Hamas strike on Israel - mod warning in OP updated 19/10/23

Snooker Loopy

This was covered on Channel 4 News tonight. Israeli tanks drove through and desecrated the Al-Fallujah graveyard, crushing headstones everywhere and disinterring bodies. The place looked like an abandoned building site at the end of it.

"The most moral army in the world" how are ya.

https://twitter.com/BobbyMcDonagh1/status/1735019507070967998

riffmongous

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492150#Comment_121492150

Jaysus

I see he's also made some lovely comments about women, homosexuals and Palestinians

Snooker Loopy

Israel classes this as good rape.

https://twitter.com/_waleedshahid/status/1731791606703865991

NEW: Josh Paul, State Department official, who resigned over weapons to Israel, says a charity told US govt that a 13-year old Palestinian boy was raped in an Israeli prison.

State Dept led an inquiry and brought the matter to Israel's attention. Israeli officials closed the charity’s office the next day and declared it "a terrorist entity."

TokTik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492017#Comment_121492017

How would one know where they are from when Israel has banned DNA ancestry tracing/testing?

Could it be that their claims may not be as iron clad as they want the world to think?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492238#Comment_121492238

"What Israel is doing is comparable to what the Nazis did to the Jewish ghettoes in Europe."

Really.....?

Number of Jews living in Poland in 1939: 3.3 million. Number that were alive in 1945: 380,000.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492663#Comment_121492663

Masha Gessen who lost relatives in the Holocaust has compared it. I've linked to her writing on this page. The hatred, the dehumanisation, the actual treatment of those penned into the ghettoes are very comparable.

As if to prove Gessen's point about the chilling climate of suppression of freedom of speech in Germany now as regards talking about Israel's crimes, she has had her Hannah Arendt prize for political thought revoked just today because of her essay in the New Yorker.

https://twitter.com/Return2Sanders/status/1734982374297866480

Snooker Loopy

In terms of who was worse between Israel and apartheid South Africa, as far back as 1989 Spitting Image was already strongly hinting it was Israel.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/e76wclj4Ri8

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492780#Comment_121492780

From that New Yorker article:

"The Nazis claimed that ghettos were necessary to protect non-Jews from diseases spread by Jews. Israel has claimed that the isolation of Gaza, like the wall in the West Bank, is required to protect Israelis from terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinians. The Nazi claim had no basis in reality, while the Israeli claim stems from actual and repeated acts of violence. These are essential differences." 

I bolded the last bit myself. I think one is on rather shaky ground making a direct comparison tbh.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492860#Comment_121492860

You are free to disagree on the comparison. The point is that one is seemingly not free to make such a good faith comparison without punishment.

Gessen being stripped of her prize has proved her point. Israel and the "criticism of Israel automatically equals anti-Semitism industrial complex" have created a chilling climate of fear and censorship. This is by design.

Israel demands views hostile to it be silenced. That is a totalitarian mindset.

Everything the international right-wing (of which Israel is a key member) mendaciously accuses others of is a confession of what it itself is.

tayto lover

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492663#Comment_121492663

They are trying hard. Give them time. The numbers aren't there but they're doing their best.

amandstu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492860#Comment_121492860

Did the Germans have any reason to see the Jews as a threat?

Was it not rather an entirely gratuitous scapegoating of a minority to advance their own poisonous ends?

Did Orwell or similar ever get a chance to treat the treatment of Jews and other minorities in the hellhole that was Germany before the second world war?

What ,I wonder is the best description of that period by a good writer?

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492993#Comment_121492993

The Nazis saw the Jews as a "threat" for the same reason the far right in this country see immigrants and non-white people as a threat - ie. no good reason at all. Because they were irredeemably racist and fascist and because fascists require an out group to mendaciously paint as a criminal threat through lying propaganda in order to focus all energy of "the glorious nation" towards this fake threat.

Did the Palestinians have good reason to see the Jews migrating to Palestine before and after World War II as a threat? Bloody sure they had, and history quickly proved it - because those migrating Jews who would become Israelis murdered them, threw them off their land, made them prisoners and refugees, scattered them to the four winds, and treated them like animals, as sub humans. And this has never let up since 1946.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121492974#Comment_121492974

No, they aren't even trying, and they actually have the means. So please stop with the genocide nonsense, it's embarrassing.

Strazdas

Did the Israeli ambassador go off message with her categorical dismissal of the two state solution? Some people think she may have lost her temper and blurted out something she wasn't supposed to say to a western audience (even though it is her actual opinion and that of the Israeli government).

Big Ears

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493052#Comment_121493052

The difference is Germany wanted to kill all Jews, where as Israel mainly wants Palestinians to leave.

Of course they'll happily kill a very significant quantity of Palestinians to achieve this, but openly trying to eradicate all Palestinians would be too bad for International relations and may see other countries (even the US) try to intervene.

So they'll continue their current approach, kill a large amount, deprive them of basic human needs, impose hunger and terror upon them and the majority will then be begging to leave the first chance they get.

igCorcaigh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121489051#Comment_121489051

I guess that is what I am on about.

The Israeli strategy seems to be based on an absolutist, zero sum game: we have enemies on our border that are a threat to us, and our security policy has failed spectacularly, so we need to destroy the threat until it is no more.

Respecting humanitarian law and such lofty ideals, are therefore a hindrance to the objectives of security of the nation, and the whole world can just do one.

So that's basically the calculus within which Israeli top heads argue.

I'm just trying to understand the logic, and that to me is a compelling one to understand (in pure logical terms).

That seems like how they operate.

sock.rocker*

Israeli leaders: War to go on until Hamas defeated, ‘with or without’ world’s approval

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-leaders-war-to-go-on-until-hamas-defeated-with-or-without-worlds-approval/

So it's just gonna go on and on. What is it like 2/3s of accommodation is already in ruins. Gaza will just be a scar on the landscape by the lime Israeli bloodlust is satisfied.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121489632#Comment_121489632

I'm not aware of any posters here supporting genocide. I'm not even aware of any posters who are supporting the Israeli Government and the IDF's actions in Gaza

I should know better than engaging with people who spend as long as they do on this thread and post the above, but given you asked me to correct you if you are wrong, let me do so.

It doesn't surprise me to see you refer to Boyd Barret as an antisemite, such an accusation unfortunately carries little weight any longer given how it has been abused by apologists for Israels butchery. It is part of the two pronged approach in an attempt to shut down any criticism of Israel, the other prong being the accusation of holocaust denial...

And you can attempt to dismiss my content as being binary when the reality is that I am one of the few posters to go to the effort of proposing actions for all parties to take steps towards peace and I have condemned the attacks of Hamas consistently, and repeatedly over the last weeks. I don't disappear from the thread when asked to recognize people held illegally on both sides as hostages, in the way some people do.

Here, in this instance, you are complaining because I am commenting on the literal words of a Minister of the Israeli Government and pointing out that despite such clear cut evidence, it is still claimed that they are not carrying out a genocide, or have no intent to do so.

When it comes to being compared to people who have been members of Dail Eireann, I'd be much happier being seen as a Boyd Barret, than an Alan Shatter. Calling for the safety of millions of people should not be so offensive to people in the way it appears to be.

Tell me how

Israeli official calling for the abolishment of Palestine.

Link

The Israeli ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely has rejected the idea of a two-state solution, saying there is “absolutely no” chance after the horrific events on October 7.

Can we accept that the official Israeli position is that Palestine can no longer exist?

Ulixes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121491397#Comment_121491397

"James Craig said it. He was the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland."

It seems that your views on the history of Ireland are as well informed as your views on the history of Israel.

James Craig never said that.

Just like Wellington never said anything about being born in a stable and Jack Lynch never said anything about standing idly bye. Oh, and Humphrey Bogart did said ‘Play it again Sam!’ in Casablanca.

In the context of then Free State politicians remarking that the Free State was a Catholic country for Catholics, Craig is recorded as saying that southerners had boasted and ‘. . . still boast of Southern Ireland being a Catholic State. All I boast of is that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State.’ 

PokeHerKing

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121446601#Comment_121446601

You're in favour of protecting borders now are ya??

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493292#Comment_121493292

That's the thing. It's pretty much uninhabitable. All infrastructure is gone. Housing is destroyed. It will be a tent city of 2.5 million people by the time Israel is finished. At which point I'm assuming the Israeli's will prevent building materials and other stuff from going through. They might allow some food and then claim that they're the good guys.

There's the assumption that they want to make it so unlivable that people will just leave.

Ulixes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493298#Comment_121493298

"It doesn't surprise me to see you refer to Boyd Barret as an antisemite, such an accusation unfortunately carries little weight any longer given how it has been abused by apologists for Israels butchery. It is part of the two pronged approach in an attempt to shut down any criticism of Israel, the other prong being the accusation of holocaust denial..."

So now I'm part of a conspiracy to shut down criticism of Israel and engage in holocaust denial. I don't remember becoming a member of such a conspiracy. When did I join this group and does it have a name? ... or maybe you're just a conspiracy theorist and I think Boyd Barrett is an anti-Semite based on his disgusting words.

"And you can attempt to dismiss my content as being binary when the reality is that I am one of the few posters to go to the effort of proposing actions for all parties to take steps towards peace and I have condemned the attacks of Hamas consistently, and repeatedly over the last weeks." You've condemned the Hamas attacks without acknowledging their genocidal intent or that there can be no peace while they are in charge. You've failed to acknowledge that the civilian deaths are a direct result of both Israeli and Hamas engaging in heated street fighting. You've failed to acknowledge that Hamas and their attack in October enjoy support from a significant proportion of the people of Gaza, probably a majority. You keep saying that all Israeli's are culpable for the actions of the Government of Israel but don't accept that the same applies to the government and people of Gaza. How do you square that?

" I don't disappear from the thread when asked to recognize people held illegally on both sides as hostages, in the way some people do." Do you really think it's the same thing?

"Here, in this instance, you are complaining because I am commenting on the literal words of a Minister of the Israeli Government and pointing out that despite such clear cut evidence, it is still claimed that they are not carrying out a genocide, or have no intent to do so."

I've said that the evidence doesn't support the accusation. I've never denied that there are nutters in the Israeli Government that would happily commit genocide. I've also compared the Jewish Settlers in the West Bank to Hamas.

"When it comes to being compared to people who have been members of Dail Eireann, I'd be much happier being seen as a Boyd Barret, than an Alan Shatter. Calling for the safety of millions of people should not be so offensive to people in the way it appears to be."

You'd be happy to be compared with a man who wants to impose a totalitarian Marxist State and therefore massively restrict the civil rights and freedoms of every person in this country in order to ape totalitarian regimes that viciously murdered tens of millions of people in the last century rather than a man who has consistently championed the poor and marginalised and, over the course of a long political career, shown himself to be a brilliant legislator... because he's Jewish and is now supporting Israel. I think that says more about you than it says about Alan Shatter.

Ulixes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493317#Comment_121493317

Does the Israeli ambassador to the UK now set Israeli policy?

Ulixes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493409#Comment_121493409

It'll be difficult to let building materials through as long as Hamas are still in charge since their first priority will always be to attack Israel and so will divert resources to that end.

brickster69

Indiscriminate bombing of Gaza confirmed. I wonder what they used for all the mosques, hospitals and refugee camps ?

https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1735215871382184342

brickster69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493052#Comment_121493052

Genocidal nonsense you say, are you sure about that ?

https://twitter.com/GUnderground_TV/status/1734851195418603804

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493493#Comment_121493493

Yes I'm absolutely sure that what happens now in Gaza is not a genocide and it's nonsense to claim that it is or to compare it with actual genocides.

nacho libre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493444#Comment_121493444

So her views don't represent the position of the current Israeli Government or is it that in a fit of temper the mask slipped. The evidence given the actions of Bibi over the years would clearly suggest its the former

I think she may receive a dressing down in private for that interview.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493392#Comment_121493392

"A Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State" is even worse.

Annd9

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121477252#Comment_121477252

Jmreire , you keep making the point that no countries are willing to take in Palestinians in large numbers because of the perceived threat that they may cause to said counties.

If you check the historical records , the same language was used against another group of people who went through sickening repression and genocide .These people were expelled from a far greater amount of countries throughout history for the perceived threat they caused.

Looking forward to your argument that these countries were absolutely correct in their assessments of said people .

nacho libre

There was a US Intelligence reports about the number of unguided munitions used in Gaza. When asked about this the IDF said we don't comment on such matters. What's going on might not meet the definition of genocide but what it does show is a reckless disregard for civilians. Yet we have posters claiming the IDF are doing their best to spare civilians, that if they really wanted to they could kill far more.

Snooker Loopy

LBC's James O'Brien's view just now: "The continuing carnage suggests this will not end until people have either fled or barely anyone is left alive."

O'Brien is very far from a left-wing radical.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493699#Comment_121493699

Just because 'unguided' munitions are used does not necessarily make it indiscriminate. There's no real anti aircraft defences, IDF aircraft can get in close to targets to hit them. They don't need to launch from outside AA range which would need guided munitions.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493672#Comment_121493672

Spot on. The destruction of universal humanity and how Israel and its supporter have adopted the same dehumanisation techniques against Palestinians which the Nazis used against the Jews is sick.

Wolf359f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493444#Comment_121493444

Ambassadors rarely stray from the government position, when they do they are replaced. She's still in her position.

Let's not forget the ruling parties founding charter contains a variation of from the river to the sea (that's a call for genocide right?). It's obvious to many that this current Israeli government want Gaza and the west bank to be free from Palestinians. It's not all talk, they are in the process of that in Gaza and the West Bank. In order to remove the 2 state solution... You need to remove one of those 2 states from the map.

Snooker Loopy

Maybe they'll burn the remaining books.

https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1735073834322079918

nacho libre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493715#Comment_121493715

I doubt you would make the same excuse for other nations using so many dumb bombs in built up areas. It would seem Biden and the US Administration would also disagree, that the IDF have been reckless given their recent statements about the high number of civilian casualties. Which could have been informed by this intelligence briefing.

Also its telling the IDF refused to comment on the matter.

Sir_Name

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493444#Comment_121493444

Seriously? Ambassadors are the envoys (and proxies) of one Head of State to another.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493787#Comment_121493787

Unguided munitions doesn't just mean 'bombs' does it? Are you saying the highly trained IDF is incapable of hitting a designated target at close range using unguided munitions when unopposed by AA defences?

It is telling in your response, you don't engage with the point made but first off you have whataboutery, and then shifting of the goalposts.

Ulixes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493726#Comment_121493726

That's a policy of ethnic cleansing, not genocide.

Ulixes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493808#Comment_121493808

No, they are representatives of the State in their host State. If their home State is an absolute monarchy, like many in the Middle East, then your argument kind of holds but if they represent a democracy then it doesn't and Israel is still a democracy for the moment at least, though if the religious crazies get their way then it will be a very hollow one.

Ulixes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493664#Comment_121493664

You have no grasp of context or subtext. You're consistent though, I'll give you that.

Snooker Loopy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493787#Comment_121493787

Israel's supporters consistently hold it to a lower standard than other democratic nations.

They also hold Israel to a lower standard than Hamas.

In fact as far as I can see there are literally no standards at all which Israel's supporters hold it to.

Certainly Israel's supporters have not seen fit to hold it to any standards at all over anything it has done since 1946 and I don't foresee how that would ever change in the future no matter what grotesque crimes Israel inflicts on others.

Snooker Loopy

According to what the supporters of Israel say about what's happening in Gaza, Srebrenica couldn't have been genocide.

But it was.

https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/bosnia/srebrenica/

Wolf359f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493833#Comment_121493833

Discussion wasn't about ethnic cleansing or genocide, it was about Israel's policy towards a 2 state solution. The ambassador said the 2 state solution is dead, you said she doesn't make Israeli government policy, I pointed to the ruling party's founding charter and map showing no Palestine, held up by the leader of Israel.

So do you actually believe Israel is planning on a 2 state solution or was the ambassador echoing the government?

Ulixes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493893#Comment_121493893

I questioned whether the Israeli ambassador's statement to the UK set Israeli government policy.

If people are putting forth her utterances as irrefutable evidence of Israeli Government policy then it is beholding on those people to show that she sets Israeli Government policy.

That's all.

I think it is without doubt that a considerable number of those within the Israeli government do not want a two State solution. I think that the words and deeds of their Prime Minister shows that he doesn't want one. That's still not the same as it being Israeli Government Policy.

Ulixes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493878#Comment_121493878

I'm certainly not a supporter of this Israeli Government. I'm not a supporter of the Government of Gaza either. There is a mechanism to change the government of Israel through political means and a likelihood that such a change will happen. There's no realistic possibility of that happening in Gaza.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493444#Comment_121493444

Are you suggesting the Israeli Ambassador to the UK is speaking contrary to Israeli policy?

If that was the case, I'm sure you'll be able to show a link to the Israeli government calling her in to line or her retracting her statement.

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121493842#Comment_121493842

Journalist's opinions are just as valid as mine, award wining or not. It is not a genocide.