Israel-Gaza war

[Dr. MB]

I doubt Hamas will survive after this. Hamas only has 30000 soldiers, and Israel has 160000 soldiers. Hamas will also not have very much international support because it is bad optics for a world leader to support a terrorist organization. This could potentially be an opportunity for Fatah to regain power in the West Bank.

Fatah is in power in the West Bank.

[Dr. MB]

Israel is clearly the more sympathetic side in this conflict. Supporting the rights of the Palestinian people shouldn't mean supporting genocidal terrorists.

Well, Israel is already on track to exceed the civilian death toll from the initial Hamas attack. So I don’t see how they have moral high ground on that front.

[Dr. MB]

The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin tonight.

Odd déjà vu... it used to be Blue-Yellow colour scheme back in February of 2022.

Democratic Germany didn't have these embarrassing hangups and, unlike the crypto-Nazi West, knew when to stand against colonialism and apartheid.

It is incredibly funny to call East Germany, a one-party dictatorship with sham elections and an all-seeing totalitarian domestic spying apparatus in the Stasi, and which literally had to build a wall to keep its own subjects from fleeing to greener pastures, "democratic".

Yeah ok but what about the name

[Dr. MB]

The Maoists are fighting

[Dr. MB]

The other comment I've heard from more than one person is that while its true that the Palestinian cause has been doomed by Hamas' terror attacks, it doesn't matter because the cause was doomed anyway; that all Hamas has accomplished was to accelerate the inevitable.

Quite. To quote a line that wasn't said by the man who turned down the offer to become Israel's President: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

The Palestinians have spent 75 years engaging in violence against Israel and gone backwards.

They might have learned something from Mahatma Gandhi and his liberation movement in British India if they bothered to early on.  Oh well.  They chose the path of violence, and this is where they ended up -staring down the barrel of genocide.

They tried that a few years ago and got massacred. Unreal levels of depravity on this forum.

Indeed, this kind of moralyzing posts claiming that Palestinians have a taste for violence and bear a collective guilt for the terrorist actions committed by some groups is appalling. The IDF massacred the March for Return, a peaceful demonstration by the border fence in Gaza

 Israeli forces responded by shooting tear gas canisters, some of them dropped from drones, rubber bullets and live ammunition, mostly by snipers. As a result, 214 Palestinians, including 46 children, were killed, and over 36,100, including nearly 8,800 children have been injured.  

Peaceful resistance does not guarantee a peaceful response by a repressive state. The March for Return was basically telling Israeli authorities "Let My People Go". The soldiers opened deadly fire

Trim your link please

[Dr. MB]

From NYTimes:

By 9:30 a.m., there had been no reports of fighting for more than two hours, and 60 trucks carrying aid and 29 Gazans had entered Gaza from Egypt, a spokesman for the border crossing, Wael Abu Omar, said by phone. Israel said that eight of those trucks contained fuel and cooking gas — a small but significant amount for a territory that has all but run out of fuel.

Both developments were signs that the cease-fire was firming up. Under the terms of the cease-fire, a large increase in aid is expected to enter Gaza from Egypt and Israel.

Cease-fires in the region often require some time to take hold. Air raid sirens sounded in southern Israel roughly 15 minutes after the truce was scheduled to take effect at 7 a.m., suggesting incoming rocket fire from Gaza. But two hours later, all fighting seemed to have subsided.

My advice is not to pay attention to “Israel War Room”

[Dr. MB]

Down to the leviathans of Micronesia and Nauru.

Even Argentina's crazy new gov voted yea, wow.

Did Israel buy off Nauru? Because Russia paid them to recognize Abkhazia.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/israel-in-solomon-islands

Yeah basically. Kind of a funny situation. I assumed Micronesia was bc they rely so heavily on U.S. aid but I guess they get a lot from Israel also.

[Dr. MB]

Highly disturbing developments coming out of Israel.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/13/it-is-a-time-of-witch-hunts-in-israel-teacher-held-in-solitary-confinement-for-posting-concern-about-gaza-deaths

An unlikely charge of intent to commit treason landed Meir Baruchin, a grey-haired, softly spoken history and civics teacher, in the solitary confinement wing of Jerusalem’s notorious “Russian Compound” prison in early November.

The evidence compiled by police who handcuffed him, then drove to his apartment and ransacked it as he watched, was a series of Facebook posts he’d made, mourning the civilians killed in Gaza, criticising the Israeli military, and warning against wars of revenge.

“Horrific images are pouring in from Gaza. Entire families were wiped out. I don’t usually upload pictures like this, but look what we do in revenge,” said a message on 8 October, below a picture of the family of Abu Daqqa, killed in one of the first airstrikes on Gaza. “Anyone who thinks this is justified because of what happened yesterday, should unfriend themselves. I ask everyone else to do everything possible to stop this madness. Stop it now. Not later, Now!!!”

Ten days after that Facebook message, he was fired from his teaching job in Petach Tikvah municipality. Less than a month later he was in a high-security jail, detained to give police more time to investigate critical views he had never tried to hide.

He was interrogated again before a second judge ordered his release. Questioners told him his posts were like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, among the most famously antisemitic documents in the world. “I’m a history teacher, so I asked, ‘Did you ever read them?’ They didn’t respond.”

When his name is clear, Baruchin plans to sue Israeli media who reported police charges without asking for his response or looking for evidence, and accused him of justifying and legitimising Hamas.

Only Democracy in the Middle East^TM

That talking point deserves to be shredded, yes. Israel is a fairly typical Middle Eastern country whether or not the people there or elsewhere would hate to acknowledge it.

Imagine actually believing this

The people *currently* in charge of Israel see democracy as an inconvenience at best.

Look at who Bibi's mates are - Putin, Orban, Trump. By their friends ye shall know them.

And yet an Israel that has been led by Bibi for so long is still a million times more free, more democratic, and more equal than any of its neighbors.

Not for about 3 million people living under its control in the West Bank.

[Dr. MB]

Once again, it is purely thanks to Hamas's violation of the Geneva convention, committing a horrendous war crime by intentionally putting civilians in harm's way, that there are so many civilian deaths.  It is not Israel's fault.  Israel would ideally like to have zero civilian casualties if that was possible.  But it's not possible, entirely thanks to Hamas.

Israel must choose between the two goals of (A) destroying Hamas, and (B) avoiding any civilian casualties.  Up until 10/7, they were going with option B.  Hamas and the world have made it clear that Israel will receive nothing but punishment in return for that decision.  So they've now switched to option A.

If you blame Israel and have no smoke for Hamas, that says an awful lot about you.  Either you're so ignorant that you simply don't understand the basics of the conflict as I've described them above, you're so anti-Semitic that you think Israeli war crimes count but Hamas's are actually fine and dandy and justified, or you're so easily taken in by social media propaganda that you think Israel is intentionally murdering civilians and committing various other horrible crimes that they're not actually committing.

It's never made sense of me why apparently the only answer to war crimes is more war crimes. I don't think the abstract goal of "destroying Hamas" is worth Israel blowing up most of Gaza.

[Dr. MB]

Benjamin Netanyahu snaps and threatens Lula: “Crossed a Red Line”

https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/1759221711403188718

Yeah can't wait for Israel to invade Brazil. What are they gonna do about it

[Dr. MB]

Thomas Friedman, who is definitely in the Biden orbit, wrote about a week ago that Israel can either choose Rafah or Riyadh. They've chosen Rafah and they will face the inevitable isolation which comes with that.

No one except Jared Kusher (and apparently Thomas Friedman, very much a washes up has been that never was) cares whether Saudi Arabia and Israel normalize relations

Yep. While I might not go that far, Israel absolutely cares about neutralizing Hamas and ending the war more than they do about relations with Saudi Arabia.

And both countries deserve revolutions which will overthrow their current fascist-adjacent governments