Israeli–Palestinian conflict

[David]

[David]

[David]

Human Rights Watch, for what it's worth, have completed their investigation and concluded that the al-Ahli hospital explosion was most likely a result of a misfired rocket from a Palestinian militant group, which aligns with Israel's version of events:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/26/gaz ... -explosion

[Culprit]

I recently read that Palestinians have more children than Israelis. That means Israelis eventually become the minority. In addition, the hard-core religious Jews have more children than moderate Jews so the hard-core will become the dominant view for elected Governments. The solution for Israelis is genocide.

[David]

[Magpietothemax]

These words come from Giora Eiland, a former head of the israel National Security Council:
Eiland wrote:

"Who are the “poor” women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas murderers…
The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers. "

The aim according to Eiland, is “not the mere killing of more Hamas fighters” but “irreversible harm to their families.”

In exactly the same way, the Nazis used blockade of fuel, water and food combined with horrendous overcrowding to inflict mass death from starvation, dehydration and infection from diseases caused by the breadown of infrastructure, in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Elements in Israeli society such as Eiland, and the Netahanyu government, are the political expression of fascism which finds its social base in the settlers currently murdering Palestinians, stealing their property and seizing their land ruthlessly in the West Bank. They have done so for decades, but are now spiralling out of any kind of restraint due to the genocidal policies of the Israel govt in Gaza.
They know that the Netahanyu regime will give them full support, military and legal immunity, for whatever atrocities they wish to undertake.
The Netahanyu government represents the hijacking of Israeli government policy by the settlers. this has arisen because all the mainstream parties in Israel, including the so called social democratic opposition, have sought compromise with the settlers. When you bargain with the devil, you are condemned to lose your soul.

[David]

[Magpietothemax]

More devastating information:

a) the NY Times has reported that the Israeli government was forewarned a year in advance of a possible assault by Hamas of the kind that occurred on October 7

b) Many of the 1200 Israeli casualties counted as a result of the October 7 events were actually caused not by Hamas, but by the IDF, which acted on the basis of the infamous "Hannibal" policy. This policy refused to allow a single Israeli to be made hostage, even if it meant carpet bombing the the place where the insurgents were operating, necessarily meaning the deaths of many Israeli citizens as well. In other words, an unknown number of the Israeli deaths attributed to Hamas were actually Israeli deaths caught by the "friendly fire" of saturation bombing and artillery fire from the IDF, in order to prevent Hamas from taking any hostages. Prefer Israeli citizens to be dead than potential leverage for Hamas.

[think positive]

One things for sure after reading through all of the above, Israel is not making any new friends. Not thinking friends anyway. These are war crimes, who’s going to stop them?

[Culprit]

One things for sure after reading through all of the above, Israel is not making any new friends. Not thinking friends anyway. These are war crimes, who’s going to stop them?

Israel ignores everyone and if charged with war crimes they would ignore those. They have never answered to anyone about anything.

[David]

More devastating information:

a) the NY Times has reported that the Israeli government was forewarned a year in advance of a possible assault by Hamas of the kind that occurred on October 7

b) Many of the 1200 Israeli casualties counted as a result of the October 7 events were actually caused not by Hamas, but by the IDF, which acted on the basis of the infamous "Hannibal" policy. This policy refused to allow a single Israeli to be made hostage, even if it meant carpet bombing the the place where the insurgents were operating, necessarily meaning the deaths of many Israeli citizens as well. In other words, an unknown number of the Israeli deaths attributed to Hamas were actually Israeli deaths caught by the "friendly fire" of saturation bombing and artillery fire from the IDF, in order to prevent Hamas from taking any hostages. Prefer Israeli citizens to be dead than potential leverage for Hamas.

What is the source for this second claim? I’ve read a report that an IDF helicopter may have mistakenly fired on some Israelis trying to escape the music festival, but there’s no word of how many actually died as a result of that (or from any similar incidents). I find it hard to believe that it would be more than a very small percentage.

[Magpietothemax]

[Magpietothemax]

FWIW, I'm very much neutral on this whole matter, I'm a keen student of history first and foremost, hence wating to obtain some understanding of this conflict.

You can't be neutral in a conflict like this, because it is a conflict between oppressor and oppressed. Automatically, a "neutral" position implies tacit support for oppression. Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and this comes on the back of decades of apartheid policy and colonialism. Every historian is partisan, whether he or she realises it or not. It is just the nature of history.
For example, would you give any legitimacy to a historian who declared himself to be "neutral" in the conflict between the Nazi military forces and the Jews who rose up in the Warsaw Ghetto? Would you not immediately declare such a historian to be an apologist for the Nazi regime?
And this is a very apt analogy, because the IDF and the Israeli government are using methods similar to those used by the Nazis against the Warsaw Ghetto.
Sorry if this is mildly offensive LH, but history is what it is...a conflict between the oppressors and the oppressed. All of history is the history of the class struggle.

[Magpietothemax]

Israeli military using AI ("The Gospel") to formulate and pinpoint targets.
In the linked video, a kid explains why every death in Gaza is planned: "if a 3 year old girl dies in Gaza, it is because an Israeli intelligence official did not think she mattered enough"
https://x.com/abierkhatib/status/173080 ... 97562?s=20

[David]

Thanks for the additional context MTTM. In the interests of balance, here's a piece from Haaretz (probably the most even-handed Israeli news outlet, though still with something of a pro-Israeli slant) dealing with these claims:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/202 ... ff7b550000

Perhaps the most blatant example of distorting a source is when Blumenthal uses an ellipsis to delete part of a quote - an omission that completely changes its meaning.

Translating into English, he quotes Ynet: “the pilots realized that there was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian … The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.”

The following words were omitted and replaced by the ellipsis: “A decision was made that the first mission of the combat helicopters and the armed drones was to stop the flow of terrorists and the murderous mob that poured into Israeli territory through the gaps in the fence.”

While the partial quote creates the impression that pilots fired at a “tremendous” rate when it was difficult to distinguish between terrorists and civilians, the full quote states that because of this difficulty, the pilots were assigned a different task: stopping terrorists flowing in from Gaza. And there was no ambiguity in this task.

As of now, there are two known events where Israeli civilians were apparently killed due to Israeli fire. The first was during the hostage situation at Kibbutz Be’eri, where 12 hostages were being held by 40 Hamas terrorists. In the heavy crossfire between Israeli forces and the kidnappers, 10 hostages died. According to the testimony of the two Israeli survivors, at least some of them died as a result of Israeli fire. The second is the incident in which a helicopter may have fired on Israelis who were fleeing the Nova trance festival in Re’im.

Blumenthal refers to the Be’eri event four times throughout his article, to create the impression that there were more such events. It is important to note: These are two tragic, isolated incidents regarding the fate of a handful of the 1,200 Israelis who died that day. The deniers of the massacre create the impression that the testimony of Yasmin Porat, a survivor of the Be’eri event who arrived there after escaping the Nova massacre, is “shocking news” and was hidden by Israel. In fact, Porat was interviewed by several major media outlets and her story is well-known. There is no “secret cover up” going on.