US plans for Gaza aid pier branded ‘smokescreen’ to allow Israeli invasion of Rafah
(www.independent.co.uk)
from lemmee_in@lemm.ee to world@lemmy.world on 24 Apr 2024 17:05
https://lemm.ee/post/30267985
from lemmee_in@lemm.ee to world@lemmy.world on 24 Apr 2024 17:05
https://lemm.ee/post/30267985
#world
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Biden does not care at all for the people of Gaza, that’s very clear with the money/ weapons he sends to Israel.
EDIT: you can keep downvoting since it doesn’t mean much on Lemmy. However, it is true. If he actually cared about the lives of the Palestinian people, he wouldn’t send so much to Israel due to the very fact, he knows that it will be used for the genocide on Palestinian people.
Or you know, he does care but internal US politics as well as international geopolitics are actually more complicated than you think and Biden can’t just do whatever the fuck he wants just because he’s president.
At a certain point you have to wonder what the value of liberal democracy is if it can’t help but be compelled into materially supporting genocide.
A democracies value is that (in theory) the government needs to reflect what its people want.
And if large parts of the country support Israel. like basically all republicans and large swaths of democrats do, then the government will unfortunately reflect that.
And large parts of the “only democracy in the middle east” wants to do genocide. Quite explicitly.
No, he does not care at all. Biden said lots of times, he fully supports Israel. When someone says that while the particular state is committing genocide - the person truly does not care about the lives of the people who are being brutally murdered.
At some point the geopolitics and internal US politics needs to setback and you need to take a hard look and think about the more than 33 000 lives that have been taken away.
This is not about “doing anything he wants just because, he’s president”. Despite the fact Biden cannot do ‘everything he wants’ - he certainly has a great influence of what happens (he’s president after all). The US refused to agree to a ceasefire multiple times.
He could for example put pressure on not giving the money to Israel until ceasefire happens and pressure to not give any weapons and such if they (Israel) decide to continue.
Also this is just me probably nitpicking but why can’t you write without rude words?
Because that is what US doctrine has been since Israel’s inception. and Biden is not in a position to change that?
Thats, unfortunately, not how politics works, Biden cant just say “fuck everyone else, im going to do something” and honestly thats probably a good thing as it also reigns in people like Trump to an extent.
Yes he has a lot of influence, but he also doesnt even have a functional majority in either the house or the senate, and even if he did, there are outspoken zionists amongst the democratic party in both houses and the DNC, theres also zionists (including christian zionists) among the party’s biggest donors. Then theres the military industrial complex and the people who have large investments in those companies as well. All of those people have vested interests in supporting Israel and put a lot of pressure on Biden to support Israel. If Biden unilaterally went against Israel he wouldnt get very far going against all those people.
And even if he someone did manage to go against them, those donors and supporters would likely flip to Trump who has basically come out saying he supports wiping Gaza off the map. oh and not to mention the media, who has been doing their best to sell the pro-Israel narrative would absolutely cannibalise Biden. So, even if he could go against all of the zionist influences, he is basically looking at a trolley problem, does he stop aid to Israel (which wouldnt even stop the genocide due to Israels large stockpiles of weapons) and basically gift the election to Trump, which among the plethora of other problems that would cause, would make things in Gaza far far worse.
Oh and thats not even mentioning how important to the US economy and military doctrine their relationship with Israel is. They need good relations with Israel and to keep them armed so that they stay the dominant power in the middle east and willing to defend US capital and political interests in the region.
Israel hosts massive stocks of US weapons, the biggest outside of the US itself, as well as early warning radars, military bases and provides a port for the US 6th fleet.
When you add all of that up, can you see why Biden cant just start burning brides both internationally, within the US and even within his own party?
Sure that might be the US doctrine but he can start the change, he has the influence to do so. From what I last read the support from US citizens has dropped significantly Approval has dropped from 50% to 36% since November
You currently pretend as if Biden has zero influence as a President. Biden can put a lot of pressure onto it and perhaps it might budge. I never mentioned at all that he would be going ‘’I’m going to do something!’’. That’s not possible of course, but he can use his Presidency to put pressure on the money and weapon aid to Israel.
True indeed; he will have many obstacles but if he truly cared about the lives that are getting murdered on a daily basis, he would. However, he could use his influence to put pressure on the situation but at the moment, he’s just going with the flow.
And this is just my opinion speaking but he, himself has an interest in Israel as well and therefore does not care about the Palestinians lives. I mean do we remember this? Joe Biden says if Israel didn’t exist, the US would have to invent one to protect US interests
This is speculation and perhaps you might be right. Can’t say much.
I know this, that’s why I referred to the one video of Biden. Therefore Biden does not really care about the Palestinian lives, everything to protect the US power in the middle east. Does not matter how many lives will get brutally taken away. As long as the US stays in power (right?). This is why it is such a double standard when US president is criticizing other countries about human rights when US presidents do not even care about human rights themselves and this is exactly why I keep repeating ‘’Biden does not care about the Palestinian lives’’
And these stocks will one day cease to exist and without US providing more and more money and weapons, they will have certainly some problems (sooner or later).
Yes and No. He can’t just ‘’burn bridges’’ immediately but he can do it slowly. At least take a hard stance on ‘’do not commit genocide’’ & ‘’do not do what Nazi Germany did to your people’’.
It’s odd though, you took my comment and changed it entirely but that’s okay though.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Joe Biden says if Israel didn’t exist, the US would have to invent one to protect US interests
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Believe it or not, the president doesn’t actually have that much power
Im not pretending he has no power im making he case that he doesnt have enough power to push this through.
i think thats an unfair assessment. There are a lot of places where people are getting murdered on a daily basis and I dont think its right to sell Biden as a heartless monster because hes not fixing them. Like I know its very apples to oranges to make this comparison, but what are you personally doing to help the people of Gaza? What about Ukraine? What are you doing to help the famine in Yemen? What about the civil war in Myanmar? Are you a bad person who doesnt care about those peoples lives because there is more you could be doing to help them? (again I know there is a world of difference between what you can do and what the POTUS can do)
I think this perfectly ties into what I was saying in my comment. Even if he is morally against this genocide (which I believe he is) the US cannot afford to lose Israel as an ally, as they need an Israel to protect US corporate and geopolitical interests in the region.
≥Therefore Biden does not really care about the Palestinian lives,
I think this thinking is a too black and white just because they are not his top priority does not mean he doesn’t care about them. I know that might sound kind of harsh but thats just how it works. Pretty much everyone, not just Biden, not just politicians but everyone operates with a concept of “acceptable losses”. Like me or you certainly own some products, wether theyre electronics or cheap clothes or what have you, that were made with slave labour or from generally mistreated workers, but we accept that because your first priority is to yourself. If your choices are buy sweatshop clothes or go without clothes, you will take the clothes and dismiss the sweatshop labour as an acceptable or unavoidable loss. So its the same for Biden, but the stakes are astronomically higher.
You seem like you have a good sense of morals, and I really respect that, so the idea of this probably seems as abhorrent to you as it does to me, but thats just kind of the reality we live in. I dont like using that as an argument, but when making the “realist” argument like im doing it becomes unavoidable.
Biden’s first priority as president is to the US. So he can only go so far with his action when it comes to Israel, and despite what you and many people are saying he is doing something he has been putting pressure on Netanyahu, but ultimately Israel knows how valuable they are to the US and so knows how far they can push it given Biden’s weak position. He has pushed aid funding for Gaza, started airdrops into the strip and building the harbour to get larger amounts of aid in, as well as negotiating for a cease fire and hostage releases.
Apologies forgot to comment, saw the message but was at university and forgot about it after that.
He does have the influence and the power but he just does not want it. Perhaps he does not have enough power to ‘’push it through’’ but he can start it and some will follow.
It is not about ‘’fixing’’ them. It is literally about him signing money and weapon aid to a state that purposefully commit genocide, made and rule through Apartheid regime and is proud to have avoided an Palestinian state (Prime Minister of Israel said this himself). He’s 100% behind Israel despite everything that’s been going on.
You are making this personal and that’s okay (while I prefer to keep it neutral and not personal though). However what am I doing for the Palestinian cause? Boycott products that I can boycott and slowly replace them with products that do not have deals with Israel. I do not understand why you are bringing other countries into a full discussion that’s merely about Israel-Palestine conflict.
Like you, yourself said. I do not have the capacity and power to help as much as the President(s) are able to. I cannot sign a bill to gives billions to the people in need. He can but he gives it to the occupier, the murder, the state that commits genocide. The state that does the exact same thing as Nazi-Germany did (ethnic cleansing, committing genocide, war crimes and mass graves).
Source of my claim about the Prime Minister’s word about an Palestinian state:
The fact he’s pretending that the Palestinian state is an immense threat to humanity while his own state is the core threat to the Palestinian people and everyone who supports the Palestinian state. Israel is a fascist state, rules through Apartheid and hate. His entire state was created from everything he claims that the Palestinian state ‘‘would become’’.
I do not understand your comment on my previous sentence there. Biden said himself ‘’if Israel didn’t exist, the US would have to invent one to protect US interests’’. He’s willing to create an own state that commits genocide, apartheid and humiliate the Palestinian people for his own interest. And you are trying to make me believe that he cares about the Palestinian lives?
No, this is not ‘’too black and white’’. Certainly they are not his top-priority, that should be his own country from which I think it is not either. He’s signing off so much money aid to state that commits genocide – while he could use that same money to help his own country.
So in what you are curre
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Israel’s PM Netanyahu ‘proud’ of preventing establishment of a Palestinian state
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
You should take a hard look at the millions of lives that are preserved by an alliance that keeps Iran from invading Israel. You’re this sad over 33,000, Imagine 3 million, or 33 million! You’ll might shit yourself crying. Biden doesn’t get time to cry. He’s got to think of the 33 million right now.
Israels internal politics is also driving it to do genocide. Doesnt excuse Bibi from doing the genocide. Doesnt excuse Biden supporting the genocide.
Well i dont think he can afford to care, politics is a costly game and someone has to pay for it.
The aid trucks need to be allowed into Gaza. Israel needs to be stopped by international pressure. This is genocide.
Is the UN official saying that the pier is enabling the Israeli invasion of Rafah, as though it wouldn’t happen otherwise? Or is he saying that but for the pier, Israel will open more land crossing to aid?
And what is the corrective action? Should the pier be built somewhere else, or not at all? Are their any factors about where to locate the pier besides political? Like the depth of the water or existing infrastructure?
And if the problem with the aid is that it’s a meaningless PR gesture, then does PR medicine not heal? Dose PR food not nourish?
Please help me understand why delivering food and medicine to Gaza is bad.
How do you get the materials in to build a pier? That should answer your questions if they are in good faith.
The US military is building the floating pier with materials they get from the US taxpayer. If you’re trying to argue it’s a waste of tax dollars, its not.
I’m talking about the logistics of physically bringing in the building materials
The US military has a massive global logistics operation and spends their time training for doing things like this. Of any organization on earth they probably have the greatest capacity for building a floating pier and ensuring aid flows through it. Why are you so hung up on the logistics of building material deliveries?
They already have methods and resources to build temporary piers, as logistics is a crucial part of war fighting.
A ship with the resources and egineers needed to build a temporary was basically already waiting to go when this decision was made.
So the logistics is already a solved problem.
A crucial part of warfighting? They are building a port purportedly to feed the people that their closest ally is deliberately starving by denying aid that Israelis have engineered to be necessary for their subsistence.
Do you think the ships will not be docking in Israel and that nothing will be transported by land through crossings? The same crossing that Israel uses to move their armed forces, weaponry and supplies through on a daily basis. Somehow those crossings will be completely off limits for the same US military that helps Israel coordinate a lot of their military operations and logistics.
I don’t understand how you can fail to see the absurdity of this situation. It’s been 7 weeks since they announced their plans and so far no construction has begun and a ship has had to return to the US due to a fire. Even if they do get something built, there will still be the need to operate and deliver the aid from the pier to the interior of the enclave with… trucks.
Yes? The Plan is to build the dock on the Gaza strip, specifically to get around the problem of Israel having the crossings closed? And no US military personel are being allowed on land so they cant just dock in Israel and drive across because Israel wont let them. Its not a difficult concept.
Who says I dont? Just because I dont hold the exact same position as you, doesnt mean i hold a completely opposite view. If Israel refuses to let aid in, then the only options for the US are airdrops, build a pier or basically invade Israel.
Yes? The problem is not the trucks themselves its getting them past the crossings. Assuming they have not all been bombed out Gaza will already have many trucks in it. and Gaza is 5km across and 40km long. distribution within gaza isnt the problem.
Sorry, but you’ve fallen for the propaganda if you actually think Israel has to allow the United States to do anything given the power dynamics. The reason this is performative is that everyone acknowledges (including ex Israeli high ranking military leadership) that this war cannot be fought without explicit US support at all times. If not for the offensive weapon supplies then for the defensive iron dome re-supply. They have held and continue to hold complete leverage over Israel and can end this tomorrow if the US administration so chose. You don’t have to have to the same viewpoint as I do but at the very least you have to acknowledge the power dynamics at play.
Im sorry for the strong language, but are you actually this dumb? You actually think the US can just operate its military in an allied country without permission???
They could end it tomorrow, but then they burn their bridge with one of the US’ most important strategic allies, lose their proxy in the middle east, have to move their military bases out of the country, their giant stockpile of weapons, their early warning radar and find a new port to supply the US 6th fleet and if they continue not to support Israel then Iran and maybe Egypt go to war with it, which royally fucks up US commercial interests in the reason and if they lose that war they lose pretty much the only pro-western country in that region.
And thats not to mention the fact that their are many many influential people in the house, the senate, the media, the DNC, donors, military, defence contractors etc. that are vehemently pro-israel not to mention basically all of the republican part too.
Yes the US establishment is mostly in favor of Israel’s actions. That is the problem. If you think the US can actually “lose” Israel then I don’t know what to tell you. They have very, very few allies without US backing.
Yes, building floating piers and bridges are basic Army functions and the US military has been doing it for hundreds of years since inception, literally back to the Revolutionary war.
Yes, the same roads the IDF uses will connect to the pier, and they will use trucks to distribute the supplies, obviously. How else would they do it? What other roads would they use?
Yes, it has been seven weeks of a plan they said would take at least eight weeks.
Man, you really should approach your news diet more rationally.
The same roads they can use to let in aid trucks without any of these theatrics. Should the UN officials also “approach their news diet more rationally”? Please realize that outside of your western bubble you are completely isolated in your viewpoints on the ongoing ethnic cleansing.
Apolitical UN employees and everyone else should stop reblogging every single unattributed report from Hamas members and sympathizers no matter how sensational and unbelievable the claim is.
Is this post about delivering aid being bad or does the title and article clearly state that this is a distraction tactic? Please help me understand your thought process of questioning things the article clearly answers.
The UN officials aren’t saying any of those things. Here’s a tldr of the issue
The platform is meant to be in Northern Gaza where the worst of the starvation is
Israel wants it to be moved south to an Israeli choke point
Israel is about to close the crossings in South Gaza so it can attack Rafah
If the tiny amount of aid that can come in is able to be diverted to South Gaza then Israel may face less international condemnation over this phase of the Gaza genocide.
If there is a starving child and you can choose to deliver them the nutrients they need but instead you choose to give them half a peanut instead, in a really theatrical way, that’s obviously bad right?
That’s what’s happening here.
At no point was a pier planned for north Gaza, the first place to be evacuated, six months ago.
Israel will be inspecting every delivery since Hamas has proved again and again that if it takes part in international commerce, it will be in the business of killing Jews. That’s why they didn’t have their own port to begin with. It’s not a choke point, it’s a highway interchange. That’s generally where you want to build the port. It’s literally the opposite of a choke point.
Egypt is in charge of the southern border crossing not Israel. Egypt doesn’t want terrorists moving weapons and fighters over its border, either.
We are all familiar with the genocidaires’ explanations/pretexts for why they are blockading humanitarian aid, thanks, you don’t need to rehash them here.
More to the point Egypt doesn’t want to give Israel a pretext for constant drone strikes in Egyptian territory now that every Palestinian refugee child is supposedly “Hamas”.
But either side can close a border, that’s intrinsic to borders.
“More than 1 million Palestinians are now sheltering in Rafah. The IDF wants them to move out so that it can conduct an offensive against Hamas units in the city.”
To where ?
The afterlife
They keep doing this. They herd them somewhere, start shooting and bombing, then herd the survivors somewhere else, telling them that’s the safe place.
And, of course, they can always justify it by claiming that there were Hamas militants hiding in the crowds. Which… sounds like it makes them not an especially urgent target?
I mean if you decimate an entire country with multiple nukes’ worth of explosives, any civilian population left is probably going to harbour a few resistance members
The IOF has built a camp for the concentration of civilians North of Rafah. I wonder if there’s a name for such an unprecedented structure.
thecradle.co/…/thousands-of-tents-set-up-in-centr…
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/368548a9-ea93-4ed3-a909-477bcaa0c46e.jpeg">
Problem. The IDF has been shooting Palestinians who try to move through their lines for months now. There’s no confidence that the IDF will suddenly start letting them through.
Thats why they’ll let everyone into this camp with no problem, because shooting people in tents is much easier than shooting them in houses or running down rubble-laden streets
That’s a lot of people to shoot. Much more likely they’ll just bomb the camp.
Shocked-Pikachu.png
This is so surreal, I thought it was a screenshot from District 9.
Note how the “aid port” never actually materialised but the invasion of Rafah did
On the day after March 7 when was announced, US military brass said it would take approximately sixty days and that the goal date to open would be May 1.
Sounds like they’ll be pretty close to that date. At least six ships have deployed to the Mediterranean with 1,000 troops and the Pentagon said yesterday “by the end of April or early May.”
I don’t know what’s involved with the project enough to speculate as to how long it should take and whether the Army and Navy engineers are making good time or not.
The invasion of Rafah has been inevitable for months if you’ve heard anything Israel has said. The Hamas big whigs followed their own families and neighbors to Rafah, using them as human shields. The war is about ending Hamas and destroying the tunnel system. The tunnels go to Rafah, therefore the IDF was going to Rafah.
Reminder that the existence of a local civilian population does not constitute a human shield. The Israelis seem to want Hamas to all line up in an empty field and unfurl a “strike here” sign, which is obviously unreasonable. Classically, a human shield is holding a guy physically in front of you. It can be extended a bit, like if you operate a missile battery from a declared POW camp, but I don’t think they’d be comfortable with their stated doctrine if it was extended to, say, the Warsaw uprising.
Other than that, yeah, I’m pretty sure the pier is still in the works, even if Israel is going to use it as an excuse to permit even less aid-wise.
When Hamas is encouraging people to ignore the evacuation warnings, or telling people the warnings are a hoax, in order to increase the body count, I call it human shields. Either way, it’s a war crime for soldiers to dress up like civilians and hide with them. Hamas is literally trying to get as many Palestinians killed as possible. It’s great publicity for the pan-Islamist/Hamas cause. And it blows my mind that there’s people here who seem to be about five Al Jazeera articles short of setting themselves on fire because of war crimes, cheering on an organization that literally gives cash prizes to war criminals for doing war crimes.
Nobody is expecting Hamas to line up, but they are expecting that when they call people on the phone and tell them to get out of the building because the tunnel underneath it is about to be blown up, innocent civilians will evacuate.
They are expecting that the people in charge in Gaza have an iota of decency with which they might surrender the tunnels and the hostages, maybe secure for themselves the rights of prisoners of war instead of terrorists. Seems reasonable to me. Even Japan surrendered for the benefit of its people, as did Germany, as did the Polish resistance in Warsaw.
Hamas thinks they found a lawfare loophole where, if they can muster up enough dead kids for the newspapers, the world powers are going to cede a democracy to Iran. I know it’s super uncomfortable to say but that’s not going to happen in any foreseeable future.
Maybe you think Hamas is right, that if they can follow the civilian population around long enough, and get the body count up high enough, the western world will turn on Israel, and Iran will come in like Gandalf at dawn on the fifth day to save Gaza (while trying to for real genocide the Jews (in a way comparable to the mass summary executions of 150,000 civilians in 60 days by the Nazis in Warsaw). I don’t think the West would stand for that. So, the only way to avoid total war in the middle east as I see is it to deter and contain Iran, and that means neither Hamas nor any other Iranian proxy get to have its own country on Israel’s front doorstep. Hamas can and should end the war tomorrow. I like to imagine how Gaza might prosper without a religious psychopaths stealing all the money and food to build tunnels, which after blowing their load on October 7, are proving to be essentially useless against Israel.
For the record, I don’t like Iran either. And definitely not Hamas. All parties directly involved are different flavours of theocratic non-democracies. Apartheid is not democracy, even if it’s apartheid in favour of people like me.
I don’t think it’s realistic that if Hamas disbanded, Gaza would live in peace and “prosper”. In fact, the Israeli government has gone out of their way to help Hamas grow in order to have them as an excuse for why that’s not happening, because they don’t want a 2-state solution.
Oh give off with the “human shields” bullshit, I won’t even bother giving you a response because you deserve no such respect from me.
Fuck off back to reddit if you want to spout baseless Zionism.
I wouldn’t find anything bullshit about it if terrorists wanted to build a hideout under my house.
If the “IDF” has succeeded in anything, it’s proving how useless the term “terrorist” is. Every toy of the western PR machine has been thrown out the pram.
One ship also had issues on its way and had to turn back. It’s coming, but building a port from scratch isn’t instant sadly. This is the channel to watch for anything involving shipping.
Edit: The human shield argument is bullshit though. Gaza is one of the most populated places on Earth. There are civilians everywhere. There’s no option for not being around civilians.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
This is the channel to watch for anything involving shipping.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I will check out the channel.
Gaza could try using their national resources for something other than terrorism, they might find the West more agreeable to their plans for the neighborhood.
Weird how every time Israel levels an area of Gaza and then later levels the same area again it has stuff built there that isn’t terrorism. But I guess all those homes and infrastructure that keep having to be rebuilt are all terrorism.
Gaza use their national resources, lol. You mean the apartheid that Israel has imposed on the Palestinian people all the while stealing land using illegal settlement building? That Gaza? Killing women and children, literally headshots to Palestinian children. Mass graves, famine…
Mass graves. Yes. 33,000 have died. What did you think happened to their bodies?
What’s the line? “Famine is imminent.” I"ve seen it repeated every day basically since December. But aid is flowing. Daily death tolls have continued trending down, not up. That’s how these sensational claims work, like kids being intentionally shot in the head. Did a whole breakdown in my post history with a dude who insisted Israel was sniping little kids on purpose and the person posted about ten links and everyone of them fell apart under the slightest scrutiny.
Sorry, the usual dehumanization tactics that have worked to give cover for decades of crimes against Palestinians has fallen apart. Israel is its own worst enemy. You can try to cover and smother the horror in Gaza, you can try to suppress voices that reject your slaughter but now that only brings more attention to that very slaughter of civilians, women and children. What’s been seen can’t be unseen no matter how desperately you try to control the narrative.
Want to add any facts to your argument or just gonna go with “Jews are evil and always have been?”
I think you should check your emotions and reevaluate the stories you’ve seen. Especially ones shared by people who are collecting donations and by people who get their orders and their money from Qatar and Iran.
The numbers speak for themselves.
Exactly, the numbers speak for themselves.
And there goes the paint them all anti-semitic if they disagree with anything, literally anything Israel does. Even Jewish people who are protesting Israel’s actions must be anti-semitic.
Sorry to tell you, but the world cannot unsee the horrors in Gaza, no matter how hard you try to control the narrative.
It’s like a small town worth of people that died, and they didn’t die for no reason, there’s a war on, and someone built weapons of war under their houses and then told them “nah don’t evacuate, you’ll be fine!”
You realize wars sometimes kill hundreds of thousands of people, or millions of people, right? God damn, how sad and horrified you are right now, how sad will you be if a wider war with Iran breaks out and kills 30,000,000 people?
Maybe if the horrors of Gaza is too much, Hamas and should stop starting wars it can’t finish. You are as short sighted as they are.
Thanks for your justification for mass slaughter of women and children. I know it’s been hard to pretend you care about civilian loss of life, and the usual PR cover failing.
Protests will grow even wider. If there’s a wider war, the world will only blame Israel for having dragged the region and the rest of us into it.
Netanyahu, a greedy, self-serving, morally bankrupt corrupt politician has helped the world see that Israel has become its own worst enemy. Religious fundamentalist cuckoos killing indiscriminately in the name of some God or other.
That may have been arguable on Oct. 8th, but no one with eyes and a brain buys that anymore. It is a war of annihilation, they are destroying all of Gaza and crushing hopes of a Palestinian nation. The Israeli establishment has made it clear they don’t support a Palestinian state of any kind.
Even during this current escalation they have continued to annex land in the West Bank, what does that have to do with Hamas or tunnels?
There are between 300 to 450 miles of tunnels, from Hamas’s own mouth, built up over fifty years, in an area only 25 miles wide. To build them they used billions in funding, from such beacons of humanity and civil rights as Iran, Qatar, and North Korea. Hamas turned the very foundation of the most populated areas of Gaza into Swiss cheese that isn’t fit to hold up a paper hat. And to achieve what? A mass shooting of 1,300 people? That’s why millions of Gazans had to live and die in a constant state of malnourishment and dependence on foreign charity with zero hope for prosperity for decadesnas Hamas diverted all public resources toward war crimes?
I get it, extremists sincerely don’t like the idea of a Jewish state in the Levant. That doesn’t mean they get to have patent and willful disregard for all international laws to try and blow it up. Arabs think it was their land first because the Ottoman empire had been murdering and taking as slaves the indigenous Hebrew-speaking Israelites, Semitic people, for so long, that they held all the deeds and Jews became foreigners on their own land. But the archeological record, recorded history, remembers, and Hamas surely knows this, too, what with all that digging. Regardless, I don’t think that’s really what motivates people to live and die for such spiteful resentment.
The truth of the matter is that religious tyrants run the middle-east, and the idea that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the people over whom is governs and to whom it is subservient–to the exclusion of religious “law”–is an existential threat to the established power dynamic, which, again, is based on mysticism and superstition. Law that can be changed on the whim or fantasy of one or two church muckity mucks is not a system that is capable of granting, let alone protecting human or civil rights.
The West Bank is somehow more complicated than Gaza, IMO. Expansion should stop indefinitely and sectarian violence should be dealt with harshly by Israel and by the West, via sanctions, carrots and sticks. I have hope Israel and America will deal with its own tyrants peacefully at the ballot box; we will know soon enough. I’m not opposed to a Palestinian state in the West Bank if its got its shit together. Could start by denouncing Hamas for what it is and demanding its surrender, calling for release of hostages, etc.
If only people understood how time or construction projects work…
Yeah, it’s much slower than destruction projects
I thought that picture was a screenshot of the movie District 9. Now making a parallel, even those alien guys were treated better than Palestinians.
The picture looks insane. As first I thought it was AI generated because the parachutes and the building looked so weird. Everything is bent and spiky. But it’s actually real.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/37f8ad0f-e3a3-4297-a7d7-5658163551c4.png">
It’s a pier to ship the natural gas reserves under Gaza when they extract it