The Israel Palestine problem solving thread
I wonder if all the innocent Gaza people are surprised Hamas has tunnels? Or that their neighbour/brother/son/father/sister could be 1 of the 40k+ fighters?
Imagine living in an open prison and not knowing what is happening…or is complicity a thing in Gaza?
It’s interesting to read how innocent Gaza folk who worked in Israel were forced to give info on Israeli families…oh hang on…there was no force required.:)
Melbourne school kids walking out of classrooms at 12 pm to march in support of Gaza/Palestine.
Roadkill wrote:I wonder if all the innocent Gaza people are surprised Hamas has tunnels? Or that their neighbour/brother/son/father/sister could be 1 of the 40k+ fighters?
Imagine living in an open prison and not knowing what is happening…or is complicity a thing in Gaza?
It’s interesting to read how innocent Gaza folk who worked in Israel were forced to give info on Israeli families…oh hang on…there was no force required.:)
I reckon anyone growing up in Gaza would be suffering PTSD, all have family members killed by IDF, know they had land that was stolen) or reclaimed if you go with the Jew right to their homeland theme) from their family, know they have no decent future besides living in squalor, cannot even go fishing off their coast.
So yeah really hard to understand why some might offer support to Hamas.
Yep terrorist organisation to Israel and the West, but freedom fighters for local Gazans.
Spent some time in East Timor years ago in early 00's and hung out with ex Fretlin fighters. They were accused of being terrorists by the Indonesian govt and the West, remember Australia and USA were complicit in the Indonesian takeover of East Timor in 74.
They were all normal blokes who had done some pretty awful shit, as had the Indonesian military done to their family's and friends. The scale of the Indonesian atrocities were many times worse and these had been pretty well overlooked by the USA and West.
I remember having a chat with a Fretlin guy (he now owned a homestay in mountains) who was in his normal life a school teacher. He had worked with many Indonesians when they were still running the education system and he spoke very highly of his colleagues and said how nice they were. Alternatively he had no issue in killing as many Indonesian's in uniform up in the hills where he was based.
Point I am trying to make is that in time of war and brutality humans were do nasty shit.
andy-mac wrote:indo-dreaming wrote:Some interesting points in first video.
From everything ive read/watched/listened to i dont think Hamas have got the outcome they wanted, i think they expected more support from other Arab countries, see video below.
War wise they are getting more desperate at this point, 11 of 12 hamas units in the north are said to be severally weakened the resistance going into Gaza city hasnt been what they expected or was seen in other areas earlier, it seems like Hamas have either fled south or have been severally hurt, IDF have even been talking about the next stage going in to the southern area.
Also IDF hasn't fallen for what hamas wanted which is to go in to the tunnels and lots of those tunnel's have been found because wherever Hamas pop up thats where the tunnels are, and the IDF have been very clever in how they use ground troops combined with drones and air support, so Hamas havent had the great advantage many expected.
The worry with this pause is Hamas get reloaded and prepare again I wouldn't be surprised if they try to entice troops on the front to break ceasefire to use it against them to try to put more International pressure on the IDF to stop their operations.
Hamas tunnels?
Not under hospital it seems.
Seems both sides spouting lots of bullshit...
Truth is somewhere in the grey...https://m.
Huh? watched the video thats not what they said, they said that Israel long ago helped build a bunker under the hospital, ive heard this before but i don't think its the same one they have now uncovered with tunnels (in classic hamas design), i think the other bunker is more a deep basement type thing, a western doctor who worked at the hospital said in a interview they were forbidden from going anywhere near there.
I watched the footage this morning on the IDF youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@IsraelDefenseForces of the tunnel they found, they go past the blast door and do a walk through of what they have found under the hospital obviously cleared out, but it has rooms, toilet, small kitchen, room to sleep, the entrance area is not from within the hospital building but within the grounds.
I do agree the truth is kind of grey in that i think Israel have talked this one hospital up too much, the footage i watched wasn't as big as their previous diagrams have shown, you would expect there isn't one big base as such but more a lot of smaller bases like the one they have found.
There is a shitload of hospitals in Gaza and there is at least one other hospital (the one where a hostage was suspected to haven been held) already been shown where a tunnel was found 50 to 100m metres away from hospital with a blast door,
There is now plenty of footage of hamas tunnel entrances right next too or within all kinds of places playgrounds, schools, mosque, hospitals, scouts hall and launching sites and all types of ammunition/military type set ups been found in all kinds of place, they also have evidence of Ambulance's being used by IDF for non medical purposes.
This week they uncovered a mosque that had rooms underneath it with tunnel's and it was clearly a place used to design and make rockets etc, its shit you cant fake too, its all there.
I dont think anyone would or could debate that hamas are not intentionally using all types of civilian infrastructure to use as a shield.
Yeah sure its to show that Hamas are morally bankrupt using these places to shield themselves, but its important that Israel can show the evidence they are using these places so people understand what they are dealing with, imagine how hard it is to fight this war when they are using these places.
Also legally once they can show these areas are used in anyway for military purposes they lose their protection status. (BTW IDF actually have a legal team that ensure they try to stick to rules of war, i know because i listened to an interview with the legal advisor)
That video was pretty trashy, more just uneducated i heard this or think this type opinions, Id suggest watching the military type channels for people that have much more understanding of things, and they also show and talk through a lot of the footage of different places uncovered etc and they are pretty neutral.
https://www.youtube.com/@PrestonStewart
https://www.youtube.com/@CombatVeteranReacts
And for whats happening on the war front and strategy wise
https://www.youtube.com/@RaptorNews
BTW. Im sure the Israeli people also suffer PSTD, even in normal times Hamas fire rockets at Israel its only the iron shield that stops carnage but not all rockets are destroyed, the sirens go off and people run to bomb shelters, in the past they have thought they are also safe from ground raid, but after 7th Oct if Hamas isn't destroyed they will live in even more fear, from a group who's charter says it wants to kill all Jews.
https://m.
Appreciating your updates @indo, I don't have the interest in the military side of things, I am defs on the Jelly spectrum, but get that it is the reality for a while longer. When I click on those links, I immediately fade, but your posts are enough to give me a rough idea of what goes on, and your posts haven't had that 'Palestinians are evil/wrong/to blame' that can happen here.
indo-dreaming wrote:andy-mac wrote:indo-dreaming wrote:Some interesting points in first video.
From everything ive read/watched/listened to i dont think Hamas have got the outcome they wanted, i think they expected more support from other Arab countries, see video below.
War wise they are getting more desperate at this point, 11 of 12 hamas units in the north are said to be severally weakened the resistance going into Gaza city hasnt been what they expected or was seen in other areas earlier, it seems like Hamas have either fled south or have been severally hurt, IDF have even been talking about the next stage going in to the southern area.
Also IDF hasn't fallen for what hamas wanted which is to go in to the tunnels and lots of those tunnel's have been found because wherever Hamas pop up thats where the tunnels are, and the IDF have been very clever in how they use ground troops combined with drones and air support, so Hamas havent had the great advantage many expected.
The worry with this pause is Hamas get reloaded and prepare again I wouldn't be surprised if they try to entice troops on the front to break ceasefire to use it against them to try to put more International pressure on the IDF to stop their operations.
Hamas tunnels?
Not under hospital it seems.
Seems both sides spouting lots of bullshit...
Truth is somewhere in the grey...https://m.
Huh? watched the video thats not what they said, they said that Israel long ago helped build a bunker under the hospital, ive heard this before but i don't think its the same one they have now uncovered with tunnels (in classic hamas design), i think the other bunker is more a deep basement type thing, a western doctor who worked at the hospital said in a interview they were forbidden from going anywhere near there.
I watched the footage this morning on the IDF youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@IsraelDefenseForces of the tunnel they found, they go past the blast door and do a walk through of what they have found under the hospital obviously cleared out, but it has rooms, toilet, small kitchen, room to sleep, the entrance area is not from within the hospital building but within the grounds.
I do agree the truth is kind of grey in that i think Israel have talked this one hospital up too much, the footage i watched wasn't as big as their previous diagrams have shown, you would expect there isn't one big base as such but more a lot of smaller bases like the one they have found.
There is a shitload of hospitals in Gaza and there is at least one other hospital (the one where a hostage was suspected to haven been held) already been shown where a tunnel was found 50 to 100m metres away from hospital with a blast door,
There is now plenty of footage of hamas tunnel entrances right next too or within all kinds of places playgrounds, schools, mosque, hospitals, scouts hall and launching sites and all types of ammunition/military type set ups been found in all kinds of place, they also have evidence of Ambulance's being used by IDF for non medical purposes.
This week they uncovered a mosque that had rooms underneath it with tunnel's and it was clearly a place used to design and make rockets etc, its shit you cant fake too, its all there.
I dont think anyone would or could debate that hamas are not intentionally using all types of civilian infrastructure to use as a shield.
Yeah sure its to show that Hamas are morally bankrupt using these places to shield themselves, but its important that Israel can show the evidence they are using these places so people understand what they are dealing with, imagine how hard it is to fight this war when they are using these places.
Also legally once they can show these areas are used in anyway for military purposes they lose their protection status. (BTW IDF actually have a legal team that ensure they try to stick to rules of war, i know because i listened to an interview with the legal advisor)
That video was pretty trashy, more just uneducated i heard this or think this type opinions, Id suggest watching the military type channels for people that have much more understanding of things, and they also show and talk through a lot of the footage of different places uncovered etc and they are pretty neutral.
https://www.youtube.com/@PrestonStewart
https://www.youtube.com/@CombatVeteranReactsAnd for whats happening on the war front and strategy wise
https://www.youtube.com/@RaptorNewsBTW. Im sure the Israeli people also suffer PSTD, even in normal times Hamas fire rockets at Israel its only the iron shield that stops carnage but not all rockets are destroyed, the sirens go off and people run to bomb shelters, in the past they have thought they are also safe from ground raid, but after 7th Oct if Hamas isn't destroyed they will live in even more fear, from a group who's charter says it wants to kill all Jews.
Hi Indo.
Was not trying to say Hamas don't have tunnels etc. Of course they do, and some of them are no doubt are absolute carnts.
My reason for posting is more on how both sides are trying to set narrative. Msm seems to have control of Israel side where social media is definitely appealing to younger generation, hence school strike in Melbourne today.
Israel definitely been caught out with lies such as Hamas.
October 7th narrative is also being tested.
https://m.
&pp=ygUZZWxlY3Ryb25pYyBpbnRpZmFkYSBvY3QgNw%3D%3D basesix wrote:Appreciating your updates @indo, I don't have the interest in the military side of things, I am defs on the Jelly spectrum, but get that it is the reality for a while longer. When I click on those links, I immediately fade, but your posts are enough to give me a rough idea of what goes on, and your posts haven't had that 'Palestinians are evil/wrong/to blame' that can happen here.
Haha. The Jellyspectrum. Classic. Same same.
Good thorough and informative post @indo.
basesix wrote:Appreciating your updates @indo, I don't have the interest in the military side of things, I am defs on the Jelly spectrum, but get that it is the reality for a while longer. When I click on those links, I immediately fade, but your posts are enough to give me a rough idea of what goes on, and your posts haven't had that 'Palestinians are evil/wrong/to blame' that can happen here.
And yeah videos not great but has admissions spoken by Israeli officials. Ex PM and main media guy for Israel re burnt bodies.
Again not taking sides but for there to be proper solution cannot have one side as Good guys and the other ad Evil baddies.
It's about land at the end of the day.
andy-mac wrote:for there to be proper solution cannot have one side as Good guys and the other as Evil baddies.
You're always sane and balanced andy-mac, keep fighting the good fight.
;);)
https://m.
basesix wrote:andy-mac wrote:for there to be proper solution cannot have one side as Good guys and the other as Evil baddies.
You're always sane and balanced andy-mac, keep fighting the good fight.
Cheers, posting a bit rushed whilst trying to get other stuff done.
Trying to make the case everyone on both sides of this conflict have real grievances with each other and for there to be a proper outcome ie a 2 state solution, both sides are not going to be happy but make the compromise.
Geez what other option is there?
Move all Palestinian people off the land of greater Israel with continual war?
From Israeli perspective, can you really defeat Hamas?
Hezbollah? Iran?
What is the end goal?
Cannot just keep killing each other in the hope one side will back down.
Anyway wife giving me shit for being on phone. ;)
At least we are keeping it civil on here.
Thanks
andy-mac wrote:basesix wrote:andy-mac wrote:for there to be proper solution cannot have one side as Good guys and the other as Evil baddies.
You're always sane and balanced andy-mac, keep fighting the good fight.
Cheers, posting a bit rushed whilst trying to get other stuff done.
Trying to make the case everyone on both sides of this conflict have real grievances with each other and for there to be a proper outcome ie a 2 state solution, both sides are not going to be happy but make the compromise.
Geez what other option is there?
Move all Palestinian people off the land of greater Israel with continual war?
From Israeli perspective, can you really defeat Hamas?
Hezbollah? Iran?
What is the end goal?
Cannot just keep killing each other in the hope one side will back down.
Anyway wife giving me shit for being on phone. ;)
At least we are keeping it civil on here.
Thanks
Exactly!! Nailed it. @andymac
andy-mac wrote:indo-dreaming wrote:andy-mac wrote:indo-dreaming wrote:Some interesting points in first video.
From everything ive read/watched/listened to i dont think Hamas have got the outcome they wanted, i think they expected more support from other Arab countries, see video below.
War wise they are getting more desperate at this point, 11 of 12 hamas units in the north are said to be severally weakened the resistance going into Gaza city hasnt been what they expected or was seen in other areas earlier, it seems like Hamas have either fled south or have been severally hurt, IDF have even been talking about the next stage going in to the southern area.
Also IDF hasn't fallen for what hamas wanted which is to go in to the tunnels and lots of those tunnel's have been found because wherever Hamas pop up thats where the tunnels are, and the IDF have been very clever in how they use ground troops combined with drones and air support, so Hamas havent had the great advantage many expected.
The worry with this pause is Hamas get reloaded and prepare again I wouldn't be surprised if they try to entice troops on the front to break ceasefire to use it against them to try to put more International pressure on the IDF to stop their operations.
Hamas tunnels?
Not under hospital it seems.
Seems both sides spouting lots of bullshit...
Truth is somewhere in the grey...https://m.
Huh? watched the video thats not what they said, they said that Israel long ago helped build a bunker under the hospital, ive heard this before but i don't think its the same one they have now uncovered with tunnels (in classic hamas design), i think the other bunker is more a deep basement type thing, a western doctor who worked at the hospital said in a interview they were forbidden from going anywhere near there.
I watched the footage this morning on the IDF youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@IsraelDefenseForces of the tunnel they found, they go past the blast door and do a walk through of what they have found under the hospital obviously cleared out, but it has rooms, toilet, small kitchen, room to sleep, the entrance area is not from within the hospital building but within the grounds.
I do agree the truth is kind of grey in that i think Israel have talked this one hospital up too much, the footage i watched wasn't as big as their previous diagrams have shown, you would expect there isn't one big base as such but more a lot of smaller bases like the one they have found.
There is a shitload of hospitals in Gaza and there is at least one other hospital (the one where a hostage was suspected to haven been held) already been shown where a tunnel was found 50 to 100m metres away from hospital with a blast door,
There is now plenty of footage of hamas tunnel entrances right next too or within all kinds of places playgrounds, schools, mosque, hospitals, scouts hall and launching sites and all types of ammunition/military type set ups been found in all kinds of place, they also have evidence of Ambulance's being used by IDF for non medical purposes.
This week they uncovered a mosque that had rooms underneath it with tunnel's and it was clearly a place used to design and make rockets etc, its shit you cant fake too, its all there.
I dont think anyone would or could debate that hamas are not intentionally using all types of civilian infrastructure to use as a shield.
Yeah sure its to show that Hamas are morally bankrupt using these places to shield themselves, but its important that Israel can show the evidence they are using these places so people understand what they are dealing with, imagine how hard it is to fight this war when they are using these places.
Also legally once they can show these areas are used in anyway for military purposes they lose their protection status. (BTW IDF actually have a legal team that ensure they try to stick to rules of war, i know because i listened to an interview with the legal advisor)
That video was pretty trashy, more just uneducated i heard this or think this type opinions, Id suggest watching the military type channels for people that have much more understanding of things, and they also show and talk through a lot of the footage of different places uncovered etc and they are pretty neutral.
https://www.youtube.com/@PrestonStewart
https://www.youtube.com/@CombatVeteranReactsAnd for whats happening on the war front and strategy wise
https://www.youtube.com/@RaptorNewsBTW. Im sure the Israeli people also suffer PSTD, even in normal times Hamas fire rockets at Israel its only the iron shield that stops carnage but not all rockets are destroyed, the sirens go off and people run to bomb shelters, in the past they have thought they are also safe from ground raid, but after 7th Oct if Hamas isn't destroyed they will live in even more fear, from a group who's charter says it wants to kill all Jews.
Hi Indo.
Was not trying to say Hamas don't have tunnels etc. Of course they do, and some of them are no doubt are absolute carnts.
My reason for posting is more on how both sides are trying to set narrative. Msm seems to have control of Israel side where social media is definitely appealing to younger generation, hence school strike in Melbourne today.
Israel definitely been caught out with lies such as Hamas.
October 7th narrative is also being tested.https://m.
&pp=ygUZZWxlY3Ryb25pYyBpbnRpZmFkYSBvY3QgNw%3D%3D
Im not sure what the point of this is?,..
Israel got caught out badly on 7th October, they were under seige it would have been chaos and confusion, 100% some Israel civilians might have also got killed in the crossfire by the IDF, its not exactly something Israel want to admit or be publicised, no government would.
And if the suggestion is any deaths of their own is intentional in any way, well thats just sick, friendly fire even on armies own soldiers happens in conflicts, and conflicts and war is not always clear or organised sometimes split second decision's need to be made where the better of two bad outcomes needs to be picked literally within seconds.
Just a simple example that could have happened on 7th Oct, your IDF in a chopper, you see a car with guns firing driving towards a group of civilians running for cover, do you blow up the car knowing they might have kidnapped Israelis inside or do you not fire and let them kill the dozen civilians running for cover?
Of course you blow up the car because if you dont more civilian's will die, there would have been many situations like this on 7th October and also just mistake's made under the pressure and confusion.
And also burnt civilians bodies doesn't mean IDF killed them, another example Hamas kill a family in their home, IDF then attack Hamas and kill them then a fire that could have already been started from hamas or blast burns the bodies
There is endless scenarios, ones we might never even consider, and fires in war zones are not at all uncommon, especially in dry rural areas where sparks can start fires.
End of the day Israel and IDF are there to protect their people, the government spends huge money on the Iron dome and other defence systems and those IDF soldiers are made up of every day citizens including many women that do national service. (over 30% of IDF are women and 25% of them officer's)
No government or army is perfect, but the idea Israel or IDF want to kill their own or dont avoid taking their own out where possible is crazy and insulting, its the same in Gaza they dont want to take out civilian's if possible, there is times when a fighter jet actually pulls out of a target because of visible citizen's, there is even footage of this they will then hit that target at another time, but 100% its a war civilians still die.
Hamas are the opposite they have no interest in protecting their citizens, their citizens cant hide in the safety of their tunnels, Hamas purposely put them in the line of fire even preventing them from moving south, the only reason being civilian deaths via social media or media create support for Palestine and condemnation for Israel and create pressure on Israel for a ceasefire so Hamas can live to fight another day.
Different opinions above in what I posted.
Watch it numbnuts! Who knows after that.
seeds wrote:Different opinions above in what I posted.
Watch it numbnuts! Who knows after that.
Watched a bit, pretty much what i said chaos and hard decisions would have had to be made often in split seconds that sadly resulted in Israel deaths, but if these decision's hadn't been made and more Hamas allowed to spread deeper into Israel or escaped back to Gaza with even more kidnapped the outcomes would be even worse.
Edit: hmmm he sounds like a Hamas simp though in denying some things that happened, will watch it all when get a chance.
No mention of the questionable policies? No split second decisions.it’s calculated. Hardcore.
indo-dreaming wrote:seeds wrote:Different opinions above in what I posted.
Watch it numbnuts! Who knows after that.Watched a bit, pretty much what i said chaos and hard decisions would have had to be made often in split seconds that sadly resulted in Israel deaths, but if these decision's hadn't been made and more Hamas allowed to spread deeper into Israel or escaped back to Gaza with even more kidnapped the outcomes would be even worse.
Edit: hmmm he sounds like a Hamas simp though in denying some things that happened, will watch it all when get a chance.
The thing i'm struggling to understand Indo, is how Israel left the gate swinging open gaily in the breeze(so to speak) for anyone to walk on through. Even with pretty severe security warnings of increased potential for Hamas 'activities'.
I just keep coming back to this point and am struggling to find logical answers to how one of the greatest defence mechanisms in modern history could just.....fall asleep at the wheel.
It really makes you wonder about it all.
Kinda like the batsoup or whatever it was as the origin of covid.
That turned out to be bullshit too....which i kinda observed was obvious from the start.
seeds wrote:No mention of the questionable policies? No split second decisions.it’s calculated. Hardcore.
If you are talking about this said to be policy of shoot a soldier that is taken by Hamas.
I have no idea if that is true or not, it could be and sadly it might be better for them to be shot than end up in Hamas hands, especially in this case they will be last to be traded in a deal and are the most likely to be tortured and some are women soldiers who highly likely will be raped too
Instead of that policy wouldn't it just be simpler to have a we dont negotiate with terrorist on hostages taken type policy?
Many countries have this type of policy because if you do negotiate with these groups that take hostages you in a sense encourage it, Israel have been very silly in the past doing crazy deals releasing a thousand or so criminals for one hostage, hence have made hostages very valuable and shown they will do deals.
Obviously at this stage you cant change policy, but surely after this they have to change policy, its not ideal but it discourages hostages being taken.
Anyway I don't know if any of what this guy is saying is true, but ive listened to many account of survivors from villages and music event attacked and accounts from IDF many called up or there not long after, their stories are very different.
So someone isn't telling the truth or stretching it and this guy seems to use some pretty loaded type language and views associated with a pro Palestine type view and deny things that there is footage and photos of remains etc of and that journalist have been allowed to see and wish they really hadn't seen
End of the day, we know that Hamas breached the border attacked not just IDF but intentionally targeted civilians often in their homes looking in their eyes before murdering them including babies, and kind napped about 240 people most civilians including elderly and kids even at least one baby.
BTW. I have to really question people here that focus on these aspects at this stage, i mean FFS there is no lack of very interesting aspects to talk about right now with hostage deals and all kinds of things being uncovered showing how Hamas are using civilians infrastructure as shields.
Honestly you people do my head in, its almost like you do your best to find faults and demonise Israel/Jews/IDF and apologies for Hamas and justify what they do and are about, I think everyone needs to read this again to have a refresh on perspective of things.
@ southernraw
Your dancing around conspiracy theory stuff, Israel fucked up big time, Hamas out smarted them, its what happens when you get complacent and think you are much smarter than your enemy.
BTW. Id be much more interested in hearing what your X is saying to you and how she is feeling and seeing things?
Rabbits68 wrote:Food for thought....
This is a transcript of a recorded podcast.
Sam Harris
The Sin of Moral EquivalenceI want to say a few things about recent events in Israel. I’m sure I will do future podcasts about this and speak with a wide range of relevant experts. But, for the moment, I would like to say something brief that stands a chance of being useful, as we watch the initial expressions of support for Israel begin to decay, as it wages war in Gaza and perhaps beyond.
As many of you know, I spent years talking about the clash, as I see it, between Western civilization and Islam. Specifically, I’ve spoken and written about the connection between the actual doctrines of Islam and jihadist violence. Of course, this violence has fallen out of the news in recent years, especially since the collapse of the Islamic State. Even I have stopped thinking much about it, but I’ve been under no illusion that the problem has gone away. Those of you who have been following my work for 20 years know that I’ve said everything I have to say on this topic, ad nauseam. And I’m sure I’ll periodically just repeat myself for the rest of my life—because eruptions of jihadist violence, and the attendant secular moral confusion about it, will be with us for generations.
However, I don’t want to rehash any of my criticism of Islam here. I’ll just briefly remind you of what I believe, which is that there is no possibility of living in peace with jihadists. So, whether we want to admit it or not, we are perpetually at war with them. And we must win a war of ideas with everyone, both within the Muslim world and outside it, who is confused about that—and there are legions of the confused. And there is no place on Earth where the truth about jihadism is more obvious or excruciating, and moral confusion about it more reprehensible, than Israel today.
But leaving all of that to one side, for the moment I’d like to make a very simple point, that really shouldn’t be at all controversial—because it doesn’t prejudge any of the questions that people might disagree about. You don’t have to agree with me about Islam, or about the role it plays in inspiring conflict. The point I’m making now says nothing about the causes of the recent violence in Israel—and yet it cuts through all the arguments and pseudo-arguments that attempt to paint some moral equivalence between Israel and its enemies, or to justify the actions of Hamas as though they were a response to Israeli provocations—to the growth of settlements, or the daily humiliation of living under occupation. Incidentally, there has been no occupation of Gaza since 2005, when Israel withdrew from the territory unilaterally, forcibly removing 9000 of its own citizens, and literally digging up Jewish graves. The Israelis have been out of Gaza for nearly 20 years. And yet they have been attacked from Gaza ever since.
But even a statement like that wades too far in controversy. I want you to step back… Whatever you think about the origins of this conflict, whatever you believe about the role that religion plays here (or doesn’t play), whatever you think about colonialism, or globalism, or any other ‘ism, whether you’re a fan of Noam Chomsky or Samuel Huntington, you should be able to acknowledge the following claims to be both descriptively true and ethically important.
At this moment in history, there are people and cultures that harbor very different attitudes about violence and the value of human life. There are people and cultures that rejoice, positively rejoice—dancing in the streets rejoicing—over the massacre of innocent civilians; conversely there are people and cultures that seek to avoid killing innocent civilians, and deeply regret it when they do—and they occasionally prosecute and imprison their own soldiers when they violate this modern norm of combat.
There are people and cultures who revel in the anguish of hostages and prisoners of war—who will parade them before cheering mobs, and often allow them to be assaulted, or raped, or even murdered. They will desecrate their bodies in public, and all of this carnage is a cause for jubilation. Conversely, there are people and cultures who find such barbarism revolting—and, again, would be inclined to prosecute anyone on their own side who took part in it.
In short, there are people and cultures who revel in war crimes—and who do not hide these crimes or their celebration of them but, rather, proudly broadcast their savagery for all the world to see. Conversely, there are people and cultures who have given us the concept of a war crime as a sacred prohibition—and as a safeguard in the ongoing project of maintaining the moral progress of civilization.
One point to concede, and this will absorb all the nuance and nonsense that is now percolating in the brains of many listeners: It is, of course, true that we in the West have been on the wrong side of these dichotomies in the past. Most Western armies, including Israel’s, have at one time or another been guilty of war crimes. And if you go back far enough, all of human conflict was just a litany of war crimes. And you don’t have to go back all that far, in fact, to find large pockets of Western culture that were morally indistinguishable from what we now see in much of the Muslim world. If you have any doubt about this, study the photos of white mobs celebrating the lynchings that occurred in the American South in the first half of the 20th century: where seemingly whole towns—thousands of men, women and children—turned out as though for a carnival to watch some young man or woman be tortured to death and then strung up on a tree or lamppost for all to see.
Seeing the pictures of these people in their Sunday best, having arranged themselves for a postcard photo under a dangling, and lacerated, and often partially cremated person, is one thing, but realize that these genteel people—who considered themselves good Christians—often took souvenirs of the body home to show their friends—teeth, ears, fingers, knee caps, internal organs—and sometimes displayed them in their places of business.
So I’m not claiming that there are permanent differences between groups of people. I’m talking about the power of ideas that happen to be ascendant at any given time and place. I’m talking about beliefs and whole worldviews that come into being in one culture and have yet to come into being in others. The point, of course, is that if we recognize the monstrosities of the past, we should recognize the monstrosities of the present, and acknowledge that at this moment in human history not every group has the same ethical norms governing its use of violence. For whatever reason. Perhaps religion has nothing to do with it.
Consider just one of these norms: Whenever an armed conflict breaks out, some groups will use human shields, and others will be deterred, to one degree or another, by their use. To be clear, I’m not talking about the taking of hostages from the opposing side for the purpose of using them as human shields. That is appalling, and it is now happening in Gaza, but it is separate crime. I’m talking about something far more inscrutable—it’s astounding, really, that it happens at all—I’m talking about people who will strategically put their own noncombatants, their own women and children, into the line of fire so that they can inflict further violence upon their enemies, knowing that their enemies have a more civilized moral code that will render them reluctant to shoot back, for fear of killing or maiming innocent noncombatants. If anywhere in this universe cynicism and nihilism can be found together in their most perfect forms, it is here.
Jihadists use their own people as human shields routinely. Hamas fires rockets from hospitals and mosques and schools and other sites calculated to create carnage if the Israelis return fire. There were cases in the war in Iraq where jihadists literally rested the barrels of their guns on the shoulders of children. They blew up crowds of their own children in order to kill US soldiers who were passing out candy to them. Conversely, the Israeli army routinely warns people to evacuate buildings before it bombs them.
Of course, during times of war, it common to dehumanize one’s enemy, to describe them as barbarous and evil. And it is natural for ethical and educated people to distrust such politically-charged language. But pay attention: I’m describing concrete behaviors—behaviors that occur on only one side of this conflict.
Just consider how absurd it would be to reverse the logic of human shields in this case: Imagine the Israelis using their own women and children as human shields against Hamas. Recognize how unthinkable this would be, not just for the Israelis to treat their own civilians in this way, but for them to expect that their enemies could be deterred by such a tactic, given who their enemies actually are.
Again, it is easy to lose sight of the moral distance here—which is strange. It’s like losing sight of the Grand Canyon when you are standing right on the edge of it. Take a moment to actually do the cognitive work: Imagine the Jews of Israel using their own women and children as human shields. And then imagine how Hamas, or Hezbollah, or al-Qaeda, or ISIS, or any other jihadist group would respond. The image you should now have in your mind is a masterpiece of moral surrealism. It is preposterous. It is a Monty Python sketch where all the Jews die.
Do you see what this asymmetry means? Can you see how deep it runs? Do you see what it tells you about the ethical difference between these two cultures?
There are not many bright lines that divide good and evil in our world, but this is one of them.
Of course, there is much more to talk about when considering the ethics of war and violence. And there’s much more to be confused about. For instance, as this war proceeds, many people will consider the deaths of noncombatants on the Palestinian side to be morally equivalent to the kids who were tortured and murdered at the peace concert by Hamas, or to the hostages who may yet be murdered and their murders broadcast on social media. But they’re not. There is a difference between collateral damage—which is, of course, a euphemism for innocent people killed in war—and the intentional massacre of civilians for the purpose of maximizing horror.
Simply the counting the number of dead bodies is not a way of judging the moral balance here. Intentions matter. It matters what kind of world people are attempting to build. If Israel wanted to perpetrate a genocide of the Palestinians, it could do that easily, tomorrow. But that isn’t what it wants. And the truth is the Jews of Israel would live in peace with their neighbors if their neighbors weren’t in thrall to genocidal fanatics.
In the West, we have advanced to a point where the killing of noncombatants, however unavoidable it becomes once wars start, is inadvertent and unwanted and regrettable and even scandalous. Yes, there are still war crimes. And I won’t be surprised if some Israelis commit war crimes in Gaza now. But, if they do, these will be exceptions that prove the rule—which is that Israel remains a lonely outpost of civilized ethics in the absolute moral wasteland that is the Middle East.
To deny that the government of Israel (with all of its flaws) is better than Hamas, to deny that Israeli culture (with all of its flaws) is better than Palestinian culture in its attitude toward violence, is to deny that moral progress itself is possible. If most Americans are better than their slaveholding ancestors, if most Germans today are better than the people who herded Jews into gas chambers, if the students protesting this war on your college campus—who are so conscientious that they lose sleep over crimes like “cultural appropriation” or using the wrong pronouns—if they are better than the racists and religious lunatics that inevitably lurk somewhere in their family trees—then we have to recognize that there is no moral equivalence now, between Israel and her enemies.
indo-dreaming wrote:seeds wrote:Different opinions above in what I posted.
Watch it numbnuts! Who knows after that.Watched a bit, pretty much what i said chaos and hard decisions would have had to be made often in split seconds that sadly resulted in Israel deaths, but if these decision's hadn't been made and more Hamas allowed to spread deeper into Israel or escaped back to Gaza with even more kidnapped the outcomes would be even worse.
Edit: hmmm he sounds like a Hamas simp though in denying some things that happened, will watch it all when get a chance.
Again unless you watch the whole thing and read related article that was posted of course you cannot understand it. Will post again.
What it really is showing is that the narrative that Hamas just got in with luck and started randomly killing people , babies etc is false.
It was a well planned military operation that was going after key Israeli military bases and they succeeded more than they expected. Caught Israel by surprise.
They had no idea of coming across a music festival until they did. Apparently it was moved to that location only a week or so before. It was between Hamas and base they were targeting.
As far as Hannibal directive, who knows. What seems to be the case though it that Apache choppers using hellfire missiles killed quite a few Israeli citizens, whether intentional or not the evidence seems to point conclusively to this. As so the use of Israeli tanks destroying infrastructure.
I have been reading Chris Hedges for years and he does deal in conspiracy and maybes. He is proper investigative journo, read some of his stuff on Balkans and you know he is real deal.
https://johnmenadue.com/the-october-7-hamas-assault-on-israel-the-most-s...
"What it really is showing is that the narrative that Hamas just got in with luck and started randomly killing people , babies etc is false.
It was a well planned military operation that was going after key Israeli military bases and they succeeded more than they expected. Caught Israel by surprise."
Maybe some media reported things as such, but most of what ive listened too from Israel dont deny this in any way, same deal with lucking out on the music festival.
Most agree that it was extremely well planned and executed and that Hamas surely didn't expect to be so successful and the response from Israel be so slow.
indo-dreaming wrote:"What it really is showing is that the narrative that Hamas just got in with luck and started randomly killing people , babies etc is false.
It was a well planned military operation that was going after key Israeli military bases and they succeeded more than they expected. Caught Israel by surprise."Maybe some media reported things as such, but most of what ive listened too from Israel dont deny this in any way, same deal with lucking out on the music festival.
Most agree that it was extremely well planned and executed and that Hamas surely didn't expect to be so successful and the response from Israel be so slow.
Well Indo, we can agree on something. :)
Ooops, how did this get in the mainstream media?
https://m.
^^
indo-dreaming wrote:"What it really is showing is that the narrative that Hamas just got in with luck and started randomly killing people , babies etc is false.
It was a well planned military operation that was going after key Israeli military bases and they succeeded more than they expected. Caught Israel by surprise."Maybe some media reported things as such, but most of what ive listened too from Israel dont deny this in any way, same deal with lucking out on the music festival.
Most agree that it was extremely well planned and executed and that Hamas surely didn't expect to be so successful and the response from Israel be so slow.
Israel just dropped the ball in regards to protecting the border...probably because there has been a prolonged period of relative peace.
That we can you the word lucky for a terrorist attack is pretty funny. All those Jihardists fizzing with excitement about how lucky they were to stumble onto a festival packed with innocent victims. Oh the joy.
Will go down as one of Hamas's greatest moments.
southernraw wrote:indo-dreaming wrote:seeds wrote:Different opinions above in what I posted.
Watch it numbnuts! Who knows after that.Watched a bit, pretty much what i said chaos and hard decisions would have had to be made often in split seconds that sadly resulted in Israel deaths, but if these decision's hadn't been made and more Hamas allowed to spread deeper into Israel or escaped back to Gaza with even more kidnapped the outcomes would be even worse.
Edit: hmmm he sounds like a Hamas simp though in denying some things that happened, will watch it all when get a chance.
The thing i'm struggling to understand Indo, is how Israel left the gate swinging open gaily in the breeze(so to speak) for anyone to walk on through. Even with pretty severe security warnings of increased potential for Hamas 'activities'.
I just keep coming back to this point and am struggling to find logical answers to how one of the greatest defence mechanisms in modern history could just.....fall asleep at the wheel.
It really makes you wonder about it all.
Kinda like the batsoup or whatever it was as the origin of covid.
That turned out to be bullshit too....which i kinda observed was obvious from the start.
"It really makes you wonder about it all." No it doesn't.
Sounds like a conspiracy.
So, check it out, Aussie dudes. This is the deal with folks like andy-mac, southernraw, basesix, seeds, Jelly Flater, GuySmiley, and mates. Why are they all about diving deep into conspiracy theories? Why are they vibing with Hamas and preaching that they're freedom fighters? Why are they out here saying Israel's this colonial settler aggressor, blaming them for the Hamas terrorist attacks, and saying that these attacks are fair game? Why are they cooking up arguments supporting Hamas and Islamic terrorism, claiming Arab Muslims are innocent victims, and dropping the blame on Israel for all the drama over the past 70 years, and stuff? It's a wild scene, ya know? Here's why:
The most insightful thing you can read about the current coverage of this conflict was actually written back in 2014 by former AP reporter and editor Matti Friedman. Almost everything he wrote is still reflected in what you see today and I would urge everyone to read it.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) November 23, 2023
I’m…
An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth
A former AP correspondent explains how and why reporters get Israel so wrong, and why it matters
The Israel Story
Is there anything left to say about Israel and Gaza? Newspapers this summer have been full of little else. Television viewers see heaps of rubble and plumes of smoke in their sleep. A representative article from a recent issue of The New Yorker described the summer’s events by dedicating one sentence each to the horrors in Nigeria and Ukraine, four sentences to the crazed génocidaires of ISIS, and the rest of the article—30 sentences—to Israel and Gaza.
When the hysteria abates, I believe the events in Gaza will not be remembered by the world as particularly important. People were killed, most of them Palestinians, including many unarmed innocents. I wish I could say the tragedy of their deaths, or the deaths of Israel’s soldiers, will change something, that they mark a turning point. But they don’t. This round was not the first in the Arab wars with Israel and will not be the last. The Israeli campaign was little different in its execution from any other waged by a Western army against a similar enemy in recent years, except for the more immediate nature of the threat to a country’s own population, and the greater exertions, however futile, to avoid civilian deaths.
The lasting importance of this summer’s war, I believe, doesn’t lie in the war itself. It lies instead in the way the war has been described and responded to abroad, and the way this has laid bare the resurgence of an old, twisted pattern of thought and its migration from the margins to the mainstream of Western discourse—namely, a hostile obsession with Jews. The key to understanding this resurgence is not to be found among jihadi webmasters, basement conspiracy theorists, or radical activists. It is instead to be found first among the educated and respectable people who populate the international news industry; decent people, many of them, and some of them my former colleagues.
While global mania about Israeli actions has come to be taken for granted, it is actually the result of decisions made by individual human beings in positions of responsibility—in this case, journalists and editors. The world is not responding to events in this country, but rather to the description of these events by news organizations. The key to understanding the strange nature of the response is thus to be found in the practice of journalism, and specifically in a severe malfunction that is occurring in that profession—my profession—here in Israel.
In this essay I will try to provide a few tools to make sense of the news from Israel. I acquired these tools as an insider: Between 2006 and the end of 2011 I was a reporter and editor in the Jerusalem bureau of the Associated Press, one of the world’s two biggest news providers. I have lived in Israel since 1995 and have been reporting on it since 1997.
This essay is not an exhaustive survey of the sins of the international media, a conservative polemic, or a defense of Israeli policies. (I am a believer in the importance of the “mainstream” media, a liberal, and a critic of many of my country’s policies.) It necessarily involves some generalizations. I will first outline the central tropes of the international media’s Israel story—a story on which there is surprisingly little variation among mainstream outlets, and one which is, as the word “story” suggests, a narrative construct that is largely fiction. I will then note the broader historical context of the way Israel has come to be discussed and explain why I believe it to be a matter of concern not only for people preoccupied with Jewish affairs. I will try to keep it brief.
How Important Is the Israel Story?
Staffing is the best measure of the importance of a story to a particular news organization. When I was a correspondent at the AP, the agency had more than 40 staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian territories. That was significantly more news staff than the AP had in China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was higher than the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings of the “Arab Spring” eventually erupted.
To offer a sense of scale: Before the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, the permanent AP presence in that country consisted of a single regime-approved stringer. The AP’s editors believed, that is, that Syria’s importance was less than one-40th that of Israel. I don’t mean to pick on the AP—the agency is wholly average, which makes it useful as an example. The big players in the news business practice groupthink, and these staffing arrangements were reflected across the herd. Staffing levels in Israel have decreased somewhat since the Arab uprisings began, but remain high. And when Israel flares up, as it did this summer, reporters are often moved from deadlier conflicts. Israel still trumps nearly everything else.
The volume of press coverage that results, even when little is going on, gives this conflict a prominence compared to which its actual human toll is absurdly small. In all of 2013, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claimed 42 lives—that is, roughly the monthly homicide rate in the city of Chicago. Jerusalem, internationally renowned as a city of conflict, had slightly fewer violent deaths per capita last year than Portland, Ore., one of America’s safer cities. In contrast, in three years the Syrian conflict has claimed an estimated 190,000 lives, or about 70,000 more than the number of people who have ever died in the Arab-Israeli conflict since it began a century ago.
News organizations have nonetheless decided that this conflict is more important than, for example, the more than 1,600 women murdered in Pakistan last year (271 after being raped and 193 of them burned alive), the ongoing erasure of Tibet by the Chinese Communist Party, the carnage in Congo (more than 5 million dead as of 2012) or the Central African Republic, and the drug wars in Mexico (death toll between 2006 and 2012: 60,000), let alone conflicts no one has ever heard of in obscure corners of India or Thailand. They believe Israel to be the most important story on earth, or very close.
What Is Important About the Israel Story, and What Is Not
A reporter working in the international press corps here understands quickly that what is important in the Israel-Palestinian story is Israel. If you follow mainstream coverage, you will find nearly no real analysis of Palestinian society or ideologies, profiles of armed Palestinian groups, or investigation of Palestinian government. Palestinians are not taken seriously as agents of their own fate. The West has decided that Palestinians should want a state alongside Israel, so that opinion is attributed to them as fact, though anyone who has spent time with actual Palestinians understands that things are (understandably, in my opinion) more complicated. Who they are and what they want is not important: The story mandates that they exist as passive victims of the party that matters.
Corruption, for example, is a pressing concern for many Palestinians under the rule of the Palestinian Authority, but when I and another reporter once suggested an article on the subject, we were informed by the bureau chief that Palestinian corruption was “not the story.” (Israeli corruption was, and we covered it at length.)
Israeli actions are analyzed and criticized, and every flaw in Israeli society is aggressively reported. In one seven-week period, from Nov. 8 to Dec. 16, 2011, I decided to count the stories coming out of our bureau on the various moral failings of Israeli society—proposed legislation meant to suppress the media, the rising influence of Orthodox Jews, unauthorized settlement outposts, gender segregation, and so forth. I counted 27 separate articles, an average of a story every two days. In a very conservative estimate, this seven-week tally was higher than the total number of significantly critical stories about Palestinian government and society, including the totalitarian Islamists of Hamas, that our bureau had published in the preceding three years.
The Hamas charter, for example, calls not just for Israel’s destruction but for the murder of Jews and blames Jews for engineering the French and Russian revolutions and both world wars; the charter was never mentioned in print when I was at the AP, though Hamas won a Palestinian national election and had become one of the region’s most important players. To draw the link with this summer’s events: An observer might think Hamas’ decision in recent years to construct a military infrastructure beneath Gaza’s civilian infrastructure would be deemed newsworthy, if only because of what it meant about the way the next conflict would be fought and the cost to innocent people. But that is not the case. The Hamas emplacements were not important in themselves, and were therefore ignored. What was important was the Israeli decision to attack them.
There has been much discussion recently of Hamas attempts to intimidate reporters. Any veteran of the press corps here knows the intimidation is real, and I saw it in action myself as an editor on the AP news desk. During the 2008-2009 Gaza fighting I personally erased a key detail—that Hamas fighters were dressed as civilians and being counted as civilians in the death toll—because of a threat to our reporter in Gaza. (The policy was then, and remains, not to inform readers that the story is censored unless the censorship is Israeli. Earlier this month, the AP’s Jerusalem news editor reported and submitted a story on Hamas intimidation; the story was shunted into deep freeze by his superiors and has not been published.)
But if critics imagine that journalists are clamoring to cover Hamas and are stymied by thugs and threats, it is generally not so. There are many low-risk ways to report Hamas actions, if the will is there: under bylines from Israel, under no byline, by citing Israeli sources. Reporters are resourceful when they want to be.
The fact is that Hamas intimidation is largely beside the point because the actions of Palestinians are beside the point: Most reporters in Gaza believe their job is to document violence directed by Israel at Palestinian civilians. That is the essence of the Israel story. In addition, reporters are under deadline and often at risk, and many don’t speak the language and have only the most tenuous grip on what is going on. They are dependent on Palestinian colleagues and fixers who either fear Hamas, support Hamas, or both. Reporters don’t need Hamas enforcers to shoo them away from facts that muddy the simple story they have been sent to tell.
It is not coincidence that the few journalists who have documented Hamas fighters and rocket launches in civilian areas this summer were generally not, as you might expect, from the large news organizations with big and permanent Gaza operations. They were mostly scrappy, peripheral, and newly arrived players—a Finn, an Indian crew, a few others. These poor souls didn’t get the memo.
What Else Isn’t Important?
The fact that Israelis quite recently elected moderate governments that sought reconciliation with the Palestinians, and which were undermined by the Palestinians, is considered unimportant and rarely mentioned. These lacunae are often not oversights but a matter of policy. In early 2009, for example, two colleagues of mine obtained information that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had made a significant peace offer to the Palestinian Authority several months earlier, and that the Palestinians had deemed it insufficient. This had not been reported yet and it was—or should have been—one of the biggest stories of the year. The reporters obtained confirmation from both sides and one even saw a map, but the top editors at the bureau decided that they would not publish the story.
Some staffers were furious, but it didn’t help. Our narrative was that the Palestinians were moderate and the Israelis recalcitrant and increasingly extreme. Reporting the Olmert offer—like delving too deeply into the subject of Hamas—would make that narrative look like nonsense. And so we were instructed to ignore it, and did, for more than a year and a half.
This decision taught me a lesson that should be clear to consumers of the Israel story: Many of the people deciding what you will read and see from here view their role not as explanatory but as political. Coverage is a weapon to be placed at the disposal of the side they like.
How Is the Israel Story Framed?
The Israel story is framed in the same terms that have been in use since the early 1990s—the quest for a “two-state solution.” It is accepted that the conflict is “Israeli-Palestinian,” meaning that it is a conflict taking place on land that Israel controls—0.2 percent of the Arab world—in which Jews are a majority and Arabs a minority. The conflict is more accurately described as “Israel-Arab,” or “Jewish-Arab”—that is, a conflict between the 6 million Jews of Israel and 300 million Arabs in surrounding countries. (Perhaps “Israel-Muslim” would be more accurate, to take into account the enmity of non-Arab states like Iran and Turkey, and, more broadly, 1 billion Muslims worldwide.) This is the conflict that has been playing out in different forms for a century, before Israel existed, before Israel captured the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, and before the term “Palestinian” was in use.
The “Israeli-Palestinian” framing allows the Jews, a tiny minority in the Middle East, to be depicted as the stronger party. It also includes the implicit assumption that if the Palestinian problem is somehow solved the conflict will be over, though no informed person today believes this to be true. This definition also allows the Israeli settlement project, which I believe is a serious moral and strategic error on Israel’s part, to be described not as what it is—one more destructive symptom of the conflict—but rather as its cause.
A knowledgeable observer of the Middle East cannot avoid the impression that the region is a volcano and that the lava is radical Islam, an ideology whose various incarnations are now shaping this part of the world. Israel is a tiny village on the slopes of the volcano. Hamas is the local representative of radical Islam and is openly dedicated to the eradication of the Jewish minority enclave in Israel, just as Hezbollah is the dominant representative of radical Islam in Lebanon, the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and so forth.
Hamas is not, as it freely admits, party to the effort to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It has different goals about which it is quite open and that are similar to those of the groups listed above. Since the mid 1990s, more than any other player, Hamas has destroyed the Israeli left, swayed moderate Israelis against territorial withdrawals, and buried the chances of a two-state compromise. That’s one accurate way to frame the story.
An observer might also legitimately frame the story through the lens of minorities in the Middle East, all of which are under intense pressure from Islam: When minorities are helpless, their fate is that of the Yazidis or Christians of northern Iraq, as we have just seen, and when they are armed and organized they can fight back and survive, as in the case of the Jews and (we must hope) the Kurds.
There are, in other words, many different ways to see what is happening here. Jerusalem is less than a day’s drive from Aleppo or Baghdad, and it should be clear to everyone that peace is pretty elusive in the Middle East even in places where Jews are absent. But reporters generally cannot see the Israel story in relation to anything else. Instead of describing Israel as one of the villages abutting the volcano, they describe Israel as the volcano.
The Israel story is framed to seem as if it has nothing to do with events nearby because the “Israel” of international journalism does not exist in the same geo-political universe as Iraq, Syria, or Egypt. The Israel story is not a story about current events. It is about something else.
The Old Blank Screen
For centuries, stateless Jews played the role of a lightning rod for ill will among the majority population. They were a symbol of things that were wrong. Did you want to make the point that greed was bad? Jews were greedy. Cowardice? Jews were cowardly. Were you a Communist? Jews were capitalists. Were you a capitalist? In that case, Jews were Communists. Moral failure was the essential trait of the Jew. It was their role in Christian tradition—the only reason European society knew or cared about them in the first place.
Like many Jews who grew up late in the 20th century in friendly Western cities, I dismissed such ideas as the feverish memories of my grandparents. One thing I have learned—and I’m not alone this summer—is that I was foolish to have done so. Today, people in the West tend to believe the ills of the age are racism, colonialism, and militarism. The world’s only Jewish country has done less harm than most countries on earth, and more good—and yet when people went looking for a country that would symbolize the sins of our new post-colonial, post-militaristic, post-ethnic dream-world, the country they chose was this one.
When the people responsible for explaining the world to the world, journalists, cover the Jews’ war as more worthy of attention than any other, when they portray the Jews of Israel as the party obviously in the wrong, when they omit all possible justifications for the Jews’ actions and obscure the true face of their enemies, what they are saying to their readers—whether they intend to or not—is that Jews are the worst people on earth. The Jews are a symbol of the evils that civilized people are taught from an early age to abhor. International press coverage has become a morality play starring a familiar villain.
Some readers might remember that Britain participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the fallout from which has now killed more than three times the number of people ever killed in the Israel-Arab conflict; yet in Britain, protesters furiously condemn Jewish militarism. White people in London and Paris whose parents not long ago had themselves been fanned by dark people in the sitting rooms of Rangoon or Algiers condemn Jewish “colonialism.” Americans who live in places called “Manhattan” or “Seattle” condemn Jews for displacing the native people of Palestine. Russian reporters condemn Israel’s brutal military tactics. Belgian reporters condemn Israel’s treatment of Africans. When Israel opened a transportation service for Palestinian workers in the occupied West Bank a few years ago, American news consumers could read about Israel “segregating buses.” And there are a lot of people in Europe, and not just in Germany, who enjoy hearing the Jews accused of genocide.
You don’t need to be a history professor, or a psychiatrist, to understand what’s going on. Having rehabilitated themselves against considerable odds in a minute corner of the earth, the descendants of powerless people who were pushed out of Europe and the Islamic Middle East have become what their grandparents were—the pool into which the world spits. The Jews of Israel are the screen onto which it has become socially acceptable to project the things you hate about yourself and your own country. The tool through which this psychological projection is executed is the international press.
Who Cares If the World Gets the Israel Story Wrong?
Because a gap has opened here between the way things are and the way they are described, opinions are wrong and policies are wrong, and observers are regularly blindsided by events. Such things have happened before. In the years leading to the breakdown of Soviet Communism in 1991, as the Russia expert Leon Aron wrote in a 2011 essay for Foreign Policy, “virtually no Western expert, scholar, official, or politician foresaw the impending collapse of the Soviet Union.” The empire had been rotting for years and the signs were there, but the people who were supposed to be seeing and reporting them failed and when the superpower imploded everyone was surprised.
And there was the Spanish civil war: “Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which do not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. … I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what had happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines.’ ” That was George Orwell, writing in 1942.
Orwell did not step off an airplane in Catalonia, stand next to a Republican cannon, and have himself filmed while confidently repeating what everyone else was saying or describing what any fool could see: weaponry, rubble, bodies. He looked beyond the ideological fantasies of his peers and knew that what was important was not necessarily visible. Spain, he understood, was not really about Spain at all—it was about a clash of totalitarian systems, German and Russian. He knew he was witnessing a threat to European civilization, and he wrote that, and he was right.
Understanding what happened in Gaza this summer means understanding Hezbollah in Lebanon, the rise of the Sunni jihadis in Syria and Iraq, and the long tentacles of Iran. It requires figuring out why countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia now see themselves as closer to Israel than to Hamas. Above all, it requires us to understand what is clear to nearly everyone in the Middle East: The ascendant force in our part of the world is not democracy or modernity. It is rather an empowered strain of Islam that assumes different and sometimes conflicting forms, and that is willing to employ extreme violence in a quest to unite the region under its control and confront the West. Those who grasp this fact will be able to look around and connect the dots.
Israel is not an idea, a symbol of good or evil, or a litmus test for liberal opinion at dinner parties. It is a small country in a scary part of the world that is getting scarier. It should be reported as critically as any other place, and understood in context and in proportion. Israel is not one of the most important stories in the world, or even in the Middle East; whatever the outcome in this region in the next decade, it will have as much to do with Israel as World War II had to do with Spain. Israel is a speck on the map—a sideshow that happens to carry an unusual emotional charge.
Many in the West clearly prefer the old comfort of parsing the moral failings of Jews, and the familiar feeling of superiority this brings them, to confronting an unhappy and confusing reality. They may convince themselves that all of this is the Jews’ problem, and indeed the Jews’ fault. But journalists engage in these fantasies at the cost of their credibility and that of their profession. And, as Orwell would tell us, the world entertains fantasies at its peril.
To not ask the question of whether or not Israel were complicit in Hamas's terror attack is to not be open to all possibilities.
It's amusing the same people here that say that 'innocent peoples lives are the cost of war' can't see it the other way around.
To actually believe Netanyahu is a good guy and has innocent peoples best intentions at heart is naive. He's currently showing his hand at that.
His and his parties intentions have always been clear regarding Gaza.
Do you really believe he and his party care what nationality pays a price for the 'cost of war'?
Not saying it's how it happened. But to not ask the question is plain naive, especially considering Netanyahus history since the 1980's.
^^ verbose piffle ^^
Israel is not Netanyahu. To question Israels military and government is not questioning Israeli people and their religion/beliefs.
Something continually overlooked is how the Israeli people themselves are furious at the Israeli government's lapse in border security.
They also want questions answered.
All this is currently getting lost in the fog of war.
https://m.
problem with your marxist/anti-semitic/longmarch drivel @grco, is that it shows that you are in the wrong place, talking to the wrong population, looking for opposition to justify your hysteria. Aussies couldn't give a crap if someone is Jewish or not. Your sad little shitlist of moderates above, is of people simply hoping there is accountability and transparency, for everyone's sake. haha 'deep diving into conspiracy'.. pfft..
''Raphael you are blocked from the top''.
https://efrat.substack.com/p/raphael-hayons-story-a-silenced-mission
philosurphizingkerching wrote:''Raphael you are blocked from the top''.
https://efrat.substack.com/p/raphael-hayons-story-a-silenced-mission
Exhibit A:
Thanks for sharing this one @philosurphiziingkerching.
…then and now
https://m.
;)
https://m.
&pp=ygUWbWFzb24gaG8gZWF0aW5nIHJvY2tzIA%3D%3D southernraw wrote:To not ask the question of whether or not Israel were complicit in Hamas's terror attack is to not be open to all possibilities.
It's amusing the same people here that say that 'innocent peoples lives are the cost of war' can't see it the other way around.
To actually believe Netanyahu is a good guy and has innocent peoples best intentions at heart is naive. He's currently showing his hand at that.
His and his parties intentions have always been clear regarding Gaza.
Do you really believe he and his party care what nationality pays a price for the 'cost of war'?
Not saying it's how it happened. But to not ask the question is plain naive, especially considering Netanyahus history since the 1980's.
To suggest there was scheming from Netanyahu and his govt to actively and with planning encourage Hamas to attack Israel knowing there would be civilian death is just ridiculous. Beyond stupid.
Not one of your best moments.
Roadkill wrote:southernraw wrote:To not ask the question of whether or not Israel were complicit in Hamas's terror attack is to not be open to all possibilities.
It's amusing the same people here that say that 'innocent peoples lives are the cost of war' can't see it the other way around.
To actually believe Netanyahu is a good guy and has innocent peoples best intentions at heart is naive. He's currently showing his hand at that.
His and his parties intentions have always been clear regarding Gaza.
Do you really believe he and his party care what nationality pays a price for the 'cost of war'?
Not saying it's how it happened. But to not ask the question is plain naive, especially considering Netanyahus history since the 1980's.To suggest there was scheming from Netanyahu and his govt to actively and with planning encourage Hamas to attack Israel knowing there would be civilian death is just ridiculous. Beyond stupid.
Not one of your best moments.
Actually it’s you that is wrong again RK. All evidence proves that the IDF will kill a few Israeli’s, and propagandise it to whip fucktards like your self, green room and Indo into consenting to unrestrained revenge killing.
soggydog wrote:Roadkill wrote:southernraw wrote:To not ask the question of whether or not Israel were complicit in Hamas's terror attack is to not be open to all possibilities.
It's amusing the same people here that say that 'innocent peoples lives are the cost of war' can't see it the other way around.
To actually believe Netanyahu is a good guy and has innocent peoples best intentions at heart is naive. He's currently showing his hand at that.
His and his parties intentions have always been clear regarding Gaza.
Do you really believe he and his party care what nationality pays a price for the 'cost of war'?
Not saying it's how it happened. But to not ask the question is plain naive, especially considering Netanyahus history since the 1980's.To suggest there was scheming from Netanyahu and his govt to actively and with planning encourage Hamas to attack Israel knowing there would be civilian death is just ridiculous. Beyond stupid.
Not one of your best moments.
Actually it’s you that is wrong again RK. All evidence proves that the IDF will kill a few Israeli’s, and propagandise it to whip fucktards like your self, green room and Indo into consenting to unrestrained revenge killing.
I am not disputing that Israel will sacrifice their own people...but the premise from SR is that Israel Govt and Netanyahu were complicit in planning the Hamas attack. Which is wrong and nothing but a dumb as fuck conspiracy theory.
Provoking someone or something into action is not actively planning and/helping an attack.
focus SD, reading and understanding is different to reading and not understanding
… being warned of an attack before it happened and then completely ignoring the warnings could be considered as helping an attack.
- hasbara is as complex and convoluted as a hamas command centre ;)
https://m.
Roadkill wrote:soggydog wrote:Roadkill wrote:southernraw wrote:To not ask the question of whether or not Israel were complicit in Hamas's terror attack is to not be open to all possibilities.
It's amusing the same people here that say that 'innocent peoples lives are the cost of war' can't see it the other way around.
To actually believe Netanyahu is a good guy and has innocent peoples best intentions at heart is naive. He's currently showing his hand at that.
His and his parties intentions have always been clear regarding Gaza.
Do you really believe he and his party care what nationality pays a price for the 'cost of war'?
Not saying it's how it happened. But to not ask the question is plain naive, especially considering Netanyahus history since the 1980's.To suggest there was scheming from Netanyahu and his govt to actively and with planning encourage Hamas to attack Israel knowing there would be civilian death is just ridiculous. Beyond stupid.
Not one of your best moments.
Actually it’s you that is wrong again RK. All evidence proves that the IDF will kill a few Israeli’s, and propagandise it to whip fucktards like your self, green room and Indo into consenting to unrestrained revenge killing.
I am not disputing that Israel will sacrifice their own people...but the premise from SR is that Israel Govt and Netanyahu were complicit in planning the Hamas attack. Which is wrong and nothing but a dumb as fuck conspiracy theory.
Provoking someone or something into action is not actively planning and/helping an attack.
focus SD, reading and understanding is different to reading and not understanding
So knowing about an event, and not acting to prevent a escalation. In fact looking at the long term goals of said escalation is not being complicit eh’
Yesterday you wanted to talk about the complicity of the Palestinian population.
Focus RK. Too much contradictory bullshit.
So with the pause in fighting happening very soon in Gaza, will Israel turn its focus to Lebanon? I've noticed the airstrikes have been increasing the last week.
Maybe give the latest Rogan episode with Dave Smith. A Jewish guy telling the truth.
N
soggydog wrote:Roadkill wrote:soggydog wrote:Roadkill wrote:southernraw wrote:To not ask the question of whether or not Israel were complicit in Hamas's terror attack is to not be open to all possibilities.
It's amusing the same people here that say that 'innocent peoples lives are the cost of war' can't see it the other way around.
To actually believe Netanyahu is a good guy and has innocent peoples best intentions at heart is naive. He's currently showing his hand at that.
His and his parties intentions have always been clear regarding Gaza.
Do you really believe he and his party care what nationality pays a price for the 'cost of war'?
Not saying it's how it happened. But to not ask the question is plain naive, especially considering Netanyahus history since the 1980's.To suggest there was scheming from Netanyahu and his govt to actively and with planning encourage Hamas to attack Israel knowing there would be civilian death is just ridiculous. Beyond stupid.
Not one of your best moments.
Actually it’s you that is wrong again RK. All evidence proves that the IDF will kill a few Israeli’s, and propagandise it to whip fucktards like your self, green room and Indo into consenting to unrestrained revenge killing.
I am not disputing that Israel will sacrifice their own people...but the premise from SR is that Israel Govt and Netanyahu were complicit in planning the Hamas attack. Which is wrong and nothing but a dumb as fuck conspiracy theory.
Provoking someone or something into action is not actively planning and/helping an attack.
focus SD, reading and understanding is different to reading and not understanding
So knowing about an event, and not acting to prevent a escalation. In fact looking at the long term goals of said escalation is not being complicit eh’
Yesterday you wanted to talk about the complicity of the Palestinian population.
Focus RK. Too much contradictory bullshit.
oh jeezus, you also. They didn't know about any event. They didn't knowingly not act on an event (that they didn't know about)
… but nobody knows that ;);)
- hear the lies here…
https://m.
&pp=ygU3SXNyYWVsaSBpbnRlbGxpZ2VuY2UgdG9sZCBuZXRhbnlhaHUgYWJvdXQgb2N0IDcgYXR0YWNrcw%3D%3D Roadkill wrote:southernraw wrote:To not ask the question of whether or not Israel were complicit in Hamas's terror attack is to not be open to all possibilities.
It's amusing the same people here that say that 'innocent peoples lives are the cost of war' can't see it the other way around.
To actually believe Netanyahu is a good guy and has innocent peoples best intentions at heart is naive. He's currently showing his hand at that.
His and his parties intentions have always been clear regarding Gaza.
Do you really believe he and his party care what nationality pays a price for the 'cost of war'?
Not saying it's how it happened. But to not ask the question is plain naive, especially considering Netanyahus history since the 1980's.To suggest there was scheming from Netanyahu and his govt to actively and with planning encourage Hamas to attack Israel knowing there would be civilian death is just ridiculous. Beyond stupid.
Not one of your best moments.
Well you wont see it in your 6 oclock news Roady so i guess it cant b true can it.
Dont question anything.
Netanyahu is despised by israels, particularly the young but you dont see that do you.
Follow blindly Roadkill. Its your forte.
2.40 mark of vid…
- just have to wait till after ‘the war’ is done before we can verify it officially… u know… deny certain access to stuff that has the capability of challenging the chosen narrative ;)
With democracy and freedom it fits under the banner of ‘kill first, ask questions later’.
https://m.
&pp=ygUSZWd5cHQgd2FybnMgaXNyYWVs
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