fyi: if you’d like a vetted cause to donate to, people are fundraising for Palestine Children’s Relief Fund which is one of the best charities i’m aware of that does relief work in Gaza and puts basically all of the money given to them toward actual work and not salaries or overhead.
According to HuffPost, which reviewed official emails, “State Department staff wrote that high-level officials do not want press materials to include three specific phrases: ‘de-escalation/cease-fire,’ ‘end to violence/bloodshed,’ and ‘restoring calm.’”
About 1/3rd through the article, they start highlighting some of the progressive conversations that have been being had in Israel, comparing them to the remarks AOC, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, and others have been criticized as “disgraceful” for.
Some important ones IMO:
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and top adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who told the BBC, “If anyone told me that what the militants did on the weekend was a legitimate response to years and years of occupation. I would say: ‘No, you’re wrong-headed. You’ve lost sight of humanity and reality.’ And if anyone tells me that what Israel is doing in Gaza today is a legitimate response to what happened on the weekend, it’s exactly the same.”
Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, an expert on the rules of war, observed Wednesday that “Hamas committed abominable war crimes for which there can be no forgiveness. But the laws of war weren’t meant only for situations in which our blood is cool, or when there is no justified anger or understandable desire for revenge.” The lawyer explained:
It’s not easy for Israelis to think about Gazans’ rights in a week when Hamas committed crimes that are still impossible to digest and our whole society is mourning and crying. But Gaza’s catastrophe won’t wait for the end of our seven-day shivah.
Consequently, this needs to be said: Israel has held millions of people under a brutal blockade for more than 15 years with the support of the entire Western world. That is inhumane and inconceivable, and every solution to this bloody conflict ultimately includes respecting the rights of all people, both in Gaza and Sderot, to live with security and human dignity. And that begins with respecting the most basic rules as set down in the international laws of war, which are designed to reduce the harm to civilians.
It’s easy to get stuck in a North American bubble of media, but it’s also important to note what’s being said locally by people who have eyes on the ground and have been watching this stuff grow first hand for 75 years since the occupation of Israel.
It’s very telling that the media began insinuating (or labeling outright) Representatives Omar and Tlaib as being antisemitic for criticizing Israel’s response, but when Sanders says the same thing, and even more, they don’t.
If it’s not antisemitic for a Jewish person to say, it’s not antisemitic for someone else to. No one is immune from criticism that would otherwise be valid, simply because of who is giving it.
Well, after watching all those videos, it was hard for me to keep working on my daily… I think if people realize what is a war and what they are doing… they would be more interested to resolve this conflict. But we live like in a bubble, and you need to work tomorrow and be productive.
The UN chief told reporters outside the Security Council the world had to unite around the principle of protecting civilians and “finding a lasting solution to this unending cycle of death and destruction.”
Exactly. If you look at the big picture, Israelis have killed WAY more Palestinians over the years, as well as apartheid and stealing Palestinian land.
I’m not taking sides, but the one sided coverage gross.
The problem with this conflict in particular is that taking the side of Palestine has become synonymous with taking the side of Hamas, or with simply being antisemitic. It’s essential if you want to express any support for Palestine that you also painstakingly lay out exactly what you support and what you don’t, otherwise… Well, the onion said it best.
I don’t think articulating a concern for any civilians on any side is taken poorly, and I don’t think that the majority of the media has skewed any calls for humanitarian aid and adherance to international warfare rules as anti-semitism. In fact, the new york times has published both investigative and opinion pieces that are very sympathetic to Palestinian civilians, and calling out Israeli disproportionate response.
I think part of the problem in discussing the issue is that the events of today are inextricably woven into the events of the
1948 founding of Israel by the UN at the end of the British mandate.
the invasion of the five armies and the 1949 armistice.
the six day war, and the loss of the Sinai peninsula.
the eventual recognition of borders by Egypt and Jordan.
the results of the shelling of Beirut after the Hezbollah attack in 2006.
But that is a lot of history, but the back and forth of tragedies, including disproportionate response is driven by these events.
When most people online seem to confuse the history of Gaza with that of the West Bank, or conflate Hamas and Hezbollah, it is no wonder that discussion breaks down.
Unfortunately I was in a debate elsewhere on the fediverse where the other person said there is no legitimate response to the Hamas attack for Israel because Israel’s existence is the source of the problem.
That sounds like the Hezbollah general who yesterday called this a “war of existence” in that either Israel exists or the Arab alliance exists. So how do you reason with that position, and how many people objecting to Israel’s use of force are really all that knowledgeable of the history?
I also think that people underestimate how you reason with allies. If Biden hadn’t shown solidarity with Israel, then his visit today wouldn’t have resulted in the opening of humanitarian aid. You influence allies by showing solidarity publicly, and having frank conversations on private.
Anyway, sorry for the long post. Have a great evening!
It doesn’t matter who killed more. That’s why this never ends. “My tragedy is worse than your tragedy” is never productive. It just serves as an (incorrect) argument for why it’s permissible for one group to keep committing atrocities while the other group has to suffer it and be the first to bury the hatchet. Then the script flips and everyone does it again from their respective positions. It never ends.
It’s terrible that some civilians immigrated to Israel for the sole purpose of becoming settlers and pushing Palestinians out.
It’s terrible that some civilians immigrated to Gaza for the sole purpose of having as big a family as possible to use their own children and grandchildren as human shields against Israeli settlers.
It’s terrible that dual-citizenship people on both sides are asking “their” [other] countries to evacuate them, after having spent decades there on purpose.
It’s terrible that Israel is willing to watch millions of civilians starve… that Egypt doesn’t want to let refugees in… and Hamas doesn’t want to let them out.
There has been some uproar this week because there are over 10,000 Spanish citizens in Israel and Gaza, but the government only decided to fleet 2 military planes to evacuate 500 of them. Turns out, they were only evacuating the “tourists and people on business trips”… meaning the rest are not; they’re people who decided to immigrate there. Following that, different reporters got hold of people “left behind”, both in Israel and Gaza.
One of those people, was a lady who immigrated to Gaza 40 years ago, “to settle right next to the Israeli border”, and now kept repeating how the Spanish consulate is ignoring her request for evacuating her 19-people family, with many children among them.
It’s estimated that 50% of the population of Gaza are underage, meaning they’re people born in the last 18 years, into a conflict that’s been going for 70 years, from way before this lady decided to immigrate there 40 years ago and contribute to the population growth.
Both sides are engaged in a long term (100+ years) strategy of trying to out-number each other, with sympathizers of each side migrating there to increase the numbers for the conflict. Since immigration into Gaza and Palestine is more restricted than into Israel, the former have been trying to churn out as many “new residents” (aka kids) as quickly as possible… who are now being used by Hamas as a humanitarian crisis bargaining chip.
Notice how even with a steady emigration of about half the population of Palestine every year, the total population keeps growing, along with a steady immigration rate of around 200K/year:
You do realize that poorer regions have much higher fertility because of much higher child mortality rates and much lower average lifespans, right? Fertility is inversely proportional with wealth and access to healthcare.
This isn’t unique to Gaza. It’s true in Africa, India, and pre-communist China.
Notice how the sharpest decline in Palestine’s demographic pyramid appears between 14 and 34 years old, or about when people realize what’s going on and decide to GTFO, and how that fits the constantly increasing emigration, while the increasing population —despite higher child mortality, lower lifespans, and extreme emigration— fits the profile of adapting fertility to and ideological parity with Israel’s immigration rates.
I’d recommend you take a look at the demographic pyramids of countries in Africa. Mortality is steepest in the 14-34 range because that’s when most people die.
That’s nonsense. Feel free to investigate the demographics of the World, Africa, Niger, Ukraine, China, or the US, to get a feel for “infant mortality” or “when most people die”.
In his Telegram post today, Durov — borrowing some of the more “high-level” language that other social media executives have used — said that “Telegram’s moderators and AI tools remove millions of obviously harmful content from our public platform,” but he also swiftly moved on to defending the app continuing to allow sensitive content under the category of “war-related coverage.”
“Tackling war-related coverage is seldom obvious.” (He does not define what the line is between “obviously harmful” and “war-related coverage.”)
“While it would be easy for us to destroy this source of information, doing so risks exacerbating an already dire situation,” he continued, citing how, he said, Hamas used Telegram to warn civilians in Ashkelon to leave the area ahead of missile strikes. “Would shutting down their channel help save lives — or would it endanger more lives?” he asked in his post today.
I have heard rumblings of people who believe that Hamas did not even attack and this was a false flag.
Prob propaganda but it def makes you think. I mean Israel did know about the attack ahead of time supposedly. How did Hamas get through the iron dome? Did anyone see where they went after? How did that girl get from the back of a Hamas truck to a hospital? Why haven’t I seen many photos videos from the ground?
This bad faith “evidence” just fuels the conspiracy.
No one is seriously questioning the authenticity of this attack, though I would not be surprised if Bibi knew of it (since, you know, they were literally told about it beforehand) and allowed it to happen to both avoid his legal troubles and to give his ultranationalist party and military a pretense for driving out or killing Palestinians.
Pearl Harbor and 9/11 weren’t fake either, and both were used to excuse atrocities too.
I just wanna chime in and say I don’t believe it either.
I bring it up because it’s the only reason that I could think of that someone is out here posting “proof” of the orders.
At some point I’m sure we’ll see a blurred video of murder and then someone pointing at the people on the screen and being like “we know that guy, that’s Hamas s Samah, he lives at 123 Westy B. He is a Hamas and this is him murdering. Here’s the body of the victim later at the morgue.”
Thats the kind of evidence I “want” (I don’t want a video of murder but like, identifying people in the video and find out who they are and like… hard evidence)
But the “evidence” I was responding to is something I could forge from half a world away
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