Hamas attacking Israel

[Ilunga]

1 hour ago, Super19 said:

@RomanPer

 

 

"Today we are celebrating my dad @DrGaborMate's 80th birthday. He was born in Budapest on January 6th 1944, two months before Nazi Germany occupied Hungary.

He was able to escape the Jewish ghetto after his mother, Judy, gave him to a stranger on the street, who agreed to take him to cousins in a safer area.

Staying in a cold, overcrowded flat, they kept him warm by sleeping on each side of him. After reuniting with his parents, who managed to survive, they fled to Canada along with his brother Janos in 1956. Living in Vancouver, he became a student activist, writer, high school teacher, doctor, healer, and renowned author.

He and my mom Rae taught me and brother Daniel and sister Hannah from an early age to be uncompromising about the truth, both the personal and political, and to stand up for the oppressed, especially the Palestinians occupied in our name.

On his 80th birthday, I honor his life and all that he has given to me and to the world.

And my wish is that today's modern-day Jewish ghettos — the Gaza death camp and occupied West Bank — will be liberated from today's modern-day Nazis, the Israeli government, so that every Palestinian can have the same freedom to follow their life path that my dad has been fortunate to have."

 

 

 

 

Tell your dad happy birthday from your friend dave in Australia. 

 

Just checked out his bibliography, very impressive. 

 

[Super19]

46 minutes ago, RomanPer said:

 

And what makes his voice more significant than mine, exactly?

He correctly assesses the situation for what it is. These words like occupation, oppression, and genocide aren't thrown around like 'halva'... they have real meaning behind them, backed by scholars and well Israel's actions. 

[Super19]

Very important talking points discussed here:

 

"This is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary interviews of a former senior US government official on Gaza.

This is Chas Freeman, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Key points in the video:

- He agrees that many of the victims of Oct 7th were killed by the Israeli army in the form of "undisciplined fire by helicopters with hellfire missiles or by tanks with incendiary rounds directed at buildings". In the case of the victims of the music festival he even says they "were largely killed, it appears, by hellfire missiles and by other undisciplined fire by Israeli forces". To him this "disgrace in military terms" stems from a "lack of discipline and training necessary to respond" but also from the IDF's "Hannibal directive", which "says that rather than get into bargaining over hostage exchange you should just kill the Israeli hostages along with their captors."

- He says that with Oct 7th "Hamas had 2 objectives": 1) "Put the Palestinian self-determination issue back on the global agenda", something he says they've "succeeded" in doing since they're is "widespread recognition outside Israel that only self-determination for Palestine in the form of a 2-state solution can provide security to Israel". He says that even in "the US, which has a larger Jewish population than Israel, many Jews have come to realize that this is the case. Younger Jews in particular in the U.S. are very disillusioned with Zionism and don't want to suffer contagion from it in the form of antisemitism, which is actually growing now as a result of Israeli actions".
2) "Give Hamas enormous popularity among Palestinians because they are seen as having stood up, as having been willing to accept death rather than captivity". He refers to Norman Finkelstein's "analogy of slave revolts in the U.S." and particularly the "1831 revolt by Nat Turner, a well-educated very intelligent enslaved African who led a slave revolt in Southern Virginia which had as its objective the murder of every white person they encountered." He says it "raises a moral question: 'Is the violence of the slave-owner morally the same as the violence of the slave trying to end that violence?'. The same moral question arises with Israeli oppression of Palestinians versus Palestinian resistance to oppression."

- All in all he concludes that much like the violence against African-Americans that followed slave revolts in the 19th century, the Israeli vengeance against Palestinians "won't be remembered fondly by anyone in the future". In fact he goes as far as saying that "when people think of Israel in the past they thought of it as a refuge for the victims of the Holocaust... now they will think of it as the home of perpetrators of genocide. When they think of Israel, they will think of burned buildings and dead babies. This is an image problem of a fundamental nature and from the point of view of Israel it strips Israel of its protection by charges of antisemitism against anyone who is critical of Israel because to be critical of people who are carrying out genocide cannot be antisemitism, it cannot be considered immoral. Antisemitism is a despicable attitude but to oppose genocide by Israel is not.""

 

 

[RomanPer]

1 hour ago, Super19 said:

He correctly assesses the situation for what it is. These words like occupation, oppression, and genocide aren't thrown around like 'halva'... they have real meaning behind them, backed by scholars and well Israel's actions. 

 

“Correctly” based on his vision of things. What gives him (or you, for that matter) right to proclaim your opinion as the only “correct” one? Just because his opinion is the same as yours doesn’t make either correct. And every time someone uses the word “scholar” in an argument, somehow the names of Karl Haushofer, Houston Chamberlain and Josef Mengele come to mind…

 

Also, before trying to throw my proverb back at me - at least understand what that proverb means. Because “throwing around like ‘halva’” phrase makes zero sense.

Edited January 7 by RomanPer

[RomanPer]

1 hour ago, Super19 said:

Very important talking points discussed here:

 

"This is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary interviews of a former senior US government official on Gaza.

This is Chas Freeman, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Key points in the video:

- He agrees that many of the victims of Oct 7th were killed by the Israeli army in the form of "undisciplined fire by helicopters with hellfire missiles or by tanks with incendiary rounds directed at buildings". In the case of the victims of the music festival he even says they "were largely killed, it appears, by hellfire missiles and by other undisciplined fire by Israeli forces". To him this "disgrace in military terms" stems from a "lack of discipline and training necessary to respond" but also from the IDF's "Hannibal directive", which "says that rather than get into bargaining over hostage exchange you should just kill the Israeli hostages along with their captors."

- He says that with Oct 7th "Hamas had 2 objectives": 1) "Put the Palestinian self-determination issue back on the global agenda", something he says they've "succeeded" in doing since they're is "widespread recognition outside Israel that only self-determination for Palestine in the form of a 2-state solution can provide security to Israel". He says that even in "the US, which has a larger Jewish population than Israel, many Jews have come to realize that this is the case. Younger Jews in particular in the U.S. are very disillusioned with Zionism and don't want to suffer contagion from it in the form of antisemitism, which is actually growing now as a result of Israeli actions".
2) "Give Hamas enormous popularity among Palestinians because they are seen as having stood up, as having been willing to accept death rather than captivity". He refers to Norman Finkelstein's "analogy of slave revolts in the U.S." and particularly the "1831 revolt by Nat Turner, a well-educated very intelligent enslaved African who led a slave revolt in Southern Virginia which had as its objective the murder of every white person they encountered." He says it "raises a moral question: 'Is the violence of the slave-owner morally the same as the violence of the slave trying to end that violence?'. The same moral question arises with Israeli oppression of Palestinians versus Palestinian resistance to oppression."

- All in all he concludes that much like the violence against African-Americans that followed slave revolts in the 19th century, the Israeli vengeance against Palestinians "won't be remembered fondly by anyone in the future". In fact he goes as far as saying that "when people think of Israel in the past they thought of it as a refuge for the victims of the Holocaust... now they will think of it as the home of perpetrators of genocide. When they think of Israel, they will think of burned buildings and dead babies. This is an image problem of a fundamental nature and from the point of view of Israel it strips Israel of its protection by charges of antisemitism against anyone who is critical of Israel because to be critical of people who are carrying out genocide cannot be antisemitism, it cannot be considered immoral. Antisemitism is a despicable attitude but to oppose genocide by Israel is not.""

 

 

 

Oh, isn’t that cute - Chas Freeman now speaks on behalf of “majority of American Jews”. I’d rather believe the financial reports of North American organizations supporting Israel, which show significant increase in donations by the North American Jews.

[StrayDog]

6 hours ago, Super19 said:

Very important talking points discussed here:

 

"This is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary interviews of a former senior US government official on Gaza.

This is Chas Freeman, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Key points in the video:

- He agrees that many of the victims of Oct 7th were killed by the Israeli army in the form of "undisciplined fire by helicopters with hellfire missiles or by tanks with incendiary rounds directed at buildings". In the case of the victims of the music festival he even says they "were largely killed, it appears, by hellfire missiles and by other undisciplined fire by Israeli forces". To him this "disgrace in military terms" stems from a "lack of discipline and training necessary to respond" but also from the IDF's "Hannibal directive", which "says that rather than get into bargaining over hostage exchange you should just kill the Israeli hostages along with their captors."

- He says that with Oct 7th "Hamas had 2 objectives": 1) "Put the Palestinian self-determination issue back on the global agenda", something he says they've "succeeded" in doing since they're is "widespread recognition outside Israel that only self-determination for Palestine in the form of a 2-state solution can provide security to Israel". He says that even in "the US, which has a larger Jewish population than Israel, many Jews have come to realize that this is the case. Younger Jews in particular in the U.S. are very disillusioned with Zionism and don't want to suffer contagion from it in the form of antisemitism, which is actually growing now as a result of Israeli actions".
2) "Give Hamas enormous popularity among Palestinians because they are seen as having stood up, as having been willing to accept death rather than captivity". He refers to Norman Finkelstein's "analogy of slave revolts in the U.S." and particularly the "1831 revolt by Nat Turner, a well-educated very intelligent enslaved African who led a slave revolt in Southern Virginia which had as its objective the murder of every white person they encountered." He says it "raises a moral question: 'Is the violence of the slave-owner morally the same as the violence of the slave trying to end that violence?'. The same moral question arises with Israeli oppression of Palestinians versus Palestinian resistance to oppression."

- All in all he concludes that much like the violence against African-Americans that followed slave revolts in the 19th century, the Israeli vengeance against Palestinians "won't be remembered fondly by anyone in the future". In fact he goes as far as saying that "when people think of Israel in the past they thought of it as a refuge for the victims of the Holocaust... now they will think of it as the home of perpetrators of genocide. When they think of Israel, they will think of burned buildings and dead babies. This is an image problem of a fundamental nature and from the point of view of Israel it strips Israel of its protection by charges of antisemitism against anyone who is critical of Israel because to be critical of people who are carrying out genocide cannot be antisemitism, it cannot be considered immoral. Antisemitism is a despicable attitude but to oppose genocide by Israel is not.""

 

 

Sorry. I stopped reading once I saw Freeman's name. This is the same man who felt the Chinese government didn't react strongly enough at the Tiananmen Sq student protests and thinks Taiwan should give themselves over to China even if it means rollbacks of democratic freedoms. 

[Bob Long]

5 hours ago, RomanPer said:

 

“Correctly” based on his vision of things. What gives him (or you, for that matter) right to proclaim your opinion as the only “correct” one? Just because his opinion is the same as yours doesn’t make either correct. And every time someone uses the word “scholar” in an argument, somehow the names of Karl Haushofer, Houston Chamberlain and Josef Mengele come to mind…

 

Also, before trying to throw my proverb back at me - at least understand what that proverb means. Because “throwing around like ‘halva’” phrase makes zero sense.

 

We live in a western world where some people see alignment between LGBTQ+ people and Islamic fundamentalism. In that world, one is always correct.

 

Edited January 7 by Bob Long

[Super19]

2 hours ago, StrayDog said:

Sorry. I stopped reading once I saw Freeman's name. This is the same man who felt the Chinese government didn't react strongly enough at the Tiananmen Sq student protests and thinks Taiwan should give themselves over to China even if it means rollbacks of democratic freedoms. 

Do you feel that Israel isn't reacting strongly enough? And that Gazans should give themselves up displace from the region?

[Super19]

8 hours ago, RomanPer said:

 

“Correctly” based on his vision of things. What gives him (or you, for that matter) right to proclaim your opinion as the only “correct” one? Just because his opinion is the same as yours doesn’t make either correct. And every time someone uses the word “scholar” in an argument, somehow the names of Karl Haushofer, Houston Chamberlain and Josef Mengele come to mind…

 

Also, before trying to throw my proverb back at me - at least understand what that proverb means. Because “throwing around like ‘halva’” phrase makes zero sense.

I hear a lot of wise words from you but that's it. You just say wise words sometimes. You're not addressing the hypocrisy I see from your position. For example, there's reasoning and proofs behind people saying terms like genocide occupation and oppression and you simply retort with 'what makes them right?' and proverbs. 

Finklestein mopped the floor with Dershowitz in similar debates.

 

All scholarly opinion should not be lumped with nazis and you know that.

 

How many people has Israel killed in the last 3 months? Which numbers/source reports numbers that you believe is close to the truth re: the death toll?

[Alflives]

3 minutes ago, Super19 said:

I hear a lot of wise words from you but that's it. You just say wise words sometimes. You're not addressing the hypocrisy I see from your position. For example, there's reasoning and proofs behind people saying terms like genocide occupation and oppression and you simply retort with 'what makes them right?' and proverbs. 

Finklestein mopped the floor with Dershowitz in similar debates.

 

All scholarly opinion should not be lumped with nazis and you know that.

 

How many people has Israel killed in the last 3 months? Which numbers/source reports numbers that you believe is close to the truth re: the death toll?

Again IMHAO the suffering in Gaza is the responsibility of Hsmas. They could lay down their arms (crawl out of their tunnels) and call for peace. The war would end and Gaza would get built up. But Hamas are cowards (terrorists) so they will continue to hide behind women, children, and those in hospital and the people of Gaza will suffer because of that. 

[Super19]

10 minutes ago, Alflives said:

Again IMHAO the suffering in Gaza is the responsibility of Hsmas. They could lay down their arms (crawl out of their tunnels) and call for peace. The war would end and Gaza would get built up. But Hamas are cowards (terrorists) so they will continue to hide behind women, children, and those in hospital and the people of Gaza will suffer because of that. 

What you're describing sounds like collective punishment. 

[StrayDog]

37 minutes ago, Super19 said:

Do you feel that Israel isn't reacting strongly enough? And that Gazans should give themselves up displace from the region?

I feel someone who believes China didn't come down hard enough on student protesters has no right to decry Israel's actions as being too heavy.

[Alflives]

7 minutes ago, Super19 said:

What you're describing sounds like collective punishment. 

Are you suggesting the people of Gaza are collectively responsible for Hamas? 

[Super19]

Just now, Alflives said:

Are you suggesting the people of Gaza are collectively responsible for Hamas? 

This is news from today:

 

 

"BREAKING: WAEL AL DAHDOUH OFFICIAL STATEMENT LIVE NOW ON AL JAZEERA 

 

Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Al-Dahdouh after the death of his son Hamza;

 

- “Nothing hurts more than the pain of losing someone you hold dearly close to your heart.

 

 - This is our destiny , our choice in this land and we must accept it, whatever it is, as we continue, we bid farewell to our loved ones but what can we say.

 

-For Hamza and all the martyrs we will honour the vow, we will continue on the same road, we watered the land with our blood but we will not stop, we might feel pain, we might suffer & nothing is more painful than losing your oldest son the soul of your soul.

 

- We are saturated with humanity, and our enemy is saturated with death and grudge, what moves us is humanity, and what moves our enemies is hatred.” "

 

 

[Super19]

 

Edited January 7 by Super19

[Alflives]

10 minutes ago, Super19 said:

This is news from today:

 

 

"BREAKING: WAEL AL DAHDOUH OFFICIAL STATEMENT LIVE NOW ON AL JAZEERA 

 

Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Al-Dahdouh after the death of his son Hamza;

 

- “Nothing hurts more than the pain of losing someone you hold dearly close to your heart.

 

 - This is our destiny , our choice in this land and we must accept it, whatever it is, as we continue, we bid farewell to our loved ones but what can we say.

 

-For Hamza and all the martyrs we will honour the vow, we will continue on the same road, we watered the land with our blood but we will not stop, we might feel pain, we might suffer & nothing is more painful than losing your oldest son the soul of your soul.

 

- We are saturated with humanity, and our enemy is saturated with death and grudge, what moves us is humanity, and what moves our enemies is hatred.” "

 

 

So the person is a reporter but is also Hamas? 

Edited January 7 by Alflives

[The Arrogant Worms]

Israel’s talk of expanding war to Lebanon alarms U.S.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-s-talk-of-expanding-war-to-lebanon-alarms-us/ar-AA1mzBk3

[Optimist Prime]

The IDF now control all but five pockets of the northern third of the Gaza Strip. 

 

~The area around Al-Qubbah is an 8.6 square km section of mostly industrial with some fields nearer the fenceline with Israel and some 'suburbs' the more north you look in the pocket. SHould be fairly straitforward to take when other more strategic places are under control. 

 

~a km west, on the other side of Salah Al Deen highway is another pocket of about 9 square KM's, half built up area of suburbs and half fields more to the south and west of that pocket. 

 

~In the more northern area of that Northern Third of the Gaza Strip is a small town called Biet Lahiya, and another pocket is there of about 6.45 square kms, that is still not under full IDF control. 

 

~Jabalia Camp, which is misleading as it is a real city with built up appartments and the like, hasnt been a 'camp' for three generations. There is almost 8 square KM's not under IDF control yet.

 

~Lastly, and in fact connected to Jabalia Camp holdout areas but I cut it in half for ease of measuring, and the thin connector strip is only hundreds of meters wide and likely already secured by the IDF as I type this... Gaza City's last quarter that needs to be secured: the Sheikh Redwan suburb of Gaza. just over 10 square km's there in that high priority zone. 

 

So, basically, 40 square km's left spread over five districts that are completely surrounded. It shouldn't take more than a day or two for each of the four side sections, but the main target of that last 10 square km's in Gaza City will likely be the toughest fighting yet and could take a few weeks to finish off. I have no idea of the ground strategy so I don't know if they will polish up the outlying areas first or finish the work in Downtown Gaza first, shrug. Were it me, I would sum up the smaller and easier ones first and then move on Sheikh Redwan district of Gaza. I guess they can do it concurrently too. 

[Optimist Prime]

18 minutes ago, Alflives said:

So the person is a reporter but is also Hamas? 

Very Hamas, but with a nifty little blue flak jacket that says "PRESS" on it. That makes him a legit reporter, do try and keep up to Hamas bullshit, or you will fall behind on your studies. lol. 

[Super19]

20 minutes ago, Alflives said:

So the person is a reporter but is also Hamas? 

No he isn't. He does not fight with the militants and he is not any spokesman for Hamas. He's a journalist with al-Jazeera.

 

Do you call him Hamas simply because he resists and condemns this Israeli siege? 

[Optimist Prime]

I think he is Hamas, specifically, because he talks like he is a member of hamas, and I can quote what was quoted directly: "This is our destiny , our choice in this land and we must accept it, whatever it is, as we continue"

 

Continue killing jews is what he is saying, and the destiny of losing loved ones due to the choice to continue trying to eradicate Israel as an entity. It is there in black and white if you care to not just read but comprehend, folks. 

 

I mean, the people of Gaza are not good at lying. They say what they mean and mean what they say: from teh river to the sea, palestine will be free literally means they want to wipe Israel off the map. it is plain as the nose on your face. Bad choice of words there, but a little funny, he fully supports Hamas and has said so even in his grief. They say the quiet part out loud all the time, mostly because Muslims generally are not good liars, along with generally not being thieves. I think this is a good trait for humanity, but it does also make it easy to understand what their intentions are. 

[Bob Long]

2 minutes ago, Optimist Prime said:

I think he is Hamas, specifically, because he talks like he is a member of hamas, and I can quote what was quoted directly: "This is our destiny , our choice in this land and we must accept it, whatever it is, as we continue"

 

Continue killing jews is what he is saying, and the destiny of losing loved ones due to the choice to continue trying to eradicate Israel as an entity. It is there in black and white if you care to not just read but comprehend, folks. 

 

it freaks me out how fast some of our folks over here want to align with this guy 

[Optimist Prime]

5 minutes ago, Bob Long said:

 

it freaks me out how fast some of our folks over here want to align with this guy 

Hamas version of Islam is the shi'ite. 

edit: bad joke, i guess their origins are in Sunni aspects of Islam. 

 

I just popped in to update the situaition on the ground in the northern third of the strip...happy new years to everyone, even those I disagree with. 2024 should be a much better year overall than the previous one. I would put money on it. 

[Bob Long]

1 minute ago, Optimist Prime said:

Hamas version of Islam is the shi'ite. 

 

I don't know all the ins and outs of that, but I'm guessing its not good for lasting peace. 

[Bob Long]

I think this opinion piece gets some key things correct on why this discussion is in stalemate:

 

Why the Israel-Hamas war is so hard to talk about: identical narratives but different facts

 

Most Jews, and especially Israeli Jews, view this conflict as an existential threat to their survival. Given that nearly half of all Jews in the world reside in Israel, should Israel lose this war, there could be another Jewish genocide, these Jews say. Palestinians and their supporters make a similar assertion: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and trying to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land, using the attack on Oct. 7 as a pretense to do so. Both groups claim that the media is biased against them, that fake news and propaganda are rampant and that these atrocities are only able to take place because too many good people remain silent.

 

Further comparisons between the Israeli and Palestinian narratives reveal that both people suffer from generational trauma. Jews carry the trauma of pogroms, the Holocaust and the mass expulsions from Middle Eastern and North African countries in 1948. Palestinians carry the trauma of their land being continually colonized by various empires, and they view the establishment of the State of Israel as yet another colonization. They are scarred from mass expulsions that took place in 1948 as well, when many were forced or encouraged to leave their homes during the war—homes to which many were unable to return. Thus, Jews fear another expulsion from their homes in the diaspora with the rise of antisemitism since Oct. 7 and expulsion or even genocide in Israel, while, simultaneously, Palestinians fear expulsion from their homes, ethnic cleansing (what they have deemed as “the second Nakba,” the second catastrophe) and genocide in Gaza by way of Israeli military invasion.

With such similar narratives, why is it so difficult for us to agree on anything? Why can’t we agree on the basic facts of the current situation? Why can’t we agree on each other’s generational trauma and the legitimacy of the fears that stem from them?

 

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2023/12/07/narrative-trauma-israel-palestine-war-246662