835 karma · joined June 22, 2023
> Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out.
-- Traudl Junge
https://accountabilityarchive.org/
Where, other than with mere hand waving? How did they explain away blowing courts and universities with rigged explosives? Soldiers bragging about "occupation, expulsion, settlement, annexiation"? All the talk about how there are no civilians in Gaza? How many people who said that has Israel prosecuted so far?
I changed it to "indoctrination". Which is a more polite word that doesn't really do it justice, but it's not really important because the result, the inability to even meaningfully interact with the charges, is a constant.
As George Orwell put it, from the totalitarian perspective history is something to be created, rather than learned. Or as Robert Antelme described a concentration camp guard: "trapped in the machinery of his own myth". I just cannot find a flattering way to describe these things, there just is no material to work with for that.
> Leading propaganda machine and former Member of Knesset Einat Wilf suggests that the Israeli government should allow aid into Gaza officially, but unofficially let "protesters" to block all aid from entering the Strip. I think that's actually kinda what happened today.
-- https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/175021647115263591...
> The Gaon Rabbi Dov Lior Shalita in a halachic ruling: Citizens must prevent the entry of Hamas trucks even on Shabbat, because equipping and supplying the enemy is a war act that must be stopped from the point of view of human control.
-- https://twitter.com/Torat_IDF/status/1750600997745959279
Probably a terrible translation but the point is clear, incitement and impunity, and the results are predictable.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/protesters-prev...
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/gaza/prote...
Yesterday, 0 trucks could enter Gaza, the day before that 9 out of 60, don't know about today. Note that under the convention against genocide, Israel is required to prosecute genocidal speech, much less such genocidal acts (apart from not committing them of course). Instead, as Yoav Gallant just posted this on Twitter:
> The State of Israel does not need need to be lectured on morality in order to distinguish between terrorists and the civilian population in Gaza. The ICJ went above and beyond, when it granted South Africa's antisemitic request to discuss the claim of genocide in Gaza.
... which is as good a summary as any for what you find at every corner with this: not just the unwillingness to learn, but the inability to even comprehend any of this. When Gideon Levy talks about the incredible depth of Israeli indoctrination, he isn't kidding, and he's not exaggerating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE
And here is him speaking to Congress over their shameful handling of benefits for 9/11 responders. Nuff said?
It's very obvious that media, the university and politicians look the other way because of the content of the protests that were attacked. If Muslims sprayed protesters at a pro-Israel rally with chemical weapons, they would be in jail that same day, and budgets for terrorism prevention would bloat all across the nation. That's not even a question. Instead we have faculty actually calling attempts to identify the perpetrators as "doxxing", while continuing to smear people. That plus the tacit approval in form of a wall of silence is all brown shirts need to do their thing.
just from one account:
> 72 hours since i was sprayed w/ skunk on campus: zero appetite, keep on throwing up, and i feel terrible. very fatigued and having trouble sleeping. skunk has not come out of my hair after 11 showers.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1749523794803257616
> amazing how we have to document our own hospitalizations, beg columbia university to investigate, identify the ppl who did it, & people still don’t believe us. I wish we were joking y’all, this has been a nightmare.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1749670357651366303
> fascinating how faculty members at this university are so quick to rebrand after inciting violence against arab, muslim, & palestinian students for months. We warned y’all for months that your words have consequences. I was telling admin & faculty about how they needed to be careful with their language since November. Sent dozens of emails & filed numerous reports while grieving my family in Gaza. Now eight students are hospitalized. Dozens are injured.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1749675386563146034
> almost 96 hours since I was sprayed w/ skunk on campus: skin is still burning. very dizzy and nauseous. turned in items for police evidence & having to throw away the rest. i finally got 6 hours of sleep. skunk water sticks to any fabric & cannot be washed out.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1749865142399992236
> Columbia University promised that the students who attacked us with chemical weapons are banned from campus. They’re still here & coming to @Columbia’s campus, according to student accounts. No arrests have been made, we’ve been left in the dark.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1750185681790337324
> here he is, going right up to protest attendees to harass them. this attacker is supposed to have been “banned from campus” but students are still seeing him @Columbia. Ten students have been hospitalized now and our attackers are still on campus.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1750195190084575712
> 120 hours since I was sprayed with skunk on campus: skin is still burning. hard to sleep for long periods bc it burns so bad. skunk is still in hair, after 12 showers. had some luck using a HEPA air purifier in my room & using charcoal soap but still dealing w/ bad symptoms.
Post people with guns on the borders. Investigate what caused the extremely sluggish response by the IDF, too.
Don't use it as an excuse for war crimes and ethnic cleansing, while talking about the hostages that are paraded around as an objective in public, as "pawns" to be sacrificed behind closed doors.
https://twitter.com/UncapturedNews/status/174516348183630682...
While IDF soldiers make TikToks literally showing off and bragging about war crimes, in the hundreds by now, given licence by hundreds of people from highest ranks of politicians to generals to "journalist" talking about how there are no innocent people, no civilians in Gaza, just "human animals" and so on. And how everyone who talks back is a Hamas supporter and/or antisemitic.
In a self-righteous fury that gets worse, no less. Which isn't explained by grief over a past event or even a knee-jerk "security" reaction, but rather by the increasing guilt: people painting themselves into a corner by running away from crimes they already committed by doubling down on them, and projecting the guilt as hatred onto those who call it out. That's as old as criminals and mobs, and it leads to war crimes in Gaza just as predictably as it emboldens settlers in the West Bank to up attacks, as it does to attacks on people elsewhere:
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/22/columbia-university-pale...
> Regarding journalists: incidents have occurred
That way one can dismiss anything. "brutally killed", "grim reality" on the one hand, "incidents", "oversimplification" and "politically motivated rhetoric that trivializes real and horrific genocides" on the other.
https://rsf.org/en/israeli-politicians-call-journalists-gaza...
and don't forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shireen_Abu_Akleh
> On October 26, 2023, a memorial erected at the site of her killing was bulldozed by the Israeli army during a raid.
And this is how they acted during her funeral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y11CVGz7toM
These are not mere "incidents", they're a criminal habit.
> This rhetoric can trivialize historical genocides, which were real and horrific.
As if this one isn't real or horrific?
https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/alerts-archive/issue...
"This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country."
The last number I heard was that 80% of the catastrophically hungry people in the world right now are in Gaza.
Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal says it's a "textbook case of genocide". Omer Bartov says it might be genocide, but that there are "clear signs of ethnic cleansing" and likely war crimes. To just shrug them and many more off as politically motivated or skimming the surface seems ironic.
> If Palestinians [..] ceased targeting civilians
What does that even mean? As if all Palestinians, instead of starving and freezing, are still holding a rifle pointed at civilians, while IDF soldiers hell bent on keeping innocent people from getting hurt say "drop the weapon"?
Collective punishment is a crime. Nothing you said and nothing anyone could say justifies it.
The argument is that someone wishing they could commit ethnic cleansing does not excuse actually committing it on a third party. Just like Hamas thinking collective punishment is justified doesn't mean you get to respond with collective punishment. Hamas and other terrorists are not the standard.
I wouldn't put it like that, but for what it's worth:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-17/ty-article/.p...
> 'Unlawful, Unethical, Horrifying': IDF Ethics Code Author on Alleged Use of 'Hannibal Directive' During Hamas Attack
> Asa Kasher, the philosopher who wrote the IDF's Code of Conduct, tells Haaretz that incidents in which the infamous operational order may have been used on October 7 must be investigated immediately: 'There is absolutely nothing [in the code] to allow someone to kill an Israeli citizen, in uniform or not'
The claim was that Netanyahu preferred Hamas "to ensure there was never a 2 state solution", which is true.
And so far it that seems to be working out. Mass starvation, infectious diseases, day 7 of the internet blackout in Gaza, the university in Gaza was just blown up with wired explosives, the Israeli government (even Mossad on Twitter, heh) proudly show it off.
Hamas doesn't explain all that, the expansionist goals do, including why one would have preferred Hamas. There was never a realistic threat of Hamas "destroying all of Israel" from Gaza, regardless of what Hamas might have wished they were capable of, but the destruction of all of Gaza, and the people in it, is going on with a speed and ferocity we haven't seen before.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2024/jan/11/palest...
Allegedly, the count of bombs dropped on Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, half the population being minors, now surpassed the amount of bombs dropped in the second Iraq war by US and UK combined in ~8 years, that number being 29,199 bombs according to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bombings_during_the_Ir...
Here's an older (this all moves so quickly) article also discussing the 2000lbs bombs: https://edition.cnn.com/gaza-israel-big-bombs/index.html
> A man sits on debris as Palestinians conduct a search and rescue operation in Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza City, on November 1
Were there tunnels under the refugee camp? I don't know, and I don't care. One cannot hide the elephant of the violent excesses, the genocidal language and the settlers who seem to have their every whims catered for, completely behind the fig leaf of Hamas and the actors that support them.
> I have not seen anyone say this before.
Smotrich is very blunt about this, as just one example of many.
https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/174690024226652991...
"Soldiers in Gaza saying they won't stop until their mission is completed: "Occupation, Expulsion, Settlement"
One of many such clips, most with a backdrop of flattening whole blocks with wired explosives.
https://twitter.com/PeruginiNic/status/1747730495482310771
"The Israeli military just blew up the University of Palestine in Gaza City with 315 mines. All the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed."
Same thing with the supreme court of Gaza:
https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17317722618482647...
What more "concessions" is Palestine supposed to make here? They already get treated like people without any rights whatsoever. What more could they "concede" that hasn't been ripped from them already?
I'd say that's simply accurate, and should be said more often, not less.
By destroying civilian infrastructure, targeting journalists, using starvation? No, that can kill all civilians in Gaza, and then there still will be Hamas in a tunnel somewhere.
And that Hamas dude is not an actor? I thought you meant movie actors.
But okay, the only people who say the kind of stuff that is normalized in Israeli society and repeated from highest ranks to lowest soldier, the only equivalent to it, is Hamas. (and probably Antisemites and all sorts of terrible people, but nobody that is remotely considered respectable by anyone in the West). You kind of made that point for me.
> IDF has hundreds of thousands of soldiers, so 5 of them made a tiktok, so what? it's irrelevant.
And when many, many, many of public Israeli figures call all people in Gaza animals and call for extermination, then that's irrelevant because Hamas the terrorist organization is saying terrorist things ^^
At any rate it's not 5, and the fact that they make these genocidal statements while destroying civilian infrastructure, including usually naming their unit, often even the name of the person who leads it, makes it clear that it's not fringe, it's not something hidden, it's not a video that was stolen of a flash card, it's what they upload on social media and get celebrated for at home. And that rhetoric seems to matches the actions on the ground way better than all that stuff about this being "war" and aimed primarily at Hamas.
There simply aren't justifications for using starvation against civilians, calling them animals and calling for their extermination, while IDF soldiers make videos rifling through the belongings of Palestinians to mock them, talking about colonization. "They" (Israeli hard right etc.) always wanted to take the land, so using the crimes of Hamas as an excuse to do just whatever, for just targeting infrastructure to make Gaza unlivable, as they so proudly describe in interviews, while repeating how it's all just self-defense is just too transparent.
> it's clear that this would have been a lot worse for Israel if the blockade wasn't there
You think? As they say, there is nothing scarier than a man without hope, and nobody is complaining about not letting weapons in. At least I am not.
There is the cost to Israel. You cannot commit and justify atrocities, dehumanize other humans completely, without getting deeply damaged yourself. As Chris Hedges wrote about comraderie (versus friendship), it feels great in war time, it's a high, for a while, but the comedown is really depressing and lonely.
And then there is the damage in the eyes of the world, which will keep trickling in for many years. The US, UK, Israel and Germany have no credibility right now except to each other and the usual vassals.
> I'm not going to try to enumerate Israel's mistakes, but when you decide to invite a coterie of journalists to the hospital you damaged to provide proof of your claims that it was actually a hive center of terrorist activity, and all of them come away basically saying "this evidence isn't good enough," then that should be a sign that it's not PR that's the problem of Israel, it's Israeli actions that are the problem that needs addressing.
And the difference Gaza which has been cut off from the internet for 4 days in a row now, and a government that buys Google ads to smear the ICJ genocide charges as being politically motivated support of Hamas, is rather stark. The US senate just voted with a 75% majority to not even record Israeli war crimes. Are they affording that to other countries in the region, too?
> let alone countries in their own region
That's such an odd defense we never hear anywhere else, but constantly in contest of Israel. Why would the physical region matter? Those other countries aren't taking part in the Eurovision song contest, for example. They're not claiming to be a democracy respecting humanitarian values. Israel was founded by educated Europeans in no small part, not people from the region. If someone brags so much, including having "the most moral army in the world", while that army is doing what it is doing now, it might have something to do with them (too), not (only) the people who don't buy it having double standards.
We expect no better of other countries who currently aren't developed and weren't ever, we're barely even on speaking terms with them, when it comes to having a place at our table in polite company. I bet they also brag about being the best and having the best army, but we don't even hear about it and don't care. If one of them got accused of genocide via a formal trial, most media outlets would have covered and translated the first hearing, where the accusations where laid out -- instead of totally ignoring that and then reporting on Israel's so-called defense the next day.
We certainly don't have a fleet of journalists embedded in the armies of other countries in the region posting feel good stories, while the other half is writing up other random personal interest stories to make people feel good about the part of the picture they're not being shown at all. Or politicians just leaping to their defense before the ink on the accusation is even dry: https://gpil.jura.uni-bonn.de/2024/01/germany-rushes-to-decl...
As exemplified by a teacher put into solitary confinement for posting about innocent deaths in Gaza and suggesting having empathy for those.
Can you show me some, who aren't getting smeared and persecuted for it? I am not aware of a single one.
Some IDF soldiers made TikToks addressing Netanyahu, starting their intent to complete "Occupation, Expulsion, Settlement". There are dozens of them bragging about how many houses they are blowing up, while they do it with wired explosives. Right now, the last "functioning" hospital in Gaza is under attack, while Israeli youth make fun of "killing Palestines" (most of them can't even pronounce "Palestinian" apparently) in live video chats. Some dude on Israeli TV saying "I'll be honest, I don't care about the war crimes, I just want to see buildings destroyed, mooooore buildings" etc. and everyone laughs.
[edit: And the line that "there are no innocent people in Gaza" is still being repeated by all sorts of people, including military. Here's for example Lt. Col. Oren Schindler in a radio interview: "We need need to make sure that wherever the IDF meets Gaza, there is devastation. Nothing less, nothing more. Where Battalion 74 was - it happened. I can garuantee you that devastation, nothing less, in every place we were, there was only sand left, and houses on the ground. Because in every home, unfortunately I learned that in Gaza there is no innocence."
One might say this proves they don't want to kill innocent people, but Hamas forces them to, etc. but given the context and the actions, I'll just note that this is true about any atrocity. Look any of them up, from the most obvious to the most obscure ones, and you'll find someone painting the it as either a.) doing good or b.) doing bad because bad people forced them to or c.) doing bad for good reasons or a good goal that sanctifies the bad deeds. I doubt "genocide lawyers" would weigh such lip service much, if at all.]
Yes, there were also thousands of people in Israel chanting "Bibi, Bibi, you can't hide, you're committing genocide". But they sure are in the extreme minority.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/13/it-is-a-time-o...
> “Most Israelis don’t know much about Palestinians. They think they are terrorists, all of them, or vague images with no names, no faces, no family, no homes, no hopes,” Baruchin said. “What I am trying to do in my posts is present Palestinians as human beings.”
> Ten days after that Facebook message, he was fired from his teaching job in Petach Tikvah municipality. Less than a month later he was in a high-security jail, detained to give police more time to investigate critical views he had never tried to hide.
> If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. [..] And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
-- Hannah Arendt, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/10/26/hannah-arendt-fr...
And as Snowden tweeted January 11th:
> Institutions are burning the public's faith in them at the precise moment in history when we have developed the capacity to replace them with algorithms.
> A revolution is coming, and if you thought human judgment was bad, just wait until you see what replaces it.
I don't get why the standard should be the deception of "the other", who is also crooked.
Why not do good things one can be honest about? Instead of maintaining several identities and narratives and a constant uphill battle in quicksand of one's own making, one could just build on top of previous achievements. It would be much more effective, it would make the US rich and respected in the world. But it would make some individuals less insanely wealthy [0], so that's not an option. It's like the drunk looking for the key under the lamp post instead of where it was lost.
[0] Oxfam just reported that the 5 richest people doubled their fortune in the last 3 years while 5 billion got poorer.
Nobody claimed that. If you're implying not having unlimited choices meant being forced to dehuamnize Palestinians and to call for their extermination and commit war crimes, that'd of course be false.
> And many many Palestinian actors have vowed the same.
What? Name one. What Palestinians actors have talked bout how there are no innocent Israelis?
And why are you comparing "actors" with people like President, Prime Minister, generals and soldiers in the field? And actions that match it, more importantly?
> Israeli Government spokespeople are out there every day explaining the policy and it's clearly not to ethnically cleanse, etc
No, they're not, they're just repeating their "but Hamas" stuff and it's hilarious to see how even the people who interview them sometimes run out of patience with that. One can't "explain" that the deeds that are already on record for having been committed haven't been committed. One can just kick up sand and lie about it.
> Hamas has vowed to kill as many Israelis as they can for all eternity in the future basically.
Or, as you said elsewhere, they want to "continue to keep killing infinite Israelis". Which is such an absurd attempt to justify the crimes Israel is committing.
Right now, you're saying Isreali is justified in its actions, which is leading to killing and starvation of civilians en masse, at rates we haven't seen before, because Hamas must be defeated and this is the only way. Since Hamas cannot be defeated in this way, it stands to reason that what you also are proposing is killing infinite Palestinians, unless they ethnically cleanse themselves, or stop having children. Same goes if you replace "freeing the hostages" with "destroying Hamas". The only way these actions achieve is the humanitarian catastrophe outlined above, which didn't even make you skip a beat.
And while Netanyahu is paying some lip service to not settling Gaza (and some Israelis are talking about how Ben Gvir should take over because that weakness is unforgivable), IDF soldiers are making their TikToks. Like this one addressing "Bibi", naming his unit (hence, no shame, this isn't something that will harm their career) and saying they will stick to it until they finished their task, which is, and I quote, "Occupation, Expulsion, Settlement"
From the first day of hearings ( https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192... )
> 3. South Africa has come to this Court to prevent genocide and to do so in the discharge of the international obligation that rests on South Africa and all other States under the Convention. The consequences of not indicating clear and particularized, specific, provisional measures - and not taking steps to intervene while Israel disregards its international obligations before our eyes - would, we fear, be very grave indeed: for the Palestinians in Gaza, who remain at real risk of further genocidal acts; for the integrity of the Convention; for the rights of South Africa; and for the reputation of this Court, which is equipped with and must exercise its powers to afford an effective realization of the rights under the Convention.
> 4. That means, we respectfully submit, indicating the provisional measures being sought by South Africa, as well as any others in addition which the Court might deem appropriate. Justice, and equal respect for the rights of Palestinians, points overwhelmingly in favour of these critically required provisional measures.
----
(Oh, and also I'd like to add that I had no idea who Jason Hickel was, just had seen that tweet and agreed with it.. but I checked him out since and I wish I could edit that quote out, because that man is terrible)
> It’s absurd to discuss all this as if Israel is the only party with agency here.
And each party is responsible for their own actions. It's not like some kind of car with two steering wheels. Each person has responsibility for what they do.
> Israel has no choice but to try and wipe out Hamas
Oh, so Israel has no agency. No choice but to turn off water, just lay waste to infrastructure to make Gaza unlivable, and of course no choice to sing about how there are "no civilians in Gaza", as shown during the hearing of the ICJ trial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G15NyemgYDM&t=4548s
Which is just one of so many clips the IDF soldiers are proudly making. They all talk about colonization very openly, and the dehumanizing rhetoric is just astonishing.
https://www.nad.ps/en/media-room/latest-israeli-incitement-r...
> But Hamas doesn’t have to embed itself in civilian population to fight Israel, that’s a choice they made knowing it would lead to high civilian casualties.
Many, many Israeli politicians have vowed to ethnically cleans if not outright murder Palestinians, for their Greater Israel thing. While they're doing it, no less. Right now, it's hundreds of thousands people set to starve, and that is justified with mere "aims" of Hamas. Nobody had to do or justify that, either.
edit: this just in:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/01/over-one-hun...
> “It is unprecedented to make an entire civilian population go hungry this completely and quickly. Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people.”
> Israel is destroying and blocking access to farmland and the sea. Recent reports allege that since Israeli military's ground offensive started on 27 October, approximately 22% of agricultural land, including orchards, greenhouses, and farmland in northern Gaza, has been razed by Israeli forces. Israel has reportedly destroyed approximately 70% of Gaza’s fishing fleet.
[..]
> Israel has also destroyed more than 60% of Palestinian homes in Gaza, directly affecting the ability to cook any food, and causing domicide through the mass destruction of dwellings, making the territory uninhabitable. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has estimated that nearly 85% of Gaza's population — representing 1.9 million people — is internally displaced, including many who have been displaced multiple times, as families are forced to move repeatedly in search of safety.
> “We have raised the alarm of the risk of genocide several times reminding all governments they have a duty to prevent genocide. Not only is Israel killing and causing irreparable harm against Palestinian civilians with its indiscriminate bombardments, it is also knowingly and intentionally imposing a high rate of disease, prolonged malnutrition, dehydration, and starvation by destroying civilian infrastructure,” said the experts. “Aid needs to be delivered to Gazans immediately and without any hindrance to prevent starvation.”
> “Our alarm for the unfolding genocide does not only refer to the ongoing bombardment of Gaza but also concerns the slow suffering and death caused by Israel’s long-standing occupation, blockade and current civic destruction, since genocide advances through an ongoing process and is not a singular event.”
Using starvation, and denying water falls under that, as a means of warfare is a war crime EVEN if ONLY used against "the enemy".
And you are implying the often-heard "there are no civilians in Gaza", which is another atrocity on top of that.
https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/resources/documents/misc/634kfc....
> Israel spent 17 years trying to manage Hamas
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
> The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.
And Smotrich, more recently
"If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip." and "In the context of de-legitimization - Hamas is an asset and the Palestinian Authority is a liability"
One crime does not excuse the other. Blaming war crimes and crimes against humanity on Hamas because they're just so extremely evil and wiley, while people in Gaza get starved to death and Israeli soldiers make TikToks about blowing up whole villages with wired explosives, singing about how they'll move in, while journalists are targeted, refugee tents are bombed, while people repeat the same sophistry over and over, because a positive wall of politicians and hack fraud journalists repeating the most obvious of lies, gives them the idea they have license to.
"They chose war and war is what they got". Children screaming in agony as legs get amputated without anesthesia.
Unforgivable.
People who chose to justify atrocities with the flimsiest excuses got what they wanted, too. But you can't accept it, say I'm engaging with "actual" facts. You are wrong. The facts simply are very unflattering for what you are advocating is all.
> Despite the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza, the United Nations, international human rights organisations, and the majority of governments and legal commentators consider the territory to be still occupied by Israel, supported by additional restrictions placed on Gaza by Egypt. Israel maintains direct external control over Gaza and indirect control over life within Gaza: it controls Gaza's air and maritime space, as well as six of Gaza's seven land crossings. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military and maintains a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory. Gaza is dependent on Israel for water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities. The extensive Israeli buffer zone within the Strip renders much land off-limits to Gaza's inhabitants. The system of control imposed by Israel was described in the fall 2012 edition of International Security as an "indirect occupation". The European Union (EU) considers Gaza to be occupied.
This is how it was possible for Israel to cut off millions of people from the internet as it starves them to death.
Turning off water is not combat.
Rigging the supreme court with explosives after posing for selfies in it is not combat.
Destroying universities and mocking people in Gaza for having no education (when they're not singing that they're no schools in Gaza cuz there are no kids in Gaza) is not combat.
IDF soldiers singing about how "there are no innocent civilians" and bragging about how many residential houses they destroyed is not combat.
Sniping a 70 year old woman fleeing with a child isn't combat.
Shooting at youth, then running over their body with an army truck on camera and leaving them to bleed to death isn't combat.
Bombing the tents of refugee camps is not combat.
> Hamas can surrender any time and combat will cease
Right. So occupying land and blockading Gaza is fine. Supporting Hamas over moderates to get "legitimacy" as Smotrich called it, is fine. But NOW you draw a line, and simply make demands that must be met before we can stop hiding crimes against humanity under the cover of "combat".
No. Such arguments, no matter how often we have heard them repeated, are not even a bad attempt, and light of the gravity of the situation that's grave as well.
80% of the currently catastrophic hungry in the world are in Gaza, right now. Every hour of time that can be played for causes death, predictably so. Those hospitals that haven't been damaged or destroyed have no fuel or electricity to operate. Just turning off water and enforcing mass starvation isn't "fighting Hamas". It's committing atrocities, if not genocide, while betting that people will simply shrug and blame it on Hamas after the people were murdered, directly or indirectly in even larger numbers. Calling that the playbook isn't just an idle accusation, this has predictive power, since every mention of Israeli crimes against civilians is hardly even looked at before deflecting at Hamas, time and time again.
> The fact is of course Israel is going after Hamas [..] because you are unable to engage with actual facts