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Beefeater1980 posted:I have never seen anything to suggest that either Hamas or Israel care so much about international opinion that they would sacrifice tangible, real world things in Gaza or the West Bank to affect it. I just don’t believe the PR tail is wagging the dog. Instead I think they do what they do for reasons that make sense to them - not us - that are rooted in their daily lives and local conditions and them try and spin whatever happens in whatever way is most advantageous. Iran cares a lot. And if Iran cares, Hamas cares. It’s their whole strategy. E:I’m gonna walk that back some. I think that Iran is an important force in Hamas decision making and I suspect they are providing the bulk of their propaganda channels. Borscht fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2023 14:27
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Alchenar posted:The conditions in gaza suck, but they aren't untenable at all. There was no great looming catastrophe that forced their hand - that was Israel's problem, things in fact looked so stable that they took their eye off the ball. They didn’t take their eyes off the ball at all. Bibi propped up Hamas in order to more easily control the West Bank. Their plan backfired. https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/amp/ Also the claim that Hamas wanted Israel to destroy all of Gaza is utterly laughable.
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Nov 11, 2023 14:29
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BUUNNI posted:They didn’t take their eyes off the ball at all. Bibi propped up Hamas in order to more easily control the West Bank. Their plan backfired. This is just selective history reading. When Hamas took over Gaza the first thing Israel did was encourage and support Fatah in launching a coup attempt - that failed disastrously. Only after that point did Israel shift to a policy of tacitly acknowledging Hamas's rule. But even then that article's take is ridiculous - it is literally defining 'allowing aid in' and 'not carpet bombing Gaza every time a fire balloon was launched' as 'propping up Hamas'. e: like really, the idea that the 20 year blockade of Gaza has been about 'propping up Hamas against the West Bank' is not a serious view.
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Nov 11, 2023 14:59
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Alchenar posted:This is just selective history reading. When Hamas took over Gaza the first thing Israel did was encourage and support Fatah in launching a coup attempt - that failed disastrously. Only after that point did Israel shift to a policy of tacitly acknowledging Hamas's rule. But even then that article's take is ridiculous - it is literally defining 'allowing aid in' and 'not carpet bombing Gaza every time a fire balloon was launched' as 'propping up Hamas'. Apartheid is untenable. The New Yorker has a really good interview with a Zionist leader. Quite eye-opening. quote:You’ve been part of the settlement movement during a lot of different governments. How do you feel that the current government of the past year has been treating settlers broadly compared with past governments? The person being interviewed also asserts the idea that human rights aren’t universal and Palestinians are not deserving of them because they are resisting Zionism. They also make it clear the goal of the settlers is to take over Gaza after they’re done ethnically cleansing it. https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extreme-ambitions-of-west-bank-settlers BUUNNI fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2023 15:09
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Alchenar posted:The conditions in gaza suck, but they aren't untenable at all. There was no great looming catastrophe that forced their hand - that was Israel's problem, things in fact looked so stable that they took their eye off the ball. But for the average Gazan, and increasingly the average Palestinian, embracing the status quo has meant accepting the inevitable demise of their people under the slow, incessant grind of the occupation. The Palestinians have repeatedly tried peaceful protest to staunch the encroachment of settlers in the West Bank or to call global attention to the prison that is Gaza, but have been violently thwarted at every turn by an Israeli state which is deaf and blind to their pleas and an Israeli population which, to a too significant extent, actively rejoices in the depravation of Palestinian land, liberty, and even life. That some increasingly marginalized Israeli liberals opine wistfully for a equitable peace means little when that peace every day looks more and more like a coping mechanism, a delusional fantasy Israeli liberals tell themselves to absolve themselves of their participation in an enterprise of slow-motion ethnic cleansing. It's little wonder that some Palestinians look at this situation and choose hope for a better future over either ignoring their own plight or giving fully into despair. The absolute tragedy of that hope is that, for many, the only vehicle for it perceived to be still viable is in the virulent and exterminationist missions of Hamas and other extremist groups.
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Nov 11, 2023 18:22
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Alchenar posted:The conditions in gaza suck, but they aren't untenable at all. Oh really. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution And we'll take a look at the West Bank while we're here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/12/israel-un-experts-condemn-record-year-israeli-violence-occupied-west-bank
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Nov 11, 2023 18:25
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Cugel the Clever posted:no gunmen stalk their streets looking for the blood of innocents. I mean this one is kind of a stretch considering Settler-on-Palestinian violence and how IDF operations in Palestinian territory semi-regularly blast a bunch of bystanders like Al Jazeera journalists.
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Nov 11, 2023 18:38
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Okay I'm responding specifically to the claim that this was a deliberate attempt to provoke a gotterdammerung style final battle over the status of Gaza. Which it absolutely was not. e: also the Palestinian people might be desperate, but it does an enormous disservice to the leadership of Hamas to just wave your arms and say the October 7th attacks were an act of despair. It was a well planned and deliberate act with a strategy behind it and I don't think it's useful not to engage with the reality of that. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2023 18:43
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Careful y’all.
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Nov 11, 2023 18:45
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https://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20140209_gaza_water_crisis from 2014:quote:Ninety-seven percent of Gazans are connected to the public water-supply system, yet this does not ensure a steady supply of water, as the Gaza Strip suffers from shortages of water, shortages in the electricity needed to pipe water through the system, as well as from severe problems with infrastructure. Consequently, residents suffer deliberate water outages, receiving running water for only six to eight hours at a time: 25% of households on a daily basis, 40% every other day, 20% once every three days, and the remaining 15% (in Gaza City, Rafah and Jabaliya) only one day out of four. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/ from 2017: quote:In November 1967 the Israeli authorities issued Military Order 158, which stated that Palestinians could not construct any new water installation without first obtaining a permit from the Israeli army. Since then, the extraction of water from any new source or the development of any new water infrastructure would require permits from Israel, which are near impossible to obtain. Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation continue to suffer the devastating consequences of this order until today. They are unable to drill new water wells, install pumps or deepen existing wells, in addition to being denied access to the Jordan River and fresh water springs. Israel even controls the collection of rain water throughout most of the West Bank, and rainwater harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian communities are often destroyed by the Israeli army. As a result, some 180 Palestinian communities in rural areas in the occupied West Bank have no access to running water, according to OCHA. Even in towns and villages which are connected to the water network, the taps often run dry. quote:In Gaza, some 90-95 per cent of the water supply is contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Israel does not allow water to be transferred from the West Bank to Gaza, and Gaza’s only fresh water resource, the Coastal Aquifer, is insufficient for the needs of the population and is being increasingly depleted by over-extraction and contaminated by sewage and seawater infiltration. Yeah that's not untenable at all.
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Nov 11, 2023 19:03
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Ezra Klein actually had a great episode with Amjad Iraqi this week that covered exactly this topic.
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Nov 11, 2023 19:17
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Alchenar posted:Okay I'm responding specifically to the claim that this was a deliberate attempt to provoke a gotterdammerung style final battle over the status of Gaza. Which it absolutely was not. Also I saw this video about Ghassan Kanafani yesterday, who was PLFP, not Hamas, but I think the bit I timestamped is probably still relevant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxXWQXal2XI&t=188s The whole thing is a fascinating watch and it's only 9 minutes long.
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Nov 11, 2023 19:18
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Alchenar posted:Okay I'm responding specifically to the claim that this was a deliberate attempt to provoke a gotterdammerung style final battle over the status of Gaza. Which it absolutely was not. Your argument is starting to make a slightly more sense now that you pulled out an industrial sized set of these bad boys.  (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 11, 2023 19:26
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Alchenar posted:Okay I'm responding specifically to the claim that this was a deliberate attempt to provoke a gotterdammerung style final battle over the status of Gaza. Which it absolutely was not. I don't think it was despair, I think it was a calculated move to force the issue, regardless of the collateral consequences. The plight and suffering of Palestinians wasn't enough to get the international community involved, so they figured that the reaction they would provoke might do the job.
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Nov 11, 2023 20:10
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Alchenar posted:Okay I'm responding specifically to the claim that this was a deliberate attempt to provoke a gotterdammerung style final battle over the status of Gaza. Which it absolutely was not. So are you no longer claiming the situation in Gaza isn’t untenable? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 11, 2023 20:16
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ZombieApostate posted:https://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20140209_gaza_water_crisis from 2014: Isn’t intermittent flow like this a nightmare for water treatment? Like, separately from the sanitation issues of having limited amounts of water stored for days in jury rigged tanks in each home, if there isn’t consistently enough water flowing through the mains, the chlorine cannot do its job. This is stuff that the managers in Flint could have pointed out.
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Nov 11, 2023 20:17
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I don't think it's the primary problem when the water being pumped is full of sewage and salt instead of chlorine, but yeah probably.
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Nov 11, 2023 20:22
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Grip it and rip it posted:I don't really buy this. The whole point of the attack was to provoke a response - Bibi's government are known to be stupid, reckless, and violent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvqCWvi-nFo Cugel the Clever posted:You or I may, sitting comfortably in our homes, look at the conditions in the pre-7 Oct Gaza and declare, "Well, they're not starving, nor crippled by disease; no gunmen stalk their streets looking for the blood of innocents. What is there to inspire such passion to upset a stable status quo?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WOd1HqvOwE Problem is, they're not the only ones who have God on their side. The Israels also say God is on their side, so it seems that God takes both sides. He doesn't take my side though because I'm an atheist. Another problem is that I'm not sure those delusional Israeli liberals you're talking about even exist anymore. They're not even increasingly marginalized, they're on board with invading Gaza and killing as many Hamas members as they can get in their sights. They're not thinking like Elon Musk that they shouldn't kill too many terrorists because they'll radicalize people, because the people they're dealing with can't possibly get more radicalized than they already are. The only language they understand is force -- and I'm not justifying this point of view btw -- and so the only real lesson that will get through is further loss of territory. The Israeli plan seems to be to take over northern Gaza, and probably not resettle it, but arrange a situation where their troops can reenter anytime they want. The walls kept Hamas inside Gaza until they didn't. In the meantime, Hamas could build up an army and build rockets and fire those at Israel and Qatar put up the money. Israel couldn't just go and break up a rocket factory without starting a full-blown war. In the West Bank, the Israelis can go in there and shoot some guys, arrest some guys, and the world doesn't pay any attention to it. The Palestinian resistance groups just aren't capable of the same kind of organization there. There's a more constant but lower-level state of friction in the West Bank which is preferable (from this hardass military POV) to this switch between peace and war in Gaza every four years. But that also creates the theoretical basis for a permanent occupation. BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Nov 12, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2023 08:19
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Platystemon posted:Isn’t intermittent flow like this a nightmare for water treatment? Like, separately from the sanitation issues of having limited amounts of water stored for days in jury rigged tanks in each home, if there isn’t consistently enough water flowing through the mains, the chlorine cannot do its job. This is the norm for huge portions of the world. It’s not great but cities have operated for decades in see these exact conditions without constant cholera outbreaks. The expectation of anything but constant running water being unacceptably dangerous is a very western idea to me and I’ve personally lived in two different countries where it’s not only the norm but somewhat of a luxury to get anything more than 2 hours of “pipe” a day.
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Nov 12, 2023 12:19
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Borscht posted:This is the norm for huge portions of the world. It’s not great but cities have operated for decades in see these exact conditions without constant cholera outbreaks. The expectation of anything but constant running water being unacceptably dangerous is a very western idea to me and I’ve personally lived in two different countries where it’s not only the norm but somewhat of a luxury to get anything more than 2 hours of “pipe” a day. There is a difference between lack of clean water due to decades long infrastructure problems in undeveloped areas and Israel’s deliberate cutting of supplies like food and water to Gaza as a policy. The UN, Human Rights Watch, AI, etc, refer to the situation as apartheid. It’s not the same as Gaza just happening not to have clean water, because it’s an undeveloped country.
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Nov 12, 2023 15:13
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mlmp08 posted:There is a difference between lack of clean water due to decades long infrastructure problems in undeveloped areas and Israel’s deliberate cutting of supplies like food and water to Gaza as a policy. Not sure what you’re responding to in my post but yeah I agree with you.
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Nov 12, 2023 15:39
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Borscht posted:Not sure what you’re responding to in my post but yeah I agree with you. I’m more saying that juche’s argument was overstating the capability and breadth of US intel capability. There are so many things that are unknown or only kind of guessed at or that the US gets flat wrong. I wouldn’t take US gov silence on an issue as evidence that they know something but just elect not to share it. E: wrong thread reply I think. mlmp08 fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Nov 12, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2023 15:43
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Borscht posted:This is the norm for huge portions of the world. It’s not great but cities have operated for decades in see these exact conditions without constant cholera outbreaks. The expectation of anything but constant running water being unacceptably dangerous is a very western idea to me and I’ve personally lived in two different countries where it’s not only the norm but somewhat of a luxury to get anything more than 2 hours of “pipe” a day. This argument only works if that was the norm in Palestine before Israel cut them off.
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Nov 12, 2023 21:04
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McNally posted:This argument only works if that was the norm in Palestine before Israel cut them off. Yeah. There's ways to mitigate cholera but a blasted war zone isn't really a great starting place. At least there are a lot of aid groups active there including a specific UN agency so there's a lot of people worrying about this already.
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Nov 12, 2023 21:48
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Any argument that Gaza just sucks, but it's tenable, or "well, they have bad water in other parts of Earth, too" isn't going to illuminate the current situation. The UN, HRW, and others have been pointing out that the last year or two have been exceptionally violent ones, when it comes to Palestinians being killed or dehoused, prior to the October 7 attack. There has been conflict escalation brewing for a while. And an argument that there is unclean water elsewhere in the world isn't a great one to deploy when discussing a strip of land militarily enclosed by Israel (and Egypt, in part), which is described by human rights orgs and the UN as apartheid or an open-air prison. Yes, there are other towns and areas without clean water, but if a wealthy modernized country encloses one tiny area and ensures there is no clean water or reliable fuel supply there, they might take it a little bit more personally than if they were part of some large stretch of a community or nation where no one had proper clean water access. It's a bit more agitating when you can look over the fence or use the internet to see that you are being deliberately deprived of resources. The disparity and deliberate policy is a key part of the situation; people are not just saying that that lack of clean water simply makes people become violent.
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Nov 13, 2023 00:56
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McNally posted:This argument only works if that was the norm in Palestine before Israel cut them off. Not at all the point I was trying to make. I’m just trying to say that from a public health and technical perspective, intermittent plumbing isn’t catastrophic, it’s just not ideal. In no way was I attempting to justify the targeting of civilian infrastructure like water systems. The 1 million displaced civilians were presumably unable to bring their water tanks or buckets or whatever with them so they’re in some real trouble regardless of if the system is working even intermittently.
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Nov 13, 2023 01:41
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Israel also cheated Palestine out of their water rights. Jordan River runs along the edge of the West Bank? Nope, that's a military exclusion zone, you can't use it. Aquifers under the West Bank? Nope, you signed your rights to that over in the Oslo Accords, but we'll graciously sell you 15% of your water back to you. What's that, population has increased since the Oslo Accords were signed? That sounds like a you problem. edit: oh, and you're definitely not allowed to transfer water between the West Bank and Gaza. ZombieApostate fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Nov 13, 2023 |
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Nov 13, 2023 01:52
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https://twitter.com/IrishUnity/status/1723442795162009982quote:the head of Sinn Fein who is likely to become the next leader of Ireland calls on the government to expel the Israeli ambassador and charge their genocidal regime with war crimes
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Nov 13, 2023 20:41
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/gaza-rising-death-toll-civilians/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f005quote:More than 11,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. While there is no breakdown between fighters and civilians, most of the dead are women and children.  
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Nov 13, 2023 21:05
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Shawn Fains and Sinn Feins causing Troubles and dropping bombs lately, and it's a pleasure to see
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Nov 13, 2023 21:11
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mlmp08 posted:https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/gaza-rising-death-toll-civilians/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f005 Part of me says this data will be useful for refuting the endless "well why weren't you doing the same for Yemen/Syria/Afghanistan/blabla" (notwithstanding that I think Assad is a monster and US tax dollars supporting Saudis in Yemen is shameful too) The rational part of me realizes the people who say this stuff don't actually care
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Nov 13, 2023 21:33
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I wonder how much under-reporting is going on in those graphs. I find it unlikely the toll is really that low for those other wars. If some kid ate a stray bullet in 2004 Afghanistan is it really making it into these numbers?
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Nov 13, 2023 22:01
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Count Roland posted:I wonder how much under-reporting is going on in those graphs. I find it unlikely the toll is really that low for those other wars. If some kid ate a stray bullet in 2004 Afghanistan is it really making it into these numbers? Syria seems like a major undercount. At least a half million people died in like the first few years of the war.
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Nov 13, 2023 22:03
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psydude posted:Syria seems like a major undercount. At least a half million people died in like the first few years of the war. UN has the estimate at around 308,000 civilians dead as a result of conflict in Syria as of 2022. https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2023/05/behind-data-recording-civilian-casualties-syria
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Nov 13, 2023 22:30
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mlmp08 posted:UN has the estimate at around 308,000 civilians dead as a result of conflict in Syria as of 2022. 12k deaths would be around 4% of that total. Which does seem too low. Like Gaza, Syria (indeed, most of the middle east) has a very young population. I'm not sure what the definition of child is but if it's under 18 it would include a sizable number of fighters which would also push that number up.
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Nov 13, 2023 23:16
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Count Roland posted:12k deaths would be around 4% of that total. I cannot personally vouch for the specific numbers in that chart. If you read the WaPo article you can click their references. UNICEF puts the number of dead children in Syria at 13,000 instead of 12,000 as of spring 2022.
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Nov 13, 2023 23:42
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Yeah I have an extremely hard time believing that only 4% of the ~300,000 civilians killed were children, especially when Assad and ISIS were specifically targeting built-up residential areas. This reminds me of how the UN states that 10,000 civilians or whatever have died in the Ukraine war so far, when there were probably 30-40k that died in Mauripol alone. The difference with Gaza is that there is a local health ministry that's actually keeping count. The WaPo article is taking unrepresentative samples across different populations and trying to draw comparisons that can't be drawn. That's not to downplay what's happening in Gaza, but it's also a bit of a disservice to the other conflicts they're comparing it to. psydude fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Nov 13, 2023 |
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Nov 13, 2023 23:51
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One of the differences with Syria is that 2.5 million refugees left, with a large portion being women and children. But refugees can’t really leave Gaza. If someone has other numbers, feel free. I am just going with what the UN and humanitarian aid organizations have as the best estimate. One of the anti-government Syrian groups puts the number of children killed in Syria around 25,000 as of 2022, rather than the 13,000 estimated by UNICEF.
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Nov 14, 2023 00:07
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https://twitter.com/jrc1921/status/1723634283888161042 https://x.com/AvdullahYousef/status/1723717610288656757?s=20 lmao these are the clowns that people believed about decapitated babies and PIJ rockets hitting hospitals, don't ever give them the benefit of the doubt e]not aimed at anyone in particular, just a big 
Radical 90s Wizard fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 01:22
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Radical 90s Wizard posted:https://twitter.com/jrc1921/status/1723634283888161042 Its very strong Sims 3 energy.
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