Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine - Page 134

On December 01 2023 11:14 JimmiC wrote:

That you believe the conspiracy to be true does not make it not a conspiracy. No one “knows” unannounced future intentions. End stop.

Sorry to break it to you, but you are not that different from the QaNon folk.

On December 01 2023 11:36 JimmiC wrote:

Yes you can it is their open plan and their actions match their words.

Even in your world where “they are doing it to hide their intentions” they are doing many unethnic cleansing acts. Leaflets to avoid areas just tons I’m sure can come up with tons of ways the Israelis are hiding their intent.

It’s bonkers you can’t see this, like it does not even matter if you are right or not it is still a secret because they ain’t talking. I can not tell if you are just so far down the rabbit hole or if you just genuinely do not know what conspiracy means and have not bothered to look it up.

On December 01 2023 10:05 Salazarz wrote:


+ Show Spoiler +There are tons of Nazis around the world today who aren't antisemitic in the slightest. + Show Spoiler +

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.

Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.

“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.

Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.

But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.

“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”

“It is a plan designed to start a war,” she added. “It’s not just a raid on a village.”

Officials privately concede that, had the military taken these warnings seriously and redirected significant reinforcements to the south, where Hamas attacked, Israel could have blunted the attacks or possibly even prevented them.

Instead, the Israeli military was unprepared as terrorists streamed out of the Gaza Strip. It was the deadliest day in Israel’s history.

Israeli security officials have already acknowledged that they failed to protect the country, and the government is expected to assemble a commission to study the events leading up to the attacks. The Jericho Wall document lays bare a yearslong cascade of missteps that culminated in what officials now regard as the worst Israeli intelligence failure since the surprise attack that led to the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

Underpinning all these failures was a single, fatally inaccurate belief that Hamas lacked the capability to attack and would not dare to do so. That belief was so ingrained in the Israeli government, officials said, that they disregarded growing evidence to the contrary.

The Israeli military and the Israeli Security Agency, which is in charge of counterterrorism in Gaza, declined to comment.

Officials would not say how they obtained the Jericho Wall document, but it was among several versions of attack plans collected over the years. A 2016 Defense Ministry memorandum viewed by The Times, for example, says, “Hamas intends to move the next confrontation into Israeli territory.”

Such an attack would most likely involve hostage-taking and “occupying an Israeli community (and perhaps even a number of communities),” the memo reads.

The Jericho Wall document, named for the ancient fortifications in the modern-day West Bank, was even more explicit. It detailed rocket attacks to distract Israeli soldiers and send them hurrying into bunkers, and drones to disable the elaborate security measures along the border fence separating Israel and Gaza.

Hamas fighters would then break through 60 points in the wall, storming across the border into Israel. The document begins with a quote from the Quran: “Surprise them through the gate. If you do, you will certainly prevail.”

The same phrase has been widely used by Hamas in its videos and statements since Oct. 7.

One of the most important objectives outlined in the document was to overrun the Israeli military base in Re’im, which is home to the Gaza division responsible for protecting the region. Other bases that fell under the division’s command were also listed.

Hamas carried out that objective on Oct. 7, rampaging through Re’im and overrunning parts of the base.

The audacity of the blueprint, officials said, made it easy to underestimate. All militaries write plans that they never use, and Israeli officials assessed that, even if Hamas invaded, it might muster a force of a few dozen, not the hundreds who ultimately attacked.

Israel had also misread Hamas’s actions. The group had negotiated for permits to allow Palestinians to work in Israel, which Israeli officials took as a sign that Hamas was not looking for a war.

But Hamas had been drafting attack plans for many years, and Israeli officials had gotten hold of previous iterations of them. What could have been an intelligence coup turned into one of the worst miscalculations in Israel’s 75-year history.

In September 2016, the defense minister’s office compiled a top-secret memorandum based on a much earlier iteration of a Hamas attack plan. The memorandum, which was signed by the defense minister at the time, Avigdor Lieberman, said that an invasion and hostage-taking would “lead to severe damage to the consciousness and morale of the citizens of Israel.”

The memo, which was viewed by The Times, said that Hamas had purchased sophisticated weapons, GPS jammers and drones. It also said that Hamas had increased its fighting force to 27,000 people — having added 6,000 to its ranks in a two-year period. Hamas had hoped to reach 40,000 by 2020, the memo determined.

Last year, after Israel obtained the Jericho Wall document, the military’s Gaza division drafted its own intelligence assessment of this latest invasion plan.

Hamas had “decided to plan a new raid, unprecedented in its scope,” analysts wrote in the assessment reviewed by The Times. It said that Hamas intended to carry out a deception operation followed by a “large-scale maneuver” with the aim of overwhelming the division.

But the Gaza division referred to the plan as a “compass.” In other words, the division determined that Hamas knew where it wanted to go but had not arrived there yet.

On July 6, 2023, the veteran Unit 8200 analyst wrote to a group of other intelligence experts that dozens of Hamas commandos had recently conducted training exercises, with senior Hamas commanders observing.

The training included a dry run of shooting down Israeli aircraft and taking over a kibbutz and a military training base, killing all the cadets. During the exercise, Hamas fighters used the same phrase from the Quran that appeared at the top of the Jericho Wall attack plan, she wrote in the email exchanges viewed by The Times.

The analyst warned that the drill closely followed the Jericho Wall plan, and that Hamas was building the capacity to carry it out.

The colonel in the Gaza division applauded the analysis but said the exercise was part of a “totally imaginative” scenario, not an indication of Hamas’s ability to pull it off.

“In short, let’s wait patiently,” the colonel wrote.

The back-and-forth continued, with some colleagues supporting the analyst’s original conclusion. Soon, she invoked the lessons of the 1973 war, in which Syrian and Egyptian armies overran Israeli defenses. Israeli forces regrouped and repelled the invasion, but the intelligence failure has long served as a lesson for Israeli security officials.

“We already underwent a similar experience 50 years ago on the southern front in connection with a scenario that seemed imaginary, and history may repeat itself if we are not careful,” the analyst wrote to her colleagues.

While ominous, none of the emails predicted that war was imminent. Nor did the analyst challenge the conventional wisdom among Israeli intelligence officials that Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was not interested in war with Israel. But she correctly assessed that Hamas’s capabilities had drastically improved. The gap between the possible and the aspirational had narrowed significantly.

The failures to connect the dots echoed another analytical failure more than two decades ago, when the American authorities also had multiple indications that the terrorist group Al Qaeda was preparing an assault. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were largely a failure of analysis and imagination, a government commission concluded.

“The Israeli intelligence failure on Oct. 7 is sounding more and more like our 9/11,” said Ted Singer, a recently retired senior C.I.A. official who worked extensively in the Middle East. “The failure will be a gap in analysis to paint a convincing picture to military and political leadership that Hamas had the intention to launch the attack when it did.”

On November 29 2023 05:37 Magic Powers wrote:

I understand what you're saying about criminals. I was just trying to explain with a relatively simple comparison why people aren't marching the streets protesting Hamas. That not all criminals are bad is a discussion generally worth having, but I didn't think it necessary to come up with a more precise comparison.

On December 01 2023 11:03 Salazarz wrote:


It happens to be that every group of Arabs that isn't being occupied and ethnically cleansed by Israel has stopped attacking them. Israel isn't ethnically cleansing Egypt, and there hasn't been a war with it since. So too Jordan and a couple others. You might think that Palestinians are different, but I happen to disagree.

Palestine has absolutely no capability to successfully wage war against Israel, state or not. Israel has one of the world's most powerful militaries, a nuclear arsenal, and the backing of the US. Even if Palestine did try to wage war against Israel as a state, them having recognition as an independent state would not make their attacks suddenly more potent.

Their apartheid activities go way beyond security fences and checkpoints.

At best, the blame for 'starting stuff' is 50/50 here, and even that is debatable. It's not as if Israel was just peacefully existing in their homes and evil Arabs came a'knockin with torches and pitchforks.

Totally, which is why if Israel is actually interested in peace, they should maybe try not ethnically cleansing Palestinians for a while and see how it goes.

To this day, the local Arabs in Tel-Aviv do not have 'full citizenship and rights and integration into society.' There is significant systemic discrimination against Arabs in Israel (and it was significantly worse 50 years ago); and then there's the whole thing with people in Gaza having no rights whatsoever, and extremely limited rights (and a completely different set of laws) for people in West Bank as well.

On December 01 2023 02:15 Magic Powers wrote:


+ Show Spoiler + Cerebrate keeps misrepresenting the historic conflict between Jews and Palestinians, sometimes completely making things up and straight up attempting to rewrite history. + Show Spoiler +

On December 01 2023 12:33 Cerebrate1 wrote:

I'm sorry, what? Naziism is a specific ideology and a pretty significant part of it is anti-semitism. Considering a lot of the other parts like countering communism and restoring German glory after WW1 are pretty irrelevant today, I think I can safely say that anyone who identifies as a Nazi today is anti-semetic. If you found even one self identifying Nazi today that isn't anti-semetic, I would be shocked. Certainly not "tons."

It could be what you meant to say was "there are tons of people who are as bad as Nazis today." That might be true, as there are a lot of ways to be bad. I think aspiring to commit genocide and spending their lives pursuing that goal is a pretty high bar of comparison, but there are a lot of people I haven't met, so I can't say what they all do in their spare time.

On December 01 2023 11:14 JimmiC wrote:

That you believe the conspiracy to be true does not make it not a conspiracy. No one “knows” unannounced future intentions. End stop.

Sorry to break it to you, but you are not that different from the QaNon folk.

On December 01 2023 14:41 Acrofales wrote:

While I agree with the overarching point that white nationalists who self-identify as neo-Nazis are almost universally anti-Semites when you get down to it, their general priorities are anti-whatever-minority-is-in-vogue-today-locally. That was also the prime point of Nazism. The ideology isn't defined by their anti-Semitism, inasmuch as their pro-Aryanism. Jews just happened to be the whatever-minority-is-in-vogue-today-locally in a lot of 1930s Europe. The Nazis were only barely less awful to Roma, Slavs, gays, socialists or any other group they labeled Untermenschen. They were wildly anti-Semite because it was a successful scapegoat and a successful propaganda project to label them Untermenschen and therefore less valid humans than Aryan Ubermenschen (which isn't actually properly defined, but everybody was free to interpret as "me! I'm an Ubermensch! As long as nobody took the effort to explicitly label you an Untermensch".

So no, from a definitional point of view of the ideology, Hamas cannot be "literally Nazis", because Palestinians would definitely be Untermenschen in literal Nazis' ideology. Although the Nazis were not very ideologically rigid. Plenty of "Untermenschen" were condoned as long as they stayed in their corner of the world. Hence why Germany could have any allies at all. But it's an open question whether Germany wouldn't have declared war on Japan immediately following victory on their hemisphere (or vice versa, for that matter, Japanese Militarism ideology was hardly any better, just placed Japanese in the position of the naturally superior race).

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel’s war with Hamas resumed in full force Friday, with airstrikes hitting targets in the Gaza Strip minutes after a weeklong truce expired. Black smoke billowed from the besieged territory, and Israel dropped leaflets over Gaza City and southern parts of the enclave, urging civilians to leave their homes to avoid the fighting.

In Israel, sirens warned of incoming rockets at several communal farms near Gaza, a sign that militants also restarted attacks. The renewed hostilities heightened concerns for Palestinians — many of whom have been displaced by the war — as well as about 140 hostages still in Gaza, after more than 100 were freed during the truce.

Qatar, which has served as a mediator along with Egypt, said negotiators were still trying to restart the cease-fire. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry singled out Israel’s role in the resumption of fighting and said it “complicates mediation efforts and exacerbates the humanitarian catastrophe.”

A day earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli officials and urged them to do more to protect Palestinian civilians as they seek to destroy Hamas. Blinken arrived Friday at the COP28 climate talks in Dubai, where he was to meet with Arab foreign ministers and other officials.

Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 raid has killed thousands of Palestinians, uprooted most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people and led to a humanitarian crisis. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are now crammed into the territory’s south with no exit, raising questions over how any Israeli offensive there could avoid heavy civilian casualties.

It was not clear to what extent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will heed appeals from the United States, Israel’s most important ally. Netanyahu’s office said Friday that Israel “is committed to achieving the goals of the war: releasing the hostages, eliminating Hamas and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to the residents of Israel.”

Only hours in to the renewed offensive, the Health Ministry of Hamas-controlled Gaza said 109 people had been killed and dozens wounded.

In the leaflets it dropped in southern Gaza, Israel urged people to leave homes east of Khan Younis, warning that the southern town was now a “dangerous battle zone.” Other leaflets warned residents of several neighborhoods in Gaza City in the north to move south.

The Israeli military also released a map carving up the Gaza Strip into hundreds of numbered parcels, and asked residents to learn the number associated with their location in case of an eventual evacuation. It was not immediately clear how Palestinians would be updated on calls for evacuation.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled northern Gaza earlier in the war, in an extraordinary mass exodus that saw many take shelter in Khan Younis and other places in the south.

One of the first airstrikes Friday destroyed a large building in Khan Younis. Moments later, residents were seen frantically searching the rubble for survivors as medics approached. One wounded person was carried away on a stretcher.

In Hamad City, a Qatari-funded housing development near the city, a strike hit an apartment in a multi-story residential building, while other parts of the building appeared largely intact.

Elsewhere, a strike hit a home near Gaza City in the north, and in the refugee camp of Maghazi, in central Gaza, rescuers clawed through the rubble of a large building hit by warplanes. A foot stuck out of the tangle of concrete and wiring.

Israel has said it is targeting Hamas operatives and blames civilian casualties on the group, accusing the militants of operating in residential neighborhoods. Since the war erupted Oct. 7, in response to a deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel, many of those killed in Israeli bombardments have been women and children.

In Israel, white smoke trails could be seen in the skies over Sderot on the border with northern Gaza after Israel’s missile protection systems activated.

Netanyahu said the war resumed because Hamas had violated the terms of the truce. “It has not met its obligation to release all of the women hostages today and has launched rockets at Israeli citizens,” he said in a statement.

Hamas claimed Israel had asked for the release of 10 female soldiers, which it rejected.

Hamas blamed Israel for the end of the truce, saying in a statement that it had rejected all offers Hamas made to release more hostages and bodies of the dead.

The Israeli military’s announcement of the resumption of strikes came only 30 minutes after the cease-fire expired early Friday.

During the weeklong truce, Hamas and other militants in Gaza released more than 100 hostages, most of them Israelis, in return for 240 Palestinians freed from prisons in Israel.

Virtually all of those freed were women and children, but the fact that few such hostages now remain in Gaza made it hard to reach a deal to extend the cease-fire.

Hamas, a militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years, had been expected to set a higher price for the remaining hostages, especially Israeli soldiers.

Netanyahu has been under intense pressure from families of the hostages to bring them home. But his far-right governing partners have also pushed him to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed, and could abandon his coalition if he is seen as making too many concessions.

A total of 81 Israelis, including dual nationals, were freed during the truce, most of whom appeared physically well but shaken. Another 24 hostages — 23 Thais and one Filipino — were also released, including several men.

The Palestinian prisoners who were released were mostly teenagers accused of throwing stones and firebombs during confrontations with Israeli forces. Several were women who were convicted by military courts of attempting to attack soldiers.

In its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 240 people captive.

Since then, Israel’s bombardment and invasion in Gaza have killed more than 13,300 Palestinians, roughly two-thirds of them women and minors, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

The toll is likely much higher, as officials have only sporadically updated the count since Nov. 11. The ministry says thousands more people are feared dead under the rubble.

Israel says 77 of its soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive. It claims to have killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence.

On December 01 2023 23:05 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Truce over.



Source

On December 02 2023 02:10 Cerebrate1 wrote:
By the way, @JimmyC @Ryzel and @raynpelikoneet : I appreciate your kind words. It's good to hear that the civility of my engagement has not gone unnoticed

Edit: also @JimmyC I meant to compliment you many pages back when you posted that expert explaining how War Crimes actually work. I was going to write a whole lengthy post on the topic, so you spared me the effort and found a great source besides.

On December 01 2023 14:41 Acrofales wrote:

While I agree with the overarching point that white nationalists who self-identify as neo-Nazis are almost universally anti-Semites when you get down to it, their general priorities are anti-whatever-minority-is-in-vogue-today-locally. That was also the prime point of Nazism. The ideology isn't defined by their anti-Semitism, inasmuch as their pro-Aryanism. Jews just happened to be the whatever-minority-is-in-vogue-today-locally in a lot of 1930s Europe. The Nazis were only barely less awful to Roma, Slavs, gays, socialists or any other group they labeled Untermenschen. They were wildly anti-Semite because it was a successful scapegoat and a successful propaganda project to label them Untermenschen and therefore less valid humans than Aryan Ubermenschen (which isn't actually properly defined, but everybody was free to interpret as "me! I'm an Ubermensch! As long as nobody took the effort to explicitly label you an Untermensch".

On December 01 2023 09:04 Cerebrate1 wrote:

You are re-defining refugee. The generally accepted definition of that word according to the UN Refugee Agency is (emphasis mine)

It then goes on to explain that legally a new host country is not permitted to expel them or return them to their home countries while the situation remains. This is yet another example of a term being redefined specifically in relation to the Israel-Arab conflict, while remaining the same in all other contexts.


I'm not sure how you define "success," but The Civil Rights Act of 1957, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Fair Housing Act of 1968, and many other civil rights advances during MLK's time seem like pretty significant leaps forward to me.