israel determined to start war

[GoCubsGo]

I've never gotten a handle on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict other than it being a long simmering territorial dispute. Is there a "good" side? I do think a little less of Azerbaijan now, but do they love Israel or just its weapons?

Knowing nothing but looking at the map I'm guessing that any unrest at Tehran's front door makes Israel happy.

[Vrede too]

I've never gotten a handle on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict other than it being a long simmering territorial dispute. Is there a "good" side? I do think a little less of Azerbaijan now, but do they love Israel or just its weapons?

Knowing nothing but looking at the map I'm guessing that any unrest at Tehran's front door makes Israel happy.

Irony. Armenia is Christian. Azerbaijan, who Israel is arming, is Muslim. I wonder what the Israel-loving fundies think of that.

2021–2023 Armenia–Azerbaijan border crisis is the latest iteration of Armenian–Azerbaijani war (1918–1920).

[O Really]

Aren't those the areas that are collectively referred to as "Berzerkistan"?

[Vrede too]

Surprise surprise, Israel's move towards Nuttyahoo's unrestrained fascist dictatorship was bankrolled by a RW American. Only now, very late in the game, is he desperately trying to deny responsibility.

An American billionaire says he'll stop funding the think tank behind Israel's judicial overhaul

Arthur Dantchik

... Dantchik is a member of the board of directors of ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of social media website TikTok.

Philanthropy

Dantchik founded the CLAWS Foundation to support his philanthropic goals. The foundation backs a number of libertarian causes in the United States and Israel....

The CLAWS Foundation has been a major donor to the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, libertarian think tank Cato Institute, and Ron Paul-linked Students for Liberty.

As of 2023, the foundation is one of the largest donors to the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jerusalem-based Jewish research and education institute. Over 10 years, the foundation gave more than $25 million to Hartman. It has also provided funding to the Israeli think tank Kohelet Policy Forum, the main driving force behind the 2023 Israeli judicial reform. On August 4, 2023, he announced he would no longer make donations to think tanks in Israel, and stated that "it is most critical at this time for Israel to focus on healing and national unity.”

Says the banker for division here and in Israel.

[GoCubsGo]

This is ugly and about to get uglier.

[Whack9]

Ugh man the videos popping up all over the internets. Not good.

[GoCubsGo]

Ugh man the videos popping up all over the internets. Not good.

Yeah, Israel is hardly faultless in this mess, but this is next level.

[billy.pilgrim]

Ugh man the videos popping up all over the internets. Not good.

Yeah, Israel is hardly faultless in this mess, but this is next level.

You can only treat others as something less than equal for so long before everything blows up.
Before the Israelis who believe this Chosen People crap get any support from me, they must give up and apologize for the evil they have caused by strutting around like some damn banty rooster claiming they're better than everyone else.
Oh, and - same to ya christians
And you too, muslims.

caused

[Vrede too]

You can only treat others as something less than equal for so long before everything blows up.
Before the Israelis who believe this Chosen People crap get any support from me, they must give up and apologize for the evil they have caused by strutting around like some damn banty rooster claiming they're better than everyone else.
Oh, and - same to ya christians
And you too, muslims.

caused

Email:

Starting today, Optimum announces free calling and texting from the United States to Israel on its Optimum phone and Optimum Mobile services until further notice, enabling customers to connect with family and loved ones during this unsettling time....

That's nice, but it's not been done for any other disasters, including the very recent 10K+ dead in Libya and Morocco, or the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes that killed scores of thousands.

Aha, Optimum is owned by:

Altice USA, Inc., commonly known as Altice, is an American cable television provider with headquarters in New York City, owned by the Franco-Israeli businessman Patrick Drahi....

Were you making a point about bias towards particular religions/cultures and apartheid, billy.pilgrim?

[billy.pilgrim]

You can only treat others as something less than equal for so long before everything blows up.
Before the Israelis who believe this Chosen People crap get any support from me, they must give up and apologize for the evil they have caused by strutting around like some damn banty rooster claiming they're better than everyone else.
Oh, and - same to ya christians
And you too, muslims.

caused

Email:

Starting today, Optimum announces free calling and texting from the United States to Israel on its Optimum phone and Optimum Mobile services until further notice, enabling customers to connect with family and loved ones during this unsettling time....

That's nice, but it's not been done for any other disasters, including the very recent 10K+ dead in Libya and Morocco, or the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes that killed scores of thousands.

Aha, Optimum is owned by:

Altice USA, Inc., commonly known as Altice, is an American cable television provider with headquarters in New York City, owned by the Franco-Israeli businessman Patrick Drahi....

Were you making a point about bias towards particular religions/cultures and apartheid, billy.pilgrim?

My email to Optimum might go something like this, screw apartheid governments and the assholes who support them.
Oh, and cancel my service.

[Whack9]

Hamas massacred about 250 people attending a music festival:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-e ... %20hostage.

More than 250 bodies have reportedly been recovered from the festival site, according to rescue agency Zaka, quoted by Israeli media.

I am reaffirmed in my belief that religion is trash. I think Hamas probably also killed a lot of sympathy for the plight of Palestinians as well.

[Vrede too]

Hamas massacred about 250 people attending a music festival:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67047034

More than 250 bodies have reportedly been recovered from the festival site, according to rescue agency Zaka, quoted by Israeli media.

I'm reminded of 2017 Las Vegas.

I am reaffirmed in my belief that religion is trash. I think Hamas probably also killed a lot of sympathy for the plight of Palestinians as well.

Yup. Nuttyyahoo and the RW are loving this, as are RW Israel allies in the US and Islamophobes in Europe and everywhere. Conspiracy theorists might suggest that there was intentional obliviousness rather than an intel "failure".

[Vrede too]

Ugh man the videos popping up all over the internets. Not good.

Yeah, Israel is hardly faultless in this mess, but this is next level.

Socialist rally in Times Square praising Hamas terror attack draws widespread condemnation
Speakers mocked slain civilians and called for the elimination of Israel

For decades the Democratic Socialists of America have been leaders in progressive thought and action. I never joined, but I worked with them at a local level many times. I am fine with excoriating terrorist Israel's apartheid policy and action. However, that does NOT equate to defending and cheering Hamas terrorism. This demo could be and IMO should be the end of DSA. There's no walking this back.

[GoCubsGo]

Ugh man the videos popping up all over the internets. Not good.

Yeah, Israel is hardly faultless in this mess, but this is next level.

Socialist rally in Times Square praising Hamas terror attack draws widespread condemnation
Speakers mocked slain civilians and called for the elimination of Israel

For decades the Democratic Socialists of America have been leaders in progressive thought and action. I never joined, but I worked with them at a local level many times. I am fine with excoriating terrorist Israel's apartheid policy and action. However, that does NOT equate to defending and cheering Hamas terrorism. This demo could be and IMO should be the end of DSA. There's no walking this back.

I don't know if this is true or not, but there are multiple reports of this type of atrocity being circulated which leads me to think there's something to it.

Hamas is begging for their own extinction, the problem is they're surrounded by civilians and weeding them out is near impossible.

[Vrede too]

https://twitter.com/IsraelWarRoom/statu ... 4446225910

I don't know if this is true or not, but there are multiple reports of this type of atrocity being circulated which leads me to think there's something to it.

Hamas is begging for their own extinction, the problem is they're surrounded by civilians and weeding them out is near impossible.

Some atrocities are posted by Hamas, itself. For example:

Israel-Hamas war: Grandmother killed, Hamas uses her phone to post to Facebook

... “A terrorist came home to her, killed her, took her phone, filmed the horror and published it on her Facebook wall. This is how we found out....

Who does that?

[Vrede too]

NC represent!

NC gubernatorial candidate accused of antisemitism says people need to start reading Hitler quotes
Mark Robinson, the Republican frontrunner for governor in 2024, spoke at a Moms for Liberty gathering

... Robinson, currently lieutenant governor, recently likened the current political climate in the U.S. to Nazi-era Germany and compared his political opponents to Hitler. He also veered into Holocaust denial, writing in a social media post that the “liberal media deliberately focuses on the topic of the Nazi and their purported murder of ‘6 million Jews’ for a specific purpose.” ...

NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson downplays past remarks about Jews, declares Israel solidarity week
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, acting as governor while Gov. Roy Cooper is in Japan, decried an 'unprovoked and unjustified invasion' by Hamas against Israel. He also defended past statements about Jews as 'poorly worded' but not antisemitic.

... Robinson in a past Facebook post called reports of the Holocaust "hogwash." In a separate 2017 post, he implied that the widely accepted figure of 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis is false.

In 2019 Robinson went on a podcast hosted by an alleged cult leader, where he endorsed the host's conspiracy theory that Jewish bankers are one of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," along with Muslims, China and the CIA.

"That’s exactly right," Robinson told the podcast host. "It’s amazing to me that we live in this age of information where you can go online and you can find all this information, and it’s not hidden from anybody.”

WNC represent!

Man arrested for allegedly making anti-Semitic threats to synagogue, charged with cyberstalking



... On Wednesday, Oct. 11, Asheville Police Department detectives arrested Michael Patrick Toone, age 44 (04/07/1979), following an investigation and charged him with cyberstalking.

Toone was booked into the Buncombe County Detention Facility on a $5,000 secured bond, but after a bond hearing, the Buncombe County district court judge doubled his bond to $10,000 secured....

Meanwhile:

Omar and Tlaib Are Condemned in the US for Saying What Prominent Israelis Are Saying
The White House is ripping Squad members for proposing de-escalation and diplomacy to stop the killing of Israelis and Palestinians.

... “We believe they’re wrong. We believe they’re repugnant and we believe they’re disgraceful,” Jean-Pierre said. “Our condemnation belongs squarely with terrorists who have brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped, hundreds, hundreds of Israelis. There can be no equivocation about that. There are not two sides here. There are not two sides.”

It's not just the Squad here. Jean-Pierre is spitting on many American progressives and anti-bigots.

... Consider Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and top adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who told the BBC, “If anyone told me that what the militants did on the weekend was a legitimate response to years and years of occupation. I would say: ‘No, you’re wrong-headed. You’ve lost sight of humanity and reality.’ And if anyone tells me that what Israel is doing in Gaza today is a legitimate response to what happened on the weekend, it’s exactly the same.”

... Widely read and referenced, Haaretz is very much a part of the debate in Israel.

Often bluntly so. Hours after the October 7 attack, the newspaper’s editorial declared, “The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing [extreme right-wingers] to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.”

Several other sane and non-knee jerk bloodthirsty Israelis are cited.

Plenty of Israeli readers disagreed with the editorial, just as plenty of Americans disagree with calls for de-escalation from Omar and Tlaib, the only two Muslim women currently serving in Congress.

But to dismiss the views of Omar, Tlaib, and other dissenting voices in Congress by saying, “There are not two sides here…” is to reject the reality that there are many sides to the debate in Israel, in Palestine, and in the United States. Labeling arguments that recognize the humanity of everyone involved, and that propose strategies for breaking cycles of violence, as sickening and “repugnant” diminishes reasoned debate at a point when it is more necessary than ever.

I agree, and Joe-hawk.

[O Really]

" Jean-Pierre said. “Our condemnation belongs squarely with terrorists who have brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped, hundreds, hundreds of Israelis. There can be no equivocation about that. There are not two sides here. There are not two sides.”

Yes but there are. There may not be two defensible sides, but whether one considers Hamas to be just an adventure club with a political view or a bunch of blood-thirsty savages, they are a force that must be dealt with. The real question shouldn't be who is "right" but what is the most effective way of dealing with them in order to reduce the danger to Israeli and Gaza non-combatant residents. Of course, it's easy to say all Hamas people should be rounded up and killed, but could you really do that, and if you think so, then explain how. It isn't like Hamas is an official and lawfully installed government. They're terrorists, or at most kind, organized international criminals. Or you could say "what if we give them enough to make them behave?" Well, could you give them enough, and if so, what would that be? Could you beat them down enough to get a surrender? Nope on that one - these people haven't surrendered to anybody in millenia. And what do you expect from a siege? Are you really going to literally starve two million people? And if you don't starve them all, are the survivors likely to be receptive to your "peace"?

Too many people who should know better keep looking for easy answers. There aren't any.

[billy.pilgrim]

" Jean-Pierre said. “Our condemnation belongs squarely with terrorists who have brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped, hundreds, hundreds of Israelis. There can be no equivocation about that. There are not two sides here. There are not two sides.”

Yes but there are. There may not be two defensible sides, but whether one considers Hamas to be just an adventure club with a political view or a bunch of blood-thirsty savages, they are a force that must be dealt with. The real question shouldn't be who is "right" but what is the most effective way of dealing with them in order to reduce the danger to Israeli and Gaza non-combatant residents. Of course, it's easy to say all Hamas people should be rounded up and killed, but could you really do that, and if you think so, then explain how. It isn't like Hamas is an official and lawfully installed government. They're terrorists, or at most kind, organized international criminals. Or you could say "what if we give them enough to make them behave?" Well, could you give them enough, and if so, what would that be? Could you beat them down enough to get a surrender? Nope on that one - these people haven't surrendered to anybody in millenia. And what do you expect from a siege? Are you really going to literally starve two million people? And if you don't starve them all, are the survivors likely to be receptive to your "peace"?

Too many people who should know better keep looking for easy answers. There aren't any.

Too many people are only looking for war and profit.

There was almost no media coverage that I saw, but what about the annual or maybe it's bi-annual event when the something-day parade has some ten thousand or so young jews taking the long parade route so they can pass the most possible Palestinian homes and businesses where they throw rocks, break windows and chant Death to All Muslims.
I think the last one was March or April.

[Vrede too]

Too many people are only looking for war and profit.

There was almost no media coverage that I saw, but what about the annual or maybe it's bi-annual event when the something-day parade has some ten thousand or so young jews taking the long parade route so they can pass the most possible Palestinian homes and businesses where they throw rocks, break windows and chant Death to All Muslims.
I think the last one was March or April.

May.

Israeli crowds chant racist slogans, taunt Palestinians during Jerusalem Day march

[Vrede too]

" Jean-Pierre said. 'Our condemnation belongs squarely with terrorists who have brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped, hundreds, hundreds of Israelis. There can be no equivocation about that. There are not two sides here. There are not two sides.'”

Yes but there are. There may not be two defensible sides, but whether one considers Hamas to be just an adventure club with a political view or a bunch of blood-thirsty savages, they are a force that must be dealt with. The real question shouldn't be who is "right" but what is the most effective way of dealing with them in order to reduce the danger to Israeli and Gaza non-combatant residents. Of course, it's easy to say all Hamas people should be rounded up and killed, but could you really do that, and if you think so, then explain how. It isn't like Hamas is an official and lawfully installed government. They're terrorists, or at most kind, organized international criminals. Or you could say "what if we give them enough to make them behave?" Well, could you give them enough, and if so, what would that be? Could you beat them down enough to get a surrender? Nope on that one - these people haven't surrendered to anybody in millenia. And what do you expect from a siege? Are you really going to literally starve two million people? And if you don't starve them all, are the survivors likely to be receptive to your "peace"?

Too many people who should know better keep looking for easy answers. There aren't any.

viewtopic.php?p=190515#p190515

... Given the degree of atrocity and Israel's never forgive - never forget mindset, I'd agree with billy.p (The Intercept) that "genocide" is a good term.

Israel calls for all civilians to leave Gaza City

Israel's military on Friday called for all civilians of Gaza City, more than 1 million people, to relocate south within 24 hours, as it amassed tanks near the Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground invasion....

The United Nations said it considered it impossible for such a movement of people to take place "without devastating humanitarian consequences."

... The Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people, is under siege by Israel, which has pounded Hamas targets in the enclave and killed more than 1,500 Palestinians in retaliatory attacks since the weekend incursions.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said fuel powering emergency generators at hospitals in Gaza could run out within hours and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned food and fresh water were running dangerously low.

"The human misery caused by this escalation is abhorrent, and I implore the sides to reduce the suffering of civilians," ICRC regional director Fabrizio Carboni said.

Genocide

... Like others across the globe, Blinken urged Israel to show restraint, but he also reiterated America's support, saying: "We will always be there by your side."

... The U.S. military is placing no conditions on its security assistance to Israel, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, adding Washington expected Israel's military to "do the right things" in prosecuting its war against Hamas.

Austin was due in Israel on Friday and planned to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Abetting genocide

... In Gaza's main southern city Khan Younis, where cemeteries were already full, dead were being buried in empty lots, like the Samour family, killed on Wednesday night in a strike that hit their house.

Palestinian rescue worker Ibrahim Hamdan drove from one bomb site to another as his team tried to pull survivors from houses destroyed by the Israeli air strikes.

"This war is harsh beyond imagining," said Hamdan, who has worked through repeated wars since becoming a rescuer in 2007. "They knock down high-rise buildings on top of their residents."

Gazans, mainly descendants of refugees who fled or were expelled from homes in Israel at its founding in 1948, have suffered economic collapse and repeated Israeli bombardment under a blockade since Hamas seized power there 16 years ago.

Palestinian anger has mounted in recent months, with Israel carrying out the deadliest crackdown for years in the West Bank and its right-wing government talking of seizing more land. A peace process meant to create a Palestinian state collapsed a decade ago, which Palestinian leaders say left the population with no hope, strengthening extremists.

Genocide