> Hamas started a war with Israel by invading it, slaughtering and raping hundreds of civilians at the music festival and in their homes
Could you provide conclusive evidence for that? Could you provide even cases of formally filed rape allegations? [1] Yes I know that a lot of Israeli media people made the accusation, but there's no reason to repeat something that no proof was given for.
I find middleeastmonitor.com an extremely biased anti-israeli propaganda piece that makes BBC seem like an unbiased news organization.
If you search for the name "Moran Gaz" used in this article to conclude
that "Gaz stated that her department has found no evidence of sexual violence" is actually not true and is Moran's statements were quite nuanced:
"
In the end, we have no complainants. What was presented in the media compared to what will ultimately emerge will be completely different. Either because the victims were murdered, or because the women who were raped by them are not prepared to reveal it. We contacted women's rights organizations and asked for cooperation. They told us that they simply did not contact them. There were parents who contacted the organizations and asked what to do if something happened to their daughter, but they did not disclose the abuse...I know there is public expectation and understand the need to address the horrific sexual crimes and sexual assaults that have been committed, but the vast majority of them will not be able to meet the threshold of proof in court, and the criticism will ultimately come to the prosecutor's office – unjustly.
"
>> Either because the victims were murdered, or because the women who were raped by them are not prepared to reveal it.
>> We contacted women's rights organizations and asked for cooperation. They told us that they simply did not contact them.
This reads entirely different that what that article from MiddleEastMonitor.com leads you to believe. The way its titled and the way you interpreted is there were no sexual assaults, only slaughter, only murders.
Im not going to engage in "Hamas slaughered festival goers on camera, killed a father in front of his kids, while blowing out one their eyes and kidnapped toddlers, but we will question the sex crimes being committed".
Is protecting the killers of families, babies and kidnappers of toddlers from accusations of sexual assault really the proverbial "hill you want to die on"?
Lets focus on order of operatons:
1) Hamas started a war
2) Israel responded in order to free its citizens and protect from future attacks.
> Could you provide conclusive evidence for that? Could you provide even cases of formally filed rape allegations?
It's pretty crazy how far the Overton Window has shifted on Jews. We went from it being prima facie evidence of antisemitism to even "notice" their disproportionate influence on, or over-representation in, certain American institutions, like the Supreme Court--as shown when Pat Buchanan got soft-canceled for noting that Kagan's confirmation would make Jews a full 1/3 of Justices, despite being only 2% of the population--to it now being acceptable to outright deny war crimes committed against Israelis.
It is important to distinguish between Jews and Israelis, as there is a significant portion of Jewish people who are leading the fight for truth about what Israel is and what Israel does.
To address your comment, Israelis have been caught lying so many times that now when they make a claim, it is on them to prove that the claim is correct, rather than on others to prove that it is not. Just a few examples off the top of my head include:
- The killing of medical workers in a convoy of ambulances and burying them in shallow graves, then lying about doing it until someone dug the bodies up and found footage confirming that they lied on the phone of one of the buried aid workers. [1]
- The hunting down and killing of World Central Kitchen aid workers via multiple air strikes [2]. This was repeatedly denied by Israelis until too much evidence was stacked up and they settled for "it was a grave mistake".
- The high profile case of killing of Hind Rajab [3] who for a brief period of time was the sole survivor of a tank attack in a shelled vehicle filled with her dead family members. Aid workers were dispatched to rescue here, coordinated with Israelis. Neither the girl nor the aid workers were ever seen alive after that. Israelis repeatedly insisted that there were no troops in the area, until too much evidence was stacked again.
Asking why there are no filled allegation is as ignorant as suggesting that no Palestinian home was destroyed because no Palestinian appealed to Palestinian court suing Israeli soldiers for destroying their home. You clearly don't understand how the system works.
Hi, your mention of the UN report made me look at the actual report in an effort to find the truth of the matter. So let's go deeper into the UN report as it's often cited as a proof of rape, but as we'll see by the end of it, there isn't actually any evidence for it other than "people said" (for more context of why I'm dismissing this, look at the points below and especially at the end of this post). Please do double-check and correct me if I reach a wrong conclusion somewhere. Here's the link to the full report by Pramila Patten published around early March 2024: [1].
The key points based on which I say that there is no proper evidence are the following:
> 34. The mission team, specifically the forensic pathologist and the digital analyst, reviewed over 5,000 photos, around 50 hours and several audio files of footage of the attacks, provided partly by various state agencies and through an independent online review of various open sources, to identify potential instances and indications of conflict-related sexual violence.
So there is plenty of photo and video material from surveillance devices. Good. But, we have a few lines mentioning something very similar to this:
> 16. [...] With respect to the latter instance, while the forensic analysis reviewed injuries to intimate body parts, no discernible pattern could be identified, against either female or male soldiers.
Further searching of the word "forensic" reveals nothing conclusive about rape. Just notes that there were injuries to intimate body parts, which is expected when bodies are blown up by tank and helicopter fire (which was confirmed to have happened during the fighting). The report does not comment whether the injuries were inflicted specifically by hand-to-hand combat weapons and small personal arms.
Now, searching for the word rape, it appears throughout the report, but only ever to point out that "there are reasons to believe that it happened", but no proof is ever given, only statements by other people. A reminder that there is a lot of surveillance photo and video material, but none of it supported the claims. For example:
> 74. In the medicolegal assessment of available photos and videos, no tangible indications of rape could be identified. Further investigation may alter this assessment in the future.
And an example of rescue teams' statements that are used as sources for the accusations:
> 13. At the Nova music festival and its surroundings, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped. Credible sources described finding 5 murdered individuals, mostly women, whose bodies were naked from their waist down – and some totally naked – tied with their hands behind their backs, many of whom were shot in the head.
Please let me know if you find something in the report that represents credible evidence of rape. I'd like to see it because I care about the truth. We know that Israel rapes Palestinians in their torture prisons because we have not only victim testimonies (that we ultimately cannot take as solid proof even if they are true), but we have actual video evidence that was released of them doing that to a prisoner on surveillance camera footage. And there is an ongoing trial where the rapists are parading around the media in Israel and proudly defending their rights to torture prisoners, including via rape. And unfortunately they have a lot of support in the country. So if Palestinian resistance fighters did the same, I want to know. But we'll need proper evidence.
One final question remains to be answered here -- why don't I think that Israelis making these claims should simply be believed? Because they lied so many times that now when Israelis make a claim, it is on them to prove that the claim is correct, rather than on others to prove that it is not. Just a few examples off the top of my head include:
- The killing of medical workers in a convoy of ambulances and burying them in shallow graves, then lying about doing it until someone dug the bodies up and found footage confirming that they lied on the phone of one of the buried aid workers. [2]
- The hunting down and killing of World Central Kitchen aid workers via multiple air strikes [3]. This was repeatedly denied by Israelis until too much evidence was stacked up and they settled for "it was a grave mistake".
- The high profile case of killing of Hind Rajab [4] who for a brief period of time was the sole survivor of a tank attack in a shelled vehicle filled with her dead family members. Aid workers were dispatched to rescue here, coordinated with Israelis. Neither the girl nor the aid workers were ever seen alive after that. Israelis repeatedly insisted that there were no troops in the area, until too much evidence was stacked again.
As for your video of an alleged pPlestinian fighter admitting to atrocities with an Israeli flag behind him, we obviously cannot take seriously a statement made in imprisonment, highly likely obtained under torture, given the vast evidence of torture (including actual rape) being conducted in Israeli prisons.
No, you are spreading lies. I won't engage any further but I'll just say that there is absolutely no video evidence, not even one, showing a rape of a Palestinian by Israeli soldiers. What there is is a video that shows Israeli soldiers standing around and beating a Palestinian prisoner, that happened to be a Hamas police-officer. The video is very unclear.
The vast majority of the discussion in Israel isn't around the the right to torture prisoners (I have actually never heard anyone argue that). That's also a lie. The discussion is around whether or not it happened.
The main difference is that in Israel, people who are suspected in doing such things would be trialed, and if found guilty, sent to jail. That's true by the way not specifically for rape, but also for harming a Palestinian in any other ways. Trails against settlers violence, for example, take place all the time. Yes, much more needs to be done, but it happens. On the Palestinian side, however, I cannot recall a single case of Palestinian facing legal charges for ever harming a Jew, and it's not because it never happens.
Does Israel have a perfect legal system? Absolutely not. But it has a system that has put many Israelis behind bars, while the Palestinian Authority usually pays compensation for those who blew up civilian buses when I was child.
> Even here on Earth, in the, what, 4 billion years history of the planet, humans are the only evolved creatures with intelligence as defined here. Maybe intelligence doesn't always occur.
It is unlikely that other beings becoming intelligent enough to rival us and deny us the supremacy over the planet would ever be allowed. Homo sapiens are believed to have "contributed to" the extinction of several other modern-human-like species (one of them being the Neanderthals). How many other times before could something similar have happened, perhaps far earlier in the evolutionary timeline?
The only way we would allow sufficiently highly intelligent life to develop and flourish is if it is completely subservient to us.
Scandinavian countries are commonly listed as a counter-example to what you say. Those countries have strong social safety nets for everyone, and their citizens' basic needs are covered. Child care costs are not an issue for them. Yet, their fertility rates are also too low.
Thus, to the extent that costs and money play a role, it does not seem to be a decisive one. There is something else going on.
Does that include housing? I went and read the Swedish Wikipedia birth rate article (Födelsetal), but couldn't find any clues. Social norms, that's about all.
Presumably the worrying thing here is a possible boom-and-bust cycle. In the long view it should be self-limiting, if a small population with lots of space tends to fill it with a larger future population that then reproduces less. It's just unpleasant to be caught at the declining stage of that cycle, with abundant old people.
He continuously armed the direct perpetrators of the genocide; supported them financially, with logistics, and intelligence; threatened their adversaries from getting involved; vetoed multiple UN security council resolutions that attempted to impose a ceasefire.
He was a direct participant in the genocide. If you're murdering someone on the street and I am standing next to you watching your back, fighting off anyone who tries to stop you, I am an accomplice in that murder, and an active participant, even if it's not my hands that are around the victim's neck, but yours. I am what enables your hands to be on their neck instead of being used to defend you from others trying to help the victim.
All ensuing crimes of Israel are thus also crimes of Joe Biden, and that's A LOT of war crimes; a clear-cut for ICC.
Before making a case for accessory to genocide, they'd first need a binding judgement that it is a genocide, presumably. I agree it probably isn't as clear cut, or at least not as simple.
The problem is a decision it is plausible it is one isn't a ruling that it is one. There is no legal basis for deciding someone is an accessory just because it is plausible. Personally I consider it a genocide, and wish there was a legal basis for going after people as accessories, but there just isn't yet.
> tourists often are very visible and tend to make a bad impression, as most haven't studied the language or learned the numerous behaviour expectations
Tourists are short-term visitors who are there exclusively to spend their money in Japan and leave it with its citizens. If the Japanese do not want that because the tourists don't come fully prepared for living in Japan, then you should just deny tourist entries to the country. It would be win-win for everyone, because there are plenty of other countries who would gladly take those tourists instead.
I'm sure the Sanseito party would be happy to add your proposal to their platform. I doubt the people who work in the tourism industry are voting for them anyway, and the people who benefit indirectly from tourism probably aren't aware enough of the dependency to care about it.
> It's as if all pro-Israel bots and fan accounts are reading the exact same guide.
Historically, many pro-Israel talking point guides/handbooks have been created and used, yes [1][2][3][4]. It would thus be unreasonable to assume that they are not currently being coordinated.
> I use the data to train Nuclear Radiochemistry AI Agents and [...]
As someone who is not involved in this ongoing discussion, I have to just say that invoking LLM agents when asked for credentials is not going to go in your favor.
My use case for data that exists that is pre-AI scientifically vetted work is completely divorced from the specifics of this conversation actually. If I want to do paper-maché sculptures with printouts of these papers, and I still commented on this post, would that be better or worse for you, here?
I was just sharing background. I want to make good models that can help scientists do work. Your personal feelings about LLMs and their capabilities feels quite distinct from the focus on this post, and the chain of comments that have led us here.
It's not a peace deal. It doesn't address any Palestinian concern other than a novel one that is stopping 2 years of constant bombardement (replaced by low-intensity fighting via proxy militias, and smaller scale killings of people who even approach the newly-declared border). Palestinian resistance got nothing out of it, as Israel has abducted and thrown into prisons more people over the past 2 years than it has released through the hostage swaps.
> It's not a peace deal. It doesn't address any Palestinian concern other than a novel one that is stopping 2 years of constant bombardement
That's true for any negotiated, i.e. conditional, armistice. If you want one side to be happy, you have to press for unconditional surrender. Palestine doesn't have the capability to force Israel to unconditionally surrender.
In any case, what we call it is irrelevant. (What the Norwegian Noble Committee calls it is irrelevant.) What matters is what the President thinks. And he thinks it's a peace deal that could make him a Nobel laureate. Which gives him an interest in not letting, as he sees it, an ICC judge mess with his deal.
> Palestinian resistance got nothing out of it
No shit. The October 7 attacks were terrorist attacks. The literature on terrorism is they extremely rarely achieve their political goals.
> That's true for any negotiated, i.e. conditional, armistice. If you want one side to be happy, you have to press for unconditional surrender. Palestine doesn't have the capability to force Israel to unconditionally surrender.
It's still not a peace deal. It does look more akin to surrender of fighting by the palestinian resistance, motivated by the civillian population reaching a breaking point because of the starvation and bombing. Moral of the story is that collective punishment works, I suppose.
> The October 7 attacks were terrorist attacks
There is no logically-consistent definition you can provide that would make that raid a terrorist attack without also capturing Israel's actions as terrorist attacks. The aggressive actions they took that day have been outdone 100-fold by Israel. The prisoners they took were a drop in the sea compared to the number of people Israel held in "administrative detention" alone, let alone all the people they randomly snatch with some bogus accusations. The state in which those prisoners returned compared to the state in which palestinian prisoners returned are day and night.
When their acts are compared objectively, the conclusions never go in Israel's favor.
> still not a peace deal. It does look more akin to surrender of fighting
Sure, whatever, it’s an armistice. Practically, it means Palestinians aren’t dying at hundreds or thousands a clip. And it means Trump can think he’s in line in Oslo.
> Moral of the story is that collective punishment works, I suppose
Moral is we’re in a multipolar world. America is no longer world cop, which means we’re back to 19th century great power dynamics.
> no logically-consistent definition you can provide that would make that raid a terrorist attack without also capturing Israel's actions as terrorist attacks
Granted. But Israel also waged a military campaign against Hamas infrastructure (and allegedly the Gaza population).
I’m not making a moral argument. Just a practical one. Killing a kidnapping civilians is a goading into war. Sinwar was explicit about his expectation of war with Israel.
He thought Iran and its proxies would be more capable. That’s a fair miscalculation. But after being faced with evidence of that fuckup, he didn’t sue for peace or attempt to return the hostages.
At the same time, Israel could have absolutely prosecuted this war more precisely. (They didn’t, and that has and probably will cost them a great deal until someone realises turning Netanyahu over to the ICC is a get out of jail free card.)
In the end, since October 7, the best Gaza could hope for was ceasefire and international occupation. The idea that an independent Palestine was ever on the table from anyone relevant, i.e. Israel and Palestine’s geographic neighbors and defence and trading partners, was always wishful. (I mean independent as sovereign. A demilitarized Gaza that is independent on paper but in practice bordered by the region’s most powerful military is the West Bank all over again.)
> The October 7 attacks were terrorist attacks. The literature on terrorism is they extremely rarely achieve their political goals.
Is every act of violent resistance against one's oppressor a "terrorist attack", what does the literature say? What distinguishes a terrorist attack from a counter-offensive?
Is it the targeting of civilians? But that didn't start on October 7th, so if that's the case, why isn't Palestine getting everything they want, and why aren't you arguing that Israel shouldn't expect to get anything out of their terrorist attacks against Palestine?
Last one is a rhetorical question, we know the answer by now. Israel and the US have all the power therefore their actions are righteous and any sort of retribution is terrorism, propped up by a million different ways to try to erase and rewrite history.
It’s quite easy to argue that the October 7th attacks were terrorism. They explicitly targeted non-strategic civilian communities and events, for political purpose. They fit within the definition as clearly as any act could.
Argue what you mean. You believe those terrorist attacks are _justified_. There are lots of ways to argue that point. But one of them is ends justification. Did it work out for the people it was supposedly on behalf of?
Yes, October 7th was a terrorist attack - so what? Israel's actions before October 7th were also terrorism, and their actions after October 7th have been many orders of magnitude worse than terrorism.
"Palestine doesn't get what they deserve because they engaged in terrorism" is a hypocritical, useless argument.
P.S. Everyone is "justified" in doing anything they can to regain their freedom once all legal options are exhausted. If you lock a person in your basement I believe they're entirely justified in bashing your face in the first chance they get. It's absurd to imply that they aren't, and it's even more absurd to try to use "but they bashed my face in" as a moral justification to further victimize your basement prisoner.
> What distinguishes a terrorist attack from a counter-offensive?
Objectives. Targeting military infrastructure and symbols of a regime can deplete martial capacity and domestic support. Targeting civilians pretty much always results in unifying the enemy—this goes back to Hitler trying to bomb Britain into submission from afar.
> that didn't start on October 7th, so if that's the case, why isn't Palestine getting everything they want
Huh? Nobody argued that everything except terrorism is a winning strategy.
> why aren't you arguing that Israel shouldn't expect to get anything out of their terrorist attacks against Palestine?
They’re the stronger military. Absent international law or pressure, might makes right.
> Last one is a rhetorical question
Literally answered it. If you’re saying you’ve presumed an answer and don’t wish to hear others, sure.
> Israel and the US have all the power therefore their actions are righteous and any sort of retribution is terrorism
You’re getting lost in your own analogies.
We can construct convincing moral models that indict both sides of this conflict because multiple actors have behaved abhorrently. (One or two have more capability and thus can act on their impulses more fully.) If you’re writing as a historian, sure, apportion blame.
If you’re thinking as a strategist, however, outcomes are what matter. And on an outcome basis, October 7 was strategically stupid (it could has been genius, but Hamas and PJ have no discipline), while the current ceasefire saves lives.
> If you’re thinking as a strategist, however, outcomes are what matter. And on an outcome basis, October 7 was strategically stupid
"It didn't work therefore it was stupid to even try" is one hell of a way to judge strategic decisions. When all your options have a near-0% chance of success, everything is going to look "stupid" in retrospect, by that logic.
> [...] then what work is this phrase even doing? Why does anyone even say it?
Most people are far more emotional than logical (possibly as a consequence of a lack of basic education in logic). They are not precise with their language, and they are not logically consistent in their words and actions. A lot of them (most?) tend to say things that make them feel good, or that they aspire towards, not things that are actually true. It's not even a conscious choice to lie, they're too used to being like that, and there isn't enough peer pressure to change since most people are like that, too.
A technical person on the spectrum should consider most people inherently "bugged" and treat all their outputs as unreliable.
>They are not precise with their language, and they are not logically consistent in their words and actions. A lot of them (most?) tend to say things that make them feel good,
Thanks for this, I think you put this really beautifully.
>or that they aspire towards, not things that are actually true
I think this last part was the part I was missing. I really appreciate your thoughts.
> Also: You are promoting that we keep a grudge. Are you planning to let go of it sometime?
I have to ask -- why? Your population is hundreds of millions, you can afford to let go of bad people and replace them with better people. You don't need to let go of a grudge against war criminals and their media collaborators. They're not your family, or people that you simply have to learn how to deal with because you can't lose them.
I'm assuming here that it is a goal to get rid of such people eventually. Then that requires making steps towards that goal. Be unforgiving towards people who wield power unethically.
Could you provide conclusive evidence for that? Could you provide even cases of formally filed rape allegations? [1] Yes I know that a lot of Israeli media people made the accusation, but there's no reason to repeat something that no proof was given for.
[1] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250106-no-rape-allegatio...
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