It’s great both sides of this conflict have so much respect for protecting the lives of civilians. Ugh. I wish the leaders of Hamas and Bibi’s reactionary government were the ones that would actually suffer the consequences of this war.
This conflict benefits the most: Russia and China (by having US distracted) and Bibi (by having previously divided Israelis united behind him)
Iran too. I’m sure they weren’t too happy with the impending Israeli-Saudi rapprochement. This at a minimum will significantly complicate that.
Hamas has already said it was directly backed by Iran.
This is why I want a blank check for Ukraine.
I think they overestimate how much this distracts the US. Plans for supporting Israel in all levels of military conflict have been nailed down for decades, and it would be very hard to put so much demand on the US with such a geographically small conflict.
China and Russia are desperate for relief because they both have terribly overplayed their hands. Russia, more so obviously. But if China opts for actual engagement, they're going to lose. The US will suffer big losses as well but definitely can sustain and overcome the Chinese threat in the long run.
So while the US is "distracted", Russia and China do what? Steal the pie from the windowsill?
We stop backing Ukraine, we start backing Israel. Ukraine loses billions in funding, which helps Russia. The better off Russia is the larger ally China has.
That's rich.
You just killed civilians, what evidence is there to conclude you wouldn't kill those ppl anyway.
Both sides of this conflict have done so much horrific shit, you can't trust any of them.
I dunno, the internet has told me that Israel is just as bad. I definitely remember when the IDF took a bunch of civilian women and children as hostages and then announced that it was going to livestream their murder.
Oh wait.
There are no good guys in that conflict.
Only bad guys and victims.
Hamas being terrorists doesn't make it OK for Israel to be committed to genocide any more than Israel's existence as an ethnofascist apartheid state makes in OK for Hamas to be bombing proms.
Both organizations are making it impossible for Palestinians to live peacefully.
If Israel were committed to genocide there would be no Palestine. It is their historical sensitivity to genocide and limitations placed on them by international law and foreign pressures that imposes on them very different standards of behavior in this war. If they operated by the same set of rules that Hamas does, this conflict would have been over long ago.
Others were captured and bound and kidnapped. “I saw videos with a male getting held by a group of Arab kids. Like, they’re like 16, 17,” one survivor recalled. “They’re kids, but they’re young men already, and they’re holding this guy, and he looks as his girlfriend is being mounted on a bike and driven away from him. God knows what she’s going to experience … Women have been raped at the area of the rave next to their friends bodies, dead bodies.”
Several of these rape victims appear to have been later executed. Others were taken to Gaza. In photographs released online, you can see several paraded through the city’s streets, blood gushing from between their legs.
One survivor who’d returned to the scene later in the day to look for his friends spoke, in a breaking voice, of what he’d seen. Of the bodies, mainly of young women, lying cold and mutilated. Of scantily clad corpses, many of whom appeared to have been shot at point-blank. Of cars, perforated by bullets or blown up by grenades.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/israel-music-festival-massacre-eyewitness-account
Israel does not perform atrocities like this. This wasn't collateral damage, this wasn't an attack on a valid military target, it was intentionally kidnapping, raping, and murdering civilians. This sort of behavior makes it very hard for me to swallow the, "both sides are equally bad," narrative. I had a lot of sympathy for the Palestinian situation before, it is quickly evaporating.
Israel has turned Gaza into an open air prison. Today Bibi announced the blockade would become total, including food, water, and medicine, which sure sounds like a path to genocide, but I'll save that criticism until it actually plays out. In general, Israel is an apartied state. Hamas is a bunch of murderous terrorists committing war crimes, doing far more harm to their supposed cause than good. This attack will result in far more of their people suffering. But they count on that, hate within the Palestine community in Gaza is what gives them political power, so the civilians Isreal is currently killing will just continue to fuel the cycle of violence.
Everyone sucks here, Hamas sucks way way way more, but that doesn't make Israel "good". If you compare Nazi Germany to apartied South Africa, the former is going to win the evil country contest everytime. But that doesn't make apartied South Africa good. If it wasn't for the Book of Revelations, America (it's government and it's people) would care as much about this conflict as it does about various civil wars and genocides happening all over the world, which is to say not at all (unless oil or other natural resources are imperilled).
Today Bibi announced the blockade would become total, including food, water, and medicine, which sure sounds like a path to genocide
My understanding is the border crossing with Egypt is still open, so Palestine can still have access to all of that.
Everyone sucks here, Hamas sucks way way way more, but that doesn’t make Israel “good”.
You make a good point about no one having clean hands in this conflict, but one party here seems willing to commit atrocities that the other is not. One party is historically willing to compromise and negotiate for a viable solution and the other has not, and in fact has it in their charter that they will not negotiate or compromise.
[Hamas's charter,] article 13, "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
What we need to end this amicably is a solution that neither party is happy with, one they are equally dissatisfied with, because that is a hallmark of compromise. If one or both parties are unwilling to compromise, the erosion of Palestinian lands and power will continue as it has, and such atrocious acts may serve to hasten it.
I’m not denying that some of this is factual reporting, but that particular source can be very biased with respect to Israel.
Overall, we rate Tablet Magazine as right-center biased based on an editorial bias that moderately favors the pro-Israel nationalist right. We also rate them Mostly Factual in reporting rather than High due to the promotion of conspiracy theories despite a clean third-party fact check record.
If Israel were committed to genocide there would be no Palestine.
Hate to point out the irony, especially in this context... but at the rate things are going, in another 5 years there probably won't be a Palestine.
Snark aside, I do completely agree, and there's a lot that I would criticize Israel for. That list does not, however, include mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of random civilians.
Rape and kidnapping maybe not but did you just say that Israel hasn't been murdering Palestinians? Or are you saying they've never murdered more than 200 at once
You know as well as I do that the IDF does not go around Palestinian villages slaughtering everyone they see.
Israel's hands are not remotely perfectly clean, and there have absolutely been actions that are reprehensible, but the operations of the IDF and Hamas are not remotely equivalent, as you're perfectly aware.
The equivalency discussions are all BS.
Terrorist attacks targeting civilians are bad.
Also, indiscriminate bombing killing civilians is bad.
A civilized world really shouldn't condone either. And one doesn't justify the other.
Flying planes into civilian buildings killing thousands wasn't an appropriate response to their government supporting tyrants who tortured and killed dissidents. (Also, probably not a good idea to support tyrants.)
The hundreds of thousands of civilians who died in the middle east in response to those attacks shouldn't have had to pay the price on such an attack even if their country had had anything to do with it in the first place.
The only appropriate "both sides" in these kinds of situations is the capacity to have empathy and regret over the suffering that occurs to normal people trying to live their lives on both sides of the conflicts.
Unfortunately a lot of what I'm seeing online these days is the logical equivalent of "Bin Laden was justified in 9/11 because the US's foreign policy caused the suffering of many in the middle east." Logic I happen to think is pretty disgusting personally, just as I've also always found dismissal of civilian suffering in broader military responses reprehensible.
Not a lot of countries have clean hands to be pointing fingers with, but the only way we move towards a world with less blood on our collective hands is by unequivocally pointing to human rights abuses where they occur and saying "this is not okay."
Not "this is okay because so and so bombed a city block first and wasn't touching black while saying I'm rubber and you're glue."
No - targeting or indiscriminately killing civilians is not okay - full stop.
And if one's attitude about the civilian deaths of one group of people is anything less than that, they might just be a bit racist towards that group of people, and may want to reexamine how they look at fellow humans and the degree to which minor differences in skin color or religion or ancestral identity outweighs the commonality of the human experience of pain, suffering, and loss.
TL;DR: It's perfectly appropriate to recognize that the Palestinian people have suffered injustice and mistreatment while also recognizing that a terrorist attack on Israeli civilians is repugnant. The mental gymnastics to recognize the former and not the latter is pretty gross though, and honestly every time I see it (and frequently these days) I can't help but think it probably really does boil down to racist assholes using false equivalency to justify their bigotry.
You don't think cutting off food, water, and power to millions isn't an are we the baddies moment too?
Both sides are acting like petulant children while their people suffer
They don’t take them hostage, usually they just kill them right there.
You know as well as I do that the IDF has never done anything like what happened on Saturday. Kidnapping children? Shooting random people waiting at a bus stop? Slaughtering 200 people at a festival? Taking a hundred hostages and then threatening to murder them while live streaming it?
Israel has done a lot of shit, and deserves criticism for all of it, but it has not done anything comparable to this.
They have regularly and repeatedly carried out air strikes targeting civilian infrastructure with no evidence of military targets.
There are multiple reports from multiple years of IDF soldiers killing children, including the recent video of soldiers killing a young boy in front of a cheering crowd.
What about all the videos of the things IDF has done to people in the West Bank? Countless reports of women being raped before being thrown from their homes, and their family members being shot for resisting having their land stolen from them.
Yes, what happened the other day was terrible. But it’s not unilateral, Israel has committed war crimes against Palestinians for decades. Just because they have been spread out instead of all happening on one day does not make them better.
I'm not looking to debate right or wrong. Just like others said, I recognize war crimes on both sides. I would NEVER defend either side of this conflict.
But committing mass war crimes in the way they have, the norms are shattered, and Gaza, at the least, is done for.
As a realist, and without endorsement of any outcome--I think the best Palestians can hope for is being put into refugee camps on the Egyptian and Jordanian borders and those countries challenged to take them in.
Not that either of those countries will. They've refused in the past and will continue to.
From what I can gather, there are no good guys between Israel and Palestine because they were set up to fight each other. The UK saw that the Jewish people were desperate following the Holocaust and told them that they can have land that was occupied by other groups with a strong religious identity. The Palestinians were like "WTF? We live here and are Muslim." Now, the two groups are fighting each other for survival while being supported and encouraged by external powers for their own political gain. This whole thing is fucked up since the victims are both Israel and Palestine.
The conversations about who did what and who's at fault are SOOOOOOOOOO tangled and terrible at this point that if you're a person of conscience the best you can do is condem the actions and crimes as they occur.
You're right that inputs to this conflict are endless and do indeed include WWII. A lot of people don't realize how terribly the allies carved up the Middle East after WWII. Look how young so many of the countries are there. They literally drew on a map flippantly at the Yalta conference and didn't give a fuck. It was INSANE.
Israel lost support when the west needed oil reserves discovered in Arab countries.... and that just one of a ton of reasons.
You will find people discussing all the times Arab nations have attacked Israel. The Yom Kippur war... imagine if Israel attacked the Saudis during Ramadan?
To anybody who's paid attention Israel is guilty of horrible apartheid. The living conditions of the Palestinians has been crime against humanity IMHO. And if watching the Israelis demolish generational homes with bulldozers for occupation and fascist settlers doesn't break your heart then you have none.
But the discussions often leave out the fact that all the Arab nations want the Palestian problem. None of those Arab countries will take them in bc its politically valuable in diplomatic negotiations and PR to have them there suffering.
To that point Lebbanon and Iran helped plan, fund, and execute this recent attack. Palestinians are a proxy for all the Arab nations.
None of these few points even comes close to touching on this conflict... my point is just that it's so lengthy and convoluted that we need to stick to actions.
Crimes against humanity, though, are clear-cut, and ervytime either side commits them, we have to call it out.
The seeds of the conflict stretch back further. Essentially, the UK promised both Arabs and Jews a state in Palestine in exchange for fighting the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
As part of the aftermath of that conflict, Great Britain was assigned a League of Nations mandate to administer Palestine starting in 1923. It wasn't exactly always peaceful and essentially the UK decided to nope out after WW2. Basically as soon as it was announced they were leaving there was a Civil War which spiraled into the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 literally the day the mandate ended and Israel declared independence. But yes the whole thing is fucked.
There's so much fucked about it. Love your comment.
One I explain to people is that at one point there were Palestinian Jews. That tends to blow people's minds.
The history of awful in the region and this conflict has a sad and crazy depth with no shortages of horrific incidents. That's why when people are so comfortable calling out one side or another my alarm bells go off.
And honestly it kills me, bc I'm adamantly against centrisim. But the history of this one leaves me there no matter how much I hate it. I can't see an innocent government in that entire region.
It’s almost like most Arab countries don’t give a shit about Palastine
They give a shit about not being attacked by a country that's got the nuclear bomb and the backing of most of the western world.
You do know that Arab countries have repeatedly attacked Israel, including on Yom Kippur which is the equivalent of attacking Mecca during Ramadan?
I'm not pro Israel, just calling out BS. In fact, this was, Iran, Lebanon, and the Palestinians coordinating.
Arabs only care about making sure the Palestinians suffer bc its a diplomatic bargaining chip and propaganda win. They adamantly refuse to help or taken in the Palestinians, but they actively support them for proxy wars. The notion that they care is disprovable.
There's no good guys in this conflict.
Point here, it wasn't Lebanon, it was Hezbollah. Hezbollah is tolerated within Lebanon because of a weak Lebanese central government, but they're still a militia within Lebanon, not Lebanon itself. They more or less represent the Iranian-aligned portion of Lebanese Shiite Muslims, not Lebanese Christians or Sunni Muslims.
Agreed and I was being sloppy.
It was Hezbollah and not "officially" the Lebanese government. But I think there's at least a solid debate (whether from weakness as you mentioned or active support) that the two are somewhat coupled. Since it allows/can't stop hezebollah to operate with impunity.
And also waiting to see what happens to Iran on this one. There's no way the proxy attack goes unanswered.
Neither Egypt nor Jordan want to deal with the kind of extremism rife within places like Gaza, and I can't blame them
I'm not sure why people wonder, "What is Hamas thinking?!"
They aren't.
They are a far right fundamentalist extremist terrorist organisation. They are fucking delusional.
Palestinian people deserve so much better than Hamas, and they have to suffer now. That's just terrible.
So the USN is going to park the newest CVN in the fleet off the coast in a couple days. If they don’t end up participating in some sort of massive hostage rescue operation with a bunch of SEALs (and, perhaps, other regional/NATO specops branches), I’m honestly going to be kinda surprised.
This is very much “fuck around and find out” territory. I don’t think Hamas realizes how much the rules have changed in reaction to what they did this weekend. Israel isn’t going to stop until they’ve killed or captured every last militant they can get their hands on in Gaza.
Obligatory disclaimer: Both the IDF and various incarnations of Arab alliances/rebels/terrorist groups have been unequivocally heinous towards each other (and their respective affiliated civilian populations) since Israel became a country. We’re not here to debate that. This is about an attack on civilians in Israel that, proportional to their national population, had five times the casualties that 9/11 inflicted.
Every country who is an ally of Isreal will be sending in their special ops teams to assist, we can be sure of that. I expect the Canadian teams to be involved. I am sure there is a national kidnapped or killed from almost all developed countries by the sound of it.
Always remember, if you plan on doing some stupid crime or barbaric thing, just make sure you say the other guy is responsible first. Prosecutors HATE this one trick!
Why would they negotiate with Terrorists?
It's time to free Palestine from this planet.
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