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‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

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Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#841

Post by tdeck »

ben_w wrote: post #840
tdeck wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this vacuous "both sides" claptrap isn't going to work anymore because we've all seen Israel's true face now.

Eh? "Both sides, X and Y, are bad" requires as a prerequisite that X is in the set of "bad". Doesn't matter which of X and Y are government policies in Israel or Palestine. Now, if the comment you'd replied to was saying "it's all X's fault, Y is innocent", then "we've all seen Israel's true face now" would be a reasonable response.

Fair enough, I'm getting into the weeds a bit and left some things unsaid.

What I'm referring to is a rhetorical technique deployed to get people to simmer down and accept the status quo. Folks who support Israel know they can't get people to be 100% behind Israel anymore, so the fallback position is "it's complicated, the Palestinians don't seem like great people either so I'm not going to go out of my way to support them". That leaves the ruling class foreign policy establishment to run the horror show the way they like without any troublesome democratic meddling.

If you want to see an example from a historical genocide, just look at what the Turkish government writes about the Armenian genocide.

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#842

Post by slightwinder »

tdeck wrote: post #832
slightwinder wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - the situation was actually very clear from the start Which start? There are so many in that conflict. > - Israel has been illegally occupying, enforcing apartheid, committing war crimes for decades. So did the other sides. For outsiders, it's very hard to know what's really going on in that region; so many history, so many details, so many emotions, so many abuse and killing... It's a chain of reactions and count…

Unfortunately this vacuous "both sides" claptrap isn't going to work anymore because we've all seen Israel's true face now.

Thank you for displaying the reason why it's so simple for Israels right-wing-factions to manipulate the public opinion.

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#843

Post by doka_smoka »

throw310822 wrote: post #709
zetazzed wrote: post #220

I see an increasing number of politicians taking the position: "I supported Israel's government's actions when they first attacked, given the goals of destroying Hamas' leadership and freeing hostages, but now that it has turned into a brutal siege with mass civilian casualties on a horrific scale, I'm strongly against their actions." E.g. Macron, Angus King, and many people I know personally. And I think we need to…

While I agree it's very important to welcome people who changed their minds, there are a few things that still annoy me: - the situation was actually very clear from the start - Israel has been illegally occupying, enforcing apartheid, committing war crimes for decades. You always ignored it. - I don't hear any apology about the above, nor any indication that these people won't return to their default stance of prete…

[dead]

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#844

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Jensson wrote: post #589
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel has been an apartheid state for decades. This has nothing to do with Hamas. Anyone who is "changing their mind" now, hasn't - it's merely no longer socially acceptable to support naked indiscriminate brutality.

> Israel has been an apartheid state for decades Around 20% of Israelis are Muslims and they have full rights and get to vote, so no its not an apartheid state.

In 1961, South Africa defended its use of apartheid by using Israel as an example of acceptable apartheid state. In 2022 (and 2024), South Africa again called Israel an apartheid state. They're kind of the authority on it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_apartheid

If the distinction you're making is only that the apartheid is applied mostly in Gaza and the West Bank, I'd say that misses the forest for the trees.

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#845

Post by ivape »

Zacharias030 wrote: post #798
sc970 wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is hard to make peace when one side is hell-bent on mass murder." Is this referring to the Hamas Charter? Suspect it is a typo and you meant to say both sides.

Mass murder through starvation and shooting children at aid stations.

[flagged]

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#846

Post by pydry »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #169
throwway120385 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while people would label arguments against Israel as being against the Jewish people or the Jewish faith. That is, decrying how Gaza and the West Bank were formed were seen as anti-semitic arguments. It was essentially an argument that Israel is Judaism. Whereas mature people can usually argue against a behavior without arguing against a person or a group of people.

In so weaponizing "antisemitism" through unethical and immoral political attacks, it increases actual antisemitism and makes the term lose its importance. Meanwhile, 20k Hasidic Jews met in an arena in NYC to denounce what Israel was doing and that they don't speak for them. The sheer arrogance of a secular political regime claiming to speak for an entire people whom aren't citizens of their country and never agreed…

It's become increasingly apparent that most accusations of anti semitism these days are a thin veil over genocidal islamophobia.

which isnt to say anti semitism doesnt exist or even that it isnt getting worse, just that most of the pearl clutching is being done by rather extreme racists who are pretty happy to see muslims exterminated.

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#847

Post by atoav »

tdeck wrote: post #822
atoav wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Cane and stick. Politician who come over to your site get the cane, those who continue to support Netanyahu get the stick. Always give cornered animals a way out unless you want to have them put up more fight than you want. This is the smart thing to do if your goal is to build a broad movement that achieves effective change in the real world. When serving emotions and looki…

I know this is a trivial thing to point out in the context of such a discussion but the expression you want is "carrot and stick". A cane is a kind of stick that you can also hit with, the verb "to cane" means to hit someone with a stick.

Thanks for the correction. English is not my first language, in German the equivalent is "Zuckerbrot und Peitsche" (sugar-bread and whip) I must have somehow made the mental leap from "sugar" via "sugarcane" to "cane" and completely forgot about the carrot.

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#849

Post by i_love_retros »

orbisvicis wrote: post #433

What's everyone's thoughts on the GHF? They're the only way that food officially enters Gaza. IDF is not supposed to be immediately present at the distribution sites, and yet are shooting civilians. As are contractors hired by GHF. In fact there are cases of nationals joining IDF for the explicit purpose of shooting civilians, seemingly. There are movements to disband the GHF, but how else would Gazans eat?

[flagged]

Re: ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]

#850

Post by elcritch »

mandmandam wrote: post #802
elcritch wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The stories have been routinely retracted by the BBC, NYTimes, Washington Post, NPR, etc after they’re later shown false. Do any of these stories compare to the mainstream media's systematic lies about 40 beheaded babies? Or babies burned in ovens? Or systematic rape? Did the US President launder any of those lies long after they were debunked? Were the stories about premie babies left to rot at Al Nasr true? Were…

> You don't refute that the boy is starving.

My refutation was implicit in the fact that the boy's condition appears to be genetic and that his brother appears healthy and well fed. His mother also appears not to be starving either.

> Read the comments on your own link - they're absolutely vile and I won't repeat them here, but that you think this is making a good case for you is absolutely wild.

I didn't link to those comments nor do I condone them. There's plenty of vile pro-Palestinian comments on X and elsewhere as well.

You also don't deny the veracity of the photo or the full story.

There is real starvation occurring in Gaza, but the IDF has also started scaling up aid and food including announcing safe corridors for UN aid delivery which I believe the IDF should've done sooner.

> Sometimes I almost feel pity for the type of mind that can defend the perpetrators of these acts. But this is going on for 21 months (and 80 years) now. At some point - long past - you become fully complicit by defending this holocaust.

You've convinced yourself it's a holocaust, despite the scales being 2 orders of magnitudes different in number and completely different in actions and intentions. Note it wasn't just 6 million Jews killed in the holocaust, but also 5-6 million Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, disabled people, and more. That's 2 out of every 3 Jewish people in Europe at the time.

Your distortions and semi-irrational accusations don't change the actual realities which are hard enough to estimate.

Estimates place the ratio of combatant to civilian death near to that of other urban wars. Most sources estimate a civilian to combatant death rate of 4:1 in Gaza, while Mosul was 4.7-6.1:1. That's despite Hamas leadership actively using civilians as shields.

There's worse confirmed famine occurring just hundreds of miles some estimates of 522,000 infant deaths due to starvation in Sudan in the last two years alone. Despite 10 times the numbers of people dying in Sudan, much less Yemen and Somolia, they're receiving only a fraction of the international aid or attention that Gazans receive.

Yet it's not sensational or in the headlines everyday, so who cares right?

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