I wish I could avoid this, but the world keeps slapping me in the face with the horrors going on in Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Israel has decided that the northern part of Gaza, with over a million people living there, must be completely emptied within 24 hours before the tanks roll in and the white phosphorus comes raining down and the soldiers march in and clear out the region house by house. This, I presume, they consider a reasonable approach to a terror attack. Just as America considered devastating an entire country and killing hundreds of thousands of people a proper approach to a terror attack that Iraqi citizens had nothing to do with.
Israeli commanders have said they’re readying a ground invasion of the territory in a bid to end Hamas rule there. The militant group launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on Saturday, killing more than 1,300 civilians and soldiers and taking scores of hostages.
Israel has responded with airstrikes and a siege. With exits to Israel and Egypt shut and food, drinkable water, medicine and fuel running low, the operations have effectively turned the densely populated 140-square-mile strip into a death trap.
No fuel has been allowed into the territory since the crisis began; many users, including the largest power plant, have run out or will soon. Nearly 1,800 people, roughly half of them women and children, have died in the bombing campaign, according to the territory’s health ministry. Another 7,300 have been wounded.
“Death trap” is right. This is another kind of terror attack against Palestinian citizens.
“The situation in Gaza has reached a dangerous new low,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told reporters. “Moving more than 1 million people across a densely populated war zone to a place with no food, water or accommodation when the entire territory is under siege is extremely dangerous and in some cases simply not possible.”
Clive Baldwin, a senior legal adviser to Human Rights Watch, warned that the order “does not alter Israel’s obligations in military operations to never target civilians and take all the measures it can to minimize harm to them.”
Nancy Okail, president of the Washington-based Center for International Policy, called the evacuation order “a license to kill. Because those who remain behind, it would be sort of a warranty to kill those who stay.”
The Norwegian Refugee Council, which operates in Gaza, said the demand to evacuate without clear guarantees of safety and return “would amount to the war crime of forcible transfer.”
Israel is planning to kill 2 million people, slowly and callously and brutally. The UN is posting alerts about what is about to happen.
Across the Gaza Strip, more than 2 million people are at risk as water runs out.
“It has become a matter of life and death. It is a must; fuel needs to be delivered now into Gaza to make water available for 2 million people,” said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General.
No humanitarian supplies have been allowed into Gaza for a week now.
Clean water is running out in the Gaza Strip, after its water plant and public water networks stopped working. People are now forced to use dirty water from wells, increasing risks of waterborne diseases. Gaza has also been under an electricity blackout since 11 October, impacting the water supply.
At the UN base in the southern Gaza Strip – where UNRWA has moved its operations- drinking water is also running out. Thousands of people have sought refuge there after Israel issued a warning to residents demanding them to leave their homes in the northern parts of the Strip.
Only in the past 12 hours, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. The exodus continues as people move to the southern parts of the Gaza Strip. Nearly 1 million people have been displaced in one week alone.
“We need to truck fuel into Gaza now. Fuel is the only way for people to have safe drinking water. If not, people will start dying of severe dehydration, among them young children, the elderly and women. Water is now the last remaining lifeline. I appeal for the siege on humanitarian assistance to be lifted now,” added Lazzarini.
I don’t know what to do. Do we just wait for the slow death of all those Palestinians, justified by the actions of a few terrorists? Just don’t ask me to ever support the criminal Israeli state ever again.
We will reach massive levels of deaths and nobody at the international level is going to care. I would like to think and hope that surely it won’t be an insane number like 100000 deaths but I fear six digits of deaths will be reached.
It is incredibly insane that the American response to 9/11 is being seriously used as a template for how Israel should respond. There was at least Israeli politician who if I am not mistaken even put the 9/11 deaths on a per Capita scale and argued that since Israel’s population is a fraction of US’s, this tragedy was much much worse and that Israel is essentially justied in any form of response.
PZ said: wish I could avoid this, but the world keeps slapping me in the face with the horrors going on in Israel and the Gaza Strip.
I reply: I feel the same anguish. As I commented on other posts earlier:
There are decent Palestinians, there are decent Israeli Jews. But both the governing powers, Hamas and Netenyahoo’s zealots, are evil and are bent on perpetuating centuries of bloodshed and murder.
Some barbarians in the u.s. government and the bloody cheerleader mainstream media decided years ago to jump onto the Israeli government bandwagon and vilify all Palestinians without any objective justification. I am at a loss to see how the bloodshed can be stopped given the maniacal governing mindsets involved. I will not recant or debate my position on this. It saddens me deeply.
If you look on that map on the side,
The northern part is where Gaza city itself is located, with 670,000 people.
The rest of Gaza is suburbs and refugee camps.
So guess where the Hamas fighters will be?
They won’t be in the northern part of Gaza.
I posted this on the earlier thread but it could go here.
So, how many men does Hama have anyway?
This is a key question if Israel is going to smash Hamas as they claim.
This source claims 40,000.
The BBC said 15,000 to 20,000.
I have no idea which number is correct.
The “source close to Hamas” is pretty dubious though. It’s likely they would inflate the numbers.
I don’t see how Israel is going to round up 20,000 Hamas men. These are guerrilla warfare fighters.
They are just going to hide, flee, and blend in with the civilian population.
Israel has invaded Gaza twice before and it never accomplished much.
Is this even going to work or is it just security theater mixed with another collection of massacres and atrocities?
.1. I’ve already pointed out that the Hamas fighters aren’t going to be where the Israelis are. Some of them might fight back, many of them will flee, hide, or blend in with the civilians. This is guerrilla warfare 101.
.2. Haven’t the Israelis ever heard of Algeria, Vietnam, or closer to home, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The USA occupied Iraq for over decade and Afghanistan for 20 years.
How did all those work out?
Invading and occupying an enemy territory has a history of not working very well.
.3. Israel has already invaded Gaza twice to get rid of Hamas.
How well did that work out anyway.
I’m not seeing how this will work.
They are repeating the mistakes of the past and expecting a different outcome.
Each side hates the other with a passion. Israel has all the power, though, and so many leaders, endnote a few Americans, favor extermination. Ironic, since the partition of Palestine was directly the result of the Holocaust. Truman’s Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, opposed it, and even reassured Saudi Arabia that it would not happen. This is of course hindsight, and I don’t think Truman had a choice,.
The IDF has already been attacking evacuees, many of whom turned back and decided to die inside of their own homes.
Honestly, it’d not surprise me if Israel suddenly decided to make large containment camps, where the civilians can be concentrated, with great big fucking ovens installed.
As for those mystified by US support of Israeli atrocities, you forget the Dominionists, who want to burn children with white phosphorus to show the love and mercy of Jesus.
As for the UN, it’s become as useless as the old League of Nations.
As I mentioned on a different thread, according to Huffpost the State Department has issued the advice
to U S diplomats to not use the phrase “de-escalation”.
My only hope is that the atrocities will be well documented and witnessed.
Ironic, since the partition of Palestine was directly the result of the Holocaust
Not even close. See my recent posting at [stderr]
@raven #5:
No, I think they know exactly what they’re doing. Netanyahu and his top brass no longer see killing tens of thousands of civilians as a mistake or an atrocity. They’re going to fight terror with terror and claim it’s not their fault and that they didn’t start it. If they’ve got an end goal in sight then it’s that the Palestinians turn on Hamas and do the IDF’s job for them, risking death from AK-47s and RPGs rather than from Merkavas and F-16s. Unless it becomes obvious in the next day or two that the Israelis are prepping massive humanitarian resources sufficient to look after hundreds of thousands of civilians “rescued” from Gaza, expect a bloodbath rather than an evacuation.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/14/gaza-civilians-afraid-to-leave-home-after-bombing-of-safe-routes
The Israeli government is doing exactly what needs to be done to make sure that more terrorist attacks will be perpetrated on its population. I’m not condoning the attacks at all but simply observing that responding to an atrocity with another one that will be even more deadly (as they have done for ever) is not a solution (obviously). And that most western countries give their unconditional support is disgusting (support to fight terrorists is fine but this is not what this is).
PS https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2023/oct/14/footage-shows-moments-before-and-after-israeli-airstrike-hits-civilian-convoy-fleeing-gaza-video
In the news: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/humanitarian-report-whats-happening-in-gaza.html
I figure that the Israelis are just upset that they are not able to get away with what the US was able to get away with our own indigenous peoples. But that was the 19th century and this is the 21st. We managed a nearly perfect genocide, I’m sure that the Israelis are looking to us as a path to be followed.
I looked at that map and saw what the goal might be. Netanyahu may intend to clear out the northern section of Gaza and use the Wadi Gaza wetlands as an easier to defend border. This accomplishes several things. It concentrates the Palestinian population allowing easier observation and tracking of movements; reduces the border length for more effective use of existing border guards; creates a more unstable situation for the Palestinians, which may lead to a slow reduction of their population (after thousands killed during the relocation – Netanyahu could be another student of US history). Then, after combat operations end, clear the rubble and allow more settlements in this now unoccupied territory, which of course, leads to more unrest. If Netanyahu’s planning is far-seeing enough, then expect another major attack on Israel, another major attack on Gaza, leading to another division and concentration using that north-south road as the new eastern border of Gaza. But maybe I’m just cynical.
I cut back watching the news, 95% of the coverage is about the Israeli Palestinian war. Turn on TV to the news channel and minutes I turn it off. I can’t stomach what’s happening there. As usual Israel gets a pass.
Just one question; What causes people to react by carrying out the inhuman attacks like the one Hamas did? I have a feeling Israel knows the answer.
Sorry but I’m all out of sympathy.
Palestines and muslims around the world have been supporting Hamas (and other groups) and their actions for ages. You could fill books with the terrorist actions muslims have done around Europe, Africa and the Middle East. For decades. Apart from 9/11, most just disappear from the news cycle after a day. They don’t want peace, that’s the BS they throw out every time someone calls them out for the actions. It’s the “No true scotsman” fallacy, a true muslim would never do that! Yet they’re the ones blowing themselves up, kill, stabbing, raping and terrorising people, all over the globe, since before I was born.
They keep claiming Islam is a religion of peace, REAL peaceful acts that have brought change is Martin Luther King Jr in the USA, Nelson Mandela in Africa and Gandhi in India. Hamas controls Gaza, that’s why the focus is on there. You need to understand, they will never stop killing innocent people, Hamas and their supports don’t want peace, they want Israel to not exist. The people there need to give up “independence” (the excuse to kill – much like the US civil war – they say it’s about state rights, but it was about owning slaves. They say it’s about independence, but it’s about wiping out the jews) and start focusing on constructive actions for their communities, but they won’t and they don’t. That’s boring and hard. It’s more heroic to die for their god and go to heaven and be remembered as a heroic martyr!
After they killed and raped their way around the concert for peace last weekend, social media was filled with people saying “yeah, but..” No But, there’s nothing that excuses what they and their supporters did. That’s not the act of “freedom fighters” and people in the West need to stop with this “both sides” BS. Muslims, Palestinians (and those alt-right jewish hate “jewish laser globalist” westerners) have been supporting/encouraging this, now they’re being held accountable for their support, as they should be. They aren’t innocent wuvy duvy people being picked on by big meanies. It’s their country and this is the actions of their people. There’s got to be a point, when the excuses used to defend the actions of killing and raping no longer work. And now they’re going to get it the fight they want, and as soon as they get a bloody nose they’ll start claiming they’re being persecuted.
You guys have been genociding cultures and people for a thousand years, you’ve just came off a 20 yrs carpet bombing of two countries, yet you always declare yourself the arbiter or what’s right and wrong when it’s another country getting it, literally, in the neck. The Black Panthers took arms and you bombed their neighbourhood, that was just in the 80s. It’s the same things you’re doing with China, they’ve had terrorist attacks by Uyghurs since the 90’s yet you’re all over using their response to beat the drums of war, because you’re the country god picked to decide who gets to live and who gets to die… in a county with the highest incarceration rate on the planet (US, England and Australia are in the top 10, USA 1st). Get off you high horses, I guarantee if a black or Native American group started doing a fraction of what the muslims have been doing you guys would eradicate them and be celebrating with bald eagles and flags.
I have friends who work with one of the large aid agencies in the Gaza Strip. It has been overwhelmed packing and distributing food, water and medical relief supplies to hundreds of thousands of Gazans. During the current terror attack by Israel one of the directors had his house flattened by an Israeli bomb. Israel is not bombing Hamas. The second last post from the director had him considering obeying Israel’s unlawful direction to move or die. In his final post he had packed up their supplies in their Northern Gaza warehouse. He posted his will online and moved to their warehouse in the south. The convoys of fleeing Gazans obeying Israels orders were attacked by Israel with over 130 Gazans murdered by the war criminals of the IDF. This included patients being evacuated in the more than 30 ambulances strafed and rocketed by Israeli pilots. Meanwhile in Australia Jewish Australians are lining up for flights to go to Israel to join in the slaughter. Palestinian Australians are not allowed to go to defend Gazans because that would be terrorism. They are even banned from demonstrating. In Sydney the Opera House has been lit up in Israeli colours to show support for its criminal bastardy and the Police have invoked emergency powers to threaten pro-Palestine demonstrators with fines of up to $11,000 and 3 years in prison.
And what will THE MOST PROGRESSIVE PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY™️ do? Why cheer on the IDF as they slaughter every Palestinian they get in their sights.
Yes, yes. I’m sure the situation is “nuanced,” and “complicated” with plenty “realpolitik” excuses why we have to look the other way as the Israeli’s commit a genocide. Oh, and don’t call it genocide, because that term is too “simplistic.”
Alt-X:
Therefore babies should die. Toddlers should die. Pubescent kids should die. Teenagers should die. And so forth.
If they live in Gaza, they should die.
No food, no water, no sewerage, no electricity, no shelter.
No innocents.
No sympathy.
—
Ah well, it’s good to know you have no sympathy for Israel, having run out of it.
(Does it regenerate over time?)
—
Be aware that in logical terms, ‘but’ equates to ‘and’, not ‘instead of’.
Acknowledging the atrocity done to Israel is a given, nobody denies that.
Noting the atrocity being done to Gaza’s inhabitants (some of whom are indeed Hamas) as collective punishment and bloody revenge does not connote approval of Hamas.
Unhinged rant is unhinged, and also irrelevant to the current situation.
Israel has had its suffering, now it is Gaza’s turn.
And you are out of sympathy, but somehow angry that others make moral judgements.
Hey, am I one of “You guys”? Millenarian genocidal carpet-bomber?
(BTW, not exactly carpet bombing in Gaza right now, more like rug bombing.
Only neighbourhoods and building complexes being rubbled.
USA is helpfully sending in more military aid, those bombs are not cheap)
@19
yes you are on the right track though maybe a little narrowly.
The actions and attitudes are not confined to any particular religion, country nor politics ideology.
they are simply strongest in those who want to rule, to control and dominate. Their biggest threat is true freedom their goal is the peace of the prison. They are all the same whether christian radical conservatives, right wing corporatist, Maga republicans, Russian gangsters or right wing Israelis. They all hate and fear, peace, freedom and democracy.
People use terror because it works not by defeating the enemy but by intensifying the conflict until one faction can finally (temporarily) gain absolute control over everything and instigate the prison of their regime.
I missed Washington Week last night, so I watched the rerun this afternoon on PBS’ World channel.
There was a great deal of disgust, sadness and horror over Hamas’ behavior in this particular raid, all of which I agreed with; but there was hardly any mention of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians for decades. I was dismayed at what turned out to be a very one-sided discussion.
Like most folks here on FtB, I refuse to take a side by declaring some mythical “lesser of two evils”. The leaders of Hamas disgust me. The leaders of the State of Israel disgust me. Ordinary Palestinians who are stuck in Gaza are mostly not to blame. Many ordinary Israelis are probably at least partly to blame because they voted the bastards in.
I just thought of something while I was writing this: I note that Bibi is now firmly in control, all of his personal corruption and attempts to render the judiciary ineffective now forgotten. I’ve read others wondering how there could have been such a failure of Israeli intelligence; but I’m not so sure that it was a failure (if you get my drift). Have I just spouted a paranoid conspiracy theory? Quite possibly…I haven’t thought it through yet.
I have a vague memory of reading, many years ago, that Israel secretly assisted in the formation of Hamas, precisely because they wanted an enemy to fight, while demonizing the far more moderate Fatah with whom they might have had to strike a deal. Can anyone confirm that? Or tell me I’m full of beans?
@ Alt-X, #19
Ouch, that’s a painful read. Let me help you out with some of those spelling errors:
…and that’s where I ran out of patience for this little exercise. There’s only so much drunken, rambling genocide-apologia I can stomach. At least, I HOPE it’s drunken rambling- I shudder to think of a mind that’s that incoherent while sober.
I honestly can’t make heads or tails of that last paragraph. I know my US history lessons were woefully-lacking when it comes to our history of violent racism, but I think I’d at least have heard of the carpet bombing of the Black Panthers, or our war with China because of… mass incarceration, or something? I mean, our super over-carceral culture in the US really is a big problem, but I’m not sure how that invalidates the criticism the treatment of Uyghurs in China by US citizens.
Also, I’m not seeing how some of us living in a country with a long history of horrific human rights abuses makes it okay for the IDF to deliberately bomb civilians. It’s wrong when the US government murders children, it’s wrong when Hamas murders children, and its wrong when the government of Israel does it too. It’s wrong to murder children, period, and it would be great if everyone could knock that shit off.
Signed,
A citizen of a nation that unfortunately torturers and murders a lot of children
I don’t recall Americans purposefully blockading food, water, medical supplies, etc. Citations please.
…
Even if they could vote, according to polling that I’ve seen, most ordinary Palestinians wouldn’t be voting for much better. They wouldn’t be voting for a party that supported a serious feasible long-term peace proposal. The majority of the normal populations of both sides share some of hte fault, and I don’t care to determine which is the lesser evil when they’re both so evil. I condemn Hamas’s recent attack on random civilians, and I condemn Israel’s blockade of food and water. We should leave them be, and let them fight, until at least one side gets enough sense knocked into them.
First sentence is a lie.
With all that hate you are letting out for a walk, I’m sure you never had any sympathy for anybody.
Second sentence is also a lie.
Hamas doesn’t even have all that much support in Gaza!!!
The rest of the Arab world has been getting fed up with Hamas for a long time.
A lot of key Arab countries are negative on Hamas these days.
Saudi Arabia is 10% and they matter because they are very rich and have oil.
The rest of Alt-X is generic hater rambling.
It’s routine and boring.
He hates the West, the USA, Muslims, and Palestinians. I’m sure his hate list is a lot longer than that.
Repost. This is the source for how much support Hamas has in 2023. It’s not all that high in Gaza and has dropped a lot in the Arab world.
Hamas’s support in Gaza isn’t all that high.
Less than half of Gazans want them in power.
This poll is from July, 2023.
…the majority of Gazans (70%) supported a proposal of the PA sending “officials and security officers to Gaza to take over the administration there, with Hamas giving up separate armed units,”
Hamas isn’t ruling by a democratic election.
There haven’t been elections in Gaza since 2006 or so.
They are ruling because they have the guns and the fighters to use them.
They are very unpopular in some key Arab countries that once supported them such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
I’m sure all the “pro-life” Americans will soon be protesting in the streets in support of all the children who die in this military incursion.
Meanwhile over at WEIT, not only are we getting badmouthed, on today’s Hili a commenter actually Mark Twained pre-Mandatory Palestine (jaw dropping) in reply to someone else concerned over Western perceptions of looming civilian death in Gaza because how that might affect continued assistance for Israel.
Given the reply to that one would come away thinking that if they could miraculously transform the allegedly sparsely populated land without a people for a people without a land into such an industrial powerhouse, they should be fully self-sufficient by now.
@25 vucodlak
MOVE was a black anarchoprimitivist group with Black Power roots and this actually did happen:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
If some other country treated Israel half as badly as Israel treats Palestinians, the US would be occupying that country.
@ 24 billseymour
I don’t know about “assisted with the formation”, but yes Israel favoured Hamas because they made better villians for propaganda purposes.
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/14/hamas-israel-palestinian-authority/
As a thought exercise I decided to imagine the Gaza Strip (28 miles long and ranging from 3.7 to 7.5 miles wide [including an already existing buffer zone that Israel enforcess so actual available space is less]) over the heavily populated areas of the San Francisco Peninsula (pretty much San Bruno/SFO to part of Sunnyvale with the Bay on one side and Interstate 280 on the other). I would say the total population of this area is under 500,000 (rough guess) in contrast to the nearly 2.4 million of the Gaza Strip. I can’t imagine taking people from SFO to Redwood City and forcing the population to go southward especially with no power and a shortage of fuel.
microraptor: for the most part the US doesn’t occupy Israel’s enemies. It just arms Israel instead and lets Israel do it.
Thank you so much for covering the conflict.
There’s rarely any defense of the Palestinians’ right to live by various prolific atheists except PZ Myers. Really hope there’s more articles like these by other atheists.
Ideally, Netanyahu should be dragged to court for war crimes or at very least, corruption and intelligence failure charges. The bastard should stand in for his predecessors for all the horrible shit Israel’s military & authorities have done towards the Palestinians. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen in our lifetimes.
I don’t recall Americans purposefully blockading food, water, medical supplies, etc. Citations please.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE
“The price is worth it”
In the news:
numerobis @35: And for the most part, none of Israel’s enemies have conducted attacks that matched this level of brutality.
Naftali Benett the former Israeli PM (you know, the one that supposed to be “better than” Netanboy), gets outraged when asked about Paletinian civilians and compares them to Nazis and used bombings of Dresden to justify whatever is happening to people in Gaza. You can’t make this shit up.
Going off on a tangent…
If any of you have any illusions about how a nuclear power (in this case, Britain) is governed listen to this .
And then apply the lesson to other powers.
It explains why the world is such a nightmarish mess.
https://youtu.be/CHZpFGPkzxw
@19 Alt-X
People have already jumped on you over this crap, but every religion is a “religion of peace”, until you get extremist authoritarians, who think everyone else is wrong, or openly evil, and that the solution is, “justified violence”. While you certainly don’t need religion to push this kind of bullshit, its a lot freaking harder to justify it without “god on your side”. All one has to do is look at US politics to see the same crap. Who are the people constantly talking about a) being 100% right about everything, b) needing violence to make changes, including to the government, c) claiming they have god on their side while doing it, and d) literally showing “compassion” only when the purpose of the word is to con their followers into thinking they give a damn about them, while simultaneously having none at all for both their real, and utterly imaginary, enemies? Yep, the extremist religious politicians, who hate everyone that isn’t a cookie cutter copy of themselves, blame all the worlds problems on literally anyone/anything other than their own policies, are constantly whining about the end of the world, and how they are doing everything for their god, and aided, abetted, and/or even helped plan the freaking Jan 6 insurrection, in which one of them famously stated, not that long ago, that if they had been in charge it would have involved more people, and more guns, i.e., more freaking violence and death. You can also see it with every single case in which we know, actually know, based on video evidence and their own admission, that violence broke out among protests in the US because either right wing nutjobs (or sometimes even cops that sympathized with this crap) went in started it, with the express intention of getting an overreaction, thereby justifying and even greater response in reaction to it. I.e, one guy breaks a window, or throws something, or some cop shoots first at a crowd, so the crowd starts to react, and moments later its tear gas, bullets (rubber or otherwise) and hundreds, or thousands, many of them innocent of the violence, get hurt and arrested. And, of course, maybe some do get fed up with this blatant abuse, and a few of the violent events “are” from real protestors, which just escalates it more. Just look at the crap coming out of the mouths of many of these nutjobs, and the suggestion, and support for it from some of them back when the orange cheeto tried to suggest using military troops to clear out protestors (and worse), and its not hard to imagine that they would do the same shit here in the US, if they could get by with it.
But, lets be clear here, the number of people actually pushing this crap are less than 5% of the population, possibly less, but they have conned almost half into supporting it, either because those supporters are in utter denial of the reality of what they could, and would, do, or because they have let themselves be sold the idea that its necessary somehow, but almost none of those supporters would actually accept it, if it came to their own neighborhoods, or they truly accepted how depraved their “leaders” are, instead of being intentionally isolated from the full depravity with propaganda, misinformation, and the false belief that they will never be a target of the same insanity form their supposed saviors.
This is why this madness is insidious – because it only takes a small number of crazies, with power, and lies, to bamboozle masses of other people, who would never accept it, if it was happening right smack in front of them, instead of to someone, “Over there…”, who they have been told is worse, and hates them, and it out to destroy their lives. Its sick, but universal, and what we are seeing now with Israel and Palestine is what happens when “both sides” are run by such insane leaders, who don’t give a single F about their own people, beyond how much support they can con out of them, as a means to some delusional end goal of reaching “holy perfection”.
Dangerous populists in other countries:
Today, Poland goes to the election booths.
The populist Law & Justice party (Polish MAGA) wants a third term in Office.
Before the Ukraine war, the international community condemned their attempts to Netanyahu the independence of the courts, but now
Poland is seen as a vital ally to the west.
A lot is hanging on this election.
This is on topic since the title of the OP is, “The world is not helping my depression”
CNN article: “How to protect your mental health while keeping tabs on the Israel-Hamas war”
It’s mostly simple common sense.
It’s unlikely to completely work. If you aren’t appalled by what is happening in Israel and Gaza, you are most likely a Zombie or something.
No one knows how many people in Gaza will be killed, the vast majority of which will be civilians. I predicted 10,000 giving Israel a 10:1 advantage in dead bodies.
It could be a lot more than that though.
We are up to 2,000 dead Gazans and the invasion hasn’t even started.
I don’t see how this is going to work.
There is no way to identify and arrest 20,000 Hamas fighters out of a population of 2.3 million people.
Not without killing huge numbers of civilians, who are trapped with no where to go.
2 kinds of groups. The ones we choose to join, and the ones we don’t choose to join.
The first kind involves the police and other groups that can accumulate cultural problems that justify group shaming.
The second kind involves race, sex, nationality, refugees…
When someone decides to treat the second group as a whole to be blamed for something they implicitly give me permission to blame them for something someone in their group has done.
I wouldn’t really judge them for the actions of others and would say so before performatively acting out some mock blaming at them.
(Religion is complicated in that kids don’t get choice until later).
Nationality is more like religion than I acknowledged.
A question I have is, -as some within the Palestinian authority (which I consider corrupt, and a poor representative of the Palestinian people) are retreating into denials of the worst artocities Hamas are alleged to have done during the attack and claiming it is Israeli propaganda- :
-Are the claims of the worst atrocities confirmed/well documented?
The Israeli army has pondered the tunnel system under Gaza for years and are considering using ground-penetrating bombs and drines entering the tunnels to identify booby traps.
A question for people with some understanding of modern drones; What are the abilities of drones in such confined spaces?
Yes and no.
Mostly they are confirmed.
This was too widespread with too many people involved.
And these days, almost everyone carries smart phones with cameras and video recorders.
Some of the wilder claims of atrocities aren’t confirmed and likely never happened.
The 40 babies with their heads cut off never happened.
If someone makes a claim of an atrocity or that an atrocity never happened, they need to be able to back that claim up with data and evidence.
The reality deniers don’t impress me at all.
And, I’m sure for every Palestinian who denies what Hamas did, there will be an Israeli who denies what the IDF is doing now in Gaza.
These people are very much alike in a lot of ways other than that they deeply hate each other.
Hard to provide evidence that a claimed attrocity did not happen.
More reasonable to require claims for attrocities to be supported and test the support rigorously and ignore the did not happen claims.
So the 40 dead babies has no supporting evidence. Dismissed.
I have chosen to largely disconnect from this. The news is everywhere and I’ll likely pick up enough details to know everything that’s really important even as I put effort into avoiding this topic.
I don’t need to wallow in the details to know that the attacks by Hama’s were brutal and indefensible. I don’t need to know everything the Israeli army is doing to civilians to know they are also brutal and indefensible.
This isn’t some sort of theoretical “both sides” equivalence, its much simpler than that. Its understanding that raping, kidnapping, and murdering Israeli civilians is vile. And so is mass murdering Palestinian civilians. The act doesn’t get any better when you change who the victims are. And its not like one act is meaningfully better than the other. The only way to be okay with these events is to give up on civilization yourself and descend into barbarism with the people acting out these atrocities.
That seems like all the really important information to know about this. It’s all bad because too many people over there on either side got too caught up in hating and fearing the other side to notice that their leaders are terrible people. Digging into the details beyond that is not going to make me more informed, it’ll just make me more unhappy.
birgerjohansson @ 48, drones are pretty capable these days. Just look at what’s trundling around on Mars for an example of autonomous drones. Armed and explosive delivering drones are quite capable as well.
Thankfully, nothing lethal that’s fully autonomous yet, but give the destructive types time.
DanDare @ 50, good advice. There’s tons of disinformation and propaganda out there currently, flooding the internet by multiple nations, especially Russia.
Fuck. One 6 year old Illinois child stabbed to death over 26 times, his mother survived, being stabbed over a dozen times by their landlord of over two years. Why? They are Muslim.
But in texts to the boy’s father from the hospital after the attack, Shahin said the landlord “knocked on their door, and when she opened, he tried to choke her and proceeded to attack her with a knife, yelling, ‘you Muslims must die,’” according to the CAIR statement.
The angry attacker is in custody and charged with premeditated murder and attempted murder, being a young angry man of 71.
But, Christianity is the religion of peace and love, love the small children to pieces.
Excuse me while I become ill.
@ 24 billseymour
For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces
After pressure, Israel has opened up the water supply for southern Gaza, and there seems to be a consensus between Israel, USA and Egypt to have some kind of unilateral cease-fire for Southern Gaza, making life somewhat easier for people in the south, and refugees that have made their way there from the north.
Gaza har a population density of 5,750 people per km2 (multiply by 1,6× 1,6 to get the value for miles2). It follows that wherever you drop a 750 lb bomb, you hit a place where a lot of families live.
This is for Alt-X. What kind of anti-Muslim nonsense are you on? You are literally taking over 1 billion Muslims of the world and not only radicalizing them as an evil monolith but as a terrorist or terrorist-adjacent group. I’m Muslim. I support Israel here but understand the suffering everyone is going through and the nuances of it. Your implications are that Muslims should be discriminated and even have violence inflicted on them because you perceive them all as anti-semites, terrorists or savages. You are implying that Muslims should be eradicated and that Muslim minorities everywhere should be getting the Palestinian treatment. This is a very dangerous thing to imply. You are implying that even western, liberal, educated, plural Muslims like me be treated like a terrorist just because I’m Muslim and therefore I”m no different from the “savage Muslim” you think we all are. Imagine if I was Jewish and you were saying those things towards Israelis and Jews instead of Palestinians and Muslims? It’s clearly bigoted.
While Islam is not a race, the way you stereotype and even racialize Muslims so easily implies you view Muslims as a monolithic and racial group predominantly. Imagine if you said Jew, Christian, or Hindu instead of Muslim. Don’t tell me it’s not the same. People in the west and several non-Muslim majority nations often conflate Muslims as someone who is foreign or dark-skinned. There is actual research on it. It’s’ clearly rooted in bigotry. A Muslim child in Illinois (in the USA!) who had nothing to do with this may have been killed with the twisted logic you are using. Can we agree this conflict really sucks, people suffering really sucks, and stopping the suffering would be a good thing? Why imply that people that happen to be Muslim suffer? In your quest to demonize those with who you think are the unenlightened and unrighteous, you are normalizing and even excusing possible atrocities towards literally a billion people that have nothing to do with this, don’t care about the conflict, or are even pro-Isarel.
Correction: I meant to say “You are literally taking over 1 billion Muslims of the world and not only RACIALIZING them as an evil monolith but as a terrorist or terrorist-adjacent group.”
Media Watch in Australia:
Sam Harris says that moral equivalence is a sin because yadda yadda jihad yadda yadda human shields yadda yadda.
Sam Harris is a sick fuck. As of course is Alt-X.
You seem to have assumed your conclusion.
Your question is quite ambiguous and ignores the complexity of claims and counterclaims, assertions and denials. Read this, carefully and thoroughly: https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/12/40-israeli-babies-beheaded-by-hamas/
These sweeping generalizations don’t help at all, ignore the causal factors, and the diversities of these populations. Try reading this: https://jewishcurrents.org/we-cannot-cross-until-we-carry-each-other?
You’re not much better than Alt-X and Sam Harris.
You’re such a lying sack of shit.
And saying that Biden is the most progressive President in American history does not say that he’s very progressive, especially on Israel, where every American President with the exception of Carter was gawdawful, and even Carter wasn’t all that great.
Also in France. And people are being suspended or shadowbanned on Instagram and other social media for reporting truths about what is happening.
It’s a combination of the worst elements of violent militant Islam with fascism, antisemitism, and decades of Israeli occupation and oppression.
@14 It’s not entirely clear that it was an Israeli attack on the convoy. Most news organizations say that it hasn’t been verified, and I’ve seen video analysis that disputes it being an air strike.
OTOH: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gaza-strip-photo/
Nonsense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Zionism
Also ahistorical: https://www.shapell.org/manuscript/truman-israel-independence-war/
@67 Indeed. Still, it shows bad things are happening to civilians there.
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Israel did suffer, and badly. For one day, and for its victims, forever more.
Gazans are suffering, and badly. On an ongoing basis.
Hamas is evil. Can’t dispute that.
Still. To claim that the ongoing suffering in Gaza is due to Hamas is not… false, but it’s not the whole story. Israel too has some say in that matter.
@69 And yet over and over again I see people (not here) saying unequivocally “Hamas is to blame”, specifically in response to pointing out Israel’s role(s).
What do you find objectionable about what I just wrote? If you don’t like my plan, what do you think we should do?
And that’s because Israel and Hamas are about equally to blame for ongoing hostilities and needless civilian deaths. Israel is committing genocide. It’s a slow-roll ethnic cleansing kind of genocide, but it’s still genocide. I’m not going to overlook that.