Israel is Coming Apart at the Seams, It Seems

The Jerusalem Post can now confirm based on verified photos of the bodies that the reports of babies being burnt and decapitated in Hamas's assault on Kfar Aza are correct.

May their memory be a blessing.

https://x.com/jerusalem_post/status/1712460425529372821

Hamas calls for Global Day of Jihad tomorrow. I'm sure that will be a peaceful protest of nuanced understanding.

Germany and France have outlawed Hamas and support of Hamas as terrorist organizations.

Muslims are rioting against that. I guess they can't differentiate support for Hamas and support for Palestine.

@RickDeckard:

Does Israel have the right to exist?

Yes or no answer please.

https://x.com/saulstaniforth/status/1712497344376111346?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

Bennet is an ultra-nationalist right-wing Israeli, but it seems to me that the SkyNews host (Kamali Melbourne?) knows this and was baiting him.

That is a convoluted question. Do you know the history and how Israel became a nation? If you did, you may not be asking that question that way.

The question was not directed at you, female oldfella.

So, no, you do not know the history. Perhaps, RickDeckard has a better handle on the situation than you do.

At this point it's irrelevant. Israel is a reality, and the only way it's going away is if the Muslims in the nations around it finally overwhelm the country and commit another holocaust.

And that's why Hamas felt they had to attack now because Saudi Arabia openly recognizing Israel and it's right to exist is harmful to their preferred outcome, which is the Muslim nations around Israel eradicating Israel.

Just like Palestinian terrorists did when Egypt made peace with Israel. Just like they did when Jordan made peace with Israel. Just like they did when Lebanon made peace with Israel.

You might note a recurring theme here.

What is that supposed to mean? Please explain.

I’m not saying one is more or less “deserving” of the land. I’m saying there will always be contention because the US and Europe unilaterally decided to give that land to Israel. Israel did nothing to take it. Israel needs to learn to play nice with it’s neighbors and stop treating those who were displaced as second class citizens.

The Partition Plan that created Israel and would have created a Palestinian state if violence didn't immediately ensue was passed by a majority vote of the UN General Assembly.

The only non-Muslim countries that voted against it were India, Greece, and Cuba. All 10 Muslim countries in the UN at the time voted against it.

For included 13 countries from Latin America and the Carribbean from Brazil to Haiti, every communist country in Eastern Europe including the Soviet Union, Australia, New Zealand, the Phillipines, and the US and Canada. 10 nations abstained, including the United Kingdom.

Final vote tally was 33 to 13, more than the 2/3rd necessary for passage.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/12/israel-white-phosphorus-used-gaza-lebanon

Hey, but it's okay when the United States gives Ukraine cluster bombs.

Call me when the area Ukraine is using them is commonly described as the “World’s Largest Open Air Prison.”

The people describing it as such are so close to grasping why Gaza is like that in the first place.

Tell me you know nothing about Levantine politics, without telling me you know nothing about Levantine politics.

When I first joined here, there was a school shooting in Los Angeles, and I’ll never forget all the posters here commenting on how much of a prison the school looked like. And some of those posters noticing that many of the students were Latino, which to their minds explained why the school looked like the way it did.

You want to explain how your comment is different than theirs?

I won't speak for 14th Doc, but I took his statement to be more about Hamas running amok in Gaza than the Palestinians as a whole.

Folks on this board (including me) have made all sorts of cavalier remarks about Russia and Russians since the invasion of Ukraine, but no one freaks out. I think the same principle here applies.

It appears I gave you too much credit.

Why do you think Gaza is apparently so much like a prison? Since you seem to think the term is apt.

In recent years it's been like a POW style high security prison due to the actions of Hamas.

As for why it was like a medium/high security prison prior to them taking over, much like the West Bank still is, a very good question.

Yeah, but it's one of those questions that Wikipedia can answer in less than a minute.

Or probably more than a minute, since their page on "Palestinian political violence" isn't especially short. But it's worth a read since it helps explain why Gaza is part of Israel and not Egypt, why there aren't Israeli settlements in Gaza in 2023, and why soldiers in the IDF don't accept free hugs from little Palestinian kids wearing baggy vests.

(I'm just kidding, the real answer is because I hate... latinos, apparently? That's news.)

Gaza is part of Israel?

Israel’s military has informed the United Nations that the entire population of northern Gaza should relocate to the southern half of the territory within 24 hours, the U.N. spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said late on Thursday night, adding that such a movement — involving over one million people — would lead to “devastating humanitarian consequences.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/12/world/middleeast/israel-un-gaza-evacuations.html


https://x.com/yashar/status/1712672961554255981

Si

Answer my question first, dinner. (Should I point out that I didn't say that Gaza was a prison, only that a large number of people termed it as such?)

And while we're at it, let's look at some population numbers:
Ukraine: Almost 44 million.
Russia: 143 million.
Palestine: Depending upon sources, could be as high as 5+ million, or as low as ~2 million+.
Israel: Almost 9.4 million.

The rule of thumb for military operations is that if you have 3x the number of forces as your opponent does, you'll win the war. (Obviously, this doesn't always hold true, but it's not entirely wrong.) From a numbers standpoint, Israel and Palestinians would seem to be evenly matched. Obviously, from a military hardware standpoint, that's not the case. After all, Israel does have nukes, and the Palestinians can count upon support from any number of Islamic nations, so they're a bit skewed in different ways. Let's also not forget that it's going to be a lot easier for Israel to get supplies from their allies than it will be for Hamas to get supplies from theirs (speaking just of those outside of Israel, of course).

Ukraine doesn't have much of an air force, doesn't have nearly the population size to draw upon that the Russians do, and also doesn't have nuclear weapons like Russia does. Forget the fact that the US, Russia, and Ukraine haven't signed a treaty blocking the use of cluster bombs, and just think about the fact that Ukraine is in a war with a vastly larger opponent for their survival. Not exactly comparable to what's happening in Israel, right now.

Oh, sure, there's ~1 billion Muslims in the world, and many of them would certainly be more than happy to die to "defend" or "liberate" Palestine, but presently, there's only one Muslim nation in the world with nukes, while Israel not only has nukes, but can count on the nearly unlimited support of such nuclear-armed nations as the US, the UK, and France. Need I point out that the US has the largest fucking military on the planet and that even in these fucked up times, the idea that the US needs to put boots on the ground to defend Israel would be a relatively easy sell for any American President worth their salt? We don't merely spend more than the other top ten nations when it comes to defense, once you get out of the top ten, the rest of the nations military budgets look like rounding errors for the Pentagon. That's not even including all the shit we're able to put towards the military that doesn't get directly counted as such because of accounting tricks that Congress has routinely pulled for decades now.

Israel isn't in danger of being wiped off the map by a group like Hamas (unless they have nukes, at which point, it's pretty much game over for a good chunk of the Muslim world if Hamas actually were to use one). What do you think the odds are of there being a significant population of Palestinians in Israel after this shit is over (assuming it ever is)? Maybe I'm wrong, but it appears to me that the odds of Hamas and Palestinians being able to defeat Israel aren't exactly high.

Big fuck difference is that nobody here is going to accuse you of being racist, regardless of what your stance is towards Ukraine and Russia (ignoring those in the idiot brigade who think that Russia will leave Ukraine as soon as they kill all the Nazis in Ukraine). I'm personally picking the words, news sources, etc., that I have used in this thread since the start of this war very carefully. Both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian folks frequently seem to be okay with things that would be considered genocide were they to occur in other parts of the world. Genocide really isn't a thing that I'm cool with. Not even joking about. Just like you won't catch me making jokes about Trump getting raped in prison. Dude's fucking garbage, no doubt, but him getting raped in (or even out of) prison? Not something that I'm willing to condone. YMMV.

Fucking face it, man, we're in WWIII. Just nobody is willing to call it that because they figure that while it's mostly proxies doing the dying, they can pretend it's something different. But it's not. Both NATO and Russia have their mitts in the largest conflicts occurring on the planet right now. It's just that the Russians are dying in larger numbers than NATO members. The only question we have is: Will somebody whack Putin before we completely fuck this planet up? I don't have an answer for that.

Words fail for how despicable that is. We are on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe amongst the largest seen for decades, being caused deliberately in full view of the world and with the support of most of the western political classes. We badly need more western leaders to break ranks here to mitigate this.
People often ask how genocides have happened in history and why people allowed them to happen. Take note of where you stand right now.

Yeah, there are clearly now more credible sources reporting this, and pictures circulating which indicate that there's at least an element of truth to the claims. There's a lot of misinformation about and it's not easy to tell it apart, but hands up on this. This is ISIS-level savagery.