Israel

[Vēritās]

Hard to imagine why anyone in Gaza would have bad feelings towards Israel. I mean, don't they read the Bible? Shouldn't they know God's chosen people have certain privileges?

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[Vēritās]

Right Wing logic: Don't these kids understand they should have risen up in their malnourished bodies armed with nothing more than the sandals on their feet, and should have overthrown a heavily armed Hamas if they didn't want to be justifiably bombed to death by God's chosen people?

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[Res Ipsa]

I'm more and more convinced religion is the worst thing Humans have come up with. Just listen to ourselves here. Some of us genuinely think an invisible man in the sky shows favoritism towards some of us based on bloodlines, and that he decided to give a certain group of people a sliver of land thousands of years ago because that's our interpretation of a book that was written by mysterious authors no one can identify.

There was no rational reason for Britain to steal that land and give it to the Jews; only a religious one.

And look how that's turned out.

That's not what happened. Not even close.

[Vēritās]

The Consequences of Impunity

As human rights advocates and international law experts have long warned, impunity for war crimes only leads to more. Last year, as Russia staged a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many pointed to the impunity for war crimes it committed in Syria and elsewhere and argued that the lack of accountability directly enabled similar crimes to be committed in Ukraine. The ICC, for its part, responded to Russian crimes in Ukraine by immediately dispatching investigators there, leading to charges implicating Russian leadership all the way up to President Vladimir Putin earlier this year. But there was no such response following Israeli crimes in Gaza, including after military campaigns in 2018, 2021, and 2022 that left hundreds of Palestinian civilians dead.

“If we’ve learned anything through prior escalations, it is that so long as there is impunity for serious abuses, we will continue to see more repression and shedding of civilian blood,” said Shakir. Human Rights Watch called on the ICC “to accelerate its investigation into serious crimes committed by all parties in Palestine.”

While both parties committed heinous crimes, Gallant’s call for a complete siege on Gaza revealed the underlying imbalance at play: While Hamas’s attack shocked Israelis and the world and amounted to the most serious attack on Israel in five decades, it paled in comparison to Gallant’s threat to starve 2 million trapped civilians. “This is why this never was and never will be a ‘war’ of equals,” media critic Sana Saeed noted on Monday. “Because one side has the power to entirely eliminate an entire population, to control whether they live or die.”

Gallant wasn’t the only Israeli leader to tap into genocidal rhetoric in response to Hamas’s attack, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declaring, “It’s time to be cruel,” and Knesset member Ariel Kallner calling for a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48,” a reference to the massacre and expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians upon Israel’s founding.

Other observers denounced efforts by either party to use crimes committed by the other as justification for committing more crimes.

“Failure of one party to a conflict to abide by the laws of war does not absolve the other party from complying with the laws of war,” noted Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Democracy for the Arab World Now.

“Israel certainly cannot claim the upper moral hand. Israeli government ministers now calling to kill, destroy, crush and even starve the residents of Gaza forget that this is already Israeli policy,” the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem echoed in a statement. “Intentional attacks on civilians are prohibited and unacceptable. There is no justification for such crimes, whether they are committed as part of a struggle for freedom from oppression or cited as part of a war against terror.”

Palestinian and international human rights groups also called on the United Nations to address the underlying causes behind this weekend’s events.

“Israel has a horrific track record of committing war crimes with impunity in previous wars on Gaza,” Amnesty International wrote in a statement that called on Palestinian armed groups to refrain from targeting civilians.

“The root causes of these repeated cycles of violence must be addressed as a matter of urgency. This requires upholding international law and ending Israel’s 16-year-long illegal blockade on Gaza, and all other aspects of Israel’s system of apartheid imposed on all Palestinians.”

Palestinian human rights groups echoed that call.

“For decades, Palestinians have been calling on the international community to take concrete and meaningful actions, beyond statements of condemnation, to put an end to these violations,” Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights wrote in an open letter to the United Nations on Monday. “The international community’s lack of political will to hold Israel to account only emboldens Israel to continue committing crimes against the Palestinian people as a whole.”

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

It’s not just Gaza. Israel literally teamed up with ISIS(!) to attack Syria, and regularly attacks Syria under the aegis of combatting Hezbollah that they’ve all but dropped any pretense of adhering to international law (mostly so they can secure water supply in the north). And we’re happily paying for it, thanks to AIPAC (and others) having the House on lockdown. I’m neutral with regards to Israel as a political entity, but to be in bed with them to the extent we are essentially puts us in a sort of moral… ‘kettle logic’, I think.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_logic

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

It’s not just Gaza. Israel literally teamed up with ISIS(!) to attack Syria, and regularly attacks Syria under the aegis of combatting Hezbollah that they’ve all but dropped any pretense of adhering to international law (mostly so they can secure water supply in the north). And we’re happily paying for it, thanks to AIPAC (and others) having the House on lockdown. I’m neutral with regards to Israel as a political entity, but to be in bed with them to the extent we are essentially puts us in a sort of moral… ‘kettle logic’, I think.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_logic

- Doc

Thanks for linking that, Doc. We do that in law pretty frequently, but we call it "alternative pleading." It's one of those things that seem odd at first (at least it did to me), but you just get used to it. I had no idea there was as general term for it.

ETA: I think "moral kettle logic" is a good description.

[Jersey Girl]

It’s not just Gaza. Israel literally teamed up with ISIS(!) to attack Syria, and regularly attacks Syria under the aegis of combatting Hezbollah that they’ve all but dropped any pretense of adhering to international law (mostly so they can secure water supply in the north). And we’re happily paying for it, thanks to AIPAC (and others) having the House on lockdown. I’m neutral with regards to Israel as a political entity, but to be in bed with them to the extent we are essentially puts us in a sort of moral… ‘kettle logic’, I think.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_logic

- Doc

It's absolutely disgusting. All of it.

[Jersey Girl]

.There was no rational reason for Britain to steal that land and give it to the Jews; only a religious one.

And look how that's turned out.

Are you posting from stolen land?

[Vēritās]

.There was no rational reason for Britain to steal that land and give it to the Jews; only a religious one.

And look how that's turned out.

Are you posting from stolen land?

Not you too. sigh.

[Jersey Girl]

Are you posting from stolen land?

Not you too. sigh.

Know what? I'm going to save us both a lot of pointless trouble. Consider it a gift.