians with violent force, forever, without paying a steep price in the loss of democracy – or, for me, in
the loss of my beloved first-born child – is an illusion. An illusion that was shattered on October 7

I don’t forgive any Hamas terrorist who murdered children and women and innocent people. But the easiest thing is to slip into an escalation of hostilities, when each side sees only its own pain and ignites an uncontrollable a conflagration.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-01/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/i-lost-my-son-to-the-war-with-hamas-force-and-violence-arent-the-solution/0000018c-21f1-dc03-a9ec-3dfb54630000

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Israel Is Losing This War

Despite the violence it has unleashed on Palestinians, Israel is failing to achieve its political goals.

www.thenation.com

yes, this summarizes a lot of what I've been afraid of. Israel is losing this war politically and Hamas has successfully rallied a lot of international sympathy despite starting the war. I can't think of anything Israel can do that won't be wrong.... Political pressure to do a ceasefire is getting immense but they know Hamas will just break it again after regrouping. I'm wondering if it will be cheaper in the long run for Israel and the USA to fund rebuilding Gaza as part of another two state solution deal... I am pessimistic but would love to be proven wrong.

 

[Kokoro Fasching]

The best would be the current non jewish residents of NYC be given matching property in New Jersey, then all of Israel move to NYC, rename it New Israel. No more problems.

 

[detrius]

Not funny.

 

[Kokoro Fasching]

Never said it was funny, said it was a possible solution. As always, many people are dying because of what a storybook tells them.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Never said it was funny, said it was a possible solution. As always, many people are dying because of what a storybook tells them.

you've got to know that's not a very practical solution... we can't just give them other people's high value property in NYC of all places.... The world isn't drowning in useful land that isn't already occupied...

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Before Israel was founded, there was a certain chance that the new Jewish state would be in Australia. But anyway where Israel is now is the historic homeland of the Jews with enough archelogical evidence to proof it, so no wonder they wanted to go there and nowhere else.

How this part of Australia almost became Israel

The new SBS documentary series Who The Bloody Hell Are We? explores lesser-known stories of Australia's past. A mission to set up a Jewish homeland in the Kimberley is one of them.

www.sbs.com.au

 

[Free]

Half of Palestinians in Gaza are now Starving; Depriving Civilians of Food is a War Crime

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) - The United Nations warned on Saturday that half the population of Gaza is now starving. The World Food Programme (WFP) had reported at the end of November that in the north of Gaza, about half of the people were suffering 'severe levels of hunger.' Meanwhile...

www.juancole.com

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Turkish lawmaker Hasan Bitmez held a speech today in the parliament that Israel will suffer the the wrath of Allah if it continues like it does right now. Right after he said that he collapsed in the parliament and died of a heart attack at age 54.

A very strange and unfortunate coincidence.

Turkish lawmaker who had heart attack after saying Israel ‘will suffer the wrath of Allah’ dies

Hasan Bitmez died Thursday after spending two days on life support following his collapse.

nypost.com

 

[Soen Eber]

Turkish lawmaker Hasan Bitmez held a speech today in the parliament that Israel will suffer the the wrath of Allah if it continues like it does right now. Right after he said that he collapsed in the parliament and died of a heart attack at age 54.

A very strange and unfortunate coincidence.

Turkish lawmaker who had heart attack after saying Israel ‘will suffer the wrath of Allah’ dies

Hasan Bitmez died Thursday after spending two days on life support following his collapse.

nypost.com

It seems rather common with Turkish politicians (you will need to accept the auto-translate and read through to the end. The article is short).

From his biography, he seems quite the reasonable person; not even a criticisms citation in his Wikipedia bio. Still though, politicians who can work themselves up into a roiling, fulminating vituperation scare the hell out of me.

(Sorry for the archaeic English, but sometimes you just have to go for the sheer poetry and resonance when it presents itself to you)

 

[Ellie]

It seems rather common with Turkish politicians (you will need to accept the auto-translate and read through to the end. The article is short).

From his biography, he seems quite the reasonable person; not even a criticisms citation in his Wikipedia bio. Still though, politicians who can work themselves up into a roiling, fulminating vituperation scare the hell out of me.

(Sorry for the archaeic English, but sometimes you just have to go for the sheer poetry and resonance when it presents itself to you)

I've spent about 2 month total in Turkey.

The amount & quality of food we ate suggests to me the country's diet would have had a similar effect on me, had I stayed.

And I almost did, after falling in love with istanbul on many afternoons spent stalking its street cats & other animals with my camera, followed by nights drinking lethal coffees and downing an unseemly amount of halwa with a background of delightful traditional music.

I even enjoyed visiting a few sufi saint's tombs, those places were very peaceful.

All in all, it was probably the European-ish vibe that made me feel at home there, despite my feeble attempts at conveying my thanks. Teşekkürler, Istanbul!