OT: World Politics

[LeafOfFaith]

I skipped to the middle just to get a preview.

“Hamas is not targeting civilians. They’ve mainly gone after military targets and soldiers. Those captured are soldiers.”

Expecting this guy to be objective and married to the facts.

 

[axlsalinger]

i understand some people can't be objective, and this attack was truly horrific.

but watch the whole interview, for fuck sake. it's only 9 minutes.

 

[MindzEye]

 

[MindzEye]

That’d be a strange thought. Especially considering this isn’t comparable to Russia invading Ukraine.

Israel is more than capable of pushing out Hamas and razing Gaza to the ground without any further US assistance.

The only thing that would make remote sense here is if it was in concert with a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan.

 

[Montana]

it's an interview worth watching, if only to understand the extreme abuse Palestinians have received themselves, over many, many years.

which is the excuse Hamas would use to justify what they did…..which is still unjustifiable.

….but if more attention was paid to their treatment, they’d say they wouldn’t have to go to these extremes.


which again, isn’t a remotely worthy excuse….but there is value in separating Hamas from the Palestinian people, paying more attention to the inhumanity on both sides, and condemning it all.

Nothing justifies this horrific attack and I have zero tolerance for terrorists, Israel should hunt down every one of those fuckers. But it's still important to understand the context and be aware that Netanyahu is an evil motherfucker himself.

100%

…and it’s brutal that so many Palestinian civilians who have already suffered will now be put through much worse as a result.

Civilians on both sides are the victims….while leadership hides behind them, to justify their own inhumane deeds.

 

[Montana]

Families murdered in their homes, homes burned down so families could be murdered in the street, 260 kids killed at a peace festival, girls raped beside their friends’ dead bodies and then killed themselves, kids and women and elderly kidnapped, babies in cages waiting to be used as trade capital for imprisoned terrorists, dead bodies being paraded in the streets and desecrated by the general population.

Yeah, I’m dying to know the reasons and rationale.

All the videos & photos have been brutal…..and obviously the one of Noa’s kidnapping has been shared most, and hits hard.

….but I saw some of white haired elderly folks 4-5 of them within feet of each other just outside their homes, on a patio dressed like any active elderly group of friends getting together to enjoy a nice Saturday BBQ….all mowed down execution style like dogs….. that hit me as hard as just about anything I’ve ever seen.


How they think that level of inhumanity will benefit their cause, is beyond me. As is anyone on either side celebrating it…..people in the streets celebrating the original Hamas attack, the day off….sharing sweets etc, revolting.

 

[Montana]

Roger Deakins level composition.

 

[LeafOfFaith]

All the videos & photos have been brutal…..and obviously the one of Noa’s kidnapping has been shared most, and hits hard.

….but I saw some of white haired elderly folks 4-5 of them within feet of each other just outside their homes, on a patio dressed like any active elderly group of friends getting together to enjoy a nice Saturday BBQ….all mowed down execution style like dogs….. that hit me as hard as just about anything I’ve seen.


How they think that level of inhumanity will benefit their cause, is beyond me. As is anyone on either side celebrating it…..people in the streets celebrating the original Hamas attack, the day off….sharing sweets etc, revolting.

Omg, I haven't seen that one. Maybe for the best. The ones I have seen are so horrible they stick with you.

And yeah, I don't understand it. I've seen reposts and comments that just boggle the mind. Like "yeah, more Jews dead please!", as one of the tamer examples, it's crazy just how deep the antisemitism runs in people.

 

[axlsalinger]

 

[MindzEye]

Since the Hamas attack I've been trying to sort out what I think about all of this on a macro level and there's a few core takeaways that are informing my opinion, but it's all such a fucking multi generational mess at this point.

Chronologically:

- I support basic Israeli claims to their historic homeland. I mean, if we're going to accept Ottoman muslim conquest in the 1500's as legitimate, then UK/French conquest post WW1 is similarly legitimate. The UK more or less immediately signalling their intent to give Israel back to it's historic jewish inhabitants (as early as 1919) is no less legitimate than Ottoman rule leading up to that, they were achieved through the same means.

- 1948-1967 is the period that set the core conditions we're still seeing today and it's marked largely by Arab aggression towards the concept of an Israeli state in their region. All territory captured by Israel was during defensive conflicts (Six Day war wasn't specifically defensive, but the conditions were already being set in the region for the Arab states to run it back. Israel decided to just not wait for them to be ready for what was very clearly being prepared for). If I support the statement above regarding the legitimacy of the nation, I have to then support their right to defend their nation. Easy peasy up to this point imo.

- Post Six Days War is where it starts going sideways with a lot of actions by Israel that are harder/impossible to morally justify, with the introduction and encouragement of jewish settlements in newly captured territory and the slow grinding creation of what can very accurately be called an Apartheid state with a growing set of restrictions, military checkpoints, and a list of human rights abuses against Palestinians. Much of this is inspired by jewish religious zealots and has set the stage for Palestinian militancy. It's kind of telling here that every time the Israeli government has come to the table to try to reach a lasting peace, (Oslo 2, Road Map, etc) they've agreed to some sort of language regarding halting or dismantling settlements built after "X" date and it really appears that those agreements were never taken seriously by the Israeli political class. It is then quite hard to see any other desired outcome from the Israeli political class that isn't intended to be either permanent apartheid, or potentially even genocidal and peace discussions are just a method of kicking the can further and further down the road knowing that a false peace is the best set of conditions for them to continue doing what they've been doing.

- With all of that said....fuck everything about Hamas. It's a cancer that is killing the host but was at least partially born from Israeli human rights abuses noted above. Where I grasp their counter argument that Israel targets Palestinian citizens with their policies & violence every day so they're going to do the same, targeting Israeli citizens in response is fucking vile and counter productive to any realistic set of goals that doesn't include "and on the 7th day of the great war, Allah came down from the heavens and swept the jews in the ocean"...and despite the say so of the guy in the video, yes Hamas did fucking target citizens, stop saying they didn't. I've never seen an IDF music festival ffs. That wasn't 260 soldiers that got dropped while listening to EDM.


There's no way to unwind this, it's all bad. The only outcomes at this point are one side genociding the other side out of existence and this conflict heating up is exactly what Hamas and the Likud wants.

 

[LeafOfFaith]

I’m genuinely unaware of Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians or any unprovoked violence on a systemic level.

Israel has given Palestinians land routinely over the years. They gave them Gaza and forcibly moved boatloads of Jews out from the area so that Palestinians could have it to themselves.

The talk about checkpoints and the such…well, Israeli clubs and restaurants were quite regularly being blown up. A friend of mine did a summer stint in high school for the Israeli ambulance service, and he was on the road every night. He treated dozens upon dozens of terror victims in just those two months. There was a legitimate need for watchdog type defense measures. But I sincerely don’t know of any instance of Israeli violence against Palestinians (especially not women and children, certainly never anything remotely approaching the level of rape or murder), other than isolated incidents of some unhinged soldier maybe going rogue in an encounter and being overly violent. I say I sincerely don’t know of any because I’m not in any way a political guy or have my finger on the pulse of the Mideast conflict, but it is not something that I’ve ever seen or had brought to my attention.

 

[Montana]

agree with every last syllable.


- but also fuck Arafat for not accepting the 2000 camp david summit proposal.

- and yigal ramir for taking out Rabin, stopping any further momentum towards peace.

 

[MindzEye]

I’m genuinely unaware of Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians

I mean, you might want to read up on the 1st Palestine War. We can accept that it was defensive on one hand, while also accepting Israel sure wasn't shy about going after civlians. Forced displacment (a human rights violation by law) kind of became the norm for Israel.

They gave them Gaza and forcibly moved boatloads of Jews out from the area so that Palestinians could have it to themselves.

"Gave them Gaza" after Israel took the settlements as military installations and gave those to settlers later as part of the exact set of policies mentioned above that were designed to slowly push Palestinians out through forced relocation.

and the policy of returning Gaza itself was meant by Sharon to act a pre emptive solution to the one state solutions's demographic problem.

The talk about checkpoints and the such…well, Israeli clubs and restaurants were quite regularly being blown up. A friend of mine did a summer stint in high school for the Israeli ambulance service, and he was on the road every night. He treated dozens upon dozens of terror victims in just those two months. There was a legitimate need for watchdog type defense measures.

You're going to have a hard time getting anyone rational to believe that ~500 checkpoints would be necessary without the illegal settlements as most of them are set up not to keep Palestians out of Israel proper (which would definitely be deemed necessary for the reasons you've provided) but to keep them away from accessing illegally (as in, against the geneva convention) settled lands (including sources of water that have been claimed by the settlers).

But I sincerely don’t know of any instance of Israeli violence against Palestinians (especially not women and children, certainly never anything remotely approaching the level of rape or murder), other than isolated incidents of some unhinged soldier maybe going rogue in an encounter and being overly violent. I say I sincerely don’t know of any because I’m not in any way a political guy or have my finger on the pulse of the Mideast conflict, but it is not something that I’ve ever seen or had brought to my attention.

It would not take long at all to educate yourself on the matter man. I don't approach any of this from an anti jewish standpoint. I support the idea of a democratic state in the middle east based on the historic homeland of the jewish people. I can't support the religious aspect of it. imo, as stated above it's a matter of geopolitics...if Ottoman rule was legitimate based on conquest, so was British rule that led to the creation of modern Israel. But they've done some unjustifiable, violent shit to the Palestinians. Mostly to support the religiously driven settlement policies.

 

[MindzEye]

agree with every last syllable.


- but also fuck Arafat for not accepting the 2000 camp david summit proposal.

- and yigal ramir for taking out Rabin, stopping any further momentum towards peace.

My understanding re: Camp David is that they were never remotely close to an agreement due to the East Jerusalem issue.

 

[Montana]

They’ve started to identify some of the dead victims from the concert, who were then take back to Gaza.

There’s also video of many of them partying at the festival just prior to things kicking off….so brutal seeing the fun they were having, knowing they’d be dead within hours.

 

[Montana]

 

[MindzEye]

Elon very clearly has some affection for jewish conspiracy theories.

 

[axlsalinger]

It would not take long at all to educate yourself on the matter man. I don't approach any of this from an anti jewish standpoint. I support the idea of a democratic state in the middle east based on the historic homeland of the jewish people. I can't support the religious aspect of it. imo, as stated above it's a matter of geopolitics...if Ottoman rule was legitimate based on conquest, so was British rule that led to the creation of modern Israel. But they've done some unjustifiable, violent shit to the Palestinians. Mostly to support the religiously driven settlement policies.

we need to stress these points. you see extremely pro-Palestine and extremely pro-Israel people out there all the time, and while I can't say I'm an expert on the issue I know enough to say there's been a lot of terrible actions taken by both sides here.

I fully support Israel's right to exist, and to exist in Israel, and denounce terrorism in any form. But Israel has treated Palestine very poorly for decades, some of the actions justified for sure but to say they never kill innocent civilians is ludicrous. It happens all the time.

And from what I understand, things have gotten much worse since Netanyahu gained power, in fact frequent and intentional violations of international law worse. It's a coalition of far-right extremists and we know how rational and fair these people generally are, right?

 

[wiseguy1]

No idea why Israel doesn't have a large military base close to the Gaza.

 

[MindzEye]

we need to stress these points. you see extremely pro-Palestine and extremely pro-Israel people out there all the time, and while I can't say I'm an expert on the issue I know enough to say there's been a lot of terrible actions taken by both sides here.

I fully support Israel's right to exist, and to exist in Israel, and denounce terrorism in any form. But Israel has treated Palestine very poorly for decades, some of the actions justified for sure but to say they never kill innocent civilians is ludicrous. It happens all the time.

And from what I understand, things have gotten much worse since Netanyahu gained power, in fact frequent and intentional violations of international law worse. It's a coalition of far-right extremists and we know how rational and fair these people generally are, right?

If we were sitting here talking about a Hamas attack on the IDF, and every single fucking target was military in nature....I would get it. I would cringe and hope for a peaceful solution, but I would grasp the justification for violent opposition to what they see as a violent, oppressive regime.

This is where I think Hamas has massively fucked up on a tactical level here. Even for people who want to have sympathy for Palestinians, how the fuck do you justify this? The one place in this conflict that Palestinians have consistently won is the PR conflict. There has always been a large amount of public sentiment against Israeli treatment of Palestinians....but this takes that out at the knees pretty viciously.