Israel to World: "Suck It."

REMEMBER THE ALAMO!

I still think there's a difference between going after militants then going after people sitting in a cafe.

Sure, there's a difference. A huge one. But when "going after militants" repeatedly results in the death or dislocation of basically innocent bystanders -- as innocent as the folks in those cafes -- it becomes a little harder to justify, morally speaking. And I stick with my point, above, which is that it's really difficult to start applying general consequences to the actions of individual, non- representative groups, whereas it's a lot easier to do so for the regimented military of a sovereign nation. I.e., you can't say that one side attacks the other, or vice versa, because in the case of Palestine there is no "other" -- just a mass of individuals without a state, without a leader, etc.

My point about "suck it" was directed at your interpretation of what Israel cutting off Arafat means. I'm saying your choice of terminology reveals an obvious bias towards the situation.

In one sense yes, but in one sense, no: I was originally going to use "fuck it," but decided to try and keep the boards a little cleaner. Maybe I should have stuck with "fuck," because what's going through Sharon or his coalition's heads can't really be that far from throwing up their hands and saying, "Fuck it -- we give up on talking to you." That's quite clearly the message, and I think it can describes that way even if you believe Israel is entirely justified in doing this.

[W]hat Israel contends is that Arafat was never doing all he could.

Define "could." Seriously. Because this is what I'm getting at above. It's undeniable that Arafat physically and politically could have tried more. But my point is that he could have done so without gradually abandoning his own clout and losing support to groups like Hamas -- which would, in the long term, have been a lot worse of a situation if peace were the end goal. He essentially had to walk a very fine line between making progress with Israel and pissing off militants in Palestine -- and sure, it's open to debate whether he walked that line close enough, but I'm just saying we should keep in mind that he was never really in a position to utterly subdue the entire Palestinian populace.

I don't believe the South African analogy is particular fair because it fails to acknowledge how Israel has been forced to become a military state due to constant attacks on its existence by neighboring Arab states.

I can't claim to be an expert on this history, but I think you'll find that black Africans did their fair share of attacking in colonial South Africa. Apartheid didn't stem simply from racism, but partly from the same thinking that seems to be in operation in the mid-East -- that a particular group of people pose a danger of rebellion or violence and thus must be pre-emptively subdued. I mean, look at your statement above: Israel becomes militaristic because of attacks by neighboring Arab states. The only sense in which this justifies their attitude toward Palestine is that Palestinians are also Arabs, and are thus ideologically disposed to be hostile toward Israel. From there it just becomes a matter of "We will segregate and suppress Arabs as a whole," which, however logical it may be, doesn't strike me as morally tenable. It's not just "militants" who are having their lands seized or their roads blocked in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip -- it's the vast majority of Arabs within greater Israel, including many who were expelled from Israel proper and are not allowed to return, based not on their activities but on their potential activities. Would a better analogy be the US's internment of Japanese during WWII?

I think it is a large element in the Israeli mindset of trying to provide safety first. I think where we also disagree is in gauge of how much terrorism Israel is going to have to suck up, in order to get the peace process back on track.

"Safety first" may trump a lot of other concerns, but for me -- and this may be personal -- it doesn't trump basic human rights. The internment apparently struck people as a perfectly reasonable safety measure at the time, but I hope we'd all agree that even if some of those interned would have been more loyal to Japan than the US, the greater cost wasn't worth it. As far as sucking up, well, someone has to do some sucking up here, and thus far it's Palestinians who are sucking up being tenth-class citizens of the nation they ostensibly live in, plus progressive settlement. Put another way: given the choice to be an Israeli citizen or Palestinian, wouldn't you choose to be Israeli? And doesn't that hint that the threat of death by terrorism is significantly less onerous than the situation of the average Palestinian?

From the AP: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who negotiated interim peace deals with Arafat, said he told Sharon that the decision to shun the Palestinian Authority was short-sighted. "I asked him, 'Suppose Arafat disappears, what will happen then?'" Peres told the Yediot Ahronot daily in an interview published Friday. "If we chase Arafat out of here, we will get into problems with the Arab world, and Egypt and Jordan will sever ties with us."

The question, which is moral and not logistical: Israel undertakes massive sweep in the West Bank, arresting several, killing several Palestinian policemen in armed confrontation. What do we think, morally, about a sovereign nation arresting and imposing its own justice system on (leave alone assassinating) individuals who don't likewise enjoy the full rights of citizenry in that nation? I stress that this is not specific or logistical, but a general moral question.

If Arafat cannot offer any concessions, as in the Camp David talks, without pissing off the militants, then what does that say about the people of Palestine?

You're absolutely right -- it says a whole lot of them consider Israel's very presence to be an affront (and I think there's a reasonable case to be made in this regard), and it says that a whole lot of them are stuck enough on this point that they're not content to co-exist. Absolutely. The question is how this situation -- which isn't going to be changed simply by telling them they're wrong -- would best be handled. Having normalized relations with a figure like Arafat seems the best available way to steer things in a less oppositional direction; Arafat has as much clout in Palestine as any single figure could reasonably be expected to have, he's somewhat beholden to appease the requests of the West, and his line is soft enough that organizations like Hamas are outright opposed to him. I think what I'm saying is that if you're dealing with a populace that's largely hostile to you, the logical route to changing this is to deal with the least hostile figure that populace can deliver, right?

Also, I think Israel would contend that Arafat should be pissing off militants.

This is where I think you're ignoring the point I tried to make above. For Arafat to have pissed of militants would have meant weakening of his support, and quite possibly his assassination. This would leave us with practically nothing but the very militants you're talking about, not even a weak check on those militants -- plus they would be, as you say pissed off. Surely this was part of Arafat's thinking -- that he could do more good alive and in power than otherwise. You're saying that Arafat should have served as a tool to certain ends, but what if too strenuous use would only have broken the tool?

The quote you provide is yet another example of this: no Palestinian figure could accumulate any support or maintain any power without such posturing.

Pre-emptive? If I can't use the cause and effect argument then neither should you. I could just as easily state that Israel is there because of terrorism. There also seems to be an overlooking of the Six Day War.

Here's where I'm really bothered, because you're using a sort of Palestinian Queen Bee reasoning that's simply not applicable. A child born in Palestine today is born into a situation where his home is occupied and open to seizure, his movements are curtailed, etc. That child did not fight in the Six Day War. Thus any treatment of that child that is in any way different from that of an Israeli child is essentially pre-emptive suppression -- pre-emptive in that the suppression is contingent on the idea that this child may be hostile toward Israel. I'm not saying it's pre-emptive in the sense that "Israel started it" -- just that their military oversight of the Palestinian populace is not based on every single Palestinian having done something to warrant it. Hence the internment analogy: it's not that they've individually done something, just that the entire population is viewed as a threat and suppressed accordingly.

For what its worth, Arabs (or Muslims might be more fitting) are citizens in Israel. They receive the same rights, and can vote.

"They receive the same rights" is the most laughable thing I've ever heard in my life. To name one thing: Jewish-Only Settlements.

I think the first priority of a government is to protect its citizens.

C'mon -- certainly some moral boundary must be put on this. Citizens of the US would theoretically be much safer if we just killed everyone who was ever involved in a violent crime, but would you find this morally defensible? We'd theoretically be safer if we could just nuke the entire eastern hemisphere, but surely there's the quibbling little concern of destroying half of the world's population to think about.

Way, way one sided. Palestinians = victims. Israel = opressors. Come on, you know it isn't that simple.

I'm sorry, but at this point, it basically is. The only "oppression" Palestinians have been able to visit on Israel is the fear of possible terrorist attack, which is not so much "oppression" as just plain "threat." In turn, even the most peace-loving Palestinian lives under a similar threat of death-by-reprisal (see that toddler, above), plus a systematic removal of rights, which is precisely what "oppression" means.

Nah, more so because Israel has more of a Western lean i.e. its a capitalist Democracy.

I'm not sure how you reconcile this with your contention, above, that Palestinians are Israeli citizens who enjoy all the rights and privileges of any other Israeli citizens. "They vote," you say ... but here you say that Israelis enjoy democracy and Palestinians don't.

Still, you make it seem as if Israel does not want to recoginize Palestine as a state.

Well, define "want." They don't want to -- something like 56% of Israelis think it's either a good or a necessary or an unavoidable idea, but it still remains a concession that's being made. And, as I said above, I understand why. But it's the same as the suicide bombers -- I understand the motivation, I just don't think it's morally tenable.

Um.. correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this thread about the modern state of Israel? (kinda post 1945?)

Secondly, i never asked anyone to shut up about the holocaust. The link i posted above was for the discussion of a book called the Holocaust and Collective Memory by Peter Novick (published by Fourth Estate), in which he examines the history of the way the Holocaust has been cited by Israel and american Jewish organisations since 1945. it's interesting in the sense that it shows there's always been a contemporary political agenda to using the holocaust as a moral imperative - like you do - and that until the 1960s, the holocaust was played down, and manifestly NOT pushed as central to the "jewish character" / justification for Israeli military action.

I should have said all this when i originally posted, but I assumed people would follow the link I pasted in.

And also that questioning the logic of it as a moral imperative that justifies the military occupation of parts of the west bank is really just building a straw man and setting it alight, in a pointless and potentially offensive way.

What I'm saying applies more to the US industry of holocaust rememberance that -sadly- all seems ultimately to say "never again will we allow Jews to be massacred by Nazis in central europe in 1945" without looking at the mechanics of genocide elsewhere or the current problems of the middle east, but still generating tacit emotional support for Israel to act however it chooses. So sorry if what i said caused any offence.

The interesting thing about the Holocaust is that even if we do take it as central to the Jewish experience and character, and not just posturing or an attempt at justification, it's a rather unpretty argument, and a bit of another "suck it": the subtext is that Jews have historically been so threatened that they now have no qualms about steamrolling anyone who stands in their way. Certainly that's not an admirable thing?

Also -- and I tried to make this point when we did the "State of Israel: Classic or Dud" thread, I still don't understand how anyone justifies the necessity of a sovereign state of Israel. Without getting into the "what was worse than the Holocaust" argument, which is totally irrelevant, we can find countless other diasporas who have historically been massacred, enslaved, and scattered from their "homelands" in a similar fashion, but it tends to be agreed that we should strive to live pluralistically, not dislocate masses of people simple to return people to ethnically homogenous or ethnically restricted "homelands."

Out of curiousity, bnw, how do you feel about the violent seizure of white-owner farms in Zimbabwe?

Alex Fishman is the main commentator on security matters for Israel's largest mass circulation paper, Yediot Achronot, a publication with right-of-center politics. Fishman is known for his excellent contacts in the military. On Sunday, Nov. 25, Fishman issued a prediction based on the recent assassination on Nov. 23 by Israel's security services of the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud. It was featured in a box on the newspaper's front page.

It began, "We again find ourselves preparing with dread for a new mass terrorist attack within the Green Line (Israel's pre-'67 border)." Since Fishman was entirely accurate in this regard, we should mark closely what he wrote next. "Whoever gave a green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line, of the kind perpetrated at the Dolphinarium (discotheque in Tel-Aviv)."

Fishman stated flatly that such an agreement did exist, even if neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas would admit it in public. "It is a fact," he continued, "that, while the security services did accumulate repeated warnings of planned Hamas terrorist attacks within the Green Line, these did not materialize. That cannot be attributed solely to the Shabak's impressive success in intercepting the suicide bombers and their controllers. Rather, the respective leaderships of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas came to the understanding that it would be better not to play into Israel's hands by mass attacks on its population centers."

In other words, Arafat had managed to convince Hamas to curb its suicide bombers. This understanding was shattered by the assassination of Abu Hunud. "Whoever decided upon the liquidation of Abu Hunud," Fishman continued, "knew in advance that that would be the price. The subject was extensively discussed both by Israel's military echelon and its political one, before it was decided to carry out the liquidation. Now, the security bodies assume that Hamas will embark on a concerted effort to carry out suicide bombings, and preparations are made accordingly."

HUGE difference: my complaint about Israel was that it was created specifically as a homeland for people of a certain ethnic heritage, as dictated by the completely deplorable, imperialist, anti-pluralistic line of thinking that various sorts of people should separate themselves into self-determining "homelands" (even if this means massive dislocation and reduction of self- determination for someone else). This is somewhat different from the people of an existing land adopting Islamic law, which is woefully theocratic but in the end not so different a concept from our own religiously-inflected laws in the US. In those cases Muslims already constitute the dominant portion of a region, whether we like it or not. But to create a nation specifically so that one group can be dominant within it? The subtext is that people have some sort of right to be able to go to a country in which they are a part of the ethnic majority (and that said country should be situated wherever they ethnically "come from," regardless of whether someone else has arrived there in the meantime). We have to reject that logic. To not reject that logic is to doom the very idea of pluralistic societies, and to call for exactly the sort of violence we see in the area right now.

You might recall, in that thread, that I ragged on Liberia for the same reason as Israel. I rejected the idea that Jews deserved as self- determining Israeli homeland for the same reasons I rejected the idea that Germans deserved a self-determining Aryan Fatherland, just like I'd have rejected any suggestion that all of the black people in the 1870's US should have been shipped over to Liberia or given Alabama and Mississippi as their own sovereign nation.

And I think I pointed out, in that thread, that some of this may have to do with personal experience. I do not understand nationalism, because I don't have any nation to be nationalistic about: I'm a "foreigner" no matter where I go. And yet I completely reject the idea that I "deserve" or have a right to anything else; we should all be foreigners.

And while I'm not going to claim that this is what was going through Arafat's head, all of this is why I understand rejecting Palestinian statehood if it's not accompanied by a "right of return" for all of those who were expelled from Israel.

"Out of curiousity, bnw, how do you feel about the violent seizure of white-owner farms in Zimbabwe?"

Honestly, I know next to nothing about it except that it sounded terrifying. A case of the "haves and the have-nots"? I can't even begin to get my head around the tribal violence in Africa.

Not tribal violence -- I asked because it bears on our discussion, insofar as you would sort of have to support land redistribution in Zimbabwe in order to support the existence of Israel. The rationale behind land redistribution is that, well, the land is African land and belongs to Africans, and white ownership of it is the result of violent colonial seizure; thus it's time to give it back. I am rather sympathetic to this logic. I am not as sympathetic to the rather less clear-cut logic of the creation of Israel, where the link goes back a long time, and the creation of a diaspora and the shifting population of the region were due to more natural historical processes, and not a recent, easy-to-identify colonization -- plus the very existence of a diaspora, of millions who had left the region, for centuries upon centuries, and then try to make claims upon it?

At root I am sympathetic to the idea that people need land to live on (see Zimbabwe), but hugely unsympathetic to the idea that people need a land. It's reductive, archaic, racist, stone-age thinking, and I simply can't support it.

The current situation is hardly cut and dried. My ambivalence is increased by the fact that impoverished black employees get detained, tortured and beaten senseless for working on these farms. Often they have no recourse but to work in such places in order to escape poverty.

The general populace are more concerned with survival than politics. In my experience, the overriding concern is with the increasingly totalitarian regime under President Mugabe.

Inspired somewhat by President Bush, his most recent tactic is to label any opposition party member a "terrorist" and have them dealt with accordingly.

The situation in Zimbabwe is spiralling rapidly out of control, and the forcible repatriation of white-owned farms is only one such example.

Afghanistan News Sunnah Sunni Deobandi Islam Islaam Kashmir Afghanistan Jihad Jihaad Chechnya Kosovo Awliya Sufiyah Sufi Soofi Sibghatullah Shah Pir Pagaro Sindh Punjab Balauchistan Balochistan Afghanistan Terror Terrorism War Militant Radical Extremist fanatic fundamentalist Sunni movement Special forces soldiers wahabi wahhaabi wahhabi Syedayn Shaheedayn Ambala Deoband Saharanpur Kandhla Thana bhawan Akora Khattak Balakot Hyderabad Karachi lyari MQM Hikayat Hikayaat peace spirit spiritual Waliullah wali saint worship veneration Sajda Ghairullah Ghayr Ghair Kufr Ilhaad Zanadaqah Wahdat ul Wajood Shahood Tassawuf Islaah Tazkiyah Nafs Shaytaan Satan Shaitan Zikr Dhikr Zakir Zaakir Dhaakir Abid Zahid Zuhd Istaghna Sabr "Safhaat min Sabr ul Ulama" ar-Rasheed trust

Sunnah Deobandi Sunni Islam Islaam Kashmir Afghanistan Jihad Jihaad Chechnya Kosovo Awliya Sufiyah Sufi Soofi Sibghatullah Shah Pir Pagaro Sindh Punjab Balauchistan Balochistan Afghanistan Terror Terrorism War Militant Radical Extremist fanatic fundamentalist Sunni movement Special forces soldiers wahabi wahhaabi wahhabi Syedayn Shaheedayn Ambala Deoband Saharanpur Kandhla Thana bhawan Akora Khattak Balakot Hyderabad Karachi lyari MQM Hikayat Hikayaat peace spirit spiritual Waliullah wali saint worship veneration Sajda Ghairullah Ghayr Ghair Kufr Ilhaad Zanadaqah Wahdat ul Wajood Shahood Tassawuf Islaah Tazkiyah Nafs Shaytaan Satan Shaitan Zikr Dhikr Zakir Zaakir Dhaakir Abid Zahid Zuhd Istaghna Sabr "Safhaat min Sabr ul Ulama"

Up to 16 killed as Israeli forces storm aid convoy

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/31/2914131.htm?section=world

Stay classy Israel.

Ask Imaam Imam Sunnah Sunni Deobandi Islaam Islam Kashmir Afghanistan Jihad Jihaad Chechnya Kosovo Awliya Sufiyah Sufi Soofi Sibghatullah Shah Pir Pagaro Sindh Punjab Balauchistan Balochistan Afghanistan Terror Terrorism War Militant Radical Extremist fanatic fundamentalist Sunni movement Special forces soldiers wahabi wahhaabi wahhabi Syedayn Shaheedayn Ambala Deoband Saharanpur Kandhla Thana bhawan Akora Khattak Balakot Hyderabad Karachi lyari MQM Hikayat Hikayaat peace spirit spiritual Waliullah wali saint worship veneration Sajda Ghairullah Ghayr Ghair Kufr Ilhaad Zanadaqah Wahdat ul Wajood Shahood Tassawuf Islaah Tazkiyah Nafs Shaytaan Satan Shaitan Zikr Dhikr Zakir Zaakir Dhaakir Abid Zahid Zuhd Istaghna Sabr "Safhaat min Sabr ul Ulama" Abdul Fattah Abu Ghuda

Afghanistan News Sunnah Sunni Deobandi Islam Islaam Kashmir Afghanistan Jihad Jihaad Chechnya Kosovo Awliya Sufiyah Sufi Soofi Sibghatullah Shah Pir Pagaro Sindh Punjab Balauchistan Balochistan Afghanistan Terror Terrorism War Militant Radical Extremist fanatic fundamentalist Sunni movement Special forces soldiers wahabi wahhaabi wahhabi Syedayn Shaheedayn Ambala Deoband Saharanpur Kandhla Thana bhawan Akora Khattak Balakot Hyderabad Karachi lyari MQM Hikayat Hikayaat peace spirit spiritual Waliullah wali saint worship veneration Sajda Ghairullah Ghayr Ghair Kufr Ilhaad Zanadaqah Wahdat ul Wajood Shahood Tassawuf Islaah Tazkiyah Nafs Shaytaan Satan Shaitan Zikr Dhikr Zakir Zaakir Dhaakir Abid Zahid Zuhd Istaghna Sabr "Safhaat min Sabr ul Ulama" ar-Rasheed trust

Sunnah Deobandi Sunni Islam Islaam Kashmir Afghanistan Jihad Jihaad Chechnya Kosovo Awliya Sufiyah Sufi Soofi Sibghatullah Shah Pir Pagaro Sindh Punjab Balauchistan Balochistan Afghanistan Terror Terrorism War Militant Radical Extremist fanatic fundamentalist Sunni movement Special forces soldiers wahabi wahhaabi wahhabi Syedayn Shaheedayn Ambala Deoband Saharanpur Kandhla Thana bhawan Akora Khattak Balakot Hyderabad Karachi lyari MQM Hikayat Hikayaat peace spirit spiritual Waliullah wali saint worship veneration Sajda Ghairullah Ghayr Ghair Kufr Ilhaad Zanadaqah Wahdat ul Wajood Shahood Tassawuf Islaah Tazkiyah Nafs Shaytaan Satan Shaitan Zikr Dhikr Zakir Zaakir Dhaakir Abid Zahid Zuhd Istaghna Sabr "Safhaat min Sabr ul Ulama"

great point

Not to play Captain Defend an Israel, but acc. to the very sparse on details article, the people were killed when they resisted the commandos. If supposedly there were no weapons on board, what exactly were they resisting with? (For all I know, they just resisted by punching the commandos, or sitting peacefully, but that seems kinda unlikely.)

Larger story from Haaretz, including:

"The boats are carrying items that Israel bars from reaching Gaza, like cement and other building materials." -- which is really fucked up that they aren't allowed in Gaza.

but also:

The military said in a statement: "Navy fighters took control of six ships that tried to violate the naval blockade (of the Gaza Strip) ... During the takeover, the soldiers encountered serious physical violence by the protesters, who attacked them with live fire."

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/at-least-10-activists-killed-in-israel-navy-clashes-onboard-gaza-aid-flotilla-1.293089

IDF claims they used tools and knives and someone went for a soldier's gun. Protesters claim that they only passively resisted. In any case, 14 protesters were killed in international by the IDF after commandos stormed their flotilla carrying aid to Gaza. Draw your own conclusions.

Just to preempt, I think the whole Gaza situation is totally fucked up, and that there is a lot more Israel + Egypt could and should be doing for the people living there. Either/both governments should stepped forward to work with any humanitarian mission if they are that concerned about weapon/rocket smuggling. That neither did, and just told the mission that they can't deliver the aid, is super cold hearted and basically evil by way of Hannah Arendt thoughtlessness. That said, if you want to deliver aid to Gaza, and you already know it's likely that Israel will step in and stop you (at least an even shot, some shipments are allowed through, some are halted), don't carry weapons. That a) sets you up for a violent conflict and b) justifies what Israel was complaining about in the first place -- that you're bringing weapons into Gaza -- and totally undermines any humanitarian mission you might have. And if you're going to carry weapons (maybe you need them in case of pirates? idk), don't open fire on the freaking army. How could that possibly end well?

The statement quoted in Haaretz says they were attacked with live fire.

and protestors say they only passively resisted

NYT:

Channel 10, a private station in Israel, quoted the Israeli Trade Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, as saying between 14 and 16 people had been killed on one of the flotilla ships. He said on Israeli Army Radio that commandos boarded the ship by sliding down on ropes from a hovering helicopter, and were then struck by passengers with “batons and tools.”

I think you are missing the point of the flotilla. It's not simply a matter of delivering much-needed supplies to Gaza. The point is to violate the Israeli blockade. The point is to draw attention to Israel's policies.

I guess it's possible commandos killed innocents only passively resisting, and then the army covered up for a bunch of psychos in their army, but sounds very unlikely to me. Israel has a functioning press. I don't think that's the kind of thing the government could get away with. (But I could be wrong!)

Considering it's just "he said she said" at this point and will probably stay that way, history is written by the victors, etc.

I guess it's possible commandos killed innocents only passively resisting, and then the army covered up for a bunch of psychos in their army, but sounds very unlikely to me.

Have you no knowledge of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict?

xpost

If the purpose was to provoke Israel into murdering civilians, then mission accomplished, I guess. It seems like a lot of strategy is provoking Israel to do something horrific and then hoping something changes because of it. Maybe this'll be the catalyst for complete change in the relationship between Israel and Gaza -- or maybe it'll just be another really tragic, morally repulsive moment in the Middle East that does nothing to change the status quo or make life better for the people living in Gaza.

Super Cub, I know plenty about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Do you know how Israeli Press works? Most press in Israeli is very cynical and holds the government to account often. It seems unlikely to me that you could get away with lying about something like this.

Well, Ha'aretz is basically Israel's answer to The Guardian and is normally the go-to paper for a liberal viewpoint. But what they've done is to Xerox a government press release/statement without digging further, which may in itself be a comment on the behaviour of the military.

Yeah, I don't think the immediate report tonight will be the final story. But if soldiers opened fire on passive resisters, I imagine that'll be in Ha'aretz this week.

Well it only happened a few hours ago, miles out at see - not sure what kind of coverage you're expecting yet

um, sea

If you know a lot about Israel and this conflict, how is it inconceivable to you that the IDF could be covering up a botched operation that resulted in civilian deaths? The last 20 years are riddled with instances of alleged IDF abuses and accusations of cover-ups. It's a mainstay of this conflict.

http://www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp

xpost

And yeah, this happened like 5 hours ago.

idk Super Cub. Like I said, I guess it's possible they are lying about there being live fire resistance. Just super short-sighted to lie about something like that imo. There were a lot of people on the flotilla. It's not the kind of thing you can conspire about one way or another. I don't see all of the activists making up a story and sticking to it, and, as that website you just linked points out, it's hard to get soldiers to lie about their roles in a conflict.

tbh, I really hope there was live fire. If Israel killed those people, even if they were wielding batons or whatever, it's going to end up really fucked up. Especially if Raed Salah was a casualty. There could be another Intifada, and if you can't trust the Israeli army to handle the flotilla situation, you definitely don't want them trying to handle rioters and protesters all over the place. Things could get massively screwed up really quickly.

I don't want to debate you on this, so this is the last post I'll make on the subject.

I think you are woefully ignorant of the dynamics of this conflict. It's entirely possible that the IDF was fired upon, but it's ridiculous to say that the IDF wouldn't use grossly disproportionate force and then try to cover it up (or at least try and justify it). That is pretty much the IDF's standard operating procedure when it come to Gaza. That was the basic strategy in the Gaza War.

xpost

suzy, one of several pieces in today's Haaretz bitterly criticising the Israeli military: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/gaza-flotilla-drives-israel-into-a-sea-of-stupidity-1.292959

"(or at least try and justify it)"

I don't disagree with this. But there's obv a huge gap between justifying something and covering it up.

Anyway, you're right. It's not worth debating over. The whole thing just has me sick to my stomach and it's 4:20 here when I should be sleeping instead of reading about this.

guy who stabbed that kid to death looks like a complete nutter

the fact that the photo of him on BBC still showing blood on his face is fucked up, if the even wasn't upsetting enough.

he even qualified it with something about how he didn't expect israel would take action there immediately or anything.

no worries if not

xp to self, *event

I've had a recommendation/request that, since this thread is several thousand posts long and Israel has entered a new phase of telling the world to suck it, this thread be locked and a new one started.

Agreed. Let's start sucking some more.

Can see the suction being out of sync if it gets too long. Israel having to up degree by which they suck accordingly.

https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1713918251955032122?s=20

This is @GhassanAbuSitt1, a surgeon who is currently saving the lives of Palestinians in a hospital in Gaza. He's just reported that counter terrorism police have showed up at his house in the UK and harrased his family.pic.twitter.com/GOvl5aQLHG https://t.co/bugmmZPAMM

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) October 16, 2023

Chotiner and Sari Bashi, the program director at Human Rights Watch:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-humanitarian-catastrophe-in-gaza

I've had a recommendation/request that, since this thread is several thousand posts long and Israel has entered a new phase of telling the world to suck it, this thread be locked and a new one started.

― WmC, Monday, October 16, 2023 8:08 AM

i request a less callous thread title too

TY. I was hesitant to say anything about it, but I don't think this kind of title does the situation any service.

As noted, I know numerous IRL people with Israeli flag avatars saying that they stand with Israel no matter what.

Plus I know IlXorz and others who almost uniformly condemn Israel as a brutal apartheid state that continues to use "but the Holocaust" as a laminated carte blanche for every atrocity the IDF wishes to commit. (There is a bit of a strawman in there but that's another topic for another time.)

I have met exactly zero people in between. I know it is not about me and/or my feelz. And I don't love "both sides"ing US politics either. The discourse is polarized and will remain so.

strange, because everyone I personally know is in between on this issue.

Same!

I request a less callous thread title as well.

It's a complex and difficult, tragic situation and people are hesitant to speak up ok this kind of thing with good reason.

Chotiner and Sari Bashi, the program director at Human Rights Watch:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-humanitarian-catastrophe-in-gaza

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W43C8xhh5E

Sam & Emma interviewing Omar Shakir, Israel & Palestine Director at HRW this morning

I made a new thread
Israel, Palestine & the Levant rolling events: Oct 23 on