Gaza/Israel Update (04/02): Israeli airstrike kills foreign workers of World Central Kitchen (Chef José Andrés food aid charity)

[SuperSpreader]

2 hours ago, TUFKAK said:

Yes but that’s like arguing all Americans are responsible for Iraq. There’s nuance to this that gets missed. 

 

I actually do think that all Americans are responsible for Iraq. Collectively that is our burden. An enemy isn't going to ask what party you're registered to. The same way people blanket believe Israelis are responsible for the gov, it's the same way I make Palestinians responsible for Hamas. 

[TUFKAK]

1 hour ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

I actually do think that all Americans are responsible for Iraq. Collectively that is our burden. An enemy isn't going to ask what party you're registered to. The same way people blanket believe Israelis are responsible for the gov, it's the same way I make Palestinians responsible for Hamas. 

I disagree. 
 

Id say people like me carry more blame than the average American for Iraq as an example.

[SuperSpreader]

10 minutes ago, TUFKAK said:

Id say people like me carry more blame than the average American for Iraq as an example.

 

I was against the war from the very get go and even did some protesting. When I've met displaced Iraqis abroad when traveling they will poke fun and say "they are American too." All I can do is apologize profusely - in their eyes, American is American. INTERNALLY we may distinguish, but I don't think entity to entity they do, and in relation to the Israel/Palestine issue > I think people are picking and choosing when they want to distinguish. 

[UpvoteShittyTakesOnly]

national sins in places with representative governments are owned by all but the burden is not equal

[SuperSpreader]

35 minutes ago, UpvoteShittyTakesOnly said:

national sins in places with representative governments are owned by all but the burden is not equal

I have no guilt. Just shame. 

[Spork3245]

4 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

I have no guilt. Just shame. 

 

"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, 'Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again!'" George W. Bush

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

10 hours ago, TUFKAK said:

The world is turning against Israel’s war in Gaza – and many Israelis don’t understand why | CNN

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Yoav Peled says he has started wondering if the world has gone mad.

 

we yeah, if many Israelis possessed the compassion to understand why they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. 
 

the thing is this kind of stuff has happened to other western nations, and historically speaking has not been looked at kindly. It’s the story of colonization. And when the oppressed get tired of getting kicked

around and provoked rise up, force out the larger super power occupying their country, the history books look at it like the supper power had it coming. Their comeuppance often seen as inevitable. 
 

The closest modern day example I think of would be the IRA vs the UK. Many around the world were pissed at the UK for Bloody Sunday. Decades later and the fear was Brexit would spark another conflict, which UK and EU desperately wanted to avoid. Has the UK instead just rolled troops and police into Northern Ireland and provoked them the sentiment globally would not be kind towards the UK when things got violent. 
 

Israel’s government and many Israelis don’t realize the world isn’t the same as it was in the 70s and 80s. The expectation for what a nation as capable and funded as Israel has changed. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

From the BBC's feed:

 

Israeli defence minister says soldiers 'in the heart' of Gaza City

 

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Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant says Israeli troops are "in the heart of Gaza City".

 

"They came from the north and the south. They stormed it in full coordination between land, air and sea forces," Gallant said in a televised news conference, according to the Reuters news agency.

 

"They are manoeuvring on foot, armoured vehicles and tanks, along with military engineers from all directions and they have one target - Hamas terrorists in Gaza, their infrastructure, their commanders, bunkers, communication rooms."

 

 

 

Netanyahu says Israeli forces are 'operating inside' Gaza City

 

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Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel's military was encircling Gaza City.

 

"Gaza city is encircled, we are operating inside it", the Israeli PM said at a press conference.

 

Netanyahu said there would be no ceasefire or fuel delivery until Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October are released.

 

He also called on the people of Gaza to "please go south".

 

"We will not stop," he said.

 

 

 

US says it opposes re-occupation of Gaza by Israel

 

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The US is opposed to a new long-term re-occupation of the Gaza Strip by Israel, a spokesperson for the US state department has said.

 

Speaking at a daily news briefing, Vedant Patel told reporters that the US did not support any forced relocation of Palestinians outside Gaza.

 

"Our viewpoint is that Palestinians must be at the forefront of these decisions and Gaza is Palestinian land and it will remain Palestinian land," he said.

 

The spokesman was responding to a question about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's comments to ABC, in which he said Israel would have "security responsibility" for Gaza after the fighting ends.

 

As a reminder, Israel withdrew troops from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years there.

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

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CNN's Anderson Cooper speaks with Emily Callahan, an American nurse with Doctors Without Borders, who gives a harrowing description of what she witnessed in Gaza as she was attempting to get out of the area.

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Biden urged Netanyahu to agree to three-day pause in fighting - report

 

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Joe Biden urged Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a three-day pause in fighting to allow progress in releasing some of the hostages held by Hamas, according to an Axios report, citing two US and Israel officials.

 

The US president and Israeli prime minister spoke in a call on Monday. In a readout of the call, the White House said the two leaders “discussed the possibility of tactical pauses”.

 

Citing the US official, Axios reported that under a proposal that is being discussed between the US, Israel and Qatar, Hamas would release 10-15 hostages. They would also use the three-day pause to verify the identities of all the hostages and deliver a list of names of the people it is holding, the official said.

 

During the call on Monday, Netanyahu told Biden that he does not trust Hamas’ intentions and doesn not believe they are ready to agree to a deal regarding the hostages, the two US and Israeli officials said.

 

Netanyahu added that Israel could lose the current international support it has for the operation if the fighting stops for three days, the officials said.

 

 

I have no doubt in my mind that the highlighted part is Bibi's idea of a "joke".

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

This is a really great article for understanding the internal dynamics within Hamas that led to the events of October 7:

 

Behind Hamas’s Bloody Gambit to Create a ‘Permanent’ State of War - The New York Times

WWW.NYTIMES.COM

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Hamas leaders say they waged their Oct. 7 attack on Israel because they believed the Palestinian cause was slipping away, and that only violence could revive it.

 

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Thousands have been killed in Gaza, with entire families wiped out. Israeli airstrikes have reduced Palestinian neighborhoods to expanses of rubble, while doctors treat screaming children in darkened hospitals with no anesthesia. Across the Middle East, fear has spread over the possible outbreak of a broader regional war.

 

But in the bloody arithmetic of Hamas’s leaders, the carnage is not the regrettable outcome of a big miscalculation. Quite the opposite, they say: It is the necessary cost of a great accomplishment — the shattering of the status quo and the opening of a new, more volatile chapter in their fight against Israel.

 

It was necessary to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash,” Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s top leadership body, told The New York Times in Doha, Qatar. “We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm.”

 

 

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“I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us,” Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told The Times.

 

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In weeks of interviews, Hamas leaders, along with Arab, Israeli and Western officials who track the group, said the attack had been planned and executed by a tight circle of commanders in Gaza who did not share the details with their own political representatives abroad or with their regional allies like Hezbollah, leaving people outside the enclave surprised by the ferocity, scale and reach of the assault.

 

The attack ended up being broader and more deadly than even its planners had anticipated, they said, largely because the assailants managed to break through Israel’s vaunted defenses with ease, allowing them to overrun military bases and residential areas with little resistance. As Hamas stormed through a swath of southern Israel, it killed and captured more soldiers and civilians than it expected to, officials said.

 

The assault was so devastating that it served one of the plotters’ main objectives: It broke a longstanding tension within Hamas about the group’s identity and purpose. Was it mainly a governing body — responsible for managing day-to-day life in the blockaded Gaza Strip — or was it still fundamentally an armed force, unrelentingly committed to destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamist Palestinian state?

 

With the attack, the group’s leaders in Gaza — including Yahya Sinwar, who had spent more than 20 years in Israeli prisons, and Mohammed Deif, a shadowy military commander whom Israel had repeatedly tried to assassinate — answered that question. They doubled down on military confrontation.

 

 

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On the surface, the months before the brutal assault seemed relatively quiet in Gaza. Hamas had sat out recent clashes between Israel and other militants, and the group’s political leaders were a thousand miles away in Qatar, negotiating to get more aid and jobs for residents of the impoverished territory.

 

But the frustration was building. Hamas leaders in Gaza were flooded with images of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, Jews openly praying at a contested site customarily reserved for Muslims, and the Israeli police storming the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a touchstone for Palestinian claims to the holy city. The prospect of Israel’s normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia, long a deep-pocketed patron of the Palestinian cause, appeared closer than ever.

 

Then, on a quiet Saturday morning, Hamas attacked.

 

It was clear in advance that Israel would respond by bombarding Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians.

 

“What could change the equation was a great act, and without a doubt, it was known that the reaction to this great act would be big,” Mr. al-Hayya said.

But, he added, “We had to tell people that the Palestinian cause would not die.”

 

 

Quote

 

Building Capabilities

 

Still, in 2021, Israeli military intelligence and the National Security Council thought that Hamas wanted to avoid another war, according to people familiar with the assessments.

 

Hamas, too, bolstered the idea that it was prioritizing governing over battle. Twice, the group refrained from joining clashes with Israel started by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militia in Gaza. Hamas’s political leaders were trying through mediators in Qatar to increase the aid going into Gaza and the number of laborers going out to work in Israel, according to diplomats involved in the discussions.

 

Many in Israel’s security establishment also came to believe that its complex border defenses to shoot down rockets and prevent infiltrations from Gaza were enough to keep Hamas contained.

 

But inside Gaza, Hamas’s capabilities grew.

 

By Oct. 7, Hamas was estimated to have 20,000 to 40,000 fighters, with about 15,000 rockets, mainly manufactured in Gaza with components most likely smuggled in through Egypt, according to American and other Western analysts. The group had mortars, anti-tank missiles and portable air-defense systems as well, they said.

 

 

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Motivation to Strike

 

While building the capabilities for the assault took years, the decision to launch it on Oct. 7 was a secret closely guarded by a small number of Hamas leaders in Gaza who did not even inform those taking part until the last minute to prevent interception by regional intelligence services, according to Hamas and regional officials.

 

A key objective was to take as many Israeli soldiers captive as possible for use in a prisoner swap, according to two Arab officials whose governments talk to Hamas.

 

One regional security official said Hamas had expected that, once the attack began, Palestinians elsewhere would rise up against Israel, other Arab populations would explode against their governments and the group’s regional allies, including Hezbollah, would join the fight.

 

But at least four intelligence services — two Arab and two European — have assessed that Hezbollah had no advance knowledge of the attack, according to officials with access to intelligence reports.

 

Hamas’s own political leaders outside Gaza were also surprised by the assault, according to several Arab and Western officials who track their movements. They have, nonetheless, praised it for reinvigorating the armed struggle against Israel.

 

“Hamas’s goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such,” said Mr. al-Hayya, the politburo member. “Hamas, the Qassam and the resistance woke the world up from its deep sleep and showed that this issue must remain on the table.”

 

“This battle was not because we wanted fuel or laborers,” he added. “It did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza. This battle is to completely overthrow the situation.”

 

[TUFKAK]

Westlake Village, California: Officials investigating death of Paul Kessler after injury during pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrations | CNN

AMP.CNN.COM

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A 69-year-old Jewish man died after suffering a head injury Sunday following an “interaction” with a pro-Palestinian demonstrator during dueling rallies in Southern California...

 

[TUFKAK]

4 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

This is a really great article for understanding the internal dynamics within Hamas that led to the events of October 7:

 

Behind Hamas’s Bloody Gambit to Create a ‘Permanent’ State of War - The New York Times

WWW.NYTIMES.COM

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Hamas leaders say they waged their Oct. 7 attack on Israel because they believed the Palestinian cause was slipping away, and that only violence could revive it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From their mouth to gods ears I guess. But god doesn’t have a dozen aircraft carriers so.

[Jwheel86]

IDF casualties by battalion to give a sense of the scale of the operation. Looks like 3 Armored Divisions are operating inside Gaza. 

 

[Jason]

[TUFKAK]

I mean, yeah? Both sides have concerns to be addressed, this was always the correct response.

[LazyPiranha]

The biggest gains are in the “stay out of it” column across the board.  

[SuperSpreader]

"it's complicated" 

[TUFKAK]

23 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

The biggest gains are in the “stay out of it” column across the board.  

I want nothing to do with American boots on the ground.

 

Force project sure, use soft power fine, but until the Arab world does something not one American in the levant. It’s a regional issue after all.

[LazyPiranha]

Just now, TUFKAK said:

I want nothing to do with American boots on the ground.

 

Force project sure, use soft power fine, but until the Arab world does something not one American in the levant. It’s a regional issue after all.

Let me be clear, I’m not not the side of “US does nothing” because I don’t have feelings about the sides here, I just have stronger feelings about the US’s ability to not make it worse.

[TUFKAK]

10 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

Let me be clear, I’m not not the side of “US does nothing” because I don’t have feelings about the sides here, I just have stronger feelings about the US’s ability to not make it worse.

Under current policy we will just fuck it up, hence why parking a meu and a carrier group is all we should do here.

 

There are solutions to the problem, but that would require people sacrifice and lol. Americans don’t do that.

 

I reference AOC, a few years ago when Congress was voting on the US funding iron dome, cause sure why the fuck not, she abstained even after she called Israel an apartheid state. Wonder why a representative with a large Jewish constituency didn’t vote to oppose us funding the Israeli military, an apartheid state after all, the values she claims to  profess, hmmm. Real jobs are hard after all.

 

Nobody owns the values they profess. Imagine if we had taken even half of the money we give to Israel’s defense posture and invested it in Palestine. Nobody actually cares about solutions, it’s all virtue signaling for the masses, bread and games.

 

We won’t fix it because nobody gives two actual fucks, we don’t even help our own dispossessed population.

[TUFKAK]

Tlaib again faces censure resolutions over Israel comments | CNN Politics

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Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib is again facing Republican-led efforts to censure her over comments critical of Israel and in support of Palestinians amid Israel’s war against Hamas.

 

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The House passed a GOP-led resolution on Tuesday to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib over comments critical of Israel and in support of Palestinians amid Israel’s war against Hamas.

 

The move amounts to a rare and significant rebuke of the Michigan Democrat, who is the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress. The vote was 234 to 188 with four Republicans voting against and 22 Democrats voting in support of the censure resolution.

 

The resolution, which was introduced by Georgia GOP Rep. Rich McCormick, advanced earlier in the day after a Democratic-led effort to block the measure failed.

 

Tlaib has defended herself against the censure attempts, arguing that they are an effort to silence her and saying that her “colleagues have resorted to distorting my positions in resolutions filled with obvious lies.”

 

Following the vote to advance the censure resolution, Tlaib delivered an emotional speech on the House floor and argued that her criticism of the Israeli government should not be conflated with antisemitism.

 

“It is important to separate people and governments. No government is beyond criticism. The idea that criticizing the government of Israel is antisemitic sets a very dangerous precedent, and it’s been used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our nation,” she said.

 

She grew emotional and had trouble speaking after she said, “I can’t believe I have to say this, but Palestinian people are not disposable.”

 

 

[Spork3245]

8 minutes ago, TUFKAK said:

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/07/politics/rashida-tlaib-censure-vote/index.html

Her being censured is nonsense, but I expect nothing less from MTG and other house republicans.

[TUFKAK]

7 minutes ago, Spork3245 said:

Her being censured is nonsense, but I expect nothing less from MTG and other house republicans.

22 dems voted for it too.

[Spork3245]

11 minutes ago, TUFKAK said:

22 dems voted for it too.

I know. Not all dems are smart.

I think they were red state/district dems that can’t afford to lose voter support and figured there were enough GOP votes to where their “symbolic” votes didn’t matter.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Death toll in Gaza likely ‘higher than is being reported’: US official (The Hill)

 

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A senior Biden administration official said the death toll of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is likely far higher than the 10,000 number being reported by the health ministry amid Israel’s war against Hamas.

 

Barbara Leaf, assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, told a House panel those killed more than one month into the war are likely “higher than is being cited.”

 

President Biden and Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress have cast doubt the Gaza Health Ministry is able to provide an accurate death toll from Gaza while under the control and coercion of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. 

 

Leaf acknowledged the ministry does not differentiate between civilians and Hamas combatants in its death toll — “they mingle them,” she said. But she underscored that the cost of Israel’s military operations on the besieged region, coupled with Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields, has been devastating. 

 

“In this period of conflict and conditions of war, it is very difficult for any of us to assess what the rate of casualties are,” she said during a Wednesday hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We think they’re very high, frankly, and it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited.”

 

“We’ll know only after the guns fall silent. We take in sourcing from a variety of folks who are on the ground,” she added. “I can’t stipulate to one figure or another, it’s very possible they’re even higher than is being reported.”

 

 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Mossad, CIA chiefs meet Qatar PM in Doha on Gaza hostage deal -source | Reuters

WWW.REUTERS.COM

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The CIA and Mossad chiefs met with the Qatari prime minister in Doha on Thursday to discuss the parameters of a deal for hostage releases and a pause in Hamas-Israel fighting in the Gaza Strip, a source briefed on the meeting told Reuters.

 

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The CIA and Mossad chiefs met with the Qatari prime minister in Doha on Thursday to discuss the parameters of a deal for hostage releases and a pause in Hamas-Israel fighting in the Gaza Strip, a source briefed on the meeting told Reuters.

 

The outcome of the talks was unclear.

 

 

 

From The Guardian:

 

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Israel to begin daily four-hour pauses in fighting in northern Gaza – White House

 

Israel will begin implementing four-hour pauses in fighting each day in the northern Gaza Strip, the White House has said.

 

White House national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said an announcement would be made three hours beforehand. He added:

 

We’ve been told by the Israelis that there will be no military operations in these areas over the duration of the pause and that this process is starting today.

 

 

[UpvoteShittyTakesOnly]

i dont envy the decision makers who have to choose how to respond to 1500 of their people being murdered in a terrorist attack by a group like hamas

 

there is seemingly no way to strike back without substantial civilian death tolls

 

doing nothing is also impossible for any nation and potentially more so for israel because of the specifics of the region

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

From the BBC's Rushdi Abualouf, reporting from Khan Younis in Southern Gaza

 

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'A real gun battle' near Al Quds hospital in Gaza City

 

The fighting in Gaza City is really intensifying, and - as we reported earlier - there is a very serious fight near the Al Quds hospital as tanks advance close to the hospital.

 

Communication is difficult, but I was talking to someone this morning who said it was "a real gun battle" in the area.

 

Most of the buildings in that neighbourhood were targeted by the Israeli military at the start of their response to the Hamas attack on 7 October.

 

This area was heavily bombed from the air for days. Now it's being bombed from sea and by artillery units on the ground.

 

 

[mclumber1]

8 minutes ago, UpvoteShittyTakesOnly said:

i dont envy the decision makers who have to choose how to respond to 1500 of their people being murdered in a terrorist attack by a group like hamas

 

there is seemingly no way to strike back without substantial civilian death tolls

 

doing nothing is also impossible for any nation and potentially more so for israel because of the specifics of the region

 

Bombing Gaza city, at least to the level Israel is doing, I think was the wrong choice.  The only way to really fight this war was (and is) to send boots on the ground in to the area.  Israel is probably going to end up losing thousands of their soldiers in the prolonged ground assault, but it will probably be the most effective and moral method of neutralizing Hamas. 

[Greatoneshere]

A disproportionate response by Israel is par for the course. They had to respond in some manner, of course, but yeah.

[UpvoteShittyTakesOnly]

2 hours ago, mclumber1 said:

 

Bombing Gaza city, at least to the level Israel is doing, I think was the wrong choice.  The only way to really fight this war was (and is) to send boots on the ground in to the area.  Israel is probably going to end up losing thousands of their soldiers in the prolonged ground assault, but it will probably be the most effective and moral method of neutralizing Hamas. 

a door kicking ground invasion in a densely populated place would result in thousands of dead civillians too like what was seen in mosul

 

it is a big reason that the us has been trying to stall the ground invasion because its going to be long and awful

[ort]

My wife works for a construction company and has just been sent a rider to an existing contract that makes them promise not to boycott Israel or use any other companies that are participating in a boycott of Israel or they will lose the contract. This is from a large local general contractor construction company for a job for a community college in Missouri. Good times.

[Ominous]

25 minutes ago, ort said:

My wife works for a construction company and has just been sent a rider to an existing contract that makes them promise not to boycott Israel or use any other companies that are participating in a boycott of Israel or they will lose the contract. This is from a large local general contractor construction company for a job for a community college in Missouri. Good times.

 

What are common Israeli goods an American could boycott?

 

Other than genocide?

[ort]

I don't even know, that's why it's so dumb.

 

My guess is that it's either in response to something one of the other sub contractors did or the owners of this general contractor are just extremely pro-isreal.

 

My wife's company is owned by evangelical mega trumpers, so I'm sure they are okay with it.