johnnyworker
Joined 3 years ago
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Comment · 2 years ago
> They just asked Israel to try hard to minimize damage, which they already demonstrated they do.
Where, other than with mere hand waving? How did they explain away blowing courts and universities with rigged explosives? Soldiers bragging about "occupation, expulsion, settlement, annexiation"? All the talk about how there are no civilians in Gaza? How many people who said that has Israel prosecuted so far?
Comment · 2 years ago
Here's Gideon Levy explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZQf-YSgPto
I changed it to "indoctrination". Which is a more polite word that doesn't really do it justice, but it's not really important because the result, the inability to even meaningfully interact with the charges, is a constant.
As George Orwell put it, from the totalitarian perspective history is something to be created, rather than learned. Or as Robert Antelme described a concentration camp guard: "trapped in the machinery of his own myth". I just cannot find a flattering way to describe these things, there just is no material to work with for that.
Comment · 2 years ago
This goes beyond military tactics:
> Leading propaganda machine and former Member of Knesset Einat Wilf suggests that the Israeli government should allow aid into Gaza officially, but unofficially let "protesters" to block all aid from entering the Strip. I think that's actually kinda what happened today.
-- https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/175021647115263591...
> The Gaon Rabbi Dov Lior Shalita in a halachic ruling: Citizens must prevent the entry of Hamas trucks even on Shabbat, because equipping and supplying the enemy is a war act that must be stopped from the point of view of human control.
-- https://twitter.com/Torat_IDF/status/1750600997745959279
Probably a terrible translation but the point is clear, incitement and impunity, and the results are predictable.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/protesters-prev...
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/gaza/prote...
Yesterday, 0 trucks could enter Gaza, the day before that 9 out of 60, don't know about today. Note that under the convention against genocide, Israel is required to prosecute genocidal speech, much less such genocidal acts (apart from not committing them of course). Instead, as Yoav Gallant just posted this on Twitter:
> The State of Israel does not need need to be lectured on morality in order to distinguish between terrorists and the civilian population in Gaza. The ICJ went above and beyond, when it granted South Africa's antisemitic request to discuss the claim of genocide in Gaza.
... which is as good a summary as any for what you find at every corner with this: not just the unwillingness to learn, but the inability to even comprehend any of this. When Gideon Levy talks about the incredible depth of Israeli indoctrination, he isn't kidding, and he's not exaggerating.
Comment · 2 years ago
I have never seen something like his appearance on Crossfire on TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE
And here is him speaking to Congress over their shameful handling of benefits for 9/11 responders. Nuff said?
Comment · 2 years ago
> it's not even clear if anybody was actually "doused" with anything.
It's very obvious that media, the university and politicians look the other way because of the content of the protests that were attacked. If Muslims sprayed protesters at a pro-Israel rally with chemical weapons, they would be in jail that same day, and budgets for terrorism prevention would bloat all across the nation. That's not even a question. Instead we have faculty actually calling attempts to identify the perpetrators as "doxxing", while continuing to smear people. That plus the tacit approval in form of a wall of silence is all brown shirts need to do their thing.
just from one account:
> 72 hours since i was sprayed w/ skunk on campus: zero appetite, keep on throwing up, and i feel terrible. very fatigued and having trouble sleeping. skunk has not come out of my hair after 11 showers.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1749523794803257616
> amazing how we have to document our own hospitalizations, beg columbia university to investigate, identify the ppl who did it, & people still don’t believe us. I wish we were joking y’all, this has been a nightmare.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1749670357651366303
> fascinating how faculty members at this university are so quick to rebrand after inciting violence against arab, muslim, & palestinian students for months. We warned y’all for months that your words have consequences. I was telling admin & faculty about how they needed to be careful with their language since November. Sent dozens of emails & filed numerous reports while grieving my family in Gaza. Now eight students are hospitalized. Dozens are injured.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1749675386563146034
> almost 96 hours since I was sprayed w/ skunk on campus: skin is still burning. very dizzy and nauseous. turned in items for police evidence & having to throw away the rest. i finally got 6 hours of sleep. skunk water sticks to any fabric & cannot be washed out.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1749865142399992236
> Columbia University promised that the students who attacked us with chemical weapons are banned from campus. They’re still here & coming to @Columbia’s campus, according to student accounts. No arrests have been made, we’ve been left in the dark.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1750185681790337324
> here he is, going right up to protest attendees to harass them. this attacker is supposed to have been “banned from campus” but students are still seeing him @Columbia. Ten students have been hospitalized now and our attackers are still on campus.
-- https://twitter.com/itslaylas/status/1750195190084575712
> 120 hours since I was sprayed with skunk on campus: skin is still burning. hard to sleep for long periods bc it burns so bad. skunk is still in hair, after 12 showers. had some luck using a HEPA air purifier in my room & using charcoal soap but still dealing w/ bad symptoms.
Comment · 2 years ago
I still haven't found a good modern equivalent to http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Comment · 2 years ago
> what should a country do when 1,200 of its citizens are brutally killed?
Post people with guns on the borders. Investigate what caused the extremely sluggish response by the IDF, too.
Don't use it as an excuse for war crimes and ethnic cleansing, while talking about the hostages that are paraded around as an objective in public, as "pawns" to be sacrificed behind closed doors.
https://twitter.com/UncapturedNews/status/174516348183630682...
While IDF soldiers make TikToks literally showing off and bragging about war crimes, in the hundreds by now, given licence by hundreds of people from highest ranks of politicians to generals to "journalist" talking about how there are no innocent people, no civilians in Gaza, just "human animals" and so on. And how everyone who talks back is a Hamas supporter and/or antisemitic.
In a self-righteous fury that gets worse, no less. Which isn't explained by grief over a past event or even a knee-jerk "security" reaction, but rather by the increasing guilt: people painting themselves into a corner by running away from crimes they already committed by doubling down on them, and projecting the guilt as hatred onto those who call it out. That's as old as criminals and mobs, and it leads to war crimes in Gaza just as predictably as it emboldens settlers in the West Bank to up attacks, as it does to attacks on people elsewhere:
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/22/columbia-university-pale...
> Regarding journalists: incidents have occurred
That way one can dismiss anything. "brutally killed", "grim reality" on the one hand, "incidents", "oversimplification" and "politically motivated rhetoric that trivializes real and horrific genocides" on the other.
https://rsf.org/en/israeli-politicians-call-journalists-gaza...
and don't forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shireen_Abu_Akleh
> On October 26, 2023, a memorial erected at the site of her killing was bulldozed by the Israeli army during a raid.
And this is how they acted during her funeral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y11CVGz7toM
These are not mere "incidents", they're a criminal habit.
> This rhetoric can trivialize historical genocides, which were real and horrific.
As if this one isn't real or horrific?
https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipcinfo-website/alerts-archive/issue...
"This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country."
The last number I heard was that 80% of the catastrophically hungry people in the world right now are in Gaza.
Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal says it's a "textbook case of genocide". Omer Bartov says it might be genocide, but that there are "clear signs of ethnic cleansing" and likely war crimes. To just shrug them and many more off as politically motivated or skimming the surface seems ironic.
> If Palestinians [..] ceased targeting civilians
What does that even mean? As if all Palestinians, instead of starving and freezing, are still holding a rifle pointed at civilians, while IDF soldiers hell bent on keeping innocent people from getting hurt say "drop the weapon"?
Collective punishment is a crime. Nothing you said and nothing anyone could say justifies it.
Comment · 2 years ago
If someone ignores what I say over and over and over again, no matter how I rephrase the point I was making all along, I no longer assume good faith, no. The goal at that point isn't to convince them, but to end it without letting the last word be another falsehood. Seems that last comment did the trick, so.
Comment · 2 years ago
That's not an argument, that's a cold hard fact.
The argument is that someone wishing they could commit ethnic cleansing does not excuse actually committing it on a third party. Just like Hamas thinking collective punishment is justified doesn't mean you get to respond with collective punishment. Hamas and other terrorists are not the standard.
Comment · 2 years ago
> IDF is mowing down their own people
I wouldn't put it like that, but for what it's worth:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-17/ty-article/.p...
> 'Unlawful, Unethical, Horrifying': IDF Ethics Code Author on Alleged Use of 'Hannibal Directive' During Hamas Attack
> Asa Kasher, the philosopher who wrote the IDF's Code of Conduct, tells Haaretz that incidents in which the infamous operational order may have been used on October 7 must be investigated immediately: 'There is absolutely nothing [in the code] to allow someone to kill an Israeli citizen, in uniform or not'
Comment · 2 years ago
> The idea that Netanyahu is responsible for Hamas' popularity is false.
The claim was that Netanyahu preferred Hamas "to ensure there was never a 2 state solution", which is true.
And so far it that seems to be working out. Mass starvation, infectious diseases, day 7 of the internet blackout in Gaza, the university in Gaza was just blown up with wired explosives, the Israeli government (even Mossad on Twitter, heh) proudly show it off.
Hamas doesn't explain all that, the expansionist goals do, including why one would have preferred Hamas. There was never a realistic threat of Hamas "destroying all of Israel" from Gaza, regardless of what Hamas might have wished they were capable of, but the destruction of all of Gaza, and the people in it, is going on with a speed and ferocity we haven't seen before.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2024/jan/11/palest...
Allegedly, the count of bombs dropped on Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, half the population being minors, now surpassed the amount of bombs dropped in the second Iraq war by US and UK combined in ~8 years, that number being 29,199 bombs according to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bombings_during_the_Ir...
Here's an older (this all moves so quickly) article also discussing the 2000lbs bombs: https://edition.cnn.com/gaza-israel-big-bombs/index.html
> A man sits on debris as Palestinians conduct a search and rescue operation in Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza City, on November 1
Were there tunnels under the refugee camp? I don't know, and I don't care. One cannot hide the elephant of the violent excesses, the genocidal language and the settlers who seem to have their every whims catered for, completely behind the fig leaf of Hamas and the actors that support them.
Comment · 2 years ago
> > Meanwhile Israel has recently expressed a desire to occupy their neighbors as well as fully settling Gaza and West Bank after they are ethically cleansed.
> I have not seen anyone say this before.
Smotrich is very blunt about this, as just one example of many.
https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/174690024226652991...
"Soldiers in Gaza saying they won't stop until their mission is completed: "Occupation, Expulsion, Settlement"
One of many such clips, most with a backdrop of flattening whole blocks with wired explosives.
https://twitter.com/PeruginiNic/status/1747730495482310771
"The Israeli military just blew up the University of Palestine in Gaza City with 315 mines. All the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed."
Same thing with the supreme court of Gaza:
https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17317722618482647...
What more "concessions" is Palestine supposed to make here? They already get treated like people without any rights whatsoever. What more could they "concede" that hasn't been ripped from them already?
Comment · 2 years ago
> There is not some kind of "war" package with shared responsibility. That is sophistry to sweep actual war crimes done by actual people under the rug.
I'd say that's simply accurate, and should be said more often, not less.
> Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out.
-- Traudl Junge
https://accountabilityarchive.org/