TrueMetis

6 hours ago, Ran said:

I bow to your greater expertise in pathetic argumentation. 

Israel isn't going anywhere, is the thing, so no amount of hand-wringing over 1948 will fix anything. Every repetition of "settler-colonialism" is a naked expectation that the useful idiots who witlessly repeat "From the river to the sea" will one day abet the ethnic cleansing of Greater Palestine.

It will never happen. The sooner the Palestinians accept this fact, the better for them.

 

So when people talk about decolonization  and settler-colonialism in the US and Canada, do you also think that's an attempt to abet ethnic cleansing? Because quite frankly you don't sound all that different here from all sorts of right wingers in the US and Canada talking about how we should stop whining about what Europeans conquered the Americas fair and square and we should stop whining about being forced into marginalized areas with limited resources.

"The evidence it was there, is that there's nothing there!".

Not only is the burden of proof on the IDF, they put out stuff that very specifically increased the burden of proof significantly. If they don't want people doubting them, maybe they shouldn't have claimed there was a god damn supervillian lair.

And I can't believe they're still using the calendar dipshit as their spokesperson.

Even if there was a military only solution* to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which notably is a separate issue from beating Hamas, if there was, the way Israel is going about it definitely isn't it. Like as I've said before, and apparently need to emphasize, this strategy is unlikely to even beat Hamas, which is barely even step one. Yet based on some of the responses, not only do some people think this is an effective way of destroying a decentralized insurgency, it's literally the only thing a military can do. Which... ouch. Like I may not have much respect for the IDF but even I don't think they're that useless.

*Technically there is one, but I'm pretty sure everyone here agrees it's not an acceptable option.

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/11/20/an-open-letter-on-the-misuse-of-holocaust-memory/

Quote

There is no military solution in Israel-Palestine, and deploying a Holocaust narrative in which an “evil” must be vanquished by force will only perpetuate an oppressive state of affairs that has already lasted far too long.

I've mentioned before I don't think this use of military force can possibly defeat Hamas, but the thing is, it doesn't matter. Since even if by some miracle Hamas is defeated, the conditions that allowed for Hamas to have come to exist will still be there, and another group will simply take their place.

2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

It's so crazy, listening to the Israeli guy, a former Israeli Prime Minister, being interviewed right now on All Things Considered, say that the Hamas headquarters are in the south, and the utter word salad with which he responds to the utterly reasonable question then, of, "Why are you bombing northern Gaza then?"

Man those headquarters sure do move around a lot, but are rather conveniently in a place the IDF wants to attack until they're suddenly somewhere else.

You know I hate modern media, I've been trying to find specifics on what exactly was claimed RE: whether doctors had denied Hamas brought in patients but not only am I having trouble finding older reports among the swathes of new ones about the CCTV footage, but none of the new ones I've seen have bothered to really give context to the situation like if doctors had previously denied any hostages had been in the hospital. Like the closest I've found is this: https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/middleeast/israel-al-shifa-gaza-what-we-know-intl/index.html which says Hamas, the Gaza Health Ministry, and hospital officials have denied the hospital is being used by Hamas and only patients are being treated, which could include the hostages it doesn't really say.

There's also this one: https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-11-19-23/h_57a8417c26b58dc33df8879feaeb0f6e which says Hamas said Saturday that it brought hostages to be treated, which of course could just be preempting the release of the footage to disrupt the narrative.

12 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Yeah it would be a pretty reasonable action by normal people, maybe not something someone who’d spent the last 24 hours butchering innocent civilians would be doing though. I’m sure after killing so many people they suddenly thought

’oh hey, I hope this Thai hostage pulls through, quick let’s get him to a hospital, no not the local hospital or the many hospitals on the way, his safety isn’t THAT important! No no, let’s drive all the way to the Al-Shifa hospital, that way he can get some really nice treatment, we definitely won’t be dragging him down into the tunnel complex so the IDF can’t get him.
 

Oooh and let’s stop off to buy some grapes and flowers on the way shall we?’

What does this have to do with the fact that the hospital did everything right? That the tweet calling it "terrorist infrastructure" was clearly about trying to revoke the protections hospitals are given. I'm sorry you need to be reminded Hamas bad every five minutes, but this constantly disingenuous framing is getting tiresome.

Which may be why they suddenly switched to "hostages were brought there for medical treatment, that makes it terrorist infrastructure!" even though, again, bringing people to be treated at a hospital is perfectly acceptable. It could have been literal Hamas members instead and it would have been okay for the hospital to treat them.

Though I admit I'm a little confused why they seem to care about about giving themselves cover since their bombing of a UN school and protected places show they're not gonna stop with or without actually proving their allegations. Guess they're just that desperate to be seen as the unequivocal good guys without holding themselves to the moral standard that would actually require. Unless their deliberately pandering to a new breed of cultish psychotics I've seen on twitter who are claiming that the UN, Red Cross, MSF, etc, are working with Hamas.

The times of Israel article I linked did call them "two wounded hostages" so it's definitely at best not clear the status of the second hostage at that time.

Also as long as we're speculating about stuff, if there's such an extensive network of tunnels, with apparently entrances in other places according to the IDF's videos, why are they taking the hostages through the main entrance instead of into one of those tunnels and then bringing a doctor into them to treat the hostages given that the IDF made the initial underground infrastructure as operating rooms and such?

Article linked further down the thread even says the hostages where removed from the hospital afterwards.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/surveillance-footage-shows-hamas-bringing-hostages-into-shifa-hospital-on-oct-7/

Quote

In an evening press conference, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says the two wounded hostages were later taken by Hamas to hideouts, and that the Red Cross was unable to visit them. He says their locations are currently unknown.

21 minutes ago, Ran said:

Dude on his feet seemed uninjured, was not handed over to medical staff, and was lovingly held on to by multiple armed men who covered his face.

They also came in stolen IDF and Israeli vehicles to a hospital that was not, in fact, the closest hospital to any of the sites where they infiltrated into Israel, which is rather interesting in itself. 

So? I legitimately don't know why this matters. They kept guard on one guy and didn't go to the optimal hospital for some reason, that definitely proves... not a damn thing.

Like I hate to tell you guys this, but they're not really acting all that different from most armed forces in this instance.

ETA: And I would love to see a bit more of Camera 5 than the 25 seconds we got, because in 40 seconds between the end of that video and the screenshot that says 10:56:46 he's gone and doesn't show up again until 11:00:36. In fact with what looks like the shirt he was being covered with on the ground near the door the definitely injured guy was sent into it looks like he may have been as well.

Basically give me the full video, this screenshot shit is inherently deceptive.

Weird, I remember another video with the IDF inside the hospital showing off disabled cameras as proof of Hamas being there, guess they missed some.

In any event, you are actually allowed to go to or bring people to a hospital to get medical treatment, this isn't evidence that Hamas controls the hospital nor does it show a crime. In fact Hamas line the entire time has been they did exactly this.

Apparently a Israeli police report suggests the Hamas did not know about the music festival when it attacked. Which I gotta say is just a nuts thought. The festival was also only extended to Saturday a few days before the festival started too.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/18/hamas-had-not-planned-to-attack-israel-music-festival-israeli-report-says

TBH if you think the left doesn't care about how the French treat Muslims and how foreigners (or indigenous groups like the Ainu for that matter) are treated in Japan then you're hanging out with a weird group of leftists.

Looks like they delete the tweet @Mudguard posted. These guys really can't handle getting made fun of on Twitter.

Between the 300L of fuel for a hospital (supposedly left too far away for hospital staff to readily get to anyway), the boxes with "Medical Supplies" in giant English letters, and delivery incubators even though the problem wasn't a lack of actual incubators there's plenty to make fun of.

In other news, Israel apparently has a special unit to retrieve sperm from its dead soldiers.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/health-ministry-cuts-red-tape-for-sperm-retrieval-from-sons-killed-in-war/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/sperm-from-39-men-killed-in-war-has-been-extracted-for-future-fertilization-knesset-committee-says/

This is fucking weird right? Like if you're going to do this for whatever reason, definitely don't talk about it and let people point out how this makes you like the Imperium from Warhammer 40K.

Isn't it being a single building the problem? They claimed, complete with shitty CGI render, a massive network of tunnels and rooms, even beyond what we know the IDF created in the 80's. Show us that or don't bother.

28 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Okay, that's pretty funny. Do you have a link to that? I'd love to see it.

See ~6:30. Though I admit I'd like broader confirmation on what it says than people on twitter, but if you look at the closeup at 6:35 you'll see that the words repeat every 7 days, at least I think, I am trying to decipher handwriting in a foreign language. Honestly the only thing really noteworthy is the top which looks like it says October 7th and "Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood" or "Flood Dance Movement" or "Movement of the Al-Aqsa Flood" IDK google translate isn't very useful here.

16 hours ago, mormont said:

Experience suggests not. Or do you believe that such Palestinians have simply never existed?

I find this sort of sentiment, regularly expressed in these discussions, puzzling. Do people think that somehow, no Palestinian has ever pursued a non-violent, equal rights campaign?

They have. But Israel is not interested in engaging with them, and nor is Hamas or the PA (nor their supporters, from the US to Arab countries). In fact both sides tend to ignore them at best, actively harass them at worst. 

It makes no sense to believe that no Palestinian has ever tried the MLK road. The question you should be asking yourself is not why that hasn't happened, but why you've never heard of it happening. 

TBF they do engage with them, via bullet.

8 hours ago, Altherion said:

Ah, but do you really think that other modern Western States which have committed war crimes in the past are held to the same moral standard? I can think of at least one that definitely is not...

People get angry, yell, but ultimately nothing actually happens? Because that's how it typically works to my knowledge.

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I need to share this:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/13/cnn-inside-gaza-hospital-israel-defense-forces-hamas-robertson-pkg-src-vpx.cnn

This is an embedded CNN journalist going through one of the hospitals and showing some things.  Some thoughts here:

- the devastation is pretty insane

- the 'armory' for the hospital is kind of pathetic - 4 rusting AKs is not what I'd call amazing, and in the US that'd be just some guy's house

- there is a kitty at 6 minutes in and I love that in the middle of this a random cat is just chilling in the suspected Hamas terrorist armory

AND THE KITTY COMES BACK AT 8 minutes! 

Well, at least they were smart enough to edit out him pointing to a calendar on the wall and claiming it was a terrorist guard roster, because Arabic speakers who saw it pointed out it just said the days of the week.

Idk, I think the standard of evidence for taking away the protections on hospitals should be higher than "we found a random assortment of crap in a hospital hundreds of people have been sheltering in." Not that there seems to be much protections on these hospital.

Has Israels propaganda game always been this garbage? A few days ago their Israel Arabic account tweeted out a video of a "nurse" in very clean clothes claiming Hamas had seized Al Shifa hospital she was in and was stealing supplies. Immediately Arabic speakers claimed her accent wasn't right and someone claiming to have gotten into contact with hospital staff said none of them knew who she was. The tweet has since been deleted. Unfortunately no mainstream sources seem to have picked up on this so who knows if we'll get a proper investigation in to what the hell that was.

Alright, I'm back and I've calmed down a bit. So I'm just gonna say my final piece on ethnostates.

An ethnostate is inherently an apartheid state, it cannot be anything else. As it cannot ever allow another group to become an majority or the group at the centre of the enthostate to become just another plurality. To defend the idea that Israel isn't an apartheid state people often point out the 2 million Arabic Israelis who have, on paper, full citizenship. But what are the implications of that? Especially the fact that said Arabic Israelis have a higher birthrate than the Jewish majority. Well, Israel must be prepared to act to ensure Jews remain the ethnic majority. Whether that be through reducing the Arabic population, through death or forced removal, reducing the Arabic birth rate, or restricting their rights. That must always, forever, be hanging over the heads of Arabic Israeli. Sounds like a recipe for peace to me. /s

The objection to ending the ethnostate is of course the difficulty, both sides have groups that would do their damnedest to drive the other out, and yes it would be likely decades or work before this could come to fruition. I don't see why this is a particularly noteworthy objection, as the same remains true of a two ethnostate solution. It too would take decades to even get to the point of two states, it too would have groups from both sides attempting to continue to drive the other out, I linked an article interviewing a settler earlier that made the game plan clear.

And if somehow you manage to actually get to a point where there are two viable states, not one state and another de-facto tributary, then what do you have? India and Pakistan? Two countries that still hate each other and are in constant conflict? How is that in any real sense better than the current situation?

So it's about as difficult, but doesn't solve the actual problem, which is getting to the point where those who want to continue the conflict don't have the power to do so, if not totally changing people's viewpoint, a generational spanning task. I can't possibly see how that isn't the better goal, unless you think these groups are just inherently violent to each other. That the bigotry is inborn. Which if so, setting aside the racism of that for a moment, then peace is impossible and why do we care to try? Let one wipe the other out, I don't see how the slow meandering constant death of trauma is worse than that.

And with that I think I'm done talking about this subject.

You know what, I'm done. I was going to try and respond to this bad faith nonsense but there's no point, some of your minds are so poisoned that your only response to "ethnic cleansing is bad" is "ah but what if the other side did it?"

I'll decide tomorrow if I'm keeping my account here, but I won't be responding to these threads anymore.

No Scot, after my rant against ethnostates I definitely think it would be fine as long as it was a different group, that's absolutely what I was getting at.

GFYS.

31 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Yep, and in previous ones before this conflict.

And here's a good example. Countries are generally ethnostates, yet Israel gets shit on more than others for being one. Nobody complains about Japan being an ethnostate with much higher barriers. The two largest countries in the world are ethnostates and nobody cares. Much of Europe is as well. But this tiny little country constantly gets slammed for being an ethnostate. Why? 

Furthermore, by saying Israel is uniquely an ethnostate the suggestion is that it needs to end and in its place will be...a Palestinian ethnostate, one which will very likely try to remove as many Jews as possible. But who cares right? 

1) No, and 2) they shouldn't be when they are. Unless we are using very different definition of ethnostate.

Like if you don't think that China doesn't get shit for its policy of Han domination, than I don't know what to tell you. China is not and cannot be an ethnostate unless they commit massive amounts of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Which they are in fact trying to do. IDK I think that's bad. Other apparently disagree.

The very idea that if Israel is not an ethnostate than this requires a Palestinian ethnostate is clearly nonsense, but it is very telling about you're position. Because if a Palestinian ethnostate requires ethnic cleansing, and you're right it would that's why they're bad, then so to does a Jewish one, one which will very likely try to remove as many Jews as possible. But who cares right?

30 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So, do you understand why Israel was created in the wake of WWII and what happened to Jews seeking to flee the Nazi’s prior to the start of the war?

We got shown that an obsession with ethnic homogeneity is bad actually? Was what happened to the fleeing Jews not bad precisely because it's an example of what Israel is doing now?

If ethnostates are the norm, if ethnostates are acceptable, the ethnic cleansing is fine, genocide is just the way of the world. And if you people really believe that, then get the fuck out of here and go back to Europe.

I mean I've said the creation of Israel was a mistake, though not here IIRC. I feel the same way about the US and Canada, but now that they exist destroying them would do more harm than good. I've also stated that I think ethnostates are bad actually. Didn't realize that was so controversial.

The IDF deliberately maims unarmed protesters. Why wouldn't I believe the worst of them?

Interview with one of the settler leaders in the West Bank, these people are fucking nuts just in case you aren't aware.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extreme-ambitions-of-west-bank-settlers