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IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

haaretz.com

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Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#521

I visited Israel for a sports seminar some ~10 years ago and met many nice people. I felt sympathetic to their reality of living in an ever-hostile environment from all sides, and struggle to keep their place in the world safe. I admired their resilience and strength. When this Gaza conflict started, I saw how the Israeli protested against their government and demanded peace, so I thought there is a semblance of an e…

I’m becoming very skeptical of the “bad government, good people” idea. Governments need popular support. This goes even for horrible dictatorships. There are degrees, of course. An oppressive state can survive with less popular support than a democracy. But it still needs a decent amount. The machinery of dictatorship is as much about keeping popular support as it is about forcing people to suppress their opposition.

> I’m becoming very skeptical of the “bad government, good people” idea. Governments need popular support. This goes even for horrible dictatorships

You're either being disingenuous or have never experienced real dictatorship. I lived under theocracy in IRAN for more than half my life and I promise you that the Westerns screaming from the back "just revolt!" have no clue what they are talking about.

These regimes control communication, the media, intact laws that punishes any kind of dissent and often has multi layered of security forces to keep the population in check (not including the regular army and police).

It's easy to shout this when it's not your life, your sibling, your child or significant other's life on the line. These regimes will not hesitate to murder their own citizens to stay in power.

I don't know enough about Israel's internal politics and their society to make an assertive comment but what I _can_ say, is that from my interactions with them, they seem like ordinary and kind people who have no intention of harming me or my family.

Unless you are psychopath, you are not going to wake up one day and decide to murder people.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many states were "founded on ethnic cleansing". So what? I don't get your point. Israel has continuously been oppressing the Palestinians for almost 80 years. That is immoral. Israel is in the wrong. > They are widely considered to posses a right of existence, and even expected to defend their citizens. You are just jumping to a different topic. I said nothing about its right to exist.

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That's not entirely true but your are changing the subject.

Have the Palestinians been ethnically cleansed? Yes or no? Have they been oppressed for almost 80 years? Yes or no?

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mostly just seeing people discuss what Israel's military is doing, with people on both sides adding historical context. It's sure as hell not a "hate-fest."

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Their nonsense is already flag'd and dead'd, you'd need to enable showdead in your profile to see their posts.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#524
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel and people of Jewish heritage has a lot of soft-power in the west. And the anti-terrorism rhetoric that Israeli's using to sell this has has previously been deployed by the west to cover up it's own crimes.

I would argue that the Muslim world has gained quite some political power in the West, perhaps as a simple result of immigration. The EU for example seem to have about 50 times more Muslims than Jews. Anti-terrorism rhetorics has indeed previously led to terrible crimes, but I wouldn't suppose that's a reason to support pro-terrorism rhetorics. It's probably best to look at the content instead of the type of rhetoric…

What evidence of this do you see? Non Jewish natural born Americans also outnumber Jews in America, yet I don’t see any immigrant students getting deported for criticizing Americans.

Jews have disproportionate levels of soft power in the US. Israel receives billions in support every year. Anti Muslim propaganda is pushed out every year in Hollywood. The medias coverage of Gaza is essentially one big lie by omission. Many states pass laws aimed to deter criticism of Israel.

I don’t see any other group in America that receives this level of support.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#525

People ought to understand that this problem of innocent Gazans - often children - being fired upon by IDF soldiers isn't a new one, it predates the current food distribution operation. An article from October in the NY Times detailing some well-documented atrocities ("44 health care workers saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza") was published as an opinion piece, in s…

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Children are children. That's why we respond with abject horror when you see them hungry and huddled, riddled with bullets. If you have to prepend a nationality to "child" to justify it, then I regret to inform you that you are a racist.

It doesn't matter whether it happens in Israeli-occupied territory or an American middle school. It's absolutely reprehensible. "stop killing children you dislike" or "stop targeting journalists" should not be a controversial demand in the 21st century. Certainly not to a modernized military.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#526
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> I didn't particularly like Israeli policy towards Palestinians for the last 15 years, but they were certainly not treated as "sub-human". Garbage. Gaza had its only airport bombed to oblivion 20 years ago and was told any attempt to repair it would result in the same. Its port has been blockaded by the Israeli navy for 15 years. Its only land exits have been heavily locked down. Israel will routinely turn electrici…

The Gazan government is a declared enemy of Israel, wanting its destruction. It has used hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to build its militant group to fight Israel.

Given the circumstances, Gaza's neighbors blockade it to keep it from building an even bigger fighting force.

> Israel will routinely turn electricity off to the country for days to punish for something, be it a rocket attack,

You mean, when occasionally Hamas will try to kill random Israeli civilians using rocket fire? Which is basically a declaration of war and causes Israel to fight back?

> or teens throwing stones.

I don't think that's actually true.

> That’s treating people as subhuman,

Israel is treating Hamas-controlled Gaza as a hostile enemy that is intent on destroying it. Given that Hamas, even under the blockade and with all the restrictions in place, still managed to invade Israel and kill a thousand citizens, while kidnapping and holding hostage 250 civilians, and still, a year and a half later, is holding these people hostage and torturing them daily... given that, I think it's hard to say blockading them was a bad idea.

If you think the blockade is the reason for their actions, then you're quite simply wrong - they were founded many years before and always had the same goal of destroying Israel, including working hard against the peace process that was forming between Israel and the eventual Palestinian Authority.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#527

People ought to understand that this problem of innocent Gazans - often children - being fired upon by IDF soldiers isn't a new one, it predates the current food distribution operation. An article from October in the NY Times detailing some well-documented atrocities ("44 health care workers saw multiple cases of preteen children who had been shot in the head or chest in Gaza") was published as an opinion piece, in s…

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Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#528
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not extrapolate from the discourse with one German to a general statement of a heterogeneous population of ~80M people. There are many different opinions and positions in Germany - like in every country in the world. Please keep that in mind. Germany has indeed still have a ‘vaccination’. How well it works, and whether it is not exploited by politics, is another matter. Lastly, the conflict in the Middle East…

No, there is nothing “complex” about Gaza - neither before nor after Oct 7. The late Michael Brooks shared a small thought experiment that might help elucidate this: https://youtu.be/7ebPj_FqM5Q

It’s one thing to call the situation “nothing complex”, but there was no solution in this clip.

Usually when people call something complex they mean that the solution is complex.

Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#529
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Israel's perspective, Palestinians are a problem. Long term, they have a few options: 1) Give them their own state. This is difficult for quite many reasons, and Israel (by which I mean the current government) doesn't want that 2) Give them full citizenship rights equal to Israel's citizens, make sure they have a proper minority representation, and let them participate in the regular political processes. The cur…

You'd think given Israel's history they'd do everything they could to not make 4) acceptable.

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Re: IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

#530

I visited Israel for a sports seminar some ~10 years ago and met many nice people. I felt sympathetic to their reality of living in an ever-hostile environment from all sides, and struggle to keep their place in the world safe. I admired their resilience and strength. When this Gaza conflict started, I saw how the Israeli protested against their government and demanded peace, so I thought there is a semblance of an e…

And you can think the same way about russians. They support all horrors russian people do to Ukrainian cities. And many are trying to earn some extra cash out of it.

No different how Americans are brain washed that they are supporting a noble goal democracy at whatever cost around the world
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