2023 Hamas/Israeli War Thread: Just because you Quds, doesn't mean you should(s)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > 2023 Hamas/Israeli War Thread: Just because you Quds, doesn't mean you should(s)

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Crab Dad posted:

Feels more and more like Hamas is shadow funded and controlled by BiBi in some way. This is simply too easy of a setup to get his genocide of the Gaza Strip.

yeah yeah i know this is impossible but gently caress what a bunch of cowinkydinks

I doubt he personally orchestrated this attack, but his material support of Hamas in order to politically undermine any hope for Palestinian statehood is documented.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2023 16:18

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 17:05

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Liquid Communism posted:

They don't need to say it out loud. Everyone listening knows exactly what the goal is when you spend a decade confining people into a small geographical area, blockading their imports, and shooting anyone who complains too loud then declare you're going to 'eliminate' partisans in their midst en masse. The best case scenario is a Trail of Tears or Phnom Penh style migration assuming one of the surrounding countries can and will accept a couple million refugees.

I know a non-zero number of people who are genuinely, honestly referring to �when the war is over� as though this is a heads-up, state-to-state, military conflict. I have no idea what they think the endgame is but it�s definitely not genocide. (To be clear, I think they�re wrong, but I don�t think they�re lying.)

# ¿ Oct 13, 2023 16:44

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Radical 90s Wizard posted:

His entire argument is they mistranslated "victims" into "deaths" which, and he's basing it on google translate, he doesn't even speak arabic.
Seems like an extremely weak reason to decide that Al-Jazeera intentionally mistranslates stuff to propagate false narratives.

He says he hired two translators. (I don�t think that fact supports the �intentional mistranslation� reading.)

# ¿ Oct 29, 2023 23:12

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

For some more background, this is the Yousef Munayyer piece quoted by the Guardian:

Yousef Munayyer posted:

�From the river to the sea� is a rejoinder to the fragmentation of Palestinian land and people by Israeli occupation and discrimination.

His position is that the phrase isn't inherently anti-Israel because it's about the Palestinian experience, not Israeli sovereignty:

Yousef Munayyer posted:

I wasn�t concerned with Israel�s identity crisis over whether it could be both Jewish and democratic; I was concerned that Palestinians were being denied basic rights throughout their homeland.

Munayyer references another piece by Maha Nasser with some more background:

Maha Nassar posted:

That�s how the call for a free Palestine �from the river to the sea� gained traction in the 1960s. It was part of a larger call to see a secular democratic state established in all of historic Palestine. Palestinians hoped their state would be free from oppression of all sorts, from Israeli as well as from Arab regimes.

To be sure, a lot of Palestinians thought that in a single democratic state, many Jewish Israelis would voluntarily leave, like the French settlers in Algeria did when that country gained its independence from the French. Their belief stemmed from the anti-colonial context in which the Palestinian liberation movement arose.

That�s why, despite the occasional bout of overheated rhetoric from some leaders, there was no official Palestinian position calling for the forced removal of Jews from Palestine. This continued to be their position despite an Israeli media campaign following the 1967 war that claimed Palestinians wished to �throw Jews into the sea.�

which leads to some context about Hamas's original rise in popularity that loops back around to why this discussion of rhetoric is important:

Maha Nassar posted:

In his 1974 speech to the UN, Fatah leader and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat declared, �when we speak of our common hopes for the Palestine of tomorrow we include in our perspective all Jews now living in Palestine who choose to live with us there in peace and without discrimination.�

In the 1980s and �90s, Fatah and the PLO changed their official stance from calling for a single state to supporting a two-state solution. Many Palestinians �particularly the refugees and their descendants � saw them as abandoning the core of their homeland and acquiescing to colonial theft. They were allowing the proverbial baby to be split.

With Fatah seen as selling out, Hamas picked up the call for a free Palestine �from the river to the sea.� It sought to burnish its own anti-colonial bona fides at the expense of Fatah.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2023 14:37

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Qtotonibudinibudet posted:

apropos of nothing, is there some sort of realpolitik reason for Biden to support Israel? it doesnt seem like they'd have much to offer the US strategically. do we want to keep them on goodish terms to outsource spying on the iranians to them? or is it more that he expects AIPAC to do collective punishment of the democrats if a democrat president raises their ire. idk if AIPAC's bullshit would reasonably be a threat to the presidential campaign

In addition to everything else that's been said, Biden personally just fuckin' loves Israel as a concept. His privilege of this predilection over the reality of Netanyahu's bullshit has reportedly rankled some of his staff and associates:

quote:

Adding to the sensitivity, the unwavering embrace of Israel that many staffers find upsetting stems in large part from Biden�s personal lifelong attachment to the Jewish state, aides said. Biden often cites his 1973 meeting with Prime Minister Golda Meir as a seminal event that crystallized his view of Israel as critical for Jewish survival.

quote:

Some in Biden�s circle worry that he does not distinguish between an idealistic image of the state of Israel and the reality of the Netanyahu government, which includes several representatives from the far right. �The president�s personal historical commitment to Israel was not modulated by the reality that this Israel happens to have a government that is the worst government it�s ever had,� an ally of the administration said. �Biden has underestimated the degree to which you have to separate how Israel reacts to this and how a Netanyahu government reacts to this.�

But the reporting portrays this as ideological inertia more than fanaticism:

quote:

On Oct. 25, [Biden] voiced skepticism about the Gaza death toll provided by the Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas. �I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed,� he said.

The following day, Biden met with five prominent Muslim Americans, who protested what they saw as his insensitivity to the civilians who were dying. All spoke of people they knew who had been affected by the suffering in Gaza, including a woman who had lost 100 members of her family.

Biden appeared to be affected by their account. �I�m sorry. I�m disappointed in myself,� he told the group, according to two people familiar with the meeting. �I will do better.� The meeting, scheduled for 30 minutes, ended up lasting more than an hour, according to one White House official, and ended with Biden hugging one of the participants.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2023 14:59

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

bulletsponge13 posted:

America also won't turn on Israel (barring some drastic change) because they pour millions upon millions of dollar into campaign funds and PACs to buy political leverage and support.

It is possible that we're seeing the beginning of such a drastic change, though. Money is horribly overweight in US politics, but it's not literally the only thing that matters. If Netanyahu continues down this path of loudly disparaging both peace and the United States electorate, it's conceivable that he could make US politicians genuinely more scared of their own voters than they are of AIPAC.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2023 22:50

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

BUUNNI posted:

This sounds exactly like the genesis of the 9/11 conspiracy theories, which is to say complete BS. Why would any Israeli intel officer worth his salt disregard veritable reports that Hamas was going to mount a devastating attack? These guys receive the very best SIGINT and HUMINT training from the west's military apparatus. We ARE living in a post-9/11 world, after all.

The logical conclusion of the claim that "Israel knew the attacks would happen but the higher ups just refused to do anything" would be that the entirety of the intel officer corps needs to be purged or Israel will suffer more attacks in the future.

Sorry, but I just don't buy that narrative.

In addition to simple incompetence, there was a political angle to downplaying the warnings. Maintaining Hamas as a low-level antagonist (in order to delegitimize the PA) is a key part of Netanyahu's political strategy. (This is something he's been documented saying, not a fringe theory.) "Hamas is planning something but it won't matter much in the grand scheme of things" is what the Israeli government wanted to hear, so that's what it heard. The reporting really reminded me of some of the descriptions of the leadup to the Iraq War, actually.

(And there are voices within Israel wondering if the entire intelligence community needs purging. Predictably, the response is "now is not the time to discuss that.")

# ¿ Nov 29, 2023 18:16

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

They weren't offering their personal opinions, right? Theoretically everyone in the world should provide the same answer to "Does the Harvard anti-harassment policy prohibit [whatever]?"

# ¿ Dec 6, 2023 15:50

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

PurpleXVI posted:

https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1747978396423069843

You know, it's paywalled, but I feel like we need to just reflect on someone unironically writing that headline and not working for the Onion.

The thesis of the article is that foreverwars chasing incoherent policy goals are bad for soldiers. The headline is for an Israeli audience, not an international one.

raminasi fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Jan 21, 2024

# ¿ Jan 21, 2024 01:45

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

SMEGMA_MAIL posted:

E: I think Haaretz had alleged that in at least one case IDF artillery officer said they were shooting kill the hostages, but I can�t get around the paywall right now

Do you have a particular article in mind? I have a subscription and am happy to confirm/summarize.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2024 20:21

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Grip it and rip it posted:

Do we have any Palestinians on this site? I'm not certain Ive ever seen someone make that claim in the past 20+ years.

Is the idea that they'd prefer a symbolic gesture that would harm their situation over the status quo? Seems like a dubious proposition to me.

I thought a recent Defector piece drew a poignant parallel:

Tom Scocca posted:

The longer this goes on, the more I think about the protesters who chanted "Hey, hey, LBJ / How many kids did you kill today?" It was a perfect chant, cutting and morally true. It drew a line, and it caught Lyndon Johnson on the wrong side of it. Johnson chose not to face the voters again in 1968. And then, behind the scenes, Richard Nixon sabotaged the Paris peace talks and replaced Johnson as president.

And Richard Nixon killed a lot more kids, and other people, in the seven extra years he added to the war�killed them not just in Vietnam but in Cambodia and Laos, illegally expanding the war without telling the public or getting permission from Congress.

It's anything but a pro-Biden article; the theme is despair at how powerless voting is to affect any of this.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2024 01:08

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

pmchem posted:

oh, voting certainly affected things in Vietnam. just not in the way many people hoped, because they voted with feelings rather than critical thinking about Tricky Dick Nixon

Ok, fair, the inability of voting to make anything better.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2024 01:15

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

What makes the claim more tendentious than it ought to be is that legal formulations of genocide require intent, so Israel's lack of an official, formal, explicit policy of not wanting the Palestinians to exist anymore provides enough of a sliver of plausible deniability that people wanting to excuse Israel's misdeeds feel empowered to do so. They end up arguing that it's not a technically a genocide unless it's from the Genocide region of Germany, but it's enough to muddy the waters.

# ¿ May 2, 2024 06:16

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 17:05

raminasi: Jan 25, 2005; a last drink with no ice

Grip it and rip it posted:

Huh it seems like there are some allegations that the Israeli government has been funding Hamas.

https://www.politico.eu/article/isr...ry%20doctorate.

That's been widely known for a while - that piece links to other reporting on it, including Netanyahu admitting it. The news story is that someone said it in an embarrassing forum, not that it's a novel allegation.

# ¿ May 9, 2024 09:41

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > 2023 Hamas/Israeli War Thread: Just because you Quds, doesn't mean you should(s)