Gaza

Israel’s actions in Gaza are utterly indefensible, no one is even going to attempt to support or defend them.

Apart from, for example, the President of the USA, and people who actually have power and influence. And the UK  PM-in-waiting.

The IDF went into a residential area and came out with rescued hostages, so there no ambiguity about the nature of the target. By claiming casualties, Hamas admits to war crimes.

As you’ve no idea about the location of the casualties in relation to the hostages, the method of injury or the reason why they were targeted (they could just have been targeted as a diversion to distract Hamas guards) you’re pretty much making things up.

‘I want Israel to exist’ is just wordplay, the subtext being ‘I want apartheid Israel to exist’. The only way all this can end is a single secular democratic state where all ethnicities enjoy equal status and opportunities.

a residential area

Too funny. You make it sound like Brookside. And not a squalid overcrowded hellscape where a traumatised population was sheltering. But yeah- blame someone else.

Apart from, for example, the President of the USA, and people who actually have power and influence. And the UK PM-in-waiting.

Yeah but they don’t post on STW.

Last year on here there were a few who tried to defend Israel’s actions, but 8 months on and with the constant evidence of war crimes, starvation, and 15 thousand dead children, no one is willing to have a go at justifying Israel’s actions any more.

The best that they can hope for is to ask whatabout Hamas?

no one is willing to have a go at justifying Israel’s actions any more.

Oh, I dunno …

The civilians killed in the operation were those Hamas was willing to sacrifice for its aims.

IDF soldiers (terrorists to some) are filming themselves burning libraries in Gaza.

Obviously this has nothing whatsoever to do with fighting Hamas but everything to do with eradicating a people’s culture and nationhood.

A glimpse into the future of Gaza:

https://x.com/BeckyCNN/status/1800548798113992937

This is a must-watch, exclusive report from CNN’s Chief International Correspondent. Five years after the defeat of ISIS, more than 50,000 ISIS followers are being held in a constellation of US prisons and camps across Northeast Syria. @clarissaward
gained extraordinary access to some of the facilities. A warning that you may find some of these images disturbing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly7qO9fGYZA

Fascinating insights from a now German Israeli

I saw that ^^ last week and it is really excellent, unfortunately despite a couple of attempts, and my determination, because it is an hour long I haven’t yet been able to watch it all the way through without dozing off!

The picture it paints of the final throes of the zionist experiment is spot on imo.

I have learnt quite a few things since Oct 7 2023 with regards to Palestine and the solidarity movement but one thing which particularly stands for me is how all the very best analysis of the situation in Palestine seems to invariably come from Jews generally but Israeli Jews in particular.

I think it is driven by a couple of things, firstly their deep understanding of Zionism and the Zionist mindset, and secondly the deep passion they feel in their revulsion of gross injustices and crimes committed supposedly in their name, and the appalling use of the Holocaust as a smokescreen.

Gerald Kaufman’s speech from the floor of the House of Commons is an excellent example of this.

Daniel Matè makes the point that for a Jew who makes the journey from supporting Zionism, to realising how totally indefensible it is, the process involves going through a ‘one-way door’. Once they have gone through that door no Jew ever goes back and embraces Zionism again.

And the commitment of so many Jews supporting justice for Palestine is not at all lost on the Muslim community which is actively involved in the solidarity movement. The above video I first saw posted on a WhatsApp group totally dominated by Muslim members. They fully understand that the struggle is between Palestinians and Zionists, not Palestinians and Jews. My local mosque invited a rabbi to speak a couple of months ago.

I have learnt quite a few things since Oct 7 2023 with regards to Palestine and the solidarity movement but one thing which particularly stands for me is how all the very best analysis of the situation in Palestine seems to invariably come from Jews generally but Israeli Jews in particular.

This interview with Ilan Pappé on the Israel lobby groups is worth a watch and slightly easier to follow,

They fully understand that the struggle is between Palestinians and Zionists, not Palestinians and Jews.

^^^ This.

Lowkey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ahlBTd6ZxI

Here the brilliant (Israeli Jewish) Ilan Pappé explains in two and a half minutes why this is the beginning of the end of the zionist experiment.

why this is the beginning of the end of the zionist experiment.

I truly hope it is, but I fear it may not be.

This is what Twitter is good for, I’ve expanded an intro to it below as it deserves to be read.

This is an excellent report on the war in Gaza by Lee Mordechai Associate professor of History at Hebrew University , he lays out in his report, all 86 pages explaining why Israel is committing a genocide in the Gaza Strip, it’s a long read but very detailed and informative as to exactly what is happening, not just in Gaza but also regarding protests and media complicity. If you don’t wish to read all 86 pages then he roughly summarised it down to 28 tweets in the link.

https://x.com/LeeMordechai/status/1803052066652205400

Despite denying it for a long time, the IDF now admits to using Palestinians as human shields…..

Kinda hard to deny when you’re caught on film strapping a wounded Palestinian to the front of your armoured truck.

It says “GRAPHIC WARNING”, but if you’ve seen any amount of footage from Gaza this is pretty **** harmless.

Remind me again…. Why does Hamas have so many willing recruits?

Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext

In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip. 

War crime?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/11/israeli-weapons-shrapnel-children-gaza-injured

Israeli-made weapons designed to spray high levels of shrapnel are causing horrific injuries to civilians in Gaza and disproportionately harming children, foreign surgeons who worked in the territory in recent months have told the Guardian.

The doctors say many of the deaths, amputations and life changing wounds to children they have treated came from the firing of missiles and shells – in areas crowded with civilians – packed with additional metal designed to fragment into tiny pieces of shrapnel.

IIRC fragmentation weapons are illegal under international law?

And an Israeli strike on a designated Humanitarian Area in which Israel has been urging civilians to gather –  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyx0qdkn45eo

War crime?…..IIRC fragmentation weapons are illegal under international law?

Israeli has shown over the previous 8 months that it couldn’t give a flying **** what the rest of the world thinks, its about time for the rest of the world to show Israel it couldn’t give a flying **** either.

Israeli has shown over the previous 8 months that it couldn’t give a flying **** what the rest of the world thinks, its about time for the rest of the world to show Israel it couldn’t give a flying **** either.

The rest of the world – the west, at least – has shown that it doesn’t give the smallest whiff of intestinal gas what happens to the Palestinians. They are just brown people. Expendable. Compare and contrast with the outpouring of grief and transfer of weapons when a few kids in Kiev are killed by a Russian missile.

IIRC fragmentation weapons are illegal under international law?

I’m sure the IDF will be undertaking a rigorous and impartial investigation into this allegation.

I’m sure the IDF will be undertaking a rigorous and impartial investigation into this allegation.

Unfortunately Israel has been allowed to mark its own homework for so many years that it will award itself a merit badge as the majority of the western world and its leaders look the other way.

As for the fragmentation bombs, they’ve been reported on since the beginning of the year by the brave medical staff in Gaza, it’s only recently that the evidence is being reported on.

How the UK establishment views Gaza:

https://x.com/beckettunite/status/1811819884466131302?s=46&t=0EdQH2VaJpSkNmaw8CsUvg

(the police violently attacking a peaceful demonstrator)

Before this thread slips further from the front page…..

https://www.reddit.com/r/GreenAndPleasant/s/HKwXxX3NFa

This shit ain’t happening on the other side of the fence.

I could slightly understand how genocide was allowed to happen in the 1700’s or whatever. But the fact the world is allowing it to happen right in front of our eyes in this day and age really baffles me. War crimes caught on the news and still not a thing is being done. I still stand by what I said at the start of the conflict, if it had been any other country in the world that was of different skin colour or religion this would have been nipped in the bud pretty sharply.

But the fact the world is allowing it to happen right in front of our eyes in this day and age really baffles me.

That’s not what baffles me most. Unfortunately this won’t be the first time that the world stood back and did nothing whilst a genocide was taking place.

What makes this one unique is that many countries are giving political and diplomatic backing to the country carrying out the genocide.

And one country in particular is openly supplying the bombs, missiles, and other weapons, to the genocidal regime carrying out the genocide, whilst at the same time demanding that the genocide stops.

That’s what baffles me most. I cannot recall anything like that before.

IIRC fragmentation weapons are illegal under international law?

Not as such. This doesn’t prevent their use forming part of a case for war crimes on grounds of proportionality, for example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1i0UbAyrpk&t=2s

Lee Fang makes interesting observations about media manipulations but Jones looks, er, unwell.

Israeli must have known it could weather the short-lived media cycle. Now Gaza is just old news. Nobody cares.

different skin colour or religion

This is it — if these were babies with blue eyes and blonde hair being torn to shreds by the Israelis, there’d have been a military intervention months ago.

What the “war” in Gaza has achieved is a grotesque hypernormalization of state-sponsored atrocity. Russia “double tap” attacks in Ukraine? Bombing paediatric hospitals?

This is war is now in the 21st century. This is the new “self-defence”.

Fragmentation weapons are not banned, only ‘non detectable fragmentation weapons’, cluster bombs are banned though.

Was wondering why the below story wasn’t discussed on here, widely reported and an absolutely horrific event?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9drj14e0lo

What the “war” in Gaza has achieved is a grotesque hypernormalization of state-sponsored atrocity.

That happened decades ago. I honestly can’t remember any point in my lifetime when some group of people in the Middle East wasn’t committing horrific atrocities to some other group.

List of conflicts 

cluster bombs are banned though

Not if you didn’t sign the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. Lithuania decided to withdraw just yesterday because Russia still uses them https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/3886616-lithuania-pulls-from-convention-banning-cluster-munitions.html

Small cluster munitions aren’t banned at all

some group of people in the Middle East wasn’t committing horrific atrocities to some other group.

Some group of people? Pretty much all of those conflicts listed in your link include European involvement, in fact some like Suez only involved Europeans attacking and killing Middle Eastern people.

Maybe some group of Europeans committing atrocities against the indigenous people and stoking up wars for their own self interest would be a better description?

And currently it is Western backed settlers slaughtering the indigenous people of Palestine because they want their land

Maybe some group of Europeans committing atrocities against the indigenous people and stoking up wars for their own self interest would be a better description?

Isn’t that just the last 1500 years?

UK to resume Unrwa funding. Announced in parliament by Lammy…

“I can confirm to the house that we are overturning the suspension of UNRWA funding, Britain will provide £21m in funds”

That’s excellent. And I think only the United States hasn’t resumed funding now….. what a great Democrat president they have!

He organises airdrops of humanitarian aid after supplying the far-right regime with bombs to drop on civilians.

It  would be nice if the UK upped the UNRWA funding btw, I think Germany gives 5 times more to UNRWA than the UK.

Hopefully a Labour government will prove to be more generous in alleviating the suffering of the Palestinian tragedy than the previous Tory government.

I think only the United States hasn’t resumed funding now

I think that’s the case, yes.