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SpookyKitty

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  8. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted

    21 minutes ago, AlexL said:

    How is this similar to my question?

    My question was:

    can you please show - based solely on his [Ben-Gvir's] words - why this man's arguments mean specifically "ethnic cleansing".

    (I also gave you Wiki's definition of ethnic cleansing.)

    My question is in no way similar to yours above. Are you trying to dodge by getting insolent, taking advantage of the lack of moderation by @dream_weaver on this forum?

    I can't answer your question if I don't know what you mean by "a". Please clarify.

  12. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted · Edited by SpookyKitty

    The full text of South Africa's application to the ICJ is now available:

    https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf

    It is 84 pages of documentation that details the endless list of abuses that Palestinians have been forced to endure by Israel, and how those abuses constitute genocide. The important stuff begins around page 17.

    The really important stuff, however, evidence of specific intent for genocide, begins on page 59 and I will reproduce some of it here:

    Quote

    Prime Minister of Israel: On 7 October 2023, in a televised address by the Government
    Press Office, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to “operate forcefully
    everywhere”.439 On 13 October 2023, he confirmed that “[w]e are striking our enemies with
    unprecedented might . . .”.440 On 15 October 2023, when Israeli airstrikes had already killed
    over 2,670 Palestinians, including 724 children,441 the Prime Minister stated that Israeli soldiers
    “understand the scope of the mission” and stand ready “to defeat the bloodthirsty monsters who 60
    have risen against [Israel] to destroy us”.442 On 16 October 2023, in a formal address to the
    Israeli Knesset, he described situation as “a struggle between the children of light and the
    children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle”,443 a dehumanising theme to
    which he returned on various occasions, including: on 3 November 2023, in a letter to Israeli
    soldiers and officers also published on the platform ‘X’ (formerly Twitter); the letter asserted
    that: “[t]his is the war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. We will not let up on
    our mission until the light overcomes the darkness — the good will defeat the extreme evil that
    threatens us and the entire world.”444 The Israeli Prime Minister also returned to the theme in
    his ‘Christmas message’, stating: “we’re facing monsters, monsters who murdered children in
    front of their parents . . . This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, it’s a battle
    of civilization against barbarism”.445 On 28 October 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their land
    invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister invoked the Biblical story of the total destruction of
    Amalek by the Israelites, stating: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our
    Holy Bible. And we do remember”.    446 The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter
    sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads
    as follows: “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but
    kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses”.    448

     

    Quote

    President of Israel: On 12 October 2023, President Isaac Herzog made clear that Israel
    was not distinguishing between militants and civilians in Gaza, stating in a press conference to
    foreign media — in relation Palestinians in Gaza, over one million of whom are children: “It’s
    an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware
    not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone.”    449
    On 15 October 2023, echoing the words of Prime Minister Netanyahu, the President told foreign
    media that “we will uproot evil so that there will be good for the entire region and the world.”450
    The Israeli President is one of many Israelis to have handwritten ‘messages’ on bombs to be
    dropped on Gaza.451

     

    Quote

    Israeli Minister of Defence: On 9 October 2023, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in an
    Israeli Army ‘situation update’ advised that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No
    electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”    452 He also informed troops on the Gaza border that he had “released
    all the restraints”,453 stating in terms that: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will
    eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week. It will take weeks or even
    months, we will reach all places.”    454 He further announced that Israel was moving to “a full-
    scale response” and that he had “removed every restriction” on Israeli forces.455

     

    Quote

    Israeli Minister for National Security: On 10 November 2023, Itamar Ben-Gvir
    clarified the government’s position in a televised address, stating: “[t]o be clear, when we say
    that Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and
    those who hand out candy — they’re all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.”    456

     

    Quote

    Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure: ‘Tweeting’ on 13 October 2023, Israel
    Katz stated: “All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win.
    They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.”    457 On 12
    October 2023, he ‘tweeted’: “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on,
    no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are
    returned home. Humanitarianism for humanitarianism. And no one will preach us morality.”    458

     

    Quote

    Israeli Minister of Heritage: On 1 November 2023, Amichai Eliyahu posted on
    Facebook: “The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and
    flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes … We must talk about the day after. In my mind, we
    will hand over lots to all those who fought for Gaza over the years and to those evicted from
    Gush Katif” [a former Israeli settlement].460 He later argued against humanitarian aid as “[w]e     wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid”, and “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians
    in Gaza”.461 He also posited a nuclear attack on the Gaza Strip.462

     

    Quote

    Israeli Minister of Agriculture: On 11 November 2023, Avi Dichter in a television
    interview recalled the Nakba of 1948, in which over 80 percent of the Palestinian population of
    the new Israeli State was forced from or fled their homes, stating that “[w]e are now actually
    rolling out the Gaza Nakba”.    463

     

    Quote

    Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and Member of the Foreign Affairs and Security
    Committee:     On 7 October 2023, Nissim Vaturi ‘tweeted’ that: “[n]ow we all have one common
    goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. Those who are unable will be
    replaced.”

     

    Quote

    Israeli Army Reservist Major General, former Head of the Israeli National Security
    Council, and adviser to the Defence Minister:    466 On 7 October 2023, Giora Eiland, describing
    the Israeli order to cut off water and electricity to Gaza, wrote in an online journal: “This is
    what Israel has begun to do — we cut the supply of energy, water and diesel to the Strip . . .
    But it’s not enough. In order to make the siege effective, we have to prevent others from giving
    assistance to Gaza . . . The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to
    starve, or to leave. If Egypt and other countries prefer that these people will perish in Gaza, this is their choice.”    467 On the same day, he asserted in a national newspaper that “[w]hen you are
    at war with another country you don't feed them, you don't provide them electricity or gas or
    water or anything else . . . A country can be attacked in a much broader way, to bring the
    country to the brink of dysfunction. This is the necessary outcome of events” in Gaza.468 He has
    repeatedly asserted the benefits for Israel of the creation of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, stating
    that “Israel has no interest in the Gaza Strip being rehabilitated and this is an important point
    that needs to be made clear to the Americans”,    469 and that “f we ever want to see the hostages
    alive, the only way is to create a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza”    .470 He has indicated that
    water should be targeted, noting that water in Gaza “comes from wells with salt water unfit for
    consumption. They have water treatment plants, Israel should hit those plants. When the entire
    world says we have gone insane and this is a humanitarian disaster — we will say, it’s not an
    end, it’s a means.”    471 In a Times radio interview on 12 October 2023, he reiterated the army
    should:

    “[C]reate such a huge pressure on Gaza, that Gaza will become an area where people
    cannot live. People cannot live, until Hamas is destroyed, which means that Israel not
    only stops to supply energy, diesel, water, food … as we did in the last twenty years …
    but we should prevent any possible assistance by others, and to create in Gaza such a
    terrible, unbearable situation, that can last weeks and months”.

    Giora Eiland has repeatedly been given a media platform to call for Gaza to be made
    uninhabitable, declaring “the State of Israel has no choice but to make Gaza a place that is
    temporarily, or permanently, impossible to live in.”    473 In an interview on 6 November 2023, he
    suggested that, “if there is an intention for a military action at Shifa [Hospital], which I think is
    inescapable, I hope that the head of the CIA got an explanation of why this is necessary, and
    why the US must ultimately back even an operation like this, even if there are thousands of
    bodies of civilians in the streets afterward.”474 Further he proposed that “Israel needs to create
    a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, compelling tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to
    seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf . . . Gaza will become a place where no human being can
    exist.”    475

    Echoing the words of President Herzog, he has repeatedly underscored that there
    should be no distinction between Hamas combatants and Palestinian civilians,     saying:

    “Who are the ‘poor’ women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas
    murderers. On the one hand, they are part of the infrastructure that supports the
    organization, and on the other hand, if they experience a humanitarian disaster, then it
    can be assumed that some of the Hamas fighters and the more junior commanders will
    begin to understand that the war is futile . . . 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 . . . It is precisely its civil collapse that will bring the end of the war
    closer. When senior Israeli figures say in the media ‘It's either us or them’ we should
    clarify the question of who is ‘them’. ‘They’ are not only Hamas fighters with weapons,
    but also all the ‘civilian’ officials, including hospital administrators and school
    administrators, and also the entire Gaza population who enthusiastically supported
    Hamas and cheered on its atrocities on October 7th.”

     

     

    Quote

    Israeli Army reservist “motivational speech”: On 11 October 2023, 95-year old Israeli
    army reservist Ezra Yachin — a veteran of the Deir Yassin massacre during the 1948 Nakba —
    reportedly called up for reserve duty to “boost morale” amongst Israeli troops ahead of the
    ground invasion, was broadcast on social media inciting other soldiers to genocide as follows,
    while being driven around in an Israeli army vehicle, dressed in Israeli army fatigues:

    “Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of
    them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live
    . . . Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbour,
    don't wait, go to his home and shoot him . . . We want to invade, not like before, we want
    to enter and destroy what’s in front of us, and destroy houses, then destroy the one after
    it. With all of our forces, complete destruction, enter and destroy. As you can see, we
    will witness things we’ve never dreamed of. Let them drop bombs on them and erase
    them.”477

     

    Quote

    Commander in the 2908th Battalion of the Israeli army: In a video posted online on
    21 December 2023, Yair Ben David said that the Israeli army had “entered Beit Hanoun and
    did there as Shimon and Levi did in Nablus,” and that “[t]he entire Gaza should resemble Beit
    Hanoun”,     referring to the city in northern Gaza which has been entirely devastated by the Israeli
    army..479 The biblical passage in issue reads: “On the third day, when they were in pain, Simeon and Levi, two of Jacob’s sons, brothers of Dinah, took each his sword, came upon the city
    unmolested, and slew all the males”.

     

  15. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted

    On 12/20/2023 at 7:54 PM, Eiuol said:

    Reasoning in general. Being systematic, as in essentially and on purpose, rather than incidentally and ad hoc. I don't see how you can have an intent without an essential and purposeful goal.

     

    Things can be done on purpose and unsystematically, but I would also argue that using an organized military and a plan which involved corralling the Palestinian population into the south of Gaza through a relentless bombing campaign of the north and then proceeding to bomb the very place they claimed would be safe for civilians is pretty systematic.

     

    Quote

    Of course not, that's not why I'm bringing up incompetency. I'm mentioning it because Alex seems to be insisting that Israel not only did nothing wrong, but that what they are doing is making meaningful progress toward safety or individual rights. The fact that Israel has practically always been in a state of war suggests that what it's doing is causing more conflict and making everything worse. If the idea is that Israel should be allowed to do literally anything to defend itself (even though you and I agree that there is a rational limit, Alex and others disagree), then what it does should actually work. 

    Indeed.

  16. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Eiuol said:

    This is my point about the first part, that special intent requires systematic effort. You can't have ad hoc special intent, and you could only establish it by pointing out systematic effort.

    1) Where are you getting this from?

    2) To prove intent requires that you prove something about the state of mind of another person, which, in this case, means proving that they are seeking the physical destruction of a group in whole or in part. It does not require you to prove that they are doing it well.

  17. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted

    9 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

    1-4 is ad hoc without any particular organization besides a general attitude or culture of behavior. 5-10 are all by nature systematic things. If you want to get specific, your link talks about a cultural climate that genocide arises out of.

    Ok... But what's your point?

    Quote

    My Lai massacre. This is as much a genocide as anything based on what you're saying. Killing anything that moves. And not just a few soldiers that did it. I mean, clearly we are distinguishing forms or barbarism, but I'm saying the word genocide has to be something direct and pervasive. To an extent all war is about us versus them since the vast majority of wars are unjustified. All unjustified wars are in some way racist. Of wars that are only partially justified, you will still find people who support the war for racist reasons. 

    There seems to be a difference between starting a war with racist overtones, as opposed to merely exterminating. I mean, the founding charter of Hamas called for the extermination of Jews, not just the end of the Israeli state. If it was just the end of the Israeli state, that wouldn't be genocidal even though it would be still grounded in racism because of what Hamas thought about Jews. The extermination of Jews is genocidal, because that's not just seeking what they see as justice, or what they see as self-defense, but seeking out extermination in and of itself. 

    Mass killing is actually insufficient to prove genocide. One must also prove that there is a "special intent", on the part of the perpetrators of the mass killing, to eradicate a people group as such. That the perpetrators are "merely" racist would be insufficient.

     

  18. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted

    25 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

    Both sides don't understand that it's the indiscriminate hate that is the problem, it won't stop. One side will always find a weak point and attack it and this will go on forever. In other words, the hate cannot guide toward the ideal and the ideal is not the annihilation of the other side.

    The hate is ultimately rooted in bad philosophy. Zionists and their supporters both here and elsewhere automatically assume that anyone who criticizes Israel's atrocities must be some kind of Hamas stooge and that Hamas' war crimes somehow justify Israel's. They don't. Zionism and Islamism are not really opposed to each other. They are in a symbiotic relationship of self-destruction. But so many are willfully blind to Israel's crimes just because they look and sound like us.

  19. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted · Edited by SpookyKitty

    3 hours ago, Eiuol said:

    And importantly, it mentions the systematic nature of it, not in an ad hoc disorganized way. I'm thinking of Vietnam, where US soldiers did horrific things, but not perpetrated in a way that was systematic by the US military or cohesive across the US military. As bad as this was, and being probably racially motivated, it wasn't genocide. I don't think what you say is as clear as you make it out to be, other than being the horrific nature of war in general when bad actors do bad things.

    The word "systematic" does not appear anywhere in the UN genocide convention. Neither systematicity nor organization is a requirement for something to qualify as a genocide. Most genocides are very stochastic and disorganized efforts. Only very few, such as the Holocaust, are of a systematic and well organized nature.

    The reason that Vietnam does not qualify as genocide, although the US certainly committed war crimes there, is because there was no special intent by any part of US leadership to destroy the Vietnamese people as such.

    Quote

    How did the chain of command run here? Were the soldiers bad actors, ignoring orders or normal procedure? Could it be brought about by a culture of violence within the military that commanders fail to deal with, rather than overt orders to kill everybody on sight? That's what I mean by incompetence. Poor leadership and poor guidance on their own also lead to atrocities, like what happened in Vietnam. 

     

    Here is what the IDF says happened that day:

    Source: https://apnews.com/article/israel-hostages-gaza-hamas-war-52fa9628e6284cdad6d7f7db6cc30742

    Quote

    TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israelis were left stunned and speechless when three hostages held by Hamas were killed by Israeli forces in the middle of an active war zone after they waved a white flag and screamed out in Hebrew to show they did not pose a threat.

    For some, the incident was a shocking example of the ugliness of war, where a complex and dangerous battlefield is safe for no one. But for critics, the incident underscores what they say is the excessively violent conduct of Israel’s security apparatus against Palestinians. Except in this case, it cut short the lives of three Israelis trying desperately to save themselves.

    “It’s heartbreaking but it’s not surprising,” said Roy Yellin, director of public outreach with the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. “We have documented over the years countless incidents of people who clearly surrendered and who were still shot.”

    Yellin said the killings violated basic military ethics and international law that prohibit shooting at people trying to surrender, whether combatants or not. But he said it was part of a long trend of largely unpunished excessive force that in recent weeks has ensnared Israelis themselves.

    According to a military official, the three hostages, all men in their 20s, emerged from a building close to Israeli soldiers’ positions in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shijaiyah, where troops have been battling Hamas militants in intense combat.

    They waved a white flag and were shirtless, possibly trying to signal they posed no threat. Two were killed immediately, and the third ran back into the building screaming for help in Hebrew. The commander issued an order to cease fire, but another burst of gunfire killed the third man, the official said.

    The army’s chief, Lt. Col. Herzi Halevi, said hostages “did everything possible” to make it clear they did not pose a threat, but that the soldiers acted “during combat and under pressure.”

    On Sunday, Halevi reviewed the rules of engagement with troops, saying the prohibition against opening fire on those who surrender must also apply to Palestinians.

    “When you see two people who do not threaten you, who don’t have weapons, who have their hands up and are not wearing shirts, take two seconds,” he said in comments broadcast on Israeli TV. “And I want to tell you something that is no less important: if these are two Gazans with a white flag who want to surrender, will we shoot them? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. That is not the IDF (Israel Defense Forces).”

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the killings “broke my heart, broke the entire nation’s heart,” but he indicated no change in Israel’s intensive military campaign. With popular opinion firmly behind the military effort, the hostages’ deaths weren’t likely to prompt a change in the public mood.

    Israel says a number of hostages have died in Hamas captivity. But the deaths of the three hostages struck a nerve because they were killed by the forces trying to rescue them.

    Roughly 129 hostages remain in the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli military, and their plight has gripped the nation, which sees their captivity as the embodiment of the security failure surrounding Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war. The hostages’ deaths prompted hundreds of demonstrators to take to the streets in anger.

    It also came days after another incident raised questions about Israel’s open-fire rules. After Hamas militants shot at a busy Jerusalem bus stop, an Israeli man who had rushed to confront the attackers was gunned down by an Israeli soldier, even though he had raised his hands, knelt on the ground and flung open his shirt to indicate he wasn’t a threat. The military has launched an investigation.

    Critics see a direct link between a long list of shooting deaths of Palestinians – from the killing of 32-year-old autistic man Eyad Hallaq, to the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and many more over the years – to the incidents that led to the deaths of Israelis.

    Most recently, B’Tselem accused the army of carrying out a pair of “illegal executions” after releasing video footage that appeared to show Israeli troops killing two Palestinian men — one who was incapacitated and the second unarmed — during a military raid in the occupied West Bank. Military police are investigating, but rights groups say such incidents rarely lead to punitive measures.

    Critics say the hostages incident reflects the military’s conduct toward civilians in Gaza. More than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, of whom about two-thirds are said to be women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.

    Avner Gvaryahu, who heads Breaking the Silence, a whistleblower group that documents testimonies of former Israeli soldiers, said soldier accounts from previous military engagements in the Gaza Strip showed that once an area was deemed by the military to be cleared of civilians, they were instructed to “shoot everything that moves.”

    “The army said this happened in violation of the rules of engagement. I’m skeptical of that, based on what we know of previous operations in Gaza,” he said. “How many Palestinians were shot at like this?”

    The military says it does what it can to protect civilians, but says it faces a complex arena where Hamas embeds itself in densely populated civilian areas. Palestinians on several occasions have said Israeli soldiers opened fire in Gaza as civilians tried to flee to safety.

    Kobi Michael, a senior researcher with the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank, disputed the comparisons between the hostage deaths to the killings of Palestinians in the West Bank or the killing of the Israeli civilian in Jerusalem. He said each case needed to be seen on its own, rather than as part of a broader trend.

    “It shouldn’t have happened but we are in a war and it’s not a sterile environment,” said Michael, who is a former senior official at Israel’s Ministry for Strategic Affairs. “We need to understand the context.”

    The killing of Israeli civilians in recent weeks has prompted a reckoning for some Israelis. Nahum Barnea, a leading commentator, wrote in Yediot Ahronot that the hostage incident was a crime and could not be passed over “as if it were nothing.”

    Ben Caspit, writing in the daily Maariv, said the rise of Israel’s far-right has helped create an environment that makes it easier for forces to open fire.

    He also highlighted a common sentiment among Israel’s hard-line right wing that there are no noncombatants in Gaza. That has fueled concerns among critics that Israeli forces are not being discriminate in their combat.

    “In recent years our finger has become too light on the trigger. The recent events have made it even lighter,” he wrote. “There are noncombatants in Gaza, and three of them were killed this weekend by our own soldiers.”

     

    So given that Israeli soldiers are ordered to "shoot anything that moves", and given that these types of incidents are almost never punished, I think it's safe to say that killing surrendering civilians is the de facto IDF policy.

    Quote

    I will watch the video. But the statement here doesn't indicate anything other than unwillingness to deal with internal threats to liberty. 

    I wish that were true.

  20. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted · Edited by SpookyKitty

    28 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

    4-8 are missing. Even if you went all the way to 6, there is still not enough for it to be a genocide. Of course genocides don't happen instantly, there is a process, but you still have to establish that the intent is all the way to 9.

    The process described in that post is not the definition of genocide and these steps are not required to happen for it to be a genocide. This is simply a description of how genocides typically occur and explains why it is not true that every Palestinian would be killed all at once or even quickly. I provided the definition of genocide under international law and presented evidence about how Israel's actions in Gaza fit them in previous posts.

    Quote

    Since I think it's hyperbole to say it's a genocide, my explanation is incompetency primarily. 

    Hunting down the third victim and then killing him after killing the first two, even though it was absolutely clear that none of them were a threat and were surrendering, is not incompetence by any stretch of the imagination. 

    Quote

    You were condemning an entire government based on a minority group within that government. 13% is a sickening number for that kind of group, but to consider that explicit moral endorsement by the political decision-makers is entirely different. I'll take a look at your video, but from the sounds of what you told us, it just talks about one group, not the way that the Israeli government has incorporated the ideas of that group specifically. 

    Oh it absolutely does. The video goes into great detail about how Likud, Israel's biggest party, Netanyahu's party, cooperates with these lunatics, and also how many of these Messianics were incorporated into and white-washed by Likud.

    Is anyone here going to sit there and seriously tell me that 87% of the Knesset cannot form a government against the ABSOLUTELY INSANE 13%?

    If Israel were a sane country, absolutely none of the other parties would ever be caught dead in a government with these people. If, in any European country, a major party formed a government with Nazis, we would rightly denounce the entire government as Nazis.

    The truth of the matter is that ultra-religious beliefs are fully mainstream in Israeli society, and the only difference between Likud and the ultra-religious is that they are saying all the quiet parts out loud.

  21. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted

    28 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

    But by that standard, there needs to be evidence that they are going through with the rest of the steps.

     

    For what purpose? That was in response to AlexL's ridiculous claim that no genocide occurred because not everyone was immediately killed. I do not need to show evidence of all the other steps when we are clearly already at the extermination phase.

     

    Quote

    Genocide still sounds like hyperbole; an improperly waged war may have racist overtones depending on who is defending it, but that doesn't then make the war a genocide. Vietnam was not a genocide for example, as bad as it was. In this case, there is justification for the war even if not justification for the way the war has been waged, which is different than genocides where literally the only violation was existing. 

     

    Holocaust scholar Raz Segal has called Israel's attack on Gaza a "textbook case of genocide":

    Source: https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide

     

    Quote

    Now you might argue that Israel manufactured the kidnappings, a sort of social engineering project, but then we are getting into territory like "did the CIA kill Kennedy?" If there is an equivalent to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, then you have a case to make. Otherwise, I think you are reaching. Give me documents, testimony, something stating intent. 

     

    What???

     

    Quote

    But I have to say, Israel killing three of its own is a catastrophic error, it indicates that Israel lacks competency. Lack of competency is different than genocidal intent, though.

     

    This is not an "error". This is systematic and has been going on for a long time. The only thing unusual about this case is that it happened to Israelis instead of Palestinians.

     

    Quote

    Don't be like the people who say that since they found a few Nazis in the Ukrainian military, the Ukrainian military must be infested by Nazis. 

    Please watch the whole lecture before commenting about it. This is a strawman argument. I recognize the fact that in any large enough group of people you're gonna find some crazies, but this goes way beyond that.

  22. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted

    38 minutes ago, AlexL said:

    So, in your view, the entire Israel is evil because there is, in Israel, a specific movement which is evil.

    No, my view is that STATE of Israel is evil because its ruling parties tolerate, endorse, and protect these insane extremists by shielding them from prosecution for their terroristic crimes and do not condemn or repudiate them. Watch the entire lecture before responding to me on this topic, because I know you sure as hell didn't watch the entire 90 minute lecture in less than 30 minutes.

    Quote

    PS: You are trying to argue that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza (and in Palestine in general) by analyzing the ideological currents in the Israeli society - instead of by examining the factual events, like the enormous percentage of dead Gazans or the catastrophic fall in the Palestinian population, in West Bank and Gaza.

    As to your "analysis" of the ideological currents - it is all fraudulent.

    PS2. The David Sheen lecture is sponsored by www.palaestina.ch. Is it from this kind of sites that you get your information regarding Israel ?

    You're clearly all out of arguments. All you have left is racist memes and head-in-the-sand denialism. We're done speaking.

  23. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted

    If anyone here is still misinformed enough to believe that Israel is anything but an almost indescribably evil, racist, genocidal lunatic state led by twisted, sick men who promulgate the most anti-man, anti-western ideologies imaginable, then watch this lecture by Israeli investigative journalist David Sheen wherein he describes the Israeli far-right "Messianic" movement and its connections to the Israeli government.

    He first talks about the beliefs of the religious far-right rabbis at Israel's top military academy. The religious far-right is fully in the mainstream of Israeli society. They constitute the second largest group in the Knesset. Remember that these people are TO THE LEFT of the messianic movement. The views of the religious far right are already so extreme that I cannot even begin to comprehend the sheer level of madness that is required to believe them. One of the rabbis wants to bring back slavery. Another describes his own ideology as explicitly anti-man and claims that Western values are the "true" holocaust.  A third one describes Hitler as "the most moral person possible". This is the Israeli MAINSTREAM. THIS GARBAGE IS WHAT IDF OFFICERS ARE TAUGHT.

    But The Messianics are somehow even more extreme than this. How? How? It's so crazy it cannot be believed. Watch this video to fully understand what we are dealing with here and how this affects American politics:

     

  25. Israelo-Palestinian Conflict: 2023 Edition

    in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism

    Posted · Edited by SpookyKitty

    15 minutes ago, AlexL said:

    You still didn't explain the extraordinary low number of bombardment victims (low in context), after using a dozen of kilotons of explosives in "indiscriminate" bombings, within a strategy of "genocide" - allegedly 20K out of 2.4 millions, that is no more than 0.08%
    ---------
    You cannot reason people out of something they were not reasoned into (Jonathan Swift?)

    But I did. Did you not read my post? Here it is again:

    Quote

    Some of the ordinance is deliberately dropped on civilians. Most of it is dropped on civilian infrastructure after most civilians have fled in order to make it as difficult as possible for those civilians to return.

    The Israelis know very well that if they "blow their load" (to put it crudely) all at once, they risk alienating the entire international community. So instead, they are steadily escalating the level of violence against civilians as the genocide drags on.

    Your only response to this was that Israel's strikes against civilian might have been legitimate and that I would need special access to certain kinds of knowledge that I could not have in order to make the determination that Israel's strikes against Gaza are indiscriminate. I dismantled any such notions in my previous post. Thus far, you have not presented any counterargument to my claim, you're just claiming that my explanation doesn't exist when it is clearly in front of you.

    By the way, here is the source for my claims about international law:

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/09/questions-and-answers-october-2023-hostilities-between-israel-and-palestinian-armed

    Quote

    The laws of war recognize that some civilian casualties may be inevitable during armed conflict, but impose a duty on warring parties at all times to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and to target only combatants and other military objectives. The fundamental tenets of international humanitarian law are “civilian immunity” and the principle of “distinction.”

    Combatants include members of a country’s armed forces and commanders and full-time fighters in non-state armed groups. They are subject to attack at all times during hostilities unless they are captured or incapacitated.

    Civilians lose their immunity from attack when and only for such time as they are directly participating in hostilities. According to guidance by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the laws of war distinguish between members of the organized fighting forces of a non-state party, who may be targeted during an armed conflict, and part-time fighters, who are civilians who may only be targeted when and only for such time as they are directly participating in hostilities. Similarly, reservists of national armed forces are considered civilians except when they go on duty, in which case they are combatants subject to attack. Fighters who leave the armed group, as well as regular army reservists who reintegrate into civilian life, are civilians until they are called back to active duty.

    For an individual’s act to constitute direct participation in hostilities, it must imminently be capable of causing harm to opposing forces and must be deliberately carried out to support a party to the armed conflict. Direct participation in hostilities includes measures taken in preparation for executing the act, as well as deployment to and return from the location where the act is carried out.

    ICRC guidance also sets out that people who have exclusively non-combat functions in armed groups, including political or administrative roles, or are merely members of or affiliated with political entities that have an armed component, such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, may not be targeted at any time unless and only for such time as they, like any other civilian, directly participate in the hostilities. That is, membership or affiliation with a Palestinian movement with an armed wing is not a sufficient basis for determining an individual to be a lawful military target.

    The laws of war also protect civilian objects, which are defined as anything not considered a legitimate military objective. Prohibited are direct attacks against civilian objects, such as homes and apartments, places of worship, hospitals and other medical facilities, schools, and cultural monuments. Civilian objects become subject to legitimate attack when they become military objectives; that is, when they are making an effective contribution to military action and their destruction, capture, or neutralization offers a definite military advantage, subject to the rules of proportionality. This would include the presence of members of armed groups or military forces in what are normally civilian objects. Where there is doubt about the nature of an object, it must be presumed to be civilian.

    The laws of war prohibit indiscriminate attacks. Indiscriminate attacks strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction. Examples of indiscriminate attacks are those that are not directed at a specific military objective or that use weapons that cannot be directed at a specific military objective. Prohibited indiscriminate attacks include area bombardment, which are attacks by artillery or other means that treat as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in an area containing a concentration of civilians and civilian objects.

    An attack on an otherwise legitimate military target is prohibited if it would violate the principle of proportionality. Disproportionate attacks are those that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the attack.

     

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