691–700 of 1001 posts
Beyond the dehumanisation of the victims by the perpetrators, one should not dehumanise the latter in response. There were no monsters.
She was recalling that, it was ordinary men killing ordinary men, and ordinary men being killed by ordinary men.
And one of these ordinary men could have been your neighbour, or yourself.
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> Maybe rockets wouldn't be shot if Israel would not illegally occupy territories. Tell me you know nothing about this conflict without telling me you know nothing about it. Israel was inches away from just having to give the Palestinians their own state. Why then, did Hamas attack just before that? The answer is simple: it is and always has been about removing Israel. That's true for Hamas and all their supporters.…
> Israel was inches away from just having to give the Palestinians their own state. I follow that situation pretty closely and my understanding is that it was the opposite: The Palestinians' supporters were about to make deals with Israel - deals they refused to make while Palestinian territory was occupied - and leave the Palestinians mostly in the cold. Interview with Hamas leaders after the attack, iirc, said the…
You don't, but the comment you're replying to is replying to:
"Maybe rockets wouldn't be shot if Israel would not illegally occupy territories."
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For one, yes Egypt is complicit in the situation of Gaza. They're paid ~$1.5B/yr by the US in defense aid that's contingent on them playing nice with Israeli defense policy which is mainly seen day to day in the Egyptian enforcement of the Gazan blockade. On top of that though, it's not clear the humanitarian solution is opening that border. With many high level Israeli officials calling for Gaza to be ethnically cle…
> On top of that though, it's not clear the humanitarian solution is opening that border. With many high level Israeli officials calling for Gaza to be ethnically cleansed, encouraging an evacuation from land that the Gazans might not be allowed back on to could be viewed in hindsight as assisting a crime against humanity. Allowing people to escape murder is not "assisting with a crime against humanity", whereas stop…
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I'm reminded of US Secretary of Defense, McNamara's lessons he learned from being involved in that quagmire. 'Even though the United States is the strongest nation in the world, it should never use that power unilaterally: "if we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we better reexamine our reasoning.' He was talking about our mistake applying unilateral policy in Vietnam. We didn't…
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Wow, thanks for responding dang! It's like a fleeting encounter with a celebrity. I see the HN policy, and understand it generally. But I am vocally lodging my objection in this particular case. To put a finer point on it: I don't think I'm the only person in my community who has an extremely negative opinion of Al Jazeera, and its historical lack of neutrality on this issue. Having a balanced and nuanced discussion…
Thanks for the kind reply! (but please don't prize my comments that highly, they don't merit it) Re your point: I hear you, but given the nature of this particular article, I assume there isn't a more primary source with this material, which mostly consists of quotations. No one has mentioned any evidence (so far as I know) that the quotes are falsified. (And yes, this is different from whether the things the quotes…
I think my most salient argument is that this selection of article is not conducive to a constructive discussion, because some (many?) Jews have a reflexive distrust of Al Jazeera. Don't take that to minimize the substance of the article.
My political awareness was forged by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the American response. The core lesson: the point of a terrorist attack is to trigger an over reaction. America wildly over reacted and became fundamentally hostile to Arab and Muslim people. This reaction led to some of the most successful recruiting of radicals in generations. Israel's response to this crisis seems to have failed to learn from that…
My political awareness was forged by participating in the Iraq war on the US side after falling for the massive propaganda before. I've literally never been the same person since, and have spent most of my waking free hours in between the jobs I can barely hold down for my PTSD trying to understand the details behind the global geopolitical situation. The truth is this is likely just a continuation of the same playbo…
With 9/11 the 28 pages shows that the Saudis are almost certainly the ones responsible for the attack but due to oil we simply ignore it and sweep it under the rug.
The US is institutionally unable to bring those responsible for terrorism to justice.
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> but there is no right whatsoever to blockade Gaza's access by sea This by the way is an important fact to bring up when the claim that "Israel left Gaza many years ago and the problem didn't improve". In actuality, they withdrew their occupying army but still kept up a blockade, including a literal cap to the number of calories allowed to enter the country, which I can only interpret as a population control measure…
The "blockade" was Israel protecting its borders once Hamas seized control. And it's not a blockade as one side borders Egypt. For much of the time, Israel allowed goods through the tough restrictions on what types of materials were allowed in started once Hamas started tunneling into Israel to commit attacks. Very recently, Israel increased significantly the number of work permits for Gazans to work in Israel in the…
The fact that Israel has an agreement with Egypt governing that border crossing and preventing imports other than as approved by Israel undermines the "its not a blockade because one border touches Egypt" argument.
Meanwhile, Egypt seems to get a free pass, minimal criticism for keeping its border locked down while being adjacent to a terrible conflict? They could at least let the most vulnerable/sick/injured flee.
In 1948 Jewish terrorists drove numbers of Palestinians from their homes into Egypt during the Nakba. Israel has refused to let the refugees they created return for the past 75 years. So while Israel is carpet bombing Gaza,the party to be condemned is - Egypt? For not cooperating in Israel's effort to drive the Gazans from their homes?
Did you mean this? There is no right to return, for no one. I'm not returning to Polish Silesia, Palestinian descendants aren't returning to imaginary ancestral land.
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> On top of that though, it's not clear the humanitarian solution is opening that border. With many high level Israeli officials calling for Gaza to be ethnically cleansed, encouraging an evacuation from land that the Gazans might not be allowed back on to could be viewed in hindsight as assisting a crime against humanity. Allowing people to escape murder is not "assisting with a crime against humanity", whereas stop…
Except the combo of general Egyptian/IDF defense coordination brokered by the US combined with the explicit calls for ethnic cleansing by high level Israeli government officials very well could be interpreted as explicitly assisting in ethnic cleansing.
Sure, but then it would be following the agreement with Israel restricting imports that would be assisting with the ethnic cleansing more than allowing refugees out.