Israel - Hamas war XIV

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Conflicting Thought said:

can we tell in poor taste jokes like this in the ukranian thread? has it happened? people are dying in horrible numbers, missery is spreading in gaza...please some respect

I have no idea what the poor taste is suppose to be. No young people protesting the war in America, the people we are talking about, are dying or starving?

I will not accept people decontextualizing what people are actually talking about. This forum has a quote feature, you can read exactly what I was responding to. These half-assed reaches that are happening at the moment are starting to look sinister, given that they are multiplying.

[Larry of the Lawn]

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

I have no idea what the poor taste is suppose to be. No young people protesting the war in America, the people we are talking about, are dying or starving?

I will not accept people decontextualizing what people are actually talking about. This forum has a quote feature, you can read exactly what I was responding to. These half-assed reaches that are happening at the moment are starting to look sinister, given that they are multiplying.

Maybe suggesting that people you're disagreeing with are behaving in a "sinister" manner isn't a great way to foster good dialogue either.  

[Ran]

Just now, Larry of the Lawn said:

Maybe suggesting that people you're disagreeing with are behaving in a "sinister" manner isn't a great way to foster good dialogue either.  

It's not people I'm disagreeing with. It's people clearly failing to comprehend pretty straightforward discourse.

Is it bad faith? Brain rot? Poor reading comprehension? All the above? 

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, Ran said:

It's not people I'm disagreeing with. It's people clearly failing to comprehend pretty straightforward discourse.

Is it bad faith? Brain rot? Poor reading comprehension? All the above? 

Another possibility - the pretty straightforward part is not as straightforward as intended. 

For my part the 'gluten free' crack was weird but not particularly offensive, but it also seemed inserted as a jab against someone given its awkwardness in placement. If you had gone further - like saying 'let the young eat ethically sourced, vegan, gluten free allergen free non-gmo cake' it might have gotten the point across better.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Another possibility - the pretty straightforward part is not as straightforward as intended. 

For my part the 'gluten free' crack was weird but not particularly offensive, but it also seemed inserted as a jab against someone given its awkwardness in placement. If you had gone further - like saying 'let the young eat ethically sourced, vegan, gluten free allergen free non-gmo cake' it might have gotten the point across better.

It still would have come across as incredibly patronizing and dismissive of younger people. 

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

you had gone further - like saying 'let the young eat ethically sourced, vegan, gluten free allergen free non-gmo cake' it might have gotten the point across better.

Brevity is golden!

But the actual confusion people seem to be having is largely that I was supposedly telling starving people in Gaza to eat cake, and that is obviously not who we were speaking about, since Zorral cited a bunch of links to claims about young Americans.

[kissdbyfire]

Cynthia Nixon on the Israel Hamas war. 

Good for her.

 

 

Edited December 26, 2023 by kissdbyfire

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, Matrim Fox Cauthon said:

It still would have come across as incredibly patronizing and dismissive of younger people. 

Right, but that was kind of the point so I think that's okay. Or at least the intent. Hard to tell these days given the rampant senility of the old people.

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

Brevity is golden!

Eh. A lot of times it isn't. A lot of times it just makes it worse. 

It's also possibly the case that it was just not as funny as it was in your head. My kids tell me that all the time.

 

[mormont]

I'll freely admit to being oversensitive on the subject, but since without gluten-free food my strapping football-playing healthy adult son would be a sickly invalid (assuming he survived the malnutrition that saw him lose 25% of his bodyweight at the age of 2), I do react to any suggestion of it being used as a punchline.

Still, we should get back to the topic.

[Rippounet]

3 hours ago, Jace, Extat said:

I don't want to watch allies bomb cities. I don't want to watch anybody do that. But if violence is the game then Israel is going to win. It's up to the Palestinians to produce leadership that can start to get a handle on the reactionary parts of the population. Not easy to do, especially when and after massive infrastructure damage and loss of life from war is affecting your people.

There's a fun little game to play here. See:

I don't want to watch allies bomb cities. I don't want to watch anybody do that. But if violence is the game then China is going to win. It's up to the Taiwanese to produce leadership that can start to get a handle on the reactionary parts of the population.

Or:

I don't want to watch allies bomb cities. I don't want to watch anybody do that. But if violence is the game then Russia is going to win. It's up to the Ukrainians to produce leadership that can start to get a handle on the reactionary parts of the population. Not easy to do, especially when and after massive infrastructure damage and loss of life from war is affecting your people.

We could even try...

I don't want to watch allies bomb cities. I don't want to watch anybody do that. But if violence is the game then China is going to win. It's up to the Uyghurs to produce leadership that can start to get a handle on the reactionary parts of the population. Not easy to do, especially when and after massive infrastructure damage and loss of life from war is affecting your people.

It doesn't always work of course (China didn't bomb Uyghur cities), but wouldn't it be fun to see how well the discourse matches different situations, depending on who's talking of course? You can easily find some variation of the discourse throughout history.

The discourse itself is nauseating of course. It's basically demanding that the oppressed accept the stronger position of their oppressor and deal with it.
It's the exact reason why Werthead called me fascist not that long ago, because of my reluctance to support war in Ukraine . And though I'd argue he read my arguments wrong, I believe the logic of his accusation was nonetheless sound.

Of course, one can always argue that defending the stronger party is realistic. And it is. I mean, if we want to be factual, the Palestinians have nothing, which means that realistically speaking they should be ready to accept whatever we are ready to give them and shut the fuck up. I mean, since we could nuke them if we wanted, they should be content that we don't. And since we even call them before dropping bombs, they should even see us as kind. That's realistic.

The opposite argument is purely moral. It is precisely that even peoples who have nothing should be given some basic rights and dignity, and that to deny a people such things can only perpetuate violence and genocidal intent. There's been some pretty good psychological research done into that I think, that basically tells us the sense of justice/fairness is so strong in humans that we are willing to sacrifice ourselves for "greater causes" in the face of injustice.
And we humans also tend to find such sacrifice noble and moving. Which is why it's a narrative that is often used to build support for a given side in a war. Hence why the West tends to support Ukraine.
As long as people sacrifice themselves to kill soldiers. If they do it to kill civilians, especially women and children, then they go against the narrative and become barbarians to be eliminated. Hence why the West supports the elimination of Hamas.

Of course, reality tends to be more complex than the basic psychological factors commonly used in propaganda. By that I mean that narratives are almost always bullshit, because humans seldom fall into the neat little boxes of "victim" or "oppressor." I personally prefer looking at power dynamics than morality, because the first one is generally far more factual.
I do make an exception here, precisely because I'm half-Jewish (and even, arguably, half-Israeli). Therefore, I find it tragic that Israel, as a people, has chosen to learn the wrong lesson from the Holocaust. Instead of choosing to become a nation dedicated to the universal preservation of human rights and dignity, we consciously chose, however progressively, to support the cold-blooded realism of strength.
And perhaps I'm showing that I'm more Christian than Jewish here, I dunno, but I do believe that Jews could actually have become something more. I have this naive idea that since we experienced the worst of evils, we could have learned how to turn away from it. And I know this sentiment did exist, for a time, in the wake of the Holocaust, and that my family sought to defend it. Dismail failure here. We weren't even able to get Netanyahu out of power.
I suppose it's a testament to our humanity that we couldn't do better than other peoples in the end. Though I do wish the "right" lessons could be learned from this, for once...

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

50 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Though I do wish the "right" lessons could be learned from this, for once...

Theres no learning going on with either fool side imo.

[Zorral]

Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars in Gaza
The damage in Gaza has outpaced other recent conflicts, evidence shows. Israel has dropped some of the largest bombs commonly used today near hospitals.
Dec. 23rd 

"... killed at least 20,057 people and displaced a vast majority of the population."

That is by the end of last week. Earlier last week it was >only< 18,000+ killed. A couple hundred more at least have been added since the end of last week, of course.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2023/israel-war-destruction-gaza-record-pace/

Quote

 

.... The most ferocious attacks have come from the air, flattening entire city blocks and cratering the landscape.

The Washington Post analyzed satellite imagery, airstrike data and U.N. damage assessments, and interviewed more than 20 aid workers, health-care providers, and experts in munitions and aerial warfare. The evidence shows that Israel has carried out its war in Gaza at a pace and level of devastation that likely exceeds any recent conflict, destroying more buildings, in far less time, than were destroyed during the Syrian regime’s battle for Aleppo from 2013 to 2016 and the U.S.-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, in 2017.

The Post also found that the Israeli military has conducted repeated and widespread airstrikes in proximity to hospitals, which are supposed to receive special protection under the laws of war. Satellite imagery reviewed by Post reporters revealed dozens of apparent craters near 17 of the 28 hospitals in northern Gaza, where the bombing and fighting were most intense during the first two months of war, including 10 craters that suggested the use of bombs weighing 2,000 pounds, the largest in regular use.

“There’s no safe space. Period,” said Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who visited Gaza on Dec. 4. “I haven’t passed one street where I didn’t see destruction of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals.” 

The war has wounded more than 53,320 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 7,700 Palestinian children have been killed, and women and children make up around 70 percent of the dead, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which also says that 1.9 million people have been displaced, equivalent to 85 percent of the population. The vast majority of Gazan civilians fleeing the invasion are not allowed by Israel and Egypt to leave.

“The scale of Palestinian civilian deaths in such a short period of time appears to be the highest such civilian casualty rate in the 21st century,” said Michael Lynk, who served as the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2016 to 2022....

 

The WaPo's methodology:

Quote

 

How we calculated this damage comparison

To assess the devastation in Gaza, The Post used data from the U.N. Satellite Center, or UNOSAT, which analyzes satellite imagery from conflict zones to determine how many structures, most of them buildings, have been damaged and destroyed.
To compare with Gaza, The Post examined UNOSAT damage data from the Russian and Syrian government campaign against rebels in Aleppo from 2013 to 2016, and from the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, which heavily bombed and shelled the cities of Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, in 2017. UNOSAT has not collected the same kind of data on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Despite the availability of other damage assessment methodologies, The Post relied on UNOSAT data because it maintained a consistent methodology over years across multiple conflict zones.

 

 

Edited December 26, 2023 by Zorral

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

claims about young Americans.

Not claims, but what is being reported upon.  Among those young are Palestinian and Arab Americans, and African Americans, and Jewish Americans.  Who can vote. Or not vote, if that is their choice.  Why is this impossible for you to accept?

 

Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars in Gaza
The damage in Gaza has outpaced other recent conflicts, evidence shows. Israel has dropped some of the largest bombs commonly used today near hospitals.

There is a substantial amount of gathered and collated information in this report which goes from the start of the war to the present, beyond what I pulled in the previous comment from the report.  Also with regard to the methodologies that were employed to create the maps and the stats.  Highly recommended.  It's also beyond horrific.

So here is a gift link, freeing the report from the pay wall:

https://wapo.st/482raNz

More of the methodology:

Quote

 

Methodology
The quality of satellite imagery, irregular coverage and even the angle of a satellite’s camera can all affect the ability to identify clear craters. In some cases, craters could be located but not conclusively attributed to a specific munition or payload size. In other cases, damage from the air campaign was clear, but craters were not visible.

The Post relied on a conservative assessment of what is and is not a crater and asked multiple experts to review any crater found in within 180 meters of a hospital in northern Gaza that had diameter of at least 40 feet, or 12.1 meters. Any crater with a diameter greater than 11.7 meters found in light soil like Gaza’s, experts said, suggests a bomb weighing 2,000 pounds or more could have been used. To account for inconsistencies in measurements, The Post relied on the slightly larger, 40-foot diameter.

The Post focused its analysis on this size because a 2,000-pound bomb dropped 180 meters away could damage a building beyond repair. At 90 meters, that same munition could destroy a building. Only craters that experts agreed on with high confidence were included in this report.

Experts cautioned The Post against ascribing particular damage to particular craters, as the amount of damage caused by a bomb can vary widely, especially in a dense urban environment. Damage depends on nearby structures, building materials, the soil, whether a bomb has been set to explode above or below ground, and other factors. Experts also noted that even the largest munitions can be employed to ensure that nearby civilian infrastructure is not damaged or is minimally affected when they explode. But even then, large munitions have inherent characteristics that can only be mitigated to a certain degree, making collateral-damage assessments done before the munition is used key to avoiding civilian harm, they said.

About this story
Louisa Loveluck in London, Claire Parker in Cairo, Jonathan Baran in San Francisco, and Cate Brown and John Hudson in Washington contributed to this report.

Design and development by Junne Alcantara and Irfan Uraizee.

 

 

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Or not vote, if that is their choice.

This is what most of them choose anyways.

This is the media drumming up hype for Trump more than anything, because it's good for business to make everything into a horse-race. Aggregated polls have barely budged since October 7th on Biden's favorability, and there's a lot more going on in the world and in the minds of Americans than a foreign war that the US is not a belligerent in.

[Zorral]

Last presidential election not voting was not the choice the young Arab-Palestinian, African American, Jewish Americans, and other Other Americans, including white Americans made. These are the voters, along with adult women of all sorts even including a buncha older WHITE women who got Biden over.  Just sayin'.  And if tRump comes back not even folks thinking they are sitting nice and safe in a sane socialist country are going to be happy with what goes down.  Just sayin'.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Palestinian Poet’s Perilous Journey Out of Gaza
Following Hamas’s October 7th attack and Israel’s invasion, Mosab Abu Toha fled his home with his wife and three children. Then I.D.F. soldiers took him into custody.
By Mosab Abu Toha
December 25, 2023

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/01/a-palestinian-poets-perilous-journey-out-of-gaza

This is the from the beginning of his first hand account of being taken by the IDF as he was trying to do what they want, which is to leave Gaza.  This is the matter-of-course for what happens randomly to just plain, normal, civilians who are Palestinians.  Even within Israel this sort of shyte has been going down randomly for Palestinians.

Quote

 

.... I join a long queue of young men on their knees. A soldier is ordering two elderly women, who seem to be waiting for men who have been detained, to keep walking. “If you don’t move, we will shoot you,” the soldier says. Behind me, a young man is sobbing. “Why have they picked me? I’m a farmer,” he says. Don’t worry, I tell him. They will question and then release us.

After half an hour, I hear my full name, twice: “Mosab Mostafa Hasan Abu Toha.” I’m puzzled. I didn’t show anyone my I.D. when I was pulled out of line. How do they know my name?

I walk toward an Israeli jeep. The barrel of a gun points at me. When I am asked for my I.D. number, I recite it as loud as I can.

“O.K., sit next to the others.”

About ten of us are now kneeling in the sand. I can see piles of money, cigarettes, mobile phones, watches, and wallets. I recognize a man from my neighborhood, who is slightly younger than my father. “The most important thing is that they don’t take us as human shields for their tanks,” he says. This possibility never crossed my mind, and my terror grows.

We are led, two by two, to a clearing near a wall. A soldier with a megaphone tells us to undress; two others point guns at us. I strip down to my boxer shorts, and so does the young man next to me.

The soldier orders us to continue. We look at each other, shocked. I think I see movement from one of the armed soldiers, and fear for my life. We take off our boxer shorts.

“Turn around!”

This is the first time in my life that strangers have looked at me naked. They speak in Hebrew and seem cheerful. Are they joking about the hair on my body? Maybe they can see the scars where shrapnel sliced into my forehead and neck when I was sixteen. A soldier asks about my travel documents. “These are our passports,” I say, shivering. “We are heading to the Rafah border crossing.”

“Shut up, you son of a bitch.” ....

.... My eyes fill with tears. I imagine Maram and our kids on the other side of the checkpoint. They don’t have blankets or even enough clothes. I can hear female soldiers, chatting and laughing.

Suddenly, someone kicks me in the stomach. I fly back and hit the ground, breathless. I cry out in Arabic for my mother.

I am forced back onto my knees. There is no time to feel scared. A boot kicks me in the nose and mouth. I feel that I am almost finished, but the nightmare is not over.

Back in the truck, my body hurts so much that I wish I had no hands or shoulders. After what feels like ninety minutes of driving, we are taken off the truck and shoved down some stairs. A soldier cuts my plastic handcuffs. “Both hands on the fence,” he says. ....

 

 

Edited December 26, 2023 by Zorral

[TrueMetis]

10 hours ago, Darryk said:

I'm talking about people who say the founding of Israel was colonisation. You are correct that the current annexation of the West Bank is colonisation, I can't defend that.

An Empire took land from another Empire and gave it to a third party without the consent of the majority living there. The societal and cultural institution where then reshaped to the newcomers desires rather than integrating into the already existing social order. What would you call that but colonization? Like legitimately, I do want an answer to this before you read the rest of my post.

 

And this doesn't even get into stuff like the common language being Arabic but the British, being the British, dealt in English and so ended up elevating English speakers to positions of power which in practice meant European Jews. And if you aren't getting hints of how the British operated in Africa I don't know what to tell you. Or taking children from their parents and giving them to others, which should bring to mind things like the 60's scoop in Canada. It's the same old story that happened here, it didn't happen, to it did happen but it wasn't part of official government policy with many details still being hidden (Israel is currently here), to it did happen, and we're sorry, but we're not actually going to do anything to make up for it and it's low key still happening (Canada is currently here), to maybe one day actually dealing with it.

IDK is this like when some people in other threads claimed most states are ethnostates? Are we just operating on a very different definition of what colonization means?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

46 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

An Empire took land from another Empire and gave it to a third party without the consent of the majority living there. The societal and cultural institution where then reshaped to the newcomers desires rather than integrating into the already existing social order. What would you call that but colonization? Like legitimately, I do want an answer to this before you read the rest of my post.

But you then have to add another wrinkle, the third party was previously thrown out of that same area which was their cultural homeland through violence, so why aren't the people who did so also colonizers? 

[GrimTuesday]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

But you then have to add another wrinkle, the third party was previously thrown out of that same area which was their cultural homeland through violence, so why aren't the people who did so also colonizers? 

Palestinians are also native to the region, stop acting like they are some kind of outside invader.

On an unrelated note, for those who act like Israelis have no other choice but to join the military, there absolutely is a choice, but it takes a level of courage and compassion that few have but we should all strive to emulate

 

Edited December 27, 2023 by GrimTuesday

[kissdbyfire]

7 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Palestinians are also native to the region, stop acting like they are some kind of outside invader.

On an unrelated note, for those who act like Israelis have have choice but to join the military, there absolutely is a choice, but it takes a level of courage and compassion that few have but we should all strive to emulate

 

Novara had an exellent interview w/ Tal Mitnick a few days ago. It's at the start of the video.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Palestinians are also native to the region, stop acting like they are some kind of outside invader.

They are! But so are Jews and yet only the latter are called colonizers. Or accused of wanting an ethnostate. Or of wanting to commit genocide despite that the former are actually being louder about the last two parts. There's no denying this.