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NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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On November 14 2023 19:42 Salazarz wrote:https://www.npr.org/2023/11/13/1211987812/israel-hamas-west-bank-gaza-war-conflict-idfStories like this show the true intentions of Israel, imo. They are not interested in de-escalation, and they are not interested in peace. The Hamas attack presented an opportunity to further their land grabs, and they're taking it without hesitation while the world is looking elsewhere. There's absolutely no excuse for this sort of thing, especially so when tensions are already sky high.
On November 14 2023 19:43 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2023 19:37 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 14 2023 16:29 Acrofales wrote:On November 14 2023 15:39 GreenHorizons wrote:The tweet says EXCLUSIVE RAW FOOTAGE: Watch IDF Spokesperson RAdm. Daniel Hagari walk through one of Hamas' subterranean terrorist tunnels—only to exit in Gaza's Rantisi hospital on the other side. But the video in the tweet isn't raw footage, doesn't show anyone walking through one of Hamas' tunnels, and certainly doesn't exit a tunnel into the hospital. The deceptions don't stop there though. I dunno, seems pretty convincing to me. Of course, I didn't need a lot of convincing that Hamas are horrible and do horrible things. Things like using hospitals as operational bases for firing rockets from. And it stands to reason those would be connected by tunnel. None of it's very surprising if you start from the generally accepted premise that Hamas does bad shit. I'll grant you that holding hostages in a basement of a hospital doesn't really sound like a bad spot for that. Holding hostages at all is obviously not good, but if Israel is throwing hundreds of bombs an hour, keeping those civilians safe in a hospital basement seems like the least bad place to keep them. The tweet is shown to be untrue by the video it is supposed to be describing and you describe it as "pretty convincing". I suppose this at least makes it easier to understand how they thought they'd get away with "the list where every terrorist writes his name... guarding the hostages" actually just being a plain calendar with the days of the week written on it. It's embarrassingly bad propaganda, but I guess as the saying goes, If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid. Lol, that is some Putin level bullshit right there. Actually, a lot of similarities with Putin's bullshit -- the whole shtick about 'our state being threatened' and 'regrettable but necessary action' and so on.
I don't think that "the world is looking elsewhere" as much as they (more specifically the West) are willfully complicit, the US chief among them (at least as far as Western political leaders and their supporters go).
It'd be easier to laugh at (it is comically stupid propaganda) if such absurd stupidity wasn't being used (and accepted by far too many) as an ostensible justification for (in the west aiding and abetting) massacring innocent children by the thousands as part of an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign by Israel.
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Lest shocking thing ever announced.
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Norway28559 Posts
Amnesty documents a spike in torture, humiliation, arbitrary arrests on the west bank
According to that article, it's been on a rise throughout all of 2023, much before october 7th, but there's also been a 50% increase in so-called 'admininstrative detention' (detention without charge or trial that can be renewed indefinitely) in the past month.
Some 'highlights' in the spoiler.
+ Show Spoiler +
Amnesty International has for decades documented widespread torture by Israeli authorities in places of detention across the West Bank. However, over the past four weeks, videos and images have been shared widely online showing gruesome scenes of Israeli soldiers beating and humiliating Palestinians while detaining them blind-folded, stripped, with their hands tied, in a particularly chilling public display of torture and humiliation of Palestinian detainees.
In one image analysed by Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab, three Palestinian men, blindfolded and stripped of their clothes can be seen beside a soldier, wearing a green olive uniform like those worn by the Israeli ground forces. A Haaretz investigation published on 19 October found that the image was taken in Wadi al-Seeq, a village East of Ramallah, on 12 October. One of the three victims depicted in the photograph told Amnesty International that he had initially been held and beaten by settlers but two hours later an Israeli military jeep arrived:
“One of the Israeli officers who came, approached me and kicked me on my left side, then jumped on my head with his two legs pushing my face further into the dirt and then continued kicking me as I was head down, into the dirt, with my hands tied behind my back. He then got a knife and tore all of my clothes off except for my underwear and used part of my torn clothes to blindfold me. The beating to the rest of my body did not stop, at one point he started jumping on my back – three or four times – while yelling ‘die, die you trash’ … in the end before this finally stopped, another officer urinated on my face and body while also yelling at us ‘to die’.”
Amnesty International also spoke to two women who were arbitrarily detained for 14 hours at a police station in occupied East Jerusalem where they were humiliated, strip-searched, mocked and asked to curse Hamas. They were later released without charges.
In a video first published on social media on 31 October and analysed by Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab, nine detained men, who based on identifiable accents are Palestinian, can be seen, some stripped naked and others half-naked, blindfolded and handcuffed, surrounded by at least 12 soldiers wearing olive green uniforms and equipped with either M4A1 or Tavor X95 assault rifles. Both uniforms and weapons are standard issue equipment of the Israeli ground forces. One of the soldiers is seen kicking one of the detainees in the head. Another video analysed by Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab uploaded to platform X (formerly Twitter) on 31 October shows a blindfolded person, likely Palestinian, along with an Israeli army sergeant mocking the prisoner and dancing around him.
A recently released Palestinian detainee from occupied East Jerusalem, who spoke to Amnesty International on condition of anonymity, said how Israeli interrogators subjected him and other detainees at the Russian Compound (al-Maskoubiyeh), a detention center in Jerusalem, to severe beatings which left him with bruises and three broken ribs. He also highlighted how Israeli police interrogators beat them continuously on their heads yelling at them to always keep their heads down, while ordering them to “praise Israel and curse Hamas.” He added: “even when one of the 12 detainees with us in the cell did that, the beating and humiliation did not stop.”
Since 7 October, according to the Israeli authorities, four Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli detention facilities in circumstances that have not yet been impartially investigated. Two of the four are workers from the occupied Gaza Strip, held incommunicado by the Israeli army in military detention centres, whose deaths were only made public by the army after an inquiry by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
On 31 October, the Israeli authorities extended by one month the “state of emergency in prisons” which grants Israel’s National Security Minister virtually unrestrained powers to deny sentenced prisoners access to visits by lawyers and family members; to hold detainees in overcrowded cells; to deny them outdoor exercise and to impose cruel collective punishment measures such as cutting off water and electricity for long hours, effectively allowing for the intensification of cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees, in violation of the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment.
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The IDF is now inside the hospital.
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On November 14 2023 23:51 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2023 22:39 RvB wrote:On November 13 2023 04:31 ChristianS wrote:The New Yorker just ran an interview with Daniella Weiss, a leader in the Israel settler movement for decades. Isaac Chotiner interviews are infamous for coaxing people into making themselves look awful, but even against that background this one stands out. It reads a little to me like interviews with senior neo-Nazis or Klansmen – facially collegial, but with anger and aggression on a hair’s trigger if the interviewer asks something even slightly disagreeable. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but the highlights are pretty open expansionist ambitions (“The borders of the homeland of the Jews are the Euphrates in the east and the Nile in the southwest.”) and an emphatic belief that Palestinians are not entitled to rights (especially voting rights), but can stay in Israel-owned territory as long as they acknowledge Jewish supremacy (“We the Jews are the sovereigns in the state of Israel and in the Land of Israel. They have to accept it.”). I’m not going to dwell on how appalling her position is. It’s worth asking, though, how representative her position is among Israelis. She claims settler movements are extremely popular in Israel, which is part of why they’ve had such a long string of right-wing governments. I think that’s plausible. But my impression was that Netanyahu’s position had largely been “I’m not going to try to achieve any long-term solution; I’ll keep you safe and mostly maintain the status quo.” The settlements are obviously expansionist, but they haven’t been especially fast (not in the way you’d expect of someone who wanted to conquer from the Nile to the Euphrates in his lifetime, anyway). In other words, I don’t think Netanyahu’s pre-war success is obviously interpreted as the Israeli public supporting a fully expansionist goal like Weiss espouses. It seems more like Israelis mostly wanted safety and maintaining the status quo; they were okay with a little expansionism as long as it was mostly led by private settler groups. I have no idea what the post-war consensus will be, though. It seems obvious now that there is no long-term security to be had from maintaining the status quo. But I don’t think Israel has the capability to conquer everything Weiss wants to conquer, and their international backing is on life support as it is. I don’t actually see any coherent post-war plan that doesn’t involve some sort of two-state solution, but at the same time that kind of peaceful conclusion has never seemed further away. Support for the settlements seems to be pretty balanced. That is not the whole story though since the settler movement is not a monolith. The settlements were initially founded for security reasons. The settlements with the aim of annexation only came later. This article gives a good overview of the West Bank settlements. The paper it links to is also interesting. It analyses how much of a problem the settlements are to a two state solution. More to the point only one third of the settlers are there for expansionist reasons: In terms of settlers’ personal reasons for living in the West Bank, one-third of Jews in the West Bank are motivated by religious ideology, while the rest were drawn to the region by the potential to improve their quality of life. Of the 127 recognized settlements, 64 were established for religious reasons, while 63 (home to 67% of Jews in the West Bank) were built with the motivation to provide a high quality of life. In other words people like Weiss are not even a majority in the settlements let alone Israel as a whole. Their aim of a greater Israel is a fantasy anyway. It includes parts of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. That's not going to happen. Not to quibble too much on minutiae, but “only 1/3 of settlers are there for religious reasons” is not the same as “only 1/3 are there for expansionist reasons.” Arguably 100% are there for expansionist reasons; if I show up to take somebody else’s land because I think I’m gonna be able to build a great house on it, that’s just as expansionist as it I show up to fulfill God’s plan for me to have it. If I was opposed to expansionism I wouldn’t have shown up at all.
Weiss claim is that the settler movement is incredibly popular and your question is if her view is representative. That's what I answered. Support for settlements is balanced and her views in the settlement movement are a minority. That moving for economic reasons can help the people who want to annex all the West Bank into Israel is true.
More generally, all these motivations run into each other. The religious zealots show up to restore the ancient Land of Israel by any means necessary. Usually that means intentionally settling in the middle of big Palestinian communities and going out of their way to pick fights (e.g. dumping sewage on their crops). But the more self-interested settlers need those guys on the front lines to feel safe taking the land in less overtly provocative settlements; if I’m gonna speed on the freeway by 10 mph it feels a lot safer if there’s a bunch of cars speeding by 25 mph around.
No they don't need this. The initial settlements were built on land with no Palestinians. The settlements with the purpose of annexing the whole West Bank came later. If they'd need the extremist settlers on the front line this sequence of events makes no sense. The majority of the settlers live in the former settlements.
Meanwhile from the government’s perspective they start out doing this for “security” reasons; but even from the start they’re figuring out what annexation would look like and placing settlements based on that plan. Because if the settlement just exists to defend other places, it’s more like a military outpost or fort; but once there’s a civilian population there you feel like you need to defend, it’s actually pretty inconvenient for it to be this isolated outpost with long, vulnerable supply lines. It’s the same vicious cycle every empire goes through – you expand in the name of creating a defensive buffer, but then in peacetime you build a bunch of shit in the buffer zone you want to defend, so now you have to expand again to defend that shit, and so on.
There were always supposed to be civilians in the settlements. This way there'd be a political interest to protect these areas. There certainly were no plans to go any further than that at first. Only under the later Likud government did the plans expand. Your observation into their effectiveness is on point. The settlements never achieved any of their aims in regards to security. They're a massive failure.
One of the worst qualities of the settlements is that it puts Palestinians in closest contact with the Israelis who are most viciously antagonistic to them. If you’re an Israeli who fundamentally views Palestinians as people who deserve rights and dignity, you probably live in Tel Aviv or something; if you’re an Israeli who thinks settlements are a sweet deal to get some cheap land, you probably live in one of the further-back settlements; if you think Palestinians are vermin who need to accept Jewish supremacy, leave or die, you’re probably on the front lines with Daniella Weiss scheming ways to contaminate their water supplies or vandalize their mosques.
Yeah the settlements are a disaster. The settlements did not achieve any of its aims. Security or otherwise. It's also an obstacle to peace. Not to mention how it hurts Israels support internationally as you already pointed out. Nonetheless a solution is possible even with the settlements. In previous negotiations Israel would annex the large settlements, give Palestinians other land in return, and abandon the rest. That's probably the most realistic way to solve the issue.
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^ That was pre 9/11 Socialist Christopher Hitchens who was 100% right and did not really abandon, even after 9/11, which is why the US won't abandon it's Israeli policy. Because we still have a sizeable Evangelical voter base, which good news is rapidly decreasing and dying off but also becoming increasingly fascist as a result, Israel knows this as and uses it to its advantage as Netanyahu has been recorded saying so. So Evangelicals support Israel because they believe it will bring on the end of the world, funny thing nobody asks what they thinks are supposed to happen to the Jews to start said Armageddon. As Hitchens would say "lunatics" on both sides of the isle.
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A friend of mine is reiterating Hamas does not operate out of hospitals, all while this Hamas stronghold in the Al-Shifa hospital is being dismantled. We're so far from being able to even view the same version of reality. Its a really weird world right now.
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On November 15 2023 11:01 Mohdoo wrote:
A friend of mine is reiterating Hamas does not operate out of hospitals, all while this Hamas stronghold in the Al-Shifa hospital is being dismantled. We're so far from being able to even view the same version of reality. Its a really weird world right now.
Those people are as far gone as the minister in Israel that called for nukes. Even Hamas propaganda outlet Al Jazeera fucked up by interviewing a patient that complained about Hamas fighters hiding in the hospital. But maybe there's a calendar hanging somewhere.
www.timesofisrael.com
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On November 15 2023 11:53 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2023 11:01 Mohdoo wrote:
A friend of mine is reiterating Hamas does not operate out of hospitals, all while this Hamas stronghold in the Al-Shifa hospital is being dismantled. We're so far from being able to even view the same version of reality. Its a really weird world right now. Those people are as far gone as the minister in Israel that called for nukes. Even Hamas propaganda outlet Al Jazeera fucked up by interviewing a patient that complained about Hamas fighters hiding in the hospital. But maybe there's a calendar hanging somewhere. www.timesofisrael.com
I think the compulsion to identify with worldviews or political perspectives is a big problem. A friend of mine is basically as die-hard anti-USA/West/etc as it gets and I legitimately feel bad for them because it feels like they are really overwhelemed and distressed by it. Its like they don't have an off-ramp. They kinda dived all the way in and ended up building an identity around it.
Because yes, I agree, they are deeply far gone, just like the nuke guy. But man, its a big issue. There are too many people who don't just believe something, but they also feel committed to it. I am sure some people here view me as some kinda weird psycho because of how quickly I will just dump a perspective in a trash can, but I feel like my autism serves me well in these situations. Its like I'm not able to experience the sensation of identity that seems to really bog some people down. There are major downsides, like being overly-detached from emotionally-charged topics like this, and it upsets people and makes them feel like I am being condescending. But man, I am really fucking glad to be way too much of whatever I am rather than way too much "capable of experiencing the sensation of group identity".
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On November 15 2023 05:22 Liquid`Drone wrote:Amnesty documents a spike in torture, humiliation, arbitrary arrests on the west bankAccording to that article, it's been on a rise throughout all of 2023, much before october 7th, but there's also been a 50% increase in so-called 'admininstrative detention' (detention without charge or trial that can be renewed indefinitely) in the past month. Some 'highlights' in the spoiler. + Show Spoiler +
Amnesty International has for decades documented widespread torture by Israeli authorities in places of detention across the West Bank. However, over the past four weeks, videos and images have been shared widely online showing gruesome scenes of Israeli soldiers beating and humiliating Palestinians while detaining them blind-folded, stripped, with their hands tied, in a particularly chilling public display of torture and humiliation of Palestinian detainees.
In one image analysed by Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab, three Palestinian men, blindfolded and stripped of their clothes can be seen beside a soldier, wearing a green olive uniform like those worn by the Israeli ground forces. A Haaretz investigation published on 19 October found that the image was taken in Wadi al-Seeq, a village East of Ramallah, on 12 October. One of the three victims depicted in the photograph told Amnesty International that he had initially been held and beaten by settlers but two hours later an Israeli military jeep arrived:
“One of the Israeli officers who came, approached me and kicked me on my left side, then jumped on my head with his two legs pushing my face further into the dirt and then continued kicking me as I was head down, into the dirt, with my hands tied behind my back. He then got a knife and tore all of my clothes off except for my underwear and used part of my torn clothes to blindfold me. The beating to the rest of my body did not stop, at one point he started jumping on my back – three or four times – while yelling ‘die, die you trash’ … in the end before this finally stopped, another officer urinated on my face and body while also yelling at us ‘to die’.”
Amnesty International also spoke to two women who were arbitrarily detained for 14 hours at a police station in occupied East Jerusalem where they were humiliated, strip-searched, mocked and asked to curse Hamas. They were later released without charges.
In a video first published on social media on 31 October and analysed by Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab, nine detained men, who based on identifiable accents are Palestinian, can be seen, some stripped naked and others half-naked, blindfolded and handcuffed, surrounded by at least 12 soldiers wearing olive green uniforms and equipped with either M4A1 or Tavor X95 assault rifles. Both uniforms and weapons are standard issue equipment of the Israeli ground forces. One of the soldiers is seen kicking one of the detainees in the head. Another video analysed by Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab uploaded to platform X (formerly Twitter) on 31 October shows a blindfolded person, likely Palestinian, along with an Israeli army sergeant mocking the prisoner and dancing around him.
A recently released Palestinian detainee from occupied East Jerusalem, who spoke to Amnesty International on condition of anonymity, said how Israeli interrogators subjected him and other detainees at the Russian Compound (al-Maskoubiyeh), a detention center in Jerusalem, to severe beatings which left him with bruises and three broken ribs. He also highlighted how Israeli police interrogators beat them continuously on their heads yelling at them to always keep their heads down, while ordering them to “praise Israel and curse Hamas.” He added: “even when one of the 12 detainees with us in the cell did that, the beating and humiliation did not stop.”
Since 7 October, according to the Israeli authorities, four Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli detention facilities in circumstances that have not yet been impartially investigated. Two of the four are workers from the occupied Gaza Strip, held incommunicado by the Israeli army in military detention centres, whose deaths were only made public by the army after an inquiry by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
On 31 October, the Israeli authorities extended by one month the “state of emergency in prisons” which grants Israel’s National Security Minister virtually unrestrained powers to deny sentenced prisoners access to visits by lawyers and family members; to hold detainees in overcrowded cells; to deny them outdoor exercise and to impose cruel collective punishment measures such as cutting off water and electricity for long hours, effectively allowing for the intensification of cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees, in violation of the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment.
Any torture is definitely an issue and should be stopped immediately and prosecuted.
That said, "an increase in arrests without trial in the past month" is the result of agitators in the West Bank. Many used weapons to attack soldiers during riots. Some were plotting atrocities to follow up Oct 7. This is a time of war and these sort of things have to be dealt with quickly. The normal legal process in a liberal democracy is very time and resource consuming (think of any major court case in your home country and how long it took from arrest to verdict.) Do you think Ukraine should be holding a full blown trial for every Russian soldier it captures? It's simply not practical or reasonable to demand on this short of a time table, especially when most resources are tied up with the war.
After the war, there should be trials, but honestly, anyone short of the ringleader terrorists will probably be swapped to free the women and children Hamas has as hostages before then anyways.
We can't know what each detainee was detained for, but this clearly biased article wants readers to believe these are all just random pedestrians and leaves out the obvious context that I had to speak out for it.
I feel bad for the guys with work permits who get questioned. They were a lifeline to start rebuilding peaceful interactions between Israelis and Palestinians (and one of the things improving the economic situation for Palestinians and convincing Israel that Hamas was becoming more moderate). The problem is, the evidence really points to Oct 7th being made possible by the intel brought back to Gaza by workers like this. I'm sure only a minority of workers act as spies for Hamas, but it's pretty understandable from a security perspective why Israel wouldn't want hundreds of unaccounted for eyes observing every defensive point and troop movement along the border and beyond during a war.
People criticize Israel for not preventing Oct 7 but also criticize it for detaining suspected terrorists. The way to prevent atrocities is not to wait until they unfold. Especially in a time of war when many terrorists will try to unleash all their plans simultaneously.
Regarding lawyer access, if the ringleaders have key messages to slip to their followers, private meetings would be great times to do that. After the war, let the lawyers in. But it just doesn't make sense to give the enemy free-bees and put your people's lives on the line for that during a crisis like this.
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Norway28559 Posts
I can agree that it makes sense for these detentions to rise sharply after oct. 7., but as mentioned, 2023 was already a 20-year high, and that clearly did not contribute much to helping Isael prevent the atrocity.
If anything I think this is also an example of the opposite, that an experience like this is just the type of push that brings someone over to the Hamas side.
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Do you think Ukraine should be holding a full blown trial for every Russian soldier it captures?
There is a difference between captured soldiers and random civilians, and there is a whole lot of room between 'full blown trials' and 'kicking dudes in the head and pissing on them while laughing.'
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"Agitators"...
If I'm an "agitator" in my country, I don't expect to get the living crap beaten out of me. Also, in some of these cases the "agitators" are allegedly completely innocent.
This brutality is explained not by "agitators", it's explained by extreme retaliation for a minor offense or sometimes no offense at all.
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Regarding the claim that initially the Jewish settlers only took unoccupied land:
The Absentee Property Law was used to scam Palestinians (even those who were refugees) out of their lawful property. This has been happening for decades. In the face of that evidence it's hard to believe the claim that only land that wasn't owned was taken by the settlers, at any point in time, be it several generations ago or now.
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Notice the word "voluntarily" otherwise it would be considered a war crime.
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What's another war crime, eh? The US (as judge, jury, and executioner) has already decided that international law doesn't apply to Israel.
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United States41989 Posts
“Voluntary” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in there. Voluntarily leaving the place that has no clean water due to a military blockade is about as voluntary as getting on the trains to the camps in 1944. Anything where you move under your own power basically.
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Northern Ireland23847 Posts
On November 15 2023 12:09 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2023 11:53 RvB wrote:On November 15 2023 11:01 Mohdoo wrote:
A friend of mine is reiterating Hamas does not operate out of hospitals, all while this Hamas stronghold in the Al-Shifa hospital is being dismantled. We're so far from being able to even view the same version of reality. Its a really weird world right now. Those people are as far gone as the minister in Israel that called for nukes. Even Hamas propaganda outlet Al Jazeera fucked up by interviewing a patient that complained about Hamas fighters hiding in the hospital. But maybe there's a calendar hanging somewhere. www.timesofisrael.com I think the compulsion to identify with worldviews or political perspectives is a big problem. A friend of mine is basically as die-hard anti-USA/West/etc as it gets and I legitimately feel bad for them because it feels like they are really overwhelemed and distressed by it. Its like they don't have an off-ramp. They kinda dived all the way in and ended up building an identity around it. Because yes, I agree, they are deeply far gone, just like the nuke guy. But man, its a big issue. There are too many people who don't just believe something, but they also feel committed to it. I am sure some people here view me as some kinda weird psycho because of how quickly I will just dump a perspective in a trash can, but I feel like my autism serves me well in these situations. Its like I'm not able to experience the sensation of identity that seems to really bog some people down. There are major downsides, like being overly-detached from emotionally-charged topics like this, and it upsets people and makes them feel like I am being condescending. But man, I am really fucking glad to be way too much of whatever I am rather than way too much "capable of experiencing the sensation of group identity".
Interesting, I do largely agree with much of that, although in various corners of the internet I inhabit autistic people can be just as, if not more tunnel-visioned and myopic than neurotypical people.
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Glad to know I can voluntarily migrate to another country in case my country gets destroyed, invaded and occupied. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
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EPT
