> I don't think the point is that it's not difficult to screen for, the point is that most people will not think to or do not have the means, the time, the knowledge, or the willpower to take apart all their devices, verify what is and isn't an explosive device, and then reassemble it intact. According to this report, there are a non-zero number of devices around the world, possibly in shipping containers, that contain explosives.
I think it's fairly unlikely that these devices are being shipped to normal hardware customers as doing so would likely risk exposing the operation. These sort of operations appear to exploit the fact that terrorist organizations themselves are forced to covertly procure hardware without going through typical supply chain channels.
> At least one of the suppositions I saw this last year, was that Ukraine was likely to be slapped on the hands for using consumer shipping for their military drone deployments. Because presumably, the majority of countries will not take lightly the fact that any given consumer shipping could now contain military equipment that could potentially be deployed against them, and that it is in the interest of every single country to react with prejudice to the mixing of consumer and military shipments.
There is a rather wide range of technologies/services that have both military and civilian use cases, drones being the obvious example of dual use hardware and shipping/logistics being an obvious example of a dual use service. Plenty of civilian shipping companies provide services to military customers around the world. I think it's pretty hard to argue that a highly targeted attack using drones transported by enemy civilian logistics is unethical simply because civilian logistics was used as part of the operation.
> An agent of the Israeli state has now admitted that since at least 2006 (so the better part of a quarter of a century), they have been planting bombs in consumer-grade electronics and subsequently using them to selectively blow people up in civilian places. How this is not a) worldwide news, and b) taken as an admission of overt terrorist activity, is utterly baffling. Can you imagine the reaction if an ex-NSA, ex-CIA, ex-MI7, or ex-MSS operative admitted that they had been planting explosives in consumer grade electronics?! There would be an international uproar.
That's a rather disingenuous way to frame an operation which was arguably the most precise coordinated assassination operation against a terrorist organization in history. Virtually all individuals killed/injured by the operation were members of the terrorist organizations being targeted with only a tiny amount of civilian casualties(virtually all civilian casualties were family members of the terrorists that happened to pick up the devices instead of the intended targets AFAIU). These devices appear to have been exclusively sold to the terrorists and never distributed to normal customers. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that any of these devices ended up being sold to normal non-terrorist customers.
Some random person is gonna get killed because their eBay sourced electronics were originally purchased for Iran, were intercepted by Mossad and tampered with, sent on their way, got seized in Jordan for sketchy customs papers, bought at evidince auction 18mo later by a reseller, who imported them (or the importer is gonna lose their life's work after being accused of explosives smuggling by the feds).
There's basically no accountability for these intelligence organizations preventing them from playing fast and loose.
On the other hand, there's various degrees of explosives spot checking all over international boundaries and the like. If random explosives are moving around surely someone would run across them, so it my just be some scumbag spook trying to get people scared.
> Some random person is gonna get killed because their eBay sourced electronics were originally purchased for Iran, were intercepted by Mossad and tampered with, sent on their way, got seized in Jordan for sketchy customs papers, bought at evidince auction 18mo later by a reseller, who imported them (or the importer is gonna lose their life's work after being accused of explosives smuggling by the feds).
I suspect in practice the spicy pagers would tend to be tracked quite closely by the intelligence agencies.
> There's basically no accountability for these intelligence organizations preventing them from playing fast and loose.
Intelligence agencies don't have a lot of accountability in general, but I'd hardly say operation grim beeper was playing fast and loose with how precisely the terrorists were targeted ultimately.
> On the other hand, there's various degrees of explosives spot checking all over international boundaries and the like. If random explosives are moving around surely someone would run across them, so it my just be some scumbag spook trying to get people scared.
Hard to say how easy to detect they would be, but it doesn't seem all that likely that random consumers would run into these sort of devices. Intelligence agencies would certainly not want these devices getting distributed to the general public.
>I suspect in practice the spicy pagers would tend to be tracked quite closely by the intelligence agencies.
Because these people totally wouldn't cut and run and leave someone else holding the bag if things went wrong. /s
Kinda like how the CIA spent the 90s quasi-protecting Al-Qaeda in an effort to penetrate the organization only to cut and run and be all "hey, FBI, y'all might want to look into these guys we really think they're up to something serious" in summer of 2001.
Say an operation was called off. I give it 50% odds between them finding a way to buy the devices to keep them from getting out into public vs 50% chance they just abandon them.
>, but I'd hardly say operation grim beeper was playing fast and loose with how precisely the terrorists were targeted ultimately.
I generally agree but I absolutely foresee some random company in the region having 1/3 of their laptops go boom because they bought tampered shit that "got out". Best case someone opens one up for service, goes WTF, snaps a picture, internet amplifies, it gets back to the OEM and the "questionable" lots are ID'd.
> but it doesn't seem all that likely that random consumers
The angry pagers were being bought under the guise of legitimate companies. I find it very hard to believe that some gravel pit or factory who needed 20 and bought 200 on a "we pay you for 250 basis" didn't have their 20 go poof while sitting on the charging shelf in the office or whatever.
This whole thing is just too "meta targeted" for my taste in the same way that "signature strikes" were. It's not like these organizations lack the capacity to kill people the old fashioned way, heck it might even be cheaper.
> Say an operation was called off. I give it 50% odds between them finding a way to buy the devices to keep them from getting out into public vs 50% chance they just abandon them.
In all likelihood even if they were abandoned, probably nothing would happen since modern explosives tend to be designed to be rather stable unless intentionally detonated(an intelligence organization would want to design them this way to avoid detection due to accidental detonation of course).
> The angry pagers were being bought under the guise of legitimate companies. I find it very hard to believe that some gravel pit or factory who needed 20 and bought 200 on a "we pay you for 250 basis" didn't have their 20 go poof while sitting on the charging shelf in the office or whatever.
From what was reported it looks like Mossad essentially licensed the brand rights for the pagers through shell companies, manufactured the pagers themselves and then distributed them exclusively to the terrorists after infiltrating the terrorists hardware procurement process in some way. One would also likely assume only pagers actually connected to the network of the terrorists would get triggered.
> This whole thing is just too "meta targeted" for my taste in the same way that "signature strikes" were. It's not like these organizations lack the capacity to kill people the old fashioned way, heck it might even be cheaper.
I think there's a bit of a difference here, it's not like these pagers were random consumer devices actually being sold on the open market, they were in reality a highly exclusive device sold only to the terrorists through some sort of supply chain infiltration attack with what appears to be only the marketing material along with fake customer testimonials being distributed publicly to trick the buyers into thinking these were normal consumer devices. For such a precise attack against a terrorist organization it seems unlikely tradition methods would have been more effective for the cost of the operation. Most traditional methods would also likely incur far higher civilian casualties.
Play Protect really is the root of all evil, Google certainly seems to be incentivized to write services like Play Protect that effectively act like malware/spyware in order to force users to see more ads by making it as difficult as possible to run effective system wide ad-blockers on mobile devices by crippling the ability of users to run non-Google sanctioned code on their devices at high enough privilege levels. They've deliberately designed Play Protect for maximum user hostility instead of trying to come up with ways to provide security while maintaining user freedom. For example they could have instead implemented much stronger sand-boxing of apps so that apps would have as little knowledge as possible regarding what type of environment they are running in, similar to webapps, yet they chose the exact opposite approach and went out of their to prevent users from restricting app permissions/system visibility deliberately.
Additionally the sideload blocking plan they published seems to be effectively Google deliberately using installation whitelisting in order to prevent users from removing ads from apps with tools like revanced(revanced is an APK patcher and relies on the ability to effectively self sign/install APK's without googles approval if running on bootloader locked devices).
These elaborate user hostile schemes of theirs even uses similar dubious technical justifications as manifest V3's ad-block crippling did for Chrome.
> GrapheneOS can not do anything about that.
I mean, they could help write exploits to help users bypass the Play Protect malware/spyware I suppose, although that probably doesn't align with their goals. I'm really not sure what other practical options there are in regards to fighting these malicious spyware services that Google wants to force on everyone.
Since Google doesn't have effective full control over the Android hardware supply chain like Apple does undermining the Play Protect spyware scheme should be much easier as one probably just needs to come up with some key extraction attacks against certified Android devices with terrible hardware security(lot of cheap Chinese SoC's used in Android phones that have rather poor cryptographic key protections). In theory one can then use extracted attestation keys to emulate a secure boot chain in software on other devices along with sufficient sandboxing to trick Play Protect into thinking it's running on a Google sanctioned bootloader locked device even when running with a custom OS.
GrapheneOS does not include any of the Google apps that implement Play Protect. You can install them, but they run in the sandbox like normal apps and so are not highly privileged. They are unable to block installation of apps, install apps or uninstall apps as they are on stock Androids
> GrapheneOS does not include any of the Google apps that implement Play Protect. You can install them, but they run in the sandbox like normal apps and so are not highly privileged. They are unable to block installation of apps, install apps or uninstall apps as they are on stock Androids
The issue is more that GrapheneOS still allows apps to view OS attestation information[0], which is similar how Play Integrity API attempts to prevent you from running on your own OS. The specific feature I'm referring to which is the problem is the Play Protect API which allows apps to inspect the host system bootloader/TPM state essentially. The problems with giving any apps(even webapps) access to this sort of attestation information are well documented[1] as it encourages app developers to lock out legitimate users who want to run unofficial operating systems. Effectively breaking this app verification capability is what is needed to prevent app developers from enforcing arbitrary security requirements on the host OS. Essentially GrapheneOS just wants app developers to trust their keys in the same way Google wants you to trust theirs(using the Play Integrity API).
> The most basic principle in democratic government is that those subject to the monopoly of violence should also have a voice in how that violence is managed.
I'm pretty sure most democracies also have a right to decide who can become a citizen. Forcing a country to give citizenship to enemy combatants would be kinda crazy, regardless of whether or not the territory those combatants operate from is under a military occupation.
The current USA regime is attempting all sorts of dumb nonsense, but birthright citizenship certainly isn't universal among countries either. I'm not a citizen of the country I was born in.
> Their strategy was, I think, as bad as it could possibly be.
After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks.
> Hamas successfully baited Israel into a disproportionate response that killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, which played directly into the dynamics of guerrilla warfare where a strong state's extreme actions against a weak opponent undermine its legitimacy.
It turns out a disproportionate response is a rather effective strategy at deterring ones enemies from attacking, it worked quite well with Hezbollah which was considered by Israel to be a much more serious threat to Israel than Hamas was.
> Walking into such a trap tends to be a real world-historical blunder for any nation.
What other option did they have realistically? The middle east isn't a region where pacifism tends to work out well.
> Yet, rather than adapting, Israel's network doubled down with censorship campaigns, crackdowns on protests, and weaponizing "anti-semitism" accusations to silence critics -- actions that have all backfired. Now international support is collapsing, the EU is pushing sanctions, and the US is slowly distancing itself. Israel's best option right now is to end the war as quickly as possible, and devote all of its efforts to repairing damaged relationships and mitigating the war's effects, before isolation accelerates to the level of sanctions similar to those imposed on South Africa.
Keep in mind that statements politicians make publicly about Israel are often rather different from what they really think, politicians placating various activist groups for domestic political reasons doesn't often translate into meaningful adverse actions against Israel. The Israeli stock market is at all time highs right now despite everything that has happened.
I agree Israel has been way too slow at ending the war, their reluctance to take actions to finish off Hamas(or force their capitulation/surrender) and end the war is not helping either the Palestinian people or Israelis.
> I'll also note that it's interesting how all sides seem to have lost. Hamas lost the shooting war, the people of Gaza have lost lives and livelihoods which may take more than a decade to rebuild, and Israel lost the information/media war so damn badly that it may genuinely not recover from this.
Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor, but that isn't really an entirely new issue either.
Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.
A country loses its right to "re-establish deterrence" when the population it's "deterring" is born inside its own de-facto borders, and when the only reason it needs to deter so many of them is that they would (rightly) like one of a) sovereignty or b) voting rights inside the federal system that controls their borders and can kick down the doors of the houses they were born in.
If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.
Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.
> A country loses its right to "re-establish deterrence" when the population it's "deterring" is born inside its own de-facto borders, and when the only reason it needs to deter so many of them is that they would (rightly) like one of a) sovereignty or b) voting rights inside the federal system that controls their borders and can kick down the doors of the houses they were born in.
It's not just Palestinians they needed to deter, by the way most Israelis were also born within the borders as well. Israel has in the past made efforts to give more sovereignty to Palestinians but those efforts have largely backfired. I think initial efforts really need to focus on de-radicalization of Palestinians first before there's any reasonable chance another attempt at giving them more sovereignty will be more successful.
> If Israel would like to give Gaza full sovereignty, or Palestinians born inside the occupied territories the right to vote in the federal systems that determine their law enforcement environment, we can talk about deterrence and law enforcement respectively.
They already tried that[0], it didn't work out and arguably made the situation worse as they voted for Hamas[1] which quite openly advocates for the destruction of Israel.
> Israel has unilateral control of who it recognizes as its citizens, and what sovereign states it recognizes. No complaint about current or past bad behavior by the Palestinians excuses its failure to grant sovereignty or voting rights to people under its territorial control.
Are you seriously suggesting Israel can just give citizenship/voting rights to all Palestinians and make a group that largely wants their destruction a voting majority? There's a reason this will basically never happen, and that reason is that it would effectively be suicidal for Israelis. This sort of one-state solution is completely unrealistic. Some variation of a two-state solution is probably the most realistic, but I think we're a long way off from that being viable due to a lack of Palestinian desire for peaceful coexistence.
> Are you seriously suggesting Israel can just give citizenship/voting rights to all Palestinians and make a group that largely wants their destruction a voting majority?
Can you think of any reason why Palestinians might feel this way? Does anything come to mind?
Since the 1990s Israel has been trying to give them a state, to varying degrees. They got civil and security autonomy in Areas A of the West Bank, for example. And Israel pulled her citizens out of the Gaza strip in 2005.
The problem is that the PA, who rules the West Bank are extremely corrupt, and Hamas is committed to Israel's destruction. Neither side has been actually performing all the functions of state, UNRWA has been doing that.
The leaders of Hamas have stated the the Jewish state is to destroyed and the Jewish residents exterminated.
The PA leaders have stated that the German genocide of Jews never occurred.
And Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian, Libyan, and Iraqi leaders have all stated the the idea of a Palestinian People was invented in the 1960s. No joke.
If you want to start pulling out quotes to judge merit in the Middle East, there's enough material to hang anybody.
The leaders of Israel have not just spoken about it, they have actually destroyed the Palestinian State in the last few months. They have killed tens of thousands of kids.
Then from where came the rockets that were shot at Ashdod, Barnea, Nitzan, Kfar Aza, Miflasim, Saad, and Nir Am come from? This was during Yom Kippor, the Jew's holiest day.
You are invited to check that those rockets were fired from the Gaza strip. I know, I live walking distance from the strip. And you should then realize that the sources who tell you that Hamas is not shooting at Israel are using the tactic of Lies of Omission to influence your opinion.
I won't dispute that 50 people were killed yesterday, I have no idea, and I don't know how many of them were killed by Hamas and how many of them were killed by Israel. The Arab media reports all of them as being martyrs because that is their culture. The Western media just translates with the Arab media says. I do know that yesterday, Yom Kippur or the Jew's holiest day of the year, Hamas shot barrages of rockets at Israeli cities and towns. I don't know how many of those rockets fell back into the Gaza strip, typically a third of them do. So go figure how many of the 50 Gazans were killed by Hamas own rockets. In any case, when the Gazans decide that they've suffered too much then they are invited and welcomed to return the hostages. The war will be over that minute.
It is very telling that the side which has the ability to end the suffering now, by returning the hostages, chooses not to do that.
So the photos of flattened buildings are all "hamas"? You came in, blew up everything, and now you are saying "they did it to themselves, that wasn't us". Their dead kids - oh they did that? The occupation? Oh, that's their fault! If only they would start being nice, so we can stop killing them and give them a city! Ah let me build a settlement in their land - but it's THEIR fault!
> So the photos of flattened buildings are all "hamas"?
No, if buildings are flattened then that's not Hamas. Israel uses HE explosive, Hamas uses FA. HE is the one that levels buildings, FA is the one that leaves burn marks. Just like we saw at the AlAhli hospital where 500 people were killed - burn marks. Flattened buildings are Israeli munitions.
> Their dead kids - oh they did that? The occupation? Oh, that's their fault!
Often, yes. This is not disputed among Gazans. By their culture, no matter which side had the hand in killing you, you are a martyr and afforded the rewards of heaven.
I suggest you go open the guys and Telegram channels. There's a photograph being shared right now of half a dozen Gazans that were killed by other Gazan's hands. All piled up on a blanket.
> The occupation? Oh, that's their fault!
There's no dispute that the beginning of the occupation is squarely on the Arabs, the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank lasted 19 years. That said, both sides are responsible for it having been dragged out for an additional 60 years. Various Israeli governments have had different levels of intentions of giving or not giving the Palestinians certain autonomies and land. But no matter what the intentions of any specific Israeli government, the Palestinians have rejected every single offer. At some point one has to be content with what they've gotten, and realize that they can't destroy the other side completely and those people need some place to live. We, the jews, watched the British give over three quarters of the land of Palestine to the Hashemite kingdom, and left us less than 25%. And we were content with that. Then the UN came in and gave half of that to an Arab state and half of that to a Jewish state. And we were content with that. But then seven Arab nations invaded us to slaughter us. The Jews were ethically cleansed during that war from the West Bank and other places. Just as the Jews were content with what we were offered when we were weak, so should one reasonably expect the Arabs to be content and realize that we're not going anywhere and we need a safe place to live as well.
> If only they would start being nice, so we can stop killing them and give them a city!
Yes, generally in Western culture it is expected that when you want something from somebody, you treat them nicely. Especially if what you want is to live next door to them.
> Ah let me build a settlement in their land
Their land? Are you pulling the Arab Land card? How would you respond to British who reject Arab immigration to Great Britain on the basis of GB being White Land? The Jews have 3000 continuous years of history in the West Bank, broken only for 19 years when Jordan ethnically cleansed the West Bank of Jews. Even Israel didn't ethnically cleanse the land she won, Israel was (and remains) 20% Arab. If you support ideas of one-race-only Land and ethnic cleansing, then you and I will never agree.
> Then give the inhabitants of the land citizenship and the right to vote! It's simple.
Effectively saying Israel should have over control of their government to a majority voting block that will likely elect terrorists again just isn't something that's ever going to happen. There's a reason the international community largely regards a one-state solution as entirely non-viable.
Either you know what the consequence of that would be, and you therefore seek to destroy the Jewish state. Or you do not know what the consequence of that would be, and you therefore should not be talking about a subject that you know little about.
However, there are no groups vying for government in the Levant which are secular in nature other than the Jewish leftist groups. And none of the other groups have a culture compatible with those Jewish leftist values.
What I can't unsee is your argument depends on Palestinians having no agency. And thus blameless.
As soon as one assumes they do then ones sympathy is very limited indeed. Bookends for me are Munich and finally 10/7. And I'm just done with that group of people. They'd be way better off if everyone abandoned them.
Discussing this topic with you is impossible because you have committed to spreading Israeli state propaganda regardless of what the actual facts of the situation are. If you are unmoved by the children being savagely blown apart by Israeli rockets because you equate that with some Arab states bad-mouthing Israel then I fear nothing will ever convince you that Palestinians are human. Have a good day and if you have kids, give them a hug and be glad they don't live in Gaza.
> Discussing this topic with you is impossible because you have committed to spreading Israeli state propaganda regardless of what the actual facts of the situation are.
If I have stated something infactual, point it out. I can back up every fact that I've stated.
> If you are unmoved by the children being savagely blown apart by Israeli rockets because you equate that with some Arab states bad-mouthing Israel
You are correct that I don't use emotional strategy in my arguments, nor am I swayed by emotional arguments. I stick to facts. And if you did too, you would recognize that one third of the Hamas rockets fall back into the Gaza strip and kill Palestinians as well. If you were to read the Palestinian Telegram channels like I read, you would have seen the recent little girl being destroyed by an IED that was placed to attack Israeli soldiers. The Muslim culture considers all killed to be martyrs, no matter whose hand killed them. The Western media treating this as if Israel killed every martyr is disingenuous. If you really cared about Palestinian lives, you would recognize that Hamas is also a major factor in killing Palestinians today, and that Hamas could end this entire war by returning the hostages any minute.
> then I fear nothing will ever convince you that Palestinians are human.
How many Palestines in Palestine have you talked to in the recent past? I talk with them almost weekly: face to face, and online. In English, in Arabic, and in Hebrew, in their own towns. You'll see in my past posts that I quote them often, both in defence and in opposition to the state of Israel, and both in defence and in opposition to the Palestinian cause.
> Have a good day and if you have kids, give them a hug and be glad they don't live in Gaza.
Thank you, I hug my children and like you said, I am glad that they don't live in the Gaza strip.
Why not? It was part of Mandatory Palestine, lost to Jordanian occupation in the war for independence, and in 1967 recovered by Israeli forces in the same manner that Jordanian forces took it in the previous war. It had a Jewish population for the past 3,000 years, the only exception being the 19 years that the Jordanians held it because the Jordanians ethnically cleansed the area upon conquering it. At what point in this timeline do the Israelis lose claim to the area, or what have I misrepresented in the timeline?
> Being forced into a never ending apartheid situation may also be the reason.
An occupation is not apartheid.
> Give them voting rights
Israel tried that...Palestinians straight up voted for Hamas terrorists[0] who promptly eliminated voting rights(although based on opinion polling Hamas would likely be elected again).
> give them a state
Israel tried moving towards that in Gaza[1], it backfired spectacularly leading to the current conflict.
Any other ideas on how to move towards peaceful coexistence? I think the first step is some sort of de-radicalization program, but not sure how one would implement that.
Apartheid by definition means race based discrimination, which is different from citizenship based discrimination(which basically all countries have to various degrees).
Anyone in the world who has one race can freely move there. People of other races cannot. Rights are awarded based on race. Nothing to do with citizenship.
> Anyone in the world who has one race can freely move there. People of other races cannot. Rights are awarded based on race. Nothing to do with citizenship.
You're obviously referring to a Israeli citizenship law[0] here. Your claim that it has nothing to do with citizenship makes no sense.
So eternal apartheid? That's what will make the Palestinians happy? When the Tamil Tigers were defeated, they were able to vote in their country. The separatists in Spain get to vote in Spain. The kurds get to vote in Turkey.
Israel is the only country that says: do not separate and create your own state, but at the same time if you stay here, we will NOT give you civil rights.
> So eternal apartheid? That's what will make the Palestinians happy? When the Tamil Tigers were defeated, they were able to vote in their country. The separatists in Spain get to vote in Spain. The kurds get to vote in Turkey.
A military occupation is not an apartheid, apartheid is race based discrimination, the occupation here is citizenship based discrimination(which basically all countries have in various forms). I'm not really sure what the best solution here is, but it's probably going to need to involve some serious de-radicalization on the part of the Palestinian people and then some form of a two-state solution.
> Israel is the only country that says: do not separate and create your own state, but at the same time if you stay here, we will NOT give you civil rights.
They tried that approach already with Gaza, it backfired massively. It's pretty obvious giving the people who elected terrorists(and based on Palestinian opinion polling they would likely elect Hamas again) the right to vote in Israeli elections isn't going to lead to a peaceful coexistence.
An eternal military occupation, where the GOVERNMENT says - you will NEVER get a country, and you will NEVER be part of our country IS apartheid.
These are direct, unambiguous statements from the Prime Minister and all members of the cabinet. They have said that the Palestinians will NEVER get a state.
So what are you saying then about Israel wanting a two state solution? They have said there will be no state, and they have said they will not give civil rights.
> An eternal military occupation, where the GOVERNMENT says - you will NEVER get a country, and you will NEVER be part of our country IS apartheid.
That's not apartheid, apartheid means race based discrimination which is simply not an accurate characterization of what is going on here.
> These are direct, unambiguous statements from the Prime Minister and all members of the cabinet. They have said that the Palestinians will NEVER get a state.
Israel isn't a dictatorship and these things can change over time, I'm certainly no fan of Netanyahu in general, right now there is very little support for a two state solution amongst Israelis because they largely don't believe the Palestinians currently have a desire to live in peace with Israeli Jews. Unfortunately they appear to be correct for the time being but if those viewpoints were to change on the Palestinian side I would expect Israeli opinions to change as well. I'm just not sure how you de-radicalize a population like the Palestinians.
> So what are you saying then about Israel wanting a two state solution? They have said there will be no state, and they have said they will not give civil rights.
My point is that Israelis in the past have supported a two state solution, obviously there is currently a war going on right now so a two state solution is not going to happen any time soon.
> This is apartheid.
That's still not apartheid, it's an occupation, there's a difference.
> Israel isn't a dictatorship and these things can change over time
Indeed, Israel is a democracy, and things have in fact changed over time. These changes in Israeli public opinion have been based largely on the actions of the Palestinians.
There was optimism about peace in 2007, after the withdrawal from Gaza: 70% of Israelis supported the two-state solution. After the Hamas massacres in 2023, there was 70% opposition to the two-state solution.
It is race based because if there was a jewish person living in Palestine, they could apply for and get the right to vote. A muslim person cannot.
The Israeli PM has said: There will never be a Palestinian state. If you plan to eternally occupy and dominate a people, what is the difference to Apartheid?
> It is race based because if there was a jewish person living in Palestine, they could apply for and get the right to vote. A muslim person cannot.
Jews are not allowed to live in Palestine controlled territories at all(i.e. Gaza and West Bank areas A/B). This still wouldn't be race based discrimination however. Apartheid is a form of discrimination among citizens, immigration law is a somewhat separate issue. Many countries take factors into account when it comes to immigration laws that wouldn't be applied with regards to those who are already citizens. You don't see those cases of immigration law preferences being called Apartheid in general.
> The Israeli PM has said: There will never be a Palestinian state.
Israel has elections and things can change.
> If you plan to eternally occupy and dominate a people, what is the difference to Apartheid?
That's still not race based discrimination so not Apartheid.
Israel was formed atop the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians (not to mention massacring of >5000). There were no Israeli citizens before it was formed, this was purely racial discrimination.
Palestinians under Israeli occupation generally have no pathway to Israeli citizenship, with the exception of those in East Jerusalem, which is occupied under international law but is considered part of Israel by Israel; in the West Bank there is a process to apply for Israeli citizenship, but only a small percentage of Palestinians in East Jerusalem can become citizens every year (I believe I read it was <5% of those who applied).
People who are not Palestinian, anywhere in the world, can convert to Judaism and make Aliyah. This pathway is denied to Palestinians, especially those under occupation.
So I don't know how you can claim this is not race based discrimination.
> It's pretty obvious giving the people who elected terrorists
8% or fewer of the people in Gaza today actually voted for Hamas. Most of them were not even born at the time of the last election, and combined with those who were under 18 at the last election and those who voted for other parties, 92% of people alive in Gaza today had no part in Hamas coming to power.
> Israel was formed atop the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians (not to mention massacring of >5000).
There were various push and pull factors involved, it's not entirely accurate to say they were all forcibly expelled(there were many that were not expelled as well).
> There were no Israeli citizens before it was formed, this was purely racial discrimination.
Palestinians that remained were given Israeli citizenship however.
> only a small percentage of Palestinians in East Jerusalem can become citizens every year (I believe I read it was <5% of those who applied).
It's around 5% that have Israeli citizenship I think, about a third that apply have been approved with the remaining being rejected or postponed looks like. The majority do not apply for Israeli citizenship for various reasons.[0]
> People who are not Palestinian, anywhere in the world, can convert to Judaism and make Aliyah. This pathway is denied to Palestinians, especially those under occupation.
There being no Jews allowed to live in Palestinian controlled territories(i.e. Gaza and West Bank areas A/B) may make converting a bit uncommon/difficult(converting in general is rather difficult AFAIU), but I don't think there's any outright prohibition on accepting Palestinian conversions for the purposes of citizenship(even though in practice it may be extremely rare).
> So I don't know how you can claim this is not race based discrimination.
I'm not claiming there's no race based discrimination when it comes to Israels immigration policy. Apartheid would be considered racial discrimination between those that are already citizens however, which is a different issue. Many countries have immigration laws that have various forms of racial discrimination and you don't normally see those cases described as apartheid either. I am not a citizen of the country I was born in due to these sort of policies.
> 8% or fewer of the people in Gaza today actually voted for Hamas. Most of them were not even born at the time of the last election, and combined with those who were under 18 at the last election and those who voted for other parties, 92% of people alive in Gaza today had no part in Hamas coming to power.
That may be true but keep in mind Palestinian opinion polling does indicate Hamas would still likely win elections if they were in fact held today.
> After the October 7 attacks it was critical that Israel re-establish deterrence, not doing so would be inviting more attacks
Sure. They did that when they killed Sinwar. After that, they could have just continued to Mossad individual leaders in Hamas.
> Israel losing the media war was probably somewhat inevitable, the extreme disparity between worldwide Muslim population sizes and Jewish population sizes being a big factor
> Sure. They did that when they killed Sinwar. After that, they could have just continued to Mossad individual leaders in Hamas.
Killing one enemy leader is insufficient to re-establish deterrence, with how severe the October 7 attacks were I don't think Israel can possibly accept any outcome that doesn't effectively remove Hamas from power in Gaza.
> Not relevant to America.
It still has some effect in America, but less so than other parts of the world.
However Hamas has yet to capitulate/surrender, Israel basically has no choice but to finish Hamas off if they won't surrender, not doing so would significantly weaken their deterrence capabilities and allow Hamas to rebuild. There are potential consequences to ceasefire agreements where an enemies leadership retains power[0] historically.
> Like, Hezbollah got the message pretty clearly.
They eventually got the message after Israel essentially eliminated the entirety of their leadership chart multiple levels deep and crushed Hezbollah's will to fight, the ceasefire Hezbollah eventually agreed to was effectively a surrender agreement.
Sure, and I don't see credible evidence that they are[0]. Just more of the same false narratives pushed by the all too common antisemitic UN officials[1].
An NGO "Agence France-Presse has described...as 'a lobby group with strong ties to Israel'" [1] is not a credible source for disputing two separate groups at the UN, the IPF and--at this point--more than a few independent investigations.
> An NGO "Agence France-Presse has described...as 'a lobby group with strong ties to Israel'" [1] is not a credible source for disputing two separate groups at the UN, the IPF and--at this point--more than a few independent investigations.
This doesn't make the information they are putting out false, the UN bias against Israel is well documented by many sources.
> This doesn't make the information they are putting out false
It makes it unreliable. If you’re claiming the IPC is an unreliable source, you need a reliable source to back you up on that. (And neither article actually cites any data that would undermine the IPC’s case.)
I’m genuinely open to being convinced. Another comment raised the issue of insufficient CDRs for IPC 5 status, which may or may not be relevant. But these UN Watch interviews are rally the base stuff, not argument.
> If you’re claiming the IPC is an unreliable source, you need a reliable source to back you up on that. (And neither article actually cites any data that would undermine the IPC’s case.)
I think the most detailed rebuttal to the recent IPC claims is this one[0] backed by the COGAT[1] published aid data. There are other responses to prior IPC reports that go into more methodological details[2] as well. The impression I get overall is that the IPC is largely just cherry picking incomplete data to create a false narrative[3]. IPC forecasts also basically never end up being accurate historically either.
What Israel is doing is essentially sowing the seeds for a new crop of leaders hell-bent on destroying Israel. Children who saw ghe carnage Israel is inflicting will grow up to join Hamas and Hezbollah, and the cycle repeats.
> What Israel is doing is essentially sowing the seeds for a new crop of leaders hell-bent on destroying Israel
This isn't necessary! Plenty of peoples have overcome cycles of revenge. There isn't something inherent to Israelis and Gazans that requires they metabolise past trauma into future violence.
Overcoming this cycle requires the cooperation of both sides, or at the very least that both sides stop fucking with one another.
Israel, the stronger entity, should've been the one to abstain first and attempt to understand and forgive, instead they kept building illegal settlements and driving more and more people out there homes. Israel made sure the embers stayed hot, and I can't think of any reason for that aside from hoping those hot embers produce a flame that justifies genocide and completely eradicating the Palestinian population.
> Yes, the current leaders are the result of Natenyahu's previous harvest.
When have Palestinians had leaders that have been truly interested in peace?
> There is no shortage of articles on the internet detailing how Israel is the one responsible for propping up Hamas.
There's a lot more nuance to this issue as allowing funds to be transferred by Qatar was to some degree an attempt at improving the lives of Palestinians in Gaza.
> And the current leaders of Iran are the fruits of what the USA/CIA sowed by toppling a popular democracy and replacing it with a despotic monarchy.
I think you're underplaying the impact of radical Islam here.
> Despite all this Israel has largely re-established military deterrence in the Middle East and is on a path to normalize relations with countries like Saudi Arabia once Hamas is either forced to surrender or degraded enough that they lose their ability to govern Gaza.
Citizens in the Gulf feel very differently on a large number of issues than their leaders.
> Citizens in the Gulf feel very differently on a large number of issues than their leaders.
Yeah, this is a common pattern, in general most Muslim counties have leadership which is far more moderate than their populations overall, with Iran being a notable exception.
This is disturbing. You seem to imply that there are legitimate reasons to starve an entire population, which is to me so repulsive that you’re not even allowed to consider entering that territory.Under that reading, once you’ve crossed that line, how can you actually win a media war ?
> You seem to imply that there are legitimate reasons to starve an entire population, which is to me so repulsive that you’re not even allowed to consider entering that territory.
No, I'm not saying that, I'm saying that the claims of starvation are simply not accurate.[0] They also tend to be pushed by antisemitic individuals[1].
You’re really saying that there is no starvation , and plenty to eat in Gaza ? ( I won’t debate the technical meaning and definition of the word famine, which I didn’t use ) There are enough Israelis who confirm this , and they’re hardly antisemitic.
> You’re really saying that there is no starvation , and plenty to eat in Gaza ?
I'm saying there are varying degrees of food insecurity but not to the levels one would typically call famine/starvation. I'm saying there is sufficient food availability to prevent starvation/famine, I'm not sure I would neccesarially characterize that as being the same thing as there being "plenty to eat" however.
> Their strategy is and has been for decades to kill as many Palestinians as possible.
This is just obviously false, Israel obviously has the military capability to kill effectively every Palestinian in Gaza, and yet they make significant efforts to prevent civilian casualties there.
It's more accurate to say "as many Palestinians as they thought the US would let them get away with". This is why each new kind of atrocity was first messaged and checked with the US before proceeding. Without cover in the UN and unlimited bombs from the US Israel's actions in Gaza would not have been possible.
Folks may remember when Israel thought they had to cook up a bunch of fancy 3D renders of a "Hamas command center" and do a multi-week propaganda blitz before attacking Al Shifa hospital. Then they eventually realized that the Biden administration didn't care, nor did they care about the lack of evidence for this supposed massive complex [1] after the fact. So they could bomb hospitals with just a generic justification after the fact.
It was the same with every escalation, from murdering UN aid workers to dropping 2,000lb bombs on tents to completely flattening cities they had designated as "safe zones".
Israel would push the envelope a bit, see that their key patron didn't care, and push it further. What was once a line they feared to cross became the new normal.
[1] It turned out to just be a couple hospital rooms that a former Israeli PM admitted they themselves had built.
> It's more accurate to say "as many Palestinians as they thought the US would let them get away with". This is why each new kind of atrocity was first messaged and checked with the US before proceeding. Without cover in the UN and unlimited bombs from the US Israel's actions in Gaza would not have been possible.
Israel makes far more efforts than even the US when it comes to trying to prevent civilian casualties.
> Folks may remember when Israel thought they had to cook up a bunch of fancy 3D renders of a "Hamas command center" and do a multi-week propaganda blitz before attacking Al Shifa hospital. Then they eventually realized that the Biden administration didn't care, nor did they care about the lack of evidence for this supposed massive complex [1] after the fact. So they could bomb hospitals with just a generic justification after the fact.
There's plenty of evidence Hamas used Al Shifa for military purposes, although it's maybe somewhat unclear to what extent exactly. Also from my understanding Israel didn't bomb Al Shifa, they raided it instead.
> It was the same with every escalation, from murdering UN aid workers to dropping 2,000lb bombs on tents to completely flattening cities they had designated as "safe zones".
The entire Gaza strip is a war zone, Israel largely tries to avoid combat operations in the al-Mawasi humanitarian zone but that doesn't mean Hamas has complete immunity there[0].
> [1] It turned out to just be a couple hospital rooms that a former Israeli PM admitted they themselves had built.
Regardless of who built the bunker under the hospital if Hamas uses it for military purposes that makes the hospital a valid military target. I'm not sure how a bunker having been built by Israel decades ago would make a difference in regards to it being a valid military target or not.
> …and yet they make significant efforts to prevent civilian casualties there.
This is just obviously false. All you have to do is look at how many children they’ve killed. Those aren’t the number of someone going out of their way to prevent civilian casualties.
lol... bots are up in arm. No one with two brain cells believes this, anymore. The only reason they are not just straight nuking the places (both gaza and west bank), because of external pressures.
They would if they could.
Yes they did. The jews were ready to accept the UN plan in 47. If the palestinains agreed the nakba would have been the end of this conflict. Instead the Palestinians chose governments that attacked israel. Even when Israel left gaza after the second intifada the gazans continued to launch rockets at tel aviv.
In context, of course pro Zionist leaders such as David Ben-Gurion were strongly in favour of a plan that saw a two-thirds majority Arab population pushed back into 43% of the territory, at the time such leaders were advocating acceptance of that plan as their ideal stepping stone to to future territorial expansion over all of Palestine.
Naturally the opposing Arab leaders were against a plan that saw a majority population receive less land, a plan that was being put forward by people openly stating it was a first step to total control of everything.
> Naturally the opposing Arab leaders were against a plan that saw a majority population receive less land, a plan that was being put forward by people openly stating it was a first step to total control of everything.
Keep in mind that there is a state with a Palestinian majority population that came out of the division of the territory under the British Mandate system, that country of course is Jordan.
> It's a shame a better deal could not have been struck for the benefit of all the people with a millennium plus history in the Levant, of all faiths.
I think it's pretty clear that the Arab leaders at the time would never have accepted an independent Jewish state regardless of how fair the land division was.
Most people wouldn't accept a new country being made over their heads within their land. Jewish people had largely not been there since Roman times. That's a long, long time. Would you accept a country being founded in yours for, say, the Roma? I highly doubt it.
> Most people wouldn't accept a new country being made over their heads within their land. Jewish people had largely not been there since Roman times.
There were plenty of Jews living on the land by the time of Israeli independence, land which had largely been acquired by purchases from Arab landowners.
> Would you accept a country being founded in yours for, say, the Roma? I highly doubt it.
Palestine was never a country prior to Israeli independence so that's probably not a realistic comparison either.
Most of the land allocated to the jews was uninhabitable desert. You can count acreage but that doesnt really tell you anything about the value each side received. Im not going to act like the plan was a great deal for palestinians, but it was an choice they had and they spurned it in favor of a never ending war that they can not win.
> The indigenous people of Palestine did not start this conflict.
These arguments are not particularly helpful because you can easily make the case for either side being the indigenous people depending on how far you want to go back in history.
> They did not choose to be colonized by Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe.
At this point the majority of Israelis were born in Israel and hold no other citizenship, so if you're suggesting the Jews all go back to Europe that isn't a realistic expectation, also many Jews were forced out of other middle east countries shortly after the founding of Israel. You can make these same arguments about many countries like the United States or Canada as well as being colonies that pushed out their indigenous people, but these arguments are not going to be particularly productive as nobody is expecting these countries to return all land to their indigenous populations either. By the way these Jews fleeing Eastern Europe prior to Israeli independence were largely purchasing the land from Arab landowners which is arguably better than them haven taken the land by force.
Germany and Japan also got to keep their countries in the end. What guarantees do the Palestinians have that they'll get to keep Gaza and not have it be overrun by Israeli settlers (who are already wreaking havoc in the West Bank)?
> Germany and Japan also got to keep their countries in the end.
Germany was split in two for many years. Ultimately they were able to keep their countries because the occupation forces were successfully able to largely de-radicalize those countries.
> What guarantees do the Palestinians have that they'll get to keep Gaza and not have it be overrun by Israeli settlers (who are already wreaking havoc in the West Bank)?
I suppose that would depend on the surrender agreement and whatever agreements are subsequently put in place, but the settler issue differs significantly between Gaza and the West Bank for various reasons. For example the issue of religious sites is a much bigger issue in the West Bank, there has been little desire amongst Israelis to settle Gaza compared to the West Bank. The security issues in the West Bank tend to also be more problematic due to proximity to major Israeli cities.
> Probably because Israel violated the ceasefire earlier this year (that was a sham from the beginning) that lasted from January to March. The first phase of the ceasefire saw an exchange of hostages, but then the Israelis refused to move on to the second phase and broke the ceasefire by bombing Gaza in the middle of the night, killing over 400 Palestinians in one day, including over 200 children.
Israel has been rather consistent that a permanent ceasefire will only happen when Hamas effectively surrenders and gives up power. Hamas had also refused to continue releasing hostages which effectively ended the ceasefire(as the terms of the second phase were never finalized).
> Not to mention the fact that Israel just killed a top Hamas negotiator in Doha, Qatar only a few weeks ago. [1] How can you negotiate with someone who just killed your negotiator?
I suppose when attempting to negotiate the surrender of Hamas if the negotiators refuse to surrender after having clearly lost a war they started then eliminating the current negotiators may result in their replacements being more likely to capitulate. That seemed to work out with Hezbollah at least.
>I suppose when attempting to negotiate the surrender of Hamas if the negotiators refuse to surrender after having clearly lost a war they started then eliminating the current negotiators may result in their replacements being more likely to capitulate.
So how exactly do you negotiate with genocidal terrorists that refuse to surrender despite having clearly lost a war? There certainly isn't an easy solution here.
> The point is that surrender is something that has to be negociated.
It actually doesn't have to be negotiated, one side can simply make a demand for surrender with their terms and then apply military pressure until capitulation. This is largely what happened with Germany/Japan in WW2.
> By organizing boring meetings with negociators and never killing them.
If it's clear the current negotiators/leaders will never surrender then there is arguably no benefit in keeping those particular negotiators/leaders alive. Once an organizations leadership tree is wiped out a few levels deep there's a decent chance you will get negotiators/leaders that will eventually capitulate to the demands(i.e. like what happened with Hezbollah).
> Well Israel's current solution is to impose famine and genocide on the civilian population.
There is no credible evidence that there is famine or genocide occurring in Gaza. Obviously the situation in Gaza is bad but that's to be expected for a war.
> This thread is literally about an article in which it is outlined that there is indeed a famine in Gaza.
It's not credible however[0]. There have been many claims without appropriate evidence for a while[1] and those involved tend to be antisemitic individuals interested only in pushing a specific narrative regardless of the facts on the ground.
As opposed to the first source you posted which is the text of a sky news interview with Hillel Neuer
From wiki
"Neuer was selected as one of the "top 100 most influential Jewish people in the world" by Israeli newspaper Maariv,[9] and by the Algemeiner Journal in 2017. He is an outspoken defender of Israel[10][11] and critic of the UN's human rights councils' actions.[12]"
So he's not pushing a pro-Israel view? How can you dismiss one source with claims of bias by providing a source that is also bias but of the opposing view?
I want to point out that I don't think sources should be ignored merely due to bias. You do though so I await your defense
I don't think I ever claimed his view was neutral. Groups on both sides putting out analysis papers will likely have some degree of bias.
> How can you dismiss one source with claims of bias by providing a source that is also bias but of the opposing view?
I mostly consider them unreliable because they have a history of putting out reports that push a narrative that simply isn't in line with reality and tend to have major methodological issues. They also have a history of putting out wildly inaccurate future projections.
> I want to point out that I don't think sources should be ignored merely due to bias. You do though so I await your defense
There's two aspects, one is the history of methodologically problematic analysis put out by these organization like those involved in the IPC report along with other UN organizations.
The other is that individuals involved in the reports tend to hold extremist viewpoints that point to a clear motivation for pushing narratives regardless of the reality on the ground.
UN officials in particular have a rather common habit of straight up lying about facts(and even what their own UN reports say in regards to starvation risk) and when caught they simply try and justify their lies[0] because those lies supposedly help their cause.
The most detailed responses/rebuttals to these IPC reports would generally be reports that COGAT is involved in producing[1][2]. While COGAT is arguably biased they do put out sufficient data/references for one to validate their analysis, groups like UN Watch do likely source from these reports. Keep in mind there's not many organizations that have access to data on the ground, COGAT likely has the most complete view while humanitarian organizations likely only have data specific to their own operations. By cherry picking data(often non-public data), ignoring counterfactual data and largely excluding COGAT data the IPC report authors can paint a false narrative more easily.
Claims of famine citing the UN/IPC are normally appeals to authority, whose convincingness depends on the credibility of the authority.
The UNWatch article isn't that - you can easy verify their points yourself. I.e. by IPC's own definition and Hamas' own casualty data, we're about three orders of magnitude short of meeting one of the requirements of a famine. IPC is just ignoring their own definition and declaring a famine anyway.
That wasn't me. I would say the question of how often UN officials lie is rather moot. If it follows from plain facts and basic math that the famine claim is false, we don't really need to argue about the credibility of those making the claims.
> If Israel believes they are genocidal terrorists that won't surrender why are they even negotiating?
One reason would be to try and get back as many hostages as possible, regardless of whether or not the terrorists surrender.
> You either negotiate or you attack the people you want to negotiate with. Not both
One can still attack an enemy while negotiating with them, I see no reason one would have to pick one option over the other.
It's not at all uncommon to negotiate with ones enemies while you attack them(including trying to kill them). If Israel explicitly gave the enemy representatives they were negotiating with diplomatic immunity then one might have a better argument against attacking those with immunity, but that was AFAIU not the case here.
> Killing 736 Israeli civilians, 79 foreign nationals, and 379 Israeli military and security personnel, and kidnapping an additional 250 civilians is not, by any fathomable definition, genocide. It is a war crime for sure, but it's not genocide.
I think the evidence is quite overwhelming that Hamas had clear genocidal intent, even if they did not have the means to accomplish that intent.
Something I try to explain to people is that HAMAS tries to kill civilians, but fails at achieving their goals, meanwhile Israel tries to avoid killing civilians, but fails to achieve that goal.
One of these is better than the other.
Weirdly, many people disagree over which one that is.
> How could one cause a famine accidentally, without intent to murder civilians?
There isn't credible evidence of a famine in Gaza. I'm not saying things are great(it is a war zone after all), but they certainly haven't gotten that bad. Look at pictures of Palestinians on the street in Gaza and compare them to pictures of people in countries where there is actual famine, they look nothing alike.
Maybe so. Genocidal intent is not genocide, by any stretch of the imagination. The shooter at the UK synagogue would love to be able to kill every last Jewish person in the world. That doesn't mean he committed genocide when he killed those 2 people and injured 4 others.
> And this didn't start in 2023. Gaza has been under Israeli blockade for decades.
The blockade was also imposed by Egypt[0] and Hamas certainly provided no shortage of security related justifications for the blockade. Unfortunately those security concerns turned out to be accurate[1].
> In February 2020, former Mossad Director Yossi Cohen and Israeli general Herzi Halevi, under Netanyahu's orders, went to Qatar to plead Qatari officials to continue the payments for Hamas.[8] Later, in September 2023, David Barnea, the Director of Mossad since 2021, went to Qatar to meet Qatari officials to discuss about the payments for Hamas.[10][44]
(...)
> Israeli intelligence officials believe that the money had a role in the success of 2023 Hamas-led attack.[10]
It wasn't just him, all the governments for the last decade tried to keep the peace while enforcing the blockage but allowing cash for salaries, humanitarian aid etc which made Gaza flourish with hotels, restaurants, beach resorts and high end shopping (see the videos). All no longer :(
A few months prior to October 7th, Natenyahu had allowed the highest number of work visas for Gazans to work in Israel proper. They genuinely thought economic prosperity would bring an slowdown and eventual end to terrorism. Now try and find Israelis who support the idea of 10s of 1000s Palestinians cruising the borders for work each day - thanks to Oct 7th.
Doesn't quite fit the narrative you want to portray, does it?
Not OP, but there were many videos posted, (especially early on in this conflict,) depicting very nice neighborhoods and commercial districts in Gaza (some of which were in the process of being destroyed or abandoned).
> Unfortunately Netanyahu actively encouraged Qatar to send cash to Hamas.
Yeah, Benjamin Netanyahu certainly got complacent thinking he could keep a genocidal terrorist group like Hamas under control with that strategy. Qatar and their support for terrorists has long been a problem as well.
There tends to be a lot more nuance[0] when it comes to polling results like these, the reality is that opinions amongst Israelis vary quite a lot. There are also a lot of problems with organizations like the UN historically wildly misrepresenting the food situation[1] which are likely to make Israelis question the accuracy of many of these starvation reports, especially from organizations that have historically made many highly inaccurate claims. UN backed IPC reports like those cited in the CNN article likewise have serious credibility issues as well[2], additionally there are extremely biased individuals like Michael Fakhri(the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food) cited in the CNN article that even publish comic books with some rather overt antisemitic tropes[3].
This equivocation is absurd. Literally every international aid organization is saying the same thing - and even a few Israeli ones are now recognizing the genocide in Gaza. The fact that Israel, far from sending "large amounts of aid", has, in fact, systematically blocked aid to Gaza was recognized even by the US government. The US even resorted to building a pier to send their own aid in.
Edit: looking at the claims more specifically, this one is particularly easy to debunk:
> even publish comic books with some rather overt antisemitic trope
The supposed "antisemitic trope" is an image of a person holding a cracked globe. The blog post implies that this is supposed to be an image representing the antisemitic "masters of the world" trope. In fact, the image represents the UN rapporteur himself looking at how the lack of international reaction to Israel's crimes has left a crack in the UN-led rules-based world order.
Ok, find a single international humanitarian organization active in Gaza that believes that Gazans are treated well. Or even a single one active in Gaza that is not saying that a blatant genocide is taking place.
And the "tentacles" are the heads of a hydra labeled "Imperialism", "Racism", "Extractivism", "Capitalism", "Patriarchy". Not sure how much clearer the imagery could get, and which part of this is antisemitic.
> Or even a single one active in Gaza that is not saying that a blatant genocide is taking place.
World Central Kitchen is active in Gaza and last I checked makes no claim of there being a genocide in Gaza.
> And the "tentacles" are the heads of a hydra labeled "Imperialism", "Racism", "Extractivism", "Capitalism", "Patriarchy".
What seems to be implied here is that these are the means in which the Jews control the world. Casting Israelis/Jews as demonic figures in general is also a common antisemitic trope.
> Not sure how much clearer the imagery could get, and which part of this is antisemitic.
The implied world domination part as well as the demonic imagery.
> World Central Kitchen is active in Gaza and last I checked makes no claim of there being a genocide in Gaza.
They don't talk about genocide, true, but they do talk about the famine they're seeing and the extreme difficulty of getting humanitarian aid into Gaza - causing them to have almost ceased food delivery at the beginning of this year, before finding ingenious new ways of cooking and delivering supplies.
It's also funny to pick an organization which has suffered one of the most clear and well documented assassinations of aid workers by Israeli forces, the World Central Kitchen attack in 2024. This was one of the cases that even the IDF couldn't invent a justification for (the convoy they killed had been coordinating constantly with them, they had followed the root exactly, etc). They called it a regrettable error, of course.
> What seems to be implied here is that these are the means in which the Jews control the world. Casting Israelis/Jews as demonic figures in general is also a common antisemitic trope.
The comic is quite explicit, we don't have to look for implicit innuendo. It says that these forces (imperialism, capitalism, etc) are the main reasons for food insecurity everywhere this happens in the world, and Gaza is just one example. While Israel, backed by the USA, is the aggressor in the case of Gaza, the same forces (again, meaning imperialist tendencies, not some conspiracy of "evil Jews") behind other acts of aggression by other states in other places impacted by famine.
> They don't talk about genocide, true, but they do talk about the famine they're seeing and the extreme difficulty of getting humanitarian aid into Gaza - causing them to have almost ceased food delivery at the beginning of this year, before finding ingenious new ways of cooking and delivering supplies.
It's much less an issue of getting aid into Gaza and much more an issue of distribution, with most aid being intercepted before reaching the intended destination[3]. Even then I've yet to see any credible evidence that there is a famine, although there are certainly various degrees of food insecurity.
> It's also funny to pick an organization which has suffered one of the most clear and well documented assassinations of aid workers by Israeli forces, the World Central Kitchen attack in 2024. This was one of the cases that even the IDF couldn't invent a justification for (the convoy they killed had been coordinating constantly with them, they had followed the root exactly, etc). They called it a regrettable error, of course.
It's a war, targeting mistakes happen, the IDF generally makes an effort to investigate when these sort of things happen. It quite clearly wasn't a case of the IDF intentionally targeting aid workers. There are simply no incentives or evidence for the IDF to have a policy of deliberately targeting WCK aid workers. Friendly fire incidents where IDF soldiers have been killed have been somewhat common in Gaza in general so it certainly doesn't seem to be improbable that a targeting mistake like this could happen by accident.
> The comic is quite explicit, we don't have to look for implicit innuendo.
Lets go through these and see if they match up with antisemetic tropes as well.
> imperialism
So here we have the "world imperialism"[0] antisemetic trope.
> capitalism
Here we have the "Jewish Capitalism"[1] antisemetic trope.
we even have a "Patriarchy"[2] trope as well
Seems pretty clear to me what the author is doing here.
> While Israel, backed by the USA, is the aggressor in the case of Gaza, the same forces (again, meaning imperialist tendencies, not some conspiracy of "evil Jews") behind other acts of aggression by other states in other places impacted by famine.
This war was started by Hamas on October 7th, it's quite clear they are the aggressor here.
> It's much less an issue of getting aid into Gaza and much more an issue of distribution
The WCK that you cited is very clear on this: the problem is getting aid into Gaza, not distributing it. They had to close their kitchens at the beginning of the year because they just couldn't get any supplies into the territory, because Israel wouldn't allow them - especially fuel. They found creative solutions in the meantime.
> Even then I've yet to see any credible evidence that there is a famine, although there are certainly various degrees of food insecurity.
Again, the org you yourself cited has many examples.
> It quite clearly wasn't a case of the IDF intentionally targeting aid workers.
It quite clearly was. The WCK said plain as day that it was. It wasn't the first or the last either - the IDF has killed more international aid workers than even the Russian barbarians have in Ukraine. When you systematically make such "targeting mistakes" over and over again, at some point the deliberate targeting becomes obvious.
> [ going one by one]
Decrying the ills of imperialism and capitalism and patriarchy is not antisemitic. Sure, the nazis used these crisicisms to refer to Jewish people. But the Indians also used them to refer to their British colonizers, the Romanians used them to refer to the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians, the Afghani and the Nicaraguans used them to refer to the USA etc. Stating that imperialism and capitalism and colonialism are the cause of much suffering in this world is not antisemitic, unless you associate it with other antisemitic imagery. Pointing out that Israel is an imperialist country that is trying to conquer (pieces of) its neighbors and opressing the Palestinian people, sometimes for patriarchal/religious reasons, sometimes for capitalist interests, is not antisemitic.
> This war was started by Hamas on October 7th, it's quite clear they are the aggressor here.
This war started when the state of Israel was formed and kicked out much of the local Palestinian population (mostly Muslims, but also some Christians and even Jewish Palestinians). Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been under Israeli occupation for some 70+ years. October 7th was just one atrocity, from a long series of atrocities, on both sides, that have punctuated this war. But the aggressor in a war doesn't change just because of one attack by the defender, even when that attack is a war crime. If Ukraine launches a terrorist bombing in Moscow tomorrow killing 700 civillians, that war crime will not change the fact that Russia is the aggressor in that war.
> The WCK that you cited is very clear on this: the problem is getting aid into Gaza, not distributing it.
I'm referring to the current situation, I'm not disputing that there have been times where aid was not allowed in, however at those times there was generally sufficient stockpiles available.
> Again, the org you yourself cited has many examples.
Examples of food insecurity, sure, but not to the level of famine.
> The WCK said plain as day that it was.
How would the WCK alone be able to make that sort of determination? Only those with direct access to the targeting decision making process would be able to with any reasonable degree of certainty be able to determine if the WCK incident was a genuine mistake vs an intentional attack. The details the IDF provided regarding how the mistake was made certainly indicate it being a mistake is plausible IMO.
> When you systematically make such "targeting mistakes" over and over again, at some point the deliberate targeting becomes obvious.
So when the IDF systematically has friendly fire issues where their own soldiers get killed does that mean they are deliberately targeting their own soldiers by that logic?
> Decrying the ills of imperialism and capitalism and patriarchy is not antisemitic. Sure, the nazis used these crisicisms to refer to Jewish people. But the Indians also used them to refer to their British colonizers, the Romanians used them to refer to the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians, the Afghani and the Nicaraguans used them to refer to the USA etc. Stating that imperialism and capitalism and colonialism are the cause of much suffering in this world is not antisemitic, unless you associate it with other antisemitic imagery.
You seem to agree that these are in fact historically documented antisemitic tropes(i.e. used by the Nazis), you appear to be saying their use is justified...that's a rather different argument.
> Pointing out that Israel is an imperialist country that is trying to conquer (pieces of) its neighbors and opressing the Palestinian people, sometimes for patriarchal/religious reasons, sometimes for capitalist interests, is not antisemitic.
One can easily make an argument that Israel's formation was anti-imperialist because its independence was an act of breaking away from an imperialist power(the British). I would agree that is a bit of an oversimplification. This particular conflict has a number of elements to it that are somewhat unique which make these sort of broad categorizations somewhat misleading.
> This war started when the state of Israel was formed and kicked out much of the local Palestinian population (mostly Muslims, but also some Christians and even Jewish Palestinians).
That's not exactly accurate IMO, the Arab-Israeli War started when the British Mandate ended and the Arab states attacked[0].
> Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been under Israeli occupation for some 70+ years.
This is simply factually inaccurate, Gaza has not been occupied by Israel for 70+ years, you seem to forget that it was occupied by Egypt[1] until 1967. The West Bank was annexed/occupied by Jordan until 1967 as well[2]. So in reality this occupation by Israel of Gaza and the West Bank has only been happening for around 58 years. Most Palestinians say the occupation has occurred for 70+ years because they consider all of Israel proper to be an occupation(as they largely reject Israel's right to exist outright).
> October 7th was just one atrocity, from a long series of atrocities, on both sides, that have punctuated this war.
This is certainly a conflict where one can easily blame either side depending on at what point in time you start.
> But the aggressor in a war doesn't change just because of one attack by the defender, even when that attack is a war crime. If Ukraine launches a terrorist bombing in Moscow tomorrow killing 700 civillians, that war crime will not change the fact that Russia is the aggressor in that war.
There's no clear original aggressor here as it largely depends on how far you look back in history, there's been so much back and forth fighting that's it's hard to pin the blame on either side for starting the conflict due to the lack of clearly defined national boarders being recognized by both sides as was the case with Ukraine and Russia.
> You seem to agree that these are in fact historically documented antisemitic tropes(i.e. used by the Nazis), you appear to be saying their use is justified...that's a rather different argument.
No, I'm saying that the nazis also ate apples, but that doesn't mean eating apples is antisemitic. Just because the nazis accused the Jewish people of being the root of all evil doesn't mean that saying evil is bad is antisemitic, if you're not accusing the Jewish people of being the root of this evil. Yes, even if you're accusing a particular group of Jewish people, such as the Israeli state, of doing this.
> There's no clear original aggressor here as it largely depends on how far you look back in history
This is actually very simple. The historic region of Palestine has been inhabited by more or less the same people ever since Biblical times. It was conquered a few times by various empires, and a large part of the population has converted to various religions (from pre-Biblical religions to Judaism, to Christianity, to Islam). The languages they speak have changed various times, and of course the genetic makeup of the population has not been constant, especially given it's a relatively common trade route.
Then, starting with the 1930s or so, a colonization effort by an initially fringe group of Jewish zealots, the Zionist movement; they became much more mainstream after the horrors of the Holocaust. This colonization effort culminated with the proclamation of the state of Israel as a "Jewish and Democratic" state in 1948, led mostly by the colonists who started to expel the local population from the region, with the assent of the British Empire, the USA , and even the USSR (and other European powers). This is the beginning point of the current conflict. Going back further in history is completely absurd: the Palestinians of today are descendants of the ancient Jewish people, of ancient Romans, of ancient Arabic tribes and so on - just as much if not more so than the Jewish people "returning home".
> This is actually very simple. The historic region of Palestine has been inhabited by more or less the same people ever since Biblical times. It was conquered a few times by various empires, and a large part of the population has converted to various religions (from pre-Biblical religions to Judaism, to Christianity, to Islam). The languages they speak have changed various times, and of course the genetic makeup of the population has not been constant, especially given it's a relatively common trade route.
There have been many rather significant demographic shifts since biblical times[0] including migration waves of Egyptians during the Ottoman period. The genetic makeup of the population changing would be something one would expect to result from things like population movements into and out of the region, so I'm not sure what you mean by "The historic region of Palestine has been inhabited by more or less the same people ever since Biblical times." if there have been significant changes since Biblical times.
> Then, starting with the 1930s or so, a colonization effort by an initially fringe group of Jewish zealots, the Zionist movement; they became much more mainstream after the horrors of the Holocaust.
That didn't just start in the 1930s[1].
> This colonization effort culminated with the proclamation of the state of Israel as a "Jewish and Democratic" state in 1948, led mostly by the colonists who started to expel the local population from the region, with the assent of the British Empire, the USA , and even the USSR (and other European powers). This is the beginning point of the current conflict. Going back further in history is completely absurd: the Palestinians of today are descendants of the ancient Jewish people, of ancient Romans, of ancient Arabic tribes and so on - just as much if not more so than the Jewish people "returning home".
The origins of the current conflict arguably started in the 1800s, however Jews occupied the region prior to that period as well in smaller numbers.
Regardless of the history most Israelis living in Israel were born in Israel and hold no other citizenship so one can't really expect them to leave their country at this point.
The ICC has found a significant risk of genocide more than a year ago, based on solid legal documents. People with on the ground experience have been saying it even longer. Holocaust scholars have been looking at the evidence and noticing the patterns. It's ridiculous to claim that it only started being a "legitimate genocide" two weeks ago.
> The ICC has found a significant risk of genocide more than a year ago
Both the court and the finding described are inaccurate: it was the ICJ, not the ICC, and it didn't find a significant risk of genocide (it found that Palestinians plausibly had rights under the Genocide Convention, South Africa had the legal right to bring a case to vindicate those rights, and there was a risk of harm in the period of adjudication of those rights were provisional measures not adopted.)
But what you're saying undersells the decision. They very explicitly found that there is credible evidence of a risk of genocide, and ordered Israel to cease their military operations entirely until the court finishes its investigation. They reviewed numerous indications of genocidal intent from public speeches by President Hertz, ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich, and various members of the Knesset, in addition to various facts about the way the actual operations are carried out.
Here is their specific finding [0]:
> In light of the considerations set out above, the Court considers that there is a real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice to the plausible rights invoked by South Africa [emp. mine], as specified by the Court.
You're treating the "real and imminent risk" finding as being comparable to an injunction, which weighs whether the plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits of the cafe. To my knowledge, the ICJ doesn't do that.
Prejudice to the rights to be protected against genocide doesn’t mean genocide, it can mean making it impossible to litigate the potential violations because of destruction of evidence and witnesses, with or without genocide.
The ICJ decision is important, but it being sold as a ruling on the likelihood of an ultimate genocide finding is inaccurate.
But now, dear reader, just do as instructed and visit the links [0] and [1]. The comic imagery is not antisemitic. But a claim here to the contrary, and the fact that we don't have infinite time to check claims, might have fooled you, as it very nearly fooled me. Fortunately, I clicked and read by myself.
> But now, dear reader, just do as instructed and visit the links [0] and [1]. The comic imagery is not antisemitic. But a claim here to the contrary, and the fact that we don't have infinite time to check claims, might have fooled you, as it very nearly fooled me. Fortunately, I clicked and read by myself.
I posted the link because it's incredibly obvious that these are variations of classic antisemetic tropes, I'm really not sure how one could argue otherwise.
You were refuted in a sibling post. I am not sure what is unclear to you in that situation. Can you screenshot what you think is at fault? Because if it is that subtle, it isn't working.
I think antisemitism is becoming a very elastic concept to neuter any criticism. And, by the way, the Palestinians are a semitic people too. So it should be antijudaism.
> You were refuted in a sibling post. I am not sure what is unclear to you in that situation. Can you screenshot what you think is at fault? Because if it is that subtle, it isn't working.
If you don't recognize the obvious antisemitic tropes based on what I've already shown I don't think further evidence would change your mind.
> I think antisemitism is becoming a very elastic concept to neuter any criticism.
I'm sure there are some cases where that happens, but I don't think this case would qualify as it's far too overt.
> And, by the way, the Palestinians are a semitic people too. So it should be antijudaism.
You're now going as far as trying to redefine the normal accepted definition of antisemitism, this seems to me to just be another attempt at downplaying antisemitism for whatever reason.
I think it's fairly unlikely that these devices are being shipped to normal hardware customers as doing so would likely risk exposing the operation. These sort of operations appear to exploit the fact that terrorist organizations themselves are forced to covertly procure hardware without going through typical supply chain channels.
> At least one of the suppositions I saw this last year, was that Ukraine was likely to be slapped on the hands for using consumer shipping for their military drone deployments. Because presumably, the majority of countries will not take lightly the fact that any given consumer shipping could now contain military equipment that could potentially be deployed against them, and that it is in the interest of every single country to react with prejudice to the mixing of consumer and military shipments.
There is a rather wide range of technologies/services that have both military and civilian use cases, drones being the obvious example of dual use hardware and shipping/logistics being an obvious example of a dual use service. Plenty of civilian shipping companies provide services to military customers around the world. I think it's pretty hard to argue that a highly targeted attack using drones transported by enemy civilian logistics is unethical simply because civilian logistics was used as part of the operation.
> An agent of the Israeli state has now admitted that since at least 2006 (so the better part of a quarter of a century), they have been planting bombs in consumer-grade electronics and subsequently using them to selectively blow people up in civilian places. How this is not a) worldwide news, and b) taken as an admission of overt terrorist activity, is utterly baffling. Can you imagine the reaction if an ex-NSA, ex-CIA, ex-MI7, or ex-MSS operative admitted that they had been planting explosives in consumer grade electronics?! There would be an international uproar.
That's a rather disingenuous way to frame an operation which was arguably the most precise coordinated assassination operation against a terrorist organization in history. Virtually all individuals killed/injured by the operation were members of the terrorist organizations being targeted with only a tiny amount of civilian casualties(virtually all civilian casualties were family members of the terrorists that happened to pick up the devices instead of the intended targets AFAIU). These devices appear to have been exclusively sold to the terrorists and never distributed to normal customers. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that any of these devices ended up being sold to normal non-terrorist customers.
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