Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[laughing dog]

Why only the “Muslim world”?

As usual, I didn't say that.

You wrote
"Egypt is not the only safe place. The Muslim world is quite large and Muslim Gazans....". You did not mention any other place. So, as usual, you deny what you actually wrote.

What I wrote was

If a Gazan really wanted to go to Michigan, I wouldn't object. But I can't help but assume that the vast majority would rather be somewhere close by, Muslim, without the language and cultural barriers in Christendom. Egypt would seem ideal.
Tom

But, of course, you prefer to keep your ideology pure so you probably didn't understand that.
Tom

Your written record is clear despite your efforts to obscure it with straw men accusations.

 

[lpetrich]

A Watershed Moment for the Politics of Israel, Courtesy of Chuck Schumer - The New York Times - "Republicans have long sought to make Israel a partisan issue, framing their party as the only one truly supportive of the Jewish state. The Senate majority leader’s blistering speech may have helped."

Pro-Israel Right Outraged by Chuck Schumer’s Netanyahu Speech - "Neoconservatives only hate “interference” in Israel when it means anything other than blank-check support for apartheid and slaughtering Palestinians."

Despite its otherwise pro-Israel tone, Schumer’s speech predictably triggered outrage among staunch pro-Israel Republicans, including many neoconservatives. Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams, of Iran–Contra fame, hysterically accused Schumer of attempting to turn Israel into an “American colony” by intervening in its politics. “It’s a shameful and unprecedented way to treat an ally,” he wrote, “and an “unconscionable interference in the internal politics of another democracy.” His views were echoed by Israeli officials like former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who took to social media to denounce his comments as “external political intervention” in Israeli affairs.

These arguments could perhaps be respected were it not for the massive, regular, and institutionalized intervention in U.S. political life carried about by the Israeli government and its supporters, which has successfully turned the affairs of a small country on the eastern Mediterranean into one of the most important domestic political issues in America. Netanyahu himself has shown no embarrassment about his own intervention in American politics, delivering rapturous speeches lobbying the U.S. Congress to legislate in favor of Israel and essentially endorsing his favored political candidates for office during U.S. elections.

Intercepted: Israel’s Use of Mass Starvation as a Weapon of War - "Aid groups assert that U.S. airdrop efforts fall short in averting famine, compounded by Israel’s obstruction of aid truck access via land routes."

 

[laughing dog]

October 7 was solid evidence that Palestinians would rather continue the violence.
Permanently.
Tom

Are you “unintentionally” broadbrushing Palestinians instead of Palestinian extremists or keeping your ideology pure ?

 

[lpetrich]

Fatah slams Hamas: Responsible for the current ‘Nakba’ - The Jerusalem Post - "Rival faction accuses Hamas of bringing upon a ‘worst catastrophe than 1948,’ pointing out the bloody 2007 coup and wondering if Hamas would be interested in appointing a Prime Minister from Iran."

Marking the first time in which a formal Palestinian voice has blamed Hamas for the disastrous outcomes of the October 7 massacre, Fatah said that “those who were responsible for the return of the occupation to Gaza Strip and caused the Nakba [catastrophe] which our Palestinian people live… have no right to dictate national priorities.”

The accusations came in response to Hamas’s critique of the appointment of new Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, described as a close partner of President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas officials got butthurt about that, calling the appointment an “individual decision,” and stating that the PA is “being preoccupied with formal steps devoid of substance,” and that a new Palestinian government lacks national consensus. Also opposing a “policy of exclusivity and a deepening of division at a pivotal historic moment,” wanting national unity with a unified leadership and holding “free, democratic elections.”

Fatah:

“Did Hamas consult the Palestinian leadership or any Palestinian national party when it made its decision to carry out the ‘adventure’ of last October 7, which led to a catastrophe more horrific and crueler than the Nakba of 1948?

And did Hamas consult the Palestinian leadership that is now negotiating with Israel and offering it concessions after concessions, which have no goal other than securing guarantees of personal security for its leadership to receive, and to try to reach an agreement with [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to maintain its divisive role in Gaza and the Palestinian arena?

About Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, defeating Fatah, was“Hamas consulted anyone when it carried out its black coup against Palestinian national legitimacy in 2007, and refused all initiatives to end the division?”

About Mohammed Mustafa, he “is armed with the national agenda and not with false agendas that have brought nothing but woes to the Palestinian people and have not achieved anything for them,” and would Hamas prefer to “appoint a prime minister from Iran, or let Tehran appoint a prime minister for the Palestinians,” referring to Hamas's Iran ties.

Fatah's statement had a swipe at the luxurious lifestyles of Hamas's leaders: “it seems that the comfortable life that this leadership lives in seven-star hotels has blinded it from what is right.”

Fatah also wondered why they and their families fled Gaza and left the Palestinian people to face a “brutal war of extermination” without any protection.

 

[Arctish]

Let's just cut to the chase: Israel will not allow Palestinians from Gaza to relocate to anywhere Zionists want to be part of their religious ethno-state. It won't let them join Palestinians in the West Bank because it wants to force out those Palestinians, too.

Let's just cut to the chase.
Israel is not going to allow their violent enemies to relocate anywhere that will help them achieve their goals of violent destruction of Israelis and genocide.

Peak racism.

You condemn children for the choice less than half of their grandparents made 18 years ago that brought a terrorist organization to power.

You call them violent because they are Palestinians, not for anything they themselves have done, like you think it's an inherent characteristic of Semitic people to destroy societies and commit genocide. Meanwhile you ignore the violence, destruction of a society, ethnic cleansing, human rights violations, and developing genocide committed by Israelis because <reasons>.

I get that you want the Israelis to defeat Hamas. So do I. But I utterly reject the notion that racism and bigotry should be enshrined as national ideals by anyone. Fuck that shit. If you're afraid of children moving into your neighborhood because of their religion and ethnic origin, you're the problem, not them.

Not if they can help it, and they can.
The question is, "When will Palestinians choose peace and prosperity over violence and domination?" I'm not holding my breath.

I see you know nothing about the Oslo Accords, and why they failed.

And I think Israelis as a whole have given up on that. October 7 was solid evidence that Palestinians would rather continue the violence.
Permanently.
Tom

So you think all Palestinians everywhere chose to participate in the October 7th attack. Even the ones who have explicitly rejected violence for years. Even the babies born yesterday.

Peak all-encompassing racism.

 

[lpetrich]

Ben-Gvir says Israel not another star on American flag. Yes, it is | Column

We are to understand that the Biden administration has put significant pressure on Netanyahu’s government to postpone the planned judicial overhaul. In Netanyahu’s “mind-your-own-business” response, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Israel is “not another star on the American flag. We are a democracy, and I expect the U.S. president to understand that.”

The close relationship between the US and Israel is sometimes described as Israel being the US's 51st state, and NYC's 6th borough.

 

[lpetrich]

I've also come across this curiosity: videos of female Israeli soldiers dancing while dressed in their uniforms.

 

[Bomb#20]

But if you mean Jews had no alternatives, it's not that simple.

Jews were as safe as every other ethnic and religious community in the Ottoman Empire.

"... it thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. While the empire was able to largely hold its own during the conflict, it struggled with internal dissent, especially the Arab Revolt. During this period, the Ottoman government engaged in genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks."

Armenian genocide - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sayfo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Greek genocide - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Arctish]

But if you mean Jews had no alternatives, it's not that simple.

Jews were as safe as every other ethnic and religious community in the Ottoman Empire.

"... it thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. While the empire was able to largely hold its own during the conflict, it struggled with internal dissent, especially the Arab Revolt. During this period, the Ottoman government engaged in genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks."

Armenian genocide - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sayfo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Greek genocide - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thank you for doing some research. I have been waiting for years for someone to take even a cursory glance at the history of the Ottoman Empire. If you quoted my post and provided links to show that I was wrong when I said Jews were as safe as other ethnic and religious communities, point taken. Jews were safer. Christians got massacred there at the end, while Jews didn't.

As your links show, the victims of those massacres were Christian citizens of the Empire in Anatolia and further north, and the massacres of Greeks and Assyrians only happened during WWI as the Empire was coming apart. There had been previous massacres of Armenians but the really big one also happened during WWI. All three massacres of Armenians apparently happened for the same reason as the massacres of the other two Christian groups - suspected or known attempts by some individuals to aid in the overthrow of the Empire resulting in horrific collective punishment of everyone in their communities.

I know of only two organized attacks on Jews in the Levant after it came under Ottoman control: the 1660 attack in Safed and the 1834 massacre (some call it a pogrom), also in Safed after it came under Egyptian control in 1831 (the Ottomans got it back in 1840). In both cases Jews were attacked by Druze during a larger rebellion against the government. The government responded by moving to both quell the uprising and to protect Jewish citizens. If you read the reports from the 1834 attacks you will see that many Jews were sheltered by their Muslim neighbors.

I am sticking with my contention that things were quiet under Ottoman rule. I acknowledge that it was not a perfect place (not even Dulac is that). Yes, there had been murderers, thieves, land swindlers, corrupt officials, violent racist bigoted assholes, organized crime, and many other unsavory types living there, but for four centuries the society was as peaceful as we human beings can usually manage. And there had been quite a lot of marriages between Muslims, Christians, Jews, and yes, even Druze. The myth that Palestinian Jews were a hated, oppressed minority is rooted in the experience of Europeans, not the Palestinians themselves.

 

[pood]

I do know that at the beginning of the Israeli offensive,

The beginning of the Israeli offensive was October 7, 2023.
Tom

Your point?

That the disaster in Gaza is the result of Islamic terrorist violence.

What Israel is doing is not really an offensive military operation. It's a defensive reaction to the military attack.
Easily avoided, but not by Israel.
Tom

The disaster in Gaza is the result of Israel practicing collective punishment, in addition to ethnic cleansing and genocide, in response to the actions of a tiny minority of terrorists, not the people of Gaza. This is a war crime. Israel is guilty of numerous war crimes.

Slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people, including children and babies, is not a defensive act. It is an act of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and a war crime.

Even Israel’s demands that Gazans vacate their homes is a war crime. Forced relocation of populations is a war crime.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Let's just cut to the chase: Israel will not allow Palestinians from Gaza to relocate to anywhere Zionists want to be part of their religious ethno-state. It won't let them join Palestinians in the West Bank because it wants to force out those Palestinians, too.

Let's just cut to the chase.
Israel is not going to allow their violent enemies to relocate anywhere that will help them achieve their goals of violent destruction of Israelis and genocide.

Not if they can help it, and they can.
The question is, "When will Palestinians choose peace and prosperity over violence and domination?" I'm not holding my breath.

And I think Israelis as a whole have given up on that. October 7 was solid evidence that Palestinians would rather continue the violence.
Permanently.
Tom

So the beatings will continue until morale improves.

 

[pood]

Right, this is nonsense, to say “the Palestinians would rather continue…” etc. The PALESTINIANS did not commit the acts of Oct. 7 — HAMAS did. What Israel is doing is collective punishment against the innocent multitutdes, including many, many children, for the sins of the guilty few. This is called A WAR CRIME — it’s all spelled out in international protocols. Israel is being run by war criminals, with the most-wanted war criminal named Netanyahu. If you really want a good use of U.S. special ops, it would be to land in Tel Aviv, throw a net over Netanyahu and drag his ass to the Hague.

 

[Bomb#20]

The one-state solution is a proposal, not a call for ethnic cleansing.

Nobody suggested you were calling for ethnic cleansing. The issue is that you have given the appearance of being okay with it if it comes to that.

No, there has been no post by Gospel that has remotely indicated as such. There is one poster that has a history of making posts suggesting support of such a thing, though they could be on a lot of people's ignore list.

If there's a house on a cliff in Pacifica and the only thing stopping it from falling into the ocean as the waves keep on eroding the cliff is a big ugly retaining wall, and somebody says he wants the retaining wall demolished, and then clarifies that he's totally opposed to the folks who want to take a wrecking ball to the house and the house has an unequivocal right to exist, but it should have organically emerged somewhere with no retaining wall, and that big ugly retaining wall has got to go, that person is giving the appearance of being okay with the house collapsing when the ocean sucks the ground out from under it.

If you are in fact not okay with it, let's see what we can do to correct the appearance. Help me to help you.

People shouldn't be required to confirm the obvious. It is crap like this that makes these threads a waste of time.

So who the heck said he was required to? How he makes himself appear is entirely his choice. What the consequences of his options are is not up to him.

Moreover, nobody is inviting him to "confirm the obvious". What's obvious is:

IMO a single state solution is the only option. to me, the Jewish people should have organically remerged in the region without the stupid wigs waving toilet paper around. Their butt wipes always leave a trail of poop.

This is genocide, if you don't see that you have your head in the sand.

What he's being asked to confirm is that this "only option" he has in mind contains some mechanism that can reasonably be counted on to prevent genocide. If you think any such mechanism is "obvious", for pete's sake, share!!! Apart from both sides' respective river-to-the-sea extremists, everyone on earth would love to hear this!!!

What narrative? "Voting for Hamas equates to supporting terrorism" isn't a narrative; it's just an obvious fact. The people who voted for Hamas knew they were voting for the murder-the-Jews party.

The vote wasn't a referendum on Israel, it was a referendum against the previous leadership which was getting Palestinians no where and rife with controversy and embezzlement. It was a vote of desperation. A vote that got no one what they wanted (excepted the far-right of Israel and the Iranian leadership).

And? So they chose to support terrorism because not supporting terrorism was a lower priority for them than getting rid of their previous rulers. That's still supporting terrorism. 2016 wasn't a referendum on Trump either, but all those swing-state voters who held their noses and went for Trump out of desperation because Clinton was so revolting still supported Trump.

 

[Derec]

Spoiled, and evidently not very hungry Palestinian in northern Gaza is not very happy with airdropped MREs.


2/10 he says. He should have moved to Rafah if he wanted to eat shawarma every day...

 

[Bomb#20]

Who do you conceive will enforce equal rights? In a shared state, making sure equal rights are a lived reality and not just empty words on a piece of paper will take boots on the ground. So I ask again, who do you have in mind? What is the nationality of all those boots on the ground?

The citizens' of said single state. Just like any other Country.

Bingo. That's who people thought you had in mind. That is why you were perceived as being okay with it if the result were ethnic cleansing. It was not because you critiqued the Israeli government.

It seems there's a misconception that Muslim countries inherently oppose Jewish people, suggesting that a unified state would jeopardize Jewish existence.

It seems there's a misconception that anyone who thinks future Palestinian authorities would not prioritize protecting Jewish citizens of a future Palestinian state from pogroms by Jew-hating extremists is deriving his opinion from sweeping generalizations about Muslims. But you are not proposing to put Israelis' fate in the hands of a voting majority of Albanians. Of course Albanians do not inherently oppose Jewish people; but Jewish people haven't been oppressing Albanians for the last seventy-five years, and Albanians don't perceive the Jews to be wrongfully living on Albanians' land, and Albanians weren't out cheering wildly when a thousand Jews were raped and murdered.

So what is there to put on the scales against the endless cycle of hatred and grievance and tit-for-tat collective punishment? The Palestinians' presumed inherent natural commitment to human rights? Gay Palestinians haven't been oppressing straight Palestinians for decades, and didn't ever seize straight Palestinians' land, and straight Palestinians still throw them off buildings.

However, this overlooks the reality of existing peaceful relations between Israel & neighboring Muslim countries.

The hell you say! It doesn't overlook that reality at all. It also doesn't overlook the reality of the existing number one supporting condition for those existing peaceful relations: the border between Israel and those neighboring Muslim countries!

My ideas may seem unconventional or even flawed to experts, and it's fair for them to be critiqued as such. However, they are merely proposals for consideration, not advocacies for harm against any group. To construe them as such is to engage with me in a discussion in a way that lacks sincerity and integrity.

"Advocacies for harm" is not the only alternative to "making lack of harm a priority". There's a whole middle ground between them, where one neither advocates harm nor prioritizes preventing it. If your unconventional ideas and proposals for consideration contain some mechanism that can reasonably be counted on to prevent genocide, for pete's sake, share!!!

 

[Bomb#20]

Thank you for doing some research. I have been waiting for years for someone to take even a cursory glance at the history of the Ottoman Empire. If you quoted my post and provided links to show that I was wrong when I said Jews were as safe as other ethnic and religious communities, point taken.

My point was that "as safe as other ethnic and religious communities" is not particularly safe.

Jews were safer.

"Safer than other ethnic and religious communities" is a pretty low bar.

Christians got massacred there at the end, while Jews didn't.

As your links show, the victims of those massacres were Christian citizens of the Empire in Anatolia and further north, and the massacres of Greeks and Assyrians only happened during WWI as the Empire was coming apart. There had been previous massacres of Armenians but the really big one also happened during WWI. All three massacres of Armenians apparently happened for the same reason as the massacres of the other two Christian groups - suspected or known attempts by some individuals to aid in the overthrow of the Empire resulting in horrific collective punishment of everyone in their communities.

Yup. So the Jews would probably not have been genocided by the Ottomans, unless a few Jewish hotheads took some stupid provocative treasonous action, like blowing up a hotel full of Ottoman employees in an attempt to help Jewish-majority parts of Palestine secede from the Empire.

I am sticking with my contention that things were quiet under Ottoman rule. I acknowledge that it was not a perfect place (not even Dulac is that). Yes, there had been murderers, thieves, land swindlers, corrupt officials, violent racist bigoted assholes, organized crime, and many other unsavory types living there, but for four centuries the society was as peaceful as we human beings can usually manage.

Yes; and they were even making progress. For instance, in the 1800s the Ottoman judicial system abolished execution by impalement.

 

[TomC]

My point was that "as safe as other ethnic and religious communities" is not particularly safe.

Another point is that the Ottoman Empire was sputtering out in the 19th century. It didn't survive WWI.

It's utterly irrelevant to the modern situation.
Tom

 

[Derec]

Right, this is nonsense, to say “the Palestinians would rather continue…” etc. The PALESTINIANS did not commit the acts of Oct. 7 — HAMAS did.

It's not all Palestinians, but Hamas are Palestinians. It wasn't Libyan nationalists this time.

Doc Brown likewise wasn't saying that all Libyans found him, much less that they all fit into that VW microbus.

Anyway, 10/7 was a Palestinian attack on Israel, and mostly on Israeli civilians - young concertgoers at the festival as well as families, including grandparents in the kibbutzim.
Also, it wasn't just Hamas. Terrorists from Islamic Jihad and other smaller groups like PFLP also participated.

What Israel is doing is collective punishment against the innocent multitutdes,

including many, many children, for the sins of the guilty few.

It's war, and civilians die during wars. Its glory is all moonshine and all that.
Many German civilians, including children, died and suffered during the last stages of WWII as well. That does not mean that the Allied invasion of Germany was "collective punishment". You also have to be wary of any numbers put out by Hamas of course.

This is Berlin, not Gaza City!

It would be preposterous if the Allies had been prevented from invading Berlin. It is equally preposterous for US and EU to pressure Israel to not invade Rafah.

This is called A WAR CRIME — it’s all spelled out in international protocols.

No. What Hamas has been doing since its founding - targeting civilians with rockets and suicide bombers, seeking outright genocide according to Fathi Hamad, is a war crime. As is its conduct on 10/7 and since.
So why are Hamas leaders allowed to gallivant between Doha and Cairo and are not arrested and brought up on war crime charges?

Israel "Palestine" is being run by war criminals, with the most-wanted war criminal named Netanyahu Ismail Hanniyeh. If you really want a good use of U.S. special ops, it would be to land in Tel Aviv Doha throw a net over Netanyahu Ismail Hanniyeh and drag his ass to the Hague a CIA blacksite.

FIFY. Hamas have murdered and kidnapped US citizens as well on 10/7. So why isn't Biden doing some extraordinary rendering?

 

[laughing dog]

It's war, and civilians die during wars. Its glory is all moonshine and all that.
Many German civilians, including children, died and suffered during the last stages of WWII as well. That does not mean that the Allied invasion of Germany was "collective punishment". You also have to be wary of any numbers put out by Hamas of course.

ignoring the inept analogy with WW2, if the justification for death of civilians is “It’s war and civilians get killed”, then why the outcry when Israeli citizens get killed in war?

 

[TomC]

It's not all Palestinians, but Hamas are Palestinians.

A big part of the problem is how many people refuse to accept that:

1) Hamas is a subset of Gazans.
2) Gazans are a subset of Palestinians.
3) Palestinians are a subset of Muslims.
4) Muslims are a subset of violently anti -Jewish bigots.

That's just how it is.
Tom