Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[laughing dog]

Zackly. “Exemplary fashion” doesn’t include killing 10x civilians per combatant.
Fucking Bibi is a war (and other) criminal and Israel will be paying s huge price for coddling him for years or decades to come.

Check your memory. 10x is the typical ratio. Gaza looks like about 1.4x by raw numbers 1.1x excluding the known bad data.

What is you unbiased source for this claim?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I also resent your claim that I am paying “lip service” to Hamas atrocities. I have and do fully condemn them.

Yet you blame Israel for the atrocity that Hamas engineered in Gaza and we are seeing play out. The atrocity they are using to try to get the world to stop Israel.

Israel is responsible for its choices it makes.

Realistically, Israel did not have a choice. If their government had decided against war it would have been overthrown.

Hamas intended to cause a war, cause horrors in Gaza and parade them on the world stage to get the world to make Israel back off. You are an unwitting Hamas weapon in going along with this.

Gaza is the kid pleading for leniency because he's an orphan because he killed his parents.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Who has done better?

Better at what? Killing civilians? Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin … In the big picture, Bibi is an also ran. But he’s right now, and he is like, 8x ahead of Hamas in the body count game.

Nobody, that's who.

By WHAT contorted metric, other than gross body count?

It's usually measured in civilian:combatant ratio.

 

[laughing dog]

I also resent your claim that I am paying “lip service” to Hamas atrocities. I have and do fully condemn them.

Yet you blame Israel for the atrocity that Hamas engineered in Gaza and we are seeing play out. The atrocity they are using to try to get the world to stop Israel.

Israel is responsible for its choices it makes.

Realistically, Israel did not have a choice……

Nonsense. The gov’t of Israel had plenty of options besides the one it chose against the counsel of the army.

Yes, Hamas wanted war but since when should the gov’t of Israel hive Hamas anything it wants?

 

[steve_bank]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/06/middleeast/american-activist-killed-west-bank-intl/index.html

The usual Israeli response when Palestinians are shot protesting.

The Israeli military has admitted to firing at the demonstrators. In a statement, the IDF added that its forces “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them.”

She was a University of Washington graduate who graduated from the Seattle-based institution this spring.

Protests at Beita are common. The Palestinian town is next to a ramshackle Israeli settler outpost known as Evyatar. The settlement was unauthorized by the Israeli state until it was legalized earlier this year. All Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law.

The more I hear the less regard I have for Israel. Biden offered his condolences but said nothing else.

No one in our government will criticize Israel in any meaningful way.

If it were Iran kililng an American we would never hear the end of it.

 

[steve_bank]

10 years ago I would have said the US should supply arms to Israel to prevent its being over run. Not so much today.

I used to think there was a moral obligation to help a Jewish state giivne the WWII persecution.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Why does your Ilk never have anything bad to say about them?

Please stop your bullshit. I, others here, and many, many others protesting against Israel have indeed condemned the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7. Your misrepresentations of others is as disgusting as RVonse’s racist slurs on other topics.

You pay lip service to the ongoing Hamas atrocities and keep blaming Israel for conducting war in an exemplary fashion.

Exemplary fashion? Hamas still exists, Hamas still has many hostages. Lots of civilians are dead. I'm unimpressed at this exemplary fashion. You can skull fuck the numbers all you want, it has been 11 months since hell fell upon Israel, and Israeli progress against Hamas is questionable at best while hostages are still in captivity, providing a hell only they and their families can understand.

Who has done better? Anywhere, anytime? Who has even come close to as low a civilian:combatant ratio in rooting forces out of a city that has not been evacuated?

Nobody, that's who.

Like I said, skull fuck the numbers doesn't change the fact that there are still hostages and Israel hasn't come close to ending Hamas.

 

[pood]

I also resent your claim that I am paying “lip service” to Hamas atrocities. I have and do fully condemn them.

Yet you blame Israel for the atrocity that Hamas engineered in Gaza and we are seeing play out. The atrocity they are using to try to get the world to stop Israel.

I guess this and the stock market discussion are off-topic, but anyway ,..

I do not blame Israel for the Hamas atrocity. Where did you get that strange idea? I blame Hamas for the Hamas atrocity. And I blame Israel for the Gaza atrocity. Gaza is not Hamas.

 

[pood]

I also resent your claim that I am paying “lip service” to Hamas atrocities. I have and do fully condemn them.

Yet you blame Israel for the atrocity that Hamas engineered in Gaza and we are seeing play out. The atrocity they are using to try to get the world to stop Israel.

Israel is responsible for its choices it makes.

Realistically, Israel did not have a choice. If their government had decided against war it would have been overthrown.

Hamas intended to cause a war, cause horrors in Gaza and parade them on the world stage to get the world to make Israel back off. You are an unwitting Hamas weapon in going along with this.

Gaza is the kid pleading for leniency because he's an orphan because he killed his parents.

You post is completely illogical. In the first two paragraphs you correctly cite Hamas. Suddenly, in the third paragraph, without so much as a proper segue, Hamas morphs into Gaza!

Gaza and Hamas are not the same. This is not an opinion, it is an objective fact that you ignore.

 

[Elixir]

Gaza and Hamas are not the same. This is not an opinion, it is an objective fact that you ignore.

If Loren allows that, then Israel becomes genocidal. He has to conflate them to justify indiscriminate mass murder.

 

[ZiprHead]

Realistically, Israel did not have a choice. If their government had decided against war it would have been overthrown.

That is a delusional statement. It's not possible for Hamas to overthrow the Israeli government. Hamas has hand weapons and unguided rockets. Israel has tanks, artillery, guided missile systems, a very good missile defense system, a navy, and much more.

 

[pood]

Realistically, Israel did not have a choice. If their government had decided against war it would have been overthrown.

That is a delusional statement. It's not possible for Hamas to overthrow the Israeli government. Hamas has hand weapons and unguided rockets. Israel has tanks, artillery, guided missile systems, a very good missile defense system, a navy, and much more.

I think he means the government would have been overthrown by the Israeli people. No evidence for that, and anyway, right now the Israeli people are fed up with the war and the failure to rescue the hostages, so Netanyahu is in trouble anyway.

 

[pood]

Who has done better?

Better at what? Killing civilians? Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin … In the big picture, Bibi is an also ran. But he’s right now, and he is like, 8x ahead of Hamas in the body count game.

Nobody, that's who.

By WHAT contorted metric, other than gross body count?

It's usually measured in civilian:combatant ratio.

I noticed you have not responded to several earlier points I made.

According to the NY Times, Hamas has gained, not lost, support in Gaza, so the Israeli effort to root out Gaza has spectacularly flamed out, as many of us predicted from the get-go.

It is not possible to eradicate Hamas, or to make Hamas “surrender,” as Jerry Coyne at his idiotic blog repeatedly demands. Do you think otherwise? If so, demonstrate how you think this will happen, short of literally wiping out every resident of Gaza, which I believe even you would agree would be genocide.

You have not addressed my post about the Israeli minister who came right out and talked about literally starving two million Gazans.

You have not addressed my point that Israel’s actions are obviously breeding more terrorists, and support for terror, in the future.

You have not addressed my point that Israel has failed in its effort to free the hostages.

 

[pood]

Gaza and Hamas are not the same. This is not an opinion, it is an objective fact that you ignore.

If Loren allows that, then Israel becomes genocidal. He has to conflate them to justify indiscriminate mass murder.

Unfortunately, this seems to be exactly right.

 

[pood]

The Gazan people are no more responsible for the Hamas atrocity than I am for George W. Bush’s Cheney-inspired war in Iraq, which I totally opposed, or the Afghan people were responsible for the Taliban/Qaeda terror attacks.

 

[Toni]

I also resent your claim that I am paying “lip service” to Hamas atrocities. I have and do fully condemn them.

Yet you blame Israel for the atrocity that Hamas engineered in Gaza and we are seeing play out. The atrocity they are using to try to get the world to stop Israel.

We don’t often agree but yes. I’ll go one further: I think that was the plan anyway: to incite anti-Semitic and anti-Israel passions world wide to the point of wiping out Jews and Israel altogether, world wide, which is the stated goal and purpose of Hamas.

. Hamas attacked Israel in order to provoke the type of response they got. They are unwilling to honor a cease fire and indeed, they will continue to refuse peace until Israel no longer exists and until the world finishes what Hitler tried to do.

Neither Israel nor Hamas nor Gaza nor the world at large is blameless in all of this.

I don’t think religion or culture has a damn thing to do with it. There are plenty of Arab and Muslim countries which could easily make themselves home to fellow Muslims, if they were interested in preserving their Palestinian brothers’ and sisters’ ( but let’s face it: they only care about the males) right to live and practice their shared faith. Why don’t they?

Because having Israel as the common enemy allows them to ignore their internal problems within their own borders and indeed, the problems with their neighbors. Yes, there is saber ratting towards the west, largely but not entirely for the same reasons.

But THE biggest reason is money. Who profits? Who profits more when there is conflict?

It is not the average citizen in any of these countries or anywhere in the world.

Making and keeping the population angry and afraid helps keep in power and keeps money flowing towards whoever people think can control or stop the violence and destruction better. It’s true whether we are talking about Gaza or Israel or Ukraine or Russia or Turkey or Mexico or the Mideast or anywhere in the world. It’s not just the arms industry.

 

[bilby]

Realistically, Israel did not have a choice. If their government had decided against war it would have been overthrown.

That is a delusional statement. It's not possible for Hamas to overthrow the Israeli government. Hamas has hand weapons and unguided rockets. Israel has tanks, artillery, guided missile systems, a very good missile defense system, a navy, and much more.

I think he means the government would have been overthrown by the Israeli people. No evidence for that, and anyway, right now the Israeli people are fed up with the war and the failure to rescue the hostages, so Netanyahu is in trouble anyway.

And in a democracy, by definition, it is needless to overthrow the government. You just vote them out.

The people only need to overthrow their government if that government is undemocratic - in which case, it probably should be overthrown.

 

[lpetrich]

Kamala Harris ran her office like a prosecutor. Not everyone liked that. - The Washington Post

People who have worked for Harris say her interactions with staff can resemble a prosecutor prying details from a witness, asking pointed questions about everything from her schedule to policy briefings. And her cautious approach to big decisions has frustrated deputies rather than inspire them.

...
As a senator, her office developed a reputation for a revolving door; according to a Legistorm analysis, the turnover in Harris’s office ranked her ninth among senators who served between 2017 and 2021. Turnover was especially high in 2019, as some left to join her campaign for the 2020 presidential nomination.

More than 90 percent of Harris’s vice-presidential staff who started working for her in early 2021 have since left the office, ... She has been repeatedly dogged by reports of infighting and dysfunction among her aides.

...
While some former staffers have publicly griped about Harris’s leadership, their complaints pale compared with warnings issued about Trump, whose former chief of staff, defense secretary, national security adviser and other key deputies have sounded alarm bells about his third attempt at the White House.

Now we know why Rex Tillerson called Donald Trump a moron. - former Trump Secretary of State
John Bolton blasts Donald Trump, Elon Musk interview - former Trump national-security adviser

“She holds herself to an incredibly high standard, and therefore, she holds her team to a really high standard,” expecting their work to be thorough and complete, said Daniel Suvor, ... offering examples of Harris’s approachability and saying she was down-to-earth. “She detested being called ‘general’ by her staff,” Suvor said.

...
“She talks a lot about their kitchen-table debates … you had to be informed to be able to present your case, and then to know enough to be able to defend your case,” Mesloh said. “Working with her was no different than that …. some people really struggled with that. But I found that rigor helped us aim higher.”

...
Among the complaints: that Harris failed to provide direction and leadership to her campaign, confusing her own staffers, and that she couldn’t choose between her family members and political advisers, leaving rival factions to wrestle for control. Her sister Maya chaired the campaign.

Nepotism? That's like how Donald Trump wants to take over the Republican Party, with making his daughter-in-law Lara co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

Some of Harris’s early staff was also discomfited by her prosecutorial leadership style, former staffers said, which included pointed questions from Harris about footnotes in their reports or the reasons behind why certain items had been added to her schedule.

“It’s stressful to brief her, because she’s read all the materials, has annotated it and is prepared to talk through it,” said one former aide.

“You can’t come to the vice president and just ask her to do something,” said another staffer. “You need to have a why.”

Good leadership.

 

[pood]

A few times here I have seen at least a couple of people here, including Loren, throw out the disgusting platitudes, when confronted with the horrific death toll of civilians in Gaza, that “war is hell” and that the victims are “collateral damage.”

War is hell. Too bad Israel is not battling an actual army. They alone are the bringers of war’s hell to innocent people.

As to “collateral damage,” it is beyond disgusting. That was Pentagon-ese to misdirect people’s attention from the huge civilian death toll that Bush/Cheney’s Iraq debacle would entail. Human beings. are not collateral fucking damage.

Incidentally, the Bush/Cheney crowd were the same awful people who came up with the term “climate change” to distract people from human-caused global warming — and I’ve no doubt Cheney knew of oil company studies, dating at least to the 1960s, which confirmed humans were causing climate change. Those studies were suppressed, just like the cigarette industry suppressed their own discovery of the cigarette-cancer link in the 1930s. The irony is that “climate change” really is the more accurate term, though not for reasons that the Bush/Cheney cabal were hoping to make stick.

 

[ZiprHead]

Realistically, Israel did not have a choice. If their government had decided against war it would have been overthrown.

That is a delusional statement. It's not possible for Hamas to overthrow the Israeli government. Hamas has hand weapons and unguided rockets. Israel has tanks, artillery, guided missile systems, a very good missile defense system, a navy, and much more.

I think he means the government would have been overthrown by the Israeli people. No evidence for that, and anyway, right now the Israeli people are fed up with the war and the failure to rescue the hostages, so Netanyahu is in trouble anyway.

Doubtful. Both on your speculation of Loren's post and that the Israelis could overthrow their own government.