GrimTuesday

The IDF has erected a 13 meter high menorah in the Gaza strip. I don't see how this can be seen as anything but a provocation.

5 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

Why do you think the Israeli authorities are dishonest?

Maybe because they are constantly being caught lying and they have a vested interest in inflating the atrocities of Hamas and the other groups that perpetrated October 7th due to the fact that public sentiment is turning against them due to how brutal and disproportionate their response has been.

There is no doubt that sexual assault happened, it is far more unbelievable (and silly) to say that there was zero sexual assaults, but the implication that it was organized or widespread is what is suspect.

9 minutes ago, Hmmm said:

Ah yes, BBC, the notorious pro-Israeli propaganda rag.  

The BBC absolutely falls into the trap that many other supposedly non-biased news sources where in order to maintain that reputation of being non-biased, they are prone to giving credence to dishonest actors.

6 hours ago, Zorral said:

That is not accurate in the least as to what happened in that manufactured state of Liberia.

Could you explain how this is inaccurate, because as far as I know this is more or less how this went down. I have seen many people compare Liberia to Israel and in my reading about it, there certainly are parallels.

Unless you are talking about the fact that whites saw it as an alternative to actually having to co-exist with emancipated blacks (I'm blanking on the actual term of this at the moment). In which case, there is still a parallel to Israel, in so far as many non-Jews who supported the Zionist movement in Europe were virulently antisemitic who saw it as a way to get the Jews out of Europe.

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

And again, Israel should likely be held to a much higher standard than Russia or Yemen. But again, if you want to advocate that Israel should be treated the same way as Russia and Yemen has been as far as sanctions, blockade, international condemnation - I'm sure you and @GrimTuesday will get along just fine.

Not sure if this is supposed to be a slight against me, but... eww.

There is a distinct difference between the sanctions against Russia and theoretical sanctions against Israel. Specifically, Russia is a state that has actively built its economy to be resilient to America/Western sanctions. They have trade deals with countries that won't fall in line with American sanctions and that allows them to weather sanctions (though they do still get hurt) to some extent.

Israel on the other hand, is much more dependent on trade with America and its allies, and as such sanctions would place a significant amount of pressure on Israel. Sanctions are far more effective against our allies than they are against most of our enemies.

The discussion yesterday in regards to a state created by African Americans who could no long live with whites already happened, and guess what, it was a colonial state where the Americo-Liberian colonists recreated the American system but with them taking the place of the white ruling class because they believed themselves to be culturally superior to what they saw as the backwards savages that were the native populations. Ironically, there are significant parallels between Liberia and Israel.

Interesting article in Jewish News Syndicate (a right wing news service backed by the Adelson Foundation) regarding the war and America's role in it.

https://www.jns.org/biden-is-the-primary-obstacle-to-israeli-victory/

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Israel’s dependence on the United States was stated bluntly by retired IDF Maj. General Yitzhak Brick in an interview earlier this week.

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

Brick went on to explain that President Joe Biden’s demand that Israel permit “humanitarian aid” to enter Gaza means that he is demanding that Israel keep Hamas fully supplied with food, water and fuel.

Obviously this is the ramblings of why I suspect is a right wing hawk, but it certainly does put into question America's culpability in this. If America has the ability to, through cutting off supplies, intercede in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and they don't do it, that is a moral failing of the highest order.

There is also the rather amusing anger at Biden as if he hasn't been mostly backing everything Israel has done (at least in public). Even the most tepid criticism or any effort to get Israel to allow even the slightest amount of humanity to Palestinians is seen as the worst betrayal.

Very interesting investigative piece from +972

https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/

A rather disturbing passage from the article

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In one case discussed by the sources, the Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas military commander. “The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage,” said one source.

“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”

Just now, polishgenius said:

 

Alright Frankie. 

I went back and rewatched the clip to make sure I got the wording right

Speaking of disposal of Kissinger's husk, we could probably just give a shovel to every Cambodian and they'll dig us a hole so deep we can hand him over to Satan personally. 

The only tragedy about Kissinger's death is that he got to live a long full life to the age of 100 and died surrounded by his loved ones, rather than alone in a cold cell in the Hague for his crimes against humanity. Always remember the words of Anthony Bourdain when you think of Kissinger.

Netanyahu just posted this

This is the translation for those who don't want to go onto twitter to translate it

Quote

Tonight, the cornerstone is laid in the Gaza Strip for the settlement "Ofir" named after the former head of the Negev Gate Council, the late Ofir Liebstein, who was murdered by Hamas. Ofir was a leader, a man of the Land of Israel, a man of construction, a man of settlement. Children will grow up here And girls who will be educated about his contribution, his heroism and his sacrifice. We will restore the settlements, expand the settlements and add more settlements. The wheat will grow again.

Edit: I'm seeing some people saying the translation is not entirely correct and this settlement is actually in what is called the Gaza Envelope which is in southern Israel surrounding Gaza. I'm leaving this here in case other folks see it on twitter.

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Eh, this is like someone in FL arguing they voted for a member of the KKK because they liked how they wanted to deal with corruption and the python problem in the Everglades. You still voted for someone who was open about being in the KKK. 

Because it's vague. 80% wanted a peace agreement while a plurality voted in a party that again was not for one. No one should be surprised that people support one thing and vote for a party totally opposed to it, even when it might be the thing they want most. 

To be perfectly blunt, the material conditions of someone living in Florida and someone living in the occupied territories are so different that it really can't be compared.

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Were they not females and teenagers? Wonder why they were being held in the first place? Bet it wasn’t because they were kidnapped. 

It's an apartheid regime, they don't actually need reasons to arrest people. Palestinians can be arrested for any reason the IDF/the Israeli police feel like, including walking on certain streets that have been declared sterile, meaning that only Jews can walk on them. Beyond that, in a lot of the cases, they haven't even been charged with anything, Israel can hold them in indefinite detention for the smallest of infractions, which does in effect amount to being kidnapped. .

And the reason that it is notable is the fact that  Israeli hostages are "females and children" while Palestinians are "females and teenagers". In case you're unaware, teenagers are children, and framing it that way makes it seem like they are dangerous youths or terrorist in training or some shit like that. It's the same thing as how Israelis are killed vs Palestinians just die, it's using different language depending on which side of the conflict they are on to elicit specific perceptions of events.

5 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

I find them largely worthless, regardless of context. It's part of the PR battle, and honestly? People shouldn't support the emancipation of palestinians because Hamas treated the hostages fairly. There are far better reasons to do that, and we should care about how they treated the hostages because of the hostages, not Hamas.

It's actually sad that it matters so much, when it ideally shouldn't at all.

I don't think there is anything to be gained by the Palestinian liberation side, because the fact that they were hostages in the first place so there is no real propaganda value in that. However, this does represent a very powerful propaganda tool for the Israeli side, because any further discomfort or violence inflicted upon the hostage is further confirmation of the inhumanity of Hamas and they can use that against Palestinians as a whole since it would be seen as further justification of Israel's offensive goal.

It will be very interesting to see how the statements of these hostages allign with the statements made by Yocheved Lifshitz, because that was a bit of a pie in the face moment for Israel. Obviously hostages are going to have different experiences so there will obviously be some difference in what they say about the condition they were kept in, but I can't imagine that Israel is going allow them to say whatever they want and there will be some level of coaching or at least making it clear what is acceptable to day (though from what I have seen there will be no outright censorship).

Police have been instructed to crack down on celebrations of prisoner releases. Palestinians can't even celebrate the freeing of political prisoners without facing Israeli repression

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ahead-of-slated-palestinian-prisoner-release-ben-gvir-tells-police-to-shut-down-celebrations/

15 minutes 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.

 

If you listen to Palestinians, they say they just want to be free to live without the boot of the Israeli occupation on their necks, there is no talk of genocide except in the case of right wing extremist groups whose legitimacy is derived from their opposition to said oppression. The main driver of antisemitism in Israel is Israel itself, not because Palestinians spring forth from the womb calling for death to the Jews, but because Israel brutalizes and denies even a shred of humanity to them and everyone they will even know and care about every day of their lives, and to demand that they just give in and accept that they must accept the domination of Israel is vile and would not be accepted in any other circumstance.

Imagine if I were to say that Taiwan needs to just accept Chinese domination, you would be rightfully outraged by that, but because Israel is the US's toe hold in the middle east and because you've been conditioned to see them as the single legitimately aggrieved party, you dismiss it as somehow different.

22 minutes ago, Ran said:

Then there are Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza also living on land stolen from the Jews they ethnically cleansed in 1948. 

"The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False" is a good read.

Citing the 20000 Jews who were forced out of their homes by Arab militias is a pathetic attempt to draw some kind of moral equivalence.

That article is interesting in so far as it is an example of how to dress up right wing Israeli propaganda with a little teeny tiny bit of acknowledgement of the Palestinian plight so as to make yourself seem more reasonable while still white washing Israel's crimes and justifying those that can't be white washed.

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

And a key problem is there's enough people on both sides willing to fuck progress up so the clock on progress is probably going to be constantly restarting.

Both Israel and Hamas have fucked it up for the foreseeable future, but it's getting tiresome that the latter is held to a way lower standard despite them being the ones who started all of this and openly call for genocide much more directly and consistently and have for decades. 

I for one disagree that the Palestinians or Hamas "started all of this" This conflict started with the settler colonial project (as acknolwedged by people like Herzl) that was the creation of the state of Israel. The reality is that while most Israelis are innocent, they are living on stolen land, the creation of the state of Israel was predicated on an act of mass ethnic cleansing and then 75 years of apartheid, which requires violence to maintain. There has not been a single day since 1948 that Palestinians have known peace from their colonizers.

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Their initial public demands after Israel responded were a ceasefire in exchange for beginning to discuss hostages and at the time they wanted thousands of people for a handful of the hostages Hamas took.

That is incorrect. From what I read, Israel demanded a complete list of all hostages (which is reasonable), to which Hamas responded they couldn't do it while under bombardment (which is also reasonable given the fragmented nature of terrorist groups). That was the initial sticking point.

Quote

But Hamas are freedom fighters, right, and their word is solid? 

Of course Hamas is not a reliable source, they have a vested interest in pushing a specific narrative, but Israel does as well, and they are granted almost complete legitimacy and their statements are accepted with a childlike credulity.

7 hours ago, Ran said:

Can't prove a negative. 

 

Who exactly is not supposed to "allow" it? Are we sending mind-controlling rays out to make sure people think rightly?

From what I've read, the security and military heads endorsed the deal and convinced the far right holdouts to come on board, so I'm thinking they're comfortable with its impact on the ongoing goal of destroying Hamas's capabilities and control of Gaza, while also advancing the goal of recovering hostages.

There is no evidence that Hamas' demands were in any way softened by the deaths of almost 15k Palestinians, and you know that if there was Israel would be shouting it from the roof. Israel's silence is equally as illuminating as its statements.

Stop being intentionally thick, both of us know that what I mean is that Israel's narrative cannot be accepted as true at face value, which has be the historic trend, and must be challenged.

Ok, so the right wingers were convinced that the second Nakba they have been salivating is well under way and this ceasefire will do nothing to stop it, you're not making it better.

It is good to hear about the hostage agreement, I hope that this can go some way towards easing tensions and lead to a more lasting peace. That said, I think it should be noted that there is zero evidence that the bombing of Gaza did anything to assist in the negotiations for hostages and in all likelihood killed a number of hostages who would not have otherwise died. This hostage agreement cannot be allowed to be seen as a victory for the Israeli government because they could have done this a month ago and it appears only after intense and very public pressure they buckled. Netanyahu and his hard line freak allies would have been fine with sending the hostages back to their families in match boxes after they were torn apart by Israeli bombs so long as it meant they could keep bombing Gaza and would have done just that if it weren't for public sentiment shifting against them.

According to the Guardian, sources close to the negotiations said that almost this exact same deal was on the table since the early days of this particular conflict. Apparently it was also Netanyahu who was one of the main impediments to a resolution, making harsher and harsher demands with each proposal, which is less likely to get a hostage free and more likely to get a liveleaks style video of a hostage being executed to try and get him to stop fucking around.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/09/netanyahu-rejected-ceasefire-for-hostages-deal-in-gaza-sources-say

Israel has access to the records for every Palestinian in Gaza, if these list are just made up from whole cloth, Israel should be able to expose them as made up. The fact that people are denying this is absurd. If anything, the numbers are likely an under count given the fact that half of the residential buildings in Gaza have been flattened or structurally compromised.

Gosh, I'm sure this is just some random, loud mouth back bencher who has no real governmental power and totally doesn't represent the views of the government. We are watching the worst human rights abuse of the 21st century, and the world is standing idly by at best, or in the case of the global hegemon America, actively supporting it.

Totally cool and normal shit. Given the fact that Palestinians are being squeezed into an ever shrinking space, I think we're going to see casualties start to rise precipitously as they have fewer places to go for safety.

43 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

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.

Not only was it called out as probably faked at the time, but people have found the woman from the video. She's an Israeli TV actress turned tiktoker. It's pretty insane that Israel has the nerve to spread Pallywood conspiracies while signal boosting this shit.

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think that all three of those leadership organizations are pretty high up on the fundamentalist scale. Hamas is probably the worst of them but it ain't like they're that far from the PA. Their polling indicates this as well. There's very little sign that Palestinians particularly want a secular form of government. 

More to the point, that choice should be theirs to make and not imposed on them unless it becomes a matter of security for others. Another way to say the same thing: the Palestinians will need to make the choice of how they want to govern, not outside forces, or it will not work very long.

That's actually incorrect, the PA/Fatah (which is more or less the same thing give Fatah's dominance in the West Bank) is and always has been a secular organization. In fact, their vision for a free Palestine was always a left wing, secular state. While some within that organization may be antisemitic, for the most part their objection to Israel is the treatment of the Palestinians at the hands of Israel.

I'd be interested in seeing the polling you're seeing that indicate that the Palestinians are interested in a fundamentalist, Islamic government, because in my research, what I am finding does not show a significant amount of support for a right wing government. What you do find is support for those who are actively fighting for them which has a significant amount of cross over between groups that would normally be opposed to each other, such as Hamas and the PFLP (which is a secular Marxist organization).

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Israel has secular leaders; it hasn't helped all that much. It's also important to realize that Palestinians do not appear to actually want secular leadership; are you suggesting outlawing that for them? 

There have been plenty of secular Palestinian leaders, unfortunately they have mostly been either murdered by Mossad/the IDF or delegitimized through becoming more or less part of the Israeli security state as with the PA.

Remember that even when Hamas won the Gaza election, they won with a slim plurality in a time when Fatah was (rightfully) reviled for its corruption which Hamas specifically ran against and even then they got 41% vs Hamas's 44% (left wing and centrist groups made up about a further 12%). Israel wants us to believe that Palestinians are overwhelming in favor a right wing fundamentalist formation, and they have done everything they could to ensure that Hamas is empowered and seen as the only avatar of liberation because Muslim fundamentalists are not in any way sympathetic, especially in the west, and therefore Israel can continue their program of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.