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

The main point I want to make here is the difference between what people said happened and what actually happened.

> I have been observing it for over a decade, longer than it had a name

Let's define what "it" actually is:

Someone receiving social shame/criticism with the stated intent to change behaviour.

If you look slightly more than a decade ago, it happened then also. And the decade before that. And the century before that. Pretty much as long as we have records with the appropriate level of detail, we can find examples of this.

So yes, people were publicly shamed in the last decade. They were publicly shamed the decade before that as well. There was absolutely nothing special about anything that happened "recently" other than some pundits deciding to invent a catch term and push a meme around the culture.

My issue is that the people who started this meme and pushed it the hardest, were doing so in an attempt to deflect or prevent themselves and their ideas from being criticized, and mostly they really deserved criticism.

It's certainly possible to be an "unwitting dupe" and continue to spread this meme, not knowing any better, but I'm not sure it's the most likely scenario.

As for your example, the evidence you've presented certainly makes him seem like an innocent victim of bullying him. I sympathize and wish it hadn't happened to him.

But you can't use this as some kind of statement to justify being against shame and criticism just because people use it immorally.

Most of the combat is happening there as well.

Israel is operating three food distribution centers in the southern part of the strip but only one in the north.

"The IDF has been directing civilians towards the “expanded humanitarian area” in al-Mawasi, a narrow coastal strip of agricultural land that was first designated as a “humanitarian zone” in October.

The expanded zone now measures 60 sq km.

The IDF said the area includes “field hospitals, tents and increased amounts of food, water, medication and additional supplies”.

A satellite image captured on 8 May shows what appears to be a new field hospital which has been constructed in Deir al-Balah."

Clearly life in the "humanitarian zone" sucks. But a lot less than in northern Gaza. Despite the often repeated mantra that "nowhere is safe in Gaza" that designated humanitarian zone is significantly safer (and there's data that shows that).

The IDF is not laying siege to the entire strip. It's not even laying siege to Northern Gaza. It's air dropping food in northern Gaza (following pressure - but still). There are three food distribution centers in southern Gaza (and I think they've also seen less violence but I'm not sure). In the south there are armed Palestinian factions that are collaborating with Israel.

Anyways, I'm appointing you to the general in charge of the war from the Israeli side. Your goal is to return the hostage and defeat Hamas. I'm interested in what your plan looks like.

No argument that the extreme right in Israel benefited from the Oct 7th attack. So far anyways. What exactly that means in terms of "expansion" remains to be seen. Isn't annexing the west bank and giving Palestinians Israeli citizenship the real solution anyways? Modulo trying to "convince" them to leave that's more or less the plan of the Israeli right.

There was plenty of hate towards Israel before Oct 7th. The hate that manifested in Oct 7th was more or less unprecedented. I can't say there is more hate now. Check out some Gaza school textbooks from before Oct 7th. They raise their kids on hate (in UN funded schools).

I also can't predict where things go from here. I think the shift that happened in Israel on Oct 7th is that Israel should not try to control or predict the intent of their enemies. Israel needs to take away the capacity of those opponents to attack Israel. You can see this in Lebanon where Israel is still hitting Hezbollah wherever they can. In the past Israel would worry about retaliation, now Israel is more worried about capabilities and is willing to deter retaliation through use of more force. Deterrence + removing capabilities.

In Lebanon you could argue Lebanese would object to Israel bombing their country but some are happy that Hezbollah is getting decimated. The Palestinian authority and some Palestinians are happy that Israel is going after Hamas and PIJ militants aggressively in the west bank.

Gaza is a very different story but they were also terrorized by Hamas. What things look like after the war - who knows. Hard to even say when this war ends and what that looks like. I would like to hope there is some better lives for everyone and peace but that seems very unrealistic. The western countries talking about a two state solution are smoking some good stuff.