An American mom, 67, spent her life advocating for Palestinian rights. Then, Hamas came for her.
They exchanged text messages and emojis. Brief status updates with words of encouragement. A picture of the beloved family dog "Tutsi."
Until no more messages came.
And then, Cindy Flash, an American, and her Israeli husband Igal vanished into the violence, presumed kidnapped by Hamas.
Four days after Hamas attacked Israel, more than 100 Israelis and potentially dozens of foreign nationals are thought to be held captive in the Gaza Strip. At least 14 U.S. citizens have been killed and an unknown number are still unaccounted for.
Flash, 67, originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, is one of them. She lives in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza, where some of the most harrowing and grisly stories have been emerging during the last few days.
"They are breaking down the safe room door," Flash said in one of her final messages to her daughter Keren, 34. "We need someone to come by the house right now." She had been communicating with her parents from a few houses away.
Keren described her mother, who worked as an administrator in a local college, as someone who had the "sweetest biggest heart," who everyone knew and loved, and who had spent a lifetime advocating for the rights of Palestinians, including those who live in Gaza where she may now be held.
Hamas ≢ Palestine
Ok, but how truish are "Hamas ≠ Palestine" and "Hamas ≈ Palestine"? At what point do we draw the line?
Questions: Who is fighting for Hamas? From where the "boots on the ground" come from? How can they organise amidst civilian population to take any coordinated actions?
Assuming that your questions are rhetorical and that you are placing blame on all Palestinian citizens for the actions of Hamas. By the same logic, all Americans are guilty for the Jan 6th attack on the capital and all the other horrific acts America have committed around the world.
No, my questions are not rethorical. Any such movement cannot live separated from the local population. They cannot organise in secret if nobody is keeping that secret. They cannot train if the others don't keep the secret. They cannot manufacture, hide and launch thousands of small range rockets if other don't keep a secret.
I'm not arguing about justifications or who did what and why. It's not relevant for this discussion.
Goes on to talk about how they were making a point rather than wanting an answer to their questions
Ok, good luck.
Palestinians knew who they were when they elected them.
Israel knew who Netanyahu was when they elected him.
Sure. And Netanyahu is a right-wing asshole. But he isn't a terrorist.
You see the difference?
I'm not here to argue semantics, Hamas are terrorists, Netanyahu is a terrorist.
If a terrorist is someone who attacks civilians for political aims, then yes.
That is pretty much textbook. Someone or some party that uses violence and the threat of violence to create fear in the pursuit of political goals.
Problem is that applies to most nation states that are active on the global scale. So the political use can be reduced to "terrorists are always the others"
It's pretty much always "terrorist are when those without power use the tools of fear against those with power." All "freedom fighters" are terrorists who won pretty much. All nations are terrorists who get to use their power and influence to convince others they aren't.
A terrorist is a member of a non-government military group that uses violence for political gains
Attacking civilians isn’t related
Yeah, if I was dead wrong about what words mean, I wouldn't want to argue semantics either.
What is your definition? It's got to be interesting if it isn't the one everyone else has decided is the correct one.
Then why do you keep replying when you are dead wrong? Can't even be consistent on keeping your word.
Hamas are terrorists, Netanyahu is a terrorist. If a terrorist is someone who attacks civilians for political aims.
I find it hard to discriminate Civilian A who was killed from Civilian B who was killed by the other side. Apparently that is a controversial statement around here. Ya'll are fucked.
Hamas are terrorists because the target civilians for death.
Netanyahu is a corrupt right-wing asshole, but he doesn't target innocent civilians for death.
If you broaden the word "terrorist" to apply to anyone you don't like for any reason, the word ceases to have any meaning or weight.
And that gives cover to ACTUAL terrorists.
Deliberately cutting off water, electricity and medical aid will result directly in children dying. Again I find it hard to see the difference between civilian A and civilian B being killed just on the basis of WHO killed them. But you do you.
Hunting down children with machine guns will directly result in children dying.
Not sure if you refer to Hamas, or the possible Israeli land invasion.
Hamas , since killing civilians was not collateral damage for their plan on oct 7 , it was sanctioned and approved by every level of the Hamas command structure as an objective of their attack.
Interesting you'd say this 19 days later, after:
How many times "collateral damage" is fine? All of it?
Again, you're pretending that INTENTION doesn't matter. That collateral damage is morally equivalent to a targeted killing.
I just 100 percent disagree.
What other result is there for INTENTIONALLY cutting off food, water and electricity. BTW I just asked my 12 yr old if I cut off the food water and electricity to a population would mean I be responsible for the deaths and her answer was "DUH!" This isn't hard man.
That's fine. Maybe if we ask Hamas to be nice and come out, they'll stop using all those people as a human shield.
Go lecture them. You're very persuasive.
They're intentionally killing civilians. It's equally targeted. It's not just collateral damage any more than nuking a civilian populace to kill one person is collateral damage. They also intentionally targeted and bombed the border crossing between Egypt and Gaza after telling civilians to flee there.
Just because one side can kill the other with technology and superior firepower doesn't make it morally different.
Netanyahu has every opportunity to tell his army not to target civilian dwellings.
But he isn't. Because he and his ilk have repeatedly stated their opinions that Palestinians don't matter. They aren't people.
Israel has been waiting on an excuse to genocide the Palestinians for at least a decade now. Hamas just gave it to them.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/no-such-thing-as-palestinian-people-top-israeli-minister-says
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-election-idUSKBN0MC1I820150316
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/18/10-quotes-that-explain-the-history-of-the-gaza-conflict/
It's wrong-headed to try to absolve either side of any blame here. Hamas are terrorists. So is the Israeli state.
Israel has a right to be paranoid and militant. They've had to fight for their right to exist as a nation for 70-80 years now. Constantly under attack. Constantly at war.
And the Palestinians have the right to be angry. Their land was stolen from them to make room for a Jewish State. They were displaced with no attempt to compromise. And they've been discriminated against and murdered systematically since.
So course extremist factions popped up on both sides.
Innocent people have been murdered by both. Hamas might have started this most recent fight, but Israel has had no qualms in using its superior firepower just as ruthlessly.
bro you can you read? hear words? Israel is currently bombing apartments, ambulances, etc. Specifically with the goal of killing every last citizen in gaza that doesn't flee.
So what is your response to the report that IDF missiles are hitting hospitals in Gaza and nearly killing MSF workers?
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/gaza-situation-catastrophic-hospitals-are-overwhelmed
Hamas's well-documented use of its own civilians as human shields, as well as its use of mosques, hospitals, schools and private homes as weapons storage facilities and firing platforms, violates international humanitarian law.
https://www.jns.org/hamas-again-using-human-shields-in-gaza/#:~:text=Hamas's%20well%2Ddocumented%20use%20of,Source%3A%20IDF%20International%20Cooperation%20Division.
More apologetics for Netanyahu killing civilians that you deem worth killing. You are fuckin sick in the head dude. Stop makin excuses for people committing war crimes no matter the side.
KILLING civilians happens in every war, no matter how just.
The issue is who is being TARGETED.
Hamas targets civilians. Israel targets Hamas.
Hamas hides among civilians, to use them as human shields.
So when Israel targets Hamas, of course civilians are going to die. That's on Hamas's hands as well.
If each faction had the ability to only kill exactly who they wanted, Israel would be killing only militants, and Hamas would still be killing children.
CUTTING OFF ALL WATER FOOD AND ELECTRICITY IS TARGETING CIVILIANS FOR DEATH. Sorry for the all caps but you seem to not be getting the idea otherwise. I don't care if civilian A or B is killed by either side, it is a war crime.
If they are truly so cut off from water that someone dies of thirst, you'll definitely have a good point. But if this is a short term tactic that gives them a tactical edge over Hamas, that's a different story.
It's been 5 days. How long can you live without water?
Obviously not.
Hamas was never elected as sole leadership in Palestine. They never won a plurality of votes, ever.
They formed a unity government, then fought the other government, usurped control, and cancelled elections forever.
Hamas won 74 out of 132 seats. They did it with 44 percent of the vote. Not sure how that worked.
Anyway, you're kind of right, kind of wrong.
Same way Republicans do it in Ohio, one assumes. Heavy concentration in minority-population areas.
And the Palestinian authority is really a puppet government that Israel allows Palestine to have, so it's not like any available option is really good
No lol. One of Israel's dumbest moves ever was empowering Hamas as they saw it as an alternative to the Palestinian Authority
This should be said more often and more forcefully, as its knowledge people (including myself) are not generally aware of.
20 years ago. Around half of today's population didn't vote and of the ones that did many didn't vote for hamas. Find a new way to blame innocent people, this one doesn't work.
Half of the population is below 19 years old. So they weren't even born when Hamas was elected.
The average age of Palestinians is 19. The average age of Israelis is 30. That tells you one thing, that you don't live a long life if your Palestinian.
Living in what human rights groups and the UN describe as an open air prison under bombarded from a neighboring country isn't exactly the best thing for life expectancy.
Roughly 2.3 million people live on the Gaza Strip out of the roughly 5 million people living in Palestine BTW, which is the area currently being bombarded by Israel in response to the terrorist attack by Hamas.
I wouldn't put a lot of stock in how the United Nations describes anything to do with Israel. Their bias is of the charts.
Remember, this is an organization that officially denounced Israel for human rights violations 20 times in one year, and for every other nation on Earth, with all the modern slavery, sex trafficking, genial mutilation, honor killings, murder of LGBTQ, marriage and rape of 7-yr-girls, denying basic education to women, forcing women to fully cover their bodies, mass incarcerations, etc,etc... For all the rest of the world, 6 denouncements.
So yeah, the UN is not a serious organization when it comes to Israel.
Maybe Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch is better.
Amnesty international wasn't the one that faked reports on Russian concentration camps in kherson?
Someone passed Whataboutism 101! Congrats 🎉
I think he's at least at 301.
It's not about whataboutism but about the credibility of the source. A year ago, everybody was taking a shit on amnesty because of its tankie-bias
Gotta link? I don’t know about this.
First please note that i ended my comment with a quotation mark, cause I may very well have fell in plain disinformation propaganda.
There was quite a scandal that aroused from an amnesty report during the last year i presume this is it. The Ukrainian government apparently heavily criticized it and accused them of projecting the guilt on the victims. The head of amnesty in Ukraine's office quit not long after because of it article from Reuters. The Times published its own opinion on that report (sorry for the paywall).
A few days later a few newsoutlets suggested that amnesty based its opinion on Russian filtration camps on interviews to people inside those camps, alleging that those persons could very well be answering at gun point. Everything apparently roots to this article from NV, an ukrainian newsoutlet. I have mixed feelings with this article because they use a facebook post from what they call a 'government channel' as source and i coudlnt find the original post and the channel says loud and clear NGO.
On April of this year, The New York Times published that leaked documents from Amnesty titling it "Unreleased Report Finds Faults in Amnesty International’s Criticism of Ukraine". Another paywall, this link from the guardian abords it.
Here another review on the scandal, but its the first time i see this source.
Thanks. I saw The NY Times article, but couldn’t find much else. After reading about it, that’s gotta be a difficult job to do.
Any organization that calls Israel "apartheid" is comically biased.
Israel is the only country in the region where a lesbian Muslim woman can vote, get an education and hold elected office.
Claiming it's apartheid is like claiming the US was apartheid when occupying Iraq because we didn't allow Iraqis to be citizens of the US.
Words have meanings, and the accusation is demonstrably absurd.
I can't help but notice your only issues here is with how terms are used in regards to Israel and Palestine but not with the bombardment of Gaza in response to a terrorist attack from Hamas. A place where nearly half of Palestine's population lives.
Do you not have an issue with Israel's response or something?
I have no idea who Israel is targeting, but if history is any guide, it is Hamas terrorists.
And Hamas terrorists make it a POLICY to hide among civilians.
For now, I'm giving Israel the benefit of the doubt because they have very much earned it.
Then you were living through an alternate timeline. Israel has killed more than 10.000 Palestinian civillians since 2008 before this weekend. Now they have declared the Palestinians animals when announcing the blockade starving them to death now.
Also they told the Palestinians to flee into Egypt and then bombed the road close to the border crossing.
And Egypt has closed their border to Palestinians just todaySo the situation gets worse and worse
Edit: I was mistaken, their just taking steps to make it harder currently.
I don't dispute your numbers. But Israel has been in a non-stop battle against terrorists who use their own people as human shields. So I put the civilian death toll squarely where it belongs: at the feet of the terrorists.
I've seen ZERO evidence that Israel has ever as a matter of policy targeted innocent civilians. In the contrary, I've seen Israel go out of it's way to send text messages to civilians to give them time to evacuate. I've seen they drop lead weights on rooftops as a warning to the people inside you get out before actual missiles come.
I've never heard of any other nation doing that. Never. They are knowingly letting terrorists escape because it spares civilian lives.
There is no scholarly consensus over the definition of the term "terrorism." This in part derives from the fact that the term is politically and emotionally charged, "a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one's enemies and opponents..
For your consideration
Just last year the IDF murdered a journalist. The illegal settlers are getting armed and protected when they assault people and Israel allowed the storming of the Al Aqsa mosque this year.
The human shield argument is also just absurd in its inhumane cynicism. "Oh look we are bombing a densely populated area. So all the people dying there were used as human shields by the terrorists who are also from that area, because we have blocked it all off. Look at what the terrorists made us do!" With this logic you can justify the annihilation of any civilian population, claiming there were military targets nearby.
Israel has every possibility to avoid the death of civillians by going in on the ground directly instead of bombing things to rubble. But that is a tactical disadvantage so they full well knowingly bomb civillians.
They also targeted numerous UN hospitals and medics, killing at least 11 so far in the current campaign. They do secondary bombings onto areas targeted before, so rescue operations are hindered.
These are all actions that speak of total disregard to civillian life and taking away their responsibility from it is absurd. In that reasoning any nation has the right to commit countless atrocities because at some point another nation did it before to them.
Even if Hamas didn't have a policy to hide amongst civilians, do civilians really have a choice but to be close to possible Hamas members? There's 45 square kilometers of Gaza with 2.3 million people. That's 50,000 people per square kilometer that's 51 people per meter approximately. So where the hell can you be in that tight space without being close to 50 or more other people.
That's an excellent criticism ... of Hamas.
If they can't operate without endangering their own civilians by pure proximity, then... don't?
Take the word of some random guy on internet, or an international NGO? Tough call 📞
Or, just use your brain.
Already did.
You go first.
50% of the persons living in palestina are under 18
Edit: had a stroke
Yeah. I wish their parents loved them more than they hate Israel.
Are you a troll or something?
No he's just right.
Yet Israel government=all Israelis is fine to you
The article clearly states "advocate for Palestinians, then Hamas came for her" like it's some "voting for the face eating leopards" situation. It's a valid distinction. Also, no, the Israeli army isn't all Israelis.
It's hard to see the difference between Palestinians and Hamas when they had a pro Palestine rally in my city and their signs were peppered with "death to all Jews" and pictures of Jewish caricatures being hanged.
You must be pretty stupid if you struggle to see the difference between hamas and normal palestinians
Do you think piss is apple juice, because theyre both a liquid and they could be the same color sometimes if you squint?
Please calm down if you can. Don’t let the miseducated get you emotional. They are victims of disinformation and propaganda, and it takes time to work through it. 👍
Just because Hamas support Palestine doesn’t mean that supporting Palestine makes you support Hamas. That’s like saying that because I like art and Hitler liked art that means I support Hitler (which I very much fucking don’t). It doesn’t make any sense logically.
https://twitter.com/RomanGoddess72/status/1712114433428799680
Funny because I can't see the difference between these people and the fascist Israeli government
Ok so don't. These people are just like the IDF and the people shouting death to Jews are just like Hamas, what's the problem here? Seems we're in agreement
One group has the power to complete annihilate the other.
The other is living in the largest open air prison & concentration camp in the world.
This is a ghetto uprising. Something I would expect you to know the history of.
no it's not, where the fuck did I wrote that?
where did he say that?
sick of you fuckers not letting people feel complexly about this. fuck off