Hamas attacking Israel

[moosehead]

Dear Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,

 

I am writing to you on behalf of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to urgently request that the Canadian Government do everything within its power to achieve an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Ending the indiscriminate violence is the only way to prevent more deaths and scale up desperately needed humanitarian assistance. 

 

My colleagues and I, like so many Canadians, were aggrieved and outraged by Hamas’ deliberate and unconscionable attack on Israeli civilians. We are now horrified by Israel’s incessant and indiscriminate attacks on Palestinian civilians and civilian spaces, including hospitals, in Gaza.  

 

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/canada-must-call-immediate-ceasefire-gaza/

[Satchmo]

Just now, moosehead said:

 

Does you goat bulldoze the homes of sheep.. kick them off their land.   Squat their property forever, not allowing the sheep to ever return ?

No. Some goats tend to repeat themselves over and over again though.  They can also just go bah in response no matter what you say to them.  Mine tries hard not to do that.

[Warhippy]

7 hours ago, Super19 said:

I've seen way more manipulation from Israel tbh. From fake videos, flat out lies and propaganda. Imagine if Gazans did even 10% of the manipulation Israel is doing right now...

This is without mentioning that Israel actually controls essentially all power and internet/communication in the region and has blacked out communications numerous times over the past month.

 

It's really important that people know without QUESTION that misinformation is rampant on both sides.  But only one side has the capabilities of actually controlling the ability to transmit that information in the region 

[Satchmo]

4 minutes ago, Warhippy said:

It's not... murder

 

It's just enforced un-alivedness

I was proven wrong on this one.  I thought it had to involve death.  That's still  part of it, but forced migration fits the term too.

[moosehead]

2 minutes ago, Satchmo said:

No. Some goats tend to repeat themselves over and over again though.  They can also just go bah in response no matter what you say to them.  Mine tries hard not to do that.

 

Does your goat believe in racism, oppression, occupation , ethnic cleansing, genocide and apartheid policies ?

[Satchmo]

Just now, moosehead said:

 

Does your goat believe in racism, oppression, occupation , ethnic cleansing, genocide and apartheid policies ?

One of us is not getting the other person's point.   Let's call it a day.

[moosehead]

Makes sense..  Good people are suffering... sad. 

 

“But the simple human truth is that you don’t have to choose. You can abhor the suffering of Palestinian families and the suffering of Israeli families like mine. You can call for peace and the immediate return of the innocent men, women and children who were violently taken from us. It doesn’t need to be political to share in my grief or in the anguish that the Israeli people are feeling.”

 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/14/us/march-for-israel-washington-security/index.html

[Warhippy]

10 minutes ago, Satchmo said:

I was proven wrong on this one.  I thought it had to involve death.  That's still  part of it, but forced migration fits the term too.

As a member of a first nations band forcibly relocated 3 times including the disastrous and criminal high arctic relocations it absolutely fits.

 

Just...my opinion 

[moosehead]

1 minute ago, Warhippy said:

As a member of a first nations band forcibly relocated 3 times including the disastrous and criminal high arctic relocations it absolutely fits.

 

Just...my opinion 

 

Cultural genocide ? Horrific. 

[I.Am.Ironman]

7 hours ago, 4petesake said:

 

Honest question- Would you consider  ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’ as genocide?

 

This is where my mind went as well. As per google search: 300-600k German civilians and 200k Japanese civilians died as a result of allied bombings during WW2.

[Elias Pettersson]

4 hours ago, moosehead said:

 

She was a peace activist and sadly would never have approved of this Israeli government collective punishment and murder of innocent women and children in Gaza.....

 

She was a peace activist who was murdered by the same people she was trying to make peace with...

[Elias Pettersson]

Jesse Kline: Western media wilfully ignorant of Hamas using hospitals for war crimes (msn.com)

 

Jesse Kline: Western media willfully ignorant of Hamas using hospitals for war crimes

 

The Oct. 17 “bombing” of the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City led to a “day of rage” against Israel throughout the Muslim world. Of course, when it was revealed that, rather than a hospital being bombed by Israeli war planes, a parking lot was hit by an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, we did not hear calls for a day of rage against Palestinian terror groups.

 

In reality, Al-Ahli was just a test run, a prelude to a concerted Hamas campaign to falsely accuse the Jewish state of committing war crimes against vulnerable civilians while covering up its own violations of international law. And many in the West, fuelled by anti-Israel media outlets, are buying the terrorists’ propaganda hook, line and sinker.

 

Over the past week, international media has been dominated by stories about Israel attacking hospitals, ambulances and schools, of children and babies dying as medical facilities in northern Gaza run out of fuel and other supplies. All of this is heartbreaking, but it’s not the full story.

 

Hamas has been using hospitals, playgrounds and schools to shield it’s military assets. And the same Hamas-run health ministry that perpetrated the Al-Ahli fraud to incite violence against Israelis is now using Israel’s attempts to dismantle those terrorist assets to perpetuate the lie that the Jewish state is committing some sort of “genocide” in Gaza.

 

And many of the wire services that are reporting on the ground in Gaza are basing their stories primarily on the statements made by those same Hamas officials, whose mistruths are being repeated by protesters on the streets of Canada and elsewhere.

 

“Fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants escalated near and around Gaza City’s besieged and overcrowded hospitals, which Palestinian officials said were hit by explosions and gunfire,” read a Reuters story published on Friday.

 

It then quoted the director of Shifa Hospital, who claimed Israel was “launching a war on Gaza City hospitals,” and accused the Jewish state of targeting a school (even though Gazan schools have been closed for some time). The story went on to discuss “missiles” that “landed in the courtyard of Al Shifa,” though Israel maintains this was a result of another misfired rocket directed at its forces.

 

An Associated Press report published in the Globe and Mail on Saturday did note Israel’s assertion that Hamas is operating a subterranean base directly below the hospital, but claimed it had done so “without providing evidence.”

 

Which is odd given that two weeks earlier, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) provided journalists with what it said was “concrete evidence,”  including intercepted communications and admissions made by several enemy combatants,  showing that Hamas had built a tunnel network underneath the hospital and that hundreds of terrorists “flooded into the hospital” after massacring Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.

 

The White House subsequently confirmed on Tuesday that it has evidence that Shifa Hospital is being used as a “command-and-control” centre and likely a weapons depot.

This is no mere coincidence. Hamas’s history of using human shields is well documented. And this is exactly what it looks like.

 

Hamas has been using its base underneath Shifa to store weapons and direct rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel. It has been exploiting the hospital’s generators to power its underground bunker, while allowing babies to die as incubators and other life-saving medical equipment run out of electricity.

 

Hamas fighters have been caught on video firing at Israeli forces from inside the Sheikh Hamad Hospital, inviting the Israelis to fire back to be used as further “evidence” of Israel’s alleged atrocities.

 

Videos and photographs showing the IDF uncovering a tunnel entrance from within Sheikh Hamad Hospital and a command-and-control centre that included a large cache of weapons hidden below a children’s hospital have been made public.

 

Meanwhile, Israel tried to provide Shifa Hospital with 300 litres of fuel, but it was refused.  Israeli government sources say they intercepted a phone call from a Hamas official who told hospital administrators they were not allowed to accept the fuel, even though it would save the lives of their own people.

 

Israel has spent over a month telling Palestinians to flee northern Gaza and has offered to help transfer patients to safer medical centres. Yet Hamas has told them to stay put, to be used as martyrs in its deadly PR war against Israel.

 

Hamas is barely trying to hide its use of civilians trapped in hospitals as human shields, yet reputable international media outlets and anti-Israel protesters have been willing to turn a blind eye to the overwhelming evidence of the organization’s continued war crimes.

 

This is not unexpected from people who take to the streets simultaneously accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians, which it is not, while advocating for a Palestinian state “From the River to the Sea” — a call for genocide against the Jews.

 

But one would have hoped that western media would be more apt to accept the evidence provided by a liberal democracy with a free press over the word of a designated terrorist organization that just finished slaughtering,  raping and mutilating over 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

 

Unfortunately, there are some in the media who simply don’t care about the truth.

 

An open letter published late last week that has so far been signed by over 1,200 “reporters, editors, photographers, producers and other workers in newsrooms around the world” (though the list includes many former journalists, freelancers and others who are not affiliated with major news outlets) seeks to inject even more anti-Israel bias into the press.

 

The letter — whose signatories include those from the Washington Post, the Guardian and MSNBC — begins by lamenting the death of 36 journalists throughout the course of this war, which is tragic, though certainly a known risk for any correspondent venturing into a war zone. But it goes on to accuse Israel of “lethally targeting journalists,” while hailing the “brave efforts” of “our colleagues in Gaza.”

 

This, despite the fact that Israel is listed by Reporters Without Borders as having the freest press in the Middle East and North Africa — a far cry from Gaza, which the organization notes is “a particularly inhospitable territory for press freedom.”

 

The letter charges that, “News coverage has positioned the attack (of Oct. 7) as the starting point of the conflict without offering necessary historical context” — insinuating that indiscriminately murdering children and babies, sodomizing young women and taking civilians hostage was somehow justified by history, while conveniently leaving out the Arab rejection of the United Nations partition plan and numerous offers of Palestinian statehood, along with Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza.

 

It also accuses Israel of committing war crimes — without, of course, providing any evidence — and calls on the media to use false and inflammatory terms such as “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” when describing the Jewish state.

 

This push for even less objective journalism than we already have has real-world consequences, inflaming mobs who swallow Hamas’s BS and putting pressure on politicians to withdraw their political support for Israel’s war against a terrorist organization that doesn’t even try to hide its genocidal intent.  All while inciting continued violence against Jews, in Canada and around the world.

 

This just goes to show the importance of supporting reputable news outlets that are committed to the truth and reject the notion that journalism should be driven by progressive ideology, rather than facts.

[Canuck Surfer]

4 hours ago, moosehead said:

Dear Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,

 

I am writing to you on behalf of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to urgently request that the Canadian Government do everything within its power to achieve an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Ending the indiscriminate violence is the only way to prevent more deaths and scale up desperately needed humanitarian assistance. 

 

My colleagues and I, like so many Canadians, were aggrieved and outraged by Hamas’ deliberate and unconscionable attack on Israeli civilians. We are now horrified by Israel’s incessant and indiscriminate attacks on Palestinian civilians and civilian spaces, including hospitals, in Gaza.  

 

https://www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/canada-must-call-immediate-ceasefire-gaza/

 

If you believe there is genocide? Its not exclusive;

 

 

[Elias Pettersson]

 

[Elias Pettersson]

 

[Elias Pettersson]

 

Edited November 15, 2023 by Elias Pettersson

[Elias Pettersson]

 

[moosehead]

Israel’s hospital raid ‘a war crime plain and simple’

 

Jennifer Cassidy, a legal expert from the University of Oxford, says targeting medical facilities is a war crime “plain and simple”.

 

“Even if we take everything the Israeli government is saying to be true [about Hamas using al-Shifa], it is still a war crime because the proportionality and the outcome effect in relation to the gains they are achieving still is breaking international law. And they’re actually providing that evidence in real-time. They’re essentially making a case against themselves,” Cassidy told Al Jazeera.

 

But she added: “Getting the Israeli government to stand before a tribunal will be extremely difficult.

 

”https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/11/15/israel-hamas-war-live-israel-says-it-plans-to-raid-al-shifa-ministry

[moosehead]

The risk

 

But below the surface things are changing. Ever since the Obama administration's "pivot to Asia" there has been a fear here in the Gulf that the US is losing interest in the region, that it cannot be relied upon as a loyal partner. At the same time, the influences of Moscow and Beijing are in the ascendant. China recently brokered the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. President Putin has impressed Arab leaders with his unstinting support for Syria's President Assad. They compare this with how quickly Washington abandoned Egypt's President Mubarak in 2011 when the crowds came out on Cairo's Tahrir Square.

 

None of this means the West has lost the friends it had in the Middle East. Those Arab allies are clearly reluctant to go beyond angry words with Washington. But they do want to be heard and for the violence in Gaza to stop now, before events in the region and in their own countries risk deteriorating far beyond their control.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67417570

Edited November 15, 2023 by moosehead

[Bob Long]

10 hours ago, Warhippy said:

Experts in their fields actually claim otherwise.

 

They claim there is in fact a form of apartheid ongoing.  They claim there is also im fact a defined aspect of genocide occuring.

 

You claim otherwise.  This doesn't make you right because you disagree with the experts who make these statements any more than it made jim bob right when he claimed to know more about vaccines and infectious diseases  than doctors less than 2 years ago during a global pandemic 

 

You do realize many academics are wrong all the time?

 

If we are going to expand definitions to fit a narrative then meaningful conversations are not possible.

 

10 hours ago, Warhippy said:

It's equally disappointing to see someone who claims to be so highly educated label individuals as antisemitic or claim they don't believe Israel should exist because they argue different points based on their experiences or points of view.

 

C'est la vie

 

I didn't label him anything. 

Edited November 15, 2023 by Bob Long

[Satchmo]

Antisemitic and Anti-Muslim Hate Speech Surges Across the Internet

 

Fueled by the conflict between Israel and Gaza and stoked by extremists, hate speech has spiked on social media platforms such as X, Facebook and Instagram, researchers said.

 

On Oct. 7, the day Hamas attacked Israel, the hashtag #HitlerWasRight appeared on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Over the next month, more than 46,000 posts featured the hashtag, often alongside language that called for violence against Jews.

 

At the same time, the hashtag #DeathtoMuslims also spiked on X and was shared tens of thousands of times, according to a review by The New York Times.

Antisemitic and Islamophobic hate speech has surged across the internet since the conflict between Israel and Hamas broke out. The increases have been at far greater levels than what academics and researchers who monitor social media say they have seen before, with millions of often explicitly violent posts on X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

 

Antisemitic content soared more than 919 percent on X and 28 percent on Facebook in the month since Oct. 7, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group. Anti-Muslim hate speech on X jumped 422 percent on Oct. 7 and Oct. 8, and rose 297 percent over the next five days, said the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based political advocacy group.

 

On fringe platforms like 4chan, Gab and BitChute, antisemitic and Islamophobic content rose nearly 500 percent in the 48 hours after Oct. 7, according to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a nonprofit that tracks hate speech and extremism. And the surge has been global, with antisemitic posts also widely shared on state-backed social platforms in China.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/technology/hate-speech-israel-gaza-internet.html

[Bob Long]

11 hours ago, I.Am.Ironman said:

 

This is where my mind went as well. As per google search: 300-600k German civilians and 200k Japanese civilians died as a result of allied bombings during WW2.

 

sure why not? we're making up definitions as we go now anyway in social media. 

[Satchmo]

I usually try to post enough lines from an article to give a precis.  Could not really do that with this one from the BBC. 

 

Israel-Gaza: Why this war is different to the others

 

If this Gaza war was like all the others, a ceasefire would probably have been in force by now.

 

The dead would be buried and Israel would be arguing with the United Nations about how much cement could come into Gaza for rebuilding.

But this war is not like that. It is not just because of the enormity of the killing, first by Hamas on 7 October, mostly of Israeli civilians, followed by Israel's "mighty vengeance" as its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it, which has mostly killed Palestinian civilians.

 

This war is different to the others because it comes at a time when the fault lines that divide the Middle East are rumbling. For at least two decades, the most serious rift in the region's fractured geopolitical landscape has been between the friends and allies of Iran, and the friends and allies of the United States.

 

The core of Iran's network, sometimes called the "axis of resistance", is made up of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen and assorted Iraqi militias that are armed and trained by Iran. The Iranians have also supported Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

 

Iran is also getting closer to Russia and China. Iran has become a significant part of Russia's war effort in Ukraine. China buys a great deal of Iranian oil.

 

The longer the war in Gaza goes on, and as Israel kills more Palestinian civilians and destroys tens of thousands of homes, the greater the risk of conflict involving some members of those two camps.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67404110

[Warhippy]

1 hour ago, Bob Long said:

 

You do realize many academics are wrong all the time?

 

If we are going to expand definitions to fit a narrative then meaningful conversations are not possible.

 

 

I didn't label him anything. 

Never said you labeled him.

 

Academics are wrong all the time of course.  Unless they're not and it doesn't conform to an individuals specific bias or emotional leaning.

 

In this instance id lean towards experts in their fields being far more accurate to the situation than others who are not.

[Satchmo]

27 minutes ago, Warhippy said:

Never said you labeled him.

 

Academics are wrong all the time of course.  Unless they're not and it doesn't conform to an individuals specific bias or emotional leaning.

 

In this instance id lean towards experts in their fields being far more accurate to the situation than others who are not.

I think some risk comes from academics who have a specific bias or emotional leaning.    As we all do really, whether we have a PHD or not.