Israel - Hamas War X

[Daeron the Daring]

21 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Do you realize many of the people calling for a right to return also don't believe Jews ever had the right to return? Do you also realize part of the call for a right to return is to end the Jewish state of Israel?

No, I have been completely unaware of that until now. Thanks for telling.

[Kalbear]

25 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

By basic I specifically meant it is an established right of our species, established by the consensus of what one would call the free part of the world (but also the UN). Yes, it is widely restricted today, and that's not something that decides wether it is righteous or not.

And that would mean it's not an established right. Even the UN gives this a right within the borders of their own country. 

25 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Other than that, the right to return is once again, one such established basic right of every human being. That it is not excercised worldwide is a different topic.

But sure, if we want to be cherrypicking, some countries oppose the establishment of the right to water and food as a legally binding principle too for every human being as a basic human right.

I don't agree that the right to return is an established basic human right. It is a right to return to your country of citizenship, but what if that country doesn't exist any more? The UN has a whole lot of debate about this right now as well. I reject this as a basis for understanding here. 

Now, should Palestinians have a specific right to return? That's a much better question. It doesn't require universal or basic human rights to discuss; it requires talking about Palestinians and what they are owed and what they deserve and what they can get. It is, however, a very weird stretch of logic to say that Jews should have a right to get the property and land stolen from them by Nazis but Palestinians should not get recompense for being kicked out of their homes. As always the main driver of what works and what doesn't is power, not justice.

[Kalbear]

27 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The football team will still be good though, right? And can't we also send half of the white Christians from Mississippi while we're at it and maybe just every white person from Arkansas? It needs to at least be an option...

Unfortunately no, because that would make Christians the majority in Israel. We might be able to get Arkansas, but Mississippi has too many. We'll have to send them to some other place to make them unhappy like Indonesia. 

But yeah, the football team should be good and I fully expect some of the home games to be held in Tel Aviv. 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

No, I have been completely unaware of that until now. Thanks for telling.

Sacasm?

[Kalbear]

Anecdote ain't data, yadda yadda, but Israel appears to be using the Hamas war to seize land in the West Bank:

Quote

 

We stop and announce ourselves: "Media. Press." They're clearly unhappy with us. Some have their faces covered with balaclavas. Soon about a dozen people in uniform are gathering around us – all of them carrying large assault-style guns.

"OK. So get out of here. Take your legs and go all the way back," one soldier says in Hebrew, pointing to the direction from which we came. They tell us we've crossed a barrier, but we point out there is no rope, no signs, nothing to indicate that. They insist the area is restricted, and it's a time of war.

 

Quote

 

"This is an old thing that we are seeing in a new way," he says in Arabic. "Their goal, their aim, is the land. And they're using the war in order to seize the land."

From the mayor's office, we return to Abuhejleh's house to speak to his family. It's tense. Everyone is worried. Then, more than five hours after Ayoud was detained, a cell phone rings – he has been released.

Abuhejleh's sister bursts into tears of relief. She tells us in Arabic: "You Americans. Look at what's happening to us Arabs here, to our people, to our land."

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

40 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Anecdote ain't data, yadda yadda, but Israel appears to be using the Hamas war to seize land in the West Bank:

 

Likud is as bad as Hamas…

Edited November 13, 2023 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Likhud is as bad as Hamas…

Dude, it's Likud.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

21 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Dude, it's Likud.

Thank you.

[Jace, Extat]

31 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Likhud 

 

28 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

 Likud.

I Liked you both! 

[Craving Peaches]

9 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

https://youtu.be/oECwF-zVt2U?si=_cqUyr1wzbYc1K8n (Warning: may find distressing!)

Does anyone know why this man in the occupied West Bank was being arrested? Or why they had to beat him in front of his family while doing so (it looks to me like he is being kicked while on the ground in the video)?

Update: Supposedly the man concerned was raising money for the civilians in Gaza:

https://youtu.be/tiQpfJn8LP8?si=DgvxnGUxoN_SoOK_

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Ethnic, no. This conflict is a long running series of essentially ethnic cousins not getting along. That can be fixed, however... 

Religious, absolutely. Idk how people can deny religion is the problem here. 

I also wanted to get back to this because it's very much wrong. Palestinians and Israelis (at least the majority of them) have similar genetic background makeups, but they are not particularly similar from an ethnicity standpoint. They each have separate languages and even alphabets. They have very different religions. They have very different holidays. They have very different shared traumas and experiences of prior countries. They have wildly different experiences from a political society perspective. They are very distinct ethnically from each other, far more so than, say, French vs Germans or Poles vs. French. 

Religion is certainly A problem - but it isn't the only one. Here's a stupid example of a problem: Israel currently has their 'weekend' on Friday and Saturday. That isn't exactly a religion issue - it stems from religion but it's mostly just what people are used to now. Do you change that? 

 

[FalagarV2]

First Norwegian citizen killed in Gaza, in a bombing in Khan Younis in the south.

[FalagarV2]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I also wanted to get back to this because it's very much wrong. Palestinians and Israelis (at least the majority of them) have similar genetic background makeups, but they are not particularly similar from an ethnicity standpoint. They each have separate languages and even alphabets. They have very different religions. They have very different holidays. They have very different shared traumas and experiences of prior countries. They have wildly different experiences from a political society perspective. They are very distinct ethnically from each other, far more so than, say, French vs Germans or Poles vs. French. 

Religion is certainly A problem - but it isn't the only one. Here's a stupid example of a problem: Israel currently has their 'weekend' on Friday and Saturday. That isn't exactly a religion issue - it stems from religion but it's mostly just what people are used to now. Do you change that? 

 

While I agree with the overall point, especially as concerns historical experience, most Muslims would not object to their weekend being Friday-Saturday, given that Friday is the central religious weekday in Islam (indeed, afaik, most Arab countries also have Friday-Saturday weekends, including Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon until recently).

[Fragile Bird]

40 minutes ago, Jace, Extat said:

 

I Liked you both! 

Founded by Menachem Begin and Sharon. Just a side note here, Begin was a Russian prisoner and when the Russians switched sides, as a Pole, he was allowed to join the Polish Free Army under General Anders, under the British. He was in my dad’s unit. When they got to Palestine all the Jews in the unit silently slipped away into the night to join the Irgun, to fight for the establishment of Israel. Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on him says the general who was second in command actually gave him a leave of absence. All the Jews who were slipping away in the night came in the night to say goodbye to their sympathetic friends, my dad being one of them. The Poles wished them well in their struggle to found Israel, the Jews wished the Poles the best of luck in surviving the war.

My dad never knew the story about the general giving Begin permission to leave. All of the Poles considered the Jews were going awol and that was a usually a death sentence if they were caught. My dad used to wonder how history might have changed if any of them in their unit ratted them out, but the truth was they all wished each other well. Begin would have remembered my dad, I was always sorry my dad never reached out to him after the war.

[Zorral]

Heavy fighting rages near main Gaza hospital and people trapped inside say they cannot flee

Health officials and people trapped inside Gaza's largest hospital rejected Israel's claims that it was helping babies and others evacuate Sunday, saying fighting continued just outside the facility where incubators lay idle with no electricity and critical supplies were running out.

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/heavy-fighting-rages-near-main-gaza-hospital/45814013#
AP Updated: 12:57 AM EST Nov 13, 2023

Also, have any safe corridor 4 hour pauses happened yet?  It's been over 4 days now since Bibi said they were kindly allowing this grace.

~~~~~~~~

Netanyahu’s Rule Is Getting More Perilous for Israel and the USA

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/netanyahus-rule-is-getting-more-perilous-for-israel-and-the-usa

Quote

 

.... Why does Netanyahu staying in power matter? We are now in the phase of the conflict where the management of the war itself begins to connect up with what comes after it. They are now not only two inherently connected questions. They are increasingly connected in operational and logistical terms. And he is being increasingly clear that he envisions either a de facto or de jure reoccupation of the Gaza Strip for the indefinite and quite likely permanent future. Would a different leader propose something different? I’m not sure. Indeed, some kind of Israeli military control over Gaza in at least the very short term is likely inevitable. Something like half the population is now displaced within the Gaza Strip. There is a pressing and immediate need for security and basic government services. And there’s no other entity to provide them. Israel won’t allow any remnant of the Hamas government to do so. Neither the Palestinian Authority or any mix of Arab governments will do so without some political process.

The problem is Netanyahu is now speaking for the Israeli government internationally and making “day after” decisions even though the Israeli public has made quite clear they don’t want him running the government after the war ends. More important, he simply lacks credibility with any of the governments who will play key roles in determining what happens after the war – not the US, not the EU (+UK) countries or the country’s Arab neighbors.

It is universally understood – in Israel, in the US and around the world – that Netanyahu is making decisions with an eye to his own political survival. That makes him a uniquely unreliable interlocutor. And it’s not clear he will be in power to make good on any deals he makes. As I noted above, we don’t know that a successor government would have a different policy for Gaza than this one. But even if it were the same, such a government would speak with more credibility that its decisions were based on security and with the backing of the broader Israeli public.

As he becomes more visible and aggressive in the US media he ups the price President Biden is paying for backing Israel as steadfastly as he has. Netanyahu is hitting the airwaves with the clear and emphatic message that he and Israel are one in the same. He is Israel.

In recent days this dynamic has been playing out in the American press. One of Netanyahu’s calling cards has long been his ability to operate and succeed in the American political realm. He speaks a near flawless American English and speaks the country’s political language more generally. In the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attacks he was nearly invisible in Israel. Though he has now done a series of press conferences he still is keeping himself at a distance from the press. But in recent days he’s been making the rounds of American media, doing Sunday show interviews and generally being ubiquitous. He can rely on softer treatment than he would ever get in Israel today. He also makes arguments for his tenure in office in English he would never make in English. When appearing on CNN over the weekend he treated questions about his own accountability for the October 7th attacks no less nonsensical than holding FDR accountable for Pearl Harbor.

Notwithstanding all of the above there’s still no clear mechanism by which Netanyahu’s rule come to an end any time soon. But the stakes for Israel and the United States are getting higher.

 

 

Edited November 13, 2023 by Zorral

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On Point did a very nice job discussing the problems with “The Law Of War”; “Crimes Against Humanity”; and “Genocide”…

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/11/13/israel-hamas-and-the-laws-of-war-a-primer

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Darzin said:

In my opinion most Israelis are way to complacent with the current situation. They already have everything they want and the Palestinians outside of Gaza have been shunted off into inconvenient defanged little enclaves. Most Israeli's I've talked to online and in real life support indefinite occupation. They see the Palestinians as incapable of making peace and the withdrawal from Gaza as proof that any end to the occupation will just lead to endless terror attacks.

The interview with that leader of West Bank settlements in the New Yorker linked to in the previous thread explicitly states no two states, only Israel, and Palestinians can go who knows where or stay and be, not even second class citizens, but animals with no rights whatsoever, always overseen by Israelis, with guns.  That is that and anyone who thinks otherwise she will probably kill.  That's somewhat paraphrasing but that's the message.  She wasn't in the least chary of saying it.

[Jace, Extat]

12 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Founded by Menachem Begin and Sharon. Just a side note here, Begin was a Russian prisoner and when the Russians switched sides, as a Pole, he was allowed to join the Polish Free Army under General Anders, under the British. He was in my dad’s unit. When they got to Palestine all the Jews in the unit silently slipped away into the night to join the Irgun, to fight for the establishment of Israel. Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on him says the general who was second in command actually gave him a leave of absence. All the Jews who were slipping away in the night came in the night to say goodbye to their sympathetic friends, my dad being one of them. The Poles wished them well in their struggle to found Israel, the Jews wished the Poles the best of luck in surviving the war.

My dad never knew the story about the general giving Begin permission to leave. All of the Poles considered the Jews were going awol and that was a usually a death sentence if they were caught. My dad used to wonder how history might have changed if any of them in their unit ratted them out, but the truth was they all wished each other well. Begin would have remembered my dad, I was always sorry my dad never reached out to him after the war.

Now that's a story. Thank you for sharing.

[Ran]

Turning it back to Israel-Gaza for a bit, the IDF released footage showing a militant with an RPG at Al-Quds hospital, and aerial surveillance showing an RPG shot from the hospital:

 

And Rear Adm. Hagari is actually in Northern Gaza, showing Rantisi hospital and signs that they believe indicate it had a tunnel access put in place by Hamas, and they believe at one point hostages may have been held there in the basement:

 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Relic said:

However, there is no disputing the fact that Americans and Europeans have much greater freedom of movement than many other folks around the world.

Never fear.  There are very many Americans, politicians and just plain folks, working on fixing that, at least for their fellow folk who happen to possess uterus and vagina.