Everything that is happening in Gaza right now is happening at the US's sufferance.
Everything that is happening in Gaza right now is happening at the US's sufferance.
The game is over
No more rounds left play
It's time to pay
Who's got the joker?
Did you ever think you were gonna convince Randblade. Why would I pretend you or Aimless are less wrong just because you're stubborn goats?Originally Posted by Hazir
Both sides have been dedicated to fucking around and finding out. The only reason 10/7 was "never supposed to happen" was a ridiculous false sense of superiority and control. One which you seem to be echoing. . .The events of 7 october were never supposed to happen; a first world, nuclear power was the victim of a genocidal war crime.
Really? You're talking to me right now. Is that what I've been doing in this thread?That has caused a lot of people to jump over the nature of what happened on 7 october back to their comfort zone of blaming the stronger side in the ensuing hot conflict. Israel, being the stronger side is told to show constraint in its reaction. Accusations of war crimes and genocide are thrown around like there's no tomorrow. We (some of us) are telling Israel (and by default ourselves) that even genocides and war crimes aren't reason to strike back indiscriminately. That sure sounds like the high ground doesn't it?
That system wasn't built and maintained for the benefit of groups like the Palestinians. It was built and maintained because it maintains a more stable status quo and the stability enhances prosperity more than the alternative would. That's been the case even for Israel albeit not quite as strongly as elsewhere. But Israel is never going to not be surrounded, no matter how much ethnic cleansing it tries to do. And while this most certainly is a new round in an old conflict, I have already considered, in this thread, how that doesn't mean the methods can't or won't change. I can't see how it would work out to Israel's betterment if it does change in these directions though. If they do go that far in the direction they've seemed to be pushing in Gaza, they will not be able to stop themselves from pursuing the same path in the West Bank as well. They've already demonstrated an inability to recognize their limitations there. And quite possibly a revanchist move in Lebanon as well. And they don't have the strength to actually do all that, nor will they remain a sufficiently united society in seeking such long enough to accomplish it even if they did have the strength. They might start it but won't finish it which would buy them the worst of both directions of travel.So, unlike you and many others, I do not believe this is a new round in an old conflict. I also do not believe that the old rules still apply. I don't even know what the new rules are. I have a strong suspicion that the system of international law that has been built up over the period since WWII won't be a significant part of it.
You don't have to believe this, but then I suggest you to have a closer look at to whom that entire system belongs anyway and who are the people who want to see it destroyed.
What has surprised me most in all this is how little effort Israel has seemed to put in to recovering the hostages. I would have thought it would be the first objective sought but their course actually seems to be directed at making recovery (either by physical force or negotiated) more difficult until after it becomes too late.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Since I by and large seem to agree with you I will not react point by point. Some things I feel like saying : no, I didn't expect that I could convince RandBlade. As to why I don't engage with Aimless any longer is not because he holds ideas that I think are both wrong and outdated, but that he felt personal abuse was the way to go.
Basically I think the whole system is fucked up beyond repair and I see no way how to replace it in a way that's not totally horrible.
Congratulations America
Former editor of Harvard Hillel, in The Crimson:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2...-antisemitism/
For the Safety of Jews and Palestinians, Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Meanwhile, "The Biden administration once more bypasses Congress on an emergency weapons sale to Israel"
https://apnews.com/article/us-israel...6a2338b677da4f
Imagine highlighting one's impotence as a means of reassurance. I believe this is known in polisci literature as "loser shit".The State Department sought to counter potential criticism of the sale on human rights grounds by saying it was in constant touch with Israel to emphasize the importance of minimizing civilian casualties
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Twitter Link
Why would Hamas do this?
The game is over
No more rounds left play
It's time to pay
Who's got the joker?
Toddlers can be quite destructive
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Sad and lonely new year to weirdo losers defending ethnic cleansing and genocide:
Twitter Link
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...d-fffc0b910000
'100-200,000, Not Two Million': Israel's Finance Minister Envisions Depopulated Gaza
Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich joined a growing list of senior lawmakers who expressed support for large-scale transfer of Gaza's civilian population as a solution to Israel's post-war security concerns
[...]
Without outlining his preferred method, Smotrich then suggested that the removal of around 90 percent of Gaza's residents would help achieve his goal. "If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not two million, the whole discourse about the day after will be different," he said.
[...]
Last week, Likud MK Danny Danon said in an interview with Kan Bet radio that Israel "has to make it easier for Gazans to leave for other countries," explaining that this would in fact be a humanitarian gesture towards their neighbors.
"I'm talking about voluntary migration by Palestinians who want to leave," he said, adding that he has already been contacted by "countries in Latin America and Africa that are willing to absorb refugees from the Gaza Strip."
Last month, Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel published an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post with a similar suggestion, calling on Western countries to take in the residents of the Gaza Strip, in an act of "voluntary resettlement." Shortly after the publication of the op-ed, the Israeli Embassy in Washington was forced to clarify that this didn't reflect government policy.
Most notably, at a meeting of Likud Knesset members last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself suggested that he sees mass transfer of Palestinian civilians out of Gaza a positive outcome of the war. In response to Danon requesting for Israel to set up a task force to deal with the issue, the prime minister explained that the main obstacle in Israel's way "is countries that are willing to absorb them, and we're working on this."
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
SA files a case against Israel before the ICJ, in the same vein as other recent cases before the Court (eg. against Myanmar and Russia):
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...c-d9a9acd80000
Meanwhile, geniuses are calling for a 50-year occupation of a large swathe of Lebanon:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/livebl...r-buffer-zone/
This worked very well the last time so it's obv a great time to try it again
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I hear a great way to not be accused of committing genocide is to not have government ministers threaten to commit genocide.
Re: America not pushing Israel to limit the scale of the conflict:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/01/w...ithdrawal.html
Last edited by Loki; 01-01-2024 at 09:29 PM.
Hope is the denial of reality
US actions don't seem particularly relevant to this; they're trying to take credit for things Israel would've done anyway, without their "prodding". At most it looks like collaboration rather than being "pushed"—an effort to maintain some sort of strategic dialogue. Biden admin officials have an obv. interest in playing up their influence on Israel's actions; it would be better to get info from sources without that particular bias.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Israel has been talking about '3 phases' and lowering the intensity of (ground) combat operations since October, so this is unlikely to be Israel doing anything they weren't already planning to do. And I imagine by now it must be getting difficult for them to find intact buildings - sorry, "Hamas command posts" - to destroy. Diminishing returns and all the that.
Depressing to see the glimmerings of moral authority that the west was tentatively re-establishing in Ukraine just being absolutely pissed down the drain by Biden's active enabling of Bibi's psychotic outburst. How will anyone take a U.S secretary of state seriously in the future when they talk about how it's wrong to target civilians or bomb hospitals?
The game is over
No more rounds left play
It's time to pay
Who's got the joker?
State dept trying to show its teeth:
Should obv be matched with visa bans and individual sanctions.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Ben-Gvir delivers his response:
Twitter Link
Google Translation: Really appreciate the United States of America but with all due respect we are not another star on the American flag. The United States is our best friend, but first of all we will do what is best for the State of Israel: the migration of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow the residents of the enclave to return home and live in security and protect the IDF soldiers.
My translation*: Know your role and shut your mouth.
* as a fluent Hebrew speaker, obviously
The game is over
No more rounds left play
It's time to pay
Who's got the joker?
Israel is now openly advocating ethnic cleansing:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel...igration-plan/
Hope is the denial of reality
Time for the Biden admin to shit or get off the pot.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I'm looking forward to the hearings at the ICJ next week. I hope there's going to be an accessible stream of it. I'm also wondering what made the Israeli government change its mind
Congratulations America
This plan does not qualify as ethic cleansing. It doesn't even come close to the definition.
Congratulations America
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Last edited by BluntHorse; 08-24-2024 at 05:11 PM.
The only thing that bothers me is that this could all end in WWIII.
P.S. As far as I know as we speak most Israelis have their roots in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
Congratulations America
I very much doubt there is anything (that Israel might actually do) that would cause the administration or a voting majority here in the US to stop providing aid to Israel for its military response to a 9/11 event
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
The question is how the admin will respond to being openly pantsed by terrorists in the Israeli govt after trying to look tough on the issue of ethnic cleansing.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I thought we'd already had quite enough of foreign-policy-by-spleen from the Trump administration but maybe your appetite for it wasn't sufficiently satisfied.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
I'm pretty sure we're talking past one another right now.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Twitter Link
it's all about the billables
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Don't think that would change after the elections either.
Congratulations America
I'll remember this piece whenever I see some worthless freak boasting on some online forum or social media about the world's most moral army.
https://www.972mag.com/israel-tortur...aza-detainees/
Esp. telling are the repeated mentions of IDF soldiers wondering why the people they were torturing hadn't fled to the south. It shows that the IDF's intelligence-gathering efforts are in the hands of incredibly stupid men. Fascism makes people stupid.In early December, images circulated worldwide showing dozens of Palestinian men in the city of Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, who were stripped to their underwear, kneeling or sitting hunched over, then blindfolded and put into the back of Israeli military trucks like cattle. The vast majority of these detainees were civilians with no affiliation to Hamas, Israeli security officials later confirmed, and the men were taken away by the army without notifying their families of the detainees’ whereabouts. Some of them never returned.
+972 Magazine and Local Call spoke with four Palestinian civilians who appeared in these photos, or were arrested near the scene and taken to Israeli military detention centers, where they were held for several days or even weeks before being released back to Gaza. Their testimonies — along with 49 video testimonies published by various Arabic media outlets of Palestinians arrested in similar circumstances in recent weeks in the northern districts of Zeitoun, Jabalia, and Shuja’iya — indicate systematic abuse and torture by Israeli soldiers against all of the detainees, civilians and combatants alike.
According to these testimonies, Israeli soldiers subjected Palestinian detainees to electric shocks, burned their skin with lighters, spat in their mouths, and deprived them of sleep, food, and access to bathrooms until they defecated on themselves. Many were tied to a fence for hours, handcuffed, and blindfolded for most of the day. Some testified to having been beaten all over their bodies and having cigarettes extinguished on their necks or backs. Several people are known to have died as a result of being held in these conditions.
...
Four different witnesses separately told +972 and Local Call that while sitting handcuffed in the street, soldiers entered homes in the neighborhood and set them on fire; +972 and Local Call have obtained photos of one of the burned houses. The soldiers told the detainees they had been arrested because “they didn’t evacuate to the southern Gaza Strip.”
An unknown number of Palestinian civilians remain in the northern part of the Strip despite Israeli expulsion orders since the early stages of the war, which led to hundreds of thousands fleeing southward. Those we spoke to listed several reasons why they did not leave: fear of being bombed by the Israeli army on the journey south or while sheltering there; fear that Hamas operatives would shoot them; mobility difficulties or disabilities among family members; and the uncertainty of life in the camps for displaced persons in the south. Lubad’s wife, for example, had just given birth, and they feared the dangers of leaving their home with a newborn.
The detainees, still in their underwear, were then taken to another beach inside Israel, near the Zikim army base, where, according to their testimonies, soldiers interrogated them and severely beat them. According to media reports, members of IDF Unit 504, a military intelligence corps, carried out these initial interrogations.
...
Maher recounted his experience to +972 and Local Call: “A soldier asked me, ‘What’s your name?’ and started punching me in the stomach and kicking me. He said, ‘You’ve been in Hamas for two years, tell me how they recruited you.’ I told him I was a student. Two soldiers opened my legs and punched me there and punched me in the face. I started coughing and realized that I wasn’t breathing. I told them, ‘I’m a civilian, I’m a civilian.’
“I remember reaching my hand down my body and feeling something heavy,” Maher continued. “I didn’t realize it was my leg. I stopped feeling my body. I told the soldier that it hurt, and he stopped and asked where; I told him in the stomach, and then he hit me hard in the stomach. They told me to get up. I couldn’t feel my legs and couldn’t walk. Every time I fell, they beat me again. My mouth and nose were bleeding, and I fainted.”
...
According to the IDF Spokesperson’s Office, the military detention facilities are intended only for questioning and initial screening of detainees, before they are transferred to the Israel Prison Service or until their release. The testimonies from Palestinians who were held inside the facility, however, paint an entirely different picture.
...
According to testimonies, the most common punishment was being tied to a fence and having to raise their arms for several hours. Whoever lowered them was taken away by the soldiers and beaten.
...
“You can’t move,” Lubad recalled of the rules. “If you move, the soldier points a laser at you and tells the Shawish, ‘Get him out, raise his hands.’ If you put your hands down, the Shawish takes you outside, and the soldiers beat you. I was tied to the fence twice. And I kept my hands up because there were people around me who were really getting hurt. One person came back with a broken leg. You hear the beating and screaming on the other side of the fence."
...
In one case, Lubad said, a detainee who refused to kneel and lowered his hands instead of keeping them raised was taken behind the barbed wire fence with his hands cuffed. The detainees heard beatings, then heard the detainee cursing a soldier, and then a gunshot. They don’t know if the detainee was actually shot, or whether he is alive or dead; in any case, he did not return for the rest of the time that those we spoke to were held there.
...
In interviews with Arabic media outlets, former detainees testified that other inmates held at the facility died next to them. “People died inside. One had heart disease. They threw him out, they didn’t want to take care of him,” one person told Al Jazeera.
Several detainees who were with Lubad also told him about such a death. They said that prior to his arrival, an elderly man from Al-Shati refugee camp, who was ill, died at the facility as a result of the conditions of detention. The detainees decided to go on a hunger strike to protest his death, and returned their rationed pieces of cheese and bread to the soldiers. The detainees told Lubad that at night, soldiers came in and severely beat them while handcuffed, and then threw teargas canisters at them. The detainees stopped striking.
...
In video testimonies, Palestinians who were released back to Gaza describe cases in which soldiers put out cigarettes on detainees’ bodies and even gave them electric shocks. “I was detained for 18 days,” a young man told Al Jazeera. “[The soldier] sees you falling asleep, takes a lighter, and burns your back. They put out cigarettes on my back a few times. One of the guys [who was blindfolded] said to [the soldier], ‘I want to drink water,’ and the soldier told him to open his mouth and then spat in it.”
Another detainee said he was tortured for five or six days. “‘You want to go to the bathroom? Forbidden,’” he recounted being told. “[The soldier] beats you. And I’m not Hamas, what am I to blame for? But he keeps telling you: ‘You are Hamas, everyone who remains in Gaza [City] is Hamas. If you weren’t Hamas, you would have gone to the south. We told you to go south.’”
Shadi al-Adawiya, another detainee who was released, told TRT in a videotaped testimony: “They put cigarettes out on our necks, hands, and backs. They kick you in the hands and head. And there are electric shocks.”
“You can’t ask for anything,” another released detainee told Al Jazeera after arriving at a hospital in Rafah. “If you say, ‘I want a drink,’ they beat you all over your body. There is no difference between old and young. I am 62 years old. They hit me in the ribs, and I’ve had trouble breathing ever since.”
...
After the outbreak of the current war in October, this law was amended: according to the version approved by the Knesset on Dec. 18, Israel can also hold such detainees for up to 45 days without issuing a detention order — a provision that has concerning ramifications.
“They don’t exist for 45 days,” Tal Steiner, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, told +972 and Local Call. “Their families are not notified. During this time, people can die and no one will know about it. [You have to] go prove it happened at all. A lot of people can just disappear.”
...
Lubad was taken to Jerusalem for interrogation three days later. “The interrogator punched me in the face, and in the end they took me outside and blindfolded me,” he said. “I tried to take the blindfold off, because it hurt, and a soldier kneed me in the forehead, so I left it.
“Half an hour later, they brought another detainee, a university professor,” Lubad continued. “Apparently, he didn’t cooperate with them during the interrogation. They beat him really brutally next to me. They told him, ‘You’re defending Hamas, you’re not answering questions. Get down on your knees, raise your hands.’ I felt two people coming toward me. I thought it was my turn to be beaten and cramped my body to prepare. Someone whispered in my ear: ‘Say dog.’ I said I didn’t understand. He said to me, ‘Say, the day will come for every dog,’” implying death or punishment.
...
But on the phone, he felt that his family wasn’t telling him something. Eventually, Lubad discovered that an hour after his younger brother had returned from his detention at Zikim Beach, he was killed by an Israeli shell that hit a neighbor’s house.
Recalling the last time he saw his brother, Lubad said: “I saw how we were sitting there in boxers, and it was terribly cold, and I whispered to him, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, you’ll be back safely.’”
...
Regarding allegations of ill-treatment and torture, the IDF Spokesperson said that “any allegations of improper conduct in the detention facility are thoroughly investigated. The detainees are handcuffed according to their risk level and health condition, according to a daily assessment. Once a day, the military detention facility holds a doctor’s lineup to check the medical condition of the detainees requiring it.”
The detainees who spoke to +972 and Local Call, however, said that they were examined by a doctor only upon their arrival at the facility, and they did not receive any subsequent medical treatment despite their repeated requests.
All active members of the IDF—and esp. all of their leaders—should be hit with targeted sanctions and travel bans. There should be int'l arrest warrants out for IDF leaders and anyone suspected of being involved in the crimes detailed in this article. Human rights lawyers in the EU must lead the way, lobbying both member states and Brussels.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
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Last edited by BluntHorse; 08-24-2024 at 05:11 PM.
Don't be weird abt it mate, you're addressing people who aren't here
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
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