Great summary. From a palestianian no less.
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@Piano-Dad said in Great summary. From a palestianian no less.:
Hamza's argument doesn't play well on the American left.
You mean the antisemitic American Left.
fear is the thief of dreams
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@kluurs said in Great summary. From a palestianian no less.:
Link to video
I applaud their support of the Palestinian people. One can care about the Palestinian people and the victims of Oct 7th. It is not either/or. But the response to Oct 7th is not genocide. It is a fight to protect a country that Hamas says they will not rest until that country is destroyed. It is Hamas that intends genocide.
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@Piano-Dad said in Great summary. From a palestianian no less.:
Hamza's argument doesn't play well on the American left.
You mean the antisemitic American Left.
@pique said in Great summary. From a palestianian no less.:
@Piano-Dad said in Great summary. From a palestianian no less.:
Hamza's argument doesn't play well on the American left.
You mean the antisemitic American Left.
If you haven't hung around a campus much, that is pretty much the left, at least its beating activist heart.
Israel is a colonialist cancer that has no claim to statehood in Palestine. The October 7th assault was justified resistance. A prelude to what is to come when Palestinians reclaim their land and expel the Zionist disease. From the river to the sea, baby!
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@pique said in Great summary. From a palestianian no less.:
Too bad these incurious students don't bother to read history.
Those kids get their information off of Tik Tok, YouTube and other meida - where they can listen to a Jewish holocaust survivor, both of his parents killed at Auschwitz provide testimony against Israel.
Link to videoOr maybe they read that Amos Goldberg, professor of Holocaust History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has said, "Yes, it is genocide. Although it is so difficult and painful to admit this and despite all efforts to think otherwise, at the end of six months of a brutal war it is no longer possible to escape this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained with the mark of Cain of the “crime of crimes,” which cannot be erased from its forehead. As such, it will stand trial for generations."
Omer Bartov, an Israeli American professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, describes why he believes Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza right now. “There was actually a systematic attempt to make Gaza uninhabitable, as well as to destroy all institutions that make it possible for a group to sustain itself, not only physically but also culturally,” says Bartov, who warns impunity for Israel would endanger the entire edifice of international law. “This is a total moral, ethical failure by the very countries that claim to be the main protectors of civil rights, democracy, human rights around the world.”
Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organization said in a landmark new report published today.
Per Human Rights Watch, "Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide. The pattern of conduct, coupled with statements suggesting that some Israeli officials wished to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, may amount to the crime of genocide."
Then there's the story that Norman Finkelstein has spoken of where he convinced a group of Palestinians to use peaceful protest. Israeli troops gunned down a group of crippled Palestinians.
Or maybe they read the story of Hind Rajab was a five-year-old Palestinian girl in the Gaza Strip who was killed by Israeli forces during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, which also killed six of her family members and two paramedics coming to her rescue.
There's a lot of stuff out there that doesn't make it to the MSM.
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Bartov in the Guardian. It came up in my Google News feed back when it was published.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov
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Ken, I could cite just as many, if not more, credible and credentialed experts who say it is not genocide. Believe whatever you want. To decry genocide on the part of Israel and say nothing of the clear genocidal intent in the Hamas charter is disingenuous.
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There's a lot of stuff out there that doesn't make it to the MSM.
I don’t do TikTok, X, or YT for news. I’ve seen most if not all those stories, plus others, covered in the MSM.
@wtg said in Great summary. From a palestianian no less.:
There's a lot of stuff out there that doesn't make it to the MSM.
I don’t do TikTok, X, or YT for news. I’ve seen most if not all those stories, plus others, covered in the MSM.
Tik Tok shows all of the above plus videos taken by Israeli soldiers looting Palestinian homes before they destroy them as well videos of other misbehavior. I saw a video of a news reporter sharing that he witnessed an elderly Palestinian woman about to walk into a hospital for her chemotherapy appointment shot down by an Israeli sniper. When he asked an Israeli official about what he witnessed, the Israeli official assured him that civilians are used as shields by Hamas.
More than a few folks have suggested that part of the timing of the concern that Tik Tok be American controlled was to ensure adequate measures be taken to eradicate such content.Other Tik Tok influencers have cited articles in Israeli press that demonstrated that the Israeli leadership was aware of the Hamas plans for the attack - but did nothing as this was a pretext for "mowing the lawn" - or more specifically, overseeing the development of "Greater Israel" - and there are Tik Tok videos of Israeli soldiers wearing badges showing the goal of Greater Israel.
So, my sense is that student's have done some research - and perhaps that is the cause of the problem. The fact that many Jewish scholars and ex-IDF soldiers seem to confirm their belief doesn't help to create a counter-factual argument.
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Because TikTok is such a reliable source of factual information and any videos posted there should be accepted as authentic. Riiight.
@pique said in Great summary. From a palestianian no less.:
Because TikTok is such a reliable source of factual information and any videos posted there should be accepted as authentic. Riiight.
Well, when you actually watch IDF soldiers doing those things, it seems credible - and your suggestion that research will prove the righteousness of the cause - maybe not so much as you believe.
All I'm saying is that Palestinians=Hamas=terrorist doesn't fly with everyone - EVEN many Jews, people who have affection and respect for the Jewish people may not be sold in the black and white vision Israel=good, Palestine=bad. Having said that I think student protestors should in no way equate Jewish students with the actions of Israel anymore than every American should be held responsible for the actions of our current or past Presidents.
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I'm talking about learning the actual history of the region, reading some history books that document what actually happened there, how Israel was founded. None of these student protesters, so far as I can ascertain, know a damn thing about the actual history of the region, because they spout off a lot of garbage that has no basis in reality.
Interestingly, prior to Oct 7th, the U.N. had a white paper on their web site that cited, week by week, month by month, year by year, everything that happened in the region during and since WWI, including all the nitty gritty details of what happened during Israel's founding. It was a straight ahead, just-the-facts, detailing that laid out, in very clear language, without any slant, what transpired, all the way up to the early 1970s.
After Oct 7th, the UN scrubbed that white paper, which had existed on their site as a .pdf that was obviously screen shots of the original text that had been typed up on an old manual typewriter. Now it has been transformed into a highly slanted and biased pro-Palestinian version and rewriting of history.
I'm glad I got to read that white paper before it was scrubbed. At some point, I am going to visit the library at the UN and find it. I originally read it because of the criticisms I have read about Israel, which directly contradicted the accounts of family members, who were actually there as eyewitnesses.
In my view, the pro-Palestinian movement in America has been brainwashed by an anti-semitic narrative that comes from Israel's enemies, and this has been going on a long time.
Plenty of Jews and Palestinians have worked together for decades to find a common peace. Neither Israel/good, Arabs/bad NOR Arabs/good, Israel bad are accurate or useful portrayals. But when American leftists are up in arms about Israel because supposedly they are on "stolen" land, and they defend Hamas as freedom fighters instead of denouncing them as terrorists and promulgators of Jewish genocide, then they have lost me.
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@kluurs Just to be clear, my comments are about news in general and not specifically the situation in Israel and Gaza.
I was responding to your observation about certain stories not appearing in the MSM and that there is information on TikTok and other newer sources of news that isn’t being reported by the MSM. I thought that you think that conventional news sources are intentionally omitting certain stories, and I was merely commenting that my experience doesn’t necessarily match that and that I’m getting much the same information in the MSM. But I read multiple news sources to try and get as complete a picture as possible. My sources don’t happen to be TikTok, etc.
How we consume news has obviously changed in bigly ways. There was a time when we relied on our news organizations to provide factual and unbiased reporting, if such a thing is possible. Journalists were expected to follow rules in their reporting, and they worked for organizations that oversaw their work and enforced a certain structure. Being human entities they of course reflected the inherent biases that we all have. You and I know that the Chicago Tribune has always had a different take on the news than the Sun-Times. But at least in theory there were some agreed upon rules of engagement and an editorial organization in place to ensure as much as possible that journalistic integrity was maintained.
Things have changed a lot with the advent of the internet and information is in the hands of the people rather than just wire services and news outlets that we relied on in the past. Anyone can become a news reporter who reaches millions of people. Minutes after an event has occurred. Information that might have been filtered or omitted in the past is out there for everyone. But the time we used to take to analyze and interpret the facts is now measured in minutes or seconds rather than days or hours.
it’s also the case that the structures which once provided oversight and enforcement of rules are gone, and that potentially has an impact on the quality of the reporting. Throw in the recent advances in AI that allow people to create photos and videos that don’t reflect what actually happened…our world is becoming a blend of the real and the imagined, and things move at lightning speed.
Brave new world. I’m not sure I’m going to survive it.
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For all the documentation and definitions signed up to since WW1, if there is one lesson to be learnt over the last century it is that people are going to take a long time to change.
Human nature remains essentially needy, greedy, jealous, aggressive.Codification of war, of war crimes etc. is all very nice in academia, but the words on paper means little or nothing to despots like Xi (Huyger persecution)and Putin(taking children of Donbass).
The Palestinian army sent into Israel on 7th Oct, sent in to kill & kidnap without regard to age/gender/status, is an army that clearly fights without any rules.
Civilians, soldiery, & ruling authorities, buildings, infrastructure & services, all are targets in their total war to eradicate Israel.When violent invasion occurs by a people of such ideals & character, I see no problem with severe responses such as were taken in WW2.
The decisions to bomb Dresden, make the dam buster raids, even the Nagasaki bomb. The idea that 'you may be able to fight on, but surrender now or we'll take out your cities and population until there's nothing & nobody in your homeland left to fight for'.So I'll continue to support all Israeli actions until the Palestinians release all their hostages.
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Ok, first off - I am not trying to be an apologist for antisemitism any more than Norman Finkelstein or the other Jewish scholars who have spoken against Israel's most recent activities.
As to the "white paper", perhaps ask Norman Finkelstein for a copy - as well as his assessment of its validity. I would also suggest reading the works of Schlomo Sand who served in the IDF and talks of some of his experience - all pre-October 7. Norman Finkelstein has written extensively on the history of Israel. His Gaza is an good review of some of the history - some of which might challenge the Israel=good, Palestine=bad. President Carter's take on dealing with Israel - has some good moments in it as well - where he essentially is told that there would never be peace if a single stone were thrown at a single Israeli.
October 7 is a horrendous act, all the more as the people attacked were some of the best of humanity. The attack was both ugly and evil.
So, but Israeli media report that the videos of preparations for the attack were known by Israeli intelligence. I know some might say, "it was a failure of the Israeli government to follow-up."
Perhaps...
But it some have suggested that Hamas and Netanyahu almost were working in concert. Hamas achieved its goal of showing Israel as the brute - and Netanyahu got to expand Israel's borders for more illegal settlements. The fact that per international law says that Israel has over half a million people living on stolen land - seems to sometimes get overlooked, as does Israel's ability to hold people without due process, or to imprison children as young 11 or 12 or torture prisoners within its system. In any event, Netanyahu is hoping for a final solution of the problem.
Andy, Pique - I would encourage you to explore scholars, scholars, and sources who have a contrary view to your own - even if a white paper which validated your opinion had near biblical truth to it.
Israel has worked hard to control narrative - since the 1960s when John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson - weren't so pro-Israel. That's when AIPAC came into existence. It was particularly true post the attack on the USS Liberty - also a lot of attention there. Some governments like to scrub unpleasant memories of their past - you know - like wars of expansion against Mexico and Spain or the subjugation of an indigenous people or selective laws against a particular race.
There's a lot of unpleasant things to learn about Israel - not all of it may be true - but perhaps should be examined a bit. Like - Harry Truman wanted a new Palestinian government be formed at the same time as Israel was established - and he was holding up the process. His daughter noted that Zionists sent letter bombs to help encourage his support of Israel. True? A necessary strategy?
Pique - those ill-informed students may be more informed that you realize - but have access to information that you've never seen - and might have honest, non-antisemitic origins.
Andy - yes, there's no question that post-October 7 Israel was going to respond - but the depth of its response had a different goal than punishment. Perhaps...and only perhaps..the goal was to fulfill a "manifest destiny" for Israel's borders.
As for antisemitism, I fear that Israel's hand is a bit heavy and may cause an increase in antipathy toward Israel. The fact that both American political parties are heavily influenced by Israel's friends in places of power - isn't quite as unnoticed as it once was. How many politicians can gain office if there is any question of support for Israel? How is that Joe Biden received more AIPAC support in Congress - and thus had an Israeli Secretary of State? Or Donald Trump has said openly that the Mrs. Adelson asks a lot of favors for her contributions - e.g. the moving the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel. Criticize Israel and your job offer is rescinded - your scholarship cancelled.
Again, we've been told that Americans who want to own up to the evil things our nation has been a part of are not real Americans. And there seems to be some of that going on with Israel - that and people can look at a situation and have a different viewpoint - without being evil. Do I think the student protestors are doing good? NOPE - whether it is related to support of Palestine or other issues, I think their strategies actually often harm, rather than help their messaging.
Finally, I think it is a tribute to the Jewish people that so many are willing to stand and criticize Israel's actions. America has many good people - but we too - have a history that has some very ugly things that happened with the full support of it's leadership and a good part of its people.
Again, I'm not apologist for the hellacious acts of Hamas - not all Palestinians are Hamas - and not all Jews are Zionists. It just ain't as simple as "they don't know history" or "what did you expect given October 7?' There is a much more nuanced history - and October 7 had deep antecedents.
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Kluurs, I actually agree with much of what is in your sources. Israel has behaved very opportunistically in its response, destroying and killing much more extensively than was likely needed to achieve military objectives. They have not effectively curtailed the worst instincts of their least ethical soldiers. Some in the IDF likely have committed war crimes by any serious person's definition. If and when this Israeli government falls we may get an objective commission to discover and report these things from within Israeli officialdom. Alas, we may have to wait quite some time for that. Netanyahu's political skill (and luck) should never be underestimated.
That still doth not a genocide make ... yet. For starters, despite the horrendous toll, most creditable estimates I have seen still report a civilian/military casualty ratio quite a bit lower than in most other wars, even wars conductive by "civilized" European nations over the past century. That fact does not excuse any deliberate targeting of civilians, like the Palestinian woman walking to her chemo appointment. The evidence of Hamas using the civilian population to shield its forces is overwhelming. But IDF soldiers who use that fact to butcher civilians for sport ought to be held to account. One can accept the former fact, and its conclusion that innocents may be killed in legitimate war, without excusing the latter fact, that some in the IDF needlessly and cruelly murder people.
The quote that began this thread is a contention by a Palestinian that any "leadership" that actually wants to lead a people should understand that surrender is sometimes the best option. Instead, we have an organization that is a modern authoritarian kleptocracy fueled by 9th century religious bigotry that sees Gaza as Götterdämmerung, except with some paradise afterward because Islam never ever loses and inch of land to infidels. Palestine, every inch of it, is a waqf from God!
Hamas must go. How do you do that without a lot of destruction given the organization's complete and utter contempt for its own civilian population?
