Israel-Gaza Conflict
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vevster
Well-Known Member
If anyone is interested. I’ve heard it is fabulous soap from before the conflict.
palestiniansoap.coop
About us
Set up to distribute internationally for the Nablus soap industry, we're a Palestinian company seeking to make Palestinian soap inexpensive and widely accessible worldwide, and to do so in a way that spreads benefits among producers, retailers, and users, and that embodies commitments to...
palestiniansoap.coop
Black Ambrosia
Well-Known Member
This video is private.
LadyRaider
Well-Known Member
I thought Zionism was just the idea of a Jewish homeland. Which Israel is. What's wrong with that?
Black Ambrosia
Well-Known Member
I feel like I need a primer when it comes to some of this stuff. FRFR.
vevster
Well-Known Member
It is an entire philosophy and the early creators were not necessarily gung ho for Judaism. They seized an opportunity. Even before this conflict, in September, I met some folks that happened to be Jewish and did not like the Zionists and their behavior since the '40s.
LadyRaider
Well-Known Member
The creation of Israel was a big ol' mess. Should have carved out a piece of Germany. Or, if the Brits and the US were so keen on it, giving them part of Scotland or Utah. That's what a lot of Jewish people react to, I think.
But the truth is that the people who created Israel didn't want Jews around them either.
It was a big ol' mess. But it's been 80 years. It's a done deal. Now we need to get the Palestinians their own state and some nice big brothers (like the USA) to defend it.
vevster
Well-Known Member
USA has not been a nice big brother to the Palestinians thus far...
LadyRaider
Well-Known Member
Definitely not. But hopefully, if this conflict spurs the 2-state solution,we're the ONLY country in the world with the wherewithal to support a new Palestine. If Egypt and Saudi were going to do it, they would have done it already.
The problem has always been that NO ONE cares about the Palestinians. It's all talk.
LadyRaider
Well-Known Member
Wow. Footage from the security cameras at the hospital showing some of the hostages being ushered through the hospital to the tunnels. Wow.
vevster
Well-Known Member
The Israel lobbies are extremely powerful and they have bough practically everyone in congress. That is a factor that drives policy.
LadyRaider
Well-Known Member
Yes. And I think there's a lot of 'white guilt" for the Holocaust, and plus we made the mess in the first place by creating Israel out of land we didn't own. "The brown people don't matter, let's put these icky Jews there." A whole bunch of racism radiating out in every direction in that deal.
Pottery Barn Rule, as Powell said. "We broke it, we own it."
vevster
Well-Known Member
For those who think Biden has his faculties and is running the country:
nysister
Well-Known Member
It really should have been Germany. They helped create this mess and should have been the ones to fix it.
LadyRaider
Well-Known Member
December 7, 2023 |
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Khan Yunis on Monday. Yousef Masoud for The New York Times |
Entire families
When Abdullah Abu Nada, a chemist who was at work in Gaza City, heard that the building where his family was staying had been hit by an airstrike, he texted his wife, Samah. She didn’t reply, and Abu Nada then called his 15-year-old son, Ahmed. When his son didn’t answer, Abu Nada called his 16-year-old daughter, Nawal. She didn’t answer, either. All three of them — as well as the two other Abu Nada children: Anas, 12, and Mohammed, 8 — had been killed in the airstrike.A different airstrike killed 68 members of the extended Joudeh family. Khaled Joudeh, 9, and his brother Tamer, 7, lost their mother, father, older brother and baby sister.
Mohammad Abu Hasira, a Palestinian journalist, was killed in a separate attack, as were 42 members of his family. Justin Amash, a former Republican congressman, said that several of his family members were killed while sheltering in a church in Gaza. And Ahmed al-Naouq, a graduate student living in London, lost his father, five of his siblings, and 13 nieces and nephews.
The civilian death toll from Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has been a major news story for weeks. In today’s newsletter, I want to put the toll’s scale into context and explain the reasons for it.
The scale
The Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, says it has confirmed that more than 15,000 people in Gaza have died during the war. Another 6,000 or so are missing, officials say.Although the ministry seems to have spread false information during this war (notably about a hospital bombing in October), many international observers believe that the overall death toll is accurate. U.S. officials largely accept it, as do some top Israeli officials.
There is more debate about the breakdown between civilian and combatant deaths.
A senior Israeli military official told my colleague Isabel Kershner this week that about a third of the dead were likely Hamas-allied fighters, rather than civilians. Gazan officials have suggested that the combatant toll is lower, and the civilian toll higher, based on their breakdown of deaths among men, women and children.
Either way, the pace of civilian deaths — at least 10,000 in two months — is extremely high for a war. My colleague Lauren Leatherby has written that Gazan civilians are dying at a faster rate than civilians did during the most intense U.S. attacks in Afghanistan or Iraq. In Ukraine, the number of civilian deaths appears to be much higher — in the tens of thousands — than in Gaza, but Ukraine’s toll has occurred over almost two years in a country with a population more than 20 times larger than Gaza’s.
(This multimedia project examines life in Gaza today.)
Three entities are most responsible for the high civilian toll, and different people obviously put different amounts of blame on each.
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Gaza City in October. Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times |
Israel’s role
The first entity is Israel. After the Oct. 7 attacks — in which Hamas fighters killed more than 1,200 people, while committing sexual assault and torture, sometimes on video — Israeli leaders promised to eliminate Hamas. Israel is seeking to kill Hamas fighters, destroy their weapons stockpiles and collapse their network of tunnels. To do so, Israel has dropped 2,000-pound bombs on Gaza’s densely populated neighborhoods.These Israeli bombs have turned much of Gaza to rubble. Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon official, has told The Times that he thinks the closest comparisons to so many large bombs falling in such a small area are the Vietnam War or World War II.
U.N. officials and many human rights advocates have criticized Israel for not pursuing tactics that would have killed fewer people. Some U.S. officials are frustrated, too, as my colleague Helene Cooper has reported. Before invading the Iraqi city of Mosul to defeat the Islamic State in 2016, for instance, the U.S. military spent months developing a plan, partly to minimize casualties. Israel, by contrast, started bombing Gaza almost immediately after Oct. 7.
Nonetheless, military experts say that there is probably no way for Israel to topple Hamas without a substantial civilian toll. The question is whether the toll could be lower than it has been.
Hamas’s role
The second responsible party is Hamas. It hides weapons in schools, mosques and hospitals, and its fighters disguise themselves as civilians, all of which are violations of international law.This approach both helps Hamas to survive against a more powerful enemy — the Israeli military — and contributes to Hamas’s efforts to delegitimize Israel. The group has vowed to repeat the Oct. 7 attacks and ultimately destroy Israel. Hamas’s strategy involves forcing Israel to choose between allowing Hamas to exist and killing Palestinian civilians.
Hamas is simply not prioritizing Palestinian lives.
Egypt’s role
The third responsible party, and the one that has received the least attention, is Egypt. Egypt’s leaders have maintained a militarized border with Gaza, refusing to admit refugees. “We are prepared to sacrifice millions of lives to ensure that no one encroaches upon our territory,” Egypt’s prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, said recently.Egypt has justified the decision by saying that it does not want to reward Israel’s aggression by encouraging Gazans to flee. And Palestinians themselves have historical reasons to fear that fleeing their land will lead Israel to annex it.
Still, Egypt’s refusal to accept many refugees is inconsistent with the behavior of many other countries during wars. Germany, Poland and other European countries have accepted millions of Ukrainians even though doing so arguably rewards Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Turkey has admitted millions of Syrian refugees in recent years. Chad has accepted many Sudanese refugees.
In these other cases, countries took steps to save lives. In Gaza, the civilian toll continues to mount.
vevster
Well-Known Member
Did I post this? The kids get it.
Crackers Phinn
Either A Blessing Or A Lesson.
Black and Jewish on Instagram: "Now they are beating up Black woman. THIS HAS GONE TOO FAR !!! Pro-Palestinian protesters forcibly broke their way into the Detroit 13th Congressional District Democratic Annual Christmas Party, crossing a line by br
12K likes, 1,448 comments - blackandjewishunity on December 21, 2023: "Now they are beating up Black woman. THIS HAS GONE TOO FAR !!! Pro-Palestinian protesters forcibly broke their way into the Detroit 13t...".
www.instagram.com
Crackers Phinn
Either A Blessing Or A Lesson.
0:36 seconds is the first punch, the video showing exactly who is in front of her is on Twitter but I can't embed.
Crackers Phinn
Either A Blessing Or A Lesson.
She should go to Gaza and stand with her people. As a Western non-Muslim woman in the ME, she will do more laying down for the cause than standing but whatevs. I'll pay for her flight.
vevster
Well-Known Member
You are always on the wrong propagandized side of things. Sad for you.
Crackers Phinn
Either A Blessing Or A Lesson.
The sheer audacity of someone who pushes EVERY conspiracy theory on the internet using the word propagandized is tedious and offputting.
Have some pizzagate and sitdown somewhere.