The whole situation is so extreme it almost reads like sick parody. Last year there were riots in Israel when some IDF soldiers were arrested for raping prisoners. The riots were in defense of the rapists, and were attended not only by extremist Israeli civilians but also Israeli lawmakers, who stormed the military base where the rapists were being held.
The leaker releases a video of some of the abuse and is then accused of "blood libel" against the IDF by the Minister of Defense, Israel Katz. That phrase, "blood libel", is specifically intended to invoke the old medieval stories of Jewish people sacrificing and eating gentile children for their religious holidays. For leaking a video proving that the abuse is real.
And all we have to do to have them roll over on our command is to threaten the halt of the billions of weapons and aid we send annually. My main issue is that Israel/US relations feel like the tail is wagging the dog. Israel exists because of the West. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that we have immense leverage over them due to them being surrounded by enemies and dependent on US weapons systems like the Iron Dome... we can basically force them to do whatever it is we want. I blame the US and the bought politicians for the tragedy in Gaza as much as I do the Israeli's.
I have the feeling Israel simply will go the way of Rhodesia within a few generations due to the actions of this war resulting in widespread de-legitimization on both sides of the political spectrum and especially generationally. No one in the US actually wants to spend tax money on a patch of land in the Middle East the size of New Jersey, especially if they don't behave.
US military aid is around 1% of budget. The consensus in Israel is to stop accepting this aid from USA.
Iron Dome is Israeli weapon system. Out of all weapons that Israel gets from USA the only things that Israel doesn't produce domestically are planes (Usa killed Israeli fighter jet project 40 years ago) and helicopters. All other weapon systems are domestically produced. Israel is eighth largest arms exporter in world
I'm not so sure that is entirely accurate. Most of Israel's military superiority is based completely on air supremacy -- Dahiya doctrine. Even w/ F-35's this requires tons of US produced munitions (smart bombs etc). The Iron Dome system was jointly designed by US/Israel and most of the actual consumables are supplied by Raytheon.
I think it is accurate to say that if the US wanted to cripple Israel they pretty much could do so on a whim, using nothing more than sanctions. That also applies to any other non-superpower country of course. What I mean to say, we could sanction them like Russia etc. and it would probably have a much larger impact if we really wanted them to do what we want.
Dahiya doctrine is wikipedia fantasy. There is no actual facts that prove that Israel has one.
Smart bombs - Israel produces their own (for example used to take out nasrallah. iirc "spice"). In Iran (and stupidly in Qatar) were used Israeli air launched ballistic missiles (there are a bunch of models. classified. nobody knows what they are exactly. some code names were leaked last year via classified USA report that was leaked). F35 that Israel using has Israeli electronics package.
Iron Dome was designed by Rafael and IAI (check wikipedia). I held mainboard in my hands like 15 years ago. Raytheon manufactures it, because this way Israel can make use of aid money (can be only spend in USA)
No wonder our leaders have gotten along so well in modern history (U.S.)
What is happening in these modern democracies that has led to this sick embrace of cruelty, pessimism ,and apathy?
It really feels like pessimism is the rot or maybe anti-optimism; how can things ever get better if the culture rejects the idea that better things are possible?
Better things are possible, very difficult, and extremely necessary. Fight for it.
There is no mention of rape, let alone mass-rape, let alone mass-rape that was sanctioned and systematized by Palestinian authorities and venerated by the Palestinian public in the article you linked. That aside, no, the normalization of punitive rape as retribution for war/revenge rape is not the hallmark of a healthy society, particularly one that anoints itself a beacon of post-Enlightenment, secular, liberal democratic values in a region it purports is barren of them.
Looks like you missed the part where I rather clearly said "in the article you linked". As for the articles you just linked because of this, literally none of them evince the charge that Hamas directed its brigades to gangrape hostages, let alone that Palestinians cheered this on. And again, it's pretty wild that you would argue that a healthy society tacitly or explicitly (it's the latter in Israel's case) encourages revenge rape, especially when it quite literally had always called itself the vanguard of the west in the middle east, the most moral army in the world, etc.
> is Israeli society, by supporting this woman, perhaps expressing support for punishing rapists and mass murderers, even where such punishment does not entirely follow the rules?
It’s unclear what woman you refer to, but anyway I don’t think there is enough “support for punishing rapists” to cancel out the riots in support of the alleged rapists, or the government, military, and media campaign to demonize the whistleblower with incendiary lies like “blood libel.”
Honestly, cold-blooded shoving a stick into a prisoner’s rectum feels more evil than some other types of rape, but I’m not going to offer any moral calculus about it. It’s all evil. Killing after raping is more evil, I’ll agree. I condemn the evil actions on both sides. Rape is never justified, even against a mass-rapist or mass-murderer.
Also, the woman you invoked was likely dead by the time Hamas got her body, so she was not tortured as the Palestinian prisoner in the video was allegedly. Again I don’t really want to do moral calculus, but it does make a difference if you insist on comparing these crimes. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/30/world/middleeast/shani-lo...
just to correct your timeline. riots were at base of military police and not all over Israel as can be understood from your message.
Leaker leaked the videos in order to show seriousness of accusation because before that wasn't clear what exactly happened and many people thought that soldiers were simply rough with prisoners and military policy actions not justified.
Leak happened august last year. Katz statement happened this week.
It's a common accusation of pro-Israel side that the whole world is so blindly and forcefully pro-Hamas that Israel can and must to do whatever it takes, even bending or breaking rules it would otherwise respect.
IME this is just not true. Sure, antisemitism is real, especially among certain strata of the society.
BUT in the main, my observation is that no one supports Hamas or their approach. Even people who are very critical of Israel in the West (but not beyond the line of fringe, rabid antisemitism) state that 7/10 attacks were horrific and Hamas is a terrible terrorist org.
I can't help but feel that the "whole world hates us" view is a hyperbola, at some level deliberate, to justify doing whatever Israel wants to civilian Palestinians.
If you look at israels definition for hamas and what the lavendar system will designate as a valid target (targets being bombed in an automated workflow with zero human oversight), all non-jewish-israeli might just be hamas in their eyes. It might just be israel will stop its war when the world is israel.
> The real reason there is such a huge backlash against her is because anyone with room temperature iq would predict that that would be how Israels opponents would take it,
What matters more, prosecuting rapists or protecting Israel's reputation? That's not really a question, I already have your answer.
I strongly condemn the October terrorist attack but I don’t see how someone can defend the morality of the IDF after the Gaza campaign.
We are talking of an army arbitrarily establishing no go zone in the middle of streets, not publishing them and then having snipers shoot down civilians crossing these imaginary lines including the ones coming to get back the corpses of their murdered family members. An army so blood thirsty they shot their own defenceless hostage who came in front of them with hands raised.
It’s pretty clear at that point that the IDF has absolutely no moral. This doesn’t in any way mean I support Hamas.
> have not just been subject to disinformation ,but actively spread it.
Just to be clear because this comment is ambiguous. Both of my statements come from internationally reputable sources including Israeli one. There is an interview with IDF snipers where they openly state what I wrote - video is available on sky news - and multiple accounts in Haaretz. The hostages killing by the IDF was a scandal inside Israel and completely true.
Both statements are beyond doubts. Could you be so kind as to point the disinformation I’m allegedly spreading?
"Both statements are beyond doubts. Could you be so kind as to point the disinformation I’m allegedly spreading?"
Sure StopDisinfo910. You're spreading the following disinformation:(1) that the IDF establishes control lines arbitrarily; (2) that these lines are always unpublished and invisible; (3) that the IDF purposefully shoots innocent palestinian civilians; (4) that the IDF has a bloodlust that leads it to want to kill even their own hostages.
1. The IDF does not establish what you call "no go zones" arbitrarily.
You wrote:
"We are talking of an army arbitrarily establishing no go zone in the middle of streets"
The lines the IDF establishes, for example the yellow-line, are not arbitrary but rather the result of extensive negotiation and both tactical and strategic considerations.
"and then having snipers shoot down civilians crossing these imaginary lines"
First, the lines are not "imaginary" - they're very real, which is why people get shot when crossing them. Second, can you prove that snipers shot down innocent civilians specifically? You say they are civilians - are you able to distinguish them from palestinian militants, who fight without uniform? Do you have a video that shows the IDF sniper shooting an innocent civilian with a time, date, geolocation data? If so, what were the names of the people who were shot? Third, in all wars crossing frontlines is going to be fatal, civilian or militant. Try walking around Pokrovsk right now, or in the DMZ. You'd get the same result. There's nothing different about crossing an IDF line.
". An army so blood thirsty they shot their own defenceless hostage who came in front of them with hands raised."
Do you really thing bloodthirst is what caused the IDF to kill their own hostages? How do you square that with the fact that they're willing to risk so much to save and recover hostages? A more likely explanation is that the IDF mistakenly thought the escaped hostages were palestinian militants. They were in a warzone, military age men, and the IDF thought the escaped hostages were trying to lure them into an ambush -- the same type of ambush that killed many other IDF soldiers in booby trapped buildings. Friendly fire is a fact of war, it doesn't prove bloodlust.
Gaza is the most filmed war in history. If the IDF were massacring civilians en masse, as Hamas did on October 7, there would be many clear videos of these massacres, with both the IDF soldiers and the innocent civilians in view. There's none.
"Both statements are beyond doubts. "
I have reasonable doubts about them, and the onus is on you to prove your quixotic explanations about "arbitrary lines" and the like. as you can see, so they are not.
The leaker releases a video of some of the abuse and is then accused of "blood libel" against the IDF by the Minister of Defense, Israel Katz. That phrase, "blood libel", is specifically intended to invoke the old medieval stories of Jewish people sacrificing and eating gentile children for their religious holidays. For leaking a video proving that the abuse is real.