Background:
From 2009-2021, Benjamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister of Israel as head of the Likud Party, with support from other parties. Inter- and intra-party instability led to a series of 4 elections within 2 years to try to form a workable government: April 2019, September 2019, March 2020 and finally March 2021. Likud had been rocked by a corruption scandals, and Netanyahu was criticised even by hawkish right-wing parties for unnecessary provocation of violence.

After the March 2021 election, a seemingly-unlikely coalition formed government, united only by their disdain for Netanyahu. A deal was struck to rotate the Prime Ministership between Naftali Bennett of the conservative Yamina party, and Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party. Bennett will be Prime Minister for 2 years, followed by 2 years of Lapid.

The Coalition consists of the following parties:

Yamina (conservative)
Yesh Atid (centrist)
Blue and White (centrist)
New Hope (centre-right)
Yisrael Beiteinu (generally right wing but open to Palestinian statehood)
Labor (centre-left)
Meretz (socialist left)
United Arab List (politically moderate but mainly representing Israeli Arabs)

Mansour Abbas from the United Arab List has a cabinet position and although there have been Arabs in cabinet before (in the Olmet Labour government) this is the first time someone from an Arab party has held a cabinet position.

The government has held for a year now so (shrugs) maybe antipathy towards Netanyahu can work wonders.

However, yesterday the government lost its narrow majority due to the departure of Idit Silman. Commentators are suggesting that even if Silman were to join Netanyahu’s coalition, it would still not garner the numbers to govern. However it does push Israel closer to having to have another election and may inhibit the governing coalition’s ability to pass legislation. The only bloc currently outside of government that is not in Netanyahu’s camp is the Joint List, mostly supported by Arabs, Druze, Christians and other minorities but probably a bit too spicy politically to join this government.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/06/israel-naftali-bennett-loses-majority-mp-idit-silman-quits-coalition

Idit Silman’s announcement left Bennett’s coalition, an alliance of parties ranging from the Jewish right and Israeli doves to an Arab Muslim party, with 60 seats – the same as the opposition.

“I tried the path of unity. I worked a lot for this coalition,” Silman, a religious conservative who served as coalition chairperson, said in a statement. “Sadly, I cannot take part in harming the Jewish identity of Israel.”

On Monday, Silman lashed out at the health minister, Nitzan Horowitz, after he instructed hospitals to allow leavened bread products into their facilities during the upcoming Passover holiday, in line with a recent supreme court ruling reversing years of prohibition.

Jewish tradition bars leavened bread from the public domain during Passover.

“I am ending my membership of the coalition and will try to continue to talk my friends into returning home and forming a rightwing government,” Silman said. “I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.”

dv said:

The Coalition consists of the following parties:

Yamina (conservative)
Yesh Atid (centrist)
Blue and White (centrist)
New Hope (centre-right)
Yisrael Beiteinu (generally right wing but open to Palestinian statehood)
Labor (centre-left)
Meretz (socialist left)
United Arab List (politically moderate but mainly representing Israeli Arabs)

I don’t think the right/left dichotomy has any useful place in the characterisation of political parties any more.

A much more useful guide would be militaristic/peacenik for example, or isolationist/global, or intelligent/stupid, or moral/corrupt.

Sadly, the aforementioned coalition didn’t hold, and there will be fresh elections in November.
The withdrawal of one of the Yamina members from the governing coalition left them with exactly 60 of the 120 member Knesset. She left on a basis that seems, to me, to be somewhat if a minor religious point: she objected to a regulatory change that allowed people to bring leavened bread into hospitals during Passover. Several bills were defeated and the Prime Ministerial duumvirate threw the towel in. PM Bennett resigned as Yamina leader and was replaced by Ayelet Shaked: Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid party took over as caretaker PM.

The various parties that made up the Government are collectively polling at 55% so they may well end up with a narrow governing majority again. It would seem that the key to success will be ensuring no one on their dockets is someone likely to derail the program. The only thing keeping the band together is opposition to Netanyahu.

Polling is looking not bad for Netanyahu

On the basis of recent polling it would seem that following the Sep elections it will be difficult for either the pro-Netanyahu or anti-Netanyahu alliances to form government but there was a new wrinkle yesterday in which Blue&White/New Hope have been joined by former IDF Chief Gadi Eizenkot and Matan Kahana who is also an IDF colonel, to form a new party called National Unity. It’s possible that the addition of these military figures to the Anti-Netanyahu political forces might earn them a few votes in the centre right.

yeah well

“We know that he fired, but it could very well be that this happened from other fire,” he added. Repeating previous Israeli claims, the military official said the soldiers had been under continuous fire for almost an hour from multiple directions before Ms Abu Akleh was shot.

The army released several videos showing Palestinian militants firing automatic weapons and soldiers coming under fire that day. But the military provided no evidence to support its claim that a fierce gunbattle was underway at the time that Ms Abu Akleh was shot.

Amateur videos as well as witness accounts have shown no evidence of militants in the vicinity and the area appeared to be quiet for several minutes before she was shot. Ms Abu Akleh was wearing a helmet and vest marked “press” at the time.

the way she was dressed, she was obviously asking for it

SCIENCE said:

yeah well

“We know that he fired, but it could very well be that this happened from other fire,” he added. Repeating previous Israeli claims, the military official said the soldiers had been under continuous fire for almost an hour from multiple directions before Ms Abu Akleh was shot.

The army released several videos showing Palestinian militants firing automatic weapons and soldiers coming under fire that day. But the military provided no evidence to support its claim that a fierce gunbattle was underway at the time that Ms Abu Akleh was shot.

Amateur videos as well as witness accounts have shown no evidence of militants in the vicinity and the area appeared to be quiet for several minutes before she was shot. Ms Abu Akleh was wearing a helmet and vest marked “press” at the time.

the way she was dressed, she was obviously asking for it

Like a Nazi ?

Cymek said:

Like a Nazi ?

no we don’t support Trump, next question

SCIENCE said:

Cymek said:

Like a Nazi ?

no we don’t support Trump, next question

I did like one Nazi. John Rabe.

Look him up.

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

Cymek said:

Like a Nazi ?

no we don’t support Trump, next question

I did like one Nazi. John Rabe.

Look him up.

Oskar Schindler was a Nazi too.

dv said:

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

no we don’t support Trump, next question

I did like one Nazi. John Rabe.

Look him up.

Oskar Schindler was a Nazi too.

Of Schindler’s Lifts fame?

Election is tomorrow, and it looks as though it will be pretty close, Netanyahu and friends versus a very broad anti-Netanyahu coalition.

Early counts have the Netanyahu aligned group slightly ahead, but commentators note that the early count usually leans right and then drifts leftward as Tel Aviv gets counted.

dv said:

Early counts have the Netanyahu aligned group slightly ahead, but commentators note that the early count usually leans right and then drifts leftward as Tel Aviv gets counted.

Didn’t look like it drifted much at all. Netanyahu & coalition get up quite easily.

sibeen said:

dv said:

Early counts have the Netanyahu aligned group slightly ahead, but commentators note that the early count usually leans right and then drifts leftward as Tel Aviv gets counted.

Didn’t look like it drifted much at all. Netanyahu & coalition get up quite easily.

And so it was

What do Israel’s new far-right kingmakers want?

The real winner of the Israeli election may not be Benjamin Netanyahu, but the country’s once taboo far right. The former prime minister, still facing legal challenges due to graft charges, looks likely to lead a bloc in Israel’s Knesset. He did so only with the help of two formerly fringe firebrands: Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.

Smotrich, the leader of the far-right Religious Zionist Party, and Ben Gvir, a prominent leader in the same political grouping, have been on the outskirts of mainstream politics for years.

And yet after this week’s election, Israel’s fifth since 2019, they will likely end up as kingmakers. Preliminary polls suggest that the Religious Zionist faction could end up the third largest in parliament, making them a vital coalition partner for Netanyahu’s center-right Likud Party with Ben Gvir already demanding control of the Public Security Ministry.

Both Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett, another recent prime minister, are also right-wingers. And Smotrich and Ben Gvir have both tempered down their harshest rhetoric in recent years. So what makes this Religious Zionist grouping different, and perhaps more alarming, than other right-wing groups?

There are a number of worrying areas where the newly powerful Israeli far right still stands out. Among them: Calls to expel Arabs who do not support Israel; intolerance of Israel’s large LGBT community and other nonobservant Jews; and a seeming acceptance of the necessity of violence.

Here’s a rundown.

Anti-Arab policies and pushes for expulsions: As Israeli journalists like Haaretz editor David E. Rosenberg have noted, the Religious Zionist faction stands out from European far-right groups for not just promising to curtail immigration but suggesting they could deport people born on Israeli-controlled land.

Ben Gvir has links to the late Meir Kahane, the U.S.-born rabbi who openly advocated for the expulsion of Palestinians from Israeli-controlled land. Ben Gvir began his political journey in the Kach party, founded by Kahane and banned under anti-terrorism laws in 1994, and he is now the leader of Otzma Yehudit, which means “Jewish Power,” a party made up of many Kahanist politicians.

In recent years, Ben Gvir has said he only supports the expulsion of Arab citizens who are not loyal to the state.

“If an Arab lives here and recognizes the state of Israel, ‘Ahlan wa Sahlan’ . No problem with them. But anyone who wants to destroy, to throw stones, to throw molotov cocktails — we’re at war with them,” he said in a recent voice memo to The Washington Post.

Smotrich, meanwhile, supported legislation that helps annex lands held by Palestinians and co-founded an Israeli nongovernmental organization that blocks Palestinian construction in Israel and the West Bank.

Critics say the aim is to speed up the process of Israeli settlers acquiring land from Palestinians — ironically Haaretz reported in 2017 that Smotrich lives in a West Bank settlement built illegally under Israel’s own laws.

Intolerance to gay rights and the nonobservant: Where Netanyahu and other Western right-wing leaders have tentatively embraced LGBT rights in recent years, the Israeli far right is often openly hostile.

Smotrich was an anti-LGBT rights activist in his youth and more recently has drawn attention for comments made about Israel’s burgeoning gay community. In 2015, Israel’s Army Radio procured a recording in which he called himself a “proud homophobe” and said that gay people should “feel uncomfortable with being abnormal.”

Ben Gvir used to protest Gay Pride parades as “abominations,” though he last year since suggested a somewhat softer stance.

“The homosexuals are my brothers and the lesbians are my sisters,” he said in a talk show interview, “but I’m against walking around in the streets in underwear.”

Critics say that behind these comments is an ultraconservative view of Israeli society. Yitzhak Wasserlauf, a 30-year-old ally of Ben Gvir expected to win a seat in Knesset, has criticized the liberal Reform Jewish movement for making a “mockery of religion” by having marriages conducted with both a rabbi and a priest.

Smotrich, a lawyer by trade, has called for major legal reforms. His opponents say they are designed to allow the government power to do things like take draconian action against asylum seekers or even political opponents without judicial interference and that women’s rights will be reversed.

Acceptance of violent extremism: Kahane helped birth Israel’s far right by advocating a hateful, often violent type of Jewish nationalism. He served in the Knesset for four years, but he was effectively boycotted by other politicians and effectively banned from Israeli politics in 1988 for racism; two years later he was assassinated.

But the threat of far-right violence he brought from the United States still hangs over Israeli politics. After negotiating the Oslo accords with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995. Police soon drew a line between the assassin and spinoff Kahane groups.

Ben Gvir, then a young far-right rabble-rouser who was exempted from Israel’s military service because of his political beliefs, had threatened Rabin just three weeks before his assassination.

Though he has never been convicted of violence himself, Ben Gvir has defended violent far-right extremists in court (like Smotrich, he is a lawyer) and he had been convicted of incitement to racism and support for a terrorist group. For years, he had a photograph of Baruch Goldstein, an American Israeli far-right extremist who massacred Palestinian worshipers, hanging in his home.

Recently, he has brandished a gun during clashes between police and stone-throwing Palestinians in East Jerusalem, calling on police to shoot with live ammunition.

Rights groups have accused Smotrich of promoting settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. And even though he is allied with Netanyahu now and proposing legal reforms that could help the former prime minister escape jail, he has shown little interest in the kind of cynical but pragmatic politics Netanyahu espouses.

In a secret recording released during the campaign last month, Smotrich was heard calling Netanyahu a liar and suggesting it was his own intervention that had stopped plans for the center-right Likud Party to ally with Israel’s Arab parties.

“Wait a bit. With Netanyahu, physics or biology will do their work,” Smotrich said in the recording, according to the Times of Israel. “He won’t be here forever; at some point he’ll be convicted by the court or whatever. Have patience. There’s no question Netanyahu is a problem, but you have to choose between one problem and another.”

…

Washington Post Email Newsletter

in the footsteps of great leaders

The Economy Must Grow Good Guys With Guns

One of those children, 16-year-old girl Jana Zakarneh, was shot in the head last December when an Israeli army raid sparked a clash in the West Bank city of Jenin. An Israeli sniper shot Jana Zakarneh four times in the head and upper body while she was on the roof of her house. A day later, the IDF said an “initial inquiry” found she was “hit by unintentional fire aimed at armed gunmen on a roof in the area from which the force was fired upon”. However, the IDF also claimed Jana was on the roof while keeping lookout for local gunmen during the military raid.

“They could see her. They could see she was a girl. Snipers can see precisely. They knew quite well she was a girl. She was playing up there for over an hour.” Mr Assaf said she was on the rooftop to play with her cat. The IDF said a drone filmed the incident, but did not respond to the ABC’s request to release the vision. In its statement a day after the death, the IDF said, “the claim that security forces purposefully fired at uninvolved civilians is implausible and without foundation”. It said it was continuing to investigate the death and “regret any harm to uninvolved civilians”.

ah but don’t worry, she won’t have been an uninvolved civilian, the moment you try to catch or touch a bullet clearly you are involved

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-23/children-amidst-rising-israeli-palestinian-tensions/101982250

https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/yair-lapid-offers-to-form-emergency-unity-government-with-netanyahu-after-hamas-terror-attack-5MOYdwsOxNSgKXhEBrsOVb

JNS) Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid issued a call for a national unity government in the wake of the massive offensive by Hamas on Saturday in order “to conduct the difficult, complex and protracted campaign before us.”

Lapid made his announcement after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at 5:15pm on Saturday to receive a security briefing.

“The State of Israel is at war. It will not be an easy war and it will not be a short war,” Lapid said. “It has strategic consequences the likes of which we have not seen for many, many years. There is a great risk that it will turn into a multi-front war.”

The opposition leader said establishing an emergency unity government will send a message to Israel’s enemies and the world that Israel stands united behind the IDF and the security establishment.

Lapid also took aim at members of Netanyahu’s current coalition.

“Netanyahu knows that with the extreme and dysfunctional composition of the current Cabinet, it is impossible to wage war. The State of Israel needs to be led by a professional, experienced and responsible political echelon,” he said.

“I have no doubt that former Defence Minister Benny Gantz will also join such a government,” Lapid said.

At 11:30am, Netanyahu issued an address from the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv.

“We are at war, not in an operation or in rounds , but at war. This morning, Hamas launched a murderous surprise attack against the State of Israel and its citizens. We have been in this since the early morning hours,” he said.

Hamas killed more than 100 Israelis in the attack that began early Saturday morning, which included firing rockets and sending dozens of Palestinian terrorists to infiltrate the Jewish state.

More than a thousand Israelis were evacuated to hospitals across the country, almost half to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva and many to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.

Death toll in Israel after Hamas attack has passed 700, defense force says

The death toll in Israel a day after the surprise attack by Hamas fighters breached the border from Gaza has risen to “over 700 dead,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Maj. Ben Wahlhaus, told CNN on Sunday.

https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-10-08-23/index.html

dv said:

Death toll in Israel after Hamas attack has passed 700, defense force says

The death toll in Israel a day after the surprise attack by Hamas fighters breached the border from Gaza has risen to “over 700 dead,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Maj. Ben Wahlhaus, told CNN on Sunday.

https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-10-08-23/index.html

This is not going to, and never could have, produce a good outcome for the people in Gaza.

Of all the hornets’ nests in the world to stir up, Israel is one of the least likely to not take the most severe retaliatory action.

The people of Gaza are being sacrificed, with the only question being ‘who’s putting them on the altar?’.

Is it Hamas? Is it Hezbollah? Is it it Syria or Iran, perhaps with Russian backing? Is it one or more Gulf states? Is it Saudi Arabia?

No matter whose idea this attack is or was, whatever the people in Gaza suffer is fully anticipated by the instigator(s), and indeed a necessary part of their plan. Those people are expendable pawns in the eyes of whoever is behind this.

captain_spalding said:

dv said:

Death toll in Israel after Hamas attack has passed 700, defense force says

The death toll in Israel a day after the surprise attack by Hamas fighters breached the border from Gaza has risen to “over 700 dead,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Maj. Ben Wahlhaus, told CNN on Sunday.

https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-10-08-23/index.html

This is not going to, and never could have, produce a good outcome for the people in Gaza.

Of all the hornets’ nests in the world to stir up, Israel is one of the least likely to not take the most severe retaliatory action.

The people of Gaza are being sacrificed, with the only question being ‘who’s putting them on the altar?’.

Is it Hamas? Is it Hezbollah? Is it it Syria or Iran, perhaps with Russian backing? Is it one or more Gulf states? Is it Saudi Arabia?

No matter whose idea this attack is or was, whatever the people in Gaza suffer is fully anticipated by the instigator(s), and indeed a necessary part of their plan. Those people are expendable pawns in the eyes of whoever is behind this.

Their future is safely in the hands of an extreme rightwing government. How lucky can you get?

captain_spalding said:

dv said:

Death toll in Israel after Hamas attack has passed 700, defense force says

The death toll in Israel a day after the surprise attack by Hamas fighters breached the border from Gaza has risen to “over 700 dead,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Maj. Ben Wahlhaus, told CNN on Sunday.

https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-10-08-23/index.html

This is not going to, and never could have, produce a good outcome for the people in Gaza.

Of all the hornets’ nests in the world to stir up, Israel is one of the least likely to not take the most severe retaliatory action.

The people of Gaza are being sacrificed, with the only question being ‘who’s putting them on the altar?’.

Is it Hamas? Is it Hezbollah? Is it it Syria or Iran, perhaps with Russian backing? Is it one or more Gulf states? Is it Saudi Arabia?

No matter whose idea this attack is or was, whatever the people in Gaza suffer is fully anticipated by the instigator(s), and indeed a necessary part of their plan. Those people are expendable pawns in the eyes of whoever is behind this.

I agree completely that this was a terrible idea from Hamas, they are out gunned 1000 fold… For me the biggest issue here is that the world needs to start looking at what is happening in Palestine as akin to what Russia has done in Ukraine. Israel are the historic aggressors here.

diddly-squat said:

captain_spalding said:

dv said:

Death toll in Israel after Hamas attack has passed 700, defense force says

The death toll in Israel a day after the surprise attack by Hamas fighters breached the border from Gaza has risen to “over 700 dead,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Maj. Ben Wahlhaus, told CNN on Sunday.

https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-10-08-23/index.html

This is not going to, and never could have, produce a good outcome for the people in Gaza.

Of all the hornets’ nests in the world to stir up, Israel is one of the least likely to not take the most severe retaliatory action.

The people of Gaza are being sacrificed, with the only question being ‘who’s putting them on the altar?’.

Is it Hamas? Is it Hezbollah? Is it it Syria or Iran, perhaps with Russian backing? Is it one or more Gulf states? Is it Saudi Arabia?

No matter whose idea this attack is or was, whatever the people in Gaza suffer is fully anticipated by the instigator(s), and indeed a necessary part of their plan. Those people are expendable pawns in the eyes of whoever is behind this.

I agree completely that this was a terrible idea from Hamas, they are out gunned 1000 fold… For me the biggest issue here is that the world needs to start looking at what is happening in Palestine as akin to what Russia has done in Ukraine. Israel are the historic aggressors here.

Perhaps its just started by people who enjoying killing and power games and it has no aim.
I mean this is humanity we are talking about I’m sure people exist who try to see if they can get the world to burn

All I know that Samson slew 1000 Hamas with the ass bone of a jew.

Cymek said:

diddly-squat said:

captain_spalding said:

This is not going to, and never could have, produce a good outcome for the people in Gaza.

Of all the hornets’ nests in the world to stir up, Israel is one of the least likely to not take the most severe retaliatory action.

The people of Gaza are being sacrificed, with the only question being ‘who’s putting them on the altar?’.

Is it Hamas? Is it Hezbollah? Is it it Syria or Iran, perhaps with Russian backing? Is it one or more Gulf states? Is it Saudi Arabia?

No matter whose idea this attack is or was, whatever the people in Gaza suffer is fully anticipated by the instigator(s), and indeed a necessary part of their plan. Those people are expendable pawns in the eyes of whoever is behind this.

I agree completely that this was a terrible idea from Hamas, they are out gunned 1000 fold… For me the biggest issue here is that the world needs to start looking at what is happening in Palestine as akin to what Russia has done in Ukraine. Israel are the historic aggressors here.

Perhaps its just started by people who enjoying killing and power games and it has no aim.
I mean this is humanity we are talking about I’m sure people exist who try to see if they can get the world to burn

My money is on Putin starting this to get the Western world to take their eye off Ukraine.

Kingy said:

Cymek said:

diddly-squat said:

I agree completely that this was a terrible idea from Hamas, they are out gunned 1000 fold… For me the biggest issue here is that the world needs to start looking at what is happening in Palestine as akin to what Russia has done in Ukraine. Israel are the historic aggressors here.

Perhaps its just started by people who enjoying killing and power games and it has no aim.
I mean this is humanity we are talking about I’m sure people exist who try to see if they can get the world to burn

My money is on Putin starting this to get the Western world to take their eye off Ukraine.

He’s long been fomenting strife all around the globe.

captain_spalding said:

dv said:

Death toll in Israel after Hamas attack has passed 700, defense force says

The death toll in Israel a day after the surprise attack by Hamas fighters breached the border from Gaza has risen to “over 700 dead,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Maj. Ben Wahlhaus, told CNN on Sunday.

https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-10-08-23/index.html

This is not going to, and never could have, produce a good outcome for the people in Gaza.

Of all the hornets’ nests in the world to stir up, Israel is one of the least likely to not take the most severe retaliatory action.

The people of Gaza are being sacrificed, with the only question being ‘who’s putting them on the altar?’.

Is it Hamas? Is it Hezbollah? Is it it Syria or Iran, perhaps with Russian backing? Is it one or more Gulf states? Is it Saudi Arabia?

No matter whose idea this attack is or was, whatever the people in Gaza suffer is fully anticipated by the instigator(s), and indeed a necessary part of their plan. Those people are expendable pawns in the eyes of whoever is behind this.

I suspect they have despaired of a good outcome of any kind. They have been besieged for a long time now.

buffy said:

captain_spalding said:

dv said:

Death toll in Israel after Hamas attack has passed 700, defense force says

The death toll in Israel a day after the surprise attack by Hamas fighters breached the border from Gaza has risen to “over 700 dead,” Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Maj. Ben Wahlhaus, told CNN on Sunday.

https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-10-08-23/index.html

This is not going to, and never could have, produce a good outcome for the people in Gaza.

Of all the hornets’ nests in the world to stir up, Israel is one of the least likely to not take the most severe retaliatory action.

The people of Gaza are being sacrificed, with the only question being ‘who’s putting them on the altar?’.

Is it Hamas? Is it Hezbollah? Is it it Syria or Iran, perhaps with Russian backing? Is it one or more Gulf states? Is it Saudi Arabia?

No matter whose idea this attack is or was, whatever the people in Gaza suffer is fully anticipated by the instigator(s), and indeed a necessary part of their plan. Those people are expendable pawns in the eyes of whoever is behind this.

I suspect they have despaired of a good outcome of any kind. They have been besieged for a long time now.

Genocide imminent¡. Population Zero, free land for settlement¡

Akram Al Satarri lives in Gaza with his family and said he works as a journalist.

He told ABC Radio Melbourne earlier today he believed the conflict was different this time.

“We have lived a very long time under occupation,” he said.

“The way the Palestinian resistance factions are moving … the way they are dealing with the Israeli army, it shows some dynamics are changing.

“It shows some sort of solution must be found to find a just solution for the chronic crisis and bottlenecks that the people of Gaza and Palestine have been living.”

Mr Al Satarri said the bodies of people he knew were being retrieved from the rubble from strikes on Gaza.

“I don’t think anyone in Gaza is safe. There are no guarantees anyone in Gaza will survive,” he said.

“The sounds of explosions are everywhere – wherever you go, you will hear them.”

He said there was already a severe shortage of food, with the Israeli government blocking supplies from reaching the Gaza Strip after the attack by Hamas.

At the moment the US doesn’t have an ambassador to Israel because Senate Republicans are refusing to confirm this position or hundreds of other military and diplomatic positions. There is instead an interim charge d’affaires carrying out the duties.

Kingy said:

Cymek said:

diddly-squat said:

I agree completely that this was a terrible idea from Hamas, they are out gunned 1000 fold… For me the biggest issue here is that the world needs to start looking at what is happening in Palestine as akin to what Russia has done in Ukraine. Israel are the historic aggressors here.

Perhaps its just started by people who enjoying killing and power games and it has no aim.
I mean this is humanity we are talking about I’m sure people exist who try to see if they can get the world to burn

My money is on Putin starting this to get the Western world to take their eye off Ukraine.

Palestinians Have No Agency ¡

roughbarked said:

Kingy said:

Cymek said:

Perhaps its just started by people who enjoying killing and power games and it has no aim.
I mean this is humanity we are talking about I’m sure people exist who try to see if they can get the world to burn

My money is on Putin starting this to get the Western world to take their eye off Ukraine.

He’s long been fomenting strife all around the globe.

So you mean Israel won’t admit it but it was actually a false double cross flag and it was their security forces who tricked Palestinians into killing a handful of dudes allowing an all out declaration of war in response so they can complete the genocide and erase the alleged terrorists from the planet for once and for all nice.

Kingy said:

My money is on Putin starting this to get the Western world to take their eye off Ukraine.

Quite the opposite. Israel have a large ex-Russian population, who settled there after the fall of the Soviet Union. While nowhere near a majority of the population, they are a statistically significant, or at least electorally significant, minority – somewhere around 10-15% of the population. Strangely enough. these people are still pro-Russia in regards to the Ukraine invasion, and the Israeli government has been one of the laggards (amongst broadly-defined industrialised democracies) in condemning Russia or offering assistance to Ukraine.

party_pants said:

Kingy said:

My money is on Putin starting this to get the Western world to take their eye off Ukraine.

Quite the opposite. Israel have a large ex-Russian population, who settled there after the fall of the Soviet Union. While nowhere near a majority of the population, they are a statistically significant, or at least electorally significant, minority – somewhere around 10-15% of the population. Strangely enough. these people are still pro-Russia in regards to the Ukraine invasion, and the Israeli government has been one of the laggards (amongst broadly-defined industrialised democracies) in condemning Russia or offering assistance to Ukraine.

Though, allegedly

.

SCIENCE said:

party_pants said:

Kingy said:

My money is on Putin starting this to get the Western world to take their eye off Ukraine.

Quite the opposite. Israel have a large ex-Russian population, who settled there after the fall of the Soviet Union. While nowhere near a majority of the population, they are a statistically significant, or at least electorally significant, minority – somewhere around 10-15% of the population. Strangely enough. these people are still pro-Russia in regards to the Ukraine invasion, and the Israeli government has been one of the laggards (amongst broadly-defined industrialised democracies) in condemning Russia or offering assistance to Ukraine.

Though, allegedly

.

I suspect Iran to be behind all of it as first assumption until proven otherwise. They have been a long-standing ally of Palestinian militants. They are also enemies of Saudi Arabia. In recent times Israel and Saudi Arabia have been moving towards normalising relations and getting aslong like two normal countries with diplomatic and economic ties and all that. If Saudi Arasbia does this, then all sorts of other Arab & African muslim states will do the same. Once they all do that they will of necessity discard support for Palestine and lhang them out to dry. The Palestinians don’t want this, they are provoking a war and the propaganda is ready to go to make this Israeli oppression of muslims, to stir up opposition to muslim countries normalising relations with Israel. The Iranians are just cunts.

SCIENCE said:

roughbarked said:

Kingy said:

My money is on Putin starting this to get the Western world to take their eye off Ukraine.

He’s long been fomenting strife all around the globe.

So you mean Israel won’t admit it but it was actually a false double cross flag and it was their security forces who tricked Palestinians into killing a handful of dudes allowing an all out declaration of war in response so they can complete the genocide and erase the alleged terrorists from the planet for once and for all nice.

No. That isn’t what he meant.

party_pants said:

SCIENCE said:

party_pants said:

Quite the opposite. Israel have a large ex-Russian population, who settled there after the fall of the Soviet Union. While nowhere near a majority of the population, they are a statistically significant, or at least electorally significant, minority – somewhere around 10-15% of the population. Strangely enough. these people are still pro-Russia in regards to the Ukraine invasion, and the Israeli government has been one of the laggards (amongst broadly-defined industrialised democracies) in condemning Russia or offering assistance to Ukraine.

Though, allegedly

.

I suspect Iran to be behind all of it as first assumption until proven otherwise. They have been a long-standing ally of Palestinian militants. They are also enemies of Saudi Arabia. In recent times Israel and Saudi Arabia have been moving towards normalising relations and getting aslong like two normal countries with diplomatic and economic ties and all that. If Saudi Arasbia does this, then all sorts of other Arab & African muslim states will do the same. Once they all do that they will of necessity discard support for Palestine and lhang them out to dry. The Palestinians don’t want this, they are provoking a war and the propaganda is ready to go to make this Israeli oppression of muslims, to stir up opposition to muslim countries normalising relations with Israel. The Iranians are just cunts.

I gree that Iran is a behind the scenes player.

Remember when ASIO brought the ISIS brides back to Australia?

Analysis from the abc conversations: No matter who loses the war between Hamas and Israel, Iran wins

roughbarked said:

Analysis from the abc conversations: No matter who loses the war between Hamas and Israel, Iran wins

Like i said the other day, the people of Gaza are insignificant and expendable pawns to the instigators of the attack.

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

Analysis from the abc conversations: No matter who loses the war between Hamas and Israel, Iran wins

Like i said the other day, the people of Gaza are insignificant and expendable pawns to the instigators of the attack.

I posted it for you.

roughbarked said:

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

Analysis from the abc conversations: No matter who loses the war between Hamas and Israel, Iran wins

Like i said the other day, the people of Gaza are insignificant and expendable pawns to the instigators of the attack.

I posted it for you.

Ta.

roughbarked said:

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

Analysis from the abc conversations: No matter who loses the war between Hamas and Israel, Iran wins

Like i said the other day, the people of Gaza are insignificant and expendable pawns to the instigators of the attack.

I posted it for you.

Ta.

Israel’s Worst Day at War
Oct. 7, 2023

By Thomas L. Friedman

When I need the most accurate analysis about Israel, the first call I always make is to my longtime friend and reporting partner there, Nahum Barnea, a veteran Yediot newspaper columnist. When I called him on Saturday afternoon for his read on the Hamas attack on Israel, I was stunned by his first response: “This is the worst day that I can remember in military terms in the history of Israel, including the blunder of the Yom Kippur War, which was terrible.”

Nahum is a careful reporter who has covered every major event in Israel for the past half century, and when he explained his rationale, I realized it was an understatement.

This is not your usual Hamas-Israel dust-up. The Gaza-Israel border is only 37 miles long, but the shock waves this war will unleash will not only thrust Israel and the Palestinians of Gaza into turmoil, but will also slam into Ukraine and Saudi Arabia and most likely Iran. Why? Any prolonged Israel-Hamas war could divert more U.S. military equipment needed by Kyiv to Tel Aviv, and it will make the proposed Saudi-Israeli normalization deal impossible — for now. And if it turns out that Iran encouraged the Hamas attack to scuttle that Israeli-Saudi deal, it could raise tensions between Israel and Iran and Tehran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, and also between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This is an incredibly dangerous moment on multiple fronts.

But going back to Nahum’s point: Why is this war such a disaster for Israel, worse than the Yom Kippur surprise attack from Egypt and Syria, which happened 50 years and one day ago? For starters, said Nahum, there is the sheer humiliation of it for the Israeli military: “In 1973 we were attacked by the biggest Arab army, Egypt.”

This time Israel was invaded in 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including communities as far as 15 miles inside Israel, by a military force belonging to “the equivalent of Luxembourg.” And yet this tiny force not only invaded Israel, overwhelming Israeli border troops; it took Israeli hostages back to Gaza across that same border — a border where Israel had spent roughly $1 billion erecting a barrier that was supposed to be virtually impenetrable. That is a shocking blow to Israel’s deterrent capabilities.

Second, he noted, Israel has always prided itself on the ability of its intelligence services to penetrate Hamas and Palestinian militants in the West Bank and get early warnings. For the past few weeks, as anyone following the news from Israel knows, Hamas was conducting what appeared to be practice maneuvers for just this kind of attack all along the Gaza border — right before the eyes of the Israeli military.

But it appears that Israeli intelligence interpreted the moves as Hamas just trying to mess with the heads of the Israeli military and make commanders a little nervous, not as a prelude for an attack. Israeli intelligence apparently believed that Hamas desperately needed more financial assistance from Qatar, which has given Hamas over $1 billion in aid since 2012, and work permits for Gazans to work in Israel — and both Israel and Qatar have always required a quiet border in return.

“The intelligence interpretation is that they were training for something that they would never dare to do,” Nahum said. “It was bad judgment and arrogance.” Hamas instead launched an incredibly complex and sophisticated invasion from land and sea.

But now we get to the really terrible part for Israel. Hamas was not only able to cross into Israel and attack Israeli communities and army bases, but it was also able to kidnap a number of Israelis — reportedly including some older people, children and at least one soldier — and take them back to Gaza. Associated Press photos “showed an abducted elderly Israeli woman being brought back into Gaza on a golf cart by Hamas gunmen and another woman squeezed between two fighters on a motorcycle,” A.P. reported. Pictures of Israeli bodies taken to Gaza and being dragged into the streets were circulating on the internet.

At the same time, Palestinian fighters took groups of Israelis hostage in the border communities of Be’eri and Ofakim, but they were eventually freed by Israeli special forces.

This is going to be a huge problem for Israel. In a previous term, in 2011, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including 280 serving life sentences, to get one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, back from Hamas in Gaza. Bibi may be called on to empty every Israeli prison of Palestinians if Hamas is holding older people and children in Gaza, Nahum noted.

Netanyahu promised on Saturday to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in Gaza, but what if Hamas is holding Israeli civilians who could be used as human shields? That will curb Israel’s room for retaliation.

“Everything the army does in Gaza going forward will require them to take into account the impact it could have on the lives of civilian hostages,” Nahum said.

Finally, Nahum noted, the top ranks of the military and the prime minister, who chairs the security cabinet, know right now that down the road there will probably be some kind of commission of inquiry into how the Hamas invasion was allowed to happen.

So they must now conduct this war, make excruciating decisions about trade-offs among deterrence, retaliation, getting hostages back from Hamas and maybe even invading Gaza, knowing all the time that even if they manage all of these perfectly, some kind of inquiry awaits them at the end of the road. It is not easy to think straight under those conditions.

As this column has been pointing out ever since he came back to power, Netanyahu’s politics of division have done terrible damage to Israel. Bibi prioritized a judicial putsch to strip the Israeli Supreme Court of its power to oversee his government — over all other priorities. In the process he fractured Israeli society and its military. And people have been warning for months how dangerous this could be. Just this week I quoted a former director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, Dan Harel, telling a Tel Aviv democracy rally that “I have never seen our national security in a worse state” and that there has already been damage to the reserve units of essential Israel Defense Forces formations, “which has reduced readiness and operational capability.”

But as bad as Netanyahu has been for Israel, Hamas has been a deadly curse for the Palestinian people since it took over Gaza in 2007. The billion-plus dollars in aid that it received from Qatar alone over the years could have gone into building Gaza into a productive society, with decent schools, universities and infrastructure, that might have been a model for a future Palestinian state with the West Bank. Instead, Hamas has devoted most of its energies and resources to digging tunnels into Israel and building rockets to try to destroy a vastly more powerful enemy — thus depriving Gazans of any chance to realize their full potential, via a government that is decent, democratic and productive.

Why did Hamas launch this war now, without any immediate provocation? One has to wonder if it was not on behalf of the Palestinian people but rather at the behest of Iran, an important supplier of money and arms to Hamas, to help prevent the budding normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia, Iran’s rival, and Israel. Such a deal, as it was being drawn up, would also benefit the more moderate West Bank Palestinian Authority — by delivering to it a huge infusion of cash from Saudi Arabia, as well as curbs on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and other advances to preserve a two-state solution. As a result, West Bank leaders might have earned a desperately needed boost of legitimacy from the Palestinian masses, threatening the legitimacy of Hamas.

That U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal also would have been a diplomatic earthquake that would have most likely required Netanyahu to jettison the most extreme members of his cabinet in return for forging an alliance between the Jewish state and the Sunni-led states of the Persian Gulf against Iran. Altogether, it would have been one of the biggest shifts in the tectonic plates of the region in 75 years. In the wake of this Hamas attack, that deal is now in the deep freeze, as the Saudis have had to link themselves more closely than ever with Palestinian interests, not just their own.

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Indeed, within hours of the Hamas invasion, Saudi Arabia issued a statement saying, according to Al Arabiya network: “The kingdom is closely following up on the unprecedented developments between a number of Palestinian factions and the Israeli occupying forces,” adding that it has “repeatedly warned of the consequences of of the situation as a result of the occupation as well as of depriving the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights and of systematic provocations against their holy .”

I am watching how the Hamas-Israel earthquake will shake up another earthquake.

Ukraine was already dealing with the temblors in the U.S. government. The toppling of the speaker of the House, combined with an increasingly vocal minority of Republican lawmakers — shockingly to me — coming out against any more economic and military aid to Ukraine has created a political mess that has resulted, for now, in no more U.S. aid for Ukraine being approved. If Israel is about to invade Gaza and embark on a long war, Ukraine will have to worry about competition from Tel Aviv for Patriot missiles as well as 155-millimeter artillery shells and other basic armaments that Ukraine desperately needs more of and Israel surely will, too.

Vladimir Putin has noticed. Last Thursday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, he said that Ukraine was being propped up “thanks to multibillion donations that come each month.” He added, “Just imagine the aid stops tomorrow.” Ukraine “will live for only a week when they run out of ammo.”

Can anything good come from this terrible new Hamas-Israel war? It’s far too early to say, but another longtime Israeli friend and analyst I trust, Prof. Victor Friedman (no relation), who teaches behavioral science at Jezreel Valley College in central Israel and knows the Israeli Arab community very well, wrote me late today, saying: “This horrid situation is still an opportunity, just like the Yom Kippur War turned out to be an opportunity that ended with a peace agreement with Egypt. The only real victory will be if what happens next — probably Israel going into Gaza — creates conditions for a real, stable settlement with the Palestinians.” In light of what the Palestinians did today, he said, they can “claim some ‘victory,’ no matter what happens next.” The point is, he added, ‘Someone needs to think beyond more force and more force.”

Personally, I do not believe that Hamas can ever be a partner for a secure peace with Israel. Hamas has had way too many chances for way too many years to prove that the responsibilities of governing in Gaza would moderate its goal of destroying the Jewish state. It turns out to be nothing more than a Palestinian Islamist mafia, interested only in preserving its grip on Gaza and being ready to serve as a cat’s paw for Iran instead of making its main goal a new future for Palestinians there and in the West Bank. Its history of rule in Gaza is shameful.

But the Palestinian Authority can be a partner. So if there is going to be an Israeli invasion of Gaza to try to destroy Hamas, it has to be paired with a political initiative that empowers and helps to strengthen that Palestinian Authority so we can forge, as Victor put it, “a settlement that provides all sides with something they can live with. Otherwise, sooner or later, we will be right back in the same situation — only worse. That was the true lesson of the Yom Kippur War.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/07/opinion/israel-hamas-attack-friedman.html?

https://youtu.be/Uar3I_LUSyM?si=c9bFqSLszxDHwW6H

Former PM Ehud Olmert speaks on the brutal attacks by Hamas, suspects Iranian involvement, and has pointed comments about Netanyahu.

dv said:

https://youtu.be/Uar3I_LUSyM?si=c9bFqSLszxDHwW6H

Former PM Ehud Olmert speaks on the brutal attacks by Hamas, suspects Iranian involvement, and has pointed comments about Netanyahu.

Certainly damning of Netanyahu.

I wonder if Putin’s likely tacid support of Iranian meddling in Israel might prompt Netanyahu to finally pick a side in Ukraine.

Witty Rejoinder said:

I wonder if Putin’s likely tacid support of Iranian meddling in Israel might prompt Netanyahu to finally pick a side in Ukraine.

‘tacit

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

https://youtu.be/Uar3I_LUSyM?si=c9bFqSLszxDHwW6H

Former PM Ehud Olmert speaks on the brutal attacks by Hamas, suspects Iranian involvement, and has pointed comments about Netanyahu.

Certainly damning of Netanyahu.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

Gaza is getting hammered right now. :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcPPJqKsTR8

Spiny Norman said:

Gaza is getting hammered right now. :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcPPJqKsTR8

Listening to that video, there’s the unmistakable sound of a prop-driven aircraft of some sort flying orbits near that camera position, with the top-left video being the one that’s transmitting the audio.
I suspect that the aircraft is an observation drone, a camera in the air for the Israelis, as it doesn’t have a transponder due to it not appearing on Flight Radar 24.
https://www.flightradar24.com/AYT102/32677811
The plane that the FR24 is focused on is a fair bit braver than I was, no way I’d go anywhere near that area in the air.

Spiny Norman said:

Spiny Norman said:

Gaza is getting hammered right now. :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcPPJqKsTR8

Listening to that video, there’s the unmistakable sound of a prop-driven aircraft of some sort flying orbits near that camera position, with the top-left video being the one that’s transmitting the audio.
I suspect that the aircraft is an observation drone, a camera in the air for the Israelis, as it doesn’t have a transponder due to it not appearing on Flight Radar 24.
https://www.flightradar24.com/AYT102/32677811
The plane that the FR24 is focused on is a fair bit braver than I was, no way I’d go anywhere near that area in the air.

Jet over the city now. I wonder if the drone is being used as a laser designator for targets.

Spiny Norman said:

Spiny Norman said:

Spiny Norman said:

Gaza is getting hammered right now. :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcPPJqKsTR8

Listening to that video, there’s the unmistakable sound of a prop-driven aircraft of some sort flying orbits near that camera position, with the top-left video being the one that’s transmitting the audio.
I suspect that the aircraft is an observation drone, a camera in the air for the Israelis, as it doesn’t have a transponder due to it not appearing on Flight Radar 24.
https://www.flightradar24.com/AYT102/32677811
The plane that the FR24 is focused on is a fair bit braver than I was, no way I’d go anywhere near that area in the air.

Jet over the city now. I wonder if the drone is being used as a laser designator for targets.

I see a US State Dept Dash-8 headed from Jordan to Baghdad, and a C-130 heading west out of Israel which belong to the Argentinian Air Force, of all things.

captain_spalding said:

Spiny Norman said:

Spiny Norman said:

Listening to that video, there’s the unmistakable sound of a prop-driven aircraft of some sort flying orbits near that camera position, with the top-left video being the one that’s transmitting the audio.
I suspect that the aircraft is an observation drone, a camera in the air for the Israelis, as it doesn’t have a transponder due to it not appearing on Flight Radar 24.
https://www.flightradar24.com/AYT102/32677811
The plane that the FR24 is focused on is a fair bit braver than I was, no way I’d go anywhere near that area in the air.

Jet over the city now. I wonder if the drone is being used as a laser designator for targets.

I see a US State Dept Dash-8 headed from Jordan to Baghdad, and a C-130 heading west out of Israel which belong to the Argentinian Air Force, of all things.

Yeah.
And every time I hear the jet go over, there’s a large explosion in the distance. :(

captain_spalding said:

Spiny Norman said:

Spiny Norman said:

Listening to that video, there’s the unmistakable sound of a prop-driven aircraft of some sort flying orbits near that camera position, with the top-left video being the one that’s transmitting the audio.
I suspect that the aircraft is an observation drone, a camera in the air for the Israelis, as it doesn’t have a transponder due to it not appearing on Flight Radar 24.
https://www.flightradar24.com/AYT102/32677811
The plane that the FR24 is focused on is a fair bit braver than I was, no way I’d go anywhere near that area in the air.

Jet over the city now. I wonder if the drone is being used as a laser designator for targets.

I see a US State Dept Dash-8 headed from Jordan to Baghdad, and a C-130 heading west out of Israel which belong to the Argentinian Air Force, of all things.

Could the C-130 be an evacuation flight? (Mr buffy’s suggestion)

buffy said:

captain_spalding said:

Spiny Norman said:

Jet over the city now. I wonder if the drone is being used as a laser designator for targets.

I see a US State Dept Dash-8 headed from Jordan to Baghdad, and a C-130 heading west out of Israel which belong to the Argentinian Air Force, of all things.

Could the C-130 be an evacuation flight? (Mr buffy’s suggestion)

That might explain it. But i don’t envy them, going from Israel to Argentina in the belly of a Hercules.

captain_spalding said:

buffy said:

captain_spalding said:

I see a US State Dept Dash-8 headed from Jordan to Baghdad, and a C-130 heading west out of Israel which belong to the Argentinian Air Force, of all things.

Could the C-130 be an evacuation flight? (Mr buffy’s suggestion)

That might explain it. But i don’t envy them, going from Israel to Argentina in the belly of a Hercules.

LOL

Now there’s Polish Air Force transport plane leaving Tel Aviv.

It does look like evacuation flights under way.

See, it’s Egypt’s fault¡

The Egyptian government has rejected any proposal to establish corridors out of Gaza for Palestinians fleeing Israel’s bombardment, a senior Egyptian official said.

My theory

Left wing mossad / military hierarchies deliberately left the wall unattended to bring down the bibi government. The civil service probably got stacked with the left wing decades ago. Notice how it all kicked off just before the election?

This notion is explored in “the crown “ where the left wing hierarchy of the british civil service DESPISED Churchill – the civil service deliberately ignores and hides any warning from the meteorological Bureau about a catastrophic weather event. People died due to asthma, accidents in thick smog – the plan was to allow the disaster to unfold and then point to Churchill being ineffective.

There’s one scene where Churchill realises hes been lied to and calls a press conference to declare a national emergency. I wonder if he sacked all those responsible in the civil service ?

The dancing israelis might be where mossad warned US intelligence but it was deliberately ignored to start a new war. The dancing israelis were aware of the plot but unsure if it would happen.

Now our war – Is your war

The dancing israelis might be where mossad warned US intelligence but it was deliberately ignored to start a new war. The dancing israelis were aware of the plot but unsure if it would happen.

Now our war – Is your war

The dancing israelis might be where mossad warned US intelligence but it was deliberately ignored to start a new war. The dancing israelis were aware of the plot but unsure if it would happen.

Now our war – Is your war

wookiemeister said:

My theory

Left wing mossad

You’re off to a great start

PALM BEACH, Fla. — He criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called Hezbollah “very smart.” Both less than a week after the attack on Israel.

Trump didn’t use the word “Israel” until almost 20 minutes into his speech, after criticizing his 2024 GOP rivals and praising supporters in the convention center, including comedian Roseanne Barr and GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a close ally who recently led last week’s effort to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“The Biden foreign policy is very paint-by-numbers,” he said. “It’s very predictable. And that at times can embolden our adversaries. President Trump was very unpredictable, and it kept everybody real polite.”

Gaetz, who’d also been scheduled to speak but arrived late following the speakership battle in Washington, D.C., said he agreed with Trump’s assessment that the war in Israel wouldn’t have happened if he was still president.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/11/netanyahu-trump-chides-israel-hamas-war-00121142

Well he is a bit unpredictable.

The spotter drone seems to be back, and there’s a fair bit of shelling hitting the northern end of the Gaza Strip. :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcPPJqKsTR8

Spiny Norman said:

The spotter drone seems to be back, and there’s a fair bit of shelling hitting the northern end of the Gaza Strip. :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcPPJqKsTR8

They appear to be bombing/shelling in a slow wave from north to south.

Boris said:

Fucking hell.

Boris said:

Ref?

Kingy said:

Boris said:

Ref?

Not that I don’t believe you, but there is a LOT of misinformation going on right now.

Kingy said:

Kingy said:

Boris said:

Ref?

Not that I don’t believe you, but there is a LOT of misinformation going on right now.

don’t have one.

Boris said:

Kingy said:

Kingy said:

Ref?

Not that I don’t believe you, but there is a LOT of misinformation going on right now.

don’t have one.

https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/palestine-red-crescent-society-demands-accountability-killing-four-its-paramedics-gaza#:~:text=11.10.2023.,hour%20today%2C%20despite%20prior%20coordination.

Boris said:

Boris said:

Kingy said:

Not that I don’t believe you, but there is a LOT of misinformation going on right now.

don’t have one.

https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/palestine-red-crescent-society-demands-accountability-killing-four-its-paramedics-gaza#:~:text=11.10.2023.,hour%20today%2C%20despite%20prior%20coordination.

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/10/11/exp-palestinian-red-crescent-quest-intv-101103pseg2-cnni-world.cnn

Boris said:

Boris said:

Boris said:

don’t have one.

https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/palestine-red-crescent-society-demands-accountability-killing-four-its-paramedics-gaza#:~:text=11.10.2023.,hour%20today%2C%20despite%20prior%20coordination.

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/10/11/exp-palestinian-red-crescent-quest-intv-101103pseg2-cnni-world.cnn

That looks ugly. I guess that one part of the military agreed to stop, but another part didn’t.

There are going to be a lot of losers in this war, but the winners will be Iran and possibly russia.

Apparently Israel has just bombed two major airports in Syria. Aleppo and Damascus international airports.

¡defence is right!

Kingy said:

Apparently Israel has just bombed two major airports in Syria. Aleppo and Damascus international airports.

I’m sorry to have double checked on this, but I did. As you said, a lot of mis and dis information about at the moment. It checks out.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syria-state-tv-says-israeli-attack-targets-aleppo-damascus-airports-2023-10-12/

buffy said:

Kingy said:

Apparently Israel has just bombed two major airports in Syria. Aleppo and Damascus international airports.

I’m sorry to have double checked on this, but I did. As you said, a lot of mis and dis information about at the moment. It checks out.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syria-state-tv-says-israeli-attack-targets-aleppo-damascus-airports-2023-10-12/

The war is spreading then.

In consideration of the context about what the head of ASIO said.. https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/loose-lips-sink-ships/5109516.html

roughbarked said:

buffy said:

Kingy said:

Apparently Israel has just bombed two major airports in Syria. Aleppo and Damascus international airports.

I’m sorry to have double checked on this, but I did. As you said, a lot of mis and dis information about at the moment. It checks out.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syria-state-tv-says-israeli-attack-targets-aleppo-damascus-airports-2023-10-12/

The war is spreading then.

Unless the Syrians are just cooking up an excuse to have a go at Israel from another direction.

I see our government has managed to get the first repatriation flight sorted from Tel Aviv.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-13/repatriation-flights-220-australians-to-leave-israel/102972294

Do you stand with Israel or Palestine? I’m Jewish, and I stand with both

David Leser
Senior freelance writer
October 13, 2023 — 11.37am

I first visited Israel in 1977, the same year the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his historic visit to Jerusalem to offer Israel his hand in peace. It was a breathtaking moment in global history – one that would cost Sadat his life – and it suddenly transformed the Egyptian leader from Israel’s arch enemy to peacemaker.

In an impassioned plea to the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and, by extension, to Jews around the world, Sadat extended an olive branch that would result in the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty two years later. He also warned his hosts not to forget the Palestinian people.

“The Palestinian problem is the core and essence of the conflict,” he said, “and … so long as it continues to be unresolved, the conflict will continue to aggravate, reaching new dimensions … there can be no peace without the Palestinians. It is a grave error of unpredictable consequences to overlook or brush this aside.”

That is a very dangerous passage to quote at this terrible moment. Dangerous because it could be read by some as an apologia for the heinous acts we have witnessed in Israel in recent days. It is not.

I am the son of a German-Jewish father who fled the Nazis in 1939, just before it became impossible to leave. I am also the son of a Jewish mother who lost her extended family in Latvia two years later to the Nazis.

I have grown up with the intergenerational pain of being Jewish. I have – like most other Jews on this planet – carried the trauma of persecution, exile, wandering and extermination deep in the marrow of my being. I have read with horror – and horror doesn’t even come close to describing this – what Hamas militants have just wrought in a place that I love; a revered, ill-fated place that is contested by two peoples with conflicting claims to the same land. A land where the children of Abraham continue to face each other across the fault line of history, not just with weapons but with crude and vulgar stereotypes.

This may seem all too quaint now to remember, but in 1997, 10 years after being caught up in the first intifada in Gaza, I sat in a room with 25 Israelis and Palestinians listening to people scream at each other over a conflict that they were born into, but was not of their making.

We were at a peace workshop high in rolling hills of olive groves and Jerusalem pines, above the old “armistice line” of 1949 and these Palestinians and Israelis were meeting each other for the first time. I was there as a journalist.

“We live in a prison,” one Palestinian boy cried. “We don’t have any rights; we don’t have any peace.”

“It’s not our fault,” an Israeli woman replied. “We’re looking for peace … but we’re victims too. Why are you blaming us?

“Because you’re Jews,” he said

For four days and nights, these people – left and right, secular and religious, Arab and Jew, occupied and occupier – fought each other’s history, language and culture. They traded wound for wound, memory for memory, loss for loss. They shouted and wept and doubled down on their positions, and then, when they’d had enough, and they were obliged to resist their urge to leave, they began, slowly, to share stories about their lives, their interests, their families and friends. In a slow dawning, they started to confront the dark images they had formed of each other, and began to see each other not as demons but as human beings.

That feels more impossible today than it has ever felt in my lifetime – to call anyone who would engage in this week’s slaughter of children, the elderly, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, revellers, civilians at home and at work, as someone still possessed of humanity.

Perhaps they are not. Perhaps these marauding men who were once little boys in all their sweet innocence and tenderness, have lost their right to this claim. But as with any men who rape and kill and violate, one of the many questions I have is “What turned them from children into monsters?”

Under Israel’s iron-hard 56-year occupation, Palestinians in their millions have been denied basic human rights, such that human rights organisations around the world – including within Israel – have labelled Israel an apartheid state.

Yes, I hear well that this is no time for moral equivalence, not when people’s loved-ones have been slaughtered or are facing execution. But what is the cost of averting one’s gaze from the longest occupation of a subject people in modern history? Or from the millions of Palestinians who now have their electricity, food and water cut off in Gaza? Or from the thousands of Palestinians who have already died, and the thousands, possibly tens of thousands, who may yet die at the hands of an invading army being urged on by millions.

Yes, Hamas is a murderous, militant resistance force, but that is not the same thing as the Palestinian people. Nor is a punishing and extremist government under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the same thing as the Jewish people.

Are we able to hold both peoples’ catastrophic circumstances in our hearts? I don’t know. I hear and read people saying “I stand with Israel” or “I stand with Palestine”. Is it possible to say “I stand with both?” And by that, I mean the innocents on both sides whose lives and hearts have been shattered.

In all my naivety, that’s what I ache for.

I have been accused at various times in my life of being a self-hating Jew because I have endeavoured to present a competing view of history, one where Palestinians also have rights to their homeland, one where they have also suffered unbearably. “Go to your Palestinian friends!” my beloved grandmother once scolded me.

I have also been accused of being a Zionist and defending the Israeli occupation (which I am deeply opposed to) because I have always felt that a people who have known mass murder – as the Jews have, and who live in a complex and perilous region, as the Israelis do – are deserving of our understanding, compassion and support.

But that is not the world we seem to live in. We seem to live in a binary world where one’s allegiance can only be for one side or the other, rather than for a common humanity.

Esther Perel, the internationally renowned psychotherapist, urged this week that we take care not to allow grief for one side to “mean hate for the other”, or that we lose our empathy for those with whom we disagree.

Is it wrong to wish into being a world where there is room enough in our hearts to carry the anguish of two peoples locked in an ancient battle for the same homeland?

The great Irish poet William Butler Yeats said the world was “more full of weeping” than we could understand. Yes it is, and at this moment of unbearable agony for two nations, I can’t help but weep for both.

David Leser is a former Middle East correspondent and regular contributor to Good Weekend.

https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/do-you-stand-with-israel-or-palestine-i-m-jewish-and-i-stand-with-both-20231013-p5ec0j.html

Witty Rejoinder said:

Do you stand with Israel or Palestine? I’m Jewish, and I stand with both

David Leser
Senior freelance writer
October 13, 2023 — 11.37am

I first visited Israel in 1977, the same year the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his historic visit to Jerusalem to offer Israel his hand in peace. It was a breathtaking moment in global history – one that would cost Sadat his life – and it suddenly transformed the Egyptian leader from Israel’s arch enemy to peacemaker.

In an impassioned plea to the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and, by extension, to Jews around the world, Sadat extended an olive branch that would result in the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty two years later. He also warned his hosts not to forget the Palestinian people.

“The Palestinian problem is the core and essence of the conflict,” he said, “and … so long as it continues to be unresolved, the conflict will continue to aggravate, reaching new dimensions … there can be no peace without the Palestinians. It is a grave error of unpredictable consequences to overlook or brush this aside.”

That is a very dangerous passage to quote at this terrible moment. Dangerous because it could be read by some as an apologia for the heinous acts we have witnessed in Israel in recent days. It is not.

I am the son of a German-Jewish father who fled the Nazis in 1939, just before it became impossible to leave. I am also the son of a Jewish mother who lost her extended family in Latvia two years later to the Nazis.

I have grown up with the intergenerational pain of being Jewish. I have – like most other Jews on this planet – carried the trauma of persecution, exile, wandering and extermination deep in the marrow of my being. I have read with horror – and horror doesn’t even come close to describing this – what Hamas militants have just wrought in a place that I love; a revered, ill-fated place that is contested by two peoples with conflicting claims to the same land. A land where the children of Abraham continue to face each other across the fault line of history, not just with weapons but with crude and vulgar stereotypes.

This may seem all too quaint now to remember, but in 1997, 10 years after being caught up in the first intifada in Gaza, I sat in a room with 25 Israelis and Palestinians listening to people scream at each other over a conflict that they were born into, but was not of their making.

We were at a peace workshop high in rolling hills of olive groves and Jerusalem pines, above the old “armistice line” of 1949 and these Palestinians and Israelis were meeting each other for the first time. I was there as a journalist.

“We live in a prison,” one Palestinian boy cried. “We don’t have any rights; we don’t have any peace.”

“It’s not our fault,” an Israeli woman replied. “We’re looking for peace … but we’re victims too. Why are you blaming us?

“Because you’re Jews,” he said

For four days and nights, these people – left and right, secular and religious, Arab and Jew, occupied and occupier – fought each other’s history, language and culture. They traded wound for wound, memory for memory, loss for loss. They shouted and wept and doubled down on their positions, and then, when they’d had enough, and they were obliged to resist their urge to leave, they began, slowly, to share stories about their lives, their interests, their families and friends. In a slow dawning, they started to confront the dark images they had formed of each other, and began to see each other not as demons but as human beings.

That feels more impossible today than it has ever felt in my lifetime – to call anyone who would engage in this week’s slaughter of children, the elderly, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, revellers, civilians at home and at work, as someone still possessed of humanity.

Perhaps they are not. Perhaps these marauding men who were once little boys in all their sweet innocence and tenderness, have lost their right to this claim. But as with any men who rape and kill and violate, one of the many questions I have is “What turned them from children into monsters?”

Under Israel’s iron-hard 56-year occupation, Palestinians in their millions have been denied basic human rights, such that human rights organisations around the world – including within Israel – have labelled Israel an apartheid state.

Yes, I hear well that this is no time for moral equivalence, not when people’s loved-ones have been slaughtered or are facing execution. But what is the cost of averting one’s gaze from the longest occupation of a subject people in modern history? Or from the millions of Palestinians who now have their electricity, food and water cut off in Gaza? Or from the thousands of Palestinians who have already died, and the thousands, possibly tens of thousands, who may yet die at the hands of an invading army being urged on by millions.

Yes, Hamas is a murderous, militant resistance force, but that is not the same thing as the Palestinian people. Nor is a punishing and extremist government under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the same thing as the Jewish people.

Are we able to hold both peoples’ catastrophic circumstances in our hearts? I don’t know. I hear and read people saying “I stand with Israel” or “I stand with Palestine”. Is it possible to say “I stand with both?” And by that, I mean the innocents on both sides whose lives and hearts have been shattered.

In all my naivety, that’s what I ache for.

I have been accused at various times in my life of being a self-hating Jew because I have endeavoured to present a competing view of history, one where Palestinians also have rights to their homeland, one where they have also suffered unbearably. “Go to your Palestinian friends!” my beloved grandmother once scolded me.

I have also been accused of being a Zionist and defending the Israeli occupation (which I am deeply opposed to) because I have always felt that a people who have known mass murder – as the Jews have, and who live in a complex and perilous region, as the Israelis do – are deserving of our understanding, compassion and support.

But that is not the world we seem to live in. We seem to live in a binary world where one’s allegiance can only be for one side or the other, rather than for a common humanity.

Esther Perel, the internationally renowned psychotherapist, urged this week that we take care not to allow grief for one side to “mean hate for the other”, or that we lose our empathy for those with whom we disagree.

Is it wrong to wish into being a world where there is room enough in our hearts to carry the anguish of two peoples locked in an ancient battle for the same homeland?

The great Irish poet William Butler Yeats said the world was “more full of weeping” than we could understand. Yes it is, and at this moment of unbearable agony for two nations, I can’t help but weep for both.

David Leser is a former Middle East correspondent and regular contributor to Good Weekend.

https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/do-you-stand-with-israel-or-palestine-i-m-jewish-and-i-stand-with-both-20231013-p5ec0j.html

Nods.

Michael V said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Do you stand with Israel or Palestine? I’m Jewish, and I stand with both

David Leser
Senior freelance writer
October 13, 2023 — 11.37am

I first visited Israel in 1977, the same year the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his historic visit to Jerusalem to offer Israel his hand in peace. It was a breathtaking moment in global history – one that would cost Sadat his life – and it suddenly transformed the Egyptian leader from Israel’s arch enemy to peacemaker.

In an impassioned plea to the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and, by extension, to Jews around the world, Sadat extended an olive branch that would result in the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty two years later. He also warned his hosts not to forget the Palestinian people.

“The Palestinian problem is the core and essence of the conflict,” he said, “and … so long as it continues to be unresolved, the conflict will continue to aggravate, reaching new dimensions … there can be no peace without the Palestinians. It is a grave error of unpredictable consequences to overlook or brush this aside.”

That is a very dangerous passage to quote at this terrible moment. Dangerous because it could be read by some as an apologia for the heinous acts we have witnessed in Israel in recent days. It is not.

I am the son of a German-Jewish father who fled the Nazis in 1939, just before it became impossible to leave. I am also the son of a Jewish mother who lost her extended family in Latvia two years later to the Nazis.

I have grown up with the intergenerational pain of being Jewish. I have – like most other Jews on this planet – carried the trauma of persecution, exile, wandering and extermination deep in the marrow of my being. I have read with horror – and horror doesn’t even come close to describing this – what Hamas militants have just wrought in a place that I love; a revered, ill-fated place that is contested by two peoples with conflicting claims to the same land. A land where the children of Abraham continue to face each other across the fault line of history, not just with weapons but with crude and vulgar stereotypes.

This may seem all too quaint now to remember, but in 1997, 10 years after being caught up in the first intifada in Gaza, I sat in a room with 25 Israelis and Palestinians listening to people scream at each other over a conflict that they were born into, but was not of their making.

We were at a peace workshop high in rolling hills of olive groves and Jerusalem pines, above the old “armistice line” of 1949 and these Palestinians and Israelis were meeting each other for the first time. I was there as a journalist.

“We live in a prison,” one Palestinian boy cried. “We don’t have any rights; we don’t have any peace.”

“It’s not our fault,” an Israeli woman replied. “We’re looking for peace … but we’re victims too. Why are you blaming us?

“Because you’re Jews,” he said

For four days and nights, these people – left and right, secular and religious, Arab and Jew, occupied and occupier – fought each other’s history, language and culture. They traded wound for wound, memory for memory, loss for loss. They shouted and wept and doubled down on their positions, and then, when they’d had enough, and they were obliged to resist their urge to leave, they began, slowly, to share stories about their lives, their interests, their families and friends. In a slow dawning, they started to confront the dark images they had formed of each other, and began to see each other not as demons but as human beings.

That feels more impossible today than it has ever felt in my lifetime – to call anyone who would engage in this week’s slaughter of children, the elderly, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, revellers, civilians at home and at work, as someone still possessed of humanity.

Perhaps they are not. Perhaps these marauding men who were once little boys in all their sweet innocence and tenderness, have lost their right to this claim. But as with any men who rape and kill and violate, one of the many questions I have is “What turned them from children into monsters?”

Under Israel’s iron-hard 56-year occupation, Palestinians in their millions have been denied basic human rights, such that human rights organisations around the world – including within Israel – have labelled Israel an apartheid state.

Yes, I hear well that this is no time for moral equivalence, not when people’s loved-ones have been slaughtered or are facing execution. But what is the cost of averting one’s gaze from the longest occupation of a subject people in modern history? Or from the millions of Palestinians who now have their electricity, food and water cut off in Gaza? Or from the thousands of Palestinians who have already died, and the thousands, possibly tens of thousands, who may yet die at the hands of an invading army being urged on by millions.

Yes, Hamas is a murderous, militant resistance force, but that is not the same thing as the Palestinian people. Nor is a punishing and extremist government under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the same thing as the Jewish people.

Are we able to hold both peoples’ catastrophic circumstances in our hearts? I don’t know. I hear and read people saying “I stand with Israel” or “I stand with Palestine”. Is it possible to say “I stand with both?” And by that, I mean the innocents on both sides whose lives and hearts have been shattered.

In all my naivety, that’s what I ache for.

I have been accused at various times in my life of being a self-hating Jew because I have endeavoured to present a competing view of history, one where Palestinians also have rights to their homeland, one where they have also suffered unbearably. “Go to your Palestinian friends!” my beloved grandmother once scolded me.

I have also been accused of being a Zionist and defending the Israeli occupation (which I am deeply opposed to) because I have always felt that a people who have known mass murder – as the Jews have, and who live in a complex and perilous region, as the Israelis do – are deserving of our understanding, compassion and support.

But that is not the world we seem to live in. We seem to live in a binary world where one’s allegiance can only be for one side or the other, rather than for a common humanity.

Esther Perel, the internationally renowned psychotherapist, urged this week that we take care not to allow grief for one side to “mean hate for the other”, or that we lose our empathy for those with whom we disagree.

Is it wrong to wish into being a world where there is room enough in our hearts to carry the anguish of two peoples locked in an ancient battle for the same homeland?

The great Irish poet William Butler Yeats said the world was “more full of weeping” than we could understand. Yes it is, and at this moment of unbearable agony for two nations, I can’t help but weep for both.

David Leser is a former Middle East correspondent and regular contributor to Good Weekend.

https://www.theage.com.au/world/middle-east/do-you-stand-with-israel-or-palestine-i-m-jewish-and-i-stand-with-both-20231013-p5ec0j.html

Nods.

On the ABC news coverage there were several good speakers from the Palestine protestors. One of them was an elderly Jew who had stood with the Palestinian protesterd many times. I thought tthat coverage was enlightening and devastating but also positive,

OK, can anyone else see the problem here?

>>She spoke to the ABC shortly before the Israel Defence Forces called for the evacuation of all civilians from Gaza City.<<

>>Israel imposed a total blockade on the Gaza strip on Sunday after thousands of Hamas terrorists breached its border fence and stormed nearby Israeli communities.

Since then, the supply of water, food, medicine and power have been cut off.

The sole remaining access from Egypt was shut down on Tuesday after air strikes hit near the border crossing.<<

From here: ABC story link

buffy said:

OK, can anyone else see the problem here?

>>She spoke to the ABC shortly before the Israel Defence Forces called for the evacuation of all civilians from Gaza City.<<

>>Israel imposed a total blockade on the Gaza strip on Sunday after thousands of Hamas terrorists breached its border fence and stormed nearby Israeli communities.

Since then, the supply of water, food, medicine and power have been cut off.

The sole remaining access from Egypt was shut down on Tuesday after air strikes hit near the border crossing.<<

From here: ABC story link

What Hamas did to the Israelis is unforgivable. What Israel is doing to Gaza is understandable, but also unforgivable.

What Hamas has done to the people in Gaza is unforgivable.

But Hamas values its political and military activities more than it values the people of Gaza.

And, the people who are pushing Hamas’s buttons, the people of Gaza have no value at all, other than as a tool of propaganda.

Sheesh at least fucking kill them with some bullshit plausibly deniable infectious disease or something, that way everyone will embrace the death instead of whinging about the atrocity.

Journalists Are So Lazy

CNN has pored through hundreds of hours of media posted online attempting to corroborate accounts of atrocities committed by Hamas. In one video, which CNN determined to be authentic but has not been able to geolocate, an assailant attacks an injured man with a garden tool in an attempt to behead him. But CNN has not seen anything that would appear to confirm the claims of decapitated children. CNN also visited the ransacked ruins of Kfar Aza on Tuesday and saw no evidence of beheaded youths. Israeli officials have not released any photographs of the incident either.

SCIENCE said:

Journalists Are So Lazy

Tell me about it.

I used to write press releases, and did any ‘journalist’ ever call to verify anything, clarify anything, or ask for more information about anything?

Never. Just print it as they received it, down to the last comma, with their byline attached.

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

Journalists Are So Lazy

Tell me about it.

I used to write press releases, and did any ‘journalist’ ever call to verify anything, clarify anything, or ask for more information about anything?

Never. Just print it as they received it, down to the last comma, with their byline attached.

Bastards.

Peak Warming Man said:

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

Journalists Are So Lazy

Tell me about it.

I used to write press releases, and did any ‘journalist’ ever call to verify anything, clarify anything, or ask for more information about anything?

Never. Just print it as they received it, down to the last comma, with their byline attached.

Bastards.

A form of praise, i suppose. Presumably, they thought that they couldn’t improve on what i sent them. Or else they really were just lazy shits.

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

Journalists Are So Lazy

Tell me about it.

I used to write press releases, and did any ‘journalist’ ever call to verify anything, clarify anything, or ask for more information about anything?

Never. Just print it as they received it, down to the last comma, with their byline attached.

and that is what a press release is. the journo might write an article about that release but the release is published, or should be, as is.

Boris said:

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

Journalists Are So Lazy

Tell me about it.

I used to write press releases, and did any ‘journalist’ ever call to verify anything, clarify anything, or ask for more information about anything?

Never. Just print it as they received it, down to the last comma, with their byline attached.

and that is what a press release is. the journo might write an article about that release but the release is published, or should be, as is.

Yeah, it was good in that way. Wasn’t really impressed with the way that the ones who attached their bylines took the credit. Could’ve bought me a drink at Xmas or something.

captain_spalding said:

Boris said:

captain_spalding said:

Tell me about it.

I used to write press releases, and did any ‘journalist’ ever call to verify anything, clarify anything, or ask for more information about anything?

Never. Just print it as they received it, down to the last comma, with their byline attached.

and that is what a press release is. the journo might write an article about that release but the release is published, or should be, as is.

Yeah, it was good in that way. Wasn’t really impressed with the way that the ones who attached their bylines took the credit. Could’ve bought me a drink at Xmas or something.

if it was labelled as a press release then they didn’t take credit.

Boris said:

captain_spalding said:

Boris said:

and that is what a press release is. the journo might write an article about that release but the release is published, or should be, as is.

Yeah, it was good in that way. Wasn’t really impressed with the way that the ones who attached their bylines took the credit. Could’ve bought me a drink at Xmas or something.

if it was labelled as a press release then they didn’t take credit.

The hell they didn’t. Publish the PR exactly as provided to them, nothing additional, except for ‘by Joe Bloggs, staff journalist’ or whatever.

Aww, who am i kidding, i would have done exactly the same thing.

captain_spalding said:

Boris said:

captain_spalding said:

Yeah, it was good in that way. Wasn’t really impressed with the way that the ones who attached their bylines took the credit. Could’ve bought me a drink at Xmas or something.

if it was labelled as a press release then they didn’t take credit.

The hell they didn’t. Publish the PR exactly as provided to them, nothing additional, except for ‘by Joe Bloggs, staff journalist’ or whatever.

Aww, who am i kidding, i would have done exactly the same thing.

also just the reading would show it was a press release instead of something being reported.

Boris said:

captain_spalding said:

Boris said:

if it was labelled as a press release then they didn’t take credit.

The hell they didn’t. Publish the PR exactly as provided to them, nothing additional, except for ‘by Joe Bloggs, staff journalist’ or whatever.

Aww, who am i kidding, i would have done exactly the same thing.

also just the reading would show it was a press release instead of something being reported.

Sir, you denigrate my talent! I may be obliged to demand satisfaction!

Just watching the live video feed from Gaza, a jet was flying over and about 20 missiles were launched from somewhere in the city after it. I think they all missed.

Hmm, was this a press release

Hamas says Israel’s heavy bombardment of the Gaza Strip has killed 13 hostages, including foreigners, held by the group.

or was it journalism¿

My YT feed posted this video for me, and now I know what I saw yesterday where I thought is was a swarm of anti-aircraft missiles trying to shoot down an Israeli aircraft, it was actually the Iron Dome system the Israeli’s have.
I’d say they were engaging a Hamas rocket before it impacted on Israeli territory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiXj5jfrZcQ

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

Link

How Israel Was Created.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6foH3Zc82ZQ

Spiny Norman said:

How Israel Was Created.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6foH3Zc82ZQ

Those of us who are old enough to remember, do know of this but the people of today don’t have easy access to stuff they never heard of.

dv said:

We love it when every single fucking part of society is just run as/by team sports.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/state-department-diplomats-warned-not-to-call-for-ceasefire-calm-end-to-violence-report/

State Department diplomats warned not to call for ceasefire, calm, end to violence — report

—-

Unusual, for the Department. Perhaps they believe there’s a prospect of eliminating Hamas from Gaza.

dv said:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/state-department-diplomats-warned-not-to-call-for-ceasefire-calm-end-to-violence-report/

State Department diplomats warned not to call for ceasefire, calm, end to violence — report

—-

Unusual, for the Department. Perhaps they believe there’s a prospect of eliminating Hamas from Gaza.

They’re correct, Tsar Bomba covered an area 10 times the size.

Spiny Norman said:

How Israel Was Created.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6foH3Zc82ZQ

The British did much the same in every country they took control. The terrible arrogance and entitlement of Empire coupled with more advanced weaponry. As an additional insult, most still think we were right and proper. What good is history when you think it does not apply to you.

PermeateFree said:

Spiny Norman said:

How Israel Was Created.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6foH3Zc82ZQ

The British did much the same in every country they took control. The terrible arrogance and entitlement of Empire coupled with more advanced weaponry. As an additional insult, most still think we were right and proper. What good is history when you think it does not apply to you.

A few degrees of separation and the sins are forgotten.

Good news ¡ This Week Established That The World Hates Moslem Arabs And Indigenous Australians, But Is Cool With Fascists ¡

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-16/israel-gaza-ukraine-us-support/102979776

Support for Israel has been decisive and real — a stark contrast to the West’s grudging aid for Ukraine

SCIENCE said:

Good news ¡ This Week Established That The World Hates Moslem Arabs And Indigenous Australians, But Is Cool With Fascists ¡

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-16/israel-gaza-ukraine-us-support/102979776

Support for Israel has been decisive and real — a stark contrast to the West’s grudging aid for Ukraine

You know all the reasons for that.

roughbarked said:

SCIENCE said:

Good news ¡ This Week Established That The World Hates Moslem Arabs And Indigenous Australians, But Is Cool With Fascists ¡

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-16/israel-gaza-ukraine-us-support/102979776

Support for Israel has been decisive and real — a stark contrast to the West’s grudging aid for Ukraine

You know all the reasons for that.

AntiSCIENCE Disinformation Agencies¿

buffy said:

buffy said:

buffy said:

I heard this fellow on RN this afternoon. Quite Interesting. He said they have been unable to confirm the baby and children atrocities reported by Israel about the Gaza incursion. He is sure the children in cages was fake news and said the photos were of something else and were not recent. The RN reporter asked him how his efforts go down with his own government. He skipped around the question.

https://fakereporter.net/info

Not much of that is in English though.

Here is the RN link:

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/radionational-drive/-how-israel-gaza-war-disinformation-is-being-spread/102987398

Shrug it was never about the weapons of children mass overboard destruction atrocities, it was always about regime change.

I don’t suppose I’d thought about it, but actually, there are Gazan hostages being held in Israel also. And quite a lot of them, I would guess.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-18/israel-gaza-war-hitting-west-bank-palestinians/102965784

buffy said:

I don’t suppose I’d thought about it, but actually, there are Gazan hostages being held in Israel also. And quite a lot of them, I would guess.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-18/israel-gaza-war-hitting-west-bank-palestinians/102965784

Maybe but we should always support the regionally dominant militaristic country established in the late 1940s that imprisons millions of Muslims in its western areas and seeks completion of its claim over autonomously governed territories.

Lots Of Fun Continues ¡

About 500 Palestinians have been killed in a blast at a Gaza hospital crammed with patients and displaced people, health authorities in the Hamas-ruled enclave say.

Surely 24 hours was enough time to evacuate 500 crammed patients and displaced people, they only needed to move the vulnerable ones that were going to be killed, everyone else would be fine and could stay without wasting evacuation time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdvqCt1vbmY

Hamas said it is open to releasing civilian hostages if Israel stops bombing Gaza. NBC News’ Richard Engel details what else Hamas senior officials are asking for.

No no no no no no no no you have it all wrong,

Israel are a militaristic society and they are all military hostages,

and

Gaza are all terrorists so they should all be bombed into oblivion¡

SCIENCE said:

Lots Of Fun Continues ¡

About 500 Palestinians have been killed in a blast at a Gaza hospital crammed with patients and displaced people, health authorities in the Hamas-ruled enclave say.

Surely 24 hours was enough time to evacuate 500 crammed patients and displaced people, they only needed to move the vulnerable ones that were going to be killed, everyone else would be fine and could stay without wasting evacuation time.

Kill Them All The Terrorists All Of Them Everyone In The Middle East

Jordan cancels Biden summit after hundreds killed in Gaza hospital blast

US president will only visit Israel as Jordan says summit will be held at time when parties could agree to end the ‘war and massacres against Palestinians’.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/17/jordan-cancels-biden-summit-after-hundreds-killed-in-gaza-hospital-blast

SCIENCE said:

SCIENCE said:

Lots Of Fun Continues ¡

About 500 Palestinians have been killed in a blast at a Gaza hospital crammed with patients and displaced people, health authorities in the Hamas-ruled enclave say.

Surely 24 hours was enough time to evacuate 500 crammed patients and displaced people, they only needed to move the vulnerable ones that were going to be killed, everyone else would be fine and could stay without wasting evacuation time.

Kill Them All The Terrorists All Of Them Everyone In The Middle East

Jordan cancels Biden summit after hundreds killed in Gaza hospital blast

US president will only visit Israel as Jordan says summit will be held at time when parties could agree to end the ‘war and massacres against Palestinians’.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/17/jordan-cancels-biden-summit-after-hundreds-killed-in-gaza-hospital-blast

Israel is saying the hospital was hit by a Hamas rocket, presumably in error.

There’s currently no way of independently ascertaining which side is responsible.

Bubblecar said:

SCIENCE said:

SCIENCE said:

Lots Of Fun Continues ¡

About 500 Palestinians have been killed in a blast at a Gaza hospital crammed with patients and displaced people, health authorities in the Hamas-ruled enclave say.

Surely 24 hours was enough time to evacuate 500 crammed patients and displaced people, they only needed to move the vulnerable ones that were going to be killed, everyone else would be fine and could stay without wasting evacuation time.

Kill Them All The Terrorists All Of Them Everyone In The Middle East

Jordan cancels Biden summit after hundreds killed in Gaza hospital blast

US president will only visit Israel as Jordan says summit will be held at time when parties could agree to end the ‘war and massacres against Palestinians’.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/17/jordan-cancels-biden-summit-after-hundreds-killed-in-gaza-hospital-blast

Israel is saying the hospital was hit by a Hamas rocket, presumably in error.

There’s currently no way of independently ascertaining which side is responsible.

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

captain_spalding said:

Bubblecar said:

SCIENCE said:

Kill Them All The Terrorists All Of Them Everyone In The Middle East

Jordan cancels Biden summit after hundreds killed in Gaza hospital blast

US president will only visit Israel as Jordan says summit will be held at time when parties could agree to end the ‘war and massacres against Palestinians’.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/17/jordan-cancels-biden-summit-after-hundreds-killed-in-gaza-hospital-blast

Israel is saying the hospital was hit by a Hamas rocket, presumably in error.

There’s currently no way of independently ascertaining which side is responsible.

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

Forensics can identify the explosive material and the type of missile/bomb.

roughbarked said:

captain_spalding said:

Bubblecar said:

Israel is saying the hospital was hit by a Hamas rocket, presumably in error.

There’s currently no way of independently ascertaining which side is responsible.

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

Forensics can identify the explosive material and the type of missile/bomb.

I don’t think that we’ll be seeing an independent forensic science team working in a Gaza any time soon.

captain_spalding said:

Bubblecar said:

SCIENCE said:

Kill Them All The Terrorists All Of Them Everyone In The Middle East

Jordan cancels Biden summit after hundreds killed in Gaza hospital blast

US president will only visit Israel as Jordan says summit will be held at time when parties could agree to end the ‘war and massacres against Palestinians’.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/17/jordan-cancels-biden-summit-after-hundreds-killed-in-gaza-hospital-blast

Israel is saying the hospital was hit by a Hamas rocket, presumably in error.

There’s currently no way of independently ascertaining which side is responsible.

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

If in the end we find that a Hamas rocket launched from nearby was exploded short by Iron Dome and ended up blowing up the hospital thanks to the idiocy of both sides, might they just hang their heads in shame, cry, kiss and make up¿

SCIENCE said:

captain_spalding said:

Bubblecar said:

Israel is saying the hospital was hit by a Hamas rocket, presumably in error.

There’s currently no way of independently ascertaining which side is responsible.

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

If in the end we find that a Hamas rocket launched from nearby was exploded short by Iron Dome and ended up blowing up the hospital thanks to the idiocy of both sides, might they just hang their heads in shame, cry, kiss and make up¿

Maybe they just set the launcher a few degrees too low, and, whoops!

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

captain_spalding said:

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

Forensics can identify the explosive material and the type of missile/bomb.

I don’t think that we’ll be seeing an independent forensic science team working in a Gaza any time soon.

No. This be the fact. The whole thiing is horrendous and I blame that neten yahoo.

SCIENCE said:

captain_spalding said:

Bubblecar said:

Israel is saying the hospital was hit by a Hamas rocket, presumably in error.

There’s currently no way of independently ascertaining which side is responsible.

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

If in the end we find that a Hamas rocket launched from nearby was exploded short by Iron Dome and ended up blowing up the hospital thanks to the idiocy of both sides, might they just hang their heads in shame, cry, kiss and make up¿

So the iron dome is extended over Gaza now?

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

captain_spalding said:

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

If in the end we find that a Hamas rocket launched from nearby was exploded short by Iron Dome and ended up blowing up the hospital thanks to the idiocy of both sides, might they just hang their heads in shame, cry, kiss and make up¿

Maybe they just set the launcher a few degrees too low, and, whoops!

I don’t know. Is there any footage?

roughbarked said:

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

captain_spalding said:

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

If in the end we find that a Hamas rocket launched from nearby was exploded short by Iron Dome and ended up blowing up the hospital thanks to the idiocy of both sides, might they just hang their heads in shame, cry, kiss and make up¿

Maybe they just set the launcher a few degrees too low, and, whoops!

So the iron dome is extended over Gaza now?

Wouldn’t be surprising, it happened once in Beirut too as we recall…

but yeah we’re getting too silly, time to cool off a bit.

roughbarked said:

SCIENCE said:

captain_spalding said:

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

If in the end we find that a Hamas rocket launched from nearby was exploded short by Iron Dome and ended up blowing up the hospital thanks to the idiocy of both sides, might they just hang their heads in shame, cry, kiss and make up¿

So the iron dome is extended over Gaza now?

Possibly. It’s about 70 km from Tel Aviv to Gaza, which is about the max. range for the Iron Dome radars. Only about 40 km from Be’er Sheva to Gaza, so quite possible that way.

Of course, it’s a mobile system, so units could be sited anywhere much closer to Gaza.

captain_spalding said:

Bubblecar said:

SCIENCE said:

Kill Them All The Terrorists All Of Them Everyone In The Middle East

Jordan cancels Biden summit after hundreds killed in Gaza hospital blast

US president will only visit Israel as Jordan says summit will be held at time when parties could agree to end the ‘war and massacres against Palestinians’.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/17/jordan-cancels-biden-summit-after-hundreds-killed-in-gaza-hospital-blast

Israel is saying the hospital was hit by a Hamas rocket, presumably in error.

There’s currently no way of independently ascertaining which side is responsible.

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

How considerate of them.

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

SCIENCE said:

If in the end we find that a Hamas rocket launched from nearby was exploded short by Iron Dome and ended up blowing up the hospital thanks to the idiocy of both sides, might they just hang their heads in shame, cry, kiss and make up¿

So the iron dome is extended over Gaza now?

Possibly. It’s about 70 km from Tel Aviv to Gaza, which is about the max. range for the Iron Dome radars. Only about 40 km from Be’er Sheva to Gaza, so quite possible that way.

Of course, it’s a mobile system, so units could be sited anywhere much closer to Gaza.

I see.

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

captain_spalding said:

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

Forensics can identify the explosive material and the type of missile/bomb.

I don’t think that we’ll be seeing an independent forensic science team working in a Gaza any time soon.

Nods.

Michael V said:

captain_spalding said:

Bubblecar said:

Israel is saying the hospital was hit by a Hamas rocket, presumably in error.

There’s currently no way of independently ascertaining which side is responsible.

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

How considerate of them.

They have tunnels under hospitals. However these may be up to 30m underground.

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

captain_spalding said:

Israel would never hit a hospital.

Hamas would never locate rocket-launching sites near a hospital.

If in the end we find that a Hamas rocket launched from nearby was exploded short by Iron Dome and ended up blowing up the hospital thanks to the idiocy of both sides, might they just hang their heads in shame, cry, kiss and make up¿

Maybe they just set the launcher a few degrees too low, and, whoops!

False Flag…

Boris said:

Me, when referring to religion from wherever, I respectfully use the old English word bullshit.

Bubblecar said:

Boris said:

Me, when referring to religion from wherever, I respectfully use the old English word bullshit.

I relate religioons to The Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson. Fairy tales with a nasty undertone.

roughbarked said:

Bubblecar said:

Boris said:

Me, when referring to religion from wherever, I respectfully use the old English word bullshit.

I relate religioons to The Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson. Fairy tales with a nasty undertone.

the post was merely to enlighten people that all who cry allahu akbar aren’t muslim. no more no less. but let your hatred flow as it says more about you than most want to know.

SCIENCE said:

buffy said:

I don’t suppose I’d thought about it, but actually, there are Gazan hostages being held in Israel also. And quite a lot of them, I would guess.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-18/israel-gaza-war-hitting-west-bank-palestinians/102965784

Maybe but we should always support the regionally dominant militaristic country established in the late 1940s that imprisons millions of Muslims in its western areas and seeks completion of its claim over autonomously governed territories.

Zing

Boris said:

roughbarked said:

Bubblecar said:

Me, when referring to religion from wherever, I respectfully use the old English word bullshit.

I relate religioons to The Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson. Fairy tales with a nasty undertone.

the post was merely to enlighten people that all who cry allahu akbar aren’t muslim. no more no less. but let your hatred flow as it says more about you than most want to know.

The fact that you interpret disdain for religion as hatred tells us a lot more about you than me.

Religion is just groups of people boasting that they have a better imaginary friend (who can be a bit of a bully, if they’re being honest,) than all those other mobs.

Boris said:

roughbarked said:

Bubblecar said:

Me, when referring to religion from wherever, I respectfully use the old English word bullshit.

I relate religioons to The Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson. Fairy tales with a nasty undertone.

the post was merely to enlighten people that all who cry allahu akbar aren’t muslim. no more no less. but let your hatred flow as it says more about you than most want to know.

For what it is worth, I hadn’t looked at the image.

buffy said:

I don’t suppose I’d thought about it, but actually, there are Gazan hostages being held in Israel also. And quite a lot of them, I would guess.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-18/israel-gaza-war-hitting-west-bank-palestinians/102965784

there is an argument to suggest that the whole of the Gaza is being held hostage by Israel..

Australian media and the Israeli war machine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcd9m0SyfPE

(While listening to this I wondered what it would have been like if Aus media supported Aborigines a small amount of how much the media / Murdoch supports Israel. Must be good having lobby groups and a cooperative press.)

diddly-squat said:

buffy said:

I don’t suppose I’d thought about it, but actually, there are Gazan hostages being held in Israel also. And quite a lot of them, I would guess.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-18/israel-gaza-war-hitting-west-bank-palestinians/102965784

there is an argument to suggest that the whole of the Gaza is being held hostage by Israel..

There is indeed. Although, you could probably call it a siege, really.

buffy said:

diddly-squat said:

buffy said:

I don’t suppose I’d thought about it, but actually, there are Gazan hostages being held in Israel also. And quite a lot of them, I would guess.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-18/israel-gaza-war-hitting-west-bank-palestinians/102965784

there is an argument to suggest that the whole of the Gaza is being held hostage by Israel..

There is indeed. Although, you could probably call it a siege, really.

maybe right now it’s a siege.. but the status quo is that Gaza is, in effect, an open air prison for about 2.0M people, where a significant proportion of the inmates are armed and fanatical and where the prison guards are even more heavily armed and likely equally fanatical.

The IDF entering into ground engagement is going to be very very messy and a lot of young, average, Israeli citizens are going to die at the hands of HAMAS and a lot of young, average, Palestinians are going to be caught in the cross fire.

https://www.trtafrika.com/world/netanyahu-aide-walks-back-gaza-hospital-air-attack-admission-15443552

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aide, Hananya Naftali, walked back controversial comments on Tuesday that suggested Israeli Air Force hit a hospital in Gaza that left 500 Palestinians dead.

An air strike ripped through the Al-Ahly Baptist Hospital in Gaza on Tuesday night and has provoked huge outrage all over the world. Tens of thousands of people have poured onto the streets around the world in support of the Palestinians.

The chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, has termed it a “war crime”.

Naftali made the comments in a post on X that has since been deleted, although screenshots of it had been widely shared on social media.

“Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza. A multiple number of terrorists dead. It’s heartbreaking that Hamas is launching rockets from hospitals, Mosques, schools, and using civilians as human shields,” the post said.

Hospital burning

The post was accompanied by a photo of a fire burning in the hospital after the strike.

However he later posted an explanation blaming a report by Reuters news agency as the source of the information.

“Earlier today I shared a report that was published on @reuters about the bombing at the hospital in Gaza which falsely stated Israel struck the hospital. I mistakenly shared this information in a since-deleted post in which I referenced Hamas’ routine use of hospitals to store weapons caches and conduct terrorist activity. I apologize for this error,” the post said.

He added: “As the IDF does not bomb hospitals, I assumed Israel was targeting one of the Hamas bases in Gaza. It is known that Hamas is using civilians as human shields, it is a war crime and a crime against humanity. This should be the focus.”

——

Times like these show the importance of social media discipline.

LOL

ahahahahahahahahahaha

oh fuck

dv said:

https://www.trtafrika.com/world/netanyahu-aide-walks-back-gaza-hospital-air-attack-admission-15443552

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aide, Hananya Naftali, walked back controversial comments on Tuesday that suggested Israeli Air Force hit a hospital in Gaza that left 500 Palestinians dead.

An air strike ripped through the Al-Ahly Baptist Hospital in Gaza on Tuesday night and has provoked huge outrage all over the world. Tens of thousands of people have poured onto the streets around the world in support of the Palestinians.

The chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, has termed it a “war crime”.

Naftali made the comments in a post on X that has since been deleted, although screenshots of it had been widely shared on social media.

“Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza. A multiple number of terrorists dead. It’s heartbreaking that Hamas is launching rockets from hospitals, Mosques, schools, and using civilians as human shields,” the post said.

Hospital burning

The post was accompanied by a photo of a fire burning in the hospital after the strike.

However he later posted an explanation blaming a report by Reuters news agency as the source of the information.

“Earlier today I shared a report that was published on @reuters about the bombing at the hospital in Gaza which falsely stated Israel struck the hospital. I mistakenly shared this information in a since-deleted post in which I referenced Hamas’ routine use of hospitals to store weapons caches and conduct terrorist activity. I apologize for this error,” the post said.

He added: “As the IDF does not bomb hospitals, I assumed Israel was targeting one of the Hamas bases in Gaza. It is known that Hamas is using civilians as human shields, it is a war crime and a crime against humanity. This should be the focus.”

——

Times like these show the importance of social media discipline.

From a slightly different perspective, one might say times like these show the importance of a lack of social media discipline¡

SCIENCE said:

LOL

ahahahahahahahahahaha

oh fuck

More details here

We’ll probably never know.

dv said:

We’ll probably never know.

This is quite possible.

dv said:

We’ll probably never know.

Latest I could find
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/who-is-to-blame-for-gaza-hospital-bomb-we-scrutinise-the-evidence/ar-AA1iqPi5

Supports suggestion that missiles hit the car park, but does not comment on the likely death toll.

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

We’ll probably never know.

Latest I could find
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/who-is-to-blame-for-gaza-hospital-bomb-we-scrutinise-the-evidence/ar-AA1iqPi5

Supports suggestion that missiles hit the car park, but does not comment on the likely death toll.

All the cars were burned, possibly with occupants.

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

We’ll probably never know.

Latest I could find
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/who-is-to-blame-for-gaza-hospital-bomb-we-scrutinise-the-evidence/ar-AA1iqPi5

Supports suggestion that missiles hit the car park, but does not comment on the likely death toll.

CNN —
The US government assesses that Israel “was not responsible” for the blast at a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday, according to the National Security Council, following President Joe Biden’s comments that a Palestinian militant group was behind the strike.

A spokesperson for the NSC, Adrienne Watson, said the assessment was based on available reporting, including “intelligence, missile activity, and open source video and images of the incident.”

“While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” Watson said in a statement on Wednesday.

Not long after landing in Israel on Wednesday, Biden weighed in on who was behind the strike on the hospital. “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after his arrival in Israel on Wednesday.

Asked what made him confident the Israelis weren’t behind the hospital strike, Biden said: “The data I was shown by my Defense Department.”

In his remarks later on Wednesday, Biden reiterated that based on the information the US has seen, the blast appears to have been “the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/18/politics/us-intel-gaza-hospital-blast/index.html

roughbarked said:

Latest I could find
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/who-is-to-blame-for-gaza-hospital-bomb-we-scrutinise-the-evidence/ar-AA1iqPi5

Supports suggestion that missiles hit the car park, but does not comment on the likely death toll.

All the cars were burned, possibly with occupants.

A good bit of factual reporting there.

The videos, in my own opinion, do tend to suggest an impact by a failed rocket, and the photo shows damage consistent with the explosion of a small explosive payload, such as would be in the rockets usually used by Hamas.

Given that (a) the explosion occurred immediately after the launch of a barrage of Hamas rockets, (b) the explosion appears to have been in line with the trajectory of those rockets, and © it would be a lot of trouble for Israel to to target just one missile at a hospital in the hope that it would eliminate whatever militants or weapons MAY have been in there (no matter how good your intel, and how accurate your missiles, it’‘d be a remarkable demonstration of faith to rely on just one shot), i personally think that the ‘failed rocket’ hypothesis is sound.

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

Latest I could find
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/who-is-to-blame-for-gaza-hospital-bomb-we-scrutinise-the-evidence/ar-AA1iqPi5

Supports suggestion that missiles hit the car park, but does not comment on the likely death toll.

All the cars were burned, possibly with occupants.

A good bit of factual reporting there.

The videos, in my own opinion, do tend to suggest an impact by a failed rocket, and the photo shows damage consistent with the explosion of a small explosive payload, such as would be in the rockets usually used by Hamas.

Given that (a) the explosion occurred immediately after the launch of a barrage of Hamas rockets, (b) the explosion appears to have been in line with the trajectory of those rockets, and © it would be a lot of trouble for Israel to to target just one missile at a hospital in the hope that it would eliminate whatever militants or weapons MAY have been in there (no matter how good your intel, and how accurate your missiles, it’‘d be a remarkable demonstration of faith to rely on just one shot), i personally think that the ‘failed rocket’ hypothesis is sound.

It is a quite reasonable analysis.

Lotta people sharing fresh news but I’m on a four day delay to allow for the fog of war. Does seem likely the hospital fire was caused by a stray Hamas strike. Also the initial reports of beheadings of women and children by Hamas within Israel have been naysaid by Israeli officials. There’s going to be a lot of speculation and misinformation so hold your horses.

dv said:

Lotta people sharing fresh news but I’m on a four day delay to allow for the fog of war. Does seem likely the hospital fire was caused by a stray Hamas strike. Also the initial reports of beheadings of women and children by Hamas within Israel have been naysaid by Israeli officials. There’s going to be a lot of speculation and misinformation so hold your horses.

I thought from the beginning that there was no proof of the said behadings of children, that any footage was likely from ISIS at an earlier date?

dv said:

Lotta people sharing fresh news but I’m on a four day delay to allow for the fog of war. Does seem likely the hospital fire was caused by a stray Hamas strike. Also the initial reports of beheadings of women and children by Hamas within Israel have been naysaid by Israeli officials. There’s going to be a lot of speculation and misinformation so hold your horses.

I really like the way this guy assesses these types of things..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l29IRT16zq0&t=339s

captain_spalding said:

roughbarked said:

Latest I could find
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/who-is-to-blame-for-gaza-hospital-bomb-we-scrutinise-the-evidence/ar-AA1iqPi5

Supports suggestion that missiles hit the car park, but does not comment on the likely death toll.

All the cars were burned, possibly with occupants.

A good bit of factual reporting there.

The videos, in my own opinion, do tend to suggest an impact by a failed rocket, and the photo shows damage consistent with the explosion of a small explosive payload, such as would be in the rockets usually used by Hamas.

Given that (a) the explosion occurred immediately after the launch of a barrage of Hamas rockets, (b) the explosion appears to have been in line with the trajectory of those rockets, and © it would be a lot of trouble for Israel to to target just one missile at a hospital in the hope that it would eliminate whatever militants or weapons MAY have been in there (no matter how good your intel, and how accurate your missiles, it’‘d be a remarkable demonstration of faith to rely on just one shot), i personally think that the ‘failed rocket’ hypothesis is sound.

The three other points that are worth considering here are (1) Like it or not, Israel has a democratically elected government and a free press.. they have a lot to loose in being found out in a lie, (2) Israel use high precision laser-guided or satellite-guided munitions so the likelihood the strike was the result of an off-target attack is low, and (3) Israel likely know the location of every hospital in Gaza

dv said:

Lotta people sharing fresh news but I’m on a four day delay to allow for the fog of war. Does seem likely the hospital fire was caused by a stray Hamas strike. Also the initial reports of beheadings of women and children by Hamas within Israel have been naysaid by Israeli officials. There’s going to be a lot of speculation and misinformation so hold your horses.

Right but if it comes straight from the mouth of those horses we are holding, surely it’s fair to consider that they really said the things they said.

SCIENCE said:

dv said:

Lotta people sharing fresh news but I’m on a four day delay to allow for the fog of war. Does seem likely the hospital fire was caused by a stray Hamas strike. Also the initial reports of beheadings of women and children by Hamas within Israel have been naysaid by Israeli officials. There’s going to be a lot of speculation and misinformation so hold your horses.

Right but if it comes straight from the mouth of those horses we are holding, surely it’s fair to consider that they really said the things they said.

Anybody here able to translate that?

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

dv said:

Lotta people sharing fresh news but I’m on a four day delay to allow for the fog of war. Does seem likely the hospital fire was caused by a stray Hamas strike. Also the initial reports of beheadings of women and children by Hamas within Israel have been naysaid by Israeli officials. There’s going to be a lot of speculation and misinformation so hold your horses.

Right but if it comes straight from the mouth of those horses we are holding, surely it’s fair to consider that they really said the things they said.

Anybody here able to translate that?

I don’t thing so, you going to neen an interpreter.

ahahahahahaha

HMAS Supply and HMAS Stalwart were commissioned in 2021 after being constructed by Spanish state-owned company Navantia … Water supplies on both vessels are currently unsuitable for human consumption

LOL

The Associated Press reported that people had resorted to drinking dirty or sewage-filled water.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-19/contaminated-water-supplies-hit-australian-war-ships/102994906
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-19/gaza-is-facing-an-unprecedented-humanitarian-crisis/102981604

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

dv said:

Lotta people sharing fresh news but I’m on a four day delay to allow for the fog of war. Does seem likely the hospital fire was caused by a stray Hamas strike. Also the initial reports of beheadings of women and children by Hamas within Israel have been naysaid by Israeli officials. There’s going to be a lot of speculation and misinformation so hold your horses.

Right but if it comes straight from the mouth of those horses we are holding, surely it’s fair to consider that they really said the things they said.

Anybody here able to translate that?

Thanks to this new INTERNET thing and modem technology, yous all can¡

https://www.google.com/search?q=translate
https://www.google.com/search?q=hold+your+horses
https://www.google.com/search?q=straight+from+the+horse%27s+mouth

SCIENCE said:

ahahahahahaha

HMAS Supply and HMAS Stalwart were commissioned in 2021 after being constructed by Spanish state-owned company Navantia … Water supplies on both vessels are currently unsuitable for human consumption

LOL

The Associated Press reported that people had resorted to drinking dirty or sewage-filled water.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-19/contaminated-water-supplies-hit-australian-war-ships/102994906
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-19/gaza-is-facing-an-unprecedented-humanitarian-crisis/102981604

I’m not surprised.
I was in Spain in the 80s & found that the Spanish had not adopted the S-bend in their toilets. Straight line from bowl to sewer.

Tamb said:

SCIENCE said:

ahahahahahaha

HMAS Supply and HMAS Stalwart were commissioned in 2021 after being constructed by Spanish state-owned company Navantia … Water supplies on both vessels are currently unsuitable for human consumption

LOL

The Associated Press reported that people had resorted to drinking dirty or sewage-filled water.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-19/contaminated-water-supplies-hit-australian-war-ships/102994906
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-19/gaza-is-facing-an-unprecedented-humanitarian-crisis/102981604

I’m not surprised.
I was in Spain in the 80s & found that the Spanish had not adopted the S-bend in their toilets. Straight line from bowl to sewer.

No worries, spending twice the alleged pandemic budget on … wait, overseas built submarines yet to be commenced … is pure genius¡

Government attacks overseas build

The discovery of “defects” on the Spanish vessels has emerged as the government prepares to respond to a long-awaited review of the navy’s Surface Combatant Fleet which examined Australia’s shipbuilding programs.

Also, yuck.

From Let the Quran Speak, We Cry for the Palestinians
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss
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dv said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

We’ll probably never know.

Latest I could find
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/who-is-to-blame-for-gaza-hospital-bomb-we-scrutinise-the-evidence/ar-AA1iqPi5

Supports suggestion that missiles hit the car park, but does not comment on the likely death toll.

CNN —
The US government assesses that Israel “was not responsible” for the blast at a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday, according to the National Security Council, following President Joe Biden’s comments that a Palestinian militant group was behind the strike.

A spokesperson for the NSC, Adrienne Watson, said the assessment was based on available reporting, including “intelligence, missile activity, and open source video and images of the incident.”

“While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” Watson said in a statement on Wednesday.

Not long after landing in Israel on Wednesday, Biden weighed in on who was behind the strike on the hospital. “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after his arrival in Israel on Wednesday.

Asked what made him confident the Israelis weren’t behind the hospital strike, Biden said: “The data I was shown by my Defense Department.”

In his remarks later on Wednesday, Biden reiterated that based on the information the US has seen, the blast appears to have been “the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/18/politics/us-intel-gaza-hospital-blast/index.html

It is like a thuggish parent who defends in every way (including force), the actions of their nasty and over-indulged child.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-19/gaza-hospital-blast-evidence-israel-palestinian-islamic-jihad/102995432

buffy said:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-19/gaza-hospital-blast-evidence-israel-palestinian-islamic-jihad/102995432

From the report:

‘One possibility for the higher death toll in this explosion is that burning propellant from the rocket rather than explosive ordnance is responsible, something analysts have pointed to based on the daytime photos and footage.’

Yes, that’s quite probably a factor.

Years ago, i read the reportsof the inquiries which followed the losses of HMS Sheffield and Atlasntic Conveyor, and damage to HMS Glamorgan by Exocet missiles in the 1982 Falklands War.

In each case, there was significant emphasis on the damage caused by fire originating from unused fuel in the missile, which spread widely on impact and continued to burn fiercely.

The general impression was that the blast of the warhead was desturctive, but much wider damage was caused by the fuel-fed fires, and it was those fires which largely contributed to the damage to the ships.

captain_spalding said:

buffy said:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-19/gaza-hospital-blast-evidence-israel-palestinian-islamic-jihad/102995432

From the report:

‘One possibility for the higher death toll in this explosion is that burning propellant from the rocket rather than explosive ordnance is responsible, something analysts have pointed to based on the daytime photos and footage.’

Yes, that’s quite probably a factor.

Years ago, i read the reportsof the inquiries which followed the losses of HMS Sheffield and Atlasntic Conveyor, and damage to HMS Glamorgan by Exocet missiles in the 1982 Falklands War.

In each case, there was significant emphasis on the damage caused by fire originating from unused fuel in the missile, which spread widely on impact and continued to burn fiercely.

The general impression was that the blast of the warhead was desturctive, but much wider damage was caused by the fuel-fed fires, and it was those fires which largely contributed to the damage to the ships.

No doubt why FAE weapons work so well against the right target.

Looks like they’re seriously turning on him now

Analysis | Even Netanyahu Loyalists Are Turning Their Backs: ‘After the War, He Has to Go’

‘Netanyahu forced us to form a government of the far-right, which created a rift in the nation and divided large parts of the population. The taxpayers and the ones who serve in the army were excluded. The Likud grassroots abhors extremism and extremists,’ a Likud official said.

…The Likud higher-ups’ remarks speak to the rapid revolution that the party has undergone. Just a week ago, it was still defending Netanyahu, and much of the rank-and-file had adopted the narrative blaming the failures that led to the October 7 massacre exclusively on the defense establishment.

No more. Today, it is almost impossible to find anyone in Likud – despite its many factions and political viewpoints – willing to come to their leader’s defense. Activists without connections to Netanyahu’s bureau or family are no longer prepared to defend him, even if they agree that so long as the war is on, the time is not right to force him from office….

Hospital car park hit by HAMAS rocket. The strike managed to loosen some stones. Hospital building not hit – there’s pictures of the car park out there

My guesses the solid fuel grain had a crack in it and an over pressure happened. Blows up the combustion chamber and the rocket falls back to earth

As people are saying

Unburnt fuel might have been ignited by the war head detonating

Remember the warhead is packed with shrapnel like ball bearings to cause maximum casualties

I’d say that propellant shape could cause issues too

Ideally you’d want a star shape hole to increase surface area of the burning surface. I’ve seen they are using SUGAR for the fuel which is a sugar / toffee rocket – I’d say this fuel makes the fuel slug highly fragile and susceptible to cracking.

wookiemeister said:

I’d say that propellant shape could cause issues too

Ideally you’d want a star shape hole to increase surface area of the burning surface. I’ve seen they are using SUGAR for the fuel which is a sugar / toffee rocket – I’d say this fuel makes the fuel slug highly fragile and susceptible to cracking.

I’d also be adding aluminium powder to the fuel to increase the temp of the combustion. The aluminium powder must pick up oxygen and release more heat

They should have conducted proper propellant testing before moving forward

https://youtu.be/62FAnfkm6vU?si=A2Dp4QTAQ2fUFLDJ

Following Biden’s meeting, Israel has agreed to allow some aid to flow through the Gazan border with Egypt.

Speaking of lapidicolage we apologise in advance for not making light schroedinger making light of the situation we just discovered.

CNN —

A State Department official has resigned from the agency over the Biden administration’s approach to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the official announced on LinkedIn Wednesday.

Josh Paul, who said he has worked in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for more than 11 years, said in his LinkedIn post that he resigned “due to a policy disagreement concerning our continued lethal assistance to Israel.”

“Let me be clear,” Paul wrote. “Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah, or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American interest.”

“This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia,” Paul adds. “That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”

Paul said that he cannot work to support a set of policy decisions that include sending over arms, which he believes to be “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said the agency appreciates that employees have “different” beliefs.

“We understand, we expect, we appreciate that different people working in this department have different political beliefs, have different personal beliefs, have different beliefs about what the United States policy should be,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Thursday.

“With respect to this specific criticism that has been aired, we have made very clear that we strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself. We are going to continue providing the security assistance that they need to defend themselves. We think they have a right, not a right but an obligation, to defend themselves against these terrorist attacks – I think any country would do that. But the President and the Secretary has spoken to this very clearly that we expect Israel to abide by all international law as they defend themselves,” Miller added.

US officials have repeatedly voiced support for Israel’s “obligation … to defend itself against these attacks from Hamas, and to try to do what it can to make sure that this never happens again,” in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but “it needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/19/politics/state-department-official-resigns-israel-gaza/index.html

dv said:

CNN —

A State Department official has resigned from the agency over the Biden administration’s approach to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the official announced on LinkedIn Wednesday.

Josh Paul, who said he has worked in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for more than 11 years, said in his LinkedIn post that he resigned “due to a policy disagreement concerning our continued lethal assistance to Israel.”

“Let me be clear,” Paul wrote. “Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah, or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American interest.”

“This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia,” Paul adds. “That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”

Paul said that he cannot work to support a set of policy decisions that include sending over arms, which he believes to be “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said the agency appreciates that employees have “different” beliefs.

“We understand, we expect, we appreciate that different people working in this department have different political beliefs, have different personal beliefs, have different beliefs about what the United States policy should be,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Thursday.

“With respect to this specific criticism that has been aired, we have made very clear that we strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself. We are going to continue providing the security assistance that they need to defend themselves. We think they have a right, not a right but an obligation, to defend themselves against these terrorist attacks – I think any country would do that. But the President and the Secretary has spoken to this very clearly that we expect Israel to abide by all international law as they defend themselves,” Miller added.

US officials have repeatedly voiced support for Israel’s “obligation … to defend itself against these attacks from Hamas, and to try to do what it can to make sure that this never happens again,” in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but “it needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/19/politics/state-department-official-resigns-israel-gaza/index.html

“It’s not essentially about Israel and Hamas,” he added, “it’s essentially about me and my career as an irrelevant virtue signaller.”

More of this needs to happen.

Spiny Norman said:

More of this needs to happen.

As a vintage pacifist, I’m in full agreement.

But one of the sad facts of human life is that some people really do need to be killed.

dv said:

CNN —

A State Department official has resigned from the agency over the Biden administration’s approach to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the official announced on LinkedIn Wednesday.

Josh Paul, who said he has worked in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for more than 11 years, said in his LinkedIn post that he resigned “due to a policy disagreement concerning our continued lethal assistance to Israel.”

“Let me be clear,” Paul wrote. “Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah, or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American interest.”

“This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia,” Paul adds. “That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”

Paul said that he cannot work to support a set of policy decisions that include sending over arms, which he believes to be “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said the agency appreciates that employees have “different” beliefs.

“We understand, we expect, we appreciate that different people working in this department have different political beliefs, have different personal beliefs, have different beliefs about what the United States policy should be,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Thursday.

“With respect to this specific criticism that has been aired, we have made very clear that we strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself. We are going to continue providing the security assistance that they need to defend themselves. We think they have a right, not a right but an obligation, to defend themselves against these terrorist attacks – I think any country would do that. But the President and the Secretary has spoken to this very clearly that we expect Israel to abide by all international law as they defend themselves,” Miller added.

US officials have repeatedly voiced support for Israel’s “obligation … to defend itself against these attacks from Hamas, and to try to do what it can to make sure that this never happens again,” in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but “it needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/19/politics/state-department-official-resigns-israel-gaza/index.html

There’s one State Dept official with a conscience.

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

CNN —

A State Department official has resigned from the agency over the Biden administration’s approach to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the official announced on LinkedIn Wednesday.

Josh Paul, who said he has worked in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for more than 11 years, said in his LinkedIn post that he resigned “due to a policy disagreement concerning our continued lethal assistance to Israel.”

“Let me be clear,” Paul wrote. “Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah, or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American interest.”

“This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia,” Paul adds. “That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”

Paul said that he cannot work to support a set of policy decisions that include sending over arms, which he believes to be “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said the agency appreciates that employees have “different” beliefs.

“We understand, we expect, we appreciate that different people working in this department have different political beliefs, have different personal beliefs, have different beliefs about what the United States policy should be,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Thursday.

“With respect to this specific criticism that has been aired, we have made very clear that we strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself. We are going to continue providing the security assistance that they need to defend themselves. We think they have a right, not a right but an obligation, to defend themselves against these terrorist attacks – I think any country would do that. But the President and the Secretary has spoken to this very clearly that we expect Israel to abide by all international law as they defend themselves,” Miller added.

US officials have repeatedly voiced support for Israel’s “obligation … to defend itself against these attacks from Hamas, and to try to do what it can to make sure that this never happens again,” in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but “it needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/19/politics/state-department-official-resigns-israel-gaza/index.html

“It’s not essentially about Israel and Hamas,” he added, “it’s essentially about me and my career as an irrelevant virtue signaller.”

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

Bubblecar said:

Spiny Norman said:

More of this needs to happen.

As a vintage pacifist, I’m in full agreement.

But one of the sad facts of human life is that some people really do need to be killed.

Who needs them to be killed? Yourself?

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

CNN —

A State Department official has resigned from the agency over the Biden administration’s approach to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the official announced on LinkedIn Wednesday.

Josh Paul, who said he has worked in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for more than 11 years, said in his LinkedIn post that he resigned “due to a policy disagreement concerning our continued lethal assistance to Israel.”

“Let me be clear,” Paul wrote. “Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah, or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American interest.”

“This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia,” Paul adds. “That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”

Paul said that he cannot work to support a set of policy decisions that include sending over arms, which he believes to be “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said the agency appreciates that employees have “different” beliefs.

“We understand, we expect, we appreciate that different people working in this department have different political beliefs, have different personal beliefs, have different beliefs about what the United States policy should be,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Thursday.

“With respect to this specific criticism that has been aired, we have made very clear that we strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself. We are going to continue providing the security assistance that they need to defend themselves. We think they have a right, not a right but an obligation, to defend themselves against these terrorist attacks – I think any country would do that. But the President and the Secretary has spoken to this very clearly that we expect Israel to abide by all international law as they defend themselves,” Miller added.

US officials have repeatedly voiced support for Israel’s “obligation … to defend itself against these attacks from Hamas, and to try to do what it can to make sure that this never happens again,” in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but “it needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/19/politics/state-department-official-resigns-israel-gaza/index.html

“It’s not essentially about Israel and Hamas,” he added, “it’s essentially about me and my career as an irrelevant virtue signaller.”

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

Israel does have a responsibility to counter Hamas. The Palestinians can’t do it. That’s the only reasonable position I can see here.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

it’s a buzzword.

Bubblecar said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

“It’s not essentially about Israel and Hamas,” he added, “it’s essentially about me and my career as an irrelevant virtue signaller.”

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

Israel does have a responsibility to counter Hamas. The Palestinians can’t do it. That’s the only reasonable position I can see here.

Attacks on Hamas that involve the killing of 1000’s of civilians does nothing to counter Hamas. It makes Hamas stronger.

roughbarked said:

Bubblecar said:

Spiny Norman said:

More of this needs to happen.

As a vintage pacifist, I’m in full agreement.

But one of the sad facts of human life is that some people really do need to be killed.

Who needs them to be killed? Yourself?

A bit sad that I, a notorious pacifist, am having to counter these juvenile attitudes :)

How are you going to stop Putin slaughtering Ukrainians and making the whole region another province of his personal Reich? Ah, satirical cartoons, that’s right, they’ll do the trick.

How are you going to stop Hamas peeping in to pointlessly massacre another thousand peaceful citizens? Yeah, virtue signalling will achieve these just aims.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

Israel does have a responsibility to counter Hamas. The Palestinians can’t do it. That’s the only reasonable position I can see here.

Attacks on Hamas that involve the killing of 1000’s of civilians does nothing to counter Hamas. It makes Hamas stronger.

a lesson i believe was learned in WW2 and bombing civilians.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

Israel does have a responsibility to counter Hamas. The Palestinians can’t do it. That’s the only reasonable position I can see here.

Attacks on Hamas that involve the killing of 1000’s of civilians does nothing to counter Hamas. It makes Hamas stronger.

You can (and should) criticise poorly targeted tactics like Israel’s air strikes without deciding that Israel should refrain from an armed response.

Revisiting Yeshayahu Leibowitz
The late Israeli thinker spoke of the occupation’s moral cost for both sides of the conflict. A philosopher considers how his nuanced arguments hold up in 2023.

Yeshaia Leibowitz via JSTOR

Editor’s Note: This essay was acquired in July 2023 and was not written in response to Hamas’s attack on Israel. It nevertheless provides useful historical context to current events.

“Israel has a right to defend itself.” It is a refrain frequently invoked to justify Israeli responses to attacks launched against its citizens by Palestinian militants. Yet not every Israeli has accepted that truism. Indeed, if there is a single individual who best represents the challenge to such thinking it is the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz.

A fierce embodiment of the Socratic gadfly, Leibowitz (1903-1994) was unafraid to use strong language to criticize Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people and territories, which commenced in 1967.

“The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the State of Israel,” he said in his typically provocative style. For Leibowitz, the occupation meant that Israel forfeited its right to retaliate in self-defense, and he was ever vocal about this position. For his opinions, he was called by no less an eminence than Sir Isaiah Berlin “the conscience of Israel.” Revisiting Leibowitz’s views now—more than five decades after he first articulated them—provides observers with a unique, and often overlooked, perspective in contemporary discourse on the conflict.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was born in Riga, Latvia in 1903 into a family of religious Jews. They were Zionists, adherents of the pan-national movement founded in Europe whose goal was to establish a sovereign state for the Jewish people in their historical homeland, namely, the land of Israel. A brilliant pupil, Leibowitz studied chemistry and philosophy at the University of Berlin, and then medicine in Koln and Heidelberg, before moving to Basel to finish his medical degree while the Nazis rose to power in Germany. In 1934, he immigrated to Palestine and took an appointment as a professor of biochemistry, and later neurophysiology, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he taught for nearly six decades. In addition to publishing numerous books and articles on everything from the history of science to the philosophy of Maimonides, he was the editor of the Encyclopedia Hebraica, and a frequent public speaker on Jewish thought, ethics, and philosophy. His outspokenness, eloquence, and polymathy helped establish him as Israel’s premier public intellectual.

Like his relatives, Leibowitz was a committed lifelong Zionist, yet he grew disillusioned by the use of Judaism as a political tool and as a justification for Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories. As an antidote, he developed his own secular brand of Zionism, which was simply “the endeavor to liberate Jews from being ruled by the Gentiles,” as he wrote in his 1992 book Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State.

Leibowitz’s positions were shaped by his understanding of Judaism as a religion of praxis, i.e., a normative system of mitzvot, biblical commandments in the Torah observed by practicing Jews, not as a political ideology or a national identity. Contrary to recent interpretations of Zionism inflected with religious and messianic flavors, Leibowitz challenged the notion that the Jewish people have a divine right to the land of Israel. He moreover warned of the dangers of idolizing sovereignty and military power. Divinely sanctioned land claims were, for Leibowitz, tantamount to a form of tyranny, or as he called it, “Judeo-fascism.”

Unfazed by any backlash, Leibowitz condemned the invocation of messianism and the sanctification of military power. These, he said, amounted to “a modern incarnation of false prophecy” and “a prostitution of the Jewish religion.” The occupation led to the erroneous belief that military force can be useful for solving political problems, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinian loss of land 1946-2009, Courtesy of the Palestine-Israel Action group,

After 1967, when Israel captured the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the so-called “Six Day War,” after fighting Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, Leibowitz warned about the heavy moral price Israel would pay for using sacred terminology to describe its victory. Ascribing religious significance to the state and hiding its aggression behind a facade of religious piety constitutes a form of idolatry, he argued, that leads to moral atrocities committed in the name of the state. On the massacre in the village of Qibya in 1953, Leibowitz wrote (my translation from Hebrew):

“We must ask ourselves: where do these young people come from, who have no moral qualms about carrying out such atrocities, and who have the urge to carry out such acts of vengeance? These young people are not the rabble. Rather, they grew up on and were educated in the values of Zionism. They are the product of applying the religious language of the scared to social and national affairs. This practice is common in our education system and in our public advocacy.”

In Leibowitz’s schema, there can be no religious claim to the land of Israel, because any such a claim is based on a confusion “between the Jewish people as the bearer of Judaism and the sovereign state instituted by these people as its instrument.”

Though Leibowitz recognized the value of Israel being a sovereign state with supreme authority within its territory, he also warned of the danger that would come from elevating Israel’s sovereignty above all else. “Sovereignty is a lofty and precious value for Israel,” he said, “for it means that the Jewish people will not be subject to other nations. But elevating the power contained within statehood to a supreme value is a very major source of harm.”

From the perspective of the government of Israel, the 1967 War was a spectacular victory. Israel defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in less than a week. It also captured the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Leibowitz did not celebrate the win. Instead, he articulated his prediction that Israel would now become the rodef (persecutor) rather than the nirdaf (persecuted) as the Jewish people were in the golah (diaspora) before the 1948 establishment of the state.

“What happened in June 1967 transformed Israel,” he said in an interview in 1985, “into an instrument for the violent domination of another people.” That victory mean that Israel was now engaged in a war of conquest, rather than defense as evidenced by continuous settlement expansion.

It is important to emphasize how radical Leibowitz’s ideas were at the time—almost heretical. After all, European Jews were themselves victims of persecution and genocide only decades before. Leibowitz forced his fellow citizens—many of them concentration camp survivors and refugees—to question whether the trauma of the Holocaust justified occupation of the Palestinian people.

Furthermore, he warned of the negative consequences for both sides of the conflict. The occupation, Leibowitz predicted, would corrode Israel’s social fabric. It will “bring about a catastrophe for the Jewish people as a whole; it will undermine the social structure that we have created in the state and cause the corruption of individuals, both Jew and Arab.” The occupation would also hasten the destruction of democracy in Israel, where Jews enjoy rights and liberties, such as freedom of expression and movement, while in the occupied territories, Palestinians are denied those same freedoms. There can be no true democracy when people are deprived of their civil and political rights, Leibowitz argued. For that reason, he supported conscientious objectors and called on Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in the occupied territories.

Leibowitz also advocated for what is known as a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is premised on the idea that just as the Jews cannot deny the existence of the Palestinians, the Palestinian people cannot deny the existence of the Jewish people. Both have a right to exist. In his book, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State (1992), Leibowitz wrote, “Only one way out of this historically created impasse is feasible in the present situation, even if neither side recognizes it as just nor finds it really acceptable: partition of the country between the two peoples,” recognizing that a two-state solution requires an unconditional withdrawal from occupied lands.

After the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, came close to implementing a two-state solution with the backing of the Clinton Administration. But extremists on both sides sabotaged the effort.

These days, a two-state solution seems like a distant, fading memory. In 2005, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resigned in protest at the Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip. Since then, right-wing governments—including the current one headed yet again by Netanyahu—have focused more on managing the conflict than on finding a long-term resolution to it through peace negotiations.

Although they both supported a two-state solution, Rabin and Leibowitz were hardly political allies. In 1993, when Leibowitz was set to receive the prestigious Israel Prize, the highest honor the government can bestow, Rabin—who was army chief of staff during the Six Day War—threatened to boycott the ceremony should organizers proceed with such plans. Rabin objected to the philosopher’s persistent call for conscientious objection to military service in the occupied territories. Leibowitz withdrew his nomination but remained a fierce social critic.

Earlier this year, a group of Israeli reservists announced their refusal to serve in protest of a proposed controversial judicial overhaul led by the religious-nationalist and messianic factions of Netanyahu’s government. In an interview for 60 Minutes, members of the organization Ahim La’neshek (Brothers in Arms), called the overhaul “an existential threat” to Israel, echoing the same dire warnings Leibowitz sounded decades ago.

https://daily.jstor.org/revisiting-yeshayahu-leibowitz/

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

CNN —

A State Department official has resigned from the agency over the Biden administration’s approach to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the official announced on LinkedIn Wednesday.

Josh Paul, who said he has worked in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for more than 11 years, said in his LinkedIn post that he resigned “due to a policy disagreement concerning our continued lethal assistance to Israel.”

“Let me be clear,” Paul wrote. “Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah, or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American interest.”

“This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia,” Paul adds. “That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”

Paul said that he cannot work to support a set of policy decisions that include sending over arms, which he believes to be “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said the agency appreciates that employees have “different” beliefs.

“We understand, we expect, we appreciate that different people working in this department have different political beliefs, have different personal beliefs, have different beliefs about what the United States policy should be,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Thursday.

“With respect to this specific criticism that has been aired, we have made very clear that we strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself. We are going to continue providing the security assistance that they need to defend themselves. We think they have a right, not a right but an obligation, to defend themselves against these terrorist attacks – I think any country would do that. But the President and the Secretary has spoken to this very clearly that we expect Israel to abide by all international law as they defend themselves,” Miller added.

US officials have repeatedly voiced support for Israel’s “obligation … to defend itself against these attacks from Hamas, and to try to do what it can to make sure that this never happens again,” in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but “it needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/19/politics/state-department-official-resigns-israel-gaza/index.html

“It’s not essentially about Israel and Hamas,” he added, “it’s essentially about me and my career as an irrelevant virtue signaller.”

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

I think that the Israeli response has been pretty much in line with exactly what is expected, in fact you could even postulate that HAMAS wants the IDF to put boots on the ground in Gaza… The issue with Gaza is that HAMAS has had a decade of rule to ensure that civilian and military infrastructure is completely intertwined.. there is no clear distinction between what is a military target and what isn’t…

Israel are angry as fuck and I’m sure they want to stamp out a specific terrorist threat to it’s people, but the plus side here (if there is one) is that Israel is a democracy and they have a free press.. so if they do things that are illegal and they lie about… they will, at some point, likely be found out and held to account (even if it’s in the court of public opinion). That said, that’s potentially years down the track so it’s not a lot of help to the civilians that are, and will continue to be, caught in the cross fire. The best we can do is hope that the IDF do show some form of restraint.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

Israel does have a responsibility to counter Hamas. The Palestinians can’t do it. That’s the only reasonable position I can see here.

Attacks on Hamas that involve the killing of 1000’s of civilians does nothing to counter Hamas. It makes Hamas stronger.

that’s not true, attacks on their infrastructure does weaken them

diddly-squat said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

Israel does have a responsibility to counter Hamas. The Palestinians can’t do it. That’s the only reasonable position I can see here.

Attacks on Hamas that involve the killing of 1000’s of civilians does nothing to counter Hamas. It makes Hamas stronger.

that’s not true, attacks on their infrastructure does weaken them

Particularly in the happenstance that communications are disrupted and ammunition stores destroyed.

Bubblecar said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

Israel does have a responsibility to counter Hamas. The Palestinians can’t do it. That’s the only reasonable position I can see here.

Attacks on Hamas that involve the killing of 1000’s of civilians does nothing to counter Hamas. It makes Hamas stronger.

You can (and should) criticise poorly targeted tactics like Israel’s air strikes without deciding that Israel should refrain from an armed response.

The IDF use laser and/or satellite guided munitions.. they are about as precise a tool as is possible.

Bubblecar said:

roughbarked said:

Bubblecar said:

As a vintage pacifist, I’m in full agreement.

But one of the sad facts of human life is that some people really do need to be killed.

Who needs them to be killed? Yourself?

A bit sad that I, a notorious pacifist, am having to counter these juvenile attitudes :)

So you are the adult here?

diddly-squat said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

“It’s not essentially about Israel and Hamas,” he added, “it’s essentially about me and my career as an irrelevant virtue signaller.”

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

I think that the Israeli response has been pretty much in line with exactly what is expected, in fact you could even postulate that HAMAS wants the IDF to put boots on the ground in Gaza… The issue with Gaza is that HAMAS has had a decade of rule to ensure that civilian and military infrastructure is completely intertwined.. there is no clear distinction between what is a military target and what isn’t…

Israel are angry as fuck and I’m sure they want to stamp out a specific terrorist threat to it’s people, but the plus side here (if there is one) is that Israel is a democracy and they have a free press.. so if they do things that are illegal and they lie about… they will, at some point, likely be found out and held to account (even if it’s in the court of public opinion). That said, that’s potentially years down the track so it’s not a lot of help to the civilians that are, and will continue to be, caught in the cross fire. The best we can do is hope that the IDF do show some form of restraint.

My only comment on that is that although eliminating Hamas is their objective, they should still take a bit of care not to make decisions that a) will endanger civilians and b) not hurt Hamas at all, such as the aid blockade at the Egyptian border, and military strikes on active escape paths for refugees. Happily it appears that both of those situations have been corrected now.

Bubblecar said:

How are you going to stop Hamas peeping in to pointlessly massacre another thousand peaceful citizens? Yeah, virtue signalling will achieve these just aims.

The situation is both intolerable and intractable. Everyone involved is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It’s like a nightmare that can’t be woken up from. We will see much horror before this resolves. The resolution itself is likely to be horrific.

And then it will just be history. Another sad page in the story of mankind.

diddly-squat said:

Bubblecar said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Attacks on Hamas that involve the killing of 1000’s of civilians does nothing to counter Hamas. It makes Hamas stronger.

You can (and should) criticise poorly targeted tactics like Israel’s air strikes without deciding that Israel should refrain from an armed response.

The IDF use laser and/or satellite guided munitions.. they are about as precise a tool as is possible.

They could have given civilians enough time to evacuate the city before they began the initial air strikes.

There’s no doubt that “an eye for an eye” was in service pretty much immediately.

But there’s also no doubt that Hamas value Palestinian lives even less.

esselte said:

Bubblecar said:

How are you going to stop Hamas peeping in to pointlessly massacre another thousand peaceful citizens? Yeah, virtue signalling will achieve these just aims.

The situation is both intolerable and intractable. Everyone involved is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It’s like a nightmare that can’t be woken up from. We will see much horror before this resolves. The resolution itself is likely to be horrific.

And then it will just be history. Another sad page in the story of mankind.

True enough, and reason to be wary of the distraction (and false comfort) of unhelpful virtue signalling.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

dv said:

CNN —

A State Department official has resigned from the agency over the Biden administration’s approach to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the official announced on LinkedIn Wednesday.

Josh Paul, who said he has worked in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for more than 11 years, said in his LinkedIn post that he resigned “due to a policy disagreement concerning our continued lethal assistance to Israel.”

“Let me be clear,” Paul wrote. “Hamas’ attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities. I also believe that potential escalations by Iran-linked groups such as Hezbollah, or by Iran itself, would be a further cynical exploitation of the existing tragedy. But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people – and is not in the long term American interest.”

“This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia,” Paul adds. “That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”

Paul said that he cannot work to support a set of policy decisions that include sending over arms, which he believes to be “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”

State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said the agency appreciates that employees have “different” beliefs.

“We understand, we expect, we appreciate that different people working in this department have different political beliefs, have different personal beliefs, have different beliefs about what the United States policy should be,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Thursday.

“With respect to this specific criticism that has been aired, we have made very clear that we strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself. We are going to continue providing the security assistance that they need to defend themselves. We think they have a right, not a right but an obligation, to defend themselves against these terrorist attacks – I think any country would do that. But the President and the Secretary has spoken to this very clearly that we expect Israel to abide by all international law as they defend themselves,” Miller added.

US officials have repeatedly voiced support for Israel’s “obligation … to defend itself against these attacks from Hamas, and to try to do what it can to make sure that this never happens again,” in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but “it needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/19/politics/state-department-official-resigns-israel-gaza/index.html

“It’s not essentially about Israel and Hamas,” he added, “it’s essentially about me and my career as an irrelevant virtue signaller.”

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

Shrug we signal our turns before we turn when we drive but we’re the best drivers in the world.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

Israel does have a responsibility to counter Hamas. The Palestinians can’t do it. That’s the only reasonable position I can see here.

Attacks on Hamas that involve the killing of 1000’s of civilians does nothing to counter Hamas. It makes Hamas stronger.

What if they kill 100% of Hamas even if it means 1000 times as many civilians are included¿

SCIENCE said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

Israel does have a responsibility to counter Hamas. The Palestinians can’t do it. That’s the only reasonable position I can see here.

Attacks on Hamas that involve the killing of 1000’s of civilians does nothing to counter Hamas. It makes Hamas stronger.

What if they kill 100% of Hamas even if it means 1000 times as many civilians are included¿

Then say hello to Hamas 2: Martyr Harder

dv said:

diddly-squat said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

I think that the Israeli response has been pretty much in line with exactly what is expected, in fact you could even postulate that HAMAS wants the IDF to put boots on the ground in Gaza… The issue with Gaza is that HAMAS has had a decade of rule to ensure that civilian and military infrastructure is completely intertwined.. there is no clear distinction between what is a military target and what isn’t…

Israel are angry as fuck and I’m sure they want to stamp out a specific terrorist threat to it’s people, but the plus side here (if there is one) is that Israel is a democracy and they have a free press.. so if they do things that are illegal and they lie about… they will, at some point, likely be found out and held to account (even if it’s in the court of public opinion). That said, that’s potentially years down the track so it’s not a lot of help to the civilians that are, and will continue to be, caught in the cross fire. The best we can do is hope that the IDF do show some form of restraint.

My only comment on that is that although eliminating Hamas is their objective, they should still take a bit of care not to make decisions that a) will endanger civilians and b) not hurt Hamas at all, such as the aid blockade at the Egyptian border, and military strikes on active escape paths for refugees. Happily it appears that both of those situations have been corrected now.

Good, time to blow that shit as high as fucking Beirut¡

SCIENCE said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

Israel does have a responsibility to counter Hamas. The Palestinians can’t do it. That’s the only reasonable position I can see here.

Attacks on Hamas that involve the killing of 1000’s of civilians does nothing to counter Hamas. It makes Hamas stronger.

What if they kill 100% of Hamas even if it means 1000 times as many civilians are included¿

They are never going to kill 100% of Hamas.

roughbarked said:

SCIENCE said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Attacks on Hamas that involve the killing of 1000’s of civilians does nothing to counter Hamas. It makes Hamas stronger.

What if they kill 100% of Hamas even if it means 1000 times as many civilians are included¿

They are never going to kill 100% of Hamas.

They don’t need to. 100% of ISIS weren’t killed but they’re much less of a danger than they were.

The Middle East is like a bottle of Coke. Shake it up and open the cap, it’s going to spray everywhere and make a huge mess.

Israel is a Mentos.

esselte said:

The Middle East is like a bottle of Coke. Shake it up and open the cap, it’s going to spray everywhere and make a huge mess.

Israel is a Mentos.

Yep and there is bugger all we can do about it.

roughbarked said:

esselte said:

The Middle East is like a bottle of Coke. Shake it up and open the cap, it’s going to spray everywhere and make a huge mess.

Israel is a Mentos.

Yep and there is bugger all we can do about it.

Then why are the politicians showboating and shirtfronting¿

SCIENCE said:

roughbarked said:

esselte said:

The Middle East is like a bottle of Coke. Shake it up and open the cap, it’s going to spray everywhere and make a huge mess.

Israel is a Mentos.

Yep and there is bugger all we can do about it.

Then why are the politicians showboating and shirtfronting¿

It is what they do.

dv said:

diddly-squat said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Seems to me what he said and did was a clear statement of the only reasonable position on these events. If you want to call that “virtue signalling” then virtue signalling is something to be applauded.

I think that the Israeli response has been pretty much in line with exactly what is expected, in fact you could even postulate that HAMAS wants the IDF to put boots on the ground in Gaza… The issue with Gaza is that HAMAS has had a decade of rule to ensure that civilian and military infrastructure is completely intertwined.. there is no clear distinction between what is a military target and what isn’t…

Israel are angry as fuck and I’m sure they want to stamp out a specific terrorist threat to it’s people, but the plus side here (if there is one) is that Israel is a democracy and they have a free press.. so if they do things that are illegal and they lie about… they will, at some point, likely be found out and held to account (even if it’s in the court of public opinion). That said, that’s potentially years down the track so it’s not a lot of help to the civilians that are, and will continue to be, caught in the cross fire. The best we can do is hope that the IDF do show some form of restraint.

My only comment on that is that although eliminating Hamas is their objective, they should still take a bit of care not to make decisions that a) will endanger civilians and b) not hurt Hamas at all, such as the aid blockade at the Egyptian border, and military strikes on active escape paths for refugees. Happily it appears that both of those situations have been corrected now.

I agree completely.. my point was more that there really isn’t a clear line between what is and what isn’t a military and/or civilian target in Gaza as for the most part everything is part of the defence infrastructure that HAMAS have built over the last decade…

Bubblecar said:

diddly-squat said:

Bubblecar said:

You can (and should) criticise poorly targeted tactics like Israel’s air strikes without deciding that Israel should refrain from an armed response.

The IDF use laser and/or satellite guided munitions.. they are about as precise a tool as is possible.

They could have given civilians enough time to evacuate the city before they began the initial air strikes.

There’s no doubt that “an eye for an eye” was in service pretty much immediately.

But there’s also no doubt that Hamas value Palestinian lives even less.

sure, that also gives HAMAS the opportunity to move their supplies, comms, weapons, soldiers, etc… it’s a very fine line

diddly-squat said:

Bubblecar said:

diddly-squat said:

The IDF use laser and/or satellite guided munitions.. they are about as precise a tool as is possible.

They could have given civilians enough time to evacuate the city before they began the initial air strikes.

There’s no doubt that “an eye for an eye” was in service pretty much immediately.

But there’s also no doubt that Hamas value Palestinian lives even less.

sure, that also gives HAMAS the opportunity to move their supplies, comms, weapons, soldiers, etc… it’s a very fine line

It’s a bold line if you value innocent lives.

The Israeli leadership decided they’ll be going in for a protracted war against Hamas, so obviously they knew any initial Hamas positions were strategically irrelevant.

They could have made it an ethically informed response from the outset, but it’s taken global concern and the personal intervention of Biden to hopefully restore some sanity.

The Palestinian Voice would be an independent and permanent advisory body.

It would give advice to the Israeli Parliament and Government on matters that affect the lives of Palestinian peoples.

This includes issues such as education, health, housing, justice and other policies with a practical impact on Palestinian people.

If the referendum passes, there would be a process with Palestinian communities, the Parliament and the broader public to settle the Voice design.

Legislation to establish the Voice would go through parliamentary processes to ensure adequate scrutiny by elected representatives in the Knesset.

This would ensure the Voice can evolve and adapt as circumstances change, while upholding the authority of Parliament to legislate the Voice.

Hopefully the blame for this will fall on Netanyahu and his devisive hard right government will fall with a new national unity government of pragmatic centrist taking the reigns. Only then will a consensus emerge that achieves just outcomes for the Palestinians with in the borders currently under the control of Israel. This will probably mean Fatah and Abaas will have to go and new democratic elections in Gaza and the West Bank.

esselte said:

The Palestinian Voice would be an independent and permanent advisory body.

It would give advice to the Israeli Parliament and Government on matters that affect the lives of Palestinian peoples.

This includes issues such as education, health, housing, justice and other policies with a practical impact on Palestinian people.

If the referendum passes, there would be a process with Palestinian communities, the Parliament and the broader public to settle the Voice design.

Legislation to establish the Voice would go through parliamentary processes to ensure adequate scrutiny by elected representatives in the Knesset.

This would ensure the Voice can evolve and adapt as circumstances change, while upholding the authority of Parliament to legislate the Voice.

That’ll fail f’sure…

Democracy Will Fix This ¡

Witty Rejoinder said:

Hopefully the blame for this will fall on Netanyahu and his devisive hard right government will fall with a new national unity government of pragmatic centrist taking the reigns. Only then will a consensus emerge that achieves just outcomes for the Palestinians with in the borders currently under the control of Israel. This will probably mean Fatah and Abaas will have to go and new democratic elections in Gaza and the West Bank.

Netanyahu and the Israeli right-wingers have been quite happy to have Hamas active in Gaza for years.

They saw Hamas as a destabilising influence in Gaza, as rivals to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, who were able to disrupt any consensus within Gaza and any positive moves towards establishing a legitimate Palestinian state. Keep ‘em divided, keep ‘em off -track was the policy.

captain_spalding said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Hopefully the blame for this will fall on Netanyahu and his devisive hard right government will fall with a new national unity government of pragmatic centrist taking the reigns. Only then will a consensus emerge that achieves just outcomes for the Palestinians with in the borders currently under the control of Israel. This will probably mean Fatah and Abaas will have to go and new democratic elections in Gaza and the West Bank.

Netanyahu and the Israeli right-wingers have been quite happy to have Hamas active in Gaza for years.

They saw Hamas as a destabilising influence in Gaza, as rivals to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, who were able to disrupt any consensus within Gaza and any positive moves towards establishing a legitimate Palestinian state. Keep ‘em divided, keep ‘em off -track was the policy.

So called ‘mowing the lawn’.

Witty Rejoinder said:

captain_spalding said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

Hopefully the blame for this will fall on Netanyahu and his devisive hard right government will fall with a new national unity government of pragmatic centrist taking the reigns. Only then will a consensus emerge that achieves just outcomes for the Palestinians with in the borders currently under the control of Israel. This will probably mean Fatah and Abaas will have to go and new democratic elections in Gaza and the West Bank.

Netanyahu and the Israeli right-wingers have been quite happy to have Hamas active in Gaza for years.

They saw Hamas as a destabilising influence in Gaza, as rivals to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, who were able to disrupt any consensus within Gaza and any positive moves towards establishing a legitimate Palestinian state. Keep ‘em divided, keep ‘em off -track was the policy.

So called ‘mowing the lawn’.

Oops… ‘grass’.

Netanyahu is now much loathed by his own party. It would do them good to shed him now but most are waiting until “after the war”.

Why, I don’t know. This would seem to be a prime time to kick out the garbage.

Unlike in previous troubles, the US hasn’t made any public requests for restraint. It’s understandable from a strategic viewpoint: Israel has just suffered one of the worst terrorist attacks of all time. In a little while there may be an opportunity to make some progress and Israel’s allies want to be arguing from a position of having supported then wholeheartedly in their scariest moment.

Witty Rejoinder said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

captain_spalding said:

Netanyahu and the Israeli right-wingers have been quite happy to have Hamas active in Gaza for years.

They saw Hamas as a destabilising influence in Gaza, as rivals to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, who were able to disrupt any consensus within Gaza and any positive moves towards establishing a legitimate Palestinian state. Keep ‘em divided, keep ‘em off -track was the policy.

So called ‘mowing the lawn’.

Oops… ‘grass’.

Worked like how having a nice little fire in 2019 worked to keep fuel around Australia low for 2023 we suppose.

Ah well remember how not being able to travel pissed enough people off that the pandemic ended and people just kept dying of mystery instead, we

Heightened tensions around the world have prompted the American government to issue a Worldwide Caution Security Alert for its citizens overseas.

“Due to increased tensions in various locations around the world, the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations or violent actions against US citizens and interests, the Department of State advises US citizens overseas to exercise increased caution.”

It advises travelling Americans to stay alert in locations frequented by tourists, sign up for the Smart Traveler program and follow the State Department on social media.

suppose feeding the MIC is more important than preventing mass illness and death so this should work just fine.

The crisis shows the failure of Israeli policy towards Palestinians, says Shlomo Brom
The former military strategist argues that a divide-and-conquer strategy can never bring peace

Israel is facing an unprecedented crisis. The state that was founded to protect Jews from persecution failed miserably in protecting its citizens living near the Gaza Strip. It was completely surprised by a militarily inferior adversary. The small Israel Defence Forces (idf) contingent deployed along Israel’s border with Gaza crumbled and could not prevent the butchering of almost a thousand people, most of them civilians, and the taking as hostages of scores of other citizens by Palestinian terrorists from Hamas.

Nobody knows how the situation will develop. The fighting has only just started. The idf is reorganising its forces along the border and mopping up Hamas forces that crossed from Gaza into Israeli territory. At the same time it is bombing targets in Gaza linked to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group. The aim is to destroy their military capabilities and to make them pay a high cost for the recent atrocities without recourse to ground operations. Israel’s civilian population, meanwhile, fears further rocket attacks from the Palestinian organisations after a barrage at the weekend and more strikes on Monday.

This is the usual pattern of Israeli reaction to attacks from the Gaza Strip, but this time it will not be enough. Public frustration and anger are at unprecedented levels. Many accuse the government and the armed forces of negligence and betrayal of their duties, and are demanding drastic military action that will “once and for all” end the threat from the Palestinians in Gaza. The government is unlikely to be able to absorb this pressure without launching major operations in the Gaza Strip that include an extensive ground offensive. These might even lead to reoccupation of the territory, with all the costs in human life that implies. That, in turn, could drag Israel into a wider conflict with the so-called “axis of resistance” that includes not only the Gaza-based groups but also Hizbullah, a Lebanon-based militia, Iran and Syria.

The political implications are broad, too. Israel’s government is in a fragile situation. There are demands for resignations of senior officials. Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and his government might be “saved” by elements in the opposition that wish to form a unity government with him for the purpose of dealing with this crisis. Regardless of the level of opposition support in the short term, however, the crisis may deal a fatal blow to Mr Netanyahu’s political career as public calls for accountability grow.

Israel was led to this grim situation by the failure of its policies towards the Palestinians. When Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007, two years after the idf had pulled its forces out, the Israeli government faced a choice between two viable political and military strategies. The first involved adapting to a reality in which Hamas was one of the two major political factions in the Palestinian territories—the other being Fatah, based in the West Bank. Any Israeli government that genuinely wished to end the conflict with the Palestinians would then have striven to include Hamas in the bilateral political process alongside its Fatah rivals. That would have required Israel to enter into direct talks with Hamas while supporting reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.

The other option was to adopt a strategy of consistently weakening Hamas and strengthening the Palestinian Authority run by Fatah. That would have had to include a credible political process aimed at a permanent status agreement, possibly achieved through a series of smaller agreements and unilateral steps.

These two options had their weaknesses and potential costs, but since the end of the government led by Ehud Olmert, in 2009, successive Israeli administrations have chosen neither of them. Mr Olmert had tried the second strategy for some time but was forced to resign before achieving any of his goals. Mr Netanyahu subsequently adopted a third strategy that was bound to fail.

In 2009 Mr Netanyahu gave a speech at Bar-Ilan University in which he declared his acceptance of a Palestinian state with several conditions. Despite this, he abandoned the political process with the Palestinians, eventually making it clear that he opposed the establishment of a Palestinian state. He replaced the political process with a strategy of “divide-and-conquer”, which was aimed at weakening the Palestinian government in Ramallah on the West Bank and strengthening Hamas’s hold on power in the Gaza Strip. Mr Netanyahu believed this to be the best way to ensure that no viable political process would be possible.

The prime minister took this policy to a new level in building his current government: a coalition with extreme religious, ultra-nationalistic parties, which stated quite openly that Israel would never enable the establishment of a Palestinian state, give equal rights to the Palestinians under a one-state solution or stop the plundering of their lands through settlement-building. This policy led to most of the Israeli army being deployed to protect Jewish settlers in the West Bank, at the expense of protecting the border around the Gaza Strip.

The current crisis demonstrates the utter failure of this strategy. It is absurd to hope that Israel can indefinitely contain with its military might and security services millions of Palestinians who claim the right to self-determination and a free, normal life. Eventually the oppressed will rise against their oppressor. Suffering under oppression and a strong desire for freedom breed resourcefulness. The Hamas fighters who planned last weekend’s attack were indeed very resourceful in exploiting Israel’s unpreparedness.

Eventually, Israel will have to make a choice between the two-state solution and a single state with equal rights for all of its inhabitants—and strive to make whichever it chooses work. Hopefully the Israeli public, having endured the collapse of the current approach, will support it. ■

Shlomo Brom is a retired brigadier-general who served in various intelligence posts in the Israel Defence Forces and as a deputy to Israel’s national security adviser.

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2023/10/10/the-crisis-shows-the-failure-of-israeli-policy-towards-palestinians-says-shlomo-brom?

Misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war is flooding social media. Here are the facts

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-misinformation-fact-check-e58f9ab8696309305c3ea2bfb269258e

Bubblecar said:

Misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war is flooding social media. Here are the facts

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-misinformation-fact-check-e58f9ab8696309305c3ea2bfb269258e

Some folks, including friends of mine, need to take a breath and maybe brush up on their critical thinking and skepticism.

Bubblecar said:

Misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war is flooding social media. Here are the facts

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-misinformation-fact-check-e58f9ab8696309305c3ea2bfb269258e

How do we know that this isn’t just more misinformation.

For example, I tend to avoid most articles and videos with titles like “the real truth about…”

party_pants said:

Bubblecar said:

Misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war is flooding social media. Here are the facts

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-misinformation-fact-check-e58f9ab8696309305c3ea2bfb269258e

How do we know that this isn’t just more misinformation.

For example, I tend to avoid most articles and videos with titles like “the real truth about…”

Associated Press have long been widely respected for their accuracy.

Bubblecar said:

party_pants said:

Bubblecar said:

Misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war is flooding social media. Here are the facts

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-misinformation-fact-check-e58f9ab8696309305c3ea2bfb269258e

How do we know that this isn’t just more misinformation.

For example, I tend to avoid most articles and videos with titles like “the real truth about…”

Associated Press have long been widely respected for their accuracy.

Certainly going to be more reliable than some meme or video with an anonymous source that pops up on social media.

No idea this was a trope:

https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/completely-unaware-greta-thunberg-deletes-propalestinian-post-featuring-antisemitic-trope/news-story/12b41fae3251f63569df721b61eeef1d

Witty Rejoinder said:

No idea this was a trope:

https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/completely-unaware-greta-thunberg-deletes-propalestinian-post-featuring-antisemitic-trope/news-story/12b41fae3251f63569df721b61eeef1d

Nah, me neither. But I live in my own little world and choose carefully what I consume from the interwebs.

Witty Rejoinder said:

No idea this was a trope:

https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/completely-unaware-greta-thunberg-deletes-propalestinian-post-featuring-antisemitic-trope/news-story/12b41fae3251f63569df721b61eeef1d

She might be too young to know but in this day and age it’s possible to familiarise yourself.

AP visual analysis: Rocket from Gaza appeared to go astray, likely caused deadly hospital explosion

The AP analyzed more than a dozen videos from the moments before, during and after the hospital explosion, as well as satellite imagery and photos. AP’s analysis shows that the rocket that broke up in the air was fired from within Palestinian territory, and that the hospital explosion was most likely caused when part of that rocket crashed to the ground.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-hospital-rocket-gaza-e0fa550faa4678f024797b72132452e3

dv said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

No idea this was a trope:

https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/completely-unaware-greta-thunberg-deletes-propalestinian-post-featuring-antisemitic-trope/news-story/12b41fae3251f63569df721b61eeef1d

She might be too young to know but in this day and age it’s possible to familiarise yourself.

thing is if you don’t know these things then you aren’t likely to go and find out. you just think it is an octopus.

Boris said:

dv said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

No idea this was a trope:

https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/completely-unaware-greta-thunberg-deletes-propalestinian-post-featuring-antisemitic-trope/news-story/12b41fae3251f63569df721b61eeef1d

She might be too young to know but in this day and age it’s possible to familiarise yourself.

thing is if you don’t know these things then you aren’t likely to go and find out. you just think it is an octopus.

I didn’t know about an octopus being an anti-Semitic symbol until I read the article.

Michael V said:

Boris said:

dv said:

She might be too young to know but in this day and age it’s possible to familiarise yourself.

thing is if you don’t know these things then you aren’t likely to go and find out. you just think it is an octopus.

I didn’t know about an octopus being an anti-Semitic symbol until I read the article.

me either.

Boris said:

Michael V said:

Boris said:

thing is if you don’t know these things then you aren’t likely to go and find out. you just think it is an octopus.

I didn’t know about an octopus being an anti-Semitic symbol until I read the article.

me either.

👌 We Phucking (WP) Mean Any Damn Thing Can Be Misappropriated To Become A Hate Symbol

Bubblecar said:

AP visual analysis: Rocket from Gaza appeared to go astray, likely caused deadly hospital explosion

The AP analyzed more than a dozen videos from the moments before, during and after the hospital explosion, as well as satellite imagery and photos. AP’s analysis shows that the rocket that broke up in the air was fired from within Palestinian territory, and that the hospital explosion was most likely caused when part of that rocket crashed to the ground.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-hospital-rocket-gaza-e0fa550faa4678f024797b72132452e3

Oh Wait What Causes Most Palestinian Rockets To Fail Midflight

Boris said:

Michael V said:

Boris said:

thing is if you don’t know these things then you aren’t likely to go and find out. you just think it is an octopus.

I didn’t know about an octopus being an anti-Semitic symbol until I read the article.

me either.

Obviously we all live outside whatever society knows about that sort of thing.

SCIENCE said:

Boris said:

Michael V said:

I didn’t know about an octopus being an anti-Semitic symbol until I read the article.

me either.

👌 We Phucking (WP) Mean Any Damn Thing Can Be Misappropriated To Become A Hate Symbol

Yes, I only learnt about that “symbol” from here and the news. Never came across it in real life.

buffy said:

Boris said:

Michael V said:

I didn’t know about an octopus being an anti-Semitic symbol until I read the article.

me either.

Obviously we all live outside whatever society knows about that sort of thing.

Just searched the internet briefly and closest we found was this thing

but we mean you could depict your unfavoured demographic with whatever graphic you like and suddenly you’d have negative associations with whatever.

On the other shoulder there’s no obvious reason that the item has to be in the image though so maybe there’s that.

buffy said:

SCIENCE said:

Boris said:

me either.

👌 We Phucking (WP) Mean Any Damn Thing Can Be Misappropriated To Become A Hate Symbol

Yes, I only learnt about that “symbol” from here and the news. Never came across it in real life.

One day this symbol will be a symbol of antisemitism¡

Fuck These Jews Of The East

Oh Wait We Think That regionally dominant militaristic country established in the late 1940s that imprisons millions of Muslims in its western areas and seeks completion of its claim over autonomously governed territories Thing Might Have Some Substance

Michael V said:

Boris said:

dv said:

She might be too young to know but in this day and age it’s possible to familiarise yourself.

thing is if you don’t know these things then you aren’t likely to go and find out. you just think it is an octopus.

I didn’t know about an octopus being an anti-Semitic symbol until I read the article.

Nor I.

PermeateFree said:

Michael V said:

Boris said:

thing is if you don’t know these things then you aren’t likely to go and find out. you just think it is an octopus.

I didn’t know about an octopus being an anti-Semitic symbol until I read the article.

Nor I.

Some Jews like to think they are the most persecuted people to have ever lived.

“Reuters is reporting that Egyptian television is showing pictures of aid trucks entering the Rafa crossing into Gaza.

The news agency also cites a statement from Hamas’s media office saying that “the relief aid convoy that is supposed to enter today includes 20 trucks that carry medicine, medical supplies, and a limited amount of food supplies .”“

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-21/israel-gaza-war-live-updates-latest-news-october-21/103002192

Michael V said:

“Reuters is reporting that Egyptian television is showing pictures of aid trucks entering the Rafa crossing into Gaza.

The news agency also cites a statement from Hamas’s media office saying that “the relief aid convoy that is supposed to enter today includes 20 trucks that carry medicine, medical supplies, and a limited amount of food supplies .”“

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-21/israel-gaza-war-live-updates-latest-news-october-21/103002192

Well that’s good

ABC News:

UN want’s to save Gaza’s health system from collapse?

When are they going to get around to Tasmania?

Ehud Barak blames Binyamin Netanyahu for “the greatest failure in Israel’s history”
A former prime minister says “destroying Hamas” is unrealistic

Oct 15th 2023 | TEL AVIV

FEW ISRAELIS have anything close to Ehud Barak’s experience of operating in Gaza. In 2000 he was prime minister and defence minister when the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, erupted in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Before that he was the commander of the Israel Defence Forces (idf) when Israel carried out its first major pullback from the cities in the Gaza Strip as part of the first Oslo Accords signed in 1993.

And then in his second stint as defence minister, in 2009, he oversaw Israel’s largest ground operation against Hamas in Gaza to date. Now the Israeli army is gearing up for what is expected to be a much larger ground operation in Gaza. Its target is Hamas, which attacked Israeli communities and bases along the border on October 7th, killing more than 1,300 Israelis, three-quarters of them civilians.

The atrocities represent “the greatest failure in Israeli history”, Mr Barak says. Now comes the military response. The army he once commanded faces huge difficulties going after a determined and well-armed enemy, entrenched in a tiny coastal enclave crowded with more than 2m inhabitants, he says. He is mindful of the implications of the inevitably heavy toll this operation will inflict on its civilian population. In the first nine days following the Hamas attack, nearly 2,400 Gazans were killed in Israeli air strikes, which Israel claims were against “Hamas targets”.

Mr Barak advises the government not to rush a ground operation. “We’re not facing an existential threat from Hamas,” he says. “Israel will win this.” Once all the reservists who have been called up have undergone refresher training, Israel can take control of most of the Gaza Strip and destroy Hamas’s centres of power and military capabilities “in two to six weeks.” Unlike the major ground operations in 2009 and 2014, when Israel simultaneously entered different areas of the Gaza Strip, thinks Mr Barak, this time the offensive could be carried out in stages.

Although he is confident about the army’s ability to pulverise Hamas in Gaza, the idf will face some constraints. Israel has acknowledged that Hamas took more than 120 civilians and soldiers hostage. Mr Barak thinks that a ground operation should be delayed if an agreement can be reached to release some of them.

He also wants Israel to ensure that its actions are seen as legitimate by the wider world. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack most Western governments offered Israel their full support. But “the support also comes with an expectation we abide by international law in our operations,” Mr Barak warns. “Support will erode when there is footage of ruined homes with bodies of children and weeping old women.” America’s naval presence—on October 14th it deployed a second aircraft carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean—is partly designed to deter outside actors from entering or escalating the conflict. But it “also emphasises Israel’s need to operate according to international law”.

Israel will need to keep a watchful eye on Hizbullah, the Iran-backed Shia militia in Lebanon. It has perhaps 150,000 rockets aimed at Israel. Israel has sent troops and tanks to the border in the hope of deterring an attack. The Hamas attack from Gaza was, says Mr Barak, based on similar Hizbullah plans to take over settlements in the north. But Hizbullah has now lost the element of surprise and Israel is prepared. “Israel doesn’t have an interest in conflict with Hizbullah right now and I don’t think they will attack now that we’ve deployed a lot of forces up north,” he says. One of America’s aircraft carriers is now looming off the coast of Lebanon, sending a signal to Hizbullah, and to its sponsor, Iran.

Although Mr Barak strongly supports a ground campaign in Gaza, he is critical of talk of “destroying Hamas” by Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, as well as ministers in his government and some generals. “What does it even mean?” he says. “That no one can still breathe and believe in Hamas’s ideology? That’s not a believable war aim. Israel’s objective now has to be clearer. It has to be that Hamas will be denied its Daesh-like military capabilities,” he says, referring to the Arabic term for Islamic State.

Mr Barak believes that the optimal outcome, once Hamas’s military capabilities have been sufficiently degraded, is the re-establishment of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. The authority, which was established under the Oslo Accords and runs the autonomous parts of the West Bank, was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in a bloody coup in 2007. However he warns that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, “cannot be seen to be returning on Israeli bayonets”. There will, therefore, need to be an interim period during which “Israel will capitulate to international pressure and hand Gaza over to an Arab peacekeeping force, which could include members such as Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. They would secure the area until the Palestinian Authority could take control.” Yet for now, other countries in the region seem to have no desire to contribute troops to such a force.

And then there is the great reckoning that will take place in Israel once the war ends. Questions will be asked as to who was responsible for the failures in intelligence and planning that allowed Hamas to take Israel so completely by surprise and to then reach civilian communities where they committed such horrific crimes.

“The immediate operational problems are being fixed now,” he says. “But a much deeper assessment will have to take place later.” When that happens, he is convinced that the blame will fall on Mr Netanyahu. “It will be clear that, above all, Netanyahu had a flawed strategy of keeping Hamas alive and kicking… so he could use them to weaken the Palestinian Authority so that no-one in the world could demand that we hold negotiations .”

Few people know the Israeli prime minister better than Mr Barak. The two men go back 55 years, to the days when Mr Netanyahu, then a commando in the secretive General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, served under Mr Barak, who commanded the unit. His older brother, Yoni Netanyahu, another of the unit’s commanders who was killed while rescuing hostages held at Entebbe Airport in 1976, was one of Mr Barak’s closest friends. In their political lives, they have been both close allies and bitter rivals.

In 1999 Mr Barak led the Labour Party to electoral victory, ending Mr Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister. But when Mr Netanyahu returned to office in 2009 Mr Barak served as his defence minister for four years. Since he left parliamentary politics in 2013, however, he has become increasingly estranged from Mr Netanyahu. Now aged 81, he has been active in the protest movement that has taken to the streets over the past nine months in an attempt to stop Mr Netanyahu’s government from making constitutional changes to curb the powers of the Supreme Court. Mr Netanyahu, he says, ignored repeated warnings from military commanders that the divisions this was causing were also tearing the army apart. During the protests thousands of reserve soldiers and officers said they would stop volunteering for the idf if the constitutional changes passed.

Mr Netanyahu is squarely to blame for the crisis, believes Mr Barak. Israel’s strategy towards the Palestinians has backfired. “Because the deaths were mainly of civilians and the state has forsaken its most basic commitment to its citizens—to keep them alive—this was the worst type of negligence.”

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/10/15/ehud-barak-blames-binyamin-netanyahu-for-the-greatest-failure-in-israels-history?

Israel’s tank commanders are studying Russia’s mistakes
Armour will be central to a Gaza invasion, despite its vulnerabilities

Like every modern army, Israel’s generals have been watching the battles in Ukraine over the past year and a half closely and taking notes. Now that the tank battalions of the Israel Defence Forces (idf) are poised to enter Gaza in force, following the terror attack on Israeli communities on October 7th in which more than 1,400 were murdered, those lessons are particularly relevant. Tanks, though increasingly vulnerable to drones, loitering munitions and modern anti-tank guided missiles, which strike from the top, remain the only platform on the battlefield combining mobility, protection and serious firepower. They will form the vanguard of Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza, blasting a path for the infantry units behind them.

“We saw how the Russians fought in Ukraine and the mistakes they made,” says Brigadier General Hisham Ibrahim, commander of the idf’s Armoured Corps, who has the job of preparing Israel’s tanks and their crews for war. “They fought there in a single-corps fashion, instead of using combined arms tactics,” he explains. In other words, Russia’s armoured regiments operated as separate tank units instead of working in integrated formations with infantry, combat-engineering and artillery units, and without co-ordination with intelligence and air power. In some cases, tank columns were sent single-file down a road without any support, leaving them to be picked off by Ukrainians. Russian tank crews were poorly trained and showed little sign of following their own doctrine.

“Israel’s armoured corps has a different shape than it used to,” says General Ibrahim. “We have been training in a combined-arms fashion at all levels for some years now. We no longer see the tank as being capable of doing everything. The battlefield has changed; it’s much more crowded and built-up. There are many challenges to these big platforms and I expect the infantry and engineers to make up for my disadvantages. Our soldiers in all the courses and exercises are now accustomed to fighting in a combined-arms environment.”

Many of these ideas were originally learned from Israel’s large-scale tank battles during the Yom Kippur war, 50 years ago. During that conflict the idf’s armoured battalions, sometimes operating on their own, took major losses from Egypt’s then-novel Sagger anti-tank missiles, supplied by the Soviet Union, as well as from opposing tanks. The IDF quickly adapted, and its tactics were widely studied and adopted by the US Army in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, Israeli tank crews are widely seen as being among the best trained and prepared in the world.

But the idf is not alone in having learned from Ukraine. At the start of Hamas’s assault on the Israeli border, the attackers used drones carrying large grenades to take out observation posts. In one case at least, there is footage of such a grenade hitting an Israeli Merkava tank. Similar tactics have been used by the Ukrainians against Russian tanks. General Ibrahim insists that while some of the tanks on the border were hit “two or three times”, none was destroyed and all will be back in action shortly.

Nevertheless, in some of the staging areas, Merkava tanks have been seen with “cope cages”, slatted metal barriers fixed over the turret, the most exposed part of the vehicle, to block such attacks from above. Russia’s resort to such improvised devices provoked sniggering last year, but Israel’s adoption suggests that armour professionals take the threat from drones increasingly seriously. The more advanced version of the Merkava used by the idf’s regular armoured brigades, as opposed to those crewed by reservists, is equipped with the trophy, an extremely sophisticated Israeli-designed “active protection system” system which has proven effective at defeating incoming anti-tank missiles with explosive panels that blow outwards. Not all of the tank units have the system, however. And every tank, including earlier versions of the Merkava, in Israel’s storage depots is now being deployed, suggesting the large scale of the operation to come and the need to guard Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

Within two hours of the start of the Hamas attack, General Ibrahim had notified all the idf’s armoured-brigade commanders that they should start mobilising, even before the official order had arrived from the army bosses. Now, for the first time in over four decades, since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the entire armoured corps has been called up.

This is a massive force, and although the IDF, keen to protect its operational security, is not giving out numbers, it is understood to include over 1,000 main battle tanks. Many of these are not intended for the ground offensive in Gaza, but are being positioned in northern Israel for the possibility of war flaring up also with Hizbullah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese movement, which has been provoking an Israeli response with daily rocket and mortar shelling since the Hamas attack on October 7th.

If a second front does erupt, Israeli tank-crews will be fighting two types of war. While both Hamas and Hizbullah have used similar tactics and weaponry in previous encounters with Israeli tanks—small ambush teams firing Russian-made (and Iranian-supplied) anti-tank missiles—the terrain will make a lot of difference. Facing Hizbullah in the hilly, woodland areas of the Galilee and southern Lebanon is a very different prospect from fighting in densely built-up urban areas of Gaza City, where attacks can come from close quarters.

For many years, the consensus among military experts was that fighting with lumbering tanks in narrow city streets was a liability. But the more informed view is that if used properly, and in conjunction with other ground forces, nothing can replace the tank’s firepower and breaching capabilities when fighting in an urban environment defended by heavily armed opponents. American commanders say that tanks proved vital in key urban battles in the Iraq war, including situations where lighter armoured vehicles proved inadequate. In Sadr City, a hostile suburb of Baghdad, American tanks and other armour formed what one study calls “roving, armoured boxes” which could move slowly, steadily and safely without exposing dismounted troops to danger.

Israel’s tank corps has at least two advantages over many other tank operators. One is that Hamas is not thought to possess “top-attack” anti-tank missiles like the American Javelin and Anglo-Swedish nlaw, supplied to Ukraine, which strike a tank at the weakest part of its armour—the top of the hull. The other is that Israeli tanks are designed to fight on the country’s borders, rather than far from home, and to give high levels of protection. That makes them relatively bulky and heavy, and potentially less mobile, but capable of withstanding serious hits.

In addition to their “active” protection, the more advanced Israeli tanks and infantry fighting vehicles also have sophisticated communications systems. These connect them to a network which supplies troops, on screens in the tank, with all the information being collected by sensors on other Israeli platforms, including footage from drones hovering overhead. “Today’s tank can use information collected from other sources to fire on its targets and collect information itself which will be used by other sources of fire,” says General Ibrahim. That overcomes the traditional problem of urban warfare: short lines of sight, in which one tank platoon may have little idea of what is going on around the next block.

Like tank generals the world around, he deeply disagrees with those who inferred from Russia’s failures that the day of the tank was over, and cites the events of October 7th as proof. As thousands of fighters were charging into Israel through 29 breaches along the border fence, he argues that at some points, the small number of tanks stationed that morning on the border “were the only remaining layer of protection, and they were using all their weapons, cannon, machineguns and simply running over, to try and stop hundreds of terrorists around them who were trying to get into the communities.” With most of the observation and cameras on the border knocked out, the tanks were often carrying the only surveillance systems still operating to pass along vital information.

Ultimately the idf’s failure that morning was one of intelligence assessment and a lack of forces within quick reach of the border. But of the few tanks which were there and made it to the kibbutzim, General Ibrahim insists “they were the key element in restoring control to those communities and ending the bloodshed. Nothing could have done that like a tank.”

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/10/16/israels-tank-commanders-are-studying-russias-mistakes?

Not the Egyptians, guys. Don’t fire your tanks at the Egyptians:

IDF ‘expresses sorrow’ over accidental hit of Egyptian position

Witnesses reported a blast and ambulance sirens on the Rafah border before the second convoy of aid trucks went in.

Israel’s military said one of its tanks accidentally hit an Egyptian position near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Several Egyptian border guards sustained minor injuries after being hit by fragments of an Israeli tank shell, a spokesperson for the Egyptian army said.

A witness and a medical source said seven people were wounded and taken to hospital.

Israel’s defence force “expresses sorrow regarding the incident, which is being investigated,” it said in a statement, giving no further details.

Reuters

Bubblecar said:

Not the Egyptians, guys. Don’t fire your tanks at the Egyptians:

IDF ‘expresses sorrow’ over accidental hit of Egyptian position

Witnesses reported a blast and ambulance sirens on the Rafah border before the second convoy of aid trucks went in.

Israel’s military said one of its tanks accidentally hit an Egyptian position near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Several Egyptian border guards sustained minor injuries after being hit by fragments of an Israeli tank shell, a spokesperson for the Egyptian army said.

A witness and a medical source said seven people were wounded and taken to hospital.

Israel’s defence force “expresses sorrow regarding the incident, which is being investigated,” it said in a statement, giving no further details.

Reuters

There are a lot of very young people in the IDF, I don’t imagine there are a whole bunch of hardened veterans with cool heads…

Bubblecar said:

Not the Egyptians, guys. Don’t fire your tanks at the Egyptians:

IDF ‘expresses sorrow’ over accidental hit of Egyptian position

Witnesses reported a blast and ambulance sirens on the Rafah border before the second convoy of aid trucks went in.

Israel’s military said one of its tanks accidentally hit an Egyptian position near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Several Egyptian border guards sustained minor injuries after being hit by fragments of an Israeli tank shell, a spokesperson for the Egyptian army said.

A witness and a medical source said seven people were wounded and taken to hospital.

Israel’s defence force “expresses sorrow regarding the incident, which is being investigated,” it said in a statement, giving no further details.

Reuters

“accidental”

Sorry we thought they had precision guidance and perfection, the whole point was that points have no dimension sorry we mean that they only hit terrorists oh wait.

SCIENCE said:

Bubblecar said:

Not the Egyptians, guys. Don’t fire your tanks at the Egyptians:

IDF ‘expresses sorrow’ over accidental hit of Egyptian position

Witnesses reported a blast and ambulance sirens on the Rafah border before the second convoy of aid trucks went in.

Israel’s military said one of its tanks accidentally hit an Egyptian position near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Several Egyptian border guards sustained minor injuries after being hit by fragments of an Israeli tank shell, a spokesperson for the Egyptian army said.

A witness and a medical source said seven people were wounded and taken to hospital.

Israel’s defence force “expresses sorrow regarding the incident, which is being investigated,” it said in a statement, giving no further details.

Reuters

“accidental”

Sorry we thought they had precision guidance and perfection, the whole point was that points have no dimension sorry we mean that they only hit terrorists oh wait.

Do as I say, not as I do.

We mean hey

but that’s the wrong feels, should be more like

surely. We make no comment on Alaska or Hawaii.

SCIENCE said:

We mean hey

but that’s the wrong feels, should be more like

surely. We make no comment on Alaska or Hawaii.

They already have what you suggest.

SCIENCE said:

We mean hey

but that’s the wrong feels, should be more like

surely. We make no comment on Alaska or Hawaii.

Texas shares it’s land, they love everyone no matter, colour, creed or faith

SCIENCE said:

We mean hey

but that’s the wrong feels, should be more like

surely. We make no comment on Alaska or Hawaii.

There was a plan in the late 30s to give the Kimberly region to the Jewish people…

diddly-squat said:

There was a plan in the late 30s to give the Kimberly region to the Jewish people…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley_Plan

AussieDJ said:

diddly-squat said:

There was a plan in the late 30s to give the Kimberly region to the Jewish people…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley_Plan

Good thing the Kimberley was completely unpopulated at that time.

AussieDJ said:

diddly-squat said:

There was a plan in the late 30s to give the Kimberly region to the Jewish people…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley_Plan

SCIENCE said:

AussieDJ said:

diddly-squat said:

There was a plan in the late 30s to give the Kimberly region to the Jewish people…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley_Plan

Hot take

dv said:

AussieDJ said:

diddly-squat said:

There was a plan in the late 30s to give the Kimberly region to the Jewish people…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley_Plan

Good thing the Kimberley was completely unpopulated at that time.

terra nullius in fact.

Boris said:

dv said:

AussieDJ said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley_Plan

Good thing the Kimberley was completely unpopulated at that time.

terra nullius in fact.

Sorry we think the other reference was in the other thread so this is the approximation.

SCIENCE said:

Boris said:

dv said:

Good thing the Kimberley was completely unpopulated at that time.

terra nullius in fact.

Sorry we think the other reference was in the other thread so this is the approximation.

You do seem to have something of an obsession with giving away those particular chunks of real estate to someone.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/aussies-left-with-headache-over-confusing-parking-sign-i-would-leave-211600780.html

…

Say wot you will but I think this sign is pretty simple to understand.

Sorry

Witty Rejoinder said:

https://au.news.yahoo.com/aussies-left-with-headache-over-confusing-parking-sign-i-would-leave-211600780.html

…

Say wot you will but I think this sign is pretty simple to understand.

So which side represents Israel? What’s your point?

captain_spalding said:

SCIENCE said:

Boris said:

terra nullius in fact.

Sorry we think the other reference was in the other thread so this is the approximation.

You do seem to have something of an obsession with giving away those particular chunks of real estate to someone.

No, no, no, no, no, colonialism is good if the other team uses long straight hollow cylindrical structures through which they compress air to make music, but if the other team uses long straight hollow cylindrical structures through which they compress air to make explosive projectiles fly, then it’s … wait … ah fuck.

It’s all good¡

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67175094

Israel aims to cut Gaza ties after war with Hamas

Israel has suggested that the long-term aim of its military campaign in Gaza is to sever all links with the territory

On Friday, Mr Gallant told a parliamentary committee that the first stage of the campaign was meant to destroy Hamas’s infrastructure, according to a statement from his office.

Israeli forces, he added, would then launch “operations at lower intensity” to eliminate “pockets of resistance”.

The third phase, he said, “will require the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip, and the establishment of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel”.

—-

The article does not mention it but the key question would be: will this mean an end to the maritime blockade that’s been in place since 2005.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-jets-strike-west-banks-jenin-two-killed-palestinian-medics-2023-10-21/

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Oct 22 (Reuters) – Israeli aircraft struck a compound beneath a mosque in the occupied West Bank early on Sunday that the military said was being used by militants to organise attacks, and Palestinian medics said at least one person was killed.

The Israeli air strike is at least the second in recent days to hit the West Bank, where violence has surged since Hamas gunmen from Gaza carried out a deadly Oct. 7 rampage in Israel.

Jenin refugee camp, a Palestinian militant stronghold, was the focus of a major Israeli military operation earlier this year.

Footage on social media, appearing to show the scene of the air strike, showed a gaping hole in one of the mosque’s exterior walls, surrounded by debris. Several dozen Palestinians are seen assessing the damage, as ambulance sirens blare in the background.

The Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service said at least one Palestinian was killed and three others injured. It had earlier said that two people were killed.

Israel Says Hamas War Could Last Months, Vows It Would Be ‘Last’

Yoav Gallant stepped up the war of words with Hamas as he spoke with forces gathered for an expected ground invasion of the Palestinian territory in response to the shock Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7.

“It will take one month, two months, three months, and at the end there will be no more Hamas,” Gallant said at an air force base whose location was not given by the defense ministry.

https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/10/23/israel-hamas-war-last/

dv said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67175094

Israel aims to cut Gaza ties after war with Hamas

Israel has suggested that the long-term aim of its military campaign in Gaza is to sever all links with the territory

On Friday, Mr Gallant told a parliamentary committee that the first stage of the campaign was meant to destroy Hamas’s infrastructure, according to a statement from his office.

Israeli forces, he added, would then launch “operations at lower intensity” to eliminate “pockets of resistance”.

The third phase, he said, “will require the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip, and the establishment of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel”.

—-

The article does not mention it but the key question would be: will this mean an end to the maritime blockade that’s been in place since 2005.

going to be interesting to see how a territory with no industrial complex will survive

I mean the Palestinian Authority don’t even have control of either of the two ports in Gaza…

diddly-squat said:

dv said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67175094

Israel aims to cut Gaza ties after war with Hamas

Israel has suggested that the long-term aim of its military campaign in Gaza is to sever all links with the territory

On Friday, Mr Gallant told a parliamentary committee that the first stage of the campaign was meant to destroy Hamas’s infrastructure, according to a statement from his office.

Israeli forces, he added, would then launch “operations at lower intensity” to eliminate “pockets of resistance”.

The third phase, he said, “will require the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip, and the establishment of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel”.

—-

The article does not mention it but the key question would be: will this mean an end to the maritime blockade that’s been in place since 2005.

going to be interesting to see how a territory with no industrial complex will survive

I mean the Palestinian Authority don’t even have control of either of the two ports in Gaza…

Gaza exports are around 2% of what they were in 2005 when the blockade went up.

dv said:

diddly-squat said:

dv said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67175094

Israel aims to cut Gaza ties after war with Hamas

Israel has suggested that the long-term aim of its military campaign in Gaza is to sever all links with the territory

On Friday, Mr Gallant told a parliamentary committee that the first stage of the campaign was meant to destroy Hamas’s infrastructure, according to a statement from his office.

Israeli forces, he added, would then launch “operations at lower intensity” to eliminate “pockets of resistance”.

The third phase, he said, “will require the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip, and the establishment of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel”.

—-

The article does not mention it but the key question would be: will this mean an end to the maritime blockade that’s been in place since 2005.

going to be interesting to see how a territory with no industrial complex will survive

I mean the Palestinian Authority don’t even have control of either of the two ports in Gaza…

Gaza exports are around 2% of what they were in 2005 when the blockade went up.

See¿ Terrorism Freedom Fighting Works¡

Hamas Action Successfully Achieves Objective Of Recommencing Serious Conversation Over Establishment Of Palestinian State

French President Emmanuel Macron has just touched down in Tel Aviv. On his visit he will call for the “resumption of a genuine peace process” for the creation of a Palestinian state and “halting the colonisation” of the West Bank while visiting Israel on Tuesday, his office says. “The only way to be useful is to one, show solidarity to Israel; two, make commitments against terrorist groups very clear; and three, to open up a political perspective.”

Macron will also express France’s “solidarity” with Israel and the French citizens living there, while also urging “a halt of the colonisation” of the West Bank as a result of Israeli settlements. The French leader’s Israel visit for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was announced late Sunday.

Israel’s four unpalatable options for Gaza’s long-term future
The path to Israel’s preferred outcome is littered with obstacles

Oct 19th 2023 | RAMALLAH

The public statements Joe Biden made during his lightning visit to Israel on October 18th did not suggest many misgivings about Israel’s impending invasion of the Gaza Strip. In private, however, the American president’s advisers hoped to press Israel’s leaders on an urgent question: what should happen after the war?

Israeli officials say they are focused on toppling Hamas from power, in retribution for the massacre it committed in southern Israel on October 7th. “Gaza will no longer be a threat for Israel,” says Eli Cohen, the foreign minister. “We will not agree that Hamas will have any power in Gaza.” Even after the risks of fighting in such a densely populated place were illustrated by a deadly blast on October 17th at Gaza’s Ahli Arab hospital, which Israel blamed on an errant Palestinian rocket, Israel’s stated war aims have not changed.

Four-way stop
But Israel’s post-war plans remain uncertain. It has four main options, all bad ones. First is a prolonged occupation of Gaza, like the one it undertook from 1967 to 2005. Israeli troops would have to secure the enclave and, in the absence of a Palestinian government, might have to oversee basic services as well.

This might please a segment of Israel’s religious right, which still fumes about the withdrawal in 2005 of all Israeli soldiers and settlers from Gaza as the abandonment of a sliver of the biblical homeland of the Jews. But no one else wants to see Gaza reoccupied, given the heavy financial burden and the likelihood of endless bad press and a steady trickle of casualties. Mr Biden warned on October 15th that a lasting occupation would be a “big mistake”. Most Israeli strategists agree.

The second option is to wage a war that decapitates Hamas and then leave the territory. This is arguably the worst way forward. Some of Hamas’s leaders and supporters would probably emerge to reconstitute the group. Even if they did not, some other undesirable force would take its place. The Middle East has a history of radical groups taking advantage of ungoverned spaces.

The best outcome, from Israel’s perspective, would be the return of the Palestinian Authority (pa), which governs parts of the West Bank in co-ordination with Israel. But that path is littered with obstacles. The first is that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, is loth to do it. “I don’t think anybody can be that stupid and think he can go back to Gaza on the back of an Israeli tank,” says Ghassan al-Khatib, a former Palestinian minister.

Even if Mr Abbas were able to take power that way, he may not want to. Yasser Arafat, the previous president of the pa and longtime figurehead for Palestinian nationalism, had a fondness for Gaza; he lived there for a time after being allowed to return to Palestine in 1994. People close to Mr Abbas say that he, in contrast, views Gaza as a hostile place.

Gaza would almost certainly be hostile to Palestinian police sent to secure it. The pa employs around 60,000 people in its security services, which have authority in roughly a third of the West Bank (see map). It cannot control even that limited area: parts of Jenin and Nablus, cities in the northern West Bank, are so restive that the pa’s forces dare not patrol them lest they be attacked. Morale is low. If Palestinian police returned to Gaza, they would be a target for the remnants of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militants. Hamas and the pa fought a bloody civil war in Gaza after Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006. Hamas eventually prevailed and ejected the pa from the strip in 2007.

Nor is security the only question. After Hamas came to power, Mr Abbas told bureaucrats in Gaza to stop working. Hamas hired tens of thousands of supporters to fill the civil service instead, while the pa continued to pay its workers to sit at home. Keeping that bureaucracy would mean working with around 40,000 people hired for their ideological loyalty to Hamas; dismissing it would repeat the mistake of America’s “de-Baathification” programme in Iraq, which threw legions of angry, unemployed men on the streets.

A fourth option would be to cobble together some sort of alternate administration, composed of local notables working closely with Israel and Egypt. Israel relied on that sort of arrangement until the 1990s, before the pa began to take over civil functions in the occupied territories.

There has been talk of trying to enlist Muhammad Dahlan, a former pa security chief who grew up in Gaza, to take the reins after Hamas. But Mr Dahlan has spent the past decade in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (uae). He has fallen out with the pa; in 2016 a Palestinian court convicted him of corruption. There is also bad blood between him and families in Gaza: he led the fighting against Hamas in 2007. “I think that’s an illusion,” says Michael Milstein, a reserve colonel in the Israeli army and an analyst at the Moshe Dayan Centre, a think-tank in Tel Aviv. “I’m not even sure he’d want to come back. He’d be worried people would want him dead.”

The case of Mr Dahlan points to a larger problem. The Palestinians have been divided for almost two decades. The split is largely their fault: though Hamas and pa leaders meet every couple of years to pay lip service to reconciliation, neither party wants to compromise. But the schism has also been exacerbated by the divide-and-rule policy of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who thought it a useful tool to stymie the Palestinian dream of an independent state. “Netanyahu had a flawed strategy of keeping Hamas alive and kicking,” says Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister.

Both Hamas and the pa rule their statelets as one-party authoritarian regimes. In 2021 Nizar Banat, a critic of Mr Abbas, was beaten to death by Palestinian police at his home in Hebron. Those who oppose Hamas in Gaza risk torture and execution. Most Palestinians choose to keep silent, shunning politics and focusing on their day-to-day struggles.

The most recent poll from the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (pcpsr) found that 65% of Gazans would vote for Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, in a head-to-head presidential race against Mr Abbas (who would lose the West Bank as well). Hamas would win 44% of the vote in Gaza in a parliamentary ballot, whereas Fatah, Mr Abbas’s faction, would take just 28%.

Between a rock and a crock
At first glance this would suggest enduring support for Hamas. But such polls offer only a binary choice between militants and incompetents. Fully 80% of Palestinians want Mr Abbas to resign. Hours after the hospital explosion there were protests in cities across the West Bank, where demonstrators chanted: “The people demand the downfall of the president.” He is 87 and has no clear successor. None of his would-be replacements inspires much enthusiasm.

In a hypothetical race between Mr Haniyeh and Muhammad Shtayyeh, the pa’s colourless prime minister, the former would win by a 45-point margin in Gaza and 21 points in the West Bank. Again, this is less a testament to Mr Haniyeh’s popularity than to Mr Shtayyeh’s lack of it: a poll in 2019, after his first 100 days in office, found that 53% of Palestinians did not even know he was the prime minister.

Open-ended questions yield more telling results. When the pcpsr asked Palestinians to name their preferred successor to Mr Abbas, a plurality said they did not know. The second most popular answer, in both the West Bank and Gaza, was Marwan Barghouti, a member of Fatah serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison for orchestrating terrorist attacks in which Israeli civilians were killed. Several of the other top choices, such as Mr Dahlan and Khaled Meshal, a former Hamas leader, do not even live in the Palestinian territories.

Exiles, prisoners—or no one: Palestinian political life is moribund. Palestinians blame this sorry situation on Israel, arguing that the lack of meaningful peace talks has deprived the pa of its raison d’être. “I think Mr Abbas will be the last Palestinian president,” says Mr Khatib. “The whole idea of the Palestinian Authority is that it’s a transition towards a Palestinian state. If there’s no political horizon, then the whole pa becomes irrelevant.”

Israelis contend that the pa has undermined itself through rampant graft. Billions of dollars in foreign aid have been siphoned off over the past three decades to buy plush villas in Jordan and to pad bank accounts in Europe. Asked to name the main problems in Palestinian society, more people cite their own government’s corruption (25%) than Israel’s continued occupation (19%).

There is blame enough to share. The result, though, is that Fatah is probably irredeemable in the eyes of most Palestinians, a liberation movement turned ossified and decadent. In recent years even some Israelis had begun to wonder if Hamas could become an interlocutor, following the same path Fatah did decades earlier, from violent militants to pliable bureaucrats.

Not only had Hamas appeared focused on trying to improve Gaza’s economy, some of its leaders also seemed amenable to a two-state solution. That would have been a remarkable shift for a group whose charter used to call for Israel’s destruction. Last year Bassem Naim, a member of the group’s political leadership in Gaza, told your correspondent that it was willing to accept “a state on 1967 borders”. Ghazi Hamad, another political official, said much the same a year earlier.

Such thoughts now seem naive. Mr Milstein was one of the few prominent Israelis who warned, well before the massacre, that Hamas’s apparent pragmatism was just a ruse. His view, vindicated by awful events, is now a near-universal one in Israel. Even if Hamas were willing to take part in peace talks, an angry, grieving Israeli public would not be a willing partner: the vast majority of Israelis want to obliterate Hamas, not reward it.

Two other questions will shape Gaza’s future. One is what role Arab states will play. In private conversations over the past week, several Arab officials floated the idea of a foreign peacekeeping force for the enclave—but most quickly added that their country was not eager to participate.

Egypt is not popular in Gaza, both because it has joined Israel in blockading the territory and because of its prior history as Gaza’s ruler from 1948 to 1967. The uae would be hesitant to play a big role. “We don’t act solo,” says an Emirati diplomat. The same is probably true of Saudi Arabia.

Israel would probably veto any role for Qatar, one of the countries with the most influence in Gaza. For years the emirate has helped stabilise Gaza’s economy with Israel’s blessing, distributing up to $30m a month in welfare payments, salaries for civil servants and free fuel. But its support for Hamas—some of the group’s leaders live there—will now make it suspect. “The whole strategy of Israel during the last decade was to trust Qatar,” says Mr Milstein. “One of the lessons we should learn from this war is that we should not give Qatar any more involvement.”

Although Arab states do not want to secure Gaza, they may be willing to help rebuild it. After the last big war, in 2014, donors pledged $3.5bn for reconstruction (though by the end of 2016 they had disbursed just 51% of that). The bill will be even bigger this time.

The other question is what happens to the pa. Half of Palestinians tell pollsters it should be dissolved. Doing so would deprive many of them of an income (the pa is the largest employer in the West Bank) and probably lead to more violence. But it would also raise the costs of Israel’s occupation and, perhaps, force Palestine’s long-term future back onto Israel’s political agenda after two decades in which it was rarely discussed. “It’s the only card he has left,” says a former confidant of Mr Abbas.

There is no lasting solution for Gaza alone. Despite the long schism, Palestinians there still see themselves as part of a larger polity. Anyway, the strip is too small and bereft of natural resources to thrive by itself. Its economy depends on Israel’s: everything from strawberry farms to furniture factories relies on exports to its wealthier neighbour. Whoever takes control, Gaza will be neither stable nor prosperous as an isolated statelet.

The only way to bring enduring quiet to Gaza is through a broader settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If the prospect of a negotiated solution evaporates completely, warns Mr Khatib, “with it, moderate leadership will vanish.” Israel can decapitate Hamas. But it is far less clear that anything better will take its place.

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/10/19/israels-four-unpalatable-options-for-gazas-long-term-future?

Seems an odd thing to do. A minnow stirring up a hornet’s nest.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-25/extra-adf-personnel-sent-to-middle-east/103018022

Michael V said:

Seems an odd thing to do. A minnow stirring up a hornet’s nest.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-25/extra-adf-personnel-sent-to-middle-east/103018022

Just an expected symbolic gesture, given that the US is increasing its presence there.

Bubblecar said:

Michael V said:

Seems an odd thing to do. A minnow stirring up a hornet’s nest.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-25/extra-adf-personnel-sent-to-middle-east/103018022

Just an expected symbolic gesture, given that the US is increasing its presence there.

Some RAAFies and pongoes get a few days sunning themselves by the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf, get withdrawn PDQ if things look like going any more nasty, symbolic, expression of solidarity, all in this together, all for one, yadda-yadda.

Proof That Politicians Are Omniscient Geniuses¡

Her brother, Yarden, his wife, Shiri, and their two young children, Ariel and Kfir, were kidnapped from their home by Hamas militants. “I know that at some point, they will have to go in because … we must put an end to Hamas,” she said. “I don’t know exactly the right timing, again, I’m not a politician. It is scary to think that it will go inside while our families are there, it can escalate the situation.”

As SCIENCE we’ll give you one guess as to what prices actually gives people the correct answer to things¡

Quadruple Standards¡

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-26/un-chief-rejects-accusations-he-justified-hamas-attacks/103023040
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-26/law-firm-threatens-legal-action-over-government-gaza-response/103021548

I wondr if hamas are thinking that first attack was a good idea?

Tau.Neutrino said:

SCIENCE said:

dv said:

diddly-squat said:

going to be interesting to see how a territory with no industrial complex will survive

I mean the Palestinian Authority don’t even have control of either of the two ports in Gaza…

Gaza exports are around 2% of what they were in 2005 when the blockade went up.

See¿ Terrorism Freedom Fighting Works¡

Hamas Action Successfully Achieves Objective Of Recommencing Serious Conversation Over Establishment Of Palestinian State

French President Emmanuel Macron has just touched down in Tel Aviv. On his visit he will call for the “resumption of a genuine peace process” for the creation of a Palestinian state and “halting the colonisation” of the West Bank while visiting Israel on Tuesday, his office says. “The only way to be useful is to one, show solidarity to Israel; two, make commitments against terrorist groups very clear; and three, to open up a political perspective.”

Macron will also express France’s “solidarity” with Israel and the French citizens living there, while also urging “a halt of the colonisation” of the West Bank as a result of Israeli settlements. The French leader’s Israel visit for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was announced late Sunday.

I wondr if hamas are thinking that first attack was a good idea?

What happened now¿

SCIENCE said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

SCIENCE said:

See¿ Terrorism Freedom Fighting Works¡

Hamas Action Successfully Achieves Objective Of Recommencing Serious Conversation Over Establishment Of Palestinian State

French President Emmanuel Macron has just touched down in Tel Aviv. On his visit he will call for the “resumption of a genuine peace process” for the creation of a Palestinian state and “halting the colonisation” of the West Bank while visiting Israel on Tuesday, his office says. “The only way to be useful is to one, show solidarity to Israel; two, make commitments against terrorist groups very clear; and three, to open up a political perspective.”

Macron will also express France’s “solidarity” with Israel and the French citizens living there, while also urging “a halt of the colonisation” of the West Bank as a result of Israeli settlements. The French leader’s Israel visit for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was announced late Sunday.

I wondr if hamas are thinking that first attack was a good idea?

What happened now¿

Someone decided that launching rockets was a good idea.

Tau.Neutrino said:

I wondr if hamas are thinking that first attack was a good idea?

I cannot believe that the provocative attack by Hamas was not planned with an end game. It was intentionally severe to ensure Israel retaliated most likely by an invasion, the question is what they had in mind. There must surely be a big surprise awaiting somewhere for Israel and probably the West.

PermeateFree said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

I wondr if hamas are thinking that first attack was a good idea?

I cannot believe that the provocative attack by Hamas was not planned with an end game. It was intentionally severe to ensure Israel retaliated most likely by an invasion, the question is what they had in mind. There must surely be a big surprise awaiting somewhere for Israel and probably the West.

Just Like Russia ¡

SCIENCE said:

PermeateFree said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

I wondr if hamas are thinking that first attack was a good idea?

I cannot believe that the provocative attack by Hamas was not planned with an end game. It was intentionally severe to ensure Israel retaliated most likely by an invasion, the question is what they had in mind. There must surely be a big surprise awaiting somewhere for Israel and probably the West.

Just Like Russia ¡

With the likely scope of an Israeli retaliation, there should be a big something for Hamas other than annihilation.

PermeateFree said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

I wondr if hamas are thinking that first attack was a good idea?

I cannot believe that the provocative attack by Hamas was not planned with an end game. It was intentionally severe to ensure Israel retaliated most likely by an invasion, the question is what they had in mind. There must surely be a big surprise awaiting somewhere for Israel and probably the West.

That could be the case, a deeper drawn out war involving other countries.

Tau.Neutrino said:

PermeateFree said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

I wondr if hamas are thinking that first attack was a good idea?

I cannot believe that the provocative attack by Hamas was not planned with an end game. It was intentionally severe to ensure Israel retaliated most likely by an invasion, the question is what they had in mind. There must surely be a big surprise awaiting somewhere for Israel and probably the West.

That could be the case, a deeper drawn out war involving other countries.

The question is, what does Iran want?

It’s Iran that’s been providing weapons and training to Hamas, as well as money and a safe haven for its leaders. Qatar has been heavily subsidising Gaza as well, but Iran is the main and most direct sponsor of Hamas.

The Hamas attack would have had a lot of push by Iran behind it, Hamas doing what its major sponsor wants and when it wants it . So where does Iran want this to go?