Israel, Palestine & the Levant rolling events: Oct 23 on

Fwiw no one itt has said anything about case gyac raised, but have mentioned numerous reports (such as this one from this past week https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-sexual-violence-zaka-ca7905bf9520b1e646f86d72cdf03244) that essentially debunk claims around widely reported sexual violence. Which isn’t the same as saying that “nothing happened,” which would be ludicrous and abhorrent.

Also, a pro-Israel advocacy center trying to tie a pro-Palestine student group to support for terror is ludicrous. We pay for Israel’s ethnic cleansing with our fucking taxes— get back to me when that’s resolved, or at least make it clear that you only consider certain entities terroristic.

Afaic, Israel is a terrorist organization.

Pure comedy.

BREAKING: Israeli military confirms strike on Rafah, says it targeted a Hamas compound 'in accordance with international law' and 'using precise munitions'

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) May 26, 2024

After so many months working together, it’s such a shame ‘our’ hostage will not come home alive and his 3yo daughter won’t have a future with her dad.

― steely flan (suzy), Sunday, 26 May 2024 08:57 (thirteen hours ago) link

I'm sorry for your loss and appreciate their efforts to remind people of our shared humanity

'using precise munitions'

I wonder when armies will start claiming to create precision shrapnel.

I'm sorry for your loss and appreciate their efforts to remind people of our shared humanity

Forgive my ignorance, and maybe my brain is unable to comprehend the horrors, but I keep thinking of all the tunnels in Gaza. I keep thinking there are enough tunnels to have kept the women and children and other non combatants safe if Hamas wanted them to be safe. It's very sad.

― felicity, Tuesday, February 20, 2024

maybe my brain is unable to comprehend the horrors, but you don't give a fuck about 'our shared humanity'

Mookie, I think you are really wrong about this. You seem to have an obsession with otherizing and ventriloquizing views that clash with your own. It's a form of dehumanization and replyguyism that you presume to read my mind. I see you picking fights with people on a regular basis aside from this. I am sorry for whatever you are going through and hope the scales fall from your eyes someday.

ty for your concern; i wish the same for you as well

also for hind rijab, and the paramedics killed trying to rescue her, and the children killed in their school today, and the civilians experiencing famine in gaza, etc. etc.

lol @ 'othering' though jfc

That “precision strike” has resulted in dozens of deaths after the tents of displaced people in a designated safe zone caught on fire. I haven’t watched any video but apparently there is some harrowing footage

Wasn’t attacking Rafah supposed to be a red line?

there is no red line.

redlining is a form of replyguyism

It means we will give you a disapproving look as we hand you briefcases full of money and crates of weapons

ty for your concern; i wish the same for you as well

also for hind rijab, and the paramedics killed trying to rescue her, and the children killed in their school today, and the civilians experiencing famine in gaza, etc. etc.

lol @ 'othering' though jfc

― mookieproof, Sunday, May 26, 2024 6:26 PM bookmarkflaglink

Resurrecting old posts and not reading any of the linked materials is surely the way to prove that you're not just a reply guy looking for something to bully a woman with for posting a tweet by a Gazan-American pointing out that Israeli girls did not deserve to have their ankles cut and that Hamas is not doing a great job governing its people.

But, I understand he went to a somewhat shitty school in other posters' opinions, so I shouldn't listen to him probably.

I'm sorry you've been carrying that old post of mine around, mookie. I condemn it.

Live updates cont.

33 min ago
Israeli strike on Rafah kills dozens, hours after Hamas fires rockets at Tel Aviv. Here’s the latest
From CNN staff

i will carry that old post of yours around literally forever, honestly

I think you're being too hard on yourself, to be honest.

If there are any other aspiring ventriloquizers around, out-of-work dummy right here.

That “precision strike” has resulted in dozens of deaths after the tents of displaced people in a designated safe zone caught on fire. I haven’t watched any video but apparently there is some harrowing footage

― rob, Monday, 27 May 2024 bookmarkflaglink

The descriptions are enough.

As far as the IDF is concerned killing a whole lot of civilians does not mean that this can't still be described as a "precision strike" because a certain amount of civilian casualties is allowable.

In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any “collateral damage” during assassinations of low-ranking militants. The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.

https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

It’s never spelled out – and I think it should be – that since 1948, 95% of all casualties in Israel and Palestine have been one side of the conflict. Since October 7, that rises to 98%.

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) May 26, 2024

Macron is outraged.

Sometimes I think about how the Palestinian civilian death total long ago surpassed the population of the place where I was born. The horror is inconceivable. It’s inexcusable, and yet, it’s still happening.

oof, I hadn't thought of it that way before, and the death toll is currently double the population of the town I grew up in. And it has just surpassed the total number of undergraduate students at the university I study/work at

#BREAKING: Gag lifted: Egyptian soldier killed following an exchange of fire between the Israeli and Egyptian soldiers near the Rafah border crossing

— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) May 27, 2024

the footage of Rafah came up on Motaz’s feed and I nearly threw up when I clicked through. Horrific.

More from those xpost CNN live updates:

The United Nation's High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has decried Israel's "horrific" strike on a camp housing displaced people in Rafah on Sunday.
...Despite noting the Israeli military's plans to carry out a review into the strike, Türk called it "shockingly clear" that the decision to strike an area "densely packed with civilians" resulted in the "entirely predictable outcome" of at least 45 deaths.

...Speaking following a visit to Israel last week, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he had detected “refinements” to Israel’s plan, which he said was now more “targeted and limited” in scale.

...The IDF said the attack was conducted based on “prior intelligence” indicating that senior officials of Hamas’s West Bank wing were present at the site, and that it had assessed there would be "no expected harm to civilians."

“Before the strike, a number of steps were taken to reduce the risk of harming uninvolved civilians during the strike, including conducting aerial surveillance, the deployment of precise munitions by the IAF, and additional intelligence information,” the IDF said, adding that it "regrets" harm done to civilians.

This exchange really got to the heart of how I have felt for months.
https://i.postimg.cc/RCgvtQmX/IMG-1268.jpg

It makes the past few months of escalating atrocities and violence come into sharp focus; this was all entirely avoidable. It would be nice for the people finally shocked into saying something about the images from Rafah to have said something months ago, instead of smearing anyone who saw exactly how this would play out as a terrorist supporter.

...Israeli officials have repeatedly said that a ground operation in Rafah, where it believes Hamas’s leadership and four battalions of fighters are camped out with Israeli hostages, is necessary for “total victory”.

They don't care about precision. They care about killing as many Palestinians as possible, and anyone who believes otherwise is deluding themselves.

herd people into a 'safe zone', burn them alive, blame them for not being in the 'safe zone', say oops we'll investigate that

They care about killing as many Palestinians as possible, and anyone who believes otherwise is deluding themselves.

I believe otherwise. A criminal indifference to the death of people in Gaza is another story. If you think that distinction doesn't matter, fine, think that.

does that distinction matter in international law? (setting aside the feebleness of international law, of course)

Good question.
xxpost If hostages get get killed during their operations, they'll prob say it was because Hamas was using them as human shields, as they used to say about random civilians. But still, the shit would really hit the fan politically (though might matter more for Biden than Bibi, at least for a while).

More updates, speaking of precision:

[Israel has told the Biden administration that it used used a precision munition to hit a target in Rafah on Sunday, but that shrapnel from the explosion ignited a fuel tank nearby and started a fire that engulfed a camp for displaced Palestinians and led to dozens of deaths, a US official told CNN.

“We can’t confirm that but it’s what Israel shared with us,” the official said, “and we assume we will learn more once Israel completes its investigation.”

...The Israeli military claimed it struck a Hamas compound in the area, killing two senior officials from the militant group.

The Israel Defense Forces also claimed publicly that the target was not located inside the humanitarian area of Rafah where Palestinians were told to move amid Israel’s operations in southern Gaza.

oopsie! sorry (not sorry), people burned to death

we assume we will learn more once Israel completes its investigation

no doubt

Just wonder why some people were unmoved before Rafah, despite it being the same scorched earth tactics they have used all along. Why were you unmoved by dead kids in Gaza City or Khan Younis?

Like what’s different now?

An article from six weeks ago about the AI system Lavender https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

Tom D.'s link earlier today was the first I heard about it, and it's been haunting me all day

@ Boring, Maryland: I literally have absolutely no idea.

Just wonder why some people were unmoved before Rafah, despite it being the same scorched earth tactics they have used all along. Why were you unmoved by dead kids in Gaza City or Khan Younis?

I'm not one of those people, so I don't know for sure, but there are reasons why this might be the case. Public opinion on all things isn't as static as we tend to think, and its also potentially not what they are ok or not ok with that has changed, but their perception of what is happened that has changed. There will be people that thought Israel were justified to do "something" in response to 10/7 at the time, but didn't imagine it would be this open ended and large scale

But people becoming not okay with it is better than people staying ok with it

kids are out of school, so it's now harder to muster claims of rampant antisemitism when there are no new videos of protestors being beaten by cops but *are* videos of palestinians being gruesomely killed

something something 'shared humanity'

humans should recognize the humanity in others. but if you're into dehumanizing other people then at least you have lots of company.

Xp Maryland

The aforementioned red-line might get some of your more "liberal" minded folks outraged. Outrage based on "wtf guys, we kinda said dont do that and now you did. You're making us look bad now, and could you please not break feeble international law so blatently", rather than outrage at the continuation of what has been happening for nearly 8 months now.

With rafah, they've exceeded the bounds that the powers that be set upon them. So people more inclined to make their moral judgements based solely on the policy of their state might start to get a bit more outraged

reasonable!

There's an element of attrition here too. There's only so many daily headlines of unrequited civilian deaths you can hear before it starts to weigh on the conscience of the everyman/woman (hopefully)

Xp all too

well let's not go too far (in america, at least, where brown people are terrorists until proven otherwise)

but it does seem like a shift if piers fucking anthony has questions