Israel slams UN chief for saying Hamas attack ‘did not happen in a vacuum,’ calls for his resignation

Five@slrpnk.net to World News@lemmy.world – 554 points –
Israel slams UN chief for saying Hamas attack ‘did not happen in a vacuum,’ calls for his resignation
politico.eu
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They didn't call the UN chief an anti-Semite. I guess that's progress right?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_Guterres

What a terrible human being, looking at his life filled with works trying to improve people. He should be ashamed, trying to look at the cause instead of the effect of global situations.

But in all seriousness, the chilling effect is real, because he's the UN secretary general they're holding back a little bit, but they're demonstrating for everybody you better not say anything we don't agree with. And that has a real impact on political speech globally.

What is more worrying is that there is a witch hunt and if you support the regular Palestinian human rights you are kind of automatically condemned as anti-Semitic and supporter of terrorists.

And I fully agree with Antonio and I am really happy that he is one of the very few people who openly stands against Israel's policies of constant suppression of Palestine.

I don't know what the plan of Israel is for the Palestinians, and what they are exactly hoping to achieve apart from making those people hate them even more and actually involuntarily boosting Hamas popularity in the region and radicalizing even more people there.

According to Hamas’ own charter, “the cause” is that a Jew somewhere in the world has a pulse.

So I think it’s reasonable for us to say, no, we’re not going to address their stated grievances.

Hamas is not the underprivileged good guy here. It's the plight of the Palestinian people, that gives power to Hamas, that is the thing that needs to be addressed.

So saying looking at the situation that enables Hamas to get political power is a reasonable thing for a politician to say. That's literally the game they play every day. Trying to remove the power from an antagonistic belligerent is a good thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Charter

For what it's worth Hamas is a political organization, and they respond to political realities, in 2017 they attempted to amend their charter to give them the ability to negotiate.

The 2017 charter accepted for the first time the idea of a Palestinian state within the borders that existed before 1967 and rejects recognition of Israel which it terms as the "Zionist enemy".[2]

Again, not apologizing for them, not condoning them.. but there are political organization that exists in political reality is, and examining the realities that enable them to draw power from a population, is a reasonable thing to do, and in fact the job of a global politician - like the UN Secretary general.

That’s exactly the kind of thinking that the Israeli government had a month ago, that by negotiating with them, they could find mutual self interest. 10/7 has disabused them of that delusion.

When someone says their goal is genocide, you should probably take them at their word.

I take issue with the implication that moving the Palestinians into reservations, and embargoing them from all trade, economic development, and movement is 'finding mutual self interest', but sure, fine, lets go with it, I preserve the issue for appeal, but not worth arguing here.

So Israel has been punished for treating The Gaza strip with dignity and mutual self interest... What should the new strategy be?

If the goal is to minimize ongoing future violence, what do you do now?

So Israel has been punished for treating The Gaza strip with dignity and mutual self interest… What should the new strategy be?

I have no idea. I don't see a path from where we are to peace. But I am realistic about the fact that Hamas isn't just some club of would-be liberal democrats just yearning for freedom. That's just not realistic. They don't want a two-state solution. They don't want a "Jews still being alive" solution. And increasingly, it doesn't seem like most Israelis want a two state solution either.

I don't have a solution for you.

I don't think anybody here is saying Hamas is a good guy. I haven't seen a single comment in this thread defending Hamas.

A lot of people however, are rationally, and correctly, pointing out that organizations like Hamas are a symptom of an oppressed people. Like an apartheid state, or slave state, we can look at history for examples of people striking out over and over again. It's not a justification, it is however an observation based on history. Slave rebellions are bloody affairs, and the innocent are killed, but the solution to slave rebellions is not harder slavery.

The two-state solution is no longer viable. It is impossible to break apart Palestine from Israel. Especially looking at how fractured the West Bank is, all of the Israeli exclaves, and all of the Palestinian reservations or intermixed - one might say even deliberately to prevent a two-state solution from being viable.

I can't speak for the next 10 to 20 years, but the long-term viable solution in 30 years is going to be a single country encompassing both current Israel and current Palestine, in a secular, non-ethnocentric, non-religious democratic organization. Where people are equal regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or language.

And it's going to be a very bloody time to get to that stage, but it's the only stable steady state.

A lot of people however, are rationally, and correctly, pointing out that organizations like Hamas are a symptom of an oppressed people. Like an apartheid state, or slave state, we can look at history for examples of people striking out over and over again.

You can see it that way, but you also have to take Hamas's stated goal into consideration. Their stated goal is not to liberate their people, it's to be the new oppressor, and a far worse one than that.

Let's put it another way. There are around two million Arab Israelis. They're in the Israeli parliament, they serve in its courts, in the military, etc. Would they be liberated if Hamas achieved its goal? They would probably be viewed as collaborators and executed.

This myth that Hamas are just freedom fighters, like Nelson Mandela or Gandhi, really needs to be dispelled. It has no basis in reality.

There's this weird urge in the minds of people to try to find a hero story. There's no hero story. And if groups like Hamas weren't wreaking havoc in the area for the past 50+ years, realistically, a Palestinian state would probably exist.

I can’t speak for the next 10 to 20 years, but the long-term viable solution in 30 years is going to be a single country encompassing both current Israel and current Palestine, in a secular, non-ethnocentric, non-religious democratic organization. Where people are equal regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or language.

Except no one in the region wants that. Certainly not Hamas.

you keep falling into this Pro Israeli or Pro Hamas dichotomy, those arnt the only options. We can be anti-apartheid and anti-hamas at the same time, but recognize the systemic nature of the violence that arises because of the oppression.

The Israeli Arabs are a good example of what a integrated Palestine Israel might look like to start with, just expand that to the entire population. Of course there are some outstanding issues to hammer out even with our model Israeli Arab integration wikipedia which ultimately means the government needs to change from being a ethnostate government to a national citizenship based government secular of religion. But I'm not going to let perfection get in the way of good enough, if we could integrate everyone today even with the racism issues, thats a huge win.

you keep falling into this Pro Israeli or Pro Hamas dichotomy, those arnt the only options. We can be anti-apartheid and anti-hamas at the same time, but recognize the systemic nature of the violence that arises because of the oppression.

But see, you're falling into the exact dichotomy you said you wanted to avoid. It's far too simplistic to just frame it as "oppressor" and "oppressed." By labeling one group as the oppressed and another group as the oppressor, you're taking a side.

It's easy to fall into that narrative, because Israel has most of the power. Life in Israel is far better than life in Gaza. In response to 10/7, Israel pushed Gaza into a humanitarian crisis by cutting off power, medicine, food, and even drinking water into Gaza (though Biden managed to get them to turn the water back on).

So it's easy to look at them and say, "oh, one group is oppressed and the other is an oppressor." But it's also naive. Hamas's stated goal is genocide. It's not really an "oppressor and oppressed" situation when the allegedly oppressed are explicitly genocidal.

The Israeli Arabs are a good example of what a integrated Palestine Israel might look like to start with, just expand that to the entire population. Of course there are some outstanding issues to hammer out even with our model Israeli Arab integration wikipedia which ultimately means the government needs to change from being a ethnostate government to a national citizenship based government secular of religion. But I’m not going to let perfection get in the way of good enough, if we could integrate everyone today even with the racism issues, thats a huge win.

But then you're essentially playing the role of a colonial power, telling the locals how it's going to be. That's what George W. Bush tried to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. It didn't work.

If you did a poll people of any ethnic and religious group between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and you asked them, "would you like to live in a secular state with both Israelis and Palestinian Arabs sharing the same land," do you think you'd get a majority? I bet you'd get fewer than 20%.

Probably more Israelis would be open and willing to agree to that than Palestinian Arabs, but I doubt you'd see a majority from either camp. And a "one secular state" solution isn't something any world leader is really talking about. It wasn't part of the Oslo or Camp David accords, isn't what anyone is proposing, etc.

You keep bringing up Hamas, I'm not defending Hamas.

Israel is engaged in systemic Apartheid against ethnic arabs in their territory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/19/israeli-apartheid-threshold-crossed https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114702

The Apartheid is the root cause of the violence, which doesn't excuse the violence, but its clearly the main catalyst.

Israel is acting as the Colonial power in this scenario.

Two State solutions are off the table given the Israel settlements integrated all throughout the westbank as of today. That only leaves one state solutions. Either Israel kills every single Arab in the country, or they have to learn to live with them in peace which means ending Apartheid.

I'm bringing up Hamas because they're the belligerent. The same reason I'm bringing up Israel. Who should we be talking about? Fatah? The PLO? They aren't in power.

The apartheid narrative is also a false one. Apartheid was under a racial test. It was a system of South Africa's white minority's choosing. That isn't the case in Palestine. There are millions of Arab Israelis. There were no "Black Whites" in South Africa's apartheid.

From 1948 to 1967, Palestine existed for 19 years as a presumed state. To get UN membership, all they had to do was form a government. Not a single Israeli soldier stepped foot into Palestine during those years. Then, the Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Republic (which included the Gaza Strip), Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait all attacked Israel unprovoked. Since then, Israel is at various levels occupied territories used to launch that war.

At various times, it's eased its occupation, most notably after Oslo and the 2000 Camp David conference. Palestine has held, at various points, elections with Israeli help. Ehud Barak worked earnestly on a Palestinian State. So did the international community.

Then in 2006, Gazans elected Hamas in a relatively democratic election. No election has been held since. Israel has not occupied Gaza since either, though it has controlled its radio waves, airspace, and ports with good reason.

Life in Gaza is intolerable and inhumane. The West Bank is also bad, though obviously not as dire (Israel does directly occupy the West Bank). It's a complex and sad story, with plenty of Palestinian suffering, but apartheid it is not.

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The whataboutism on this issue is off the charts. If your best defense of Israel's government is to compare it to a terrorist group, don't be surprised when people think of it as a terrorist group.

I didn't mention the Israeli government, except to point out that they were delusional. This isn't whataboutism.

This is a statement free of whataboutism: Hamas is a terrorist organization intent on killing as many Jews as possible, worldwide, without stopping.

That's it. No need to expand on that. That's a statement free of whataboutism.

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I'm sure you're probably not wrong in spirit, being a terrorist organization charter and all... but a good way to convince people you're taking out of your ass is to quote a source and have the text of the quote not be in the source.

The context is not that the Hamas charter is reasonable, it's that the sentiment that birthed the charter may have historical foundation. Just like Israeli animosity towards muslims as a whole has historical foundation.

That’s a little like saying you have to understand that Hitler’s rise was in the wake of World War 1’s devastating reparations. Or Stalin’s purges were after Nicholas II and his various misdeeds.

Everyone knows Hamas seized power about a half century after the British two-state division. And about a quarter century after the 1967 war. It also matters not one iota.

It is factually accurate to say that the economic and political aftermath of WW1 was a defining factor in Hitler's rise to power.

Saying that does not in any way endorse the despicable beliefs they espoused.

Of course it's accurate. All world events, all of them, happen in some kind of context. Everyone knows that. No one believes that there was some kind of parallel universe where Israel and Hamas were just plopped down onto a map with no history and no context. Everyone knows the context.

The problem, however, is when people say stupid shit like, "Well, we can't condemn Hamas without first discussing--..."

That's when you can stop them. You can say, actually, yes, you can condemn Hamas without caveat or whataboutism. It's a really simple thing to do. We do it all the time.

That’s when you can stop them. You can say, actually, yes, you can condemn Hamas without caveat or whataboutism.

No, no you can't. Not at an intellectually honest level of trying to resolve an issue.

How a person reacts to you is based not on just that moment in time, but everything that leads up to that moment.

You can't ignore history if you want to fix the present for a better future. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

That’s when you can stop them. You can say, actually, yes, you can condemn Hamas without caveat or whataboutism.

No, no you can’t.

I just did.

I'll do it again. I categorically condemn Hamas. There.

Everyone knows Hamas seized power about a half century after the British two-state division.

Perhaps you're not in the US, but no. This is absolutely not true. You're wildly overestimating the number of people who have a contextual understanding of this situation.

I'm an American living in Europe. In both countries, I'd say people are aware there is a context. Maybe they don't fully know what the context is, but they know there is a context.

But again, you don't need context to condemn Hamas. You might need it to understand Hamas, but you don't need it to condemn Hamas.

Again, wildly overestimating the intelligence of the average American. Especially when it comes to history of things that aren't in America. Or just history in general.

In my experience abroad, Americans have a decent handle on it, at least compared to Europeans. I've met more than one Irish person who, for example, did not know that the Six Day War ever happened.

LOL I would bet on the average European over the average US citizen any time on that question.

I don't disagree in the main, but I'd stipulate that Americans who have traveled extensively tend to be more informed than those who haven't. So it's a little more believable in the context of OP being an expatriate, and presumably associating with others of their ilk. Also, this isn't a quality unique to Americans.

Travel more.

Thanks boo. You know so much about my life and know precisely what I have and have not done. Does acting like this make you feel better? It should make you feel shame, but you may not be capable of that.

You're the one who, for ego or fake Internet points or whatever, just throws around trite stereotypes without any experience or data. Just lazy shit like, "hurp, derp, Americans dumb." It doesn't make you a bad person, it just means you're lazy and ignorant. That's fine though. You can be lazy and ignorant.

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Are you addressing the entirety of the US population with this comment?

Yes, Americans should travel more. You have no idea where the person you replied to has been.

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But again, you don’t need context to condemn Hamas.

You can condemn the actions, but if you want to fix the problem, then you better learn the context in which the actions take place. Otherwise it's just going to be centuries more of throwing bombs at each other.

You can condemn the actions, but if you want to fix the problem, then you better learn the context in which the actions take place.

According to Hamas, their grievance is that Jews are alive. I'm not going to address that grievance.

Otherwise it’s just going to be centuries more of throwing bombs at each other.

That seems likely, but just denying the objectives of Hamas isn't going to bring peace either. For the last 20 years, the international community has been trying to follow the Oslo and Camp David peace accords, but there's been only one even remotely interested partner.

Pretty sure the average American would struggle to find Israel on a map, let alone know that there is context to the current situation.

As an American, it's sad of me to say this, but trying to get an American to be able to tell you the location of just all 50 states in the US would be problematic.

Our education system situation has truly been downgraded for quite a while.

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Those things are completely accurate and it's odd that you would bring them up as examples. In which way is it not appropriate to understand the historical context in which an event took place?

Exactly.

Imagine thinking it's wise to ignore the factors that led to the rise of fascism and believe there's nothing useful to learn from them.

It's good to understand the historical context. All for it.

What historical context doesn't do, however, is forgive the unforgivable.

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Then why did Netanyahu fund them then? The PLO was open to a two state solution.

Hamas gets almost all of its direct funding from Iran and Russia.

Israel, along with the United Nations, United States, EU, etc funds humanitarian projects in Gaza. Some of that aid is surely diverted to Hamas and Hamas controls Gaza, but the moral case for allowing some aid to be diverted to Hamas in exchange for avoiding a humanitarian catastrophe is strong.

I assume they were talking about this

Toward the end of Netanyahu’s fifth government in 2021, approximately 2,000-3,000 work permits were issued to Gazans. This number climbed to 5,000 and, during the Bennett-Lapid government, rose sharply to 10,000.

That's what counts as empowering Hamas? Letting Palestinians earn a living?

I mean I guess you can spin it that way, but it's a spurious claim to make.

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

Along with the rest of the article this describes the point in general terms. You can research more if you want to

I mean, maybe there was some kind of conspiracy to pit Hamas against Fatah.

To me, it seems more likely that they were trying to treat Hamas as what people here act like it is: some kind of governing party in Gaza to be negotiated with. That was obviously an error.

Conflating Israeli war crimes with Hamas. Nice Hasbara talking point.

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How DARE the UN Secretary General express the blindingly obvious truth?! The nerve! 🤦

This clearly shows the power of Israel regarding having a public opinion that goes against their book… no one dare speak ill of Israel government narrative

The UN Chief resigning as a result would be a show of power. Calling for it and not getting is a show of weakness.

Israel doesn't give a shit. They have most of the west oligarchy fellating them, "donating" billions of dollars in "aid" and weapons, and approving of their entire history of human rights abuses and genocide of Palestine.

I read that they put the names, pictures, and personal info of the Harvard students that spoke out on ad trucks and drove them around the Harvard campus.

The lengths to which they're going to suppress dissent are getting pretty scary. I would not be at all surprised if threats have been made through back channels.

https://canarymission.org/students

Its psychotic. And then they have the balls to mix actual anti-semites in next to people who just don't think we should fund a government that kills thousands of civilians with impunity

I looked at their twitter and their latest tweet was a quote tweet boosting an account widely known as an anti-lgbt hate group. They're absolutely disgusting.

Ironically that was done by a company called "Accuracy In Media." If you go to their site aim.org you can see the truck for yourself. It had giant LED screens on both sides playing a sideshow of doxxing students.

I really believe that this effect is waning, at least with younger people.

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That awkward moment when the genocidal occupying force can't handle literal facts.

Looks like stating simple facts it not acceptable any more ...

Oh, no, it's not that, at all. It's just a good media manipulation tactic. The Israeli ambassador pitches a fit and calls for his resignation, then the news cycle turns to the spat over whether Guterres should resign, and we forget about the truths he spoke. Truths which are unflattering and inconvenient for Israel. Mission accomplished.

When the Jewish peace groups sat in for a ceasefire in Washington, spokespeople for the ADL in effect denied their status as Jews and said antizionism is the same as antisemitism.

You can't enforce ethnic land claims without perpetual suppression of undesirables, and the completely predictable effects that will cause.

TBF, zionists resent even orthodox american Jews for having rejected the initial call on ideological grounds.

You can see it in modern discourse where American Jews that support Palestine are dismissed out of hand by Israelis and zionists as "just being stupid Americans"

Yeah there's always been this stuff but it just seems to have made it's way in to the official statements a lot more this time around, like there isn't that awareness of how most people perceive it that's been keeping things less weird in the past. I could see past responses to this being something like "Jews have differing opinions on the subject of Zionism but we all agree that protecting Jewish lives and securing a safe homeland for Jews is important." Now what used to be the extreme response is the mainstreamed one.

It's odd how often anti-zionism is equated with anti-Semitism. Zionism is the opposite of tolerance, and anti-Semitism is intolerance.

People seem to forget the Nazis were Zionists. They sent some of the Jewish population to Palestine. They also had plans of creating a Jewish state in Madagascar.

German had lost the ability to do either late in the war, when they took there hate to it final destination. People are right to be worried about what a state does to an oppressed class of people. Especially when said state wants those people gone and there is nowhere for them to go.

They also had plans of creating a Jewish state in Madagascar.

German had lost the ability to do either late in the war, when they took there hate to it final destination. People are right to be worried about what a state does to an oppressed class of people. Especially when said state wants those people gone and there is nowhere for them to go.

This bullshit. Hi bullshit, been a while - you still stink like you always did.

Looks like that comment is an accurate representation of the wikipedia page you shared so I fail to see where the bullshit is alleged to be.

Zionism is about an independent Jewish state, not a German police-state/penal colony. To say Nazi Germany was Zionist shows a lack of understanding of either the Nazis, Zionism or both.

It looks like the comment I'm responding to is imprecise and only directly quoting the accuracies rather than the inaccuracies. Basically the Nazis and Zionist Congress overlapped on the territories explored to be a "home" for the Jews, with obviously different intentions. So the inaccuracy here would be the conflation of the two on ideological grounds, but not necessarily on the logistical matters.

Where the conflation may not apply, is from the turn of the century to the rise of the Third Reich, did anti-Semites support the idea of Jews relocating elsewhere by their own volition, since (in their minds) it would have been a mutually beneficial arrangement? Debatably none of the major powers were friendly towards Jews (Bolsheviks at least disavowed antisemitism in an official capacity) at the time, hence a motivating factor for why the WZO was created.

It's only accurate if you ignore the reporting by Poland.

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Was that the conference that happened on September 10th, 2001?

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Yeah well Israel was offended by the UN sending out an untargeted reminder that the Geneva conventions exist.

Let them seethe and cope.

Proud of Guterres' courage. We share a country and an alma mater and that also makes me proud.

SLAMMED fuck journalism today.

It triggers me every single time I read it. When did journalists forget how to write like adults? Who as we all know, would use criticize instead of slam.

I think a lot of them do it on purpose because they know it will drive up engagement with people posting about the shitty titles.

100% chance this was an editor decision. Their mission is not only to edit what the journalist wrote, but to also sell it, make it engaging, bring in eyes for ads or subscription. I've never met a journalist who had the title of their article intact as written. That is almost always rewritten entirely by an editor or a team of editors.

There are no journalists. Just propagandists and AI.

“Earth exists within a vacuum, therefore UN chief is wrong.”

Well, in a vacuum or not, it still sucked.

Hamas terrorist attacks sucked. Bombing whole city blocks in retaliation sucks. Indeed.

Personally I'm astonished how many seems to find it easy picking a side. The more I learn the less I feel sure about anything except that the whole situation sucks.

Picking a side sucks. Not picking a side sucks. I'm glad I don't have political influence for this one.

As a tangent I feel it's a bit symptomatic of our social media landscape having trust issues when we can't allow ourselves to delegate having an opinion about one of the most infected and complex conflicts that is way out of most people's control.

I don't blame social media for this one. I dk where you grew up but being from the US... our government lies to us all the fucking time.

(sorry for what I'm about to do)

'Member Iraq has WMDs? 'member Abu Ghraib? 'member Gitmo? 'member "waterboarding isn't torture"? 'member we had no warning about 9/11? 'member the "kill team" who took human body parts? 'member Iran-Contra? 'member "I am not a crook"?

And those are just the popular ones.

Bit of a theme there. What was the incumbent party at the time?

I don't want to turn it into a sides thing, Obama bombed a few hospitals of his own and Biden is fumbling pretty fucking hard right now.

More examples that come to mind:

Tuskegee Syphilis study and the Regan administrations response to AIDS

More than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since the war began, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, the New York Times reported.

I would take this number always with a grain of salt. Keep in mind that this ministry is run by the Hamas and that it immediately made Israel responsible for the shelling of the Hospital parking lot and put up a very high number of casualties for that said parking lot.

Otherweise Israel’s ambassador is acting quite childish in my oppinion and it surely does not help Israel at all to behave in such a way at the U.N. I also have no answer on how to deal with those terrorists of the Hamas, but casually accepting civilian casualites without much precision is definitely not the right thing to do...

And of course nothing that is happening there in the middle east is happening in a vacuum. Neither Israel or the people of Palestine lived in peace in the last decades.

Even if you halve that number, it still more than 2,500 people so far.

It’s appropriate to call Hamas terrorists and monsters.

It’s also appropriate to call the Israeli response extremely excessive- and appropriate to point out that the powers that are created this mess specifically to gain/keep power in Israel.

Both things can be true.

It’s also worth pointing out, that if you figure for every civilian killed, they’re making another Hamas soldier? Or whatever it is that comes after Hamas?

EDIT: NPR hourly newsupdate quoted seven thousand now. Granted that's probably from the Ministry of Health and suspect... (it was a 30 second blurb while I was driving home.)

It's probably officially more than died in the last gaza invasion, and it's only going to get worse.

It’s also appropriate to call the Israeli response extremely excessive- and appropriate to point out that the powers that are created this mess specifically to gain/keep power in Israel. Both things can be true.

I absolute agree!

It's also reasonable to assume that given any number you choose to accept of Palestinian casualties. Statistically speaking, its highly probable that at least half of them have been under 16 years of age, children.

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People keep bringing up the parking lot incident as if admitting that there isn't definitive proof it wasn't Israel is the same thing as proof that is was Hamas, and errors in reporting mean nothing reported is credible. Building your propaganda model on split hairs is back-firing badly for you. Humanistic Judaism can not be constrained by the straight-jacket of colonial Zionism.

The Undisputed Facts in Gaza Are Enough by Eric Levitz

The case for a ceasefire in Gaza does not rest on Israel’s culpability for any single air strike. The undisputed facts are more than enough to indicate that Israel’s campaign against Hamas has featured a callous disregard for civilian suffering. We don’t need to rely on Hamas to know that Israel has cut off food, fuel, electricity, and water to much of Gaza’s population. Israel’s own government has told us that. Similarly, data from the Gaza Health Ministry is not our only indication that there have been massive civilian casualties in Gaza. The U.N. tells us that Gaza is running out of body bags, while photos published by the IDF portray the large-scale decimation of civilian infrastructure.

Indeed.

And even beyond respecting human rights and international law, I would also like to add the following.

Israel and Biden are showing a total lack of consideration for the hostages or for foreign nationals stuck in Gaza.

In fact, they are giving priority to opportunistic and illegal land grabs in the West Bank above all else.

The West should put way more pressure on Israel to stop the war crimes they are committing right now, and to put more effort in securing the release and safety of our own citizens.

Fact is, that hospital disaster wouldn't have happened if Hamas hadn't slaughtered 1500 people in their homes.

Israel's response is not a force of nature.

No, I agree. I just mean that Hamas wanted to sow chaos and destruction by doing what they did, and well, that's what they got. It's still unclear who fired that rocket, whether it was a misfire or whatever, but if Hamas hadn't attacked, there would be no israeli ground offensive, half of Gaza wouldn't have been ordered to evactuate, and a lot of innocents would still be alive today.

..And Hamas wouldn't have wanted to sow chaos and destruction if Israel had been negotiating in good faith since 1967. But they haven't. So here we are.

Hamas is an entity of Israel's creation, and was funded by Israel to remove support from other, less militant Palestinian organizations.

Zionists argue all the way back to several hundreds years B.C. Not that you can always draw an exactly straight line here, but the point should be that no reaction is inevitable, but that we have organized governments here making these decisions every day.

Well, shit, then argue back before that. What of the Babylonians and the Assyrians that the Israelites genocided? What of their ancestors? Shouldn't they have their land returned to them?

If you go far enough back we're probably all entitled to the land. Let's just do away with these "borders" and make the whole world into a theme park instead.

I'm in favor of annihilation of humans as a species and returning the land to the rightful owners: the plants and (non-human) animals. Surely they can't fuck it up as much as we have.

Mushrooms and molds always being left out…

Which is sad because I’m told they’re pretty fungi

Every time there's been a viable two-state solution presented, Hamas or whoever was the palestinian authroity at the time rejected the proposal because they want all of Israel. That isn't happening. Israel has agreed to a two state solution multiple times! The representatives of palestine never have. If they had, this situation would've stabilized decades ago.

Israel has agreed to a two state solution multiple times!

Certainly not in 1995, or in 2014. They've also went back on their own ceasefires with Hamas in 2008 and 2012.

Fact is, Hamas slaughering 1400 people wouldn't have happened if Israel hadn't oppress the Palestine people for more than 50 years. That is what UN chief is saying, because they've been calling out Israel bs for a long time. Israel have the power themselves to stop the cycle of hate, but they didn't, instead they intensified it.

Are you making a justification for a hospital bombing?

How in the fuck did you get that from my comment?

Confirming your complete lack of irony.

What's ironic here? Sorry, I really do have a problem recognizing irony.

While the hospital disaster wouldn't have happened if not for the attack, the attack also wouldn't have happened if not for the blockades, terrorization of Palestinians, demolition of houses, and non stop settler violence everywhere even in the West Bank.

And the blockades wouldn't have happened if the Palestinian people didn't put Hamas in power after, in attempts at peace and a two state solution, Israel demilitarized Gaza. And the wall wouldn't have happened without the suicide bus bombings. I mean we can carry this back. At a minimum we can't stop until WWI. And that's really just a minimum. The crusades would be another point to carry it back to but that seems real far.

Also true. But an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. There needs to be peace. And there can be no peace with Hamas, whose mission it is to completely destroy Israel.

Why do they have that mission? Is it possibly die to decades of Isreal trying to completely destroy Palestine?

Yes, but after they take two men and a kidney, you gotta at least take an eye.

If you think that there's no peace with Hamas, but there's peace with Isn'trael, then you may be delusional. Just ask the West bank.

More than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since the war began, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, the New York Times reported.

I would take this number always with a grain of salt.

Understandable, it's a claim made by a partisan faction after all. That said, according to this random X/Twitter account the IDF itself claimed two days ago to have made "over 10,000 targeted strikes" on Gaza since the beginning of the current conflict, so the casualty number given by Hamas works out to about 0.57 fatalities per strike, which doesn't seem like that outlandish a claim to me given how densely populated Gaza is.

1 more...

Fuck Israel. I am out of words, how worse can this get?

In the other thread you call for the destruction of Israel and for Jews to live under Hamas rule. This is going to get a lot worse while Hamas and people like you refuse a 2 state solution.

I used to be like you. Went to the rallies. Even met with the leaders, until they showed me they were racist and hated Jews. Didn't want Israel to exist. Then I realized that both sides were just going to be at each other's throats till the end of time. Because neither would back down or allow the other to back down.

In a game of Total destruction there will be no winners. The only way to win is not to play. Yet Hamas has plenty of support from some people to erase Israel. Hamas and Israel are going to fight. And more people die in conflicts in Africa every day. But it's more important to hate Jews then discuss what can be done to protect civilians in conflicts with higher casualty rates in Africa...

In the other thread you call for the destruction of Israel and for Jews to live under Hamas rule.

Dude, where do you pull this shit from? Your ass? Quote me.

You literally said Hamas should be given all of Israeli and Israeli citizens should give up their citizenship and live under a "democratic" Palestine. We both know Hamas will stop at nothing less than exterminating all Jews. That's their official stance that Hamas themselves advocate for.

"Jewish people can stay and live under Palestine"

Translation, remove the borders and let Hamas expand their operations

I'd be open to this type of thinking if the leaders of the rallies I went to didn't say they want all Jews dead and their homeland restored to them after the rally was over behind closed doors when they weren't in front of the media. All that one state solution is propaganda BS without a chance of happening.

Yea sure let's trust the hostage takers and child murders not to take any more hostages or murder more Jewish childen.

There are no innocents here and it's all propaganda.

“Jewish people can stay and live under Palestine”

Translation, remove the borders and let Hamas expand their operations

Your translation is really pathetic. I think you must be a troll.

Ok if you're not being disingenuous then how will you get Hamas to lay down their arms when they, Iran, and Hezbollah have all said they will not until all the Jews are dead?

How do you propose to end the conflict and unite the governments?

How should both sides unarm?

How can desegregation be implemented like it was after the troubles?

We both know you post so often you're the one in the PR brigade and have no interest in reunification, which I'm old enough to remember seeing in several countries. It's not Israel that's holding up a two or one state solution. It's those obsessed with killing all Israeli Jews.

A best one side is in a religiously modified war and the other fighting to survive. At worst both sides are in a religiously motivated war that will never end.

Hamas attack did not happen in a vacuum, just like Israel acting like this to what the UN chief said did not happen in a vacuum. Israel has been hating on the UN calling out their apartheid for decades now, and it is Israel itself who is principally responsible for removing any meaning from the term antisemitism itself. It is going to find itself very, very alone in the coming decades.

‘did not happen in a vacuum,’ calls for his resignation

Here's the "vacuum" he was talking about.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

"vacuum"

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

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I mean what sort of madness is it to suggest that if you call apartheid apartheid it's not about the apartheid it must be antisemitism instead /s

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations is calling for the resignation of UN Secretary-General António Guterres after he said the Hamas attack on October 7 in which 1,400 people were killed “did not happen in a vacuum.”

After the statement, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan called Guterres’ speech “shocking” on X, formerly Twitter, saying “the Secretary-General is completely disconnected from the reality in our region.”

“There is no justification or point in talking to those who show compassion for the most terrible atrocities committed against the citizens of Israel and the Jewish people,” he added on the social media platform.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki also spoke to those assembled Tuesday, both appealing for mitigating harm to civilians in Gaza.

More than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since the war began, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, the New York Times reported.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began this October, Israel has enforced a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity and water to a population largely reliant on humanitarian aid.


The original article contains 413 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 54%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

bad bot, forget word slam. I guess it happended in a vacuum then..