Due to the severity of the situation and the fast flowing news cycle, we have decided to create a general megathread for discussion regarding the conflict.
Informal/Satirical news sources are not allowed on the main feed of the community but you are free to post them in this thread.
Please remember that all community and instance rules apply to this thread hence keep is civil.
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Some facts about the Gaza Strip:
- Population: ~2.3 Million
- Area: 365 km² (141 sq mi)
- 41 km (25 mi) long, from 6 to 12 km (3.7 to 7.5 mi) wide
- Population density: ~6300/km² 1
Gaza is very densely populated. In Gaza live as many people as in Houston. But Houston has an area of 1658.6 km² (640.4 sq mi). Thus Gaza has nearly five times the population density of Houston. New York City is the only city in the US with a population of more than a million and a higher population density than Gaza. 2 The tallest building in Palestine stands at 76.1 m (255 ft). 3
A little less than half of the population of Gaza is made up of children. 4
There are only three (“legal”) ways in and out of Gaza:
- Rafah Crossing into Egypt in the south
- Kerem Shalom Crossing into Israel in the south
- Erez Crossing into Israel in the north
Gaza has a very small port. It can only be used by small fisher boats. 5
Israel built a wall and fences around Gaza. 6
Water runs out at United Nations shelters in Gaza
Israel has cut off the flow of food, medicine, water and electricity to Gaza, pounded neighborhoods with airstrikes and told the estimated 1 million residents of the north to flee south ahead of Israel’s planned attack. The Gaza Health Ministry said more than 2,300 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting erupted last weekend.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that Israeli officials told him they had turned the water back on in southern Gaza. But the spokesman for Israel’s energy and water ministry, Adir Dahan, said it was only flowing at a single location in southern Gaza. Aid workers in Gaza said they had not yet seen evidence the water was back and a Gaza government spokesperson said it was not flowing.
Hmm! Why would the US spread Israeli misinformation? It’s a mystery! 🙃
About half a million Gaza residents have taken refuge in U.N. shelters across the territory and are running out of water, said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee agency, known by the acronym UNRWA. “Gaza is running dry,” she said, adding that U.N. teams have also begun to ration water.
Touma said a quarter of a million people in Gaza moved to shelters over the past 24 hours, the majority of which are U.N. schools where “clean water has actually run out,” said Inas Hamdan, another UNRWA spokeswoman.
Across Gaza, families rationed dwindling water supplies, with many forced to drink dirty or brackish water. Many resorted to going to dirty wells and the sea, increasing the risk of dehydration, water borne diseases and more deaths.
“I am very happy that I was able to brush my teeth today, can you imagine what lengths we have reached?” said Shaima al-Farra, in Khan Younis.
Settlers are sick.
Everyone knows that the UN is a Hamas front. Providing the UN with water is akin to providing Hamas with the heads of babies.
Might want to add a /s tag there or something, poe’s law
The fact that I have to is a condemnation of this community.
Yeah, we are trying to very actively crack down on it but you know how things are with the influx
I’m curious what disinformation you’re talking about given what you quoted? And you implied that it is known, but why do you think said disinformation would be spread?
Also, there are no settlers in Gaza. Haven’t been for around 18 years.
The misinformation is the Zionist lie that they turned the water back on, when actual people on the ground in Gaza are telling us they don’t have water.
Also, everyone living on stolen Palestinian land and benefiting from land theft and apartheid is a settler. From the river to the sea.
To be clear, there’s one lie and then that lie got spun into something pro-Israeli.
Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that Israeli officials told him they had turned the water back on in southern Gaza. But the spokesman for Israel’s energy and water ministry, Adir Dahan, said it was only flowing at a single location in southern Gaza.
Sounds like Jake got told the same lie, and he spun it and omitted the “one location” part. Dahan lied (saying it was on at one location when it wasn’t) and Sullivan made it sound even better by conveniently dropping the “one location” part and implying that water is fully restored.
From Sullivans perspective he may be reporting the “truth”, based upon what he knows/knew at the time, but said it in such a way to imply the Israelis are better than he “knows”.
And my questions on race and who qualifies as white? Because I’m guessing you consider yourself a very anti-racist person. But that shit was racist as fuck.sorry this was a response for a different post.
Seems like a mistake to place the danger zone on that side of the Kerem Shalom goods crossing, but then again they left that moron Netanyahu in charge so I’m sure that’s no mistake.
I heard Egypt actually warned Israel of the exact date of the initial attack and Israel still failed to react, it becomes harder every day to think this whole war wasn’t the intention of Israel leadership.
The likelihood Israel didn’t know of the attack shrinks by the day.
There are a few Canadian citizens stuck in Gaza and very much in danger. I’m hoping that some solution can be found to help these people out.
Are you trying to say that the Canadian citizens stuck in Gaza are somehow more special than the other citizens?
Yes! At least they are to me as a Canadian citizen. Not more important in human terms, but definitely more of interest to me to see how Canadians in a war zone are dealt with by our government.
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Thank you! Sorry ignorant American and I wanted to learn more! I’m not sure why you were down voted so much by the little bit I read.
IDF misinformation from the start of the conflict until now:
1. Hamas beheaded forty babies
Context: the reports of Hamas beheading babies came from an interview by i24 News of an IDF commander. This quickly spread through Western media outlets such as CNN, NBC, MSNBC, FOX News, the Telegraph, Daily Mail, etc. I haven’t done a comprehensive sweep of who picked up the story and who didn’t (and of course now it’s much harder to do so because of retractions, edits, my lack of direct TV access, and SEO), but from what I can tell AP News and Al Jazeera have been relatively reliable.
Lack of evidence: 6 days ago, Anadolu (Turkish state-owned media) reported that: Israeli army says it does not have ‘confirmation’ about allegations that ‘Hamas beheaded babies’. This was later confirmed by other sources.
Misinformation: 5 days ago, Biden stated "I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed, pictures of terrorists beheading children,” said Biden, who described Saturday’s attack as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”. The White House later posted a retraction of this claim: "A White House spokesperson later clarified that US officials and the president have not seen pictures or confirmed such reports independently,” The Post reported on Wednesday.
2. Shani Louk, claimed to be naked, dead, and sexually assaulted
Context: images circulated online about a video purporting to show Shani Louk, a German national attending the Nova EDM festival, on the back of a truck, face-down. Claims that she appeared to be naked, dead, and sexually assaulted circulated on the same media sources discussed above.
Misinformation: given the videos we have, we know with a decent amount of certainty that the video being shown is of Shani Louk. However:
A. She’s clearly not naked in the video and you can see that she is wearing black shorts as well as boots. A top is also visible (but she is face-down, so we can’t see much of it). Neither her shorts nor her boots appeared to have been removed. From what I can tell, she was initially wearing a long skirt that was likely lost in the chaos.
B. Her family claims that she is alive and receiving medical attention at a hospital in Gaza, which does explain why they would be transporting her. There is visible blood on the back of her head, but she does not seem to be bleeding profusely when the video was taken.
C. I will not comment on whether or not she was sexually assaulted.
3. 260 dead Israelis at EDM festival
Context: many news sources independently verified that 260 bodies were pulled from the EDM festival. Many sources reported that this was an act of terror with no strategic objective and a massacre of innocent civilians.
Lack of context: Nova was held in Kibbutz Re’im, mere minutes from Gaza, and also mere minutes from the IDF Gaza Division’s Re’im base. Tanks are clearly visible in videos leaving the festival, as are armed personnel. Hebrew-language interviews of released prisoners are providing more insight into these attacks, but I do not speak Hebrew so I will refrain from commenting on this further. Hamas has claimed that fighters were told to avoid harming or killing civilians.
Potential misinformation: Hamas claiming that fighters were told to avoid harming civilians does not mean that Hamas fighters did not harm civilians, obviously.
Potential misinformation: the reports indicate that 260 bodies were found, but their origin has not been confirmed. We know that armed personnel discharged their weapons against Hamas fighters (and vice-versa). How many of the dead are civilians, IDF, armed security, or Hamas?
Much of the media coverage on this conflict has been used to spread misinformation, even from traditionally “reliable” sources in the Western sphere. As a result, I would strongly recommend supplementing coverage of these events with those outside the Western sphere. The journalism being done is lazy.
I had a frustrating conversation with one person around the “40 beheaded babies” claim. Snopes dug into the claim. The IDF never I think we’ll never be able to verify that particular claim. The flip side is that in the end, a dead baby is a dead baby regardless of how it got that way. My objection is that facts matter, particularly with claims of particular brutality or when the situation is a powder keg.
Hamas has claimed that fighters were told to avoid harming or killing civilians.
I don’t buy this for one minute. Not a minute. Palestinian civilian casualties are high because Hamas and other organizations operate from inside of neighborhoods as guerrilla forces. Israel has separate forces. You wouldn’t get massive civilian casualties from Hamas targeting the IDF’s bases. They can make all the claims they want, but it doesn’t fit with the facts.
A lot of these settlements have either contracters or the IDF directly providing security. So the idea that Hamas could have broken out of Gaza and just found all the soldiers neatly in their bases seems unbelievable. The IDF is an occupying force, not a European military where it’s just some dudes with their thumbs up their asses in a barracks near some nature reserve.
Ultimately we can’t know how Hamas leadership told their soldiers to behave. But they do have a clear incentives not to condone the killing of civilians: they want to capture hostages and use them as leverage. They need to create the expectation that these hostages are treated fairly and can be returned safely so that it is entirely up to Israel whether it wants those civilians to die.
Tragically, civilians always die in wars. Both sides always propagandise this to claim that it is the other side that is just killing civilians as policy. The facts however, are abundantly clear when it comes to the question of which side shows the greater disregard for civilian casualties.
The impression I had gotten from interviews (Al Jazeera, the Guardian, Haaretz) was that Israeli civilian police were there and exchanged fire with Hamas but that it was HOURS before they came across any IDF personnel. I’ve been focusing on this less as the time goes on and the catastrophic situation in Gaza gets worse and worse, so maybe further sources have come out regarding the Nova Festival.
Regardless I would like to see consequences to the people who authorized a festival so close to Gaza in the first place…
That’s the part that really doesn’t make sense to me.
There’s literally an active military base RIGHT THERE. It’s literally based in Re’im. There’s no way the IDF could be that incompetent. It’s not like forces had to be deployed from elsewhere in the country.
Supposedly, they had another location in mind but it fell through so they had to use Re’im with two days notice.
I don’t know how to confirm this myself but I have read and heard that before anything else, after it was known Hamas fighters were inside Israeli territory, the IDF first move militarily was to start bombing Gaza. No one can argue honestly that the IDF defends Israelis - its literally just the most reactionary of religious Zionists that they serve.
Secular Jewish Israelis? Nah they can fend for themselves for a few hours, we’ve gotta attack Palestinian civilians, says the IDF. And that’s not even bringing up that 20% of Israeli citizens ARE ARABS, some of whom were also attacked in their homes in Southern Israel 10 days ago, but of course the same people calling Hamas human animals will go after them next (not to suggest they aren’t already, only that Gazans face more immediate extermination).
That sounds pretty correct. From what I remember of the reporting at the time, we heard of the offensive, then immediately we had multiple reports, videos, and streams of the IDF bombarding Gaza.
here’s literally an active military base RIGHT THERE
Practically the complete IDF was in the West Bank at that time, when you have minimal staffing at a military base you really don’t want to leave it but hunker down as it getting captured would be even worse.
There’s no way the IDF could be that incompetent.
I’d say that’s a reasonable assessment. That Netanyahu and his goons are as competent, however, is a much more tenuous claim, or they wouldn’t have sent the IDF o the West Bank (to back up settlers harassing (and worse) Palestinians).
practically the complete IDF was in the West Bank at that time
anyone have sources or more info on this? to what extent is this true?
I love when the US helps to deescalate a situation! I’m sure no US troops will be hit by any strikes to justify direct US intervention in this conflict.
The US is going to push us straight into a world war with their mismanagement of this conflict.
What fucking help does Israel need for fucks sake.
It’s about keeping Iran out of it so it doesn’t escalate. Have to demonstrate a willingness to get involved while doing the diplomatic work behind the scenes to de-escalate. They are telling Israel they can have their revenge on Hamas but they need to bring things down a few notches. Don’t occupy Gaza, don’t starve them out, don’t commit war crimes, make an effort to avoid collateral damage, etc. At the same time, they are telling Iran they don’t want a wider conflict but are ready to fuck them sideways if they even think about escalating. Israel doesn’t need any help fighting unless someone else piles on.
if the US government cared about protecting Palestinians I don’t think we would be in this situation
They don’t. They care about keeping this from escalating into a very dangerous regional conflict with the potential to spread further. Israel is absolutely justified in going after Hamas. What they are actually doing is beyond what a reasonable response would look like. Nobody besides the bad guys cares if Israel goes and kills some terrorists, but they can’t displace a million people who had nothing to do with it and then starve them out. In a matter of days, Israel went from being the victims of a heinous attack to committing war crimes on a massive scale. That can’t be. It makes it hard to support Israel and we also can’t turn our backs on an ally. It’s an untenable political situation for the U.S. and risks a major conflict. The U.S. is serving its own interests.
Israel is absolutely justified in going after Hamas.
Why? Does Israel want a refund?
How’s that working out for the US?
Starving ✅
War crimes ✅
Collateral damage ✅
The US is toothless and their foreign influence is nonexistent even for a country that’s one of their closest allies.
Hey, genocide is hard work! Have some empathy
It’s pretty obvious… the myth of Israeli invulnerability turned out to be just that… mythical. The Palestinians have done a good job proving that.
I talked to an Israeli (we were both vacationing in Vancouver, BC). There never was a feeling of invulnerability, but rather of containment and a tolerable level. Hamas would lob some rockets over the border, the Iron Dome would shoot them down, maybe some would get through. You learn to live with a certain amount of risk.
What this attack shattered was the feeling that Hamas is a threat that could simply be managed and ignored. It should also shatter the illusion that continued mistreatment of the Palestinian is a viable way forward. Unfortunately, I think the Israeli leadership will only take the first lesson.
There never was a feeling of invulnerability, but rather of containment and a tolerable level.
I was referring to the propaganda we were fed about Israel during the Cold War - you can still see it in a lot of right-wing narratives about Israel.
You learn to live with a certain amount of risk.
Here in South Africa, we call it “laager mentality” - in the US, wars fade into the background, but in places like Israel (and Apartheid-South Africa) the “open-ended-war-with-no-end-in-sight” cannot fade into the background. And, eventually, it leads to… consequences.
What this attack shattered was the feeling that Hamas is a threat that could simply be managed and ignored.
It’s not Hamas - it’s Palestinians. Before Hamas it was the PLO, and if Israel (somehow) neutralises Hamas there will be another “big bad” Israelis will have to live in fear of. Israelis know that - they just prefer referring to Hamas to deflect from the fact that their colonial war has always been against the entirety of Palestinians.
But yes… this attack has most definitely shattered the idea of “containment and a tolerable level.”
Unfortunately, I think the Israeli leadership will only take the first lesson.
A colonialist project can only act like a colonialist project - if it doesn’t, the colonialist state must cease to exist in it’s current form and become something else.
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Israel is somewhat weakened right now. Doubtless some countries or organizations are thinking this is the perfect time to take a go at it, regardless of the reality of that situation. The US tossing in an aircraft carrier group - one of which equals the air and naval power of most countries - hopefully tilts that calculus back towards keeping out of any conflict.
The chance of a World War III happening is significantly higher by escalating the UA-RUS war than this. Palestine has no allies and they have been cornered for years. US just secures a clean genocide.
Ukraine isn’t NATO and the West has given every indication that they see it as a proxy war with Russia. Israel is already dragging in the US, and risks dragging in Iran, which would force the Arab World to choose sides.
How is Iran joining forcing the Arab world to choose sides? Iran is not well liked in the Arab world. Most of them would probably prefer if Iran goes down with Palestine and wouldn’t care much. At least not the Saudis, Iraq and Pakistan. Don’t think Egypt is too hot for Iran either.
Iran-Saudi talked for the first time in forever to align on this
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Yeah, clearly a propaganda account and not a very good one at that. The pre-typed, scripted lines and the emotionally charged language are kind of a dead give-away. I would be ashamed paying someone that does such a poor job, honestly lol
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Iran is Persian, not Arab. They are also currently engaged in a power struggle by proxy with the KSA, ostensibly to determine which of them will become the region’s dominant power. There is no world in which KSA sides with Iran, and as they go (MBS really) so go most of the other big players in the Arab world.
mismanagement
When talking about the US, it’s more often correct to assume malice rather than incompetence
A friend of mine is volunteering for this organization. We’re trying to help as IT guys but if you know anyone stranded in Israel or Gaza, or want to aid them indirectly, I thought I’d pass the link.
(They’ve helped in other crisis scenarios as well)
Can you elaborate on the helping as IT guys part?
Can you elaborate on how you’re helping as “IT guys” ?
I too am an “IT guy” and would be interested in learning how my skills could assist those in need.
Why do Palestinians and Israelites hate each other?
Tl;dr Israel showed up and kicked Palestinians out, Palestinians want their land back. Ensue 80 years of complications
Also Israel has two means of aquiring citizenship. First is having Jewish ancestry. The second and more problematic is that anyone who converts to Judaism can apply in a slower process that grants them citizenship. People who aquire citizenship can then live there and gain govt benefits that subsidize living cost, in other words, govt sanctioned stealing of Palestinian homes/land. Thats why Palestinians say they often hear settlers with Brooklyn accents. People who live in places like NYC with high costs of living are basically given the option to have much cheaper housing if they convert and forget their morals about theft.
So basically Israel recruits citizens from groups of people who have financial incentives to move there and lack a sense of humanity to turn down “free stuff stolen from destitute opressed people” and thus you build a citizenry who is totally comfortable with this Apartheid/Genocidal bullshit.
There’s more than 2 ways to get Israeli citizenship.
Both of those fall under the “right of return” for Jews.
Non-Jews with permanent residency can become citizens after 3 years if they give up their previous citizenship. Meanwhile, Jews are allowed to be dual citizens. For example, some Druze in the Golan Heights became Israeli citizens that way, particularly due to the Syrian Civil War.
Also, in 1952, Israel passed a citizenship law that gave citizenship to anyone who had been a national of the British mandate in 1948, had registered as an Israeli resident in 1949, and hadn’t left Israel before claiming citizenship. So about 170k Arabs were granted citizenship, while the ~720k who fled or were expelled during the war were excluded, although they expanded eligibility a bit in 1980 to include Arabs who had returned to Israel after the war.
It’s even simpler
Israel showed up and kicked the Palestinians out, those either unable to or unwilling to leave are now being subject to ethnic cleansing.
Or even simpler: Israel’s sole purpose is to exterminate Palestine.
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Israel also wants to keep the support from the US so they are cleansing slow enough that the US won’t care.
Like when Russia creates it’s breakaway regions as an excuse to take a chunk out of a country. No one cares when they did it to Georgia or when they are doing it to Moldova but with Ukraine they became too visible and got a pretty big backlash. The trick is to not do crimes too visibly.
Technically it wasn’t so much Israel as Europe (and the US) but the Zionists definitely made their mark.
Europe (Britain mostly) and the US pushed the newly formed UN to pass a resolution calling for the creation of Israel in 56% of the territory, but the zionist militias actually took almost 75% of the land while destroying entire villages and murdering the existing population. The West continued to support them after that and have been tacitly approving of them taking even more of the land as the decades have gone by. The West is not blameless, but it was very much Israel that did it.
Hey fella: they “showed up” from where, and why?
- All around the world
- The zionist movement
Have any other questions?
Why should the people in the Middle East suffer because of what nazi Germany did?
Why should the people in the Middle East suffer because of what nazi Germany did?
It’s not just the Nazis - it’s the entire west.
There were always Jewish people in the area who were often treated as second class citizens by a Muslim majority, btw.
When the west promised Israel to the Jewish people around the globe and the population already living there, many other Arab/Muslim countries were also already gladly exiling their Jewish population as well.
It wasn’t “just the west”.
With the promise of a state and Zionism as a religious driver they stomped the people already living there, although these people were simultaneously promised their own state called Palestine.
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There was never a place called Palestine outside of the British mandate
And there wasn’t a place called the United States of America until 1776?
Only after ‘67 were these locations earmarked as “Palestinian land”.
Because Israel took over more land that was fully inhabited by the Palestinians (for the second time)
And why, when Egypt and Jordan made peace with Israel, did they renounce any claims to Gaza and the West Bank instead of pushing for Palestinian statehood in those areas? It’s almost as if the Arab world chooses to keep the Palestinians poor and stateless as a means to vilify and discredit Israel…
Assuming you’re arguing in good faith, which is a huge assumption, the answer comes down to negotiating power. Egypt was able to get the entire Sinai peninsula back during these negotiations. Israel never fully gave up the Gaza strip, hence the second part of my tl;dr above: “Palestinians want their land back. Ensue 80 years of complications”
Hmm, why would Palestinians hate European settlers that stole their land via the imperial edict of Britain? 🙄
“European settlers” in the sense that they hadn’t been in Israel since the Romans kicked them out in '65 for causing too much trouble with all their messiahs and religious zealotry.
2000 years!
They hadn’t ever been in Israel, they were born and raised in Europe by parents that were born and raised in Europe by grandparents that were born and raise in Europe etc. etc. They were Europeans, complete with white skin and European culture and European language.
This wasn’t refugees returning to their home. It was settlers invading nonwhite people’s land and stealing it for themselves.
A third of Israelis are (family of) refugees/emigrants from the middle-east or north Africa.
It’s not a ‘white european’ country, which you’d know just looking at them.
Imposing simplistic American notions of race on a complicated conflict is stupid and embarrassing.
Yeah, now. That’s because they imported Jews from everywhere they could to become Israeli. It started as a European settler project.
But if you look at the positions of power, the government and businesses and celebrities, you’ll see mostly white faces. Israel definitely has a white supremacist bent to it - you don’t think an Ethiopian Jew will ever be the prime minister do you?
America’s white majority is going to disappear too, but you don’t think that will actually end American white supremacy right?
It is always interesting seeing a person be so blatantly racist and not realize it.
Jews have had people there pretty much that entire time. Under the Roman empire, under the Byzantine, under Arabs, under the Ottoman empire, under the British empire.
You seem to know very little about the region. The way you speak of race is certainly American. Not sure how you think the Polish, much less Polish Jews, were treated in the past, but I can assure you it wasn’t as a white person.
Further, the Sephardi chief rabbi is middle eastern by any definition (born in Israel, parents born in Iraq). The Ashkenazi chief rabbi is the son of a polish born Holocaust survivor.
There are at least 3.2 Mizrahi Jews in Israel although recent studies suggest around 44% of the population. That means Jews from Israel or the surround middle eastern areas. Are middle easterners white now?
Jews might be considered white in America (sometimes). But what is white in America does not apply to the rest of the world. Even Europe doesn’t share the same attitude, I assure you.
It didn’t start as a European settler project. Europe was in control of the region post WWI so Jews lobbied in Europe and in the US. Many of which were Mizrahi and/or already having lived in mandate Palestine.
I’m sure you don’t even realize what you’re saying is racist, but it is. If a person with black parent(s) can pass as white, are they also white? Is their a paper bag test for Jews too? What about one drop? Are all Africans black? Do you know what an average person from Yemen looks like? Egypt? Why didn’t Polish and German Jews just be pretend not to be Jewish during the Holocaust since they are white?
Since the human population shares at least two common areas that all current humans came from, how many generations must a group of people exist in a place to say they are descendants of that place? If a person is a jew by birth through European heritage, but is blacker than Obama, and moves to Israel are they a white European Jew or a black minority? Is Bashar al-assad white? Viktor Orban? Gabriel Boric?
Please, can you answer those questions?
You still see white faces in high places. That’s why Europe and America are Israel’s greatest supporters - they want an ethnosate in the middle east.
That’s why you aren’t going to ever see an Ethiopian Prime Minister. Now you’re right, race isn’t exactly like it is in the US. It actually reminds me more of colorismo in Latin America, where racial prejudice is based more on how dark your skin is than being clear cut along racial lines. Light skinned Asians get to have this privilege in the racial majority.
But there is a racial component to Israel’s apartheid regime and its unlimited support from Europe and America, and you have to acknowledge this.
Out of interest, would you describe Romani people (pejorative ‘gypsy’) as being white?
If they were given their own settler colony and started being treated as an equal by all the other white countries? Yes.
I wouldn’t consider a European Jew before the formation of Israel to be white, but they’re sure as fuck white now.
I’ll be honest. Most Americans don’t even realize Roma are a real group of people. They hear gypsy and think crystal balls and magic. The population is much smaller and more integrated in the US than in Europe so many have never met someone from that group. But I mean if you want the honest answer, a person that looks white in America is considered white until a reason is given otherwise. Maybe a name. Maybe a symbol. Maybe they say something. My youngest son can pass for white easily. Asheknazi jews are white by current american standards, but I don’t see white southern baptists churches needing armed security during service. And I’m one generation shy of when Jews weren’t allowed in to certain places.
Race is weird in America. And Americans are very touchy about it on both sides. I think it’s because it’s built on a house of cards, but so many fundamental things revolve around it. Racial justice on the left. Umm… other things on the right. Like racism is definitely real. I can make it through police checkpoints without getting stopped, while my wife gets stopped every time. But Americans like to pretend there is some true hard standard when it is all a wobbly social construct.
The only Israeli citizen I know was born in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Yeah, if we stretch this logic even further down, we all get to claim our ancestral land in Africa from 200 millennia ago.
The Netherlands had better watch out… my ancestors came from there about 300 years ago, and that automatically gives me the right to rape, torture and murder my way through Antwerp!
Every Russian in Lithuania better pack their bags. I’m tearing up my Pennsylvania birth certificate and returning home! I can’t wait to open the first Primanti Bro’s in Vilnius.
Anrwerp is Belgium, though ;)
Pshhh… there’s a difference?
Yes, all ancestral land claims are ultimately at least a little bit silly.
Yes, the vague equivalent would be for the Native Americans to reclaim the United States via superior force ~1800 years from now.
Not even Native Americans!
It would be the equivalent of people with extremely diluted ancestry and no connection to any tribe, white people who practice a Native religion and speak an extremely deformed English dialect of some Native language but are otherwise just US Americans.
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racism, forced displacement and oppression
HMM WHY DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR?!
capped off with one of the most horrific genocides in the history of the world.
History repeats, I guess.
Keep screeching for nuance while Israel bombs evacuation routes and refugee camps with the full throated support of Europe and America.
It was their turn to be the boot. /s
While I won’t argue in support of the amount of force Israel is using, I am curious what you believe they should do. For this current situation and the whole situation at large.
Return the land they stole and reform the single Palestinian state so they can peacefully coexist within Palestine.
2000 years of racism, forced displacement and oppression, capped off with one of the most horrific genocides in the history of the world.
And who is responsible for that, eh? The same “western civilization” that is now using Israel as a kapo state to do it’s dirty work in the middle-east, perhaps?
It’s almost like you just want to believe Jewish people are bad guys to fit a simpler narrative of what’s happening.
Its almost like you want to collapse all Jews and the settler colonial state of Israel into one group to fit a simpler narrative of what’s happening.
So all of Israel is a colonial state? What should happen with it and it’s over 9 million people? Of which almost half are middle eastern (I’m only including several generations middle eastern here, obviously we have people that are 3 or 4th generation Israeli, but I am not sure what your threshold is for being considered a native of an area). Then another 2.5 percent are beta Israel. So let’s just say half are middle eastern or African. What should happen with this colonial state?
So all of Israel is a colonial state? Yes.
What should happen with it and it’s over 9 million people? You return proper land ownership and a lot of people will move back to where they’re from when they no longer get preferential treatment and free stuff. It happened in South Africa. If you don’t live on land that was stolen from Palestinians but within Palestinian borders, you live in Palestine now.
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The Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the Earth, because they have displayed hostility to Allah.
Allah will kill the Jews in the hell of the world to come, just like they killed the believers in the hell of this world.
-- Atallah Abu Al-Subh, former Hamas minister of culture
Palestine is Islamic, and not an Islamic emirate, from the river to the sea, that unites the Palestinians. Jews have no right in it, with the exception of those who lived on the land of Palestine before World War I.
This is Islam, that was ahead of its time with regards to human rights in the treatment of prisoners, but our nation was tested by the cancerous lump, that is the Jews, in the heart of the Arab nation… Be certain that America is on its way to utter destruction, America is wallowing [in blood] today in Iraq and Afghanistan, America is defeated and Israel is defeated, and was defeated in Lebanon and Palestine… Make us victorious over the community of infidels… Allah, take the Jews and their allies, Allah, take the Americans and their allies… Allah, annihilate them completely and do not leave anyone of them.
--Sheikh Dr. Ahmad Bahar, acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council
By God, we will not leave one Jew in Palestine. We will fight them with all the strength we have. This is our land, not the Jews…
-- Abdel Aziz Rantisi, Hamas leader
The Jews: killed the prophets…slaughtered the innocent…imprisoned our pious… NO PEACE WITH THE MURDERERS.
Let everyone know that Hamas… is only against Jews and those twisted in their manner… it realizes the Jews’ methods in trying to cause hostility and friction between people…
We should lend punches to the Jews wherever possible [to commemorate Muhammad’s defeat of one of the Jewish tribes of Arabia].
--Hamas communiqué
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There’s only two teams. The imaginary side you made up in your head doesn’t exist.
It’s Hamas or Israel. Pick one.
Almost a troll-like insistence on lack of nuance to an extremely complex situation
The invocation of nuance is a trick to get you to not take a stance that matters and to stay trapped in your own head cooking up imaginary solutions that can never and will never happen.
The actually nuanced position is to support Hamas despite its flaws, because they’re the only material force that is fighting for Gaza.
The actually nuanced position is to be opposed to the bloodshed and race/religion-based tribalism happening with both the Israeli government AND Hamas, and to do more than just “tut tut” Israel’s recent activities in the West Bank and the virtual prison they’ve turned Gaza into.
The current Israeli government is committed to eradicating Islam from within the borders of Israel. The current Hamas leadership is committed to eradicating Jewish people from the face of the earth and setting up an Islamic state where Israel currently stands.
Despite these two diametrically opposed positions, the majority of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis are secular and just want to live their lives while being afforded basic human rights.
And this goes back further than 80 years; both groups tend to have last names based on bloodlines, and those last names invariably trace themselves back to people living and worshiping on the same physical land, often repeatedly.
The stance that matters is to be vocally opposed to ALL genocide; right now, that means being opposed to the actions of the Israeli government; it also means being opposed to the claimed goals of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian government.
It also leaves room for celebrating legitimate overtures of peace and the thousands of people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds who are currently putting their lives at risk to provide food, water and basic medical assistance to all the Israelis/Palestinians currently affected by this battle waged by hardliners and extremists.
The actually nuanced position is to be opposed to the bloodshed and race/religion-based tribalism happening with both the Israeli government AND Hamas, and to do more than just “tut tut” Israel’s recent activities in the West Bank and the virtual prison they’ve turned Gaza into.
Hamas is resisting Zionism, not Jews. They’re pretty explicit about that.
So if you oppose race/religion-based tribalism you support Hamas, because they’re the ones opposing it.
People don’t have to pick one or the other at all. I despise the Israeli government for their genocidal actions. I despise Hamas for terror attacks on innocent civilians.
The Israeli government is disgusting in their actions, and I very much hope for the freedom of the Palestinians, but fuck Hamas. You can support the Palestinians and their plight while condemning the people in charge.
I have support for any Israeli or Palestinian citizen that does not commit or advocate for senseless violence. Fuck the people in power in both places.
By not picking a side you become invisible and irrelevant. If you don’t want to pick a side, just tune out and go play video games or something because it’s basically the same thing.
No shit that I am irrelevant to the war in Gaza. I live on the other side of the world and dont have any political power. The most I could do is try to send some money to aid the Palestinian refugees, and I still would be invisible and irrelevant to it. Are you sending money, supplies, armaments, or fighting for Hamas? If not you are invisible and irrelevant to this conflict yourself. Just like 99.999% of the world’s population.
Vocal support matters in democracies. If Western governments stopped supporting Israel this war would be very different.
By not even vocally supporting anything you have taken away your own voice. You’ve silenced yourself.
What a Moronic take. Both sides bad so pick one!
No, stop putting up shit and you’ll get support from non insane people. They’re both being shitbirds, there’s no reason to approve of either behavior
When Palestinians held peaceful marches for freedom, Israel blew their knees out. Pacifism doesn’t work when one side thinks you’re animals.
Also, by choosing to not pick a side, you’re just tacitly siding with the winning side. Which side do your tax dollars go to?
Can we acknowledge that it’s one of the most complicated geopolitical circumstances in the history of the world?
No, we can’t… because it’s not. It’s only “complicated” due to pro-Israeli propaganda and nothing else - it’s no more “complicated” than Apartheid South Africa was.
And Israelis hate Palestinians because, in their desperation Palestinians turned to terrorism, also Palestinians are in their way.
Palestinians want freedom and sovereignty, the Israeli government wants the exact opposite, and most Israeli people either support the government or don’t care what happens (particularly because they get
free real estatesettlements out of it).Zionist colonisers from Europe forced Palestinians from their land 75 year ago and have continued to inflict death and misery on those that remain.
You mean the world finally allowed the Jewish people to establish a country in their ancestral homeland (which has maintained a Jewish presence in that land for the last 4000 years) and the Arab world continually rejects a partition plan that would allow 2 states for 2 people, instead resorting to terrorism and a repeated call for the extermination of the Jewish people, resulting in Israel having to do what it must to protect its interests and the interests of the Jewish people everywhere.
Let’s not forget - the people referring to themselves as Palestinians could have had a state any number of times in the last century, but it’s not really about that, it’s about killing Jews. If a state is what they wanted, they could have had it by now:
San Remo conference decisions, 1920 League of Nations decisions, 1922 Peel Commission proposal, 1937 UN General Assembly proposal, 1947 Israel’s stretched out hand for peace, 1948 Israel’s offer of fixed official borders, 1949 Israel’s stretched out hand for peace, 1967 Begin/Saadat peace proposal, 1978 Rabin’s contour-for-peace, 1995 Barak/Clinton peace offer, 2000 Sharon’s peace gesture, 2005 Olmert/Bush peace offer, 2008 Netanyahu’s invitation for peace, talks, 2009 Obama/Kerry contour-for peace, 2014
Oh look… a genocide apologist has shown up.
You mean the world finally allowed the Jewish
What do you mean, “the world,” apologist? Antisemitism is purely a western invention - don’t blame the entire world for that which white people did.
Also, don’t pretend that Zionism is (somehow) a Jewish idea - the idea originated in Christian countries that wanted to dump Jewish people in Palestine due to… drumroll, please… the west’s antisemitism.
Do tell, Clyde… which part of the world’s murderous antisemitism is the root cause of the idea of a modern-day Israel even making sense to many Jewish people, eh?
Stop pretending that Christian Zionism doesn’t predate Jewish Zionism - that cat is out of the bag, Clyde.
Israel’s stretched out hand for peace
Oh, look… the genocide apologist is pretending the side that has been engaging in genocide somehow isn’t and that it’s the people experiencing genocide that is the cause of the fucking genocide.
It goes back a bit further than that, right?
The Jaffa riots, for example, were back in 1921. Palestinians rioted and killed about 50 Jews, and British police killed about 50 Palestinians while trying to restore order.
Jews started buying land and moving to Palestine in the late 1800s.
The situation is complex, dating back to British involvement with the Belfort Plan in delineating Israel’s territory. In recent years, a cycle fueled by radicals and right-wing hardliners on both sides has intensified.
Don’t get me wrong, the recent casualties result from pure terrorism and Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorism. Israels retaliation on the other hand as we can see will create a human catastrophe affecting everyone. Hopefully both parties will immediately stop and opt for peaceful dialogue.
Most normal people don’t. But the political situation of “we were here first” vs. “This is now the land of Israel” causes whatever you see happening nowadays.
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They don’t it’s a bit to keep the west from crowding their tourist spots.
Yeah, these attacks and bombings are just an elaborate stage play to keep out the tourists… 🤦♂️
What’s the matter with you?
Usually it’s oil. But this time it’s airable land and water.
*arable
It’s an option. An outpost in the Middle East that serves as a vanguard to easily start proxy wars with the oil countries. Then deploy boots on the ground while hiding behind plausible deniability. “We just supported our allies.”
It’s like War on Terror, an excuse for the corporations to get more dollaroos. The problem is not that they are running out, the problem is that others still have some.
While many Palestinians do hate the Zionists and vice versa, framing the conflict as between two powers that hate each other for religious reasons or racist reasons or what have you is what leads to such terrible “Two religions fighting again for the billionth time!” analysis.
Israel is a modern colonial state. While most outright colonist countries are no longer around, Israel is the exception. One of the reasons why it’s allowed to be the exception is because it’s a stronghold for American interests in an incredibly important region - whoever controls the world’s oil supply, controls everything that depends on oil, which is a LOT of things. Lately, it’s also increasingly a weapons manufacturer and cybersecurity base - their technologies are tested out on Palestinians as if they are guinea pigs, and then these systems are sold to various countries for use in their own populations. In general, Palestinians today have low qualities of life and the amount of territory they control shrinks by the year as Israel shoves Palestinians out of their homes and puts Israeli settlers in those homes instead. Naturally, the Palestinians are not happy about this at all, but resistance is difficult even when you’re not surrounded on all sides (Gaza has the sea, Israel, and Egypt bordering it, and Egypt is currently sympathetic to the Israeli side due to a coup that put Sisi in power; while the West Bank has Israel and Jordan, and Jordan is also sympathetic to Israel currently).
Palestine wants a state for themselves, which is a fairly reasonable thing to want. Israel absolutely does not want a two-state solution let alone to give Palestine all its land back. The two are therefore at an impasse - there’s a fundamental contradiction here that cannot be solved by some middle of the ground solution. Palestine has attempted on numerous occasions to try and resist, both peacefully and violently - both methods get them killed in the thousands while the West says nothing, because again, it’s extremely important to have Israel in the region as a Western imperialist outpost. Have you ever noticed that the only time the phrase “… has a right to exist”, it’s always in reference to Israel? Few other nations seem to have this “right” in the West’s eyes. Yugoslavia sure didn’t. Neither did the USSR, or for that matter modern-day Russia given the rhetoric going around a year or so ago about how they wanted to subdivide Russia into a dozen oblasts.
There are other powers in the region that are against Israel, with the weaker ones being Syria and Lebanon, while the strongest is Iran. Up until fairly recently, while Hezbollah (a sort of state-within-a-state military force separate from the rest of Lebanon but also integrated into it) has scored a few points on Israel in the past, they were broadly speaking outgunned by Israel. Additionally, Israel has nukes, which made a war to actually overthrow Israel essentially impossible without the risk of nuclear bombs being dropped on Beirut, Damascus, Tehran, etc. This has changed in the last few years, due to a mixture of Israel (and the West broadly speaking) becoming relatively weaker because so much military aid has been sent and destroyed in Ukraine, and Iran and friends becoming stronger. The threat of nuclear annihilation still exists, and it’s one of the major problems still for the anti-Israel resistance, but given Hamas’ victory in Gaza a week ago, there is blood in the water and the sharks are coming.
I hope this all shows that thinking along the lines of “X hates Y and so they’re fighting” obfuscates a lot of what’s actually going on geopolitically. It’s extremely important to say that the fact that Israel is a Jewish state doesn’t mean that they have, according to various right-wing conspiracy theories, some kind of outsized influence over so-and-so countries. Israel does have an influence over various countries because their propaganda department is very active in the West to shut down anti-Zionist (which is unequivocally NOT the same as anti-semitism) viewpoints, and the aforementioned cybersecurity and weapons development programs, but this is a two-way street. The West needs Israel. Israel needs the West. The United States is essentially what has kept Israel alive for the better part of the last century.
This isn’t to say that Zionist and Islamic beliefs have no impact on the calculus here - they have a lot to do with it, in fact - but merely to say that this isn’t just some inherently religious war.
apologies for the off topic, but this thread shows as 11 hours old and I only see 7 top level comments. for a major event mega thread I expected much more and I’m wondering if I’m doing Lemmy wrong somehow?
A number of top level comments are from hexbear and lemmygrad so maybe your instance has those blocked? That will affect how many comments you see.
lemmy.ca defederated from hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml, who are driving top-level comments on here. Since you can’t see the top-level comments, you also can’t see any discussion below.
I opposed lemmy.ca’s decision to defederated from hexbear based on the perceived behaviour of hexbear users on other instances for exactly this reason: I think an instance’s role is to police the actions of users posting to that instance, not to police their users’ exposure to other instances.
As a counterpoint, I don’t mind the hexbear and lemmygrad posts being hidden from view. These people have no interest in good faith arguments and instead derail every post into irrelevant arguments filled with half-truths or outright disinformation.
Server instances deciding independently whether or not to defederate gives people the option to either use an instance where they won’t see this garbage or one where they do. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Damn hexbear and lemmygrad really became the new “commie”
It’s really shone a light on how little the West actually understands communism tbh
Y’all are talking past each other because you’re operating on entirely different assumptions about what the same words mean
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Yeah that’s a good point lmao
This is a great example of a hexbear user’s argument. I simply talked about not wanting to see bad faith arguments, and you respond with a strawman talking about communism, the west, and clichés used by conservatives. You really nailed their favorite tactic of concern trolling like a bunch of 4Chan users cosplaying as leftists.
Communism is when I don’t have to work, and also “the West TM” bad. /s
Hexbear and Lemmygrad dont have antiwork stances? Also the US empire is the largest source of violence in the world today.
These people have no interest in good faith arguments and instead derail every post into irrelevant arguments filled with half-truths or outright disinformation.
I haven’t really seen any evidence of this and worldnews gets a lot of hexbear and lemmygrad posters. It just comes off as red-scaring to me.
Well a lot of the rest of Lemmy have seen numerous examples of it which is why they keep getting defederated from instances. This being about communism is a red herring as the lemmy.ml is run by self-proclaimed communists.
Furthermore, I rarely ever see hexbear users actually discussing communism or any other economic system. Typically it’s just ad hominem remarks about “the west,” strawman arguments, concern trolling as if they’re innocent victims, and carrying water for the Chinese and Russian governments.
Well a lot of the rest of Lemmy have seen numerous examples of it which is why they keep getting defederated from instances.
NGL the users of the big instances that have defederated like .world are the majority of comments I have to delete here for overt racism, supporting genocide, etc. You can check the modlog if you dont believe me.
I’m sorry, I dont really trust the opinion of the admins of instances overflowing with calls for violence and racism.
This being about communism is a red herring as the lemmy.ml is run by self-proclaimed communists.
I’ve seen the admins be called tankies by the same people complaining about hexbear and grad.
Furthermore, I rarely ever see hexbear users actually discussing communism or any other economic system. Typically it’s just ad hominem remarks about “the west,” strawman arguments, concern trolling as if they’re innocent victims, and carrying water for the Chinese and Russian governments.
Yeah this comes off to me as someone who had read a bunch of their comments with no background understanding of why the US empire is the largest purveyor of violence in the world today. I cannot blame them for not having the resources or authority to educate everyone they encounter.
Thank you. All anyone needs to know about why lemmy.world defederated from hexbear is that they did it preemptively because they didn’t agree with the ideology of hexbear users. This is based on the admin’s own statements. It was completely unjustified.
These people have no interest in good faith arguments
This is such an obnoxious sweeping statement.
Fair point, but it applies by and large and is the reason why they keep getting defederated just a short while after federating with the rest of Lemmy (after closing themselves off for the past 3 years).
It really doesn’t. A lot of the time they’re flippant not because they have no interest in discussion but because so many libs dismiss and sneer at their vilified and misunderstood political positions — I’ve seen people literally assume they’re Trump supporters or Putin supporters and go around saying so to anyone who asks — and it makes discussion frustrating or outright impossible. Conveying a lot of background information to someone who is hostile and not listening is difficult. So they’re flippant, and it becomes a vicious cycle.
Lemmy version 0.19 can’t come soon enough - it’s going to bring more moderation tools, which should help mitigate defederation.
There’s also a lack of moderators as well, which causes either overreaching or insufficient actions a lot of the time.
It’s being extremely heavily moderated. (Not just the defederation.) You can gather the political stance by what comments remain.
Yeah, it’s not the easiest to read because most of the censorship is “user was banned from community”. Which seems to remove the comments as well.
The only comment text listed in the modlog are the truly vile ones.
Sometimes you remove comment and then ban the user and the comment removal hasn’t had time to propagate. But yeah, the vileness you see is the ballpark for what we remove.
Can you look at this one by @Pipoca 2 hours ago? I won’t paste the full text here for obvious reasons, but it seems pretty reasonable, mostly facts, and not vile at all. It just looks like a bad case of overmoderation.
mod Removed Comment - There’s a few things going on.
…
reason: Bothsidesing a genocide
If I recall correctly it described a genocide primarily through the lense of a two sided religious conflict. We remove that stuff as genocide apologia.
Oh. I thought that’s exactly what this was.
Is there anywhere on Lemmy that is allowing open discussion of this? Or is the censorship high enough up that it’s not possible on Lemmy?
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Civilian meat grinder.
UK Tory MP accuses politicians of being complicit in Israeli war crimes
Sorry for the Reddit link but I couldn’t find an alternative source.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-airstrikes-israel-1.6998419
So they’re airstriking the south after telling everybody in the north to head south.
Obviously. No civilians are in the North to strike anymore.
Is Egyptian/UN aid actually going to make it through the checkpoint? Egypt has had aid trucks parked outside for like days.
The trucks initially went in but initially backed out when Israel bombed the corridor again.
