Merged Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

In before, squibs and crisis actors...

 

[ZiprHead]

In before, squibs and crisis actors...

Now you see 'em, now you don't.

 

[lpetrich]

Opinion | How the Squad and Like-Minded Progressives Have Changed Their Party - The New York Times - April 23, 2024
Starting off by calling them "far-left", even though they are essentially sewer socialists, as in the wastewater-disposal plumbing.

Then describing how the rest of the Democratic Party has been catching up to them.

In recent weeks, Democratic leaders have begun inching closer to the progressive view that it is against U.S. interests to continue sending unconditional U.S. military aid to Mr. Netanyahu’s government in an asymmetrical war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza.

...
“We stood our ground on this issue since Day 1,” Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts told me. “Today our vision is a part of that mainstream political discourse, and the party is responding.”

...
Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, another progressive Democrat, accused Israel of threatening actions that amounted to war crimes. Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a progressive Democrat and the only Palestinian American member of Congress, has described Israel’s longstanding approach to the conflict as apartheid.

noting Ocasio-Cortez, in House Speech, Accuses Israel of ‘Genocide’ - The New York Times - "Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had called for a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas, but had resisted labeling the conflict a genocide."
This time,

... the Democratic House leadership barely blinked.

“A lot of what I was trying to do was legitimize this position,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez told me in a recent interview. “That it’s not just like some fringe-activist thing.”

Report Cards for 2022 - GovTrack.us - I checked on their ideology scores.

Van Hollen, Sanders, Merkley, and Five Colleagues Urge President Biden to Enforce U.S. Law with Netanyahu Government | U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland

Bernie Sanders I-VT 0.00, Jeff Merkley D-OR 0.04, Elizabeth Warren D-MA 0.06, Mazie Hirono D-HI 0.07, Tina Smith D-MN 0.08, Chris van Hollen D-MD 0.12, Ben Ray Luján D-NM 0.17, Peter Welch D-VT (House: 0.14)

Sens. Chuck Schumer D-NY is at 0.24, Joe Manchin D-WV 0.45, Kyrsten Sinema I-AZ 0.50.

Top Democrat says he needs more answers before approving F-15 sale to Israel - Live Updates - POLITICO = Rep. Gregory Meeks D-NY 0.14.

 

[lpetrich]

Partly, the drift away from decades-old American foreign policy is a reflection of the enormous death toll and suffering in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed, as well as the intransigence of the right-wing Israeli government. But it is also a mark of the growing influence of American progressives on the Democratic Party.

AOC seems very careful and responsible.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged that antisemitism was on the rise but said the progressive movement is operating in a “tinderbox situation” in which groups like AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobby, have used unfair accusations of antisemitism to silence any criticism of the Israeli government.

“Two things can be true at the same time,” she said. “You have a lot of cynical weaponization of false accusations and conflating of criticism of Israel with antisemitism, alongside the fact that antisemitism is very real and on the rise.”

Not just AOC.

Allies of the movement, though, say the U.S. role in Gaza has become too personal to ignore. “I have constituents who’ve lost dozens of their family members,” Ms. Omar said. “They’ve been killed with weapons provided by their own tax dollars.”

AOC herself has been busy.

In classified briefings, at the White House and in scores of private conversations with other Democrats, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez pushed hard for a permanent end to hostilities and conditions for military aid.

“There was no lack of outside organizing, but I don’t feel like there were enough inside voices that were able to get through these halls of power, particularly to people who disagreed with us,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “And so I decided to dedicate a lot of time and energy to really spending a lot of time in those spaces.”

She also said she sat with families of the Israeli hostages and was alarmed by the rise antisemitic attacks, especially in New York City, part of which she represents.

Ayanna Pressley D-MA 0.05, Ilhan Omar D-MN: 0.09, AOC D-NY: 0.10

Not just The Squad.

Representative Sara Jacobs of California, the youngest Jewish member of Congress and a Democratic member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, has also lobbied her colleagues. She said the administration should enforce the Foreign Assistance Act, which bars the United States from giving arms to any country that impedes humanitarian aid, as Ms. Jacobs said she believes Israel has done.

“A lot of people think that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic,” Ms. Jacobs told me, adding that she has family in Israel. “I have been working very hard to try and carve out that space where there are legitimate criticisms.”

Sara Jacobs D-CA 0.12

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said her decision to publicly call the war in Gaza a genocide was driven largely by reports of imminent famine among Palestinians in the enclave amid what she said she believes to be the intentional blocking of humanitarian aid by Mr. Netanyahu.

Before giving the speech on the House floor, she said, she carefully considered other factors as well, including rising antisemitic attacks and the history of genocide against Jewish communities. She also said she spoke with a close childhood friend who is a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

“I said, you know, ‘What do you think would have been helpful?’” the congresswoman recalled. “And my friend told me that people need to see these folks as human. That’s why I chose to use the images and in my speech to discuss what famine means.”

Great job.

 

[Derec]

Allies of the movement, though, say the U.S. role in Gaza has become too personal to ignore. “I have constituents who’ve lost dozens of their family members,” Ms. Omar said. “They’ve been killed with weapons provided by their own tax dollars.”

Same was true for German-Americans during WWII. A lot of German civilians were killed with American weapons.
Going into Germany and defeating the Nazis was nevertheless necessary, and so is defeating Hamas and their allies.

In classified briefings, at the White House and in scores of private conversations with other Democrats, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez pushed hard for a permanent end to hostilities and conditions for military aid.

"Permanent end to hostilities" is impossible unless Hamas is removed. At most it is a ceasefire that will be broken just like the ceasefire in effect on 10/6 was broken. Hamas has already stated that they intend to attack Israel over and over again. And even a temporary ceasefire talks failed because Hamas refuses to release hostages - they offered only 32 "dead or alive". Why are AOC and her ilk ignoring all this?

Ayanna Pressley D-MA 0.05, Ilhan Omar D-MN: 0.09, AOC D-NY: 0.10

Yepp. All very far to the Left. And dragging hapless Biden with them.

Representative Sara Jacobs of California, the youngest Jewish member of Congress and a Democratic member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, has also lobbied her colleagues. She said the administration should enforce the Foreign Assistance Act, which bars the United States from giving arms to any country that impedes humanitarian aid, as Ms. Jacobs said she believes Israel has done.

Is she also proposing weapons sales to Egypt be blocked, as they are definitely impeding humanitarian aid? They closed the Rafah crossing recently.

“A lot of people think that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic,” Ms. Jacobs told me, adding that she has family in Israel. “I have been working very hard to try and carve out that space where there are legitimate criticisms.”

Criticism is not. Hostility often is.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said her decision to publicly call the war in Gaza a genocide was driven largely by reports of imminent famine among Palestinians in the enclave amid what she said she believes to be the intentional blocking of humanitarian aid by Mr. Netanyahu.

Israel opened the Erez crossing to aid. Kerem Shalom was also opened to aid until Hamas shot rockets at it. The Rafah crossing was closed by Egypt, not Israel. One-sided blame on Israel or Netanyahu shows her bias.

Before giving the speech on the House floor, she said, she carefully considered other factors as well, including rising antisemitic attacks and the history of genocide against Jewish communities. She also said she spoke with a close childhood friend who is a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

“I said, you know, ‘What do you think would have been helpful?’” the congresswoman recalled. “And my friend told me that people need to see these folks as human. That’s why I chose to use the images and in my speech to discuss what famine means.”

Why not place the blame where it belongs - Hamas.

 

[Derec]

Opinion | How the Squad and Like-Minded Progressives Have Changed Their Party - The New York Times - April 23, 2024
Starting off by calling them "far-left", even though they are essentially sewer socialists, as in the wastewater-disposal plumbing.

Well, any form of socialism is far left. And the alliance between anti-Israel terrorists and western leftists is not a new thing either.
Besides, sewer socialism sounds like a system that may be adopted by the sewer mutants from Futurama ...

Then describing how the rest of the Democratic Party has been catching up to them.

A bad idea.

In recent weeks, Democratic leaders have begun inching closer to the progressive view that it is against U.S. interests to continue sending unconditional U.S. military aid to Mr. Netanyahu’s government in an asymmetrical war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza.

On the contrary, it is in US interest for Israel to destroy Hamas. Leaving them in power will only embolden them and their Iranian puppet masters.

“We stood our ground on this issue since Day 1,” Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts told me. “Today our vision is a part of that mainstream political discourse, and the party is responding.”

"Since Day 1" is correct. The Hamas Squad was against Israel defending itself ever since it was brutally attacked on 10/7.
It is both bad policy and bad politics to abandon Israel. Unfortunately, Biden is a weak president who is allowing himself to be pulled to the left by the likes of Sandy Wormtongue and Sandersman the White ...

Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, another progressive Democrat, accused Israel of threatening actions that amounted to war crimes. Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a progressive Democrat and the only Palestinian American member of Congress, has described Israel’s longstanding approach to the conflict as apartheid.

Two women that have always been extremely hostile to Israel.

noting Ocasio-Cortez, in House Speech, Accuses Israel of ‘Genocide’ - The New York Times - "Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had called for a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas, but had resisted labeling the conflict a genocide."

I am asking again, what would that "permanent cease-fire" mean concretely? Would all hostages be released? Would Hamas stay in power? And what is to stop them from attacking Israel again?

Van Hollen, Sanders, Merkley, and Five Colleagues Urge President Biden to Enforce U.S. Law with Netanyahu Government | U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland

Sanders is a huge disappointment on this. But I guess it is not a surprise given that he has the rabid antisemite Linda "Cockroach" Sarsour as one of his chief surrogates in 2020.

Bernie Sanders I-VT 0.00

Absolute zero. In more ways than one.

 

[Derec]

Israel's war zone policy is kill anything that moves in the zone.

The tweet is from March, referrencing an incident from Feburary.
And why do you think these yutes were civilians? Because Ramy Abdul and Al Jazeera claim they were?

In before, squibs and crisis actors...

Those definitely weren't squibs ...

 

[Derec]

Since even LP says Israel lies, shy accept their estimates as valid?

I definitely trust their numbers far more than Hamas'.

 

[Derec]

https://rietjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/EN_RIET_2022_N7_Child-soldiers-in-Palestinian-groups-forced-recruitment-and-use-of-minors-as-a-violation-of-International-Humanitarian-Law_daniel-perez-garcia_art2.pdf

Well, first thanks for providing a paper. That said, it is a very poor one, even by social science standards.
While the abstract talks about forced recruitment, there is no mention of it in the body when dealing with Palestinian terror factions. There is no attempt to differentiate between voluntary and forced recruitment of minors, or for that matter, to provide any numbers or data.

As this article demonstrates, in the global phenomenon of child soldiers, Palestinian groups have deliberately recruited and used children as direct parties to the conflict, a practice as illegal as that of any other armed actor committing such crimes. Thus, Palestinian organisations have for decades systematically violated the rights of children by enlisting them into their ranks and involving them directly in the hostilities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Contravening international humanitarian law and guarantees of protection for the very young in this way is a clear war crime that must be prosecuted and punished in international courts.

The "forced" part has been unceremoniously dropped. So we cannot conclude that the recruitment of minors is chiefly, or even substantially, a forced recruitment rather than these minors joining terror groups off their own free will.

 

[aupmanyav]

"Gaza just launched an unprovoked attack on Israel"​

I would not say unprovoked, but they want to be annihilated (whatever be the cost to Gazans).

 

[Derec]

By the way, lpetrich, I just saw that the NY Times article was written by none other than Mara Gay.
She is this dim bulb who can't do math (neither can Brian Williams).

NYT is still employing this nitwit, this halfwit, this dimwit?

 

[lpetrich]

For all those people who get hopelessly distraught whenever anyone uses the word "socialism",

 Sewer socialism

Sewer socialism was an originally pejorative term for the American socialist movement that centered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from around 1892 to 1960.[1] The term was coined by Morris Hillquit at the 1932 Milwaukee convention of the Socialist Party of America as a commentary on the Milwaukee socialists and their perpetual boasting about the excellent public sewer system in the city.[2]

With the creation of the Socialist Party of America, this group formed the core of an element that favored reformism rather than revolution, de-emphasizing social theory and revolutionary rhetoric in favor of honest government and efforts to improve public health. The sewer socialists fought to clean up what they saw as "the dirty and polluted legacy of the Industrial Revolution",[3] cleaning up neighborhoods and factories with new sanitation systems, city-owned water and power systems and improved education. This approach is sometimes called "constructive socialism".[4]

Working within the system to make Infrastructure and good government and good education and public health -- one would have to be a hard-boiled right-winger to consider this center-left position "far left".

 

[ZiprHead]

By the way, lpetrich, I just saw that the NY Times article was written by none other than Mara Gay.
She is this dim bulb who can't do math (neither can Brian Williams).

NYT is still employing this nitwit, this halfwit, this dimwit?

I'm glad for you that you've never made a mistake and are perfect in every way.

 

[laughing dog]

https://rietjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/EN_RIET_2022_N7_Child-soldiers-in-Palestinian-groups-forced-recruitment-and-use-of-minors-as-a-violation-of-International-Humanitarian-Law_daniel-perez-garcia_art2.pdf

Well, first thanks for providing a paper. That said, it is a very poor one, even by social science standards.
While the abstract talks about forced recruitment, there is no mention of it in the body when dealing with Palestinian terror factions. There is no attempt to differentiate between voluntary and forced recruitment of minors, or for that matter, to provide any numbers or data.

. There is no quantitative data. But section 4 provides numerous examples of the Un and others denouncing the use of forced recruitment of children.

 

[TomC]

. There is no quantitative data. But section 4 provides numerous examples of the Un and others denouncing the use of forced recruitment of children.

Again, that's a huge problem with children.
They're easily manipulated.

The minors in Gaza have never been anywhere or learned anything else but Hamas indoctrination. I sincerely doubt that many of them are able to distinguish between reality and what they have been taught by Gazan leadership. I see no reason to think that forcible recruitment is much of a problem.
Tom

 

[ZiprHead]

. There is no quantitative data. But section 4 provides numerous examples of the Un and others denouncing the use of forced recruitment of children.

Again, that's a huge problem with children.
They're easily manipulated.

The minors in Gaza have never been anywhere or learned anything else but Hamas indoctrination. I sincerely doubt that many of them are able to distinguish between reality and what they have been taught by Gazan leadership. I see no reason to think that forcible recruitment is much of a problem.
Tom

Thank you for your thought. Here's two cents to cover your costs.

 

[TomC]

. There is no quantitative data. But section 4 provides numerous examples of the Un and others denouncing the use of forced recruitment of children.

Again, that's a huge problem with children.
They're easily manipulated.

The minors in Gaza have never been anywhere or learned anything else but Hamas indoctrination. I sincerely doubt that many of them are able to distinguish between reality and what they have been taught by Gazan leadership. I see no reason to think that forcible recruitment is much of a problem.
Tom

Thank you for your thought. Here's two cents to cover your costs.

So you're fine with child soldiers, as long as they're Gazans.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Tom

 

[Derec]

I'm glad for you that you've never made a mistake and are perfect in every way.

I certainly have never confused a 1 with 1,000,000. The worst part of this is that it isn't somebody just making an impromptu mistake. This was planned. That means not only did these two numbnuts miss it, so did the MSNBC producers. Nobody went "holup, this doesn't sound right".

 

[Derec]

There is no quantitative data.

Well certainly not in this "paper".

But section 4 provides numerous examples of the Un and others denouncing the use of forced recruitment of children.

Denouncing something says zero about how frequent something is.

 

[Derec]

Again, that's a huge problem with children.
They're easily manipulated.

As are teenagers. As are adults, esp. young adults. But I think there is a big difference between claiming 15-17 year old Hamas terrorists are "forced" vs. just living in a culture/families where terrorism is glorified.

The minors in Gaza have never been anywhere or learned anything else but Hamas indoctrination. I sincerely doubt that many of them are able to distinguish between reality and what they have been taught by Gazan leadership. I see no reason to think that forcible recruitment is much of a problem.

Exactly. I bet they get many volunteers.