As Palestinians pushes for statehood, Israel finds itself more isolated by Niki2

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

In one of its most closely-watched rulings since its creation in 1948, the United Nations’ top court issued a series of orders to Israel to protect Palestinians in Gaza to prevent genocide there.

Here is a look at the six so-called provisional measures, issued Friday by a panel of 17 judges at the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands. The decision was one step in a broader case that the court is considering about South Africa’s accusation that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel denies the allegation.

1. The court ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope” of the U.N. convention on genocide. Referring to protecting Palestinian civilians, the court said Israel should work to prevent “killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” Approved in a 15-2 vote.

2. The court ordered Israel to “ensure with immediate effect that its military does not commit any acts described in point 1 above.” Approved in a 15-2 vote.

3. The court said Israel “shall take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.” Approved in a 16-1 vote.

4. Israel was ordered to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Approved in a 16-1 vote.

5. The court ordered Israel to “take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope” of the relevant articles in the genocide convention. Approved in a 15-2 vote.

6. The court said Israel “shall submit a report to the court on all measures taken to give effect to this order within one month as from the date of this order.” Approved in a 15-2 vote.

https://apnews.com/article/icj-ruling-israel-gaza-genocide-3fa0908d995
cc104e8ab4674f5ee75cc

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Friday, January 26, 2024 12:42 PM

Fuck the UN.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Saturday, January 27, 2024 8:16 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Fuck the UN.

Updated 1:08 PM EST, Fri January 26, 2024

The clip of Hala’s killing is one of a growing number that show unarmed civilians holding white flags being shot dead in Gaza. The Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has said that they are investigating nine such incidents. CNN has examined four cases, including that of Hala Khreis.

CNN made multiple attempts to sit down with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to share its findings. They told CNN on Friday that “the incident is being examined,” and, when pressed further, said they were referring to al-Mawasi. They did not say if the other incidents are being investigated.

The incident in al-Mawasi, a coastal town in southern Gaza previously designated a “safe zone” by the IDF, took place earlier this week. Ramzi Abu Sahloul, 51, was among a group of five men, their hands raised and brandishing a white flag. Sahloul told Ahmed Hijazi, a Palestinian journalist, that they were trying to get back to a house where his brother was being held back by Israeli soldiers to plead for his release. Moments after interviewing him, Hijazi filmed two Israeli tanks in the distance, beyond a raised bank, and then Sahloul being fatally shot in the chest. The impact of the first round is visible in the footage and appears to come from the direction of the tanks.

Among the most widely reported of the incidents CNN looked at was the shooting of three Israeli hostages, whom the IDF admitted to killing, mistakenly believing their surrender was a trap. The IDF has repeatedly claimed that it is doing everything in its power to avoid harming civilians, but its soldiers shot hostages waving a white flag, violating its rules of engagement and raising questions about those efforts.

Another video, previously reported by CNN, shows a young man on the ground after being shot while trying to evacuate Gaza City. His father, holding a white flag, could be seen crying over his body. The footage doesn’t show the moment he was shot, and the IDF did not reply to CNN’s request for comment.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/middleeast/hala-khreis-white-flag-shoot
ing-gaza-cmd-intl/index.html

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Sunday, January 28, 2024 1:47 PM

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The Importance of the I.C.J. Ruling on Israel

The court did not order a ceasefire, but its finding that Israel is the subject of “plausible” claims that it is in violation of the Genocide Convention is momentous, an international-law expert says.

By Isaac Chotiner | January 27, 2024

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-importance-of-the-icj-rulin
g-on-israel

On Friday, the International Court of Justice, in The Hague—one of the six principal parts of the United Nations—found that Israel must take action to prevent genocidal violence by its armed forces; “prevent and punish” the incitement to genocide; and insure that humanitarian aid to Gaza is increased. South Africa had accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza during the war that began in response to Hamas’s October 7th terrorist attack. (Twelve hundred people were killed in that attack; more than twenty-five thousand Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment.)

The ruling of the I.C.J.—which is distinct from the International Criminal Court—fell short of finding Israel guilty of having committed genocide, but such a decision could take years; South Africa had also urged the court to order an immediate ceasefire, which it did not do. (The court does not have an enforcement mechanism.) But the I.C.J. still found cause for great concern about Israel’s military actions, and also the statements of its leaders. “At least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza,” the court found, “appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the [Genocide] Convention.”

I recently spoke by phone with Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School and the director of the school’s Center for Global Legal Challenges. She is also a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the likely impact of the ruling, why the court was not going to make a definitive ruling on genocide so quickly, and why the court’s judgment should be considered surprising.

How do you understand what this decision is saying?

I think what this decision is saying is that Israel has engaged in acts that could plausibly constitute violations of the Genocide Convention—both genocidal acts and perhaps incitement to genocide—and that there’s enough here that’s been alleged, that those allegations are plausible. So they haven’t found that genocide has necessarily taken place, but the situation is dire enough that it is necessary for the court to issue these provisional measures.

So it’s a pretty big blockbuster, I think, because the court is finding that Israel, which of course is a state that was created after World War Two, for the protection of those who had been subject to the horrors of the Holocaust, is the subject of plausible claims that it is in violation of the Genocide Convention, which was a convention that, in large part, was created for the purposes of condemning and attempting to prevent genocides like the Holocaust from ever happening again. So this is a momentous decision.

There has been disappointment from some Palestinians, and from some supporters of the Palestinian cause, that this was not labelled genocide right now. Is that something that should have been seen as a realistic possibility?

That was never on the table. What South Africa was asking here is for provisional measures, and when the court is making a decision on provisional measures, it’s not making a decision on whether the merits demonstrate the claims that are made by the applicant have been proved, because it doesn’t have any of the evidence in front of it. It just has arguments of the two sides in front of it. All that it is being asked to do is determine whether the allegations that are being made could plausibly constitute a violation of the Genocide Convention and, moreover, that the situation is dire enough that the court should act to preserve its capacity to actually render a decision on the merits, because that’s necessary in order to prevent the rights at issue in the case from being violated.

What does that mean in practice when you say “preserve its capacity to actually render a decision on the merits”?

The idea behind it is that the court is going to take time to actually contemplate the claims that are being made in the case, and typically an I.C.J. case takes years to come to a final decision on the merits. And in a case like that, then the question becomes, Well, if we wait years before we render a decision on the case, it may be that all the damage is done, and the thing that the litigants are trying to prevent, that the applicant is trying to prevent, it’ll just be too late. And, in particular, in the case of a genocide, it’s pretty obvious. If there’s a claim that there’s a genocide ongoing, and the court says, “O.K., we will accept your papers and we’re not going to render a decision for two years,” at that point, the genocide will have taken place, and there’s no rolling back the clock and resurrecting the people who’ve been subject to the genocide.

So the purpose of this process is to say, “Has South Africa said enough here that we think that there could be violations of the Genocide Convention, if these allegations are eventually proved when we get to the merits of the case, and are we persuaded that the situation is dire enough that it calls for us to issue provisional measures, in order to preserve the right to the parties so that, by the time we get to the merits, those rights have not been so obliterated that our issuing of a merits decision is going to have no practical effect at all?” So that’s where we are, we’re at that very preliminary stage, and that’s why they were able to make a decision in two weeks, based just literally on the submissions of the parties and no introduction of any kind of evidence at all that you would expect.

When you said there was no chance that they would rule on the question of genocide, is that something that was explicitly known at the outset?

The International Court of Justice follows its own procedures, and people who are not used to following the court, and are tuning in for the first time, might not understand how its decision-making works, and may not realize that what was happening here was a call for provisional measures, which is a certain procedural process that is never asking the court to make a decision as to whether genocide has in fact taken place. And even someone who may have tuned in to the arguments that were made when South Africa was detailing all of the events that it argues constitute genocidal acts, one could listen to that and think, Oh, this is calling on the court to decide that in fact there has been genocide. So I understand the misunderstanding.

But if you listen closely to those oral arguments, South Africa said very explicitly that the court didn’t have to make a decision as to whether genocide was established. It simply had to decide that there was enough of a basis to come to the conclusion that there could be, that there’s a plausible case made that there are violations of the Genocide Convention. And this is important, I’ll note, because genocide is extraordinarily difficult to prove. And I think people might be understating the importance of this decision because they think that somehow it’s obvious that genocide is taking place here, and so it’s a bit of a yawn to say that they’re plausible allegations.

Can you then tell us why it’s so hard to prove, and also what the Genocide Convention is?

The Genocide Convention is a treaty that was entered into by states after World War Two, and after the Holocaust, which prohibits states from engaging in genocide. And, really, it in many ways invented the term “genocide,” the idea that destruction of a group in whole or in part is a crime in and of itself, and one of the most heinous crimes that can be committed was really a process of invention. It’s easy to forget that that was not really understood to be a crime until not long before the Genocide Convention was put in place.

And the Genocide Convention identifies the commission of certain acts as genocidal acts, including killing a group in whole or in part. And it requires establishing not only that those acts were committed but that they were done with the specific intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. And that specific-intent requirement makes genocide extraordinarily hard to prove because you have to show not only that they’ve killed a lot of people, or that they’ve made life difficult, if not impossible to live for a group of people, but also that they meant to do it, and that they were doing it.

The language is “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.” The “as such” is what you are referring to, right?

Yes.

And I assume that’s also why the court takes note of comments from Israeli leaders, because I assume that that goes to the “as such,” which is, I think, one of the broad reasons when people look at genocide, they often turn to the rhetoric of leaders of the state accused of carrying it out, correct?

Right. The court makes several important findings here. One is that Palestinians are a group that is protected by the Genocide Convention, and that the Palestinians in Gaza are a substantial part of that protected group, and therefore acts that are taken against the Palestinians could be a violation of the Genocide Convention because it could be acts that destroy a group in whole or in part. And then the question is: How do you prove intent? Well, you can prove intent in part through circumstantial evidence, like actions taken to make life unlivable in that territory for the people who live there. And the court takes some notice of various kinds of allegations that have been made about the conditions of life for people in Gaza, but then it also looks to the statements of Israeli officials as a way of providing some evidence that there could be specific intent.

They don’t have to determine that it in fact has happened here. But I think they detailed those comments as a way of making clear that in the court’s view there was enough there, in the application and in the public evidence, that suggests that it is possible that Israel in fact has that genocidal intent.

Now, this was the hardest part for South Africa from the get-go, to show that there was this specific intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. Partly because one way in which Israel can and has defended itself is to say, “Look, we are not trying to destroy Palestinians as a group in whole and in part. What we are trying to do is defend ourselves, and it’s Hamas’s fault that these civilians are in the way, and that they are being killed. But that’s not our specific intent to do so, and certainly not to destroy in whole or in part.” And what’s interesting here, I thought that there was a chance that that argument was going to hold sway with a number of judges, and it turns out it held sway with only one of the seventeen, who was persuaded that there wasn’t enough alleged here to support a claim of genocidal intent. But, with the sixteen others, including, interestingly, the judge appointed by Israel, and he found in favor of some of the provisional measures—not all of them—which suggests that he believed that there were enough allegations that, at least, some of the acts alleged could amount to genocide, which includes not just the genocidal acts but specific intent. So, to me, that was a very striking finding.

In the case of Russia and Ukraine, which the court also ruled on a while back, it did order a ceasefire. Why not here?

Yeah, it did. And these are two very different opinions, and two very different cases. So the Russia vs. Ukraine case was a case where Ukraine brought the case against Russia under the Genocide Convention. And what the case said was: Russia had launched this war against us, and Russia claimed that it was entitled to launch this war because we, Ukraine, were engaging in genocidal acts in the eastern part of Ukraine, and that those are false allegations, and that claim is the basis for the invasion, and so we’re calling on the court to determine that that is not a legitimate basis for the invasion by Russia, and that the invasion therefore is unlawful and a violation of international law.

And so the court in its provisional orders there said exactly that. It said there’s no plausible claim here that there was any genocide being committed by Ukraine, and so to the extent that Russia’s invasion has been justified, in order to bring an end to a supposed genocide, it needs to stop that invasion because there was no genocide for it to stop. Now, this is a very different kind of case, because this is a case where no one really disputes that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas.

And the court calls for the return and release of the hostages being held by Hamas currently as well.

Yes, it did. I don’t think that it was ever reasonable to expect the court to say: Israel has to stop all fighting altogether. And I don’t think that’s reasonable to have expected because Israel does have a right to self-defense. But the question is not whether they have a right to self-defense. In this case, the question is whether it’s consistent with the Genocide Convention. Now, it’s worth noting that because this case gets into the court only under the Genocide Convention, and it does so because the Genocide Convention has a provision within it that says any disputes under the Genocide Convention can be brought to the International Court of Justice. We don’t have in front of us, in this case, any claims about international humanitarian law or the Geneva Conventions, which is a separate body of law that’s relevant but is not really in front of the court.

So it seems like what you’re saying is that there’s nothing inconsistent about the court saying that it’s plausible that acts of genocide occurred, and are occurring, and that the court is not going to call for a ceasefire.

They’re not incompatible, because what the court is saying is that we’re not going to order a ceasefire, but Israel is obligated to take these specific acts and to carry out its ongoing conflict that’s consistent with the Genocide Convention. And it goes on to provide a number of other specific measures that Israel needs to take in the course of defending itself. So I think if they had said, “You can’t defend yourself. There has to be a ceasefire,” I think Israel would have responded, and I think it would’ve had a lot of sympathy to this response that it’s not within the court’s power to say that the state doesn’t have a right to self-defense, because, under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, states have the right to engage in defense of themselves, and no one has suggested otherwise here. It’s just that they can’t do that in ways that violate international law.

How do you view this decision, historically?

I think it is important, particularly coming on the heels of some other decisions by the I.C.J. There was a case that Gambia brought against Myanmar, which was also under the Genocide Convention, and another prior case that was brought by the Netherlands and Canada against Syria, where the court accepted a new form of standing, which is also the form of standing that’s been used by South Africa here, which basically means that, if there is an obligation owed to all state parties to a convention like the Genocide Convention, or the Torture Convention, that any state that’s party to that convention can bring in action in the I.C.J. if there’s an alleged violation of that convention, and hold that state to account.

And that’s a pretty revolutionary move for the court because it means that, even in cases where the applicant has no connection whatsoever to the events unfolding—and here South Africa doesn’t claim it has any connection to its claimed acts of genocide in Gaza—it can bring the state responsible for those actions to account in the I.C.J., and have the I.C.J. render a decision as to whether it is violating international law. And this really reaffirms that this is a new term for the court, that the court is prepared to do this on a regular basis. And, even in cases where you’ve got states with very powerful supporters—like Israel, of course, has a very powerful support in the United States—it’s willing to wade into some extremely hot political situations, and try to bring the reason of law to those situations.

It also could be an important step forward for the law because it gives a way of enforcing international human-rights obligations that, previously, there was no obvious way in which those obligations would be enforced.

Enforcing them or calling attention to them?

That’s a fair question. Enforcing them in the sense of holding to account the state that’s responsible for those actions and ordering them to act consistent with the law, and finding that the specific actions that they’re taking are inconsistent with their treaty obligations, and giving specific orders as to how they’re supposed to respond. There is this further question that I think your question suggests, which is: Well, then who’s going to enforce that? So they’re breaking the law already, which is to say they can just ignore this opinion, and I think you’re right to ask that question. We’re going to see, I think, in the coming weeks, how Israel responds to this. And one possible course Israel might take is to decide to ignore it or to play it down. And then the question is going to be how other states respond to that, and, in particular, how the United States responds to that.

Because a decision like this can, by itself, have a really significant impact, even if you don’t have, say, the Security Council ordering something. Even if that doesn’t happen, a decision that there are plausible claims that Israel is in violation of the Genocide Convention, in the way in which it’s waging this war, should have a serious impact on states that are supporting Israel in this war, and in particular the United States, which is providing military assistance. A decision can lead them to ask the question as to whether they are potentially in violation of their own legal obligations by continuing to support Israel with military assistance. So, even if Israel is determined to ignore this decision, this decision could still have a significant impact on Israel, depending on how other states respond to it.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Wednesday, January 31, 2024 10:13 PM

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Unless Israel changes course, it could be legally culpable for mass starvation

By Alex de Waal | Wed 31 Jan 2024 06.01 EST

Alex de Waal is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/31/israel-gaza-star
vation-international-law

Gaza is experiencing mass starvation like no other in recent history. Before the outbreak of fighting in October, food security in Gaza was precarious, but very few children – less than 1% – suffered severe acute malnutrition, the most dangerous kind. Today, almost all Gazans, of any age, anywhere in the territory, are at risk.

There is no instance since the second world war in which an entire population has been reduced to extreme hunger and destitution with such speed. And there’s no case in which the international obligation to stop it has been so clear.

These facts underpinned South Africa’s recent case against Israel at the international court of justice. The international genocide convention, article 2c, prohibits “deliberately inflicting [on a group] conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.

In ordering provisional measures to prevent potential genocide last Friday, the ICJ didn’t rule on whether Israel is actually committing genocide – that will take years of deliberation – but the judges made it clear that the people of Gaza face “conditions of life” in which their survival is in question. Even Justice Aharon Barak, appointed by Israel to sit on the panel, voted in favour of immediate humanitarian relief.

But a humanitarian disaster such as Gaza’s today is like a speeding freight train. Even if the driver puts on the brakes, its momentum will take it many miles before it stops. Palestinian children in Gaza will die, in the thousands, even if the barriers to aid are lifted today.

Starvation is a process. Famine can be its ultimate outcome, unless stopped in time. The methodology used to categorize food emergencies is called the integrated food security phase classification system, or IPC. It’s a five-point scale, running from normal (phase 1), stressed, crisis, and emergency, to catastrophe/famine (phase 5).

In categorizing food emergencies, the IPC draws on three measurements: families’ access to food; child malnutrition; and the numbers of people dying over and above normal rates. “Emergency” (phase 4) already sees children dying. For a famine declaration, all three measures need to pass a certain threshold; if only one is in that zone, it’s “catastrophe”.

The IPC’s famine review committee is an independent group of experts who assess evidence for the most extreme food crises, akin to a high court of the world humanitarian system. The committee has already assessed that the entirety of Gaza is under conditions of “emergency”. Many areas in the territory are already in “catastrophe”, it said, and might reach “famine” by early February.

Yet whether or not conditions are bad enough for an official declaration of “famine” is less important than the situation today, which is already killing children. Bear in mind that malnutrition makes humans’ immune systems more vulnerable to diseases sparked by lack of clean water and sanitation, and that those diseases are accelerated by overcrowding in unhealthy camps.

Since the IPC was adopted 20 years ago, there have been major food emergencies in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia’s Tigray region, north-east Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen. Compared to Gaza, these have unfolded slowly, over periods of a year or more. They have stricken larger populations spread over wider areas. Hundreds of thousands died, most of them in emergencies that didn’t cross the bar of famine.

And in the most notorious famines of the late 20th century – in China, Cambodia, Nigeria’s Biafra and Ethiopia – the numbers who died were far higher, but the starvation was also slower and more dispersed.

Never before Gaza have today’s humanitarian professionals seen such a high proportion of the population descend so rapidly towards catastrophe.

All modern famines are directly or indirectly man-made – sometimes by indifference to suffering or dysfunction, other times by war crimes, and in a few cases by genocide.

Much more at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/31/israel-gaza-star
vation-international-law

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Monday, February 5, 2024 5:16 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Hey! Let's expand the war!

We can attack Syria and Iraq while Israel attacks Hezbollah.

What could possibly go wrong?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Sunday, February 11, 2024 4:31 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

What the Israeli Public Doesn’t See

In largely ignoring the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the Israeli media both shapes and reflects public opinion.

By Elisheva Goldberg | February 7, 2024

https://jewishcurrents.org/what-the-israeli-public-doesnt-see

On January 29th, The Nightly News with Michal Rabinovitch—which airs on Israel’s public broadcaster, known as Kan—ran a series of stories that were broadly representative of the channel’s programming over the past few months. A story about diplomatic progress toward a prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas was followed by a report on the rockets launched into Israel’s interior from the Gazan city of Khan Younis; the segment included video from inside Hamas tunnels and footage captured by soldiers’ body cameras as they fought house to house. Next came a story about how Israeli soldiers were failing to open fire—as, the panelists emphasized, they had instructions to do—on any Gazan approaching the “buffer zone” along the border with Israel; that day, five Hamas fighters had come within 500 meters of an Israeli town, generating fear of another infiltration. The show then turned to coverage of Israeli politics, interviews with young war widows, a story about a car-ramming attack that day at an army base in Haifa, video of Israeli protesters trying to stop humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, and, finally, a profile of struggling businesses in the north, near the border with Lebanon. In the middle, it cut to a nine-minute briefing by Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman.

Notably absent from this coverage of the war and its reverberations was any mention of the killing of Palestinian civilians, or of the perils now facing the more than 2 million people trapped in the besieged enclave—including not only Israel’s military campaign, but also famine, thirst, displacement, and lack of medical care. In most Israeli media coverage, “it is as if [Palestinian civilians] don’t exist,” Gideon Levy, a reporter for the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz, which has covered the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, told the progressive American news program Democracy Now!. On international news networks, “you see Gaza. You see children dying on the dirty floors of the hospitals, bleeding to death. You see the uprooted people, you see the destruction, you see the suffering . . . and the starvation,” Levy said. “In Israel you see only the soldiers, only the hostages.”

Some media analysts have warned that this absence is shaping Israeli public opinion. A poll released by Tel Aviv University’s Peace Index and the Israel Democracy Institute in mid-November showed that a majority of Israeli Jews — 57.5% — believed Israeli forces were using insufficient firepower in Gaza, while another 36.6% thought the military was using the correct amount of force, and just 1.8% thought it was using too much.

Much more at https://jewishcurrents.org/what-the-israeli-public-doesnt-see

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Monday, February 12, 2024 1:23 AM

Fuck Palestine.

Fuck Israel too.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 3:55 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

How Israel’s war went wrong

In one case the Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas military commander.

Over a dozen experts about the war back in October warned that Israel had a dangerously loose understanding of what the war was about. The stated aim of “destroying Hamas” was at once maximalist and open-ended: It wasn’t clear how it could be accomplished or what limit there might be on the means used in its pursuit.

Generally, just war theorists believe that war cannot be ethically waged without having “reasonable prospects for success.” The logic is intuitive: War inevitably involves a lot of killing, and killing can only be justified if it accomplishes a greater good. If the objective behind the killing is impossible (or extremely implausible), then there is no greater good to be won from the bloodshed.

Walzer believes that many Israelis, traumatized by the events of October 7, did not fully appreciate how intermingled Hamas — the de facto government of Gaza — was with Gazan society. It’s an organization made up of not only tens of thousands of fighters, but also many civilian functionaries and a vast physical infrastructure. Truly destroying such an entity cannot reasonably be accomplished through force of arms alone — at least not without a yearslong military campaign and an unthinkable amount of civilian death.

More at https://www.vox.com/24055522/israel-hamas-gaza-war-strategy-netanyahu-
strategy-morality

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 10:48 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The death toll in Gaza

The cumulative death toll as of today is just over 29,000, about 1.3% of the total population of Gaza. Dead and injured come to just under 100,000, or 4.3% of the total population. https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-repo
rted-impact-day-137

On a population basis, that's six times the number of American casualties in all of World War II. During World War II the US suffered roughly 1 million dead and wounded out of a population of 136 million, for a casualty rate of 0.7 percent.

https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-the-death-toll-in-gaza-4/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, February 20, 2024 11:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The death toll in Gaza

The cumulative death toll as of today is just over 29,000, about 1.3% of the total population of Gaza. Dead and injured come to just under 100,000, or 4.3% of the total population.

I bet they'll think twice before ever paratrooping into a concert and picking off a bunch of unarmed civilians before taking the women and children, kidnapping and raping them.

Now if we only punished criminals in America maybe they'd think twice as well.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Monday, February 26, 2024 10:04 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

In shameless displays of social depravity, Israeli soldiers are looting Gaza homes en masse

February 25, 2024

https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2024/02/25/in-shameless-displays-of-s
ocial-depravity-israeli-soldiers-are-looting-gaza-homes-en-masse/

Oren Ziv reports:

Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza have not been shy about posting videos on social media gleefully documenting their wanton destruction of buildings and humiliation of Palestinian detainees. Some of these clips were even exhibited in South Africa’s presentation at the International Court of Justice last month as evidence of genocide. But there is another war crime being readily documented by Israeli soldiers that has garnered less attention and condemnation despite its prevalence: looting.

In November, the Palestinian singer Hamada Nasrallah was shocked to discover a TikTok of a soldier playing the guitar that his father had bought him 15 years earlier. Other videos uploaded to social media in recent months show Israeli soldiers boasting about finding wristwatches; unboxing someone’s collection of soccer shirts; and stealing rugs, groceries, and jewelry.

In a Facebook group for Israeli women comprising nearly 100,000 users, someone wondered what to do with the “gifts from Gaza” that her partner, a soldier, had brought back for her. Sharing a photo of cosmetic products, she wrote: “Everything is sealed except for one product. Would you use these? And does someone know the products or are they only in Gaza?”

Indeed, since the start of Israel’s ground invasion in late October, soldiers have been taking whatever they can get their hands on from the homes of Palestinians who have been forced to flee. More than an open secret, the phenomenon has been widely — and uncritically — reported in the Israeli media, while rabbis from the Religious Zionist movement have been answering soldiers’ questions about what is permissible to loot according to Jewish law.

A commonplace rationalization of amoral behavior by soldiers is that warfare can bring out the worst in people and yet the behavior of IDF soldiers in Gaza speaks to a much more deeply rooted issue: the debased character of Israeli society.

An abstract for Do Israelis Respect Human Dignity?, a policy paper by Alouph Hareven, published by The Israel Democracy Institute says:

Most Israelis share the perception that the condition of human dignity in Israel is problematic. There are of course tens of thousands of Israelis who daily practice the respect of human dignity – in their families, at work, in relationship to persons belonging to other groups. Yet, according to repeated public opinion surveys, most Israelis attach to “who is an Israeli” mainly qualities of rudeness, intolerance, incivility, and loudness.

Human dignity is harmed in Israel in several major areas:

• About one million Israelis live in families where the men use violence against their wives.

• In the rate of violence among young people, in schools, Israel is a leading country.

• In the rate of people killed in traffic accidents Israel, again, is one of the leading countries.

• Lack of respect, and humiliation of new immigrants is a major barrier to their integration in Israeli society.

• On many occasions there is a mutual lack of respect of human dignity in the relations between secular and religious Jews.

• There are many cases where human dignity is harmed inside the Israel Defense Forces, in the behavior of policemen, and in the behavior of public officials.

• The prevailing public view of the behavior of Knesset members is that most of them do not respect the human dignity of their colleagues.

• According to top security officials, and leading Palestinians, daily humiliation of Palestinians, by Israelis, has been a major cause of the Intifada and the seeking of revenge.

• Foreign workers in Israel, who number a few hundred thousand, also often suffer from humiliating behavior by their employees and other Israelis.

• Many Israeli tourists abroad – though of course not all of them – have through their rude behavior accorded a negative image to Israelis.

The basic law on Human Dignity and Freedom has thus far not contributed to a change in the behavior of most Israelis. Indeed, most of them have never even read the law. A core question for the future of Israel is therefore: How can we make the respect of human dignity a prevalent behavior?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Monday, February 26, 2024 10:18 AM

That's what happens when hostile invaders come in and murder unarmed civilians, and then kidnap and rape the women and children.

I wouldn't be so concerned about what's happening in Gaza now because it's going to start happening here too.

This is Laken Riley.

Joe Biden* murdered her. Democrats murdered her. You murdered her.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Tuesday, February 27, 2024 2:14 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Aaron Burned Himself To Make Us Look At Gaza

Like many readers here I feel helpless about the ongoing genocide against Palestinians committed by U.S. supported Zionist settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. I can not even find the right words to express myself about it.

Others are more consequential. And powerful. Disgust about the cruelty imposed on Palestinians can induce the utmost will to change things.

U.S. Air Force Member Sets Self on Fire Outside Israel’s Embassy in D.C. to Protest War in Gaza - Time, Feb 25 2024

An active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, in apparent protest of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which he described as a “genocide.”
...
The burn victim, who identified himself in video of the incident as 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell, reportedly succumbed to his injuries on Sunday night, according to independent journalist Talia Jane, who posted on social media that she is in contact with Bushnell’s family and friends.

Bushnell reportedly sent a message to media outlets before his planned self-immolation. “??Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people,”
he warned. ...

On Facebook Sunday morning, he also wrote:

“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

The post included a link to a live-stream of his protest on the web-broadcasting platform Twitch, which has since removed the video for violations of its community guidelines and terms of service.

“I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” the airman repeated, in footage reviewed by TIME, as he walked toward the driveway of the Israeli embassy.

“But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

After Bushnell doused himself with liquid and reached for his lighter, unidentified law enforcement or security officers could be heard asking off-screen, “Can I help you?” After setting himself aflame, he repeatedly shouted “Free Palestine.”

A security man decided to 'help' by pointing his gun on the dying man.

A censored video of the incident is here.

Rest in peace, Aaron Bushnell. Rest. In. Peace.

Posted by b on February 26, 2024 at 13:56 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/02/aaron-burned-himself-to-make-us-
look-at-gaza.html#more

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Tuesday, February 27, 2024 2:18 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
That's what happens when hostile invaders come in and murder unarmed civilians, and then kidnap and rape the women and children.

Oh, you mean like Israelis did to Palestinians?

Yeah, our Administrations, going back decades .... we seem to favor violent invaders. We tend to be them, too.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Saturday, March 2, 2024 8:03 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Biden’s planned airdrop of food to Gaza is a ‘major policy failure’ says former USAID official

March 1, 2024 From https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2024/03/01/bidens-planned-airdrop-of-
food-to-gaza-is-a-major-policy-failure-says-former-usaid-official/

The Independent reports:

Jeremy Konyndyk, who led USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance during the Obama administration and oversaw humanitarian air drops to Nepal, the Philippines and Iraq, described the potential US plan to drop aid by air as a “major policy failure” on the part of the Biden administration.

“When the US government has to use tactics that it otherwise used to circumvent the Soviets and Berlin and circumvent Isis in Syria and Iraq, that should prompt some really hard questions about the state of US policy,” he told The Independent.

The United Nations warned this week that some 576,000 people, or one quarter of Gaza’s population, are “one step away from famine.” It has also accused Israel of “systematically” blocking aid deliveries into Gaza and of opening fire on convoys that do make it through.

The US has repeatedly said it has been working behind the scenes to convince Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, but the amount of aid that has reached Gazans dropped by half in February compared to the previous month.

The dire conditions on the ground in Gaza were drawn into sharp relief on Wednesday when more than 100 Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd that was scrambling to collect aid from food trucks near Gaza City. The Israeli army said its forces had “fired at those who posed a threat” after some civilians rushed towards the trucks.

Mr Konyndyk, who is now president of Refugees International, told The Independent that airdrops are “the most expensive and least effective way to get aid to a population. We almost never did it because it is such an in extremis tool.”

He referenced his experience managing US airdrops to Yazidi civilians who were fleeing attacks from Isis fighters on the top of Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq in 2014. At the same time it was dropping aid, the US was also carrying out airstrikes against Isis fighters who were besieging the Yazidis.

Al-Monitor reports:

Scott Paul, who leads humanitarian policy at Oxfam America, said the airdrops would deliver only a symbolic amount of aid while being deeply degrading to the population.

Airdrops “would mostly serve to relieve the guilty consciences of senior US officials whose policies are contributing to the ongoing atrocities and risk of famine in Gaza,” Paul said in a statement.

Airdrops are an expensive and inefficient means of aid delivery compared to road convoys and carry the risk of aid diversion. Humanitarian organizations consider them a tool of last resort to reach a population that is not accessible by land.

Politico reports:

For close watchers of the Israel-Hamas conflict, which has raged following the militants’ Oct. 7 attack, the move to drop aid from the skies signals Biden can’t persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do more for suffering Palestinians.

“We look 100 percent weak,” said Dave Harden, a former humanitarian assistance coordinator at the U.S. Agency for International Development. “Administration officials are doing this just to make themselves feel better.”

The U.S. has many ways to influence Israeli actions, not least of which is to consider conditioning military aid for the country. Democrats in Congress have long suggested that Biden withhold new arms sales to Israel until Netanyahu addresses the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But Kirby, aware the U.S. is in talks with Israel on a new weapons delivery, on Friday reiterated the U.S. would continue to support Israel’s right to self-defense.

“To make matters even more baffling, we’re doing this while continuing to send weapons to the very military responsible for forcing us to conduct aid airdrops,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 3, 2024 2:51 AM

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-aid-convoy-gaza-ci
ty-dead-idf-opened-fire-rcna141195

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Meanwhile

Quote:
More than 100 killed as Israeli troops accused of opening fire on Gazans crowded around aid convoy
The incident came as the death toll Gaza surpassed 30,000 and amid surging fears of starvation in the north of the territory.

Quote:
Exclusive: Israeli forces fired on food convoy in Gaza, UN documents and satellite analysis reveals

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/21/middleeast/un-food-convoy-gaza-isra
el-strike-cmd-intl/index.html

Some say that Israel used food aid as bait.

Others say that Jewish settlers were right at the border of Northern Gaza, ready to takeover once Palestinians had been killed or forced out.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

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Tuesday, March 5, 2024 8:58 PM

JAYNEZTOWN

Trump breaks silence on Israel's military campaign in Gaza: 'Finish the problem'

https://www.aol.com/trump-breaks-silence-israels-military-220238048.ht
ml

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Thursday, March 7, 2024 2:19 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

More news on humanitarian aid to Gaza:

The U.S. military will build a temporary port and pier on Gaza’s coastline to provide a new route for humanitarian aid, President Biden is set to announce in his State of the Union address Thursday evening, according to senior administration officials. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said the plan is part of Biden’s orders to “flood the zone” with assistance arriving by air, land and sea.

This is late, but better late than never.

I realize the "free Palestine" crowd will never buy this, but I think it shows yet again Biden's basic human decency. He's obviously a longtime supporter of Israel and, regardless of the politics, feels strongly that Hamas needs to be destroyed. At the same time, he has slowly but inevitably come around to the view that Israel is deliberately starving the Gazans and the US can't allow that to happen.

He'll get credit from no one for this plan. Progressives will deride it as a token gesture against genocide while hawks will condemn it as weakness in the face of terrorism. In reality, it's just Biden being Biden in a no-win situation.

But in the end, it will be important. It will ramp up steadily, just like other aid programs always have, but it will prevent mass starvation in Gaza. Finally.

https://jabberwocking.com/biden-plans-to-flood-the-zone-with-aid-to-ga
za/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, March 13, 2024 7:12 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

EU chief accuses Israel of using ‘starvation as a war arm’ in Gaza

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/eu-chief-accuses-israel-o
f-using-starvation-as-a-war-arm-in-gaza/

Philippe Lazzarini @UNLazzarini

The number of children reported killed in just over 4 months in #Gaza is higher than the number of children killed in 4 years of wars around the world combined.

1:29 PM · Mar 12, 2024
https://twitter.com/UNLazzarini/status/1767618985397272831

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Sunday, March 17, 2024 10:19 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Earthquake That Could Shatter Netanyahu’s Coalition

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox don’t serve in its armed forces. That’s getting harder than ever to justify.

By Yair Rosenberg | March 15, 2024

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/03/orthodox-mil
itary-israel-netanyahu/677758/

The most controversial Israeli comedy sketch of the current war is just 88 seconds long. Aired in February on Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s equivalent of Saturday Night Live, it opens with two ashen-faced officers knocking on the door of a nondescript apartment, ready to deliver devastating news to the inhabitants. The officers are greeted by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who is similarly stricken when he sees them.

“I’ve been terrified of this knock,” he says. “Ever since the war began, I knew it would eventually come for me.” But before the pained officers can continue, he interjects: “Listen, there is no situation in which I will enlist—forget about it.”

It turns out that the officers have the wrong address. This is not the home of a fallen soldier, but of one of the many thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews who do not serve in Israel’s army, thanks to a special exemption. As the officers depart to find the right family, the man calls after them, “Tell them that we prayed for him! We did everything we could.”

The gag struck a nerve. Channel 14, Israel’s pro-Netanyahu equivalent of Fox News, ran multiple segments denouncing the satire. Commentators for right-wing media outlets called it “incitement,” a term typically applied to pro-terrorist speech in Israeli discourse. Why did a short sketch warrant such an overwhelming response? Because it took aim at the most vulnerable pressure point of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition—one with the potential to cause the current government’s collapse.

Since Israel was founded in 1948, it has fielded a citizens’ army with mandatory Jewish conscription—and one very notable exception: Ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, yeshiva students do not serve. This dispensation dates back to David Ben-Gurion, the country’s first prime minister. A secular Jewish socialist, he saw Israel’s ultra-Orthodox as the dying remnant of an old world, and when the community’s leadership requested an exemption from the draft, Ben-Gurion calculated that it was a small price to pay for their support. At the time, the ultra-Orthodox constituted about 1 percent of Israel’s population, and the exemption applied to just 400 young men in religious seminaries.

That was then. Today the Haredi community numbers some 1.2 million, more than 13 percent of Israel’s total population. And because this community has the highest birth rate in the country, its ranks will only swell. In other words, the fastest-growing group in Israeli society does not serve in its armed forces. Since October 7, the divide has been thrown into stark relief. After Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped hundreds more, the country initiated one of the largest mobilizations in its history. Children and spouses departed their families for the front, leaving fear and uncertainty in their absence. Nearly 250 soldiers have since been killed, and thousands more injured. Many Israelis spend their evenings at home fretting about that ominous knock on the door.

Meanwhile, Haredi life has largely continued as usual, untouched by the war and its toll. Yeshiva students have even been photographed enjoying ski vacations abroad while their same-age peers are on the battlefield. Some ultra-Orthodox individuals do voluntarily serve in the army, and others act as first responders, but their numbers are small enough to be a rounding error. In February, a record-high 66,000 military-age Haredi men received exemptions; just 540 had enlisted since the war began. Put another way, more Arab Israelis serve in the Israel Defense Forces than ultra-Orthodox Jews.

The Haredi carve-out has long rankled Israel’s secular citizens. Yair Lapid, the center-left opposition leader and past prime minister, rose to prominence in 2012 on a campaign that promised “equality of the burden.” Before him, the right-wing politician Avigdor Lieberman built his secular Russian constituency on a similar pledge. But what has changed since October 7 is that this discontent is no longer emanating solely from the usual suspects, such as the left-wing Eretz Nehederet, but from supporters of the current governing coalition, including the more modern religious right.

Unlike the ultra-Orthodox, Israel’s religious Zionist community is fully integrated into the country’s army and economy. Sympathetic to Haredi piety, it has typically sat out the debates over conscription—but no longer. In early January, a religious Zionist educator from Jerusalem published an “Open Letter to Our Haredi Sisters.” In it, she implored ultra-Orthodox mothers to encourage their sons to enlist in the IDF. “This reality is no longer tolerable,” she wrote. “For those who think that their son is not suited for military service, we say: Many of our children are not suited to be soldiers. None of them are suited to die in war. None of us are suited to sending a child to risk his life. We all do this because it is impossible to live here without an army … and we are all responsible for one another: it cannot be that others will take risks and risk their children for me, and I and my children will not take risks for them.” The letter now has nearly 1,000 signatures.

The grassroots pressure on this issue from the non-Haredi religious community has risen to the point that Bezalel Smotrich, the ultra-nationalist politician and finance minister who has courted Haredi votes, joined the anti-exemption campaign, at least rhetorically. “The current situation is outrageous and cannot continue,” he said last month. “Israeli society’s claim against the [Haredi] community is just.” But this demand may be one that Netanyahu cannot satisfy.

Much has been written about Netanyahu’s dependence on the Israeli far right to remain in power. But the backbone of his coalition for many years has actually been the ultra-Orthodox political parties. They stuck with the premier after he was indicted on corruption charges, and they refused to defect to the opposition even after Netanyahu failed to form a government following successive stalemate elections. Today, the far right provides 14 of Netanyahu’s 64 coalition seats; the Haredi parties provide 18. The Israeli leader has richly rewarded this loyalty by ensuring an ever-growing flow of public subsidies to ultra-Orthodox voters and their religious institutions. Because Haredi men can maintain their military exemption only by remaining in seminaries until age 26, they rarely enter the workforce until late in life and lack the secular education to succeed in it. As a result, nearly half of the ultra-Orthodox community lives in poverty and relies on government welfare—an unsustainable economic course that is another perennial source of Israeli angst.

The Israeli public—and especially the Israeli right—was previously willing to look the other way on Haredi enlistment to advance other political priorities. But now, in a time of perceived existential conflict, Haredi enlistment has become a prime concern. Israel faces war with Iranian proxies—Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north—and it needs more soldiers, not more people who can’t be drafted. To cope, the country has extended reserve duty for current enlistees, further underscoring the disparity between their experience and that of the ultra-Orthodox. A long-standing fault line in Israeli society has now produced an earthquake.

Recent polls show that Israeli Jews—including majorities on the political right and center right—now overwhelmingly oppose blanket Haredi exemptions. A February survey found that an astonishing 73 percent were against exemptions—up 11 points from November. A poll released this week similarly found that 73 percent of Israeli Jews, including a majority of people who voted for the Netanyahu government, oppose the billion-shekel subsidies to Haredi institutions that are included in the government’s current budget proposal.

Unfortunately for Netanyahu, he’s running out of time to solve this problem, and his usual stalling tactics may not suffice. That’s because not just the Israeli public but the Israeli Supreme Court has put the issue on the agenda. Back in 1998, the high court ruled that the ultra-Orthodox exemption violated the principle of equality under the law, and ordered the Parliament to legislate a fairer arrangement to replace the existing regime. Since then, successive Israeli governments have tried and failed to craft such a solution, constantly kicking the can down the road. Months before the war, the current government set a March 31 deadline for passing its own legislation to resolve the Haredi-draft issue. This was widely expected to be yet another exercise in equivocation, leaving most of the ultra-Orthodox exempt so as to keep the coalition together, and likely setting up another showdown with the Supreme Court. In other words, more of the same.

But more of the same is no longer enough after October 7. With the public incensed at what many see as Haredi privilege, Netanyahu is facing revolt within his ranks. Most notably, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has publicly called for an end to the exemptions and said he will not support any legislation on the matter that is not also approved by Benny Gantz, a centrist opposition lawmaker and rival to Netanyahu who sits in the country’s war cabinet. But any Haredi-draft bill that satisfies Gantz and Gallant is unlikely to satisfy the Haredi parties, who perceive enlistment as a threat to their cloistered way of life. And if no new legislation is passed, the IDF will be required to begin drafting the ultra-Orthodox on April 1.

As this deadline approaches, tensions have exploded into the open. This past week, Yitzhak Yosef, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, declared that “if you force us to go to the army, we’ll all move abroad.” The ultimatum drew widespread condemnation, even from within the hard-right government. “Drafting to the military: A good deed!” retorted Smotrich’s party. “Army service is a huge privilege for a Jew who defends himself in his country and a great deed,” added the far-right faction of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. It’s not clear that these worldviews can be reconciled, and the failure to bridge them could bring down the government.

Polls show that the overwhelming majority of Israelis want Netanyahu to resign, either now or after the war; that most Israelis want early elections; and that the current hard-right coalition would be crushed if those elections were held tomorrow. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, surely aware of those surveys, called yesterday for Israel to go to the polls to choose new leadership. The problem for the Israeli public is that no external mechanism forces Netanyahu to hold new elections, and the terrible polls for his coalition give its members every incentive to swallow their differences and keep the government afloat rather than face voters. Haredi conscription is perhaps the one issue that could shatter this cynical compact.

It’s never wise to bet against Netanyahu, Israel’s ultimate survivor. He will pursue every possible avenue to paper over this problem. But if he fails, his ultra-Orthodox allies could be compelled to leave the coalition, breaking it from within to force elections and freeze the status quo until a new government is sworn in. And if that happens, Israel’s other civil war may claim its first casualty: Netanyahu’s political career.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, March 20, 2024 4:51 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump’s son-in-law would evict the desert hobos!

Palestinians should be moved to the Negev desert to ‘clean up’ Gaza’s ‘valuable’ waterfront

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has offered his own solution to the mass bloodshed and displacement in Gaza: some good, old-fashioned real estate development.

During an interview with Tarek Masoud, the faculty chair of Harvard’s Middle East Initiative, Kushner proposed moving Palestinians to Israel’s arid desert region to “clean up” Gaza’s “valuable” waterfront.

“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable to—if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner said, without clarifying who exactly would profit off such a project. He added that the area could’ve had great potential if “all the money” in Gaza had gone into “education and innovation,” instead of its tunnel network and munitions.

Kushner’s statement comes on the heels of warnings from the United Nations that the people of Gaza are facing an “imminent famine” as Israel continues its offensive.

Kushner suggested displacing the remaining Palestinians from the “valuable” waterfront, and dropping them in the Negev desert.

“I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there, I know that that won’t be the popular thing to do, but I think that that’s a better option to do, so that you can go in and finish the job,” he said. The Jewish Virtual Library describes the Negev as “oppressively hot” and “filled more with dirt, rocks and canyons, which are no less forbidding” than sand dunes.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jared-kushner-pitches-moving-palestinian
s-out-of-gazas-valuable-waterfront

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, April 1, 2024 9:25 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Israel: spoiling for war to distract from its Gaza genocide

Russia Voices Outrage As Death Toll Rises To 11 After Israeli Attack On Iran's Damascus Embassy
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iranian-embassy-syria-targeted-
large-israeli-airstrikes-major-escalation

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Tuesday, April 2, 2024 10:06 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

This old satire from The Onion was made newly relevant by recent events ( https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2024/4/2/24119339/world-central-kit
chen-israel-gaza-idf-killed-andres-wck )

TEL AVIV—Addressing observers concerned about the toll of the nation’s ongoing incursion into Gaza, Israeli officials assured critics Friday that it was doing everything possible to minimize civilians. “To those expressing apprehension about this war, just know that our troops are taking every effort to mitigate civilian life,” said Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, explaining that he remained laser-focused on taking the necessary precautions to reduce civilians in Gaza or prevent them entirely. “Let me be clear: Our war is against Hamas. We have explicitly instructed our commanders that they should take pains so there are as few innocent men, women, and children in Gaza as humanly possible.” Netanyahu then added that because of the unfortunate realities of war, it was always sadly possible that a few Gazans might survive.

https://www.theonion.com/israel-assures-it-doing-everything-possible-t
o-minimize-1851085308

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, April 4, 2024 7:20 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

In Gaza, Israel unleashed a rogue army in which ‘every commander makes his own rules’

April 3, 2024 | The Times of Israel reports:

On Tuesday evening, the Haaretz daily spoke to unnamed military sources who revealed that the cause of the strike killing seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) staffers was undisciplined, rogue commanders, not a lack of coordination between the IDF and the WCK.

A source in the intelligence branch told Haaretz that the IDF’s Southern Command “knows exactly what the cause of the attack was: in Gaza, everyone does as they please.”

Army regulations require final approvals from division commanders or those above them before strikes can be carried out on sensitive targets such as aid convoys.

But in Gaza, “every commander makes his own rules” and his own interpretation of the rules of engagement, the source told Haaretz, which said it wasn’t clear whether the strikes on the convoy ever received final approval.

The intelligence source noted the IDF decision to establish a new coordination hub between COGAT — which facilitates aid delivery for Israel — and Southern Command but insisted that this wouldn’t solve the problem, as similar centers already exist.

“It has no connection to coordination… You can set up another 20 administrations or war rooms, but if someone doesn’t decide to put an end to the conduct of some of the troops inside Gaza, we’ll see more incidents like this,” the source told Haaretz.

More at https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2024/04/03/in-gaza-israel-unleashed-a
-rogue-army-in-which-every-commander-makes-his-own-rules/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, April 14, 2024 1:10 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

To continue the story in one coherent thread...

The IDF is apparently partially withdrawing from Gaza. They haven't met their objective of destroying Hamas, altho they did kill 30,000+ people and cause tremendous suffering and destruction.

*****

And in a deliberate act of war, the IDF bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria. Legally, embassies and consulates are bits of national territory in foreign land. If someone were to attack an American embassy or consulate, that would be the same as attacking America itself, and could be responded to as a cause for war.

Why did Israel do this? What do they get out of randomly attacking Iran which had NOTHING to do with the Hamas attack Oct 7?

Well, they want to provoke an Iranian response, and then drag us into war with Iran.

Yeah, with friends like that, who need enemies???

Well, Israel got it's response. Iran sent 100-200 drones and missiles at military targets in Israel, and Israel vows a tremendous response.

Will we get involved in yest another Mideast war?
Wll this spin out of control and affect oil shipping too?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
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Sunday, April 14, 2024 2:22 AM

I think these idiots should all pretty much stop what they're doing before they all get wrecked. Nobody's wondered yet if the damage done has surpassed the original transgression? Or are we just treating this like a competitive sport and keeping track of the score with the dead bodies that pile up on both sides?

At this point, my advice to anybody would be not to support either side, financially, morally or otherwise. Everybody else should let them know that whatever they do they do now as long as that shit doesn't spill out beyond their own borders. Larger powers could, and probably should, try to talk some sense in the situation, but beyond that no carrots and no sticks dealt anywhere as long as everyone keeps it internal and doesn't try dragging any other parties into it.

Feel completely free to have your little religious war if you'd like. But you're going to do it on your own dime with your own resources. If either side doesn't like that and/or couldn't survive long under those conditions, maybe right now is the time to decide how you're going to behave tomorrow.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Sunday, April 14, 2024 4:38 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

You don't understand, SIX.

Iran isn't having a religious war, ISRAEL IS.

Israel is doing what it's doing because many Jews believe that are GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE, and Zionists believe that the land of Palestine was GIVEN TO THEM BY GOD.

They are allowed (by their god) to do ANYTHING. Even commmit genocide. It's in their Torah

Quote:
According to the book of Exodus, Amalek is the nation that attacked the weakest among the Israelites as they fled from Egypt. This transgression was not to go unpunished. The Torah has a harsh prescription for Amalek: annihilation.

We would call it genocide.

Quote:
“It shall be that when Hashem, your God, gives you rest from all your enemies all around, in the Land that Hashem, your God, gives you as an inheritance to possess it, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heaven. Do not forget it!” (Deuteronomy 25: 19; also see Exodus 17:14 and Numbers 24:20)

Blotting out the memory of Amalek was no mere psychological activity. The Israelites were expected to kill every Amalekite–man, woman, and child. But was this just a theoretical imperative or was it meant to be carried out?

The book of Samuel implies that it required actual fulfillment: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox, and sheep, camel and ass,” (Samuel I, 15:3). King Saul struck down Amalek as he was commanded but he then took mercy upon King Agag and upon some of the Amalekite animals. God and the prophet Samuel harshly criticized Saul for not fulfilling God’s word.

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/genocide-in-the-torah/

The Torah and the Q'uran each have passages in them that are pretty horrific, and some followers take those passages way too seriously. Zionists and Wahhabists deserve each other bc they're both religious nuts. But other mideast nations and cultures aren't that nutty.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Sunday, April 14, 2024 5:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You don't understand, SIX.

Iran isn't having a religious war, ISRAEL IS.

Israel is doing what it's doing because many Jews believe that are GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE, and Zionists believe that the land of Palestine was GIVEN TO THEM BY GOD.

They are allowed (by their god) to do ANYTHING. Even commmit genocide. It's in their Torah

So we're told.

Quote:
Quote:
According to the book of Exodus, Amalek is the nation that attacked the weakest among the Israelites as they fled from Egypt. This transgression was not to go unpunished. The Torah has a harsh prescription for Amalek: annihilation.
We would call it genocide.

Maybe. I don't know. We're lied to all the time about literally everything.

I'll honestly say I don't have a single opinion on that topic. Doesn't change anything in my previous post.

Quote:
Quote:
“It shall be that when Hashem, your God, gives you rest from all your enemies all around, in the Land that Hashem, your God, gives you as an inheritance to possess it, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heaven. Do not forget it!” (Deuteronomy 25: 19; also see Exodus 17:14 and Numbers 24:20)

Blotting out the memory of Amalek was no mere psychological activity. The Israelites were expected to kill every Amalekite–man, woman, and child. But was this just a theoretical imperative or was it meant to be carried out?

The book of Samuel implies that it required actual fulfillment: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox, and sheep, camel and ass,” (Samuel I, 15:3). King Saul struck down Amalek as he was commanded but he then took mercy upon King Agag and upon some of the Amalekite animals. God and the prophet Samuel harshly criticized Saul for not fulfilling God’s word.

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/genocide-in-the-torah/

The Torah and the Q'uran each have passages in them that are pretty horrific, and some followers take those passages way too seriously. Zionists and Wahhabists deserve each other bc they're both religious nuts. But other mideast nations and cultures aren't that nutty.

The Bible has its own share of fun pages in it too.

The way I see it, those two groups are just going to keep at this until the extinction of the human race, whichever way that ultimately ends up coming about.

One of them appears to prefer brainwashing people to do small to large scale atrocities that are usually only possible if the person perpetrating them isn't making it out of the situation alive.

The other appears to allow just enough atrocities to be committed on its citizens to try and justify a STRONG reaction the other way that might ultimately end in genocide, or maybe the geniuses in charge end up turning this into WWIII.

They aren't ever going to stop. This will never end.

And it's no more our job to police this than it is to police any alleged Russian aggression toward Ukraine.

No carrot. No stick. As long as they don't go out of bounds, and as long as they don't go dragging anybody else into it or begging for money or support. They need to hash things out. If they haven't managed to get over all of this after thousands of years, who's to say it won't be another few thousand years before they can all just let it go.

American Citizens should not be financially responsible for international wars that they can't even intelligently explain to one another. When something happens we get two sides of news that will explain the situation differently depending on their audience. And we've got no reason to believe that either of the two sides of news is even close to the truth in the first place.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Sunday, April 14, 2024 5:59 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Biden Tells Bibi: US Will Not Support A Counterattack Against Iran After Hundreds Of Drones, Missiles Sent
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-pressuring-china-turkey-saud
i-arabia-intervene-iran-halt-attack-israel

Common sense from the Biden* WH????

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
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Sunday, April 14, 2024 4:25 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Biden Tells Bibi: US Will Not Support A Counterattack Against Iran After Hundreds Of Drones, Missiles Sent
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-pressuring-china-turkey-saud
i-arabia-intervene-iran-halt-attack-israel

Common sense from the Biden* WH????

No. It's not common sense.

It should have been let known to both parties that US will not support anything they do when this all started. In fact, it should have just been known before anybody started anything.

But the Biden* Administration chose this moment right now to say they weren't going to help. This was 100% purely politically motivated since Biden* is hemorrhaging Muslim voters, particularly in Michigan were they'll probably end up tanking his reelection chances.

After what Iran just did, Israel should be responding.

The Muslim dogs started this. It should end when the Muslim dogs suffer the final losses of the conflict.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Sunday, April 14, 2024 11:08 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

What's with this "Muslim dogs" shit?

Dood, you're as brainwashed as SECOND and THUGR, just on Muslims instead of Russians.

You've heard "Muslim ... terrorist... Muslim .... terrorist" so often it's been welded together.

Come into the light.

See reality.

P.S. The British started it.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
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Monday, April 15, 2024 1:44 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

NOTE: Israel started this latest pissing match with Iran by striking an Iranian consulate in Syria. Iran was really hoping to sit this one out, but Israel is determined to go to war with Iran to drag the us into the conflict.

Iran spanked Israel back, hard enough to let Israel know it could spank harder. After a 72-hour warning, it sent a few very credible missiles in along with a swarm of drones and rockets ... enough to overwhelm combined Israeli, British, French (and American?) air defenses and did damage to maybe a half-dozen Israeli military targets, without killing anyone.

Biden* urged Israel to "take the win" but it seems Israel wants to escalate even more.

We would do best to stay out if it. Israel shouldn't be the tail that wags the dog.

Quote:
Israel Says Readying 'Imminent' Attack On Iran As Airlines Cancel Flights To Region

Update(1329ET): It appears things are moving fast, via Israel's Channel 12 broadcaster, following the earlier conclusion of Israel's War Cabinet meeting:

THE ISRAELI AIR FORCE HAS COMPLETED ITS PREPARATION FOR AN IMMINENT ATTACK AGAINST IRAN

The Times of Israel top headline has switched to: War cabinet decides to hit Iran back hard, hopes it won’t spark regional war

A host of airlines have canceled flights to the region, including the following:

Germany’s Lufthansa has suspended its regular flights to and from Tel Aviv, Erbil, and Amman, up to and including Monday. Flights to Beirut and Tehran will remain suspended until at least Thursday.

KLM cancelled all flights to and from Tel Aviv until Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Dutch arm of Air France says.

Britain’s easyJet on Sunday paused operations to and from Tel Aviv. The carrier said in an emailed statement to Reuters that it will temporarily pause operations to and from Tel Aviv until April 21.

Wizz Air says it had cancelled most of its flights to and from Tel Aviv, Saturday through Monday.

Finnair has suspended operations in Iranian airspace until further notice, which may cause longer flight times on flights from Doha. A spokesperson said the Finnish carrier will reroute over Egypt, resulting in delays of a “few minutes.”

* * *

Update(1225ET): Israel is looking to "send a message" against Iran, but short of causing outright war and mass casualties, a top level official has told The Washington Post. During Monday's Israel War Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Netanyahu is reported to have requested defense leaders to draw up a list of targets.

According to Washington Post's reporting:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked the Israel Defense Forces to provide target options, according to an official familiar with high-level discussions, who said Israel is looking at options that would “send a message” but not cause casualties.

Those options include a potential strike on a facility in Tehran or a cyberattack, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks.

“Everybody agrees that Israel must respond,” the official said. “How to respond, when to respond, is the question.”

Israeli officials are now signaling to their US counterparts that they would like the White House's backing and coordination for retaliation, however, so far President Biden has urged restraint. This weekend the president clearly said the US will not back an Israeli military attack on Iran, on fears it would spark a bigger war.

Biden has issued what appears an ambiguous statement, and Israel's military says it is preparing:

BIDEN: US COMMITTED TO ISRAEL'S SECURITY AND FOR CEASE-FIRE

* * *

Update(1145ET): Israel's war cabinet has issued a statement, reported in the country's Channel 12 broadcaster, according to breaking reports:

Israel wants to embark on action against Iran coordinated with US, channel 12 says — Reuters

Channel 12 has cited top Israeli ministers to say that the military's objective will be to "hurt Iran without causing all-out war," according to news wires.

But the Biden administration has already said it will not back a retaliatory attack on Iran, amid fears of the situation spiraling into all-out regional war.

As for Tehran, it is warning that in the face of any Israeli assault it will hit back harder. According to BBC Iran correspondent Kasra Naji:

Iran's IRGC commander: in new equation every time Israel attacks our interests, assets, personalities or citizens, we will hit back from our soil. Israel's Def Minister: we won't accept an equation in which Iran responds with a direct attack every time we strike targets in Syria.

Recall that before the Saturday night Iranian attack, Israel's leadership vowed that a major response would happen if the Islamic Republic directly attacks Israel from its soil. Indeed that's precisely what Iran did - it launched hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles directly from its territory.

Meanwhile in Iran:

Iran has lifted suspensions on domestic and international flights from its capital, Tehran, the state-run IRNA news agency reported, possibly signaling a return to stabilization for now.

It comes as Israel weighs its response to the strikes and world leaders call for restraint.

Global airlines faced ongoing disruptions to flights after Iran’s missile and drone attacks on Israel narrowed options for planes navigating between Europe and Asia.

More at https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/uk-france-germany-join-bidens-c
all-israels-restraint-while-russia-defends-irans-strike

Oil price rise? More inflation? Biden* re-election risk?
Let's see if DNC political self-preservation kicks in, or if Israel has a stranglehold on DC. (Rumors are that Mossad has dirt on most of TPTB in DC. Epstein, they say, was the tip of the iceberg.)

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Sunday, April 21, 2024 12:27 AM