Israel

[nbmishoid 949]

20 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

I’d appreciate hearing the centrist position. Care to share it?

There are near an infinity of non extremist options, in almost all political situations.  The extremism declare there is not.  
it’s not my war but I care about the ongoing killing.

[hayden_horn 11,362]

32 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

I'm fine, I freaked out a bit last night, but loaded my dogs up and took something of an impromptu road trip to clear my head. I haven't had an episode like that in years, I sincerely apologize guys.

nothing to apologize about. it's all good. 

[Bullneck 19,181]

On 11/11/2023 at 2:08 PM, Anastasis said:

When I see stuff like that posted here, I think about the type of propaganda artist that would post that here and think it was informative to consideration of the positions being taken by the posters here. Really makes you wonder…

On rare occasions I'll hit "show this post" from someone I have on ignore.  Usually it's something worthless; no exception here.

21 hours ago, Jatrain said:

They’re all assholes?  

There's a little more to it than that, but thanks for your effort.

21 hours ago, chainsaw said:

That's not the saying. The saying is "From the river to the sea [wait for it] Palestine will be free."

There's nothing in there about eradicating anyone, much less Jews.

It's a Hamas slogan.  It's all about eradicating Jews.

Edited November 12, 2023 by Bullneck

[DixonHur 11,342]

Is @chainsaw going full Q?

[chainsaw 9,872]

52 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

On rare occasions I'll hit "show this post" from someone I have on ignore.  Usually it's something worthless; no exception here.

There's a little more to it than that, but thanks for your effort.

It's a Hamas slogan.  It's all about eradicating Jews.

Hamas didn't come up with it and they have not redefined it. If you have contrary evidence I'm all ears.

[Gatorubet 30,247]

22 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

Hamas didn't come up with it and they have not redefined it. If you have contrary evidence I'm all ears.

I absolutely can understand that the saying has different meanings to different people. For fucks sake, look at the confederate flag!   I’ve grown up with enough dumb shit UDC people to know that they all aren’t raging racists.

That said, you have to be smart enough in 2023 not to fly the fucking confederate flag - because enough racist assholes consider it to be their symbol that your personal views must bow to the clear offense that use in a is seen by others.

The same thing with that saying.

[chainsaw 9,872]

2 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

I absolutely can understand that the saying has different meanings to different people. For fucks sake, look at the confederate flag!   I’ve grown up with enough dumb shit UDC people to know that they all aren’t raging racists.

Confederate flag was never conceived as anything other than a symbol of a secessionist movement that was expressly and provably intended to preserve the institution of slavery. It's not an apples to apples comparison.

Quote

enough racist assholes consider it to be their symbol that your personal views must bow to the clear offense that use in a is seen by others.

The same thing with that saying.

I'm fairly confident that if you poll the non-terrorists (who even in Gaza outnumber the terrorists like 99-1) who use the slogan the majority of them would not say that "be free" means "be free of jews." I'm not a fan of micromanaging the mannerisms of a systematically oppressed people. If it ruffles the feathers of the oppressors, so be it.

[Gatorubet 30,247]

38 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

Confederate flag was never conceived as anything other than a symbol of a secessionist movement that was expressly and provably intended to preserve the institution of slavery. It's not an apples to apples comparison.

Look, nobody with half a brain who has looked at the actual secession articles enacted by the various southern states can argue that the war was NOT about preserving slavery.  But that is no way negates the fact that many Confederate soldiers fighting in that war did not have slaves, nor did they join to expressly preserve slavery. And it doesn’t mean that their dimwitted descendants who are proud of their ancestors’ service to the confederacy all think that “slavery was great” - or that they hate Black people because of their usage.   I am the family historian.   I thwarted another family member’s attempt to sign up their daughter in the UDC for a college scholarship.  I knew that the harm to the daughter by affiliating with the organization was far worse than a small $ college scholarship.  For people like my relative, regardless of history, regardless of what you just said, they do not view their ancestors service the same way as those who appropriated that symbol and use it as a representation of racism and hate.

We need to move veeeerrrrry slowly when our assumptions attribute terrible views to people.    Often it is a combo of Hanlon’s razor and a lack of information. 

We agree on that

Edited November 12, 2023 by Gatorubet

[DDD Dad 14,343]

2 hours ago, DixonHur said:

Is @chainsaw going full Q?

Maybe he’s just an Anastasis sock. 

[Bullneck 19,181]

1 hour ago, chainsaw said:

Hamas didn't come up with it and they have not redefined it. If you have contrary evidence I'm all ears.

You have made up your mind. You aren’t worth bothering with. 

[Anastasis 23,478]

4 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

You have made up your mind. You aren’t worth bothering with. 

lol. Spider man pointing gif this whole thread. But at least some of y’all showed up to it eventually. Crickets can only chirp so long while Palestinians are murdered in cold blood by the IDF for the crime of being a reporter or nonviolently protesting apartheid. 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Anastasis

[chainsaw 9,872]

3 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

You have made up your mind. You aren’t worth bothering with. 

The slogan itself doesn't have any genocidal terms in it. Whatever you think is genocidal must have come from someplace else, but where? Thats what I've been asking for and the best anyone could muster has been "well Hamas says it too" as if they get to redefine it for everyone else. They don't, they haven't, and the hundreds of thousands of people who have been saying it worldwide haven't allowed the slogan to be coopted for that purpose.

[Anastasis 23,478]

22 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

Maybe he’s just an Anastasis sock. 

No socks hall monitor. 

[DDD Dad 14,343]

12 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

No socks hall monitor. 

 

[Anastasis 23,478]

1 minute ago, DDD Dad said:

 

Post more bin Laden logic and act clueless. 

[DDD Dad 14,343]

9 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Post more bin Laden logic and act clueless. 

WTF is bin Ladin logic?  Wait. Don’t bother. I don’t want to know. 

[956 Worldwide 34,727]

9 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

WTF is bin Ladin logic?  

[MC Fresh Breath 4,074]

 

[statsman 5,472]

On 11/11/2023 at 7:33 PM, chainsaw said:

So if Hamas says something sensible it's off limits for everyone else to say? I'm asking about the overwhelming majority of people who are using it. The people in the streets calling for a ceasefire. The assignment was not to find an antisemite or terrorist who has used the slogan. The assignment was to find evidence that the slogan means what you claim it means.

Guys, let’s take chainsaw at his word. When we come across a demonstration, we can mingle in and add the other chants:

”From the river to the sea, we want liberal democracy!”

 
“From the river to the sea, pluralism is for me!”

“From the river to the sea, no to Islamic theocracy!”

We can do it!

[bolverk 29,694]

35 minutes ago, statsman said:

Guys, let’s take chainsaw at his word. When we come across a demonstration, we can mingle in and add the other chants:

”From the river to the sea, we want liberal democracy!”

 
“From the river to the sea, pluralism is for me!”

“From the river to the sea, no to Islamic theocracy!”

We can do it!

 

Worth a read.

In Congress and on Campuses, ‘From the River to the Sea’ Inflames Debate
The pro-Palestinian rallying cry has become a fixture of protests in the United States and was a focus of the congressional censure of Representative Rashida Tlaib. It has a fraught history.

When House Republicans and a solid bloc of Democrats banded together this week to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, for her statements about the Israel-Gaza war, they homed in on her embrace and defense of one pro-Palestinian slogan they called unacceptable: “from the river to the sea.”

The official congressional rebuke of Ms. Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, said the phrase was “widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel.” The top White House spokeswoman disavowed it from the West Wing, saying that it was “divisive” and that many considered it hurtful and antisemitic.

The phrase, which Ms. Tlaib has defended as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate” has not only become a flashpoint for dispute in Washington; it has echoed across college campuses and in cities throughout the country in recent weeks as pro-Palestinian activists protest the heavy civilian toll of Israel’s war against Hamas. The slogan has prompted charges of antisemitism and fueled an increasingly bitter debate over the conflict, its root causes and how it should be waged — and what position the United States should be taking as it rages on.

The decades-old phrase has a complicated back story that has led to radically different interpretations by Israelis and Palestinians, and by Americans who support them.

“The reason why this term is so hotly disputed is because it means different things to different people,” said Dov Waxman, a professor of Israel studies at the University of California in Los Angeles, adding that “the conflicting interpretations have kind of grown over time.”

The phrase “from the river to the sea” — or in Arabic, “min al-nahr ila al-bahr” — dates to the dawn of the Palestinian nationalist movement in the early 1960s, about a quarter century before Hamas came into existence. It gained popularity within the Palestine Liberation Organization, or P.L.O., as a call for returning to the borders under British control of Palestine, where Jews and Arabs had both lived before the creation of Israel as a Jewish state in 1948.

The slogan reflects the geography of that original claim: Israel spans the narrow stretch of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. But the phrase’s popularity persisted even as territorial claims shifted, after the P.L.O. entered peace negotiations in the 1990s, formally recognizing Israel’s right to exist and coming to governance through the creation of the Palestinian Authority.

For many Palestinians, the phrase now has a dual meaning, representing their desire for a right of return to the towns and villages from which their families were expelled in 1948, as well as their hope for an independent Palestinian state, incorporating the West Bank, which abuts the Jordan River, and the Gaza Strip, which hugs the coastline of the Mediterranean.

“When they’re using that phrase, it’s a very personal one for them,” said Maha Nassar, an associate professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Arizona. “They’re saying, ‘I identify with my ancestral home in Palestine, even if it’s not on a map today.’”

“Also, it’s an insistence on Palestinians and Palestine being unified,” she added.

But the phrase has also been adopted over the years by Hamas, which calls for the annihilation of Israel, taking on a darker meaning that has long shaped the way in which it is received.

That has only intensified in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in which the group killed more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers, the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, and took hundreds of others hostage. Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas, says that more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since.

“It is an antisemitic charge denying the Jewish right to self-determination, including through the removal of Jews from their ancestral homeland,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.

In a post on X this week, the A.D.L., a Jewish advocacy group that fights antisemitism and discrimination, wrote: “‘From the River to the Sea’ is a Hamas call to annihilate Israel,” adding that “claiming it is a rally of coexistence gives cover to terror.”

Many members of Congress, including dozens of Democrats, endorsed a similar view this week as they condemned Ms. Tlaib for her comments.

The slogan does not appear in Hamas’s founding covenant from 1988, which pledges “to confront the Zionist invasion and defeat it,” not just in historic Palestinian territory, but worldwide. It is featured, however, in a section of the group’s revised platform from 2017. In the same paragraph, Hamas indicates it could accept a Palestinian state along the borders that were in place before the 1967 war — the same borders considered under the Oslo Accords.

Still, Hamas’s firm commitment not to recognize Israel under any conditions has solidified the impression to critics that whoever repeats the slogan is participating in a rallying cry for the destruction of Israel — and by extension, of the Jewish people as well.

“The phrase ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ suggests a vision of the future without a Jewish state, but it does not answer the question of what the role of Jews would be,” said Peter Beinart, a professor at the City University of New York. He added that the meaning of the phrase, however, “depends on the context.”

“If it’s coming from an armed Hamas member, then yes, I would feel threatened,” said Professor Beinart, who is Jewish. “If it is coming from someone who I know has a vision of equality and mutual liberation, then no, I would not feel threatened.”

Many Palestinians have been dismayed over the outrage about the slogan, which they regard as the result of an orchestrated effort by groups like the A.D.L. to impugn the motives of Palestinians as a means of undermining their cause of statehood and silencing them.

“It is perfectly possible for both people to be free between the river and the sea,” Ahmad Khalidi, a researcher at Oxford University who worked on Arab-Israeli peace negotiations during the 1990s, said of Palestinians and Jews. “Is ‘free’ necessarily in itself genocidal? I think any reasonable person would say no. Does it preclude the fact that the Jewish population in the area between the sea and the river cannot also be free? I think any reasonable person would also say no.”

Mr. Khalidi pointed out that Israel’s Likud party, which is led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, embraced a similar slogan in its original 1977 platform, which stated that, “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” That phrase also could be seen “as having a malign intent,” he said.

Likud has since dropped the phrase, though the party has opposed a two-state solution in which Palestinians would have a recognized state alongside Israel. And in 2018, Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition pushed through a law that enshrined the right of national self-determination in Israel as “unique to the Jewish people.”

Edited November 14, 2023 by bolverk

[mchookem 16,337]

speaking of 'on campus', quick update... niece did not end up arrested or going viral this weekend, so i think she's safe from expulsion, thank god. she did what she 'intended to do' but is 'safe' (her words). no idea what that entailed nor do i want to know, but hopefully she directs her efforts to positive vs. destructive efforts. my husband also reached out to her with some words of wisdom and love this weekend and i shared Hermanator's link with her (no response, no clue if she's watched it yet). anyways...yay for angry young people that want to change the world, but damn they can worry you 😒

[Brian Fantana 6,689]

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israelis-keep-hurting-their-own-pr

[statsman 5,472]

Israel provides equal rights and representation for all of its recognized citizens. The problem for Israel is- to stay a Jewish state (as I noted before, this is a very illiberal concept for a mostly liberal people), it has to restrict citizenship/immigration. 

Palestinians claim a “right of return”, which would allow them citizenship. Israel wants to deny that, for fear losing status as a Jewish state (alternative would be allowing border entry and instituting “real” apartheid, which would be anathema for them). 

It is possible for a liberal democracy to have extremely restrictive immigration/citizenship laws, but the ones that do tend to be island nations- Japan, Australia, New Zealand. Somebody desiring Australian citizenship can’t just walk across a border (that said, Australia has had camps for undesired would-be immigrants). 
 
I know I’m not really contributing any solution to this problem, just pointing out the complexities of the knot. 

Edited November 14, 2023 by statsman

[Don Johnson 4,754]

On 11/12/2023 at 2:51 PM, chainsaw said:

Confederate flag was never conceived as anything other than a symbol of a secessionist movement that was expressly and provably intended to preserve the institution of slavery. It's not an apples to apples comparison.

First, you're wrong.  At an absolute minimum, many believed it was just a sign of southern heritage.

Tom Petty wasn't pushing for slavery.  The Dukes of Hazard wasn't pushing for slavery.  But, like you should, people wised up to how it was viewed by most of the world.

Tom Petty - "It was downright stupid."

https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/tom-petty-on-past-confederate-flag-use-it-was-downright-stupid-177619/

 

But just move on from that example and replace the confederate flag with a swastika, which certainly had life prior to the Nazis adopting it.  Yet no one flies the swastika as a sign of "health, luck, success and prosperity."  

[chainsaw 9,872]

1 hour ago, Don Johnson said:

First, you're wrong.  At an absolute minimum, many believed it was just a sign of southern heritage.

Tom Petty wasn't pushing for slavery.  The Dukes of Hazard wasn't pushing for slavery.  But, like you should, people wised up to how it was viewed by most of the world.

Tom Petty - "It was downright stupid."

https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/tom-petty-on-past-confederate-flag-use-it-was-downright-stupid-177619/

 

But just move on from that example and replace the confederate flag with a swastika, which certainly had life prior to the Nazis adopting it.  Yet no one flies the swastika as a sign of "health, luck, success and prosperity."  

Sorry but not even the most hardline ZIonists would compare the slogan to the successful redefinition of the swastika by a global imperialist nation state.

[Brian Fantana 6,689]

Very cool and normal that the "God sent Hitler to create Israel" guy was a featured speaker at today's rally and doing the "you're either with us or against us" dance with no critical analysis from Western media.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/pastor-hagee-there-is-no-middle-ground-in-this-conflict-youre-either-for-the-jews-or-not/

[Aqua Buddha 14,598]

Finding out:

Gaza parliament...

[RDCanecutter 26,454]

50 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Finding out:

Gaza parliament...

I suppose the point of that photo is to have Hamas see it, and come boiling out of their tunnels into pre-sighted kill zones.

[Anastasis 23,478]

Witness the humanizing decency of the pax.

[BrickHorn 18,240]

37 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Witness the humanizing decency of the pax.

Maybe they’ll find Saddam’s WMDs under there. Or whatever was supposed to be in Al Capone’s vault. 

[Neonmoon 38,129]

5 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

Maybe they’ll find Saddam’s WMDs under there. Or whatever was supposed to be in Al Capone’s vault. 

[chainsaw 9,872]

 

[956 Worldwide 34,727]

Just a thought, but it shouldn’t be possible for the IDF to storm or raid a hospital, as a hospital should offer no resistance if indeed that’s the only thing it’s being used for.  I am assuming that any violence will be the fault of the IDF, since there are of course no terrorists there to go after. 

[956 Worldwide 34,727]

25 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

 

So then you can take it easy because if there aren’t any Hamas fighters there, there won’t be any fighting. 

[Anastasis 23,478]

1 hour ago, BrickHorn said:

Maybe they’ll find Saddam’s WMDs under there.

Netanyahu: "If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region..."

Maybe we'll learn to pay attention. Doubt it, but it's a thought. 

 

 

Edited November 15, 2023 by Anastasis

[InkaUtexas 26,006]

seeing reports they went in, there was a live feed on Reuters. Some gunfire. Lots of people standing around. 

 

[chainsaw 9,872]

 

[Aqua Buddha 14,598]

9 hours ago, chainsaw said:

 

Then why not just surrender the hospital and ask the IDF for humanitarian aid with the patients?

[Chuckie Finster 22,702]

 

To be clear, do you have a problem with the statement: “Civilians who praise the slaughter of Jews are not innocent”

[bolverk 29,694]

‘Erase Gaza’: War Unleashes Incendiary Rhetoric in Israel
Experts say that inflammatory statements by prominent Israelis are normalizing ideas like the killing of civilians and mass deportations.

Shock, grief and pain have cascaded across Israel since Hamas gunmen poured out of Gaza to kill an estimated 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers on Oct. 7. So have anger and a thirst for vengeance, which the country’s leaders are verbalizing in language that critics in Israel say often crosses the line into incitement.

“We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly,” said Yoav Gallant, the defense minister, two days after the attacks, as he described how the Israeli military planned to eradicate Hamas in Gaza.

“We’re fighting Nazis,” declared Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister.

“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible — we do remember,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, referring to the ancient enemy of the Israelites, in scripture interpreted by scholars as a call to exterminate their “men and women, children and infants.”

Inflammatory language has also been used by journalists, retired generals, celebrities, and social media influencers, according to experts who track the statements. Calls for Gaza to be “flattened,” “erased” or “destroyed” had been mentioned about 18,000 times since Oct. 7 in Hebrew posts on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, said FakeReporter, an Israeli group that monitors disinformation and hate speech. The phrases were only mentioned 16 times in the month and a half before the war.

The cumulative effect, experts say, has been to normalize public discussion of ideas that would have been considered off limits before Oct. 7: talk of “erasing” the people of Gaza, ethnic cleansing, and the nuclear annihilation of the territory.

Incendiary statements are not limited to Israel, of course. Ghazi Hamad, a senior leader of Hamas, vowed on Oct. 24 that the group would wipe out Israel as a country, and appeared to exult in the barbaric acts that his militants had carried out against Israeli civilians. “We are not ashamed to say it with full force,” he said. “We have to teach Israel a lesson, and we will do it again and again.”

But the proliferation of such language by Israelis has opened a debate in Israel, where far-right and ultranationalist politicians were testing the boundaries of acceptable speech even before Oct. 7. Itamar Ben-Gvir, a right-wing settler who went from fringe figure to minister of national security in Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet, has a long history of making incendiary remarks about Palestinians. He said in a recent TV interview that anyone who supports Hamas should be “eliminated.”

Concerns about the spread of extremist rhetoric are an extension of a political battle within Israel that has been raging all year between Mr. Netanyahu’s ultraright government and a civic opposition, some of whom now worry that it will inure Israelis to the civilian toll in Gaza as the war goes on.

The idea of a nuclear strike on Gaza was raised last week by another right-wing minister, Amichay Eliyahu, who told a Hebrew radio station that there was no such thing as noncombatants in Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu suspended Mr. Eliyahu, saying that his comments were “disconnected from reality.”

Mr. Netanyahu says that the Israeli military is trying to prevent harm to civilians. But with the death toll rising to more than 11,000, according to the Gaza health ministry, those claims are being met with skepticism, even in the United States, which has pressed Israel to allow daily four-hour humanitarian pauses in the combat.

Such reassurances are also belied by the language Mr. Netanyahu uses with audiences in Israel. His reference to Amalek came in a speech delivered in Hebrew on Oct. 28 as Israel was launching the ground invasion. While some Jewish scholars argue that the scripture’s message is metaphoric not literal, his words resonated widely, as video of his speech was shared on social media, often by critics.

“These are not just one-off statements, made in the heat of the moment,” said Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer and author of “The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine and the Legal Battle for Human Rights.”

“When ministers make statements like that,” Mr. Sfard added, “it opens the door for everyone else.”

Yehuda Shaul, co-director of Ofek, a think tank in Jerusalem, has collected 286 statements since Oct. 7 that he classifies as having the potential to incite unlawful behavior. His list includes Eyal Golan, an Israeli pop singer; Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Mr. Netanyahu; and Yinon Magal, a host on Israel’s right-wing Channel 14.

“Erase Gaza. Don’t leave a single person there,” Mr. Golan said in an interview with Channel 14 on Oct. 15.

“I don’t call them human animals because that would be insulting to animals,” Ms. Netanyahu said during a radio interview on Oct. 10, referring to Hamas.

“It’s time for Nakba 2,” Mr. Magal wrote on X on Oct. 7, a reference to the mass displacement and flight of Palestinians before and after Israel’s creation in 1948, which Palestinians refer to as the “nakba,” or “catastrophe.”

In the West Bank last week, several academics and officials cited Mr. Eliyahu’s remark about dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza as evidence of Israel’s intention to clear the enclave of all Palestinians — a campaign they call a latter-day nakba.

On Saturday, the Israeli agriculture minister, Avi Dichter, said that the military campaign in Gaza was explicitly designed to force the mass displacement of Palestinians. “We are now rolling out the Gaza nakba,” he said in a television interview. “Gaza nakba 2023.”

The rise in incendiary statements comes against a backdrop of rising violence in the West Bank. Since Oct. 7, according to the United Nations, Israeli soldiers have killed 150 Palestinians, including 44 children, in clashes. Jewish settlers, some of whom are armed and informally allied with the military, have killed eight people, one of them a child, according to the United Nations.

Israeli officials point out that Hamas is also active in the West Bank and say that many of those clashes resulted from the military’s efforts to root out militants. Three Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians since Oct. 7.

Eran Halperin, a professor of psychology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, argued that the use of inflammatory language by Israeli leaders is not surprising, and even understandable, given the brutality of the Hamas attacks, which inflicted collective and individual trauma on Israelis.

For the first time since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, he said, Israel’s survival hangs in the balance. The country is facing the prospect of a multi-front conflict against Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as a potential uprising in the West Bank.

“People in this situation look for very, very clear answers,” Professor Halperin said. “You don’t have the mental luxury of complexity. You want to see a world of good guys and bad guys.”

“Leaders understand that,” he added, “and it leads them to use this kind of language, because this kind of language has an audience.”

Casting the threat posed by Hamas in stark terms, Professor Halperin said, also helps the government ask people to make sacrifices for the war effort: the compulsory mobilization of 360,000 reservists, the evacuation of 126,000 people from border areas in the north and south, and the shock to the economy.

But Mr. Sfard warned that Israel’s dehumanization of the people of Gaza could open the door to further discrimination and mistreatment of Palestinian citizens in Israel. It will also make Israelis more inured to the civilian death toll in Gaza, which has isolated Israel around the world, he added. A civilian death toll of 10,000 or 20,000, he said, could seem to “the average Israeli that it’s not such a big deal.”

In the long run, Mr. Sfard said, such language dooms the chance of ending the conflict with the Palestinians, erodes Israel’s democracy and breeds a younger generation that is “easily using the language in their discussion with their friends.”

“Once a certain rhetoric becomes legitimized, turning the wheel back requires a lot of education,” he said. “There is an old Jewish proverb: ‘A hundred wise men will struggle a long time to take out a stone that one stupid person dropped into the well.’”

[wildcat09 29,355]

3 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Then why not just surrender the hospital and ask the IDF for humanitarian aid with the patients?

Is a military force holding it? Or are a lot of doctors just working there trying to treat patients and hoping they don't get killed?

[bolverk 29,694]

7 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Is a military force holding it? Or are a lot of doctors just working there trying to treat patients and hoping they don't get killed?

It doesn't really sound like much of a defense has been put up so far. NYTimes has reported that there was a brief exchange of gunfire outside and that some weapons have been found, as well as at least one suspected Hamas fighter has been (is being) interrogated. From the reporting, I can't tell if it's over -- and no word on the suspected underground/basement Hamas headquarters.

 

Quote

 

Troops interrogated people inside Al-Shifa Hospital, an Israeli official says.

The Israeli military forged ahead with its raid on Gaza’s largest hospital Wednesday afternoon, storming the complex and interrogating people inside, in a significant step that could shape the pace and extent of its war with Hamas.

The hospital, Al-Shifa, has become synonymous with Israel’s 40-day effort to wrest control of Gaza from Hamas. Its capture could affect international sentiment about the invasion as well as the continuing negotiations to free the hostages captured by Hamas last month.

Israeli soldiers briefly exchanged fire with gunmen outside the hospital before going in, a senior military official said, but more than 12 hours after it began, the operation appeared more like a police raid than a pitched battle.

The official said that troops were interrogating people inside the hospital and had found weapons, but declined to provide evidence or further details because the operation was ongoing. Little information was available on Wednesday afternoon, as communications were disrupted in Gaza City.

Palestinian officials, the heads of United Nations agencies and some Mideast regional leaders condemned the raid, warning that it risked the lives of Gaza’s most vulnerable.

For years, Israel has said that Hamas built a military command center beneath the hospital, turning its patients into human shields. The Israeli military presented the hospital as a target hours before its troops entered Gaza last month, in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that Israeli officials say killed roughly 1,200 people.

To Palestinians, Al-Shifa Hospital is a civilian institution that for weeks has served as a refuge for thousands of displaced Gazans in addition to the gravely ill and wounded. Hamas and the hospital’s leadership deny its use as a military base. Israeli strikes on Gaza since Oct. 7 have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,600 children, according to Gazan health officials — one of the largest tolls in any air campaign this century.

Early on Wednesday,  the army said it had launched “a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital.” It said that its goal was not to harm civilians, and that it had sent incubators, Arabic speakers and medical supplies and personnel to join the operation.

By the afternoon, the senior Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing operation, said that soldiers were interrogating people, one of whom may have been a Hamas member, in part of the hospital.

The official said that soldiers had found weapons and evidence of a militant headquarters, but declined to provide further details and said that proof would not be provided until after the raid had ended. Of the brief firefight that he said unfolded at the start of the raid, it was unclear if the gunmen had emerged from inside the hospital itself.

The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza said in a statement, also without providing evidence, that the Israeli soldiers had beaten patients and displaced people sheltering at the hospital, and expelled others from the complex. Muhammad Zaqout, a senior health Gazan official, said in a news briefing that the Israeli soldiers had first entered part of a surgery department before later taking control of the radiology and cardiology departments.

Because of the communications disruption, The New York Times could not reach anyone at the hospital to verify either side’s assertions.

Should the Israeli military find a Hamas compound at the hospital and broadcast convincing evidence of the building’s dual use, it could change the global conversation about its operation.

John F. Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, said on Tuesday that the United States had its own intelligence supporting Israel’s claim of a militant presence at Al-Shifa. Mr. Kirby also said that the U.S. — Israel’s closest ally — did not want to see “a firefight in a hospital where innocent people, helpless people, sick people trying to get medical care they deserve are caught in the crossfire.”

After the raid began, Hamas released a statement saying it held Israel’s military and President Biden “fully responsible” for its outcome.

Before the raid, the World Health Organization said that Al-Shifa had ceased to function, and hospital officials had described grim conditions for patients. They said that medicine, anesthetics and fuel had all but run out, shutting down generators and lifesaving equipment. Officials said that roughly three dozen premature babies were at particular risk.

 

 

[Brian Fantana 6,689]

4 hours ago, Chuckie Finster said:

To be clear, do you have a problem with the statement: “Civilians who praise the slaughter of Jews are not innocent”

In a vacuum, no. In a context, like the one he is reference, of justifying collective punishment, yes.

But, I suspect you knew that and were just looking for a gotcha. Shame on you.

[Chuckie Finster 22,702]

5 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

In a vacuum, no. In a context, like the one he is reference, of justifying collective punishment, yes.

But, I suspect you knew that and were just looking for a gotcha. Shame on you.

Is this where I get to point out that Jews and Israel are not synonyms or is that only something that you guys get to do when lecturing us?

[Brian Fantana 6,689]

1 minute ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Is this where I get to point out that Jews and Israel are not synonyms or is that only something that you guys get to do when lecturing us?

When did I conflate them? Or did you just want to say that to somebody. My reply to you would be the same regardless of whether or not you're Jewish.

[Chuckie Finster 22,702]

8 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

When did I conflate them? Or did you just want to say that to somebody. My reply to you would be the same regardless of whether or not you're Jewish.

Likely me just being touchy that "civilians who praise the slaughter of Jews are not innocent" is somehow meant to be comparable to some of the truly controversial shit spewed in the last few weeks, and then being scolded for bringing it up. 

[Brian Fantana 6,689]

4 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Likely me just being touchy that "civilians who praise the slaughter of Jews are not innocent" is somehow meant to be comparable to some of the truly controversial shit spewed in the last few weeks, and then being scolded for bringing it up. 

Well, I thought you were asking chainsaw what problem they had with someone waving a sign around saying that. Obviously, it's a true statement, anyone who praises the slaughter of Jews is a straight up monster. But, when you are using that notion as a justification for collective punishment for Palestinians in Gaza, which is what I suspect the signholder's intent to be considering those signs were being waved in front of speakers such as John Hagee, a famous antisemite who once claimed Hitler was sent by God to create Israel, then yeah I have a problem with that.

[chainsaw 9,872]

 

 

Edited November 15, 2023 by chainsaw

[chainsaw 9,872]

6 hours ago, Chuckie Finster said:

To be clear, do you have a problem with the statement: “Civilians who praise the slaughter of Jews are not innocent”

I do, actually.

[chainsaw 9,872]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-public-support-israel-drops-majority-backs-ceasefire-reutersipsos-2023-11-15/

Quote

Some 68% of respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said they agreed with a statement that "Israel should call a ceasefire and try to negotiate."

About three-quarters of Democrats and half of Republicans in the poll supported the idea of a ceasefire, putting them at odds with Democratic President Joe Biden who has rebuffed calls from Arab leaders, including Palestinians, to pressure Israel into a ceasefire.

Gee maybe some of that "unwavering" support should, yknow, waver a bit.