Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[laughing dog]

And who STOLE the land they have now from Palestinians in 1948.

A steaming pile of bullshit!

There was no such thing as a "Palestinian" in 1948. At least not the way that term is understood today, as an ethnonym. That was an invention by the PLO much later.

When it was used back in the 1940s, "Palestinian" merely referred to the inhabitants of the region.

Which means there such a thing as a “Palestinian “. And using that a term as a descriptor that people of the time fix not use is common. Really, your argument cannot be taken seriously.

Arctish keeps talking about how much Hamas cares about the prosperity of ordinary Gazans.

Whatever one's view about the degree of Hamas;'s commitment to your view of "prosperity", it has nothing whatsoever to do with supporting Hamas or terrorism. People frequently over opinions and views on subjects or outcomes without condoning them.

 

[pood]

And who STOLE the land they have now from Palestinians in 1948.

A steaming pile of bullshit!

There was no such thing as a "Palestinian" in 1948.

Ho, ho, ho!

 

[Harry Bosch]

According to Reuters, Hamas released an American hostage. Great news. I think that we tend to forget about the hostages and forget the terror that they are receiving.

 

[Derec]

Which means there such a thing as a “Palestinian “.

Not in the sense we use word today. Face it, there was no Palestinian national identity in the 1940s. PLO invented it for tactical purposes, as their then leader Mohsen admitted.

And using that a term as a descriptor that people of the time fix not use is common. Really, your argument cannot be taken seriously.

It can and should be taken seriously.

Whatever one's view about the degree of Hamas;'s commitment to your view of "prosperity", it has nothing whatsoever to do with supporting Hamas or terrorism. People frequently over opinions and views on subjects or outcomes without condoning them.

It's an example of Arctish defending Hamas on here.

 

[Derec]

There was no such thing as a "Palestinian" in 1948.

Ho, ho, ho!

There were no Palestinians back then in the sense of the word as it is used today.
There were Arabs. And btw, many of them immigrated in the decades preceding the Israeli War of Independence.
That's why UNRWA only requires a 2 year residency to declare Arabs and their descendens perpetual refugees, dissimilar to any other refugee designation in the world.

And as far as "Nakba", there is a lot of propaganda surrounding it.

 

[laughing dog]

Which means there such a thing as a “Palestinian “.

Not in the sense we use word today. Face it, there was no Palestinian national identity in the 1940s. PLO invented it for tactical purposes, as their then leader Mohsen admitted.

That is pretty desperate pedantry.

And using that a term as a descriptor that people of the time fix not use is common. Really, your argument cannot be taken seriously.

It can and should be taken seriously.

Only by those who have no rational arguments. Whether or not Arabs who lived in Palestine thought of themselves as "Palestinian" is relevant to the underlying issue that they thought of it as their home.

Really, since there was no Israel in 1948, should we deny there is such a thing as "Israeli"?

Whatever one's view about the degree of Hamas;'s commitment to your view of "prosperity", it has nothing whatsoever to do with supporting Hamas or terrorism. People frequently over opinions and views on subjects or outcomes without condoning them.

It's an example of Arctish defending Hamas on here.

No, it is an example of a difference of opinion on what "prosperity" means to different people in different contexts. While I don't know what Hamas wants, I can easily imagine that if Israel did not exist, that Hamas would exhibit behavior that you might find as encouraging or wanting prosperity for their inhabitants. Does that mean Hamas is in favor or not in favor of prosperity for Gazans? And, does it really matter at this juncture in time, what the answer is?

 

[ZiprHead]

There was no such thing as a "Palestinian" in 1948.

Ho, ho, ho!

There were no Palestinians back then in the sense of the word as it is used today.
There were Arabs. And btw, many of them immigrated in the decades preceding the Israeli War of Independence.
That's why UNRWA only requires a 2 year residency to declare Arabs and their descendens perpetual refugees, dissimilar to any other refugee designation in the world.

And as far as "Nakba", there is a lot of propaganda surrounding it.

That sounds like a huge cop out to try to claim people who lived in Palestine for generation weren't "Palestinians".



1482 Map of Palestine.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

According to Reuters, Hamas released an American hostage. Great news. I think that we tend to forget about the hostages and forget the terror that they are receiving.

For the hostage, yes, good news. That Trump leveraged quite a bit with Middle East nations to secure the release of a single hostage... that isn't as good.

 

[TomC]

According to Reuters, Hamas released an American hostage. Great news. I think that we tend to forget about the hostages and forget the terror that they are receiving.

For the hostage, yes, good news. That Trump leveraged quite a bit with Middle East nations to secure the release of a single hostage... that isn't as good.

For that hostage and their friends and family, yes. For future victims of Hamas, and the peace and prosperity of Israeli and Gazan people in general, maybe not so much.
Tom

 

[southernhybrid]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/...e_code=1.G08.1ZGA.vBw5Ah1wNk-P&smid=url-share

Some Israeli military officials have privately concluded that Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation unless aid deliveries are restored within weeks, according to three Israeli defense officials familiar with conditions in the enclave.

For months, Israel has maintained that its blockade on food and fuel to Gaza did not pose a major threat to civilian life in the territory, even as the United Nations and other aid agencies have said a famine was looming.

But Israeli military officers who monitor humanitarian conditions in Gaza have warned their commanders in recent days that unless the blockade is lifted quickly, many areas of the enclave will likely run out of enough food to meet minimum daily nutritional needs, according to the defense officials. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive details.

Because it takes time to scale up humanitarian deliveries, the officers said that immediate steps were needed to ensure that the system to supply aid could be reinstated fast enough to prevent starvation.

The growing acknowledgment within part of the Israeli security establishment of a hunger crisis in Gaza comes as Israel has vowed to dramatically expand the war in Gaza to destroy Hamas and bring back the remaining hostages — twin aims that more than 19 months of war have yet to achieve. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was defiant, and said the military would resume fighting in the coming days “in full force to finish the job” and “eliminate Hamas.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s statement came on the same day that President Trump landed in Saudi Arabia, as part of his first major foreign trip since his re-election. Mr. Trump, however, is not visiting Israel, underscoring a growing divide between two leaders who increasingly disagree on some of the most critical security issues facing Israel.

The military officials’ analysis has exposed a gulf between Israel’s public stance on the aid blockade and its private deliberations. It reveals that parts of the Israeli security establishment have reached the same conclusions as leading aid groups. They have warned for months of the dangers posed by the blockade.

The analysis also highlights the urgency of the humanitarian situation in Gaza: Most bakeries have shut, charity kitchens are closing and the United Nations’ World Food Program, which distributes aid and coordinates shipments, says it has run out of food stocks.

Israeli restrictions on aid to Gaza have been one of the most contentious issues of the war. Israel cut off supplies to Gaza in March, shortly before breaking a cease-fire with Hamas, which remains entrenched in Gaza despite losing thousands of fighters and control over much of the territory during the war.

The link is a gifted article that explains that even a lot of Israelis realize that Israel is starving innocent people due to the madman who is controlling their country. Sure, Hamas is a terrible organization, but when you act like Israel, you usually end up causing more support for the bad guys, as you become even worse than the other bad guys. Stop pretending this isn't happening. Even Israelis solders are seeing it. They are just too scared to admit it openly. Sort of like what's going on with Trump and his party.

 

[pood]

Indeed. A lot of Israeli reservists are refusing call-ups. Netanyahu, as you properly describe, is a madman, just like his pals Putin and Trump. How anyone can support this genocidal madness is beyond me.

 

[pood]

Netanyahu belongs before the Hague. Please remember that a warrant for his arrest has been issued by the International Criminal Court.

 

[Derec]

SH, the problem is that there have been claims of "famine" ever since the war started. And people in recent photos do not look emaciated. Even in photos from that NY Times article that makes claims of "famine".

Also, from the article:

Mr. el-Halabi said his daughter, who recently gave birth, was unable to breastfeed because she has not been eating enough. No baby formula is available, he said.

Why are people still have children in a war? Especially if you believe their claims of "famine", why would you bring additional mouths to feed into the world if you can't adequately feed yourself?

 

[laughing dog]

SH, the problem is that there have been claims of "famine" ever since the war started. And people in recent photos do not look emaciated. Even in photos from that NY Times article that makes claims of "famine".

Also, from the article:

Mr. el-Halabi said his daughter, who recently gave birth, was unable to breastfeed because she has not been eating enough. No baby formula is available, he said.

Why are people still have children in a war? Especially if you believe their claims of "famine", why would you bring additional mouths to feed into the world if you can't adequately feed yourself?

That’s right, blame the victim for being human.

 

[pood]

One in five Gazans could starve to death in the coming months.

 

[pood]

SH, the problem is that there have been claims of "famine" ever since the war started. And people in recent photos do not look emaciated. Even in photos from that NY Times article that makes claims of "famine".

Also, from the article:

Mr. el-Halabi said his daughter, who recently gave birth, was unable to breastfeed because she has not been eating enough. No baby formula is available, he said.

Why are people still have children in a war? Especially if you believe their claims of "famine", why would you bring additional mouths to feed into the world if you can't adequately feed yourself?

She was raped because she was wearing sexy clothes. If she didn’t want to be raped, why did she wear sexy clothes?

You probably think exactly like that, don’t you?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Because that was the proposal Palestinians accepted and it's the one I'm citing.

Note: "privately agreed" and "would have to gain popular support through a national referendum". In other words, they were offering something they knew they couldn't deliver.

You made up a meaningless scenario as a supposed rebuttal. The only return the Palestinians are going to accept is everyone, including all their descendants living in other countries.

Bullshit. Also, racist fear mongering.

They have made it very clear for a very long time what "right of return" means. They have painted themselves into a corner that utterly precludes taking any other path. They have also made it very clear what they intend if they get control: genocide.

It's not racist fear mongering to think they intend what they repeatedly say they intend. They have done a very through job of stomping out any dissent and a lifetime of brainwashing.

Bullshit.

It happened for 400 years right there in Palestine from the 16th century to the 20th.

And blacks peacefully coexisted with whites during Jim Crow. That's the "peace" you want.

Expand on this, please. In what way were the lives of blacks under Jim Crow law comparable to the lives of Jews in Palestine under Ottoman rule? It looks like you're making an appeal to emotion by using trigger words but I'm willing to discuss this with you (again).

No, this isn't an appeal to emotion, just the most relevant comparison I can think of. Reasonable peace assuming they are sufficiently subservient and there will be occasional killings for no reason.

We have already discussed the jizya tax and how it applied to Jews, Christians, Druze, Yazidis, etc. We also discussed the representation of the various ethnic and religious communities at the upper echelons of the government, and the degree of self-rule each community enjoyed, so don't pretend you don't know just how much religious freedom and local control people had under the millet system.

They were better off there than in other Arab lands but that doesn't make it not bad.

And anyway, I have already said I don't think the Ottoman system was perfect or that there wasn't room for improvement, so don't try to mischaracterize my posts, either.

The point is you want a return to the supposed "coexistence"--I'm pointing out what you want to return to.

I said the people of Palestine enjoyed 400 years of peaceful coexistence under Ottoman rule, that the only times I know about where ethnic strife occurred were two times the Ottomans briefly lost control, and that the claim that Palestinian Jews, Christians, and Muslims can't live together in peace is arrant nonsense. So you can either demonstrate (with links) that the lives of Palestinians weren't peaceful, that ethnic strife was ongoing, or you can accept the inconvenient truth that Palestinian Jews didn't join the European immigrants in the Zionist movement because they didn't feel the need for a Jewish State when the multi-ethnic, multi-religion, multi-cultural society they lived in was something they valued and wanted to preserve.

Just because you aren't aware of them doesn't mean they didn't happen. Small pogroms happened, weren't notable. It was simply part of life as a Jew. And you're referring to the European immigrants--do you not realize that the majority of Jews in Israel are of Arab descent, the ones that were driven out of their homes in 1948?

If it really were about the actions of Europeans rather than about Jews we wouldn't have seen the expulsions of 1948.

And now that they rebelled and threw off their oppressors they don't dare go back. Think of domestic violence, it's a perfect model for what's happening.

Who is "they"?

The European Jews who immigrated to Palestine and fought to create a Jewish State were escaping other Europeans.

That's not addressing the comparison at all.

And note that the majority of Jews came from Arab lands, not Europe.

I note you keep saying that but when asked to back up your claim the best you can do is show that Jews emigrated to Israel in the decades following its founding and that you keep including Algerian Jews in the count despite the fact that most of the Jews who left Algeria did so in order to retain their French citizenship, and that most of them went to France.

If you have evidence Palestinian Jews were oppressed by their Palestinian Christian and Muslim neighbors, share it with the rest of us.

Back up your claims, Loren.

You still aren't addressing the fact that you want the abuse victim to go back to their abuser. And pointing to one country doesn't address the overall picture.

Map of the Jewish Refugees Arab/Muslim Countries (1948-1972)

Encyclopedia of Jewish and Israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-Semitism to Zionism.

www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org

Note that Algeria doesn't have that much more exodus than the other countries.

And anyway, your posting history indicates you don't give a fuck when it's Jews moving into settlements in the West Bank where they will be vastly outnumbered by non-Jews, so why the pearl clutching when it's a few thousand non-Jewish refugees returning to their former homes in Israel? Could it be that your argument is nothing but racist fearmongering in defense of preserving the results of ethnic cleansing? It certainly looks that way.

It's not a few thousand, it would be several million.

Says who?

Link to your source that says the Return of the refugees would mean several million immediately moving in who would be immediately eligible to vote and would overthrow the government and march Jews off to death camps. They sound both hysterical and extremely ill-informed. That or else they're truly, deeply anti-Psemitic racists spouting off about how much they detest the idea of Palestinians living in the religious ethno-state of their dreams.

I'm saying that several million right now is the only right of return that the Palestinians will accept. You making up fantasies doesn't change that.

Even if you were right (and you clearly aren't, see the linked article above and ffs do some research before you spout off on what Palestinians will accept), that doesn't mean there can't be peaceful co-existence between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Palestine, only that the hardcore bigoted Zionists won't have the exclusive Jewish ethno-state they envision.

The hardcore Islamists want an exclusive Muslim ethno-state. You don't seem to care about that.

And note that the Jews want the ethno-state because they want to live. The Islamists want to kill the Jews.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And why they came to naught was that Hamas doesn't like prosperity.

Interesting.

Please share your links which have given you the idea Hamas' doesn't like prosperity.

Because they constantly act in a fashion to preclude it.

I suspect it's a racist screed that dehumanizes Palestinians, but I could be wrong. It might be a carefully researched, perceptive, and insightful analysis of the inner workings of a terrorist organization with a strange aversion to something most terrorists want very much.

I didn't say the Palestinians don't like prosperity. I specifically said Hamas. Last I checked Hamas isn't a race. And it's not because of race but rather that if there is prosperity the people won't be desperate enough to enlist with Hamas. The Palestinian territories used to be the most prosperous non-oil Arab nation. Now there's little more than Hamas.

Understand that Hamas answers to Iran, not Gaza. They are not acting in the interests of Gaza and most of their actions are decidedly not in the interests of the people.

Just because some of us don't bother to distinguish Hamas from Gaza from the people of Gaza doesn't mean we don't recognize the difference. We are just using labels of convenience, like people might say that Washington wants something when they mean the US government.

Hamas shells the checkpoint so Israel pulls it's people under cover and thus closes the checkpoint. There goes the produce. Hamas knew what would happen when they shelled the checkpoint.

When did Hamas shell the checkpoint? Was it a one-time event or did it happen more than once? Did it ever happen when Jewish settlers were the ones exporting produce?

It happens every so often. It usually doesn't make the news.

And you're asking a stupid question--there are no Jewish settlers exporting produce through checkpoints into Gaza, thus the notion of Hamas shelling them is nonsense.

Be specific.

If you want to discuss events you have to provide links to reports about them. You have to do your own research and know at least a little bit about the topic. That's how discussions here work.

So, link to your source and let's sort out the facts from the fiction. As I recall, you fell for that racist story about Palestinians destroying the greenhouses like petulant children. Have you looked into it any further than that?

Are you saying they weren't destroyed??

And it's not petulant children, it's carefully orchestrated by the terrorists.

And not one link was shared that day.

Back up your claims, Loren.

Provide the evidence that supports your claims that Hamas doesn't like prosperity.

Provide your evidence of the timing and frequency of shelling of the checkpoint at the Karni crossing.

Provide your evidence the greenhouses were destroyed in a manner that was carefully orchestrated by terrorists.

I believe you are making shit up as you go along but I am giving you the benefit of the doubt here by asking for whatever shitty sources you're using. Perhaps they are to blame.

Causation is generally not provable in any given case, all we can do is look at patterns. But there are so many "coincidences" that intent seems obvious.

As for not liking prosperity--that should be obvious. Hamas exists by being the only game in town. Of course they don't want there to be any other options!

Or look at what has been happening recently. Israel figured there were four months of supplies in Gaza, so they cut all supplies. If the people were truly starving before we would see few survivors by now. But people look like they used to. But without being able to steal the aid Hamas is having a big problem paying it's people. And that's why Israel wants to set up a system where each household gets it's own supplies rather than allow any organization in Gaza to distribute things.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So it was the infamous Gaza strip wildlife that you reckon was the problem?

The big ones, like bears and lions, which are always so prevalent in densely populated urban areas?

I mean, you do get that the US Forest Service aren't blowing up horse corpses in Manhattan, right? Not even in Central Park.

Seriously, the sheer weirdness of the stuff you need to assume in order to support your rationalisations should tip you off that you are veering into crazyland. Before you post such shit, why not at least hesitate long enough to see if it passes the laugh test?

Why in the world do you think bears and lions? Much more likely would be mid-range scavengers. Think of the coyote, the vulture. I live in a desert, we don't have much in the way of larger wildlife--but when an idiot dies out there the body tends to get scattered anyway. I have never seen the corpse of anything beyond bird range--but I have seen pieces of large animals.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If the IDF had buried the bodies (with bullet holes in the head ostensibly from a bombing) for such humanitarian concerns, you’d think the IDF would say so. So far, no such statement has been proffered.

I have not kept up with the timeline on this. I am going on what they have said happened.

Corpses in combat zones have long been a big problem. Is it surprising that they have a procedure for dealing with them??