A place to post and discuss news related to the recent events in Israel, including the Hamas/Islamic Jihad incursion and repercussions.
It is definitionally ethnic cleansing with a fig leaf that defies credulity
Also the Gaza Strip is not a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
If you don't consider the Gaza Strip part of the nation of Palestine, I suppose...
If you don't consider the Gaza Strip part of the nation of Palestine, I suppose...
To be fair, considering that the State of Palestine has been entirely occupied by Israel since 1967, and since only 138 of the 193 UN member states recognize Palestine, there are certainly plenty of people who feel that there is no "nation of Palestine".
(Note that this is merely an observation, and does not reflect my actual beliefs.)
I'm sure the Biden Administration will be more than happy to explain to the American people why this isn't genocide or ethnic cleansing.
I don't see how what else it can be called except genocide.
For reference, he may actually have been quoting a different passage... But it's basically the same sentiment.
TL:DR, go look at Deuteronomy 25:17-19.
For reference, he may actually have been quoting a different passage... But it's basically the same sentiment.
TL:DR, go look at Deuteronomy 25:17-19.
The same chapter that says if a married man dies without having children, his brother should go have sex with his widow and bear a child. Ideally naming it after the dead husband. Real font of morality, that book.
Using multi-thousand year old tribal beliefs as guidance for life is kind of a mistake once you get beyond "Don't do bad things to other people; help them, instead".
For reference, he may actually have been quoting a different passage... But it's basically the same sentiment.
TL:DR, go look at Deuteronomy 25:17-19.
That is perfect! The extremists can take it to mean kill all Palestinians and the moderates can say oh, that's not what he really meant. Perfect political cover. He's much better at this than American politicians
The problem with language is that it can be so imprecise and apt to obfuscate or elide the real issue.
Here, it is not to the point Israel might have at best a tiny scrap of plausible deniability to committing genocide just because they have substantial objectives of rescuing hostages and eliminating terrorists. The taxonomy of genocide vs war crimes is really unhelpful for justifying the means of prosecuting those objectives.
I mean this in a respectful way, because there was a very enlightening and insightful post earlier and the search for a basis for classifying the current massacres as a lesser crime against humanity suggests there is a level of denial here. It can be hard to accept that one's government is capable of the level of evil experienced under Nazi occupation, Imperial Japan, the Vietnam War, modern Myanmar or Africa, and so on.
The same chapter that says if a married man dies without having children, his brother should go have sex with his widow and bear a child. Ideally naming it after the dead husband. Real font of morality, that book.
I mean, we have a Speaker of the House who is on record as having said that "every American woman has a duty to birth at least one able-bodied worker", so... he's probably on board.
Jesus came and sacrificed himself to allow us to spurn any Old Testament stuff that we find inconvenient in daily life, while allowing us to make others lives miserable with the rest. (Well, if you're a White Evangelical male; otherwise, it's inverted.)
Putin accused Ukraine and western people of being behind an anti-Israel riot at Dagestan’s Makhachkala airport on Sunday, with the US calling the accusation ridiculous, AFP reports.
Putin accused “social networks” from Ukraine and “western special services” of instigating Sunday’s riot.
“The events in Makhachkala last night were instigated through social networks, not least from Ukraine, by the hands of agents of western special services,” Putin said during a televised address on Monday.
“Who is organising the deadly chaos and who benefits from it today, in my opinion, has already become obvious ... It is the current ruling elites of the US and their satellites who are the main beneficiaries of world instability,” Putin added.
More than 80 people in Dagestan were detained after attempting to surround an airplane that had flown in from Israel.
US officials have called such allegations “absurd”.
“I’ve seen their comments about blaming Ukraine. That is absurd,” a state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said to reporters on Monday.
Miller added that Putin should publicly denounce the riots.
You have to commit to the bit.
Good write-up on the history at play and the biases we all bring to this topic:
Israeli Ministry 'Concept Paper' Proposes Moving Gazans To Egypt's Sinai
An Israeli government ministry has drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, drawing condemnation from the Palestinians and worsening tensions with Cairo.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office played down the report compiled by the Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise — a “concept paper.” But its conclusions deepened long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt’s problem, and revived for Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.
‘How can I vote for Biden?’ Arab Americans in Michigan ‘betrayed’ by Israel support
Arab American backing for Biden sinks over ‘rock-solid’ Israel support
Arab American support for Joe Biden has fallen in the wake of his response to the latest bout of violence between Israel and Hamas, a new poll from the Arab American Institute (AAI) shows. The same poll showed a sharp increase in reports of discrimination against members of the community.
Following Hamas’s deadly 7 October attacks, which killed 1,400 Israelis, Biden has repeatedly proclaimed the US’s “rock-solid and unwavering support” for Israel, which has responded by tightening its blockade and bombarding the Gaza Strip. More than 8,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to health officials in the coastal territory.
According to AAI, that response has prompted a “dramatic plummeting of Arab American voter support for President Biden”. There are roughly 3.7 million Arab Americans in the US.
“Support among Arab American voters for Biden has plummeted from 59% in 2020 to 17% today,” the poll analysis said.
Notably, the data found that for the first time in AAI’s 26 years of polling that a majority of the Arab Americans did not claim to prefer the Democratic party.
Moreover, 40% of those polled said they will vote for Donald Trump in 2024 – a five percentage-point increase from 2020, marking an all-time high for Arab American identification with the Republican party.
“It’s important for our organizing that we know how the community is positioning itself in this. And it’s important for us to let the administration know – you’re at risk of losing this particular component group of the community,” said James Zogby, president and co-founder of AAI.
Guess who white people are going to blame if Biden loses re-election. Hint, not the guy who hugged Netanyahu.
Israeli Ministry 'Concept Paper' Proposes Moving Gazans To Egypt's Sinai
An Israeli government ministry has drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, drawing condemnation from the Palestinians and worsening tensions with Cairo.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office played down the report compiled by the Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise — a “concept paper.” But its conclusions deepened long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt’s problem, and revived for Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.
It’s almost as if this was the plan all along.
And then, after the neglected camps turn into terrorist hotbeds, guess what? The planes fly and the tanks roll again.
My stomach is churning over the latest reports of missile strikes on a Jabalya refugee camp purportedly to take out a Hamas leader.
My parents fled Cambodia in the early 80s and saw other refugees being shot and bodies looted on the Thai border.
I can't believe they would just slaughter the refugees they displaced with the invasion. This is sickening.
I suppose it would be too much for Israel to do something at least barely humanitarian like accept Palestinian refugees and aid/guard them? Surely even concentration camps are a better solution than indiscriminately killing civilians in refugee camps.
Well Israel is officially one of the Baddies now, if they weren't considered one already. I don't care who you think is hiding in there, you don't bomb a godsdamned refugee camp.
I just can't stop thinking about the parallels with 9/11 and the immediate overreach of the Right to go all out and attack attack attack. "This is our time" they thought. "This is our mero mole." "We've been waiting for an excuse to kick the sh*t out of our supposed enemies, and make hay. This is going to be good for us, and cathartic. We don't get a lot of opportunities like this, given the "woke" culture nowadays. Let's make the most of it." [thousands of civilians die, due to righteous anger justified by the awful footage of killings and abductions]
I have gotten banned for suggesting Netanyahu was attempting a solution to the Palestinian problem in the “final” category, but it is getting harder and harder to deny.
A concerning though just occurred to me, and wanted to bring this to you guys, who are far more knowledgeable in this conflict and perspective.
I believe come election time, depending on how things are handled, there could be a significant amount of voters with the following train of thought:
"I hate Trump/MAGA with every fiber of my being, but I just can't bring myself to vote for Biden, after how he handled the Israeli/Hamas conflict." And thus, voting independent or abstaining or what have you, which results in Reds winning the election and ending human life soon after.
How feasible is this? What would "how he handled the conflict" need to be, in order to make this statement true? And how far away are we from this statement being true?
In my foreigner, limited and ignorant perspective, it seems that the American Gov't is going to support Israel regardless of what they do, and they might lose supporters because of it.
Help me understand a bit more. Thanks to anyone who provides insight.
Sadly, yes. I expect there will be a lot people who will use it as their reason to continue to not vote for either main party, or at all. There are even people out there who would vote for Trump because they don't like what Biden's doing, and not even realize that Trump would be doing everything Biden is currently doing and then some.
Well Israel is officially one of the Baddies now, if they weren't considered one already. I don't care who you think is hiding in there, you don't bomb a godsdamned refugee camp.
When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you [the Palestinians] - 2 and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.[a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles[b] and burn their idols in the fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
Children were carrying other injured children out of the rubble. Body parts all over the place.
What will be interesting for me is the US reaction because it's not like the IDF hasn't done this before. Usually the play book here is for the IDF to claim some military value to the target, the UN states otherwise, the third country who's citizens were acting for the UN gives some dressing down the Isreali ambassador and the Isreali media, as well as some foreign media, then makes some thinly veiled actusation of anti-semistism. Finally the US does the whole "he said, she said" dance and move on.
Ireland tends to be the third country quite a bit as we do have a lot of people interacting with the UN so it tends to result in smears like these. That's the Irseali foregin minister btw.
https://twitter.com/elicoh1/status/1718641822694625665
Personally, I suspect Ireland frightens Isreali governments as it proves a major potential problem in controlling the narrative internationally and espeically the US on multiple fronts.
A concerning though just occurred to me, and wanted to bring this to you guys, who are far more knowledgeable in this conflict and perspective.
I believe come election time, depending on how things are handled, there could be a significant amount of voters with the following train of thought:
"I hate Trump/MAGA with every fiber of my being, but I just can't bring myself to vote for Biden, after how he handled the Israeli/Hamas conflict." And thus, voting independent or abstaining or what have you, which results in Reds winning the election and ending human life soon after.
How feasible is this? What would "how he handled the conflict" need to be, in order to make this statement true? And how far away are we from this statement being true?
In my foreigner, limited and ignorant perspective, it seems that the American Gov't is going to support Israel regardless of what they do, and they might lose supporters because of it.
Help me understand a bit more. Thanks to anyone who provides insight.
If foreign policy matter in US elections there is zero evidence of it. Same applies in UK, France etc. Only have to go back to the 2003 Iraq war to prove that point. That was massively unpopular in the UK and Blair still won a third term. Chirac took the opposite stance and did nothing for his popularity long term.
Is there an effect? Maybe but at the end of the day people will vote on what impacts them directly. Foreign policy is only ever changed by lobbying to individuals within governments. Take a look at John Hume for example and his efforts to create the peace process in Northern Ireland by interacting with US and UK officials over years to create the space for it.
And interestingly, the Irish and UK leaders (Reynolds and Major) who probably had the largest impact on the process didn't last long. As we say here, it didn't butter any parsnips for their bases in the end even given their proximity to it.
If you would like another anecdote, I personally swore I would never vote for Biden after the allegations of sexual assault surfaced in the summer of 2020. Not just me but my entire circle of peers committed to abstaining from voting if Bernie didn’t get the nomination.
….guess who we all voted for in November 2020.
A concerning though just occurred to me, and wanted to bring this to you guys, who are far more knowledgeable in this conflict and perspective.
I believe come election time, depending on how things are handled, there could be a significant amount of voters with the following train of thought:
"I hate Trump/MAGA with every fiber of my being, but I just can't bring myself to vote for Biden, after how he handled the Israeli/Hamas conflict." And thus, voting independent or abstaining or what have you, which results in Reds winning the election and ending human life soon after.
How feasible is this? What would "how he handled the conflict" need to be, in order to make this statement true? And how far away are we from this statement being true?
In my foreigner, limited and ignorant perspective, it seems that the American Gov't is going to support Israel regardless of what they do, and they might lose supporters because of it.
Help me understand a bit more. Thanks to anyone who provides insight.
Polls are already showing a huge swing among Arab Americans over it (hich I read about here or Wonkette or someplace), and I imagine non-Arab Muslims, too. Not looking good for Democracy anymore, guys.
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