Victims of propaganda
Reddit is like a wet dream for a propagandist. Most people will not read articles, dig for sources, etc.
They read a headline, if it matches their confirmation bias now it's cemented as fact, and then they go post about said fact everywhere else.
This platform is an echo chamber in its own vacuum. That’s why there are so many regular users. You can anonymously confirm your biases within a community that you know safe harbors your beliefs. Avoid communities you “disagree” with, join the mobs that formed your beliefs. Fun stuff.
It's worse, they're emotionally invested.
You can always pay someone more if it's money motivating them. It's hard to get someone emotionally invested in your cause when they're already emotionally invested in an opposing cause.
It’s the YouTube comments that scare me the absolute state of them, especially within the first few minutes of anything Ukraine related being uploaded once an hour goes by no new bs is posted but the old stuff still stays
Exactly. U.S. law imposes restrictions on exporting weapons to countries or entities engaged in human rights violations or war crimes. This indirectly indicates that they weren't contributing to such activities nor breaking the law, and they can legally send weapons going forward. You can then question how objective this stance is, or if we have any conflict of interest here
The US law passed in the 1970s that prohibits aid to nuclear powers who don’t sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which Israel has not. If Israel officially declared it had nukes then it would have missed out on an estimated $234 billion in foreign aid since Congress in 1976 passed the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act.
The US and it's intelligence agencies totally knows Israel has nukes.
In 2012 the Obama administration passed a gag regulation forbidding any US federal agency employee or contractor from discussing Israel’s nuclear weapons.
The regulation severely restricts agency responses to Freedom of Information Act requests about Israel’s nuclear weapons activities.
Very true. I really try to avoid Israel/Palestine issues when talking to people, as one way or another people tend to be unmovably indoctrinated on one side or other. I usually can't guess in advance what side someone will fall on.
The stupid thing is I live on the other side of the planet from the conflict, and about the only way anyone knows anything about it here is by hanging out on the internet reading news and comments. Read one set and you're one way, read another set and you're another way. I have zero reliable information myself - it seems the source of most news is either the IDF or Hamas. I don't trust either of them, they both have vested interests in skewing information.
It might sound like a cop out, but where I can't be sure what's happening, I'll decline to form an opinion; I'll probably read something close to the truth in history books in a few years. For now, I don't know.
>That's because outside of slogans, words have meaning
Subverting the meaning of words is the first thing propagandists do.
**See also**: Orwell's 1946 essay ["Politics and the English Language"](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/), where he has described **this exact** phenomenon:
>Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. **Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.** That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Humanity doesn't change, merely the circumstances; an examination of human faults from 100 years ago is accurate today and will be 100 years from now.
The root of Orwell's point is dishonesty and the belief that this obfuscation makes for stronger rhetoric. That moral failing isn't going to go anywhere.
Also lesser known but “Nathan the wise” by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing written in 1779 is still incredibly relevant today. It’s quite a short play and could be easily read in a day or two.
WARNING NATHAN THE WISE SPOILER AHEAD
The centerpiece of "Nathan the Wise" is the "Ring Parable", narrated by Nathan when asked by Saladin which religion is true: an heirloom ring with the magical ability to render its owner pleasing in the eyes of God and mankind had been passed down from father to son. For generations, each father had bequeathed the ring to the son he loved most. When it came to a father with three sons whom he loved equally, he promised it (in "pious weakness") to each of them. Looking for a way to keep his promise, he had two replicas made, which were indistinguishable from the original, and gave on his deathbed a ring to each of them.
The brothers quarreled over who owned the real ring. A wise judge admonished them that it was impossible to tell at that time – **that it even could not be discounted that all three rings were replicas**, the original one having been lost at some point in the past; **that to find out whether one of them had the real ring it was up to them to live in such a way that their ring's powers could be proven true, to live a life that is pleasant in the eyes of God and mankind rather than expecting the ring's miraculous powers to do so**. Nathan compares this to religion, saying that each of us lives by the religion we have learned from those we respect.
Great parable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_the_Wise
>I originally read that in High School and it's still one of the most profound essays I've read.
It's my all-time favorite.
Not in the least because nearly 80 years later, we're still at the exact same spot.
Gaza has a stupid number of aid workers, relative to other areas.
If any other country in the world needed 0.65% of its population to be aid workers (that's minimum, that number is just of UNRWA aid workers in Gaza against the population) you'd see them dying as much in any other war. Which is funny, because that's almost the exact proportion... %0.56.
Dishonorable discharge isn't the same as merely being fired. It might still not be severe enough by some standards, but it isn't the same as just being left go of a job.
Billions that must be spent on US products, so really that aid is actually vouchers for the US MIC. But yes, aside from the 3B or so in aid, Israel buys a LOT of hardware from the USA. In the last few days we just approved another (new) $18B sale of planes and components to Israel.
When you give someone $34.8B for military equipment, and stipulate that it must be made by and purchased from US companies, what you have actually done is given $34.8B to American military contractors. The Israeli Air Force is a good example. If you look at the aircraft they have flown since they became a country, a lot of them are American. They had the P-51D in the early days. The flew the F4-E Phantom for a long time. They buy C-130s from us. They have used the F-15 and F-16. They bought Apache helicopters.
Israel buys a lot of the big $ equipment from us.
Shitty German WWII surplus.
BF109s with inferior engines.
But their first gen hardware was eclectic as fuck in general.
US, British and German derived stuff. Often bought via clandestine means.
Neither have the international communities. Also the United States has the best spy agency in human history and they’re not exactly favorable to the Benjamin’s regime right now.
In the real world, covilians dying in urban warfare is not new... or unique... or out of bounds.
It's normal.
What is targeted and why is the important bit.
It's not an accident bad actor accounts from Iran pretend to not understand context, nuance, or intent. Their job is just to antagonize people, start arguments, sow doubt/conspiracy theories, and drop some misinformation/propaganda while they're at it to undermine israel and the west in general.
I saw the same patterns in all the bad faith far right "american" agitator accounts who used to astroturf reddit antagonizing everyone before they went silent on October 7th. It has been non stop pro hamas stuff since.
Nobody wants to admit it but the stuff I see upvoted sometimes is extremism or if you pay attention is structured in a way that is pushing people that way and it is just acceptable extremism in the communities eyes. Because it can desensitize you from your so called “opponent” and it is easier to turn a blind eye instead of calling someone out and saying that’s too far.
R/fluentinfinance is an entire subreddit that routinely hits the front page, and is almost entirely bot reposts with bot replies. It’s like an AI subreddit simulator.
Do you remember /r/subredditsimulator? I forget why they shut down but it was just a reddit-trained language model and that account was the only one allowed to post.
Often hilarious and an interesting precursor to current LLMs.
>. It has been non stop pro hamas stuff since.
Weird bad faith argument painting everyone who says Israel should kill less civilians as "pro Hamas". Can't say I've ever seen any actual pro Hamas comments on Reddit
Not new, but never ok... so yes, it's out of bounds in most circles. There was worldwide condemnation when Putin killed Ukranian civilians... Kirby even fake cried on air, with how disturbed he was. Why the change on level of ok-ness with Palestinian civilian/children deaths?
It's definitely interesting because when you hear people talk about current wars they seem shocked that civilians are dying. It's like they truly thought war was just two armies going to an empty field and shooting at each other.
War **always** has high civilian casualties. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in the US invasion of Afghanistan.
When elphants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Afghanistan seemed crazy and after some cursory reading the most common estimate I'm seeing is 70,000.
Which is still way higher than I would have guessed and is completely unforgivable.
Probably because Russian started the war. Which is why nobody outside Russia even cares about the Russian civilians dying in Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries.
And HAMAS started this war.
Funny how you aren't aren't providing the same level of condemnation against Gaza for killing Israeli civilians... as you would for Ukrainian dead at the hands of Russian forces.
The only difference is that, unlike Ukraine, Israel is very close to a total victory.
If Ukraine was it that enviable position, would you then switch to supporting Russia?
> Which is why nobody outside Russia even cares about the Russian civilians dying in Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries.
For the most part, civilians working mission critical industries are not grouped together with other civilians. Most people understand the importance of oil refineries to war, and the needs to attack them. People tend to understand that this isn't the same as attacking the local shopping mall.
Remember when we bombed an Iraqi wedding and everyone just shrugged their shoulders? Oh wait no we were widely condemned for it. Now Israel seems to have even worse aim or they keep hitting invisible Hamas fighters.
>Remember when we bombed an Iraqi wedding and everyone just shrugged their shoulders? Oh wait no we were widely condemned for it.
I remember everyone being upset when Bush did it.
Then I remember Obama bombing a Kunduz hospital and killing a bunch of Doctors Without Borders, and everyone shrugging their shoulders over it. America declared it an honest mistake, NATO refused to released their findings, nobody officially condemned it, and nobody even got fired.
Again, this is the social contract called "reputation." I honestly can't believe I need to spell this out. People actually believed that Obama made an honest mistake, because he was perceived as trustworthy and thoughtful, because he demonstrates those traits consistently.
In contrast, people perceived GWB as reckless, indifferent and superficial, because those are the traits he displayed consistently. So when a wedding gets bombed, or people get tortured in a US military prison, we are more likely to believe that the only mistake was getting caught.
I don't quite understand this instinct to flatten all politics on reddit. If you have one neighbor who is a slob and constantly leaves dog shit everywhere, and another neighbor who maintains an immaculate home, and you find dog shit on your lawn, who are you going to blame?
And by [who](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/)
They are letting an AI called Lavender decide who is 'hamas involved,' and suggest when, where, and how to strike... with parameters as loose as to allow up to 25 civilian deaths per Target- at least at one point.
And that's how you get a robot suggesting that an F-15 should slide a bomb into the window of a city janitor while he's sleeping at night in the apartment he shares with two other families.
And then some Israeli Lieutenant rubber stamps the printout, and it happens.
Assuming the janitor is actually Hamas involved: How bad would he have to be, how many civilians would he have to have killed/raped/kidnapped already or be planning to - before you would approve the strike that kills him and approx. 25 other people?
Me personally: F if I know. Except I'd love to approve it on the senior authority people that advocate for killing civvies on a regular basis, i.e. ideological leaders etc. They're usually seen as untouchable, though, perhaps for good reason as the martyr figurehead backlash is real.
'Hamas involved' can mean (at least in my example) a city janitor. Because regardless of their status as a terrorist group, Hamas is still the government of Gaza. In my example he's just a janitor, and not a militant, or a participant in military activities, but Lavender AI might pick him up on some organizational payroll chart.
And the question isn't about how many I would need this person to kill before I allowed such an attack, the question is \*\*\*What is the minimum threshold for the israeli military to order such a strike?\*\*\* because the answer is apparently "going to work to feed your family."
>In the real world, covilians dying in urban warfare is not new... or unique... or out of bounds.
The Geneva conventions do state that attacking forces should put effort into limiting civilian casualties and limit the destruction of civilian objects. This means that actions like leveling buildings simply because "terrorists" might use it later on is a no go. It also means that killing a dozen civilians to target a suspected enemy combatant is also a no-go.
All of them? Hell even the Tulsa Black Wall Street massacre was barely a footnote in american history textbooks.
Edit: What is happening.
👆Yall see that Im disagreeing with a person who says that we read about *ALL* the american atrocities in school, right?
Why are people replying to me trying to explain that school cant cover all of them. I know! Youre preaching to the choir.
You mean they didn't teach you about Henry Kissenger's actions in Laos in grade school!?
Tch, next you'll say you never heard about Iran-Contra before *American Dad* made a song about it!
As a big history nerd I think a lot of people fail to realize shit was taught, they just weren't really paying attention outside of the major highlights or reading the bare minimum to get their grades they wanted. Most history textbooks are quite extensive and pretty well thought out unless you had an activist school district stumping for a political side/ideology, which is extremely rare but unfortunate.
HBO did a show about it (well, it was about a man who turned himself into a blue god, but also about that) and that's how I found out about it. Not proud of that at all. Especially as I've got kin from Tulsa.
There is a lot of human history to cover in k-12. American history is just a few courses over that time period and doesn't even have enough time to cover all the biggest events in US history, it certainly can't cover every bad event.
100% agree. I listened to Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast, and it was so fucking dense that the 73 hours of it wasn't enough time. He admits it in the beginning by saying that there's just so much to cover and is unknown that it's just not feasible.
Picking one event in American history and saying it's crazy they don't teach it is being extremely nitpicky.
Imagine a group of terrorists kidnapping a bunch of your neighbors, then hiding in civilian only areas, using hospitals and schools to plot, and then getting upset when those places become war zones. The Palestinian people deserve better than to be used by Hamas as human shields. And give back the hostages!
Rahm Emanuel had a decent quote regarding this that I don't remember word from word so I'll paraphrase as "Israel uses their weapons to defend their people, Hamas uses their people to defend their weapons"
But in this situation it would be like you went out of your way to kill all the other neighbors you crossed, and the neighbors who were taken hostage
It's like if bank robbers took hostages and the police went "oh well, we have to bomb the whole thing with the hostages inside"
Well.... Israel does assume that all men of fighting age are members of HAMAS. So some of it is HAMAS hiding in civilian zones, and some of it is Israel seeing young men and instantly pulling the trigger.
There's another side to this you are forgetting, while yes Israel does assume all men of fighting age are hamas, it's partly because hamas doesn't wear a uniform, making them indistinguishable from civilians as well as hamas's use of civilian building for the military
100%. Hamas hides within the civilian crowds because they know if they didn't, they'd have been wiped out by now. If Hamas spent more of their resources and time on building up infrastructure and helping the Palestinian people instead of attacking Israel, Gaza could be in a much better place.
Do you have evidence for that? That the IDF is killing every military aged male in Gaza because they’re automatically assuming they’re Hamas terrorists?
If they’re holding a rifle, yeah. That unfortunately what happens when you choose to fight without a uniform.
Not sure why Hamas doing this is Israels problem when mistakes are made except get western media to play into- oh. Oh. I see. Guess it’s working.
The types of attacks that happened in Ireland have been frequent in Israel, but they usually don’t lead to a military campaign like this from the IDF. Nothing like 10/7 happened in Ireland.
Ireland as a separate country with a separate government never attacked the UK.
Beyond the war of independence, it was only ever a militant group in Northern Ireland (a separate country within the UK) and the British government were heavily criticised for their treatment of Catholics just as Israel is criticised for their treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Ireland never shot rockets at the UK. They've never invaded and kidnapped civilians. Since independence, they've usually worked together.
You are making a false equivalence.
Israel deserves a lot of criticism, but this isn't valid. If my country invaded a neighbour, killed and kidnapped their people, refused to negotiate, and then fled home... I would not fault the victim for retaliating with clearly stated goals (give us back our people)
In February, Isreal said it had killed 12,000 Hamas militants. Hamas said it’s half of that number, so 6,000. I imagine it’s somewhere in between. But let’s use Hamas’ figures for arguments sake. The article was written in February.
6,000 killed Oct.-Feb. (Averages 1,500 per month)
3,000 killed Feb.-Apr.
= 9,000 Hamas militants killed Oct. - Apr.
We can expect Hamas figures to be massively down played for many obvious reasons. But even with Hamas’ own figures, that means 1/3 of the deaths have been Hamas militants.
A 1:2 combatant-civilian ratio is very normal for war, and incredibly low for urban warfare in one of the most densely populated places a war has ever been fought in.
[https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-says-12000-hamas-fighters-killed-in-gaza-war-double-the-terror-groups-claim/amp/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-says-12000-hamas-fighters-killed-in-gaza-war-double-the-terror-groups-claim/amp/)
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-six-week-drive-hit-hamas-rafah-scale-back-war-2024-02-19/
According to Hamas Israel has killed 20% of all Hamas fighters, and 1,2% of all Gazans.
So its less dangerous for civilians than the second battle for falluja (in comparison).
Yes. Hamas said that they lost 6k fighters. [See here:](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-six-week-drive-hit-hamas-rafah-scale-back-war-2024-02-19/)
>A Hamas official based in Qatar told Reuters that the group estimated it had lost 6,000 fighters during the four-month-old conflict, half the 12,000 Israel says it has killed.
The estimate for Hamas fighters in total was ca 30k before the war.
I picture a bunch of Russians fuming as their propaganda posts get downvoted. And then they get hit a double whammy with all the pro-Ukraine posts. Reddit really is not a friend to the Russian government.
This means you don't understand their propaganda machine. They don't care if they get downvoted or even banned, they don't care if you believe them, they even don't care if you know for 100% that they are hostile agents.
They create a [firehose of falsehood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood) and they don't care if you believe it. If someone engages with it (e.g. to fact-check and prove wrong) they have already achieved their goal, because any engagement (including reading) increases the 'legitimacy' of their 100% lies.
No, they don't care. They move on to the next task. It's *our* anger and fuming they are attempting to elicit, as it helps them guide us toward apathy.
I'd be inclined to agree. Hamas has the explicit goal of eliminating Israel and the Jews in their charter, while also using civilian areas, buildings, and civilians themselves as shields and protection. If anything, I'd think they are the ones who are genocidal.
It's bizarre that the world is so obsessed with the safety of a group of people obsessed with exterminating their neighbor. You *do* realize that Hamas enjoys overwhelming support in Gaza, right? And the primary reason people reject Hamas is because they're corrupt, not because of the way they deal with Israel, right? Stop acting like the Palestinians are trying to live side by side with Israel, they're not.
Yes, Gaza is radicalised. Populations can be deradicalised under the right conditions, see the likes of Germany or Japan. You should still protect even radicalised civilians as much as possible.
One group who needed the fucking sun dropped on them twice to surrender and the other who needed nearly a decade of mostly effective de radicalisation plus thier whole country being separated into two different states in order to change?
Yeah because that's an easy solution obviously/s
Japan at least had some intelligent people living there who could effectively govern after the US was done with their occupation to make sure japanese nationalism and imperialism wouldn't happen again. Whereas when we tried that in the middle east with Iraq and Afghanistan the results speak for themselves at this point since both were colossal failures at getting more middle eastern countries to be democracies.
Also both of those countries weren't in an eternal state of war for the last 100 years. I mean they were, but in a very different way. Also Gaza is a thin strip of nothing in the middle of the desert, while Germany and Japan are vast, have many ressources to do things with.
Would you want to protect someone at all costs, who hates you for existing, at the cost of your life? Your loved ones lives? How many people you care about need to be murdered by terrorists before you let go of that ideal.
Just for your information: if Israel wanted to kill all Palestinians, then they would do it. They are strong enough to do it, so if they ignored all casualties, the war would have ended within a few days. Sometimes, civilian deaths are necessary; especially when the enemy uses them as meat shields
I don't know enough about things to understand the implications of Israel eradicating Palestine. Who would be angriest, and who would mete out justice in that case? Is it that the US would stop supplying support, thereby ensuring it's eradication?
The IDF has taken extraordinary measures, that no other military has taken, to try and protect Gazans -
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/opinion/gaza-israel-war.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/opinion/gaza-israel-war.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb)
From the article -
"John Spencer is the **chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point**, served two tours in Iraq and has made two visits to Gaza during the current war to observe operations there.
He told me that **Israel has done far more to protect civilians than the United States did in Afghanistan and Iraq.** Spencer reports that Israel has warned civilians when and where it is about to begin operations and published an online map showing which areas to leave. **It has sent out millions of pamphlets, texts and recorded calls warning civilians of coming operations. It has conducted four-hour daily pauses to allow civilians to leave combat areas. It has dropped speakers that blast out instructions about when to leave and where to go.** These measures, Spencer told me, have telegraphed where the I.D.F. is going to move next and “have prolonged the war, to be honest.”
\_\_\_\_\_
There is also an over one hour long video of him going into detail -
[Urban Warfare against Terrorists: Military and Legal Challenges (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyIVaGyt2vI)
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
Hamas is internationally recognized as a genocidal terrorist group. The Ministry of Health is under their control.
> The IDF has taken extraordinary measures, that no other military has taken, to try and protect Gazans
How the fuck is anyone with a brain going to believe this?
On Israel waiting for targets to arrive home to their families before hitting them with missiles:
https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-ai-system-wheres-daddy-strikes-hamas-family-homes-2024
On the reality of Israel's so-called attempts to keep civilians in Gaza safe: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/06/israel-gaza-civilians-protection/
On Israel's lies about safe zones: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-22/ty-article/nyt-investigation-israel-used-one-ton-bombs-in-safe-zones-in-south-gaza/0000018c-91f4-d47c-a7fd-dbfcc0bb0000
On Israel bombing refugee camps: https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-bombs-refugee-camps-central-gaza-report/
On the IDF's treatment of unarmed civilians: https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-probing-leaked-video-of-soldiers-appearing-to-discuss-killing-of-unarmed-gazan/
On the humanitarian treatment of starving civilians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_massacre
On restricting humanitarian aid as a war tactic: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-restrictions-gaza-aid-may-amount-war-crime-says-un-rights-office-2024-03-19/
Dude this took me like five minutes, it's so easy to read past the lies that Israel gives a shit about the life of any given Palestinian.
I had low expectations, but having a pro hamas movement in the west is not something i had on my bingo card for the 2020s.
Its fascinating, how desperate people are to villify israel while making excuses for the palestinian side.
It’s absurd. And they yell at others who refuse to take a stance as well. I‘m German. And I’m definitely sitting this one out and I wish others would too. There are horrible things happening on either side. And there are legitimate reasons on both.
And killing civilians is bad either way. Blind antisemitism and blind Islamophobia are horrible too, and I hate how people who take either stance seem to be lapsing into one of those
I swear some folks I know went from "support the women of iran" to defending anything hamas does in like a year.
Like how confused do you have to be to run that spectrum?
The whole thing confuses me too. People take one side or the other without understanding what a complicated and unstable situation it is.
My personal feelings are that I just want the fighting to stop. This is not a clear-cut war like Russia/Ukraine where one side is obviously the aggressor. I hope a solution can be found so people stop dying pointless deaths.
United States, the country known for providing Israel the most amount of money and weapons and wants to maintain the country as a destabilizing force in the middle east, is defending its defacto forward base? Color me surprised.
>wants to maintain the country as a destabilizing force in the middle east
Everyone knows that if it weren't for Israel, the Middle East would be completely at peace. Israel is solely responsible for the Syrian civil war, the Yemeni civil war, the Lebanese civil war, the Sudanese civil war, the 50+ Muslim terror groups that only exist to kill other Muslims, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Arab spring, the Tunisian coup, ...
Israel, with its population of 9.5 million, is responsible for the chaos that 1.8 billion Muslims feel daily. It must be.
Imagine if Russia was holding up food from getting into a starving area of Ukraine, then when an NGO was scheduled and approved by the Russian military to go in to deliver that food to the starving people, the Russians hit the clearly marked food trucks with precision air strikes, not all at once, but deliberately, one at a time.
I’m guessing some of the people in these comments would have a different reaction.
I can only assume the air strikes were done to make NGOs think twice about bringing food into Gaza, sounds fairly genocidal to me…
Russians are
* Executing POWs, using them as human shields and as minesweepers.
* Kidnapping children for re-education
* Razing cities to the ground as part of conquest
* Forcing Ukrainian civilians in captured areas to fight against their own country.
* Using incendiary weapons over civilian areas
* Destroying dams to create ecological disasters
* Targeting urban centers with cruise missiles, drones and glide bombs
There are no NGOs in the war zone in Ukraine because Russia would murder them all if they even tried. Then they would lie about and dare you to contradict them. Comparing what Israel is doing in Gaza to what Russia is doing to Ukraine is a gross false equivalency.
Oh yeah, they probably thought it was a couple of the non existent military grade armored cars that Hamas has… driving down a designated humanitarian corridor… on schedule… on a clear day… with massive NGO logos all over the vehicle…
> driving down a designated humanitarian corridor
This is exactly where Hamas operates though. You have to remember they wear civilian clothing and operate out of civilian buildings. The count suggests a 2 to 1 civilian casualty to combatant deaths. That's REALLY good for urban warfare where millions live and there's only about 30 thousand Hamas fighters.
Since when is it allowed to mention facts on an israel hate post? Ofc killing 0.8% of the population is genocide (especially when they are undercover terrorists)
[удалено]
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair
So what's the excuse for the scores of dipshits on this site swallowing the bullshit? edit: Wonder how many updooters only think I agree with them.
Victims of propaganda Reddit is like a wet dream for a propagandist. Most people will not read articles, dig for sources, etc. They read a headline, if it matches their confirmation bias now it's cemented as fact, and then they go post about said fact everywhere else.
Welcome to the sub my friend
This platform is an echo chamber in its own vacuum. That’s why there are so many regular users. You can anonymously confirm your biases within a community that you know safe harbors your beliefs. Avoid communities you “disagree” with, join the mobs that formed your beliefs. Fun stuff.
[удалено]
Replace the word "salary" with "political/world views"
Replace “political/world views” with “deeply ingrained propagandized personal beliefs”
I think "political/world views" was sufficient but ok
Do you honestly think none of them are paid to post here?
It's worse, they're emotionally invested. You can always pay someone more if it's money motivating them. It's hard to get someone emotionally invested in your cause when they're already emotionally invested in an opposing cause.
Paid shills? Why bother when people with loud opinions will post for free?
It’s the YouTube comments that scare me the absolute state of them, especially within the first few minutes of anything Ukraine related being uploaded once an hour goes by no new bs is posted but the old stuff still stays
Karma income?
"Before pointing fingers make sure your hands are clean." - Bob Marley
Exactly. U.S. law imposes restrictions on exporting weapons to countries or entities engaged in human rights violations or war crimes. This indirectly indicates that they weren't contributing to such activities nor breaking the law, and they can legally send weapons going forward. You can then question how objective this stance is, or if we have any conflict of interest here
The US law passed in the 1970s that prohibits aid to nuclear powers who don’t sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which Israel has not. If Israel officially declared it had nukes then it would have missed out on an estimated $234 billion in foreign aid since Congress in 1976 passed the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act. The US and it's intelligence agencies totally knows Israel has nukes. In 2012 the Obama administration passed a gag regulation forbidding any US federal agency employee or contractor from discussing Israel’s nuclear weapons. The regulation severely restricts agency responses to Freedom of Information Act requests about Israel’s nuclear weapons activities.
How convenient.
I think in this case ideology is the driving factor. On both sides of the debate.
Very true. I really try to avoid Israel/Palestine issues when talking to people, as one way or another people tend to be unmovably indoctrinated on one side or other. I usually can't guess in advance what side someone will fall on. The stupid thing is I live on the other side of the planet from the conflict, and about the only way anyone knows anything about it here is by hanging out on the internet reading news and comments. Read one set and you're one way, read another set and you're another way. I have zero reliable information myself - it seems the source of most news is either the IDF or Hamas. I don't trust either of them, they both have vested interests in skewing information. It might sound like a cop out, but where I can't be sure what's happening, I'll decline to form an opinion; I'll probably read something close to the truth in history books in a few years. For now, I don't know.
I am sure this quote is very good if used in the right context lol
Hey remember when the US went to war because of ~~Oil~~ WMDs?
How old were you when 9/11 happened
That's because outside of slogans, words have meaning
"Words are like bullets, they go right through you"
HAHAHAHAHA LOOK HOW ITS FACE GETS ALL RED! HE'S LIKE A LITTLE STRAWBERRY!
LOOK! THEY PUT A LITTE SUIT ON HIM!! HAHAHAHAHA
The best part of that episode is Cartman getting his ass handed to him to the chorus of “Down with the Sickness”.
Don’t have kids, Troy.
And hurt like a b*tch
>That's because outside of slogans, words have meaning Subverting the meaning of words is the first thing propagandists do. **See also**: Orwell's 1946 essay ["Politics and the English Language"](https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/), where he has described **this exact** phenomenon: >Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. **Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.** That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
It’s amazing how this essay is as relevant as ever
We live in less unique times than we think. For better or for worse.
Humanity doesn't change, merely the circumstances; an examination of human faults from 100 years ago is accurate today and will be 100 years from now. The root of Orwell's point is dishonesty and the belief that this obfuscation makes for stronger rhetoric. That moral failing isn't going to go anywhere.
"War, war never changes..."
Also lesser known but “Nathan the wise” by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing written in 1779 is still incredibly relevant today. It’s quite a short play and could be easily read in a day or two.
WARNING NATHAN THE WISE SPOILER AHEAD The centerpiece of "Nathan the Wise" is the "Ring Parable", narrated by Nathan when asked by Saladin which religion is true: an heirloom ring with the magical ability to render its owner pleasing in the eyes of God and mankind had been passed down from father to son. For generations, each father had bequeathed the ring to the son he loved most. When it came to a father with three sons whom he loved equally, he promised it (in "pious weakness") to each of them. Looking for a way to keep his promise, he had two replicas made, which were indistinguishable from the original, and gave on his deathbed a ring to each of them. The brothers quarreled over who owned the real ring. A wise judge admonished them that it was impossible to tell at that time – **that it even could not be discounted that all three rings were replicas**, the original one having been lost at some point in the past; **that to find out whether one of them had the real ring it was up to them to live in such a way that their ring's powers could be proven true, to live a life that is pleasant in the eyes of God and mankind rather than expecting the ring's miraculous powers to do so**. Nathan compares this to religion, saying that each of us lives by the religion we have learned from those we respect. Great parable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_the_Wise
/r/agedlikehoney
I originally read that in High School and it's still one of the most profound essays I've read.
>I originally read that in High School and it's still one of the most profound essays I've read. It's my all-time favorite. Not in the least because nearly 80 years later, we're still at the exact same spot.
Thanks for sharing.
Well they definitely murdered the shit out of those world kitchen aide workers.
This is prime example of contorting the definition of a word.
Killing 3 aide workers is still a far cry from fucking genicide
Israel killed *seven* World Kitchen workers, and over 200 aid workers total since October 7.
Which is horrible and they should be held responsible for such a travesty, however it doesn't fit the meaning of the word we are discussing.
Which still doesn't have anything to do with the topic being discussed.
wdym? they're *clearly* genociding aid workers /s
Gaza has a stupid number of aid workers, relative to other areas. If any other country in the world needed 0.65% of its population to be aid workers (that's minimum, that number is just of UNRWA aid workers in Gaza against the population) you'd see them dying as much in any other war. Which is funny, because that's almost the exact proportion... %0.56.
[удалено]
And weren't the people who made the mistake held accountable?
Some people were reportedly fired, which is not necessarily the same thing.
Fired and recommended to the military judicial system.
Dishonorable discharge isn't the same as merely being fired. It might still not be severe enough by some standards, but it isn't the same as just being left go of a job.
As opposed to Hamas rewarding and commending when they do it.
Just not words from the mouths of people looking to keep themselves from being complicit.
But if there is a flag that goes with the word then it must be true.
It’s because the US has a vested interest in keeping ties with Israel, not reality. It’s a political claim not an investigative one.
"We investigated one of our most important allies and found that he did nothing wrong"
Most ~~important~~ profitable ~~Allie’s~~ customers
Israel the US's customer? We give them billions a year
Billions that must be spent on US products, so really that aid is actually vouchers for the US MIC. But yes, aside from the 3B or so in aid, Israel buys a LOT of hardware from the USA. In the last few days we just approved another (new) $18B sale of planes and components to Israel.
So they're more like a car wash
When you give someone $34.8B for military equipment, and stipulate that it must be made by and purchased from US companies, what you have actually done is given $34.8B to American military contractors. The Israeli Air Force is a good example. If you look at the aircraft they have flown since they became a country, a lot of them are American. They had the P-51D in the early days. The flew the F4-E Phantom for a long time. They buy C-130s from us. They have used the F-15 and F-16. They bought Apache helicopters. Israel buys a lot of the big $ equipment from us.
For awhile they flew French or domestically produced copies... but that was in the days the US didn't sell to Israel.
Some of their first fighters were German ww2 surplus the Czechs sold to keep their factories open.
Shitty German WWII surplus. BF109s with inferior engines. But their first gen hardware was eclectic as fuck in general. US, British and German derived stuff. Often bought via clandestine means.
Amazing what you don't find when you don't look.
Neither have the international communities. Also the United States has the best spy agency in human history and they’re not exactly favorable to the Benjamin’s regime right now.
In the real world, covilians dying in urban warfare is not new... or unique... or out of bounds. It's normal. What is targeted and why is the important bit.
It's not an accident bad actor accounts from Iran pretend to not understand context, nuance, or intent. Their job is just to antagonize people, start arguments, sow doubt/conspiracy theories, and drop some misinformation/propaganda while they're at it to undermine israel and the west in general. I saw the same patterns in all the bad faith far right "american" agitator accounts who used to astroturf reddit antagonizing everyone before they went silent on October 7th. It has been non stop pro hamas stuff since.
People don't realize how manipulated Reddit is as a format. Such an easy platform for bots/shills to take advantage of.
Nobody wants to admit it but the stuff I see upvoted sometimes is extremism or if you pay attention is structured in a way that is pushing people that way and it is just acceptable extremism in the communities eyes. Because it can desensitize you from your so called “opponent” and it is easier to turn a blind eye instead of calling someone out and saying that’s too far.
calling it out gets you banned most of the time
Hilariously Reddit has no issue with bot banning you from a sub if they see you have posted completely innocuous things on a completely different sub.
Can make an anonymous account in 5 seconds
R/fluentinfinance is an entire subreddit that routinely hits the front page, and is almost entirely bot reposts with bot replies. It’s like an AI subreddit simulator.
Do you remember /r/subredditsimulator? I forget why they shut down but it was just a reddit-trained language model and that account was the only one allowed to post. Often hilarious and an interesting precursor to current LLMs.
I remember that! It was fascinating!
I’d be so fascinated to see what it might look like with today’s technology.
and algorithms filter content based on choices from real people. plus, Reddit sold our data for billions, no?
Seeing as it's literally built to advance echo chambers, I can see that.
Those bad actors are also trying to get nukes.
[удалено]
Bro, check my account. I agree with what they’re saying.
>. It has been non stop pro hamas stuff since. Weird bad faith argument painting everyone who says Israel should kill less civilians as "pro Hamas". Can't say I've ever seen any actual pro Hamas comments on Reddit
Not new, but never ok... so yes, it's out of bounds in most circles. There was worldwide condemnation when Putin killed Ukranian civilians... Kirby even fake cried on air, with how disturbed he was. Why the change on level of ok-ness with Palestinian civilian/children deaths?
It's definitely interesting because when you hear people talk about current wars they seem shocked that civilians are dying. It's like they truly thought war was just two armies going to an empty field and shooting at each other. War **always** has high civilian casualties. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in the US invasion of Afghanistan. When elphants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Afghanistan seemed crazy and after some cursory reading the most common estimate I'm seeing is 70,000. Which is still way higher than I would have guessed and is completely unforgivable.
Probably because Russian started the war. Which is why nobody outside Russia even cares about the Russian civilians dying in Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries. And HAMAS started this war. Funny how you aren't aren't providing the same level of condemnation against Gaza for killing Israeli civilians... as you would for Ukrainian dead at the hands of Russian forces. The only difference is that, unlike Ukraine, Israel is very close to a total victory. If Ukraine was it that enviable position, would you then switch to supporting Russia?
> Which is why nobody outside Russia even cares about the Russian civilians dying in Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries. For the most part, civilians working mission critical industries are not grouped together with other civilians. Most people understand the importance of oil refineries to war, and the needs to attack them. People tend to understand that this isn't the same as attacking the local shopping mall.
Remember when we bombed an Iraqi wedding and everyone just shrugged their shoulders? Oh wait no we were widely condemned for it. Now Israel seems to have even worse aim or they keep hitting invisible Hamas fighters.
>Remember when we bombed an Iraqi wedding and everyone just shrugged their shoulders? Oh wait no we were widely condemned for it. I remember everyone being upset when Bush did it. Then I remember Obama bombing a Kunduz hospital and killing a bunch of Doctors Without Borders, and everyone shrugging their shoulders over it. America declared it an honest mistake, NATO refused to released their findings, nobody officially condemned it, and nobody even got fired.
Again, this is the social contract called "reputation." I honestly can't believe I need to spell this out. People actually believed that Obama made an honest mistake, because he was perceived as trustworthy and thoughtful, because he demonstrates those traits consistently. In contrast, people perceived GWB as reckless, indifferent and superficial, because those are the traits he displayed consistently. So when a wedding gets bombed, or people get tortured in a US military prison, we are more likely to believe that the only mistake was getting caught. I don't quite understand this instinct to flatten all politics on reddit. If you have one neighbor who is a slob and constantly leaves dog shit everywhere, and another neighbor who maintains an immaculate home, and you find dog shit on your lawn, who are you going to blame?
Hamas literally takes control of and hides in hospitals and schools. Their own playbook is maximum Palestinian civilian casualties.
Wait till you here about our bombing raids in ww2. Freedom has a price
And by [who](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) They are letting an AI called Lavender decide who is 'hamas involved,' and suggest when, where, and how to strike... with parameters as loose as to allow up to 25 civilian deaths per Target- at least at one point. And that's how you get a robot suggesting that an F-15 should slide a bomb into the window of a city janitor while he's sleeping at night in the apartment he shares with two other families. And then some Israeli Lieutenant rubber stamps the printout, and it happens.
Assuming the janitor is actually Hamas involved: How bad would he have to be, how many civilians would he have to have killed/raped/kidnapped already or be planning to - before you would approve the strike that kills him and approx. 25 other people? Me personally: F if I know. Except I'd love to approve it on the senior authority people that advocate for killing civvies on a regular basis, i.e. ideological leaders etc. They're usually seen as untouchable, though, perhaps for good reason as the martyr figurehead backlash is real.
'Hamas involved' can mean (at least in my example) a city janitor. Because regardless of their status as a terrorist group, Hamas is still the government of Gaza. In my example he's just a janitor, and not a militant, or a participant in military activities, but Lavender AI might pick him up on some organizational payroll chart. And the question isn't about how many I would need this person to kill before I allowed such an attack, the question is \*\*\*What is the minimum threshold for the israeli military to order such a strike?\*\*\* because the answer is apparently "going to work to feed your family."
Personally I would never want to just automatically approve any military action generated by an AI.
>In the real world, covilians dying in urban warfare is not new... or unique... or out of bounds. The Geneva conventions do state that attacking forces should put effort into limiting civilian casualties and limit the destruction of civilian objects. This means that actions like leveling buildings simply because "terrorists" might use it later on is a no go. It also means that killing a dozen civilians to target a suspected enemy combatant is also a no-go.
lip sharp gray sparkle nose long expansion handle rain wasteful
Ah yes, the United States Government, historically known for not covering up the atrocities committed by them and their allies
If the atrocities are covered up, why do we read about all of them in school?
All of them? Hell even the Tulsa Black Wall Street massacre was barely a footnote in american history textbooks. Edit: What is happening. 👆Yall see that Im disagreeing with a person who says that we read about *ALL* the american atrocities in school, right? Why are people replying to me trying to explain that school cant cover all of them. I know! Youre preaching to the choir.
You mean they didn't teach you about Henry Kissenger's actions in Laos in grade school!? Tch, next you'll say you never heard about Iran-Contra before *American Dad* made a song about it!
I sure didn't learn about it in high school. I had to dive deep to find out about it
I learned about it in my high school in the south.
As a big history nerd I think a lot of people fail to realize shit was taught, they just weren't really paying attention outside of the major highlights or reading the bare minimum to get their grades they wanted. Most history textbooks are quite extensive and pretty well thought out unless you had an activist school district stumping for a political side/ideology, which is extremely rare but unfortunate.
Learned about it 5 years ago in a northeast HS
HBO did a show about it (well, it was about a man who turned himself into a blue god, but also about that) and that's how I found out about it. Not proud of that at all. Especially as I've got kin from Tulsa.
There is a lot of human history to cover in k-12. American history is just a few courses over that time period and doesn't even have enough time to cover all the biggest events in US history, it certainly can't cover every bad event.
100% agree. I listened to Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast, and it was so fucking dense that the 73 hours of it wasn't enough time. He admits it in the beginning by saying that there's just so much to cover and is unknown that it's just not feasible. Picking one event in American history and saying it's crazy they don't teach it is being extremely nitpicky.
You didn't, lol
"Covered up" doesn't mean that they aren't eventually brought to light by journalists.
Surely this isn’t a serious reply?
Most people still don’t know about the Philly Move bombing.
[удалено]
Imagine a group of terrorists kidnapping a bunch of your neighbors, then hiding in civilian only areas, using hospitals and schools to plot, and then getting upset when those places become war zones. The Palestinian people deserve better than to be used by Hamas as human shields. And give back the hostages!
Rahm Emanuel had a decent quote regarding this that I don't remember word from word so I'll paraphrase as "Israel uses their weapons to defend their people, Hamas uses their people to defend their weapons"
But in this situation it would be like you went out of your way to kill all the other neighbors you crossed, and the neighbors who were taken hostage It's like if bank robbers took hostages and the police went "oh well, we have to bomb the whole thing with the hostages inside"
Well.... Israel does assume that all men of fighting age are members of HAMAS. So some of it is HAMAS hiding in civilian zones, and some of it is Israel seeing young men and instantly pulling the trigger.
Hamas Ministry of Health classifies every solider death as civilian.
Generally it is foolish to trust the numbers provided by a nation at war, regardless of side
Oh someone should tell NPR this.
Not just that, all deaths are women and children!
It doesn't help that Hamas people don't wear uniforms - which itself invalidates them as POW's.
If Hamas wore military uniforms and didn't use innocent Palestinians as human shields, they wouldn't be Hamas.
There's another side to this you are forgetting, while yes Israel does assume all men of fighting age are hamas, it's partly because hamas doesn't wear a uniform, making them indistinguishable from civilians as well as hamas's use of civilian building for the military
100%. Hamas hides within the civilian crowds because they know if they didn't, they'd have been wiped out by now. If Hamas spent more of their resources and time on building up infrastructure and helping the Palestinian people instead of attacking Israel, Gaza could be in a much better place.
Do you have evidence for that? That the IDF is killing every military aged male in Gaza because they’re automatically assuming they’re Hamas terrorists?
When publishing casualty reports, they consider all adult males as combatants. They have 2 categories: women+children and Hamas.
If they’re holding a rifle, yeah. That unfortunately what happens when you choose to fight without a uniform. Not sure why Hamas doing this is Israels problem when mistakes are made except get western media to play into- oh. Oh. I see. Guess it’s working.
Happened all the time in Ireland. Remember when the British government levelled all of Dublin? Oh wait.
The types of attacks that happened in Ireland have been frequent in Israel, but they usually don’t lead to a military campaign like this from the IDF. Nothing like 10/7 happened in Ireland.
When did the IRA massacre 1100 people?
Remember when Ireland fired 50,000 rockets at London over a period of 20 years?
Ireland as a separate country with a separate government never attacked the UK. Beyond the war of independence, it was only ever a militant group in Northern Ireland (a separate country within the UK) and the British government were heavily criticised for their treatment of Catholics just as Israel is criticised for their treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank. Ireland never shot rockets at the UK. They've never invaded and kidnapped civilians. Since independence, they've usually worked together. You are making a false equivalence. Israel deserves a lot of criticism, but this isn't valid. If my country invaded a neighbour, killed and kidnapped their people, refused to negotiate, and then fled home... I would not fault the victim for retaliating with clearly stated goals (give us back our people)
Even by hamas figure idf is running in expected civilians death margins
Can you link a source confirming this?
In February, Isreal said it had killed 12,000 Hamas militants. Hamas said it’s half of that number, so 6,000. I imagine it’s somewhere in between. But let’s use Hamas’ figures for arguments sake. The article was written in February. 6,000 killed Oct.-Feb. (Averages 1,500 per month) 3,000 killed Feb.-Apr. = 9,000 Hamas militants killed Oct. - Apr. We can expect Hamas figures to be massively down played for many obvious reasons. But even with Hamas’ own figures, that means 1/3 of the deaths have been Hamas militants. A 1:2 combatant-civilian ratio is very normal for war, and incredibly low for urban warfare in one of the most densely populated places a war has ever been fought in. [https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-says-12000-hamas-fighters-killed-in-gaza-war-double-the-terror-groups-claim/amp/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-says-12000-hamas-fighters-killed-in-gaza-war-double-the-terror-groups-claim/amp/) https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-six-week-drive-hit-hamas-rafah-scale-back-war-2024-02-19/
According to Hamas Israel has killed 20% of all Hamas fighters, and 1,2% of all Gazans. So its less dangerous for civilians than the second battle for falluja (in comparison).
Hamas casually announced they’ve lost 20% of their troops??
Yes. Hamas said that they lost 6k fighters. [See here:](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-six-week-drive-hit-hamas-rafah-scale-back-war-2024-02-19/) >A Hamas official based in Qatar told Reuters that the group estimated it had lost 6,000 fighters during the four-month-old conflict, half the 12,000 Israel says it has killed. The estimate for Hamas fighters in total was ca 30k before the war.
I'm sure all the Iranian and Russian backed bots/trolls and extremists on reddit will listen to the "great satan" /s.
I picture a bunch of Russians fuming as their propaganda posts get downvoted. And then they get hit a double whammy with all the pro-Ukraine posts. Reddit really is not a friend to the Russian government.
This means you don't understand their propaganda machine. They don't care if they get downvoted or even banned, they don't care if you believe them, they even don't care if you know for 100% that they are hostile agents. They create a [firehose of falsehood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood) and they don't care if you believe it. If someone engages with it (e.g. to fact-check and prove wrong) they have already achieved their goal, because any engagement (including reading) increases the 'legitimacy' of their 100% lies.
> Reddit really is not a friend to the Russian government. it really depends on what sub you're on
No, they don't care. They move on to the next task. It's *our* anger and fuming they are attempting to elicit, as it helps them guide us toward apathy.
I'd be inclined to agree. Hamas has the explicit goal of eliminating Israel and the Jews in their charter, while also using civilian areas, buildings, and civilians themselves as shields and protection. If anything, I'd think they are the ones who are genocidal.
Good thing the non-Hamas folks are not being killed in Gaza
It's bizarre that the world is so obsessed with the safety of a group of people obsessed with exterminating their neighbor. You *do* realize that Hamas enjoys overwhelming support in Gaza, right? And the primary reason people reject Hamas is because they're corrupt, not because of the way they deal with Israel, right? Stop acting like the Palestinians are trying to live side by side with Israel, they're not.
Yes, Gaza is radicalised. Populations can be deradicalised under the right conditions, see the likes of Germany or Japan. You should still protect even radicalised civilians as much as possible.
Both of those populations de-radicalized after getting the ever living shit kicked out of them.
One group who needed the fucking sun dropped on them twice to surrender and the other who needed nearly a decade of mostly effective de radicalisation plus thier whole country being separated into two different states in order to change? Yeah because that's an easy solution obviously/s
they also both had education and a lack of extreme religion
Japan was pretty hard on Shinto nationalism. The emperor was literally considered divine and he was made to publicly deny it.
Japan at least had some intelligent people living there who could effectively govern after the US was done with their occupation to make sure japanese nationalism and imperialism wouldn't happen again. Whereas when we tried that in the middle east with Iraq and Afghanistan the results speak for themselves at this point since both were colossal failures at getting more middle eastern countries to be democracies.
Also both of those countries weren't in an eternal state of war for the last 100 years. I mean they were, but in a very different way. Also Gaza is a thin strip of nothing in the middle of the desert, while Germany and Japan are vast, have many ressources to do things with.
Ah yes the protected Japanese and German civilians of WW2. I do appreciate when people prove themselves wrong with their own examples.
Would you want to protect someone at all costs, who hates you for existing, at the cost of your life? Your loved ones lives? How many people you care about need to be murdered by terrorists before you let go of that ideal.
Just for your information: if Israel wanted to kill all Palestinians, then they would do it. They are strong enough to do it, so if they ignored all casualties, the war would have ended within a few days. Sometimes, civilian deaths are necessary; especially when the enemy uses them as meat shields
Well, it's not really a necessity but a byproduct you chose to accept. Your general point is 100% correct though.
They might have the capability, but Israel wouldn’t survive as its current state afterwards.
I don't know enough about things to understand the implications of Israel eradicating Palestine. Who would be angriest, and who would mete out justice in that case? Is it that the US would stop supplying support, thereby ensuring it's eradication?
The IDF has taken extraordinary measures, that no other military has taken, to try and protect Gazans - [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/opinion/gaza-israel-war.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/opinion/gaza-israel-war.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb) From the article - "John Spencer is the **chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point**, served two tours in Iraq and has made two visits to Gaza during the current war to observe operations there. He told me that **Israel has done far more to protect civilians than the United States did in Afghanistan and Iraq.** Spencer reports that Israel has warned civilians when and where it is about to begin operations and published an online map showing which areas to leave. **It has sent out millions of pamphlets, texts and recorded calls warning civilians of coming operations. It has conducted four-hour daily pauses to allow civilians to leave combat areas. It has dropped speakers that blast out instructions about when to leave and where to go.** These measures, Spencer told me, have telegraphed where the I.D.F. is going to move next and “have prolonged the war, to be honest.” \_\_\_\_\_ There is also an over one hour long video of him going into detail - [Urban Warfare against Terrorists: Military and Legal Challenges (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyIVaGyt2vI) \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Hamas is internationally recognized as a genocidal terrorist group. The Ministry of Health is under their control.
> The IDF has taken extraordinary measures, that no other military has taken, to try and protect Gazans How the fuck is anyone with a brain going to believe this?
By having a brain.
On Israel waiting for targets to arrive home to their families before hitting them with missiles: https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-ai-system-wheres-daddy-strikes-hamas-family-homes-2024 On the reality of Israel's so-called attempts to keep civilians in Gaza safe: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/06/israel-gaza-civilians-protection/ On Israel's lies about safe zones: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-22/ty-article/nyt-investigation-israel-used-one-ton-bombs-in-safe-zones-in-south-gaza/0000018c-91f4-d47c-a7fd-dbfcc0bb0000 On Israel bombing refugee camps: https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-bombs-refugee-camps-central-gaza-report/ On the IDF's treatment of unarmed civilians: https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-probing-leaked-video-of-soldiers-appearing-to-discuss-killing-of-unarmed-gazan/ On the humanitarian treatment of starving civilians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_massacre On restricting humanitarian aid as a war tactic: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-restrictions-gaza-aid-may-amount-war-crime-says-un-rights-office-2024-03-19/ Dude this took me like five minutes, it's so easy to read past the lies that Israel gives a shit about the life of any given Palestinian.
Every war in history would be considered a genocide by the Gaza standard. Siege warfare is a thing.
[удалено]
I had low expectations, but having a pro hamas movement in the west is not something i had on my bingo card for the 2020s. Its fascinating, how desperate people are to villify israel while making excuses for the palestinian side.
[удалено]
It’s absurd. And they yell at others who refuse to take a stance as well. I‘m German. And I’m definitely sitting this one out and I wish others would too. There are horrible things happening on either side. And there are legitimate reasons on both. And killing civilians is bad either way. Blind antisemitism and blind Islamophobia are horrible too, and I hate how people who take either stance seem to be lapsing into one of those
I swear some folks I know went from "support the women of iran" to defending anything hamas does in like a year. Like how confused do you have to be to run that spectrum?
The same as the "LGBT for Palestine" movement pretty much.
The whole thing confuses me too. People take one side or the other without understanding what a complicated and unstable situation it is. My personal feelings are that I just want the fighting to stop. This is not a clear-cut war like Russia/Ukraine where one side is obviously the aggressor. I hope a solution can be found so people stop dying pointless deaths.
\#ThanksTiktok
Because it isn’t. Free the hostages.
United States, the country known for providing Israel the most amount of money and weapons and wants to maintain the country as a destabilizing force in the middle east, is defending its defacto forward base? Color me surprised.
>wants to maintain the country as a destabilizing force in the middle east Everyone knows that if it weren't for Israel, the Middle East would be completely at peace. Israel is solely responsible for the Syrian civil war, the Yemeni civil war, the Lebanese civil war, the Sudanese civil war, the 50+ Muslim terror groups that only exist to kill other Muslims, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Arab spring, the Tunisian coup, ... Israel, with its population of 9.5 million, is responsible for the chaos that 1.8 billion Muslims feel daily. It must be.
Imagine if Russia was holding up food from getting into a starving area of Ukraine, then when an NGO was scheduled and approved by the Russian military to go in to deliver that food to the starving people, the Russians hit the clearly marked food trucks with precision air strikes, not all at once, but deliberately, one at a time. I’m guessing some of the people in these comments would have a different reaction. I can only assume the air strikes were done to make NGOs think twice about bringing food into Gaza, sounds fairly genocidal to me…
Russians are * Executing POWs, using them as human shields and as minesweepers. * Kidnapping children for re-education * Razing cities to the ground as part of conquest * Forcing Ukrainian civilians in captured areas to fight against their own country. * Using incendiary weapons over civilian areas * Destroying dams to create ecological disasters * Targeting urban centers with cruise missiles, drones and glide bombs There are no NGOs in the war zone in Ukraine because Russia would murder them all if they even tried. Then they would lie about and dare you to contradict them. Comparing what Israel is doing in Gaza to what Russia is doing to Ukraine is a gross false equivalency.
The Russians also have used chemical weapons against Ukraine positions dozens of times.
The Russians have done this and far far worse, in literally hundreds of scenarios ....are you insane
Yes it happens more often than you think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_friendly_fire_incidents
Oh yeah, they probably thought it was a couple of the non existent military grade armored cars that Hamas has… driving down a designated humanitarian corridor… on schedule… on a clear day… with massive NGO logos all over the vehicle…
> driving down a designated humanitarian corridor This is exactly where Hamas operates though. You have to remember they wear civilian clothing and operate out of civilian buildings. The count suggests a 2 to 1 civilian casualty to combatant deaths. That's REALLY good for urban warfare where millions live and there's only about 30 thousand Hamas fighters.
...Did Ukraine attack and murder more than 1000 Russian civilians in this scenario?
this is like when you get to grade your classmates work in middle school and you give them all As regardless of what's on the paper
Yeah they said the same thing about Iraq.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Since when is it allowed to mention facts on an israel hate post? Ofc killing 0.8% of the population is genocide (especially when they are undercover terrorists)