Anonymous wrote:The victim mentality is really beyond what I even imagined.
Literally murdering thousands of kids and still screaming “everyone hates us for no reason!!”
It’s certifiable
It is certifiable that so many people hate Israelis and Jews, no?
It that every Jew is responsible for what Israeli policy is. Must mean every Muslim is pro Hamas / pro terrorist.
This is a good point. "If you don't support Hamas and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an Islamophobe who wants to genocide all Muslims" makes as much sense as "If you don't support Israel and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an antisemite who wants to genocide all Jews."
I suspect the previous poster(s) understands this, but they're backed into a corner and can only spew a smokescreen of insults. Which is a very dishonest practice.
DP
Everyone here is 100.00% anti-Hamas. What about that fact don't you get? Stop trying to gin up a defense for what Israel is doing by arguing that those opposed to those actions are supportive of Hamas. It's pathetic. Even you can do better.
Perhaps my post wasn't sufficiently clear? Of course everyone here is anti-Hamas and, more specifically, opposes its actions on 10/7. I was making a comparison between absurd conclusions. Nobody believes that opposing Hamas means you're a genocidal Islamophobe who hates Muslims. Similarly, nobody believes that opposing Israel means you're a genocidal antisemite who hates Jews. Well, almost nobody in both cases. Some people are deliberately obtuse or deceitful or too fanatical to think straight, and my post was aimed at these folk. I don't support either statement, which is ... kind of why I put them both in quotes.
That's objectively false. Can't be anti-Hamas and yet be their direct mouthpiece repeating their false claims and conspiracy theories.
Which I have done ... where, exactly? Another straw man. Sorry, but this is getting very boring.
Don't know if it was you or who, as posts are anonymous, but I'm definitely not the only one here who keeps seeing Hamas propaganda and false talking points popping up over and over again.
Which makes your role here what...? A confused person who doesn't know what's going on? Someone who is naive and lacks critical thinking skills? Clearly not, since you are also hyperfocused on rhetorical devices, like "ad hominem" and "strawman" which tells me you are here specifically to argue. Yet if that's the case, then why are you ignoring the instances where Hamas talking points are being used? Perhaps you overestimate the notion of plausible deniability?
The PP keeps throwing around the terms “ad hominem” and “strawman” as an attempt to discredit the detailed NYT reporting. She’s using those terms (incorrectly but whatever) to distract from the objectively horrific and meticulously detailed description of the vicious sexual torture used by Hamas on 10/7. If she can get people to mentally associate that detailed reporting with cheap rhetorical devices, it helps her cause. It’s a classic propagandist move, albeit an easily identifiable one. She’s a propagandist, just not a very skilled one.
DP
The NY Times account is horrifying. It would be impossible to look into the eyes of those parents and not feel tremendous sadness for them (and for the world, frankly, since what happened to their daughter is just horrific for our shared sense of humanity).
I can't take the position that I'm sure the reporting is not true, but there is something about this reporting that doesn't seem to make much sense. I don't think I have ever come across reporting related to severe trauma (and this reported trauma is probably as severe as one can imagine) where the eyewitness accounts are even 10% as vivid and detailed as the ones featured in the Times. I'm not prepared to call anyone involved a liar, but I would just gently point out that shock and trauma, at least in my experience, just does not lend itself to a very vivid and detailed memory of the events in question - for most people, anyway.
You just did call everyone involved a liar.
I look forward to watching you say the same thing about the NYT’s meticulous reporting about the child deaths in Gaza and how those babies were killed and what their parents said they saw when their kids died in front of them. Are those parents, with their horrific details of watching their children bleed out and die in front them, also lying? Please do go on and tell me how the Palestinian parents who watched their children die in front of them are also lying.
DP. There is a mix of lies and truths. Yes, some Palestinian children have died, but there are also lies about how many died (such as the grossly exaggerated death count from Baptist Hospital). There are also lies about whose hands they died at. Yes, IDF killed some, but Hamas is also killing Palestinians, like when Hamas was trying to steal humanitarian aid for themselves rather than distribute it and they shot and killed hungry Palestinians who complained about it. Or when Hamas was trying to stop people from trying to evacuate. Or when civilians died because they were placed in harm's way by Hamas as human shields, or were killed because their home or shelter collapsed into Hamas tunnels when Hamas complexes were bombed.
Sure, but that’s not the point. The PP who is saying that the detailed eyewitness accounts of sexual torture must be lies because the shock and trauma should have prevented the creation of vivid and detailed memories of that torture needs to also then come out and say that the Palestinian parents who described watching their child bleed out in front of them in vivid detail are also lying because that level of shock and trauma should have prevented those parents from forming those memories. If she’s taking the position that the stories of sexual torture can’t be true because of “shock and trauma” then she needs to be consistent in how that theory is applied. Unless, of course, she’s taking the position that only Jewish women have this peculiar inability to remember unspeakable horrors, which is what I suspect she’s really getting at.
In any case, I look forward to reading her statements that the Palestinian parents who described the horrific and slow deaths of their dying children in front of their own eyes are also lying when they describe those deaths in excruciating and awful detail.
Exactly how mental are you???
The person used these exact words “I can't take the position that I'm sure the reporting is not true, but there is something about this reporting that doesn't seem to make much sense.“ and “ I'm not prepared to call anyone involved a liar, but I would just gently point out that shock and trauma, at least in my experience, just does not lend itself to a very vivid and detailed memory of the events in question - for most people, anyway.”
And from those two statements you walked away with an argument that the accounts “must be lies”? Must be lies? Are you literally deranged?
Anonymous wrote:I couldn't get through the NY Times article. The brutalization of women was planned and carried out in multiple locations on 10/7. Not only is Hamas and its supporters a death cult but it is filled with rapists.
Where were the protests, the signs, the marches for these women? Michelle "bring back our girls" Obama? Susan Sarandon? UN Women? It's like rape has become fashionable again when the victims are Jews.
The sexual abuse of women on 10/7 or on any other day is horrific and disgusting. I'm sure everyone here wishes none of that ever happened.
It's sad that the initial reports were met with guarded skepticism, but consider that we were also told that 40 babies were beheaded, a baby was baked in an oven, and dead babies were found hanging on a clothesline. These stories proved to be untrue. The more lurid and preposterous the claim, the less likely it was to be true, even though some assertions were allegedly based on "eyewitness testimonies" (which were later retracted). We also heard that Palestinian militants had burned many people alive. It turned out, and Israelis who observed the events of the day confirmed this, that in fact the IDF had done most, if not all, of the burning, including burning hundreds of Palestinian militants to death (as has been pointed out, they "did not burn themselves").
Unfortunately, Israel is currently led by some ethically challenged people. To put it bluntly, they lie. A lot. Given Israel's lack of credibility, it would be naive to unquestioningly accept any of its assertions. Israel's moral challenges also make it difficult to believe so-called confessions of rape by captured militants. Israel beats "confessions" out of its detainees, so these "admissions" cannot be assumed to be valid in every case.
Additionally, there is no available forensic evidence of rape. In a Times of Israel report, it is claimed that "physical evidence of sexual assault was not collected from corpses by Israel’s overtaxed morgue facilities." Additionally, "the government has not released explicit footage or pressed rape survivors to share their stories. Nor have the forensic services released formal reports on whether their findings were consistent with sexual abuse."
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/amp/).
I think it likely that, sadly, women were raped on 10/7. I think it equally likely that some of the rape stories we have been told are fabricated. It would be entirely out of character for Israel not to lie about rape, given that it has lied about virtually everything else and is particularly prone to lying about being victimized.
Wow. To me, a non-Israeli and non-Jew, this just reads as horrific sexual rape and torture apologia. I find your entire screed genuinely chilling. You probably don’t even care how vicious you sound, but it’s awful.
You know what I did immediately after 10/7? I went to Hamas’ own telegram channels and watched their own videos, which they kept up until they realized how bad it made them look. You obviously did not and obviously don’t care anyhow, given that the victims were Jewish. I will never forget what I saw. Never.
Did you see any videos portraying rape on the Hamas channels? I am genuinely curious.
Your assessment of my sentiments is entirely incorrect. I have never apologized for rape or torture, and I clearly call sexual abuse "horrific and disgusting," so your conclusions are unfounded. When I point out that the claims of babies being beheaded and hung on clotheslines are false (as in, people lied), this does not mean I don't care about beheading babies or hanging them up with the laundry (in truth, I strenuously object to roasting children or pinning them, either dead or alive, to clotheslines.) It means I have a commitment to the truth. Similarly, I am not detracting from the severity of rape when I point out that Israel has very little credibility, so it would be naive to blindly believe everything it claims (I did acknowledge that I think some of the claims are probably accurate). Perhaps you could try to separate my disinclination to embrace lies as support for whatever is being lied about?
If someone tells you that they met Elvis last Monday and Bigfoot last Tuesday, you could be excused for being a little skeptical if they told you they met Justin Bieber on Wednesday. While it's possible the latest claim is true, one might wonder if this person is prone to hallucinating or is perhaps just plain telling porkie pies.
If I may say so, it seems to me people with an agenda are being rather theatrical and performative about some of Israel's claims. We were all expected to work ourselves into a lather, despise Palestinians, embrace Israel unconditionally, celebrate massacring children in Gaza, and fall about clutching our pearls and collapsing on the fainting couch because Hamas baked a baby in an oven and hung dead babies on a clothesline, except ... that didn't happen. Why would we be stupid enough to blindly believe anything else Israel claims after that? And why would proof of such extreme stupidity be "chilling" or "vicious"? And why would one's very well-founded skepticism indicate lack of sympathy for the victims in the unlikely event something Israel claims actually turns out to be true?
Terrible, cruel, and unjust things undoubtedly happened on 10/7. I don't think anyone denies that. However, the Israeli authorities lie so compulsively that one would have to be extremely dull-witted or childlike not to want some independent verification of anything they tell you.
That’s a lot of words to say “I’m a vicious anti-Semite who freely uses the most ancient of anti-Semitic tropes.”
Do you realize just how awful you sound to rational people who aren’t gleefully stewing in anti-Semitism day in and day out? I’m genuinely curious, to quote you.
- non-Jew, since obviously if I were Jewish you’d start going on about the protocols of Zion or whatever. And I feel dirty even talking to you, like I’m giving credence to someone who would have watched the Hamas videos for fun.
You may be surprised to learn that I am a secular Ashkenazi Jew, but that's neither here nor there. Many orthodox Jews oppose Zionism in general and the current Israeli government in particular. Don't let that get in the way of trying to win a cheap point by screeching about antisemitism (which is antisemitic in itself).
What is relevant is that nobody has answered my question about rape videos. Do they or don't they exist? And why do you throw up smokescreens of insults rather than trying to address my arguments? Well, we know why, but couldn't you at least try to be honest enough to address my actual statements instead of lying about them? When you so obviously lie about and misrepresent what I have said, why do you expect me to naively believe anything else you might say?
Nobody has addressed my point about the lying. Given that the 40 beheaded babies/baby baked in an oven/babies on clotheslines stories were, well, flat-out lies, why is is "antisemitic" to wonder how true similar stories might be? It's the lying, stupid. When someone lies and lies and then lies some more, you start to wonder about the credibility of every story they tell. Kind of like when someone screams "antisemitism" again and again and again some more, you start to wonder if maybe they're trying to bury the truth under all that faux indignation and hysteria. Prove me wrong. Show you have some integrity and explain to me why I should believe the chopped-off-breast story when so many other stories have turned out to be lies. What differentiates that story from the babies-on-clotheslines story? Why would it be unreasonable to want some sort of verification, given that so many of these stories turned out to be false?
And please don't tell me I'm "denying atrocities" because I "hate Jews" or any similar dishonest and evasive craziness. I acknowledge that atrocities occurred. I even said I think there were probably rapes and that rape is "horrific." I am not dismissing unverified claims. Some may very well be true. Under the circumstances, however, I would simply like to see some sort of authentication before I make up my mind one way or the other. What is your problem with that?
Since you’re so fixated about the lying, let’s start with your lies first. Give me hard and solid proof that Israel — specifically Israel, not an individual Jew unless you are taking the position that one Jew speaks for all of Israel — but that “Israel” (your words) said that there were specifically 40 beheaded babies, a baby baked in an oven, and a baby on a clothesline. Show me where “Israel” as a single entity lied repeatedly about every single one of these, because that’s your assertion: that “Israel,” not an individual, not an entity in Israel, not an individual Jewish reporter, not a Jewish extremist, not even the IDF, but that “Israel” itself lies. So show me that proof. Find me the evidence that singular Israel collectively and repeatedly lied. You say it happened as a fact and you’ve repeated that “fact” over and over. So show me your mountains of evidence.
Spoiler alert: you are lying.
And yes. I will call out antisemitism when I see it, and it’s profoundly antisemitic to repeatedly and chillingly talk about how “Israel” lies all the time. That is the most ancient of antisemitic tropes and your anger at being identified for using that trope is not my problem.
Israel has discredited itself. Recent polls in Israel show that Israelis increasingly distrust Netanyahu. His ratings are plummeting and his nationalist base is beginning to desert him. There's a better than zero chance he may end up in jail on corruption charges, which might be the best thing to happen to Israel in a long time.
Why are you spreading false Hamas propaganda, and wild conspiracy theories that 10/7 was some kind of false flag staged by the IDF?
Now I'm truly puzzled. Where do I claim that 10/7 was staged by the IDF? This is (yawn) another straw man. Let me guess -- you will follow up with another ad hominem? Can I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF AND also believe that the babies on a clothes line stories is untrue? Or are you insisting that IF I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF, I must ALSO believe the babies-on-a-clothesline IS true? Do you understand that, as someone above just pointed out, two claims need not be mutually exclusive?
Wow. You really are a piece of work. Right above this,
"We now know that those burned on 10/7 were almost certainly burned by the Israeli military."
Unreal that anyone would try and claim that the 10/7 violence was Israeli military when we have HOURS AND HOURS of Hamas video showing it was in fact Hamas.
Stop playing dumb games here. You are really failing badly here.
She has no evidence that the IDF did any of the burning of Israel civilians just like she has no evidence that IDF stated “40 beheaded babies” anywhere. I hate calling her a she, because that would imply that she could potentially be a mother, and that would be the greatest tragedy.
There is ample evidence that “some” of the 10/7 damage was caused by IDF. That evidence is witness reports of helicopter and tank fire, the damage that can only be caused by tank and helicopter shelling, and burned bodies of Hamas militants who most assuredly did not self immolate.
What there is evidence of is that IDF responded to the Hamas attack on 10/7, killed many of the Hamas attackers, and that a few civilians were caught in the crossfire. But what there is NOT evidence of is that IDF was somehow responsible for a majority of the Israelis killed and burned. And again, there would have been ZERO people killed and burned if Hamas hadn't attacked on 10/7. Hamas was, and still is the party responsible for the violence. And, the bombing would end if Hamas capitulated and surrendered. No amount of "but Israel..." will change that. None.
Not the person you're responding to but to throw in my two cents. Israeli leaders have been caught out lying so many times that they have earned widespread distrust (including from many Israelis). This is NOT the same as pretending Hamas is all sweetness and light. It simply means many of us don't take every story coming out of Israel at face value.
How to apportion responsibility for the current tragic situation is a different but worthy debate. It has been percolating for a very long time.
Yes, both sides lied. And continue to lie. But that doesn't change the fact that Hamas is still the primary party responsible for the violence and fallout. None of this would have happened if Hamas hadn't engaged in its violent attack on 10/7.
Yes, both sides lie like rugs. I'm glad we agree.
As to the entirely different discussion about primary responsibility, I don't think it's that simple. The roots of this conflict go back a long, long way, well before 10/7. Israeli settlers have perpetrated atrocities against Palestinians in the West Bank for decades. They have murdered Palestinians living there and stolen their homes. This is all well-documented. You're no doubt familiar with "administrative detention," which is detention without trial. We know many Palestinians have endured this type of detention, and the Israeli Supreme Court has consistently denied detainees access to legal counsel. There are many reports of torture and ill treatment of detainees that need to be investigated. A UN inquiry determined that Israeli forces killed a journalist, Shireen Abu Aklah, "without justification." Other journalists and Palestinian writers have been killed by the IDF or detained without trial. IDF snipers in Gaza are killing non-combatants such as the two ladies in the Holy Cross Parish, possibly because the Israeli defense minister said he had removed "all restraints" on his soldiers. These are all behaviors of a fascist state. In the 1940s, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others warned of the potential for fascism in Israel in a letter to the NYT, in which they mention the Deir Yassin massacre (https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948).
Palestinians have valid complaints, and Israel's current far-right government has added fuel to the fire. Deir Yassin, settler violence, killing journalists, and administrative detention don't mean that innocent Israelis should have suffered on 10/7. What happened on 10/7 doesn't mean that thousands of Palestinian children should be suffering so terribly now. To use a cliche, two wrongs don't make a right. This situation has been a fiasco for decades. Much smarter people than me have been trying to help for decades, yet it's as bad as it's ever been and in danger of getting a lot worse. It's so, so sad.
Yes. Thank you for trying to bring back from rational thinking to this thread. To me (a Jew) there is nothing in this post that is antisemitic. And this post is not pro-Hamas or excusing 10/7. It is simply stating that there is more than one wrong. I cannot understand why everyone cannot see this situation this way.
Ok, if you think there is more than one wrong, what is your proposed endgame? That is what matters. Telling us "these guys are awful", what are we to do with that? You are expressing emotion, and???
Anonymous wrote:I couldn't get through the NY Times article. The brutalization of women was planned and carried out in multiple locations on 10/7. Not only is Hamas and its supporters a death cult but it is filled with rapists.
Where were the protests, the signs, the marches for these women? Michelle "bring back our girls" Obama? Susan Sarandon? UN Women? It's like rape has become fashionable again when the victims are Jews.
The sexual abuse of women on 10/7 or on any other day is horrific and disgusting. I'm sure everyone here wishes none of that ever happened.
It's sad that the initial reports were met with guarded skepticism, but consider that we were also told that 40 babies were beheaded, a baby was baked in an oven, and dead babies were found hanging on a clothesline. These stories proved to be untrue. The more lurid and preposterous the claim, the less likely it was to be true, even though some assertions were allegedly based on "eyewitness testimonies" (which were later retracted). We also heard that Palestinian militants had burned many people alive. It turned out, and Israelis who observed the events of the day confirmed this, that in fact the IDF had done most, if not all, of the burning, including burning hundreds of Palestinian militants to death (as has been pointed out, they "did not burn themselves").
Unfortunately, Israel is currently led by some ethically challenged people. To put it bluntly, they lie. A lot. Given Israel's lack of credibility, it would be naive to unquestioningly accept any of its assertions. Israel's moral challenges also make it difficult to believe so-called confessions of rape by captured militants. Israel beats "confessions" out of its detainees, so these "admissions" cannot be assumed to be valid in every case.
Additionally, there is no available forensic evidence of rape. In a Times of Israel report, it is claimed that "physical evidence of sexual assault was not collected from corpses by Israel’s overtaxed morgue facilities." Additionally, "the government has not released explicit footage or pressed rape survivors to share their stories. Nor have the forensic services released formal reports on whether their findings were consistent with sexual abuse."
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/amp/).
I think it likely that, sadly, women were raped on 10/7. I think it equally likely that some of the rape stories we have been told are fabricated. It would be entirely out of character for Israel not to lie about rape, given that it has lied about virtually everything else and is particularly prone to lying about being victimized.
Wow. To me, a non-Israeli and non-Jew, this just reads as horrific sexual rape and torture apologia. I find your entire screed genuinely chilling. You probably don’t even care how vicious you sound, but it’s awful.
You know what I did immediately after 10/7? I went to Hamas’ own telegram channels and watched their own videos, which they kept up until they realized how bad it made them look. You obviously did not and obviously don’t care anyhow, given that the victims were Jewish. I will never forget what I saw. Never.
Did you see any videos portraying rape on the Hamas channels? I am genuinely curious.
Your assessment of my sentiments is entirely incorrect. I have never apologized for rape or torture, and I clearly call sexual abuse "horrific and disgusting," so your conclusions are unfounded. When I point out that the claims of babies being beheaded and hung on clotheslines are false (as in, people lied), this does not mean I don't care about beheading babies or hanging them up with the laundry (in truth, I strenuously object to roasting children or pinning them, either dead or alive, to clotheslines.) It means I have a commitment to the truth. Similarly, I am not detracting from the severity of rape when I point out that Israel has very little credibility, so it would be naive to blindly believe everything it claims (I did acknowledge that I think some of the claims are probably accurate). Perhaps you could try to separate my disinclination to embrace lies as support for whatever is being lied about?
If someone tells you that they met Elvis last Monday and Bigfoot last Tuesday, you could be excused for being a little skeptical if they told you they met Justin Bieber on Wednesday. While it's possible the latest claim is true, one might wonder if this person is prone to hallucinating or is perhaps just plain telling porkie pies.
If I may say so, it seems to me people with an agenda are being rather theatrical and performative about some of Israel's claims. We were all expected to work ourselves into a lather, despise Palestinians, embrace Israel unconditionally, celebrate massacring children in Gaza, and fall about clutching our pearls and collapsing on the fainting couch because Hamas baked a baby in an oven and hung dead babies on a clothesline, except ... that didn't happen. Why would we be stupid enough to blindly believe anything else Israel claims after that? And why would proof of such extreme stupidity be "chilling" or "vicious"? And why would one's very well-founded skepticism indicate lack of sympathy for the victims in the unlikely event something Israel claims actually turns out to be true?
Terrible, cruel, and unjust things undoubtedly happened on 10/7. I don't think anyone denies that. However, the Israeli authorities lie so compulsively that one would have to be extremely dull-witted or childlike not to want some independent verification of anything they tell you.
That’s a lot of words to say “I’m a vicious anti-Semite who freely uses the most ancient of anti-Semitic tropes.”
Do you realize just how awful you sound to rational people who aren’t gleefully stewing in anti-Semitism day in and day out? I’m genuinely curious, to quote you.
- non-Jew, since obviously if I were Jewish you’d start going on about the protocols of Zion or whatever. And I feel dirty even talking to you, like I’m giving credence to someone who would have watched the Hamas videos for fun.
You may be surprised to learn that I am a secular Ashkenazi Jew, but that's neither here nor there. Many orthodox Jews oppose Zionism in general and the current Israeli government in particular. Don't let that get in the way of trying to win a cheap point by screeching about antisemitism (which is antisemitic in itself).
What is relevant is that nobody has answered my question about rape videos. Do they or don't they exist? And why do you throw up smokescreens of insults rather than trying to address my arguments? Well, we know why, but couldn't you at least try to be honest enough to address my actual statements instead of lying about them? When you so obviously lie about and misrepresent what I have said, why do you expect me to naively believe anything else you might say?
Nobody has addressed my point about the lying. Given that the 40 beheaded babies/baby baked in an oven/babies on clotheslines stories were, well, flat-out lies, why is is "antisemitic" to wonder how true similar stories might be? It's the lying, stupid. When someone lies and lies and then lies some more, you start to wonder about the credibility of every story they tell. Kind of like when someone screams "antisemitism" again and again and again some more, you start to wonder if maybe they're trying to bury the truth under all that faux indignation and hysteria. Prove me wrong. Show you have some integrity and explain to me why I should believe the chopped-off-breast story when so many other stories have turned out to be lies. What differentiates that story from the babies-on-clotheslines story? Why would it be unreasonable to want some sort of verification, given that so many of these stories turned out to be false?
And please don't tell me I'm "denying atrocities" because I "hate Jews" or any similar dishonest and evasive craziness. I acknowledge that atrocities occurred. I even said I think there were probably rapes and that rape is "horrific." I am not dismissing unverified claims. Some may very well be true. Under the circumstances, however, I would simply like to see some sort of authentication before I make up my mind one way or the other. What is your problem with that?
Since you’re so fixated about the lying, let’s start with your lies first. Give me hard and solid proof that Israel — specifically Israel, not an individual Jew unless you are taking the position that one Jew speaks for all of Israel — but that “Israel” (your words) said that there were specifically 40 beheaded babies, a baby baked in an oven, and a baby on a clothesline. Show me where “Israel” as a single entity lied repeatedly about every single one of these, because that’s your assertion: that “Israel,” not an individual, not an entity in Israel, not an individual Jewish reporter, not a Jewish extremist, not even the IDF, but that “Israel” itself lies. So show me that proof. Find me the evidence that singular Israel collectively and repeatedly lied. You say it happened as a fact and you’ve repeated that “fact” over and over. So show me your mountains of evidence.
Spoiler alert: you are lying.
And yes. I will call out antisemitism when I see it, and it’s profoundly antisemitic to repeatedly and chillingly talk about how “Israel” lies all the time. That is the most ancient of antisemitic tropes and your anger at being identified for using that trope is not my problem.
Israel has discredited itself. Recent polls in Israel show that Israelis increasingly distrust Netanyahu. His ratings are plummeting and his nationalist base is beginning to desert him. There's a better than zero chance he may end up in jail on corruption charges, which might be the best thing to happen to Israel in a long time.
Why are you spreading false Hamas propaganda, and wild conspiracy theories that 10/7 was some kind of false flag staged by the IDF?
Now I'm truly puzzled. Where do I claim that 10/7 was staged by the IDF? This is (yawn) another straw man. Let me guess -- you will follow up with another ad hominem? Can I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF AND also believe that the babies on a clothes line stories is untrue? Or are you insisting that IF I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF, I must ALSO believe the babies-on-a-clothesline IS true? Do you understand that, as someone above just pointed out, two claims need not be mutually exclusive?
Wow. You really are a piece of work. Right above this,
"We now know that those burned on 10/7 were almost certainly burned by the Israeli military."
Unreal that anyone would try and claim that the 10/7 violence was Israeli military when we have HOURS AND HOURS of Hamas video showing it was in fact Hamas.
Stop playing dumb games here. You are really failing badly here.
She has no evidence that the IDF did any of the burning of Israel civilians just like she has no evidence that IDF stated “40 beheaded babies” anywhere. I hate calling her a she, because that would imply that she could potentially be a mother, and that would be the greatest tragedy.
There is ample evidence that “some” of the 10/7 damage was caused by IDF. That evidence is witness reports of helicopter and tank fire, the damage that can only be caused by tank and helicopter shelling, and burned bodies of Hamas militants who most assuredly did not self immolate.
What there is evidence of is that IDF responded to the Hamas attack on 10/7, killed many of the Hamas attackers, and that a few civilians were caught in the crossfire. But what there is NOT evidence of is that IDF was somehow responsible for a majority of the Israelis killed and burned. And again, there would have been ZERO people killed and burned if Hamas hadn't attacked on 10/7. Hamas was, and still is the party responsible for the violence. And, the bombing would end if Hamas capitulated and surrendered. No amount of "but Israel..." will change that. None.
Not the person you're responding to but to throw in my two cents. Israeli leaders have been caught out lying so many times that they have earned widespread distrust (including from many Israelis). This is NOT the same as pretending Hamas is all sweetness and light. It simply means many of us don't take every story coming out of Israel at face value.
How to apportion responsibility for the current tragic situation is a different but worthy debate. It has been percolating for a very long time.
Yes, both sides lied. And continue to lie. But that doesn't change the fact that Hamas is still the primary party responsible for the violence and fallout. None of this would have happened if Hamas hadn't engaged in its violent attack on 10/7.
Yes, both sides lie like rugs. I'm glad we agree.
As to the entirely different discussion about primary responsibility, I don't think it's that simple. The roots of this conflict go back a long, long way, well before 10/7. Israeli settlers have perpetrated atrocities against Palestinians in the West Bank for decades. They have murdered Palestinians living there and stolen their homes. This is all well-documented. You're no doubt familiar with "administrative detention," which is detention without trial. We know many Palestinians have endured this type of detention, and the Israeli Supreme Court has consistently denied detainees access to legal counsel. There are many reports of torture and ill treatment of detainees that need to be investigated. A UN inquiry determined that Israeli forces killed a journalist, Shireen Abu Aklah, "without justification." Other journalists and Palestinian writers have been killed by the IDF or detained without trial. IDF snipers in Gaza are killing non-combatants such as the two ladies in the Holy Cross Parish, possibly because the Israeli defense minister said he had removed "all restraints" on his soldiers. These are all behaviors of a fascist state. In the 1940s, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others warned of the potential for fascism in Israel in a letter to the NYT, in which they mention the Deir Yassin massacre (https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948).
Palestinians have valid complaints, and Israel's current far-right government has added fuel to the fire. Deir Yassin, settler violence, killing journalists, and administrative detention don't mean that innocent Israelis should have suffered on 10/7. What happened on 10/7 doesn't mean that thousands of Palestinian children should be suffering so terribly now. To use a cliche, two wrongs don't make a right. This situation has been a fiasco for decades. Much smarter people than me have been trying to help for decades, yet it's as bad as it's ever been and in danger of getting a lot worse. It's so, so sad.
That's a rather one-sided portrayal, conveniently leaving out how Palestinians have been firing hundreds and even thousands of rockets a year into Israel, every year for decades, and these rockets are not toys, but rockets of the sort that exploded at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. People were quick to characterize that one as a JDAM or 2,000 pound bomb, and to say it killed 500 people. That is some of what Israeli civilians have had to deal with every single day. It also leaves out how Arabs literally tried repeatedly to invade and exterminate the Jews, with wars in 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006 and so on - with Israel pushing them back and retaking territory, or taking new territory. By all rights, the Jews could have pushed all Arabs out completely. But they didn't. And let's not forget all of the rest of the continual terror campaigns, like the Black September incident where a Palestinian death squad kidnapped a group of Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Summer Olympics, holding them hostage, and ultimately massacring them. Portraying Palestinians as nothing but downtrodden victims isn't quite honest.
But meanwhile also consider that there are also more than 2 million Palestinian Arabs in Israel who DO NOT live in Gaza or the West Bank, but are instead full members of Israeli society, with citizenship, voting rights, some have even held seats in the Knesset and have held high ranking office including Cabinet posts. The difference is that they aren't indoctrinated in extremist ideology about destroying Israel and clearing all Jews out from the river to the sea.
The narrative keeps going to some warped notion that Israel is just pure evil and bent on genocide and exterminating Palestinians, for no reason whatsoever. That is just plain wrong and completely dishonest.
Look, if there was a button Israel could press that would remove all Palestinians and make their land available for Israeli expansion, the majority would vote for pressing it. And not just after 10/7.
Anonymous wrote:I couldn't get through the NY Times article. The brutalization of women was planned and carried out in multiple locations on 10/7. Not only is Hamas and its supporters a death cult but it is filled with rapists.
Where were the protests, the signs, the marches for these women? Michelle "bring back our girls" Obama? Susan Sarandon? UN Women? It's like rape has become fashionable again when the victims are Jews.
The sexual abuse of women on 10/7 or on any other day is horrific and disgusting. I'm sure everyone here wishes none of that ever happened.
It's sad that the initial reports were met with guarded skepticism, but consider that we were also told that 40 babies were beheaded, a baby was baked in an oven, and dead babies were found hanging on a clothesline. These stories proved to be untrue. The more lurid and preposterous the claim, the less likely it was to be true, even though some assertions were allegedly based on "eyewitness testimonies" (which were later retracted). We also heard that Palestinian militants had burned many people alive. It turned out, and Israelis who observed the events of the day confirmed this, that in fact the IDF had done most, if not all, of the burning, including burning hundreds of Palestinian militants to death (as has been pointed out, they "did not burn themselves").
Unfortunately, Israel is currently led by some ethically challenged people. To put it bluntly, they lie. A lot. Given Israel's lack of credibility, it would be naive to unquestioningly accept any of its assertions. Israel's moral challenges also make it difficult to believe so-called confessions of rape by captured militants. Israel beats "confessions" out of its detainees, so these "admissions" cannot be assumed to be valid in every case.
Additionally, there is no available forensic evidence of rape. In a Times of Israel report, it is claimed that "physical evidence of sexual assault was not collected from corpses by Israel’s overtaxed morgue facilities." Additionally, "the government has not released explicit footage or pressed rape survivors to share their stories. Nor have the forensic services released formal reports on whether their findings were consistent with sexual abuse."
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/amp/).
I think it likely that, sadly, women were raped on 10/7. I think it equally likely that some of the rape stories we have been told are fabricated. It would be entirely out of character for Israel not to lie about rape, given that it has lied about virtually everything else and is particularly prone to lying about being victimized.
Wow. To me, a non-Israeli and non-Jew, this just reads as horrific sexual rape and torture apologia. I find your entire screed genuinely chilling. You probably don’t even care how vicious you sound, but it’s awful.
You know what I did immediately after 10/7? I went to Hamas’ own telegram channels and watched their own videos, which they kept up until they realized how bad it made them look. You obviously did not and obviously don’t care anyhow, given that the victims were Jewish. I will never forget what I saw. Never.
Did you see any videos portraying rape on the Hamas channels? I am genuinely curious.
Your assessment of my sentiments is entirely incorrect. I have never apologized for rape or torture, and I clearly call sexual abuse "horrific and disgusting," so your conclusions are unfounded. When I point out that the claims of babies being beheaded and hung on clotheslines are false (as in, people lied), this does not mean I don't care about beheading babies or hanging them up with the laundry (in truth, I strenuously object to roasting children or pinning them, either dead or alive, to clotheslines.) It means I have a commitment to the truth. Similarly, I am not detracting from the severity of rape when I point out that Israel has very little credibility, so it would be naive to blindly believe everything it claims (I did acknowledge that I think some of the claims are probably accurate). Perhaps you could try to separate my disinclination to embrace lies as support for whatever is being lied about?
If someone tells you that they met Elvis last Monday and Bigfoot last Tuesday, you could be excused for being a little skeptical if they told you they met Justin Bieber on Wednesday. While it's possible the latest claim is true, one might wonder if this person is prone to hallucinating or is perhaps just plain telling porkie pies.
If I may say so, it seems to me people with an agenda are being rather theatrical and performative about some of Israel's claims. We were all expected to work ourselves into a lather, despise Palestinians, embrace Israel unconditionally, celebrate massacring children in Gaza, and fall about clutching our pearls and collapsing on the fainting couch because Hamas baked a baby in an oven and hung dead babies on a clothesline, except ... that didn't happen. Why would we be stupid enough to blindly believe anything else Israel claims after that? And why would proof of such extreme stupidity be "chilling" or "vicious"? And why would one's very well-founded skepticism indicate lack of sympathy for the victims in the unlikely event something Israel claims actually turns out to be true?
Terrible, cruel, and unjust things undoubtedly happened on 10/7. I don't think anyone denies that. However, the Israeli authorities lie so compulsively that one would have to be extremely dull-witted or childlike not to want some independent verification of anything they tell you.
That’s a lot of words to say “I’m a vicious anti-Semite who freely uses the most ancient of anti-Semitic tropes.”
Do you realize just how awful you sound to rational people who aren’t gleefully stewing in anti-Semitism day in and day out? I’m genuinely curious, to quote you.
- non-Jew, since obviously if I were Jewish you’d start going on about the protocols of Zion or whatever. And I feel dirty even talking to you, like I’m giving credence to someone who would have watched the Hamas videos for fun.
You may be surprised to learn that I am a secular Ashkenazi Jew, but that's neither here nor there. Many orthodox Jews oppose Zionism in general and the current Israeli government in particular. Don't let that get in the way of trying to win a cheap point by screeching about antisemitism (which is antisemitic in itself).
What is relevant is that nobody has answered my question about rape videos. Do they or don't they exist? And why do you throw up smokescreens of insults rather than trying to address my arguments? Well, we know why, but couldn't you at least try to be honest enough to address my actual statements instead of lying about them? When you so obviously lie about and misrepresent what I have said, why do you expect me to naively believe anything else you might say?
Nobody has addressed my point about the lying. Given that the 40 beheaded babies/baby baked in an oven/babies on clotheslines stories were, well, flat-out lies, why is is "antisemitic" to wonder how true similar stories might be? It's the lying, stupid. When someone lies and lies and then lies some more, you start to wonder about the credibility of every story they tell. Kind of like when someone screams "antisemitism" again and again and again some more, you start to wonder if maybe they're trying to bury the truth under all that faux indignation and hysteria. Prove me wrong. Show you have some integrity and explain to me why I should believe the chopped-off-breast story when so many other stories have turned out to be lies. What differentiates that story from the babies-on-clotheslines story? Why would it be unreasonable to want some sort of verification, given that so many of these stories turned out to be false?
And please don't tell me I'm "denying atrocities" because I "hate Jews" or any similar dishonest and evasive craziness. I acknowledge that atrocities occurred. I even said I think there were probably rapes and that rape is "horrific." I am not dismissing unverified claims. Some may very well be true. Under the circumstances, however, I would simply like to see some sort of authentication before I make up my mind one way or the other. What is your problem with that?
Since you’re so fixated about the lying, let’s start with your lies first. Give me hard and solid proof that Israel — specifically Israel, not an individual Jew unless you are taking the position that one Jew speaks for all of Israel — but that “Israel” (your words) said that there were specifically 40 beheaded babies, a baby baked in an oven, and a baby on a clothesline. Show me where “Israel” as a single entity lied repeatedly about every single one of these, because that’s your assertion: that “Israel,” not an individual, not an entity in Israel, not an individual Jewish reporter, not a Jewish extremist, not even the IDF, but that “Israel” itself lies. So show me that proof. Find me the evidence that singular Israel collectively and repeatedly lied. You say it happened as a fact and you’ve repeated that “fact” over and over. So show me your mountains of evidence.
Spoiler alert: you are lying.
And yes. I will call out antisemitism when I see it, and it’s profoundly antisemitic to repeatedly and chillingly talk about how “Israel” lies all the time. That is the most ancient of antisemitic tropes and your anger at being identified for using that trope is not my problem.
Israel has discredited itself. Recent polls in Israel show that Israelis increasingly distrust Netanyahu. His ratings are plummeting and his nationalist base is beginning to desert him. There's a better than zero chance he may end up in jail on corruption charges, which might be the best thing to happen to Israel in a long time.
Why are you spreading false Hamas propaganda, and wild conspiracy theories that 10/7 was some kind of false flag staged by the IDF?
Now I'm truly puzzled. Where do I claim that 10/7 was staged by the IDF? This is (yawn) another straw man. Let me guess -- you will follow up with another ad hominem? Can I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF AND also believe that the babies on a clothes line stories is untrue? Or are you insisting that IF I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF, I must ALSO believe the babies-on-a-clothesline IS true? Do you understand that, as someone above just pointed out, two claims need not be mutually exclusive?
Wow. You really are a piece of work. Right above this,
"We now know that those burned on 10/7 were almost certainly burned by the Israeli military."
Unreal that anyone would try and claim that the 10/7 violence was Israeli military when we have HOURS AND HOURS of Hamas video showing it was in fact Hamas.
Stop playing dumb games here. You are really failing badly here.
She has no evidence that the IDF did any of the burning of Israel civilians just like she has no evidence that IDF stated “40 beheaded babies” anywhere. I hate calling her a she, because that would imply that she could potentially be a mother, and that would be the greatest tragedy.
There is ample evidence that “some” of the 10/7 damage was caused by IDF. That evidence is witness reports of helicopter and tank fire, the damage that can only be caused by tank and helicopter shelling, and burned bodies of Hamas militants who most assuredly did not self immolate.
What there is evidence of is that IDF responded to the Hamas attack on 10/7, killed many of the Hamas attackers, and that a few civilians were caught in the crossfire. But what there is NOT evidence of is that IDF was somehow responsible for a majority of the Israelis killed and burned. And again, there would have been ZERO people killed and burned if Hamas hadn't attacked on 10/7. Hamas was, and still is the party responsible for the violence. And, the bombing would end if Hamas capitulated and surrendered. No amount of "but Israel..." will change that. None.
Not the person you're responding to but to throw in my two cents. Israeli leaders have been caught out lying so many times that they have earned widespread distrust (including from many Israelis). This is NOT the same as pretending Hamas is all sweetness and light. It simply means many of us don't take every story coming out of Israel at face value.
How to apportion responsibility for the current tragic situation is a different but worthy debate. It has been percolating for a very long time.
Yes, both sides lied. And continue to lie. But that doesn't change the fact that Hamas is still the primary party responsible for the violence and fallout. None of this would have happened if Hamas hadn't engaged in its violent attack on 10/7.
Yes, both sides lie like rugs. I'm glad we agree.
As to the entirely different discussion about primary responsibility, I don't think it's that simple. The roots of this conflict go back a long, long way, well before 10/7. Israeli settlers have perpetrated atrocities against Palestinians in the West Bank for decades. They have murdered Palestinians living there and stolen their homes. This is all well-documented. You're no doubt familiar with "administrative detention," which is detention without trial. We know many Palestinians have endured this type of detention, and the Israeli Supreme Court has consistently denied detainees access to legal counsel. There are many reports of torture and ill treatment of detainees that need to be investigated. A UN inquiry determined that Israeli forces killed a journalist, Shireen Abu Aklah, "without justification." Other journalists and Palestinian writers have been killed by the IDF or detained without trial. IDF snipers in Gaza are killing non-combatants such as the two ladies in the Holy Cross Parish, possibly because the Israeli defense minister said he had removed "all restraints" on his soldiers. These are all behaviors of a fascist state. In the 1940s, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others warned of the potential for fascism in Israel in a letter to the NYT, in which they mention the Deir Yassin massacre (https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948).
Palestinians have valid complaints, and Israel's current far-right government has added fuel to the fire. Deir Yassin, settler violence, killing journalists, and administrative detention don't mean that innocent Israelis should have suffered on 10/7. What happened on 10/7 doesn't mean that thousands of Palestinian children should be suffering so terribly now. To use a cliche, two wrongs don't make a right. This situation has been a fiasco for decades. Much smarter people than me have been trying to help for decades, yet it's as bad as it's ever been and in danger of getting a lot worse. It's so, so sad.
That's a rather one-sided portrayal, conveniently leaving out how Palestinians have been firing hundreds and even thousands of rockets a year into Israel, every year for decades, and these rockets are not toys, but rockets of the sort that exploded at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. People were quick to characterize that one as a JDAM or 2,000 pound bomb, and to say it killed 500 people. That is some of what Israeli civilians have had to deal with every single day. It also leaves out how Arabs literally tried repeatedly to invade and exterminate the Jews, with wars in 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006 and so on - with Israel pushing them back and retaking territory, or taking new territory. By all rights, the Jews could have pushed all Arabs out completely. But they didn't. And let's not forget all of the rest of the continual terror campaigns, like the Black September incident where a Palestinian death squad kidnapped a group of Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Summer Olympics, holding them hostage, and ultimately massacring them. Portraying Palestinians as nothing but downtrodden victims isn't quite honest.
But meanwhile also consider that there are also more than 2 million Palestinian Arabs in Israel who DO NOT live in Gaza or the West Bank, but are instead full members of Israeli society, with citizenship, voting rights, some have even held seats in the Knesset and have held high ranking office including Cabinet posts. The difference is that they aren't indoctrinated in extremist ideology about destroying Israel and clearing all Jews out from the river to the sea.
The narrative keeps going to some warped notion that Israel is just pure evil and bent on genocide and exterminating Palestinians, for no reason whatsoever. That is just plain wrong and completely dishonest.
Look, if there was a button Israel could press that would remove all Palestinians and make their land available for Israeli expansion, the majority would vote for pressing it. And not just after 10/7.
What are we to do with this conjecture? How should we respond to this? Provide us instructions.
Anonymous wrote:The victim mentality is really beyond what I even imagined.
Literally murdering thousands of kids and still screaming “everyone hates us for no reason!!”
It’s certifiable
It is certifiable that so many people hate Israelis and Jews, no?
It that every Jew is responsible for what Israeli policy is. Must mean every Muslim is pro Hamas / pro terrorist.
This is a good point. "If you don't support Hamas and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an Islamophobe who wants to genocide all Muslims" makes as much sense as "If you don't support Israel and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an antisemite who wants to genocide all Jews."
I suspect the previous poster(s) understands this, but they're backed into a corner and can only spew a smokescreen of insults. Which is a very dishonest practice.
DP
Everyone here is 100.00% anti-Hamas. What about that fact don't you get? Stop trying to gin up a defense for what Israel is doing by arguing that those opposed to those actions are supportive of Hamas. It's pathetic. Even you can do better.
Perhaps my post wasn't sufficiently clear? Of course everyone here is anti-Hamas and, more specifically, opposes its actions on 10/7. I was making a comparison between absurd conclusions. Nobody believes that opposing Hamas means you're a genocidal Islamophobe who hates Muslims. Similarly, nobody believes that opposing Israel means you're a genocidal antisemite who hates Jews. Well, almost nobody in both cases. Some people are deliberately obtuse or deceitful or too fanatical to think straight, and my post was aimed at these folk. I don't support either statement, which is ... kind of why I put them both in quotes.
That's objectively false. Can't be anti-Hamas and yet be their direct mouthpiece repeating their false claims and conspiracy theories.
Which I have done ... where, exactly? Another straw man. Sorry, but this is getting very boring.
Don't know if it was you or who, as posts are anonymous, but I'm definitely not the only one here who keeps seeing Hamas propaganda and false talking points popping up over and over again.
Which makes your role here what...? A confused person who doesn't know what's going on? Someone who is naive and lacks critical thinking skills? Clearly not, since you are also hyperfocused on rhetorical devices, like "ad hominem" and "strawman" which tells me you are here specifically to argue. Yet if that's the case, then why are you ignoring the instances where Hamas talking points are being used? Perhaps you overestimate the notion of plausible deniability?
DP there is very little Hamas propaganda. Most of the posts are Israel propaganda and fantasy. Every time israel goes on a murdering spree you will see stories like those in the NYT to justify their actions. There is no justification form Israel’s action in Gaza. I have moved from neutral on Israel to seeing it and its supporters as an evil force in the world.
DP. Well, Hamas’ own videos have moved me from being a supporter of a free Palestine in a two-state solution to being a supporter of Israel so I guess we balance out. I suppose you are correct, though, that the videos Hamas proudly distributed on its own are not actually Hamas propaganda. They are proof of what Hamas is doing, live-streamed torture that they cheer on. I don’t think it’s propaganda when you are live-streaming torture you are proud of. So in that sense, yes, Hamas isn’t actually showing propaganda in their snuff videos. They are showing who they are exactly.
Similar. I'd hoped both sides would get it together and choose leaders that could bring a two state solution and end 80 years of conflict. But the massacres on 10/7 changed everything.
The more we've learned about what Hamas did on 10/7 - chopping off breasts, beheading women, shooting them in the head as they raped them, driving nails into their genitals - the more clear it's become that Hamas and their supporters need to be obliterated from the face of the Earth. Vile, hateful, misogynistic, sadistic, religious extremists.
It's sad that UN Women and Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International turned their back on what Hamas does to women. Not to mention all the progressives cheering it on.
Clearly, anti-semitism is extremely deep rooted, particularly among the left. Globally. There has been zero empathy for the victims. And the victims were people living on kibbutzes and going to music festivals - the most liberal people in Israel.
My thinking has changed 100 percent. We all know now what Palestinians would do to Israelis if given the chance. Israel is perfectly within its rights to defend themselves from that horror. Obviously, civilian deaths, particularly children, is tragic. But that is the nature of war. It's why most countries avoid it. And Hamas fights and shoots their 13,000 missiles and counting from schools and mosques and hospitals. And it was Hamas who invaded Israel and launched this war.
It's baffling why so many progressives support or make excuses for Hamas. They are ISIS. They are Al-Qaeda. They are not allies of women or LGBTQ or POC. They are the scummiest men on Earth.
So, yeah, I support Israel 100 percent. If Palestinians aren't going to disavow Hamas, there's not much choice but for the IDF to go in and destroy them. Hamas - for the sake of humanity, and particularly women - is unacceptable. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose. And now they confront the consequences.
Do you want to tell us what West Bankers did to deserve land grab, water theft, evictions, admin detention, and settler violence. I’m sure you think they had it coming. Tell us.
Doesn't mean Israel needs to cease to exist or change its fundamental makeup as a nation. The West Bank issue can be addressed without any of that happening.
Russia does bad things but no one in America is calling for the country to go away.
So you do agree Israel does “bad things” in the West Bank? Two questions then:
What do you think is suitable punishment for Israel for its bad deeds in the West Bank?
What are the suitable forms of fighting the “bad things” Israel does in the West Bank?
Anonymous wrote:I couldn't get through the NY Times article. The brutalization of women was planned and carried out in multiple locations on 10/7. Not only is Hamas and its supporters a death cult but it is filled with rapists.
Where were the protests, the signs, the marches for these women? Michelle "bring back our girls" Obama? Susan Sarandon? UN Women? It's like rape has become fashionable again when the victims are Jews.
The sexual abuse of women on 10/7 or on any other day is horrific and disgusting. I'm sure everyone here wishes none of that ever happened.
It's sad that the initial reports were met with guarded skepticism, but consider that we were also told that 40 babies were beheaded, a baby was baked in an oven, and dead babies were found hanging on a clothesline. These stories proved to be untrue. The more lurid and preposterous the claim, the less likely it was to be true, even though some assertions were allegedly based on "eyewitness testimonies" (which were later retracted). We also heard that Palestinian militants had burned many people alive. It turned out, and Israelis who observed the events of the day confirmed this, that in fact the IDF had done most, if not all, of the burning, including burning hundreds of Palestinian militants to death (as has been pointed out, they "did not burn themselves").
Unfortunately, Israel is currently led by some ethically challenged people. To put it bluntly, they lie. A lot. Given Israel's lack of credibility, it would be naive to unquestioningly accept any of its assertions. Israel's moral challenges also make it difficult to believe so-called confessions of rape by captured militants. Israel beats "confessions" out of its detainees, so these "admissions" cannot be assumed to be valid in every case.
Additionally, there is no available forensic evidence of rape. In a Times of Israel report, it is claimed that "physical evidence of sexual assault was not collected from corpses by Israel’s overtaxed morgue facilities." Additionally, "the government has not released explicit footage or pressed rape survivors to share their stories. Nor have the forensic services released formal reports on whether their findings were consistent with sexual abuse."
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/amp/).
I think it likely that, sadly, women were raped on 10/7. I think it equally likely that some of the rape stories we have been told are fabricated. It would be entirely out of character for Israel not to lie about rape, given that it has lied about virtually everything else and is particularly prone to lying about being victimized.
Wow. To me, a non-Israeli and non-Jew, this just reads as horrific sexual rape and torture apologia. I find your entire screed genuinely chilling. You probably don’t even care how vicious you sound, but it’s awful.
You know what I did immediately after 10/7? I went to Hamas’ own telegram channels and watched their own videos, which they kept up until they realized how bad it made them look. You obviously did not and obviously don’t care anyhow, given that the victims were Jewish. I will never forget what I saw. Never.
Did you see any videos portraying rape on the Hamas channels? I am genuinely curious.
Your assessment of my sentiments is entirely incorrect. I have never apologized for rape or torture, and I clearly call sexual abuse "horrific and disgusting," so your conclusions are unfounded. When I point out that the claims of babies being beheaded and hung on clotheslines are false (as in, people lied), this does not mean I don't care about beheading babies or hanging them up with the laundry (in truth, I strenuously object to roasting children or pinning them, either dead or alive, to clotheslines.) It means I have a commitment to the truth. Similarly, I am not detracting from the severity of rape when I point out that Israel has very little credibility, so it would be naive to blindly believe everything it claims (I did acknowledge that I think some of the claims are probably accurate). Perhaps you could try to separate my disinclination to embrace lies as support for whatever is being lied about?
If someone tells you that they met Elvis last Monday and Bigfoot last Tuesday, you could be excused for being a little skeptical if they told you they met Justin Bieber on Wednesday. While it's possible the latest claim is true, one might wonder if this person is prone to hallucinating or is perhaps just plain telling porkie pies.
If I may say so, it seems to me people with an agenda are being rather theatrical and performative about some of Israel's claims. We were all expected to work ourselves into a lather, despise Palestinians, embrace Israel unconditionally, celebrate massacring children in Gaza, and fall about clutching our pearls and collapsing on the fainting couch because Hamas baked a baby in an oven and hung dead babies on a clothesline, except ... that didn't happen. Why would we be stupid enough to blindly believe anything else Israel claims after that? And why would proof of such extreme stupidity be "chilling" or "vicious"? And why would one's very well-founded skepticism indicate lack of sympathy for the victims in the unlikely event something Israel claims actually turns out to be true?
Terrible, cruel, and unjust things undoubtedly happened on 10/7. I don't think anyone denies that. However, the Israeli authorities lie so compulsively that one would have to be extremely dull-witted or childlike not to want some independent verification of anything they tell you.
That’s a lot of words to say “I’m a vicious anti-Semite who freely uses the most ancient of anti-Semitic tropes.”
Do you realize just how awful you sound to rational people who aren’t gleefully stewing in anti-Semitism day in and day out? I’m genuinely curious, to quote you.
- non-Jew, since obviously if I were Jewish you’d start going on about the protocols of Zion or whatever. And I feel dirty even talking to you, like I’m giving credence to someone who would have watched the Hamas videos for fun.
You may be surprised to learn that I am a secular Ashkenazi Jew, but that's neither here nor there. Many orthodox Jews oppose Zionism in general and the current Israeli government in particular. Don't let that get in the way of trying to win a cheap point by screeching about antisemitism (which is antisemitic in itself).
What is relevant is that nobody has answered my question about rape videos. Do they or don't they exist? And why do you throw up smokescreens of insults rather than trying to address my arguments? Well, we know why, but couldn't you at least try to be honest enough to address my actual statements instead of lying about them? When you so obviously lie about and misrepresent what I have said, why do you expect me to naively believe anything else you might say?
Nobody has addressed my point about the lying. Given that the 40 beheaded babies/baby baked in an oven/babies on clotheslines stories were, well, flat-out lies, why is is "antisemitic" to wonder how true similar stories might be? It's the lying, stupid. When someone lies and lies and then lies some more, you start to wonder about the credibility of every story they tell. Kind of like when someone screams "antisemitism" again and again and again some more, you start to wonder if maybe they're trying to bury the truth under all that faux indignation and hysteria. Prove me wrong. Show you have some integrity and explain to me why I should believe the chopped-off-breast story when so many other stories have turned out to be lies. What differentiates that story from the babies-on-clotheslines story? Why would it be unreasonable to want some sort of verification, given that so many of these stories turned out to be false?
And please don't tell me I'm "denying atrocities" because I "hate Jews" or any similar dishonest and evasive craziness. I acknowledge that atrocities occurred. I even said I think there were probably rapes and that rape is "horrific." I am not dismissing unverified claims. Some may very well be true. Under the circumstances, however, I would simply like to see some sort of authentication before I make up my mind one way or the other. What is your problem with that?
Since you’re so fixated about the lying, let’s start with your lies first. Give me hard and solid proof that Israel — specifically Israel, not an individual Jew unless you are taking the position that one Jew speaks for all of Israel — but that “Israel” (your words) said that there were specifically 40 beheaded babies, a baby baked in an oven, and a baby on a clothesline. Show me where “Israel” as a single entity lied repeatedly about every single one of these, because that’s your assertion: that “Israel,” not an individual, not an entity in Israel, not an individual Jewish reporter, not a Jewish extremist, not even the IDF, but that “Israel” itself lies. So show me that proof. Find me the evidence that singular Israel collectively and repeatedly lied. You say it happened as a fact and you’ve repeated that “fact” over and over. So show me your mountains of evidence.
Spoiler alert: you are lying.
And yes. I will call out antisemitism when I see it, and it’s profoundly antisemitic to repeatedly and chillingly talk about how “Israel” lies all the time. That is the most ancient of antisemitic tropes and your anger at being identified for using that trope is not my problem.
Israel has discredited itself. Recent polls in Israel show that Israelis increasingly distrust Netanyahu. His ratings are plummeting and his nationalist base is beginning to desert him. There's a better than zero chance he may end up in jail on corruption charges, which might be the best thing to happen to Israel in a long time.
Why are you spreading false Hamas propaganda, and wild conspiracy theories that 10/7 was some kind of false flag staged by the IDF?
Now I'm truly puzzled. Where do I claim that 10/7 was staged by the IDF? This is (yawn) another straw man. Let me guess -- you will follow up with another ad hominem? Can I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF AND also believe that the babies on a clothes line stories is untrue? Or are you insisting that IF I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF, I must ALSO believe the babies-on-a-clothesline IS true? Do you understand that, as someone above just pointed out, two claims need not be mutually exclusive?
Wow. You really are a piece of work. Right above this,
"We now know that those burned on 10/7 were almost certainly burned by the Israeli military."
Unreal that anyone would try and claim that the 10/7 violence was Israeli military when we have HOURS AND HOURS of Hamas video showing it was in fact Hamas.
Stop playing dumb games here. You are really failing badly here.
She has no evidence that the IDF did any of the burning of Israel civilians just like she has no evidence that IDF stated “40 beheaded babies” anywhere. I hate calling her a she, because that would imply that she could potentially be a mother, and that would be the greatest tragedy.
There is ample evidence that “some” of the 10/7 damage was caused by IDF. That evidence is witness reports of helicopter and tank fire, the damage that can only be caused by tank and helicopter shelling, and burned bodies of Hamas militants who most assuredly did not self immolate.
What there is evidence of is that IDF responded to the Hamas attack on 10/7, killed many of the Hamas attackers, and that a few civilians were caught in the crossfire. But what there is NOT evidence of is that IDF was somehow responsible for a majority of the Israelis killed and burned. And again, there would have been ZERO people killed and burned if Hamas hadn't attacked on 10/7. Hamas was, and still is the party responsible for the violence. And, the bombing would end if Hamas capitulated and surrendered. No amount of "but Israel..." will change that. None.
Not the person you're responding to but to throw in my two cents. Israeli leaders have been caught out lying so many times that they have earned widespread distrust (including from many Israelis). This is NOT the same as pretending Hamas is all sweetness and light. It simply means many of us don't take every story coming out of Israel at face value.
How to apportion responsibility for the current tragic situation is a different but worthy debate. It has been percolating for a very long time.
Yes, both sides lied. And continue to lie. But that doesn't change the fact that Hamas is still the primary party responsible for the violence and fallout. None of this would have happened if Hamas hadn't engaged in its violent attack on 10/7.
Yes, both sides lie like rugs. I'm glad we agree.
As to the entirely different discussion about primary responsibility, I don't think it's that simple. The roots of this conflict go back a long, long way, well before 10/7. Israeli settlers have perpetrated atrocities against Palestinians in the West Bank for decades. They have murdered Palestinians living there and stolen their homes. This is all well-documented. You're no doubt familiar with "administrative detention," which is detention without trial. We know many Palestinians have endured this type of detention, and the Israeli Supreme Court has consistently denied detainees access to legal counsel. There are many reports of torture and ill treatment of detainees that need to be investigated. A UN inquiry determined that Israeli forces killed a journalist, Shireen Abu Aklah, "without justification." Other journalists and Palestinian writers have been killed by the IDF or detained without trial. IDF snipers in Gaza are killing non-combatants such as the two ladies in the Holy Cross Parish, possibly because the Israeli defense minister said he had removed "all restraints" on his soldiers. These are all behaviors of a fascist state. In the 1940s, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others warned of the potential for fascism in Israel in a letter to the NYT, in which they mention the Deir Yassin massacre (https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948).
Palestinians have valid complaints, and Israel's current far-right government has added fuel to the fire. Deir Yassin, settler violence, killing journalists, and administrative detention don't mean that innocent Israelis should have suffered on 10/7. What happened on 10/7 doesn't mean that thousands of Palestinian children should be suffering so terribly now. To use a cliche, two wrongs don't make a right. This situation has been a fiasco for decades. Much smarter people than me have been trying to help for decades, yet it's as bad as it's ever been and in danger of getting a lot worse. It's so, so sad.
That's a rather one-sided portrayal, conveniently leaving out how Palestinians have been firing hundreds and even thousands of rockets a year into Israel, every year for decades, and these rockets are not toys, but rockets of the sort that exploded at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. People were quick to characterize that one as a JDAM or 2,000 pound bomb, and to say it killed 500 people. That is some of what Israeli civilians have had to deal with every single day. It also leaves out how Arabs literally tried repeatedly to invade and exterminate the Jews, with wars in 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006 and so on - with Israel pushing them back and retaking territory, or taking new territory. By all rights, the Jews could have pushed all Arabs out completely. But they didn't. And let's not forget all of the rest of the continual terror campaigns, like the Black September incident where a Palestinian death squad kidnapped a group of Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Summer Olympics, holding them hostage, and ultimately massacring them. Portraying Palestinians as nothing but downtrodden victims isn't quite honest.
But meanwhile also consider that there are also more than 2 million Palestinian Arabs in Israel who DO NOT live in Gaza or the West Bank, but are instead full members of Israeli society, with citizenship, voting rights, some have even held seats in the Knesset and have held high ranking office including Cabinet posts. The difference is that they aren't indoctrinated in extremist ideology about destroying Israel and clearing all Jews out from the river to the sea.
The narrative keeps going to some warped notion that Israel is just pure evil and bent on genocide and exterminating Palestinians, for no reason whatsoever. That is just plain wrong and completely dishonest.
Look, if there was a button Israel could press that would remove all Palestinians and make their land available for Israeli expansion, the majority would vote for pressing it. And not just after 10/7.
What are we to do with this conjecture? How should we respond to this? Provide us instructions.
lol embroider it on your pillowcase and pray to it daily.
Anonymous wrote:I couldn't get through the NY Times article. The brutalization of women was planned and carried out in multiple locations on 10/7. Not only is Hamas and its supporters a death cult but it is filled with rapists.
Where were the protests, the signs, the marches for these women? Michelle "bring back our girls" Obama? Susan Sarandon? UN Women? It's like rape has become fashionable again when the victims are Jews.
The sexual abuse of women on 10/7 or on any other day is horrific and disgusting. I'm sure everyone here wishes none of that ever happened.
It's sad that the initial reports were met with guarded skepticism, but consider that we were also told that 40 babies were beheaded, a baby was baked in an oven, and dead babies were found hanging on a clothesline. These stories proved to be untrue. The more lurid and preposterous the claim, the less likely it was to be true, even though some assertions were allegedly based on "eyewitness testimonies" (which were later retracted). We also heard that Palestinian militants had burned many people alive. It turned out, and Israelis who observed the events of the day confirmed this, that in fact the IDF had done most, if not all, of the burning, including burning hundreds of Palestinian militants to death (as has been pointed out, they "did not burn themselves").
Unfortunately, Israel is currently led by some ethically challenged people. To put it bluntly, they lie. A lot. Given Israel's lack of credibility, it would be naive to unquestioningly accept any of its assertions. Israel's moral challenges also make it difficult to believe so-called confessions of rape by captured militants. Israel beats "confessions" out of its detainees, so these "admissions" cannot be assumed to be valid in every case.
Additionally, there is no available forensic evidence of rape. In a Times of Israel report, it is claimed that "physical evidence of sexual assault was not collected from corpses by Israel’s overtaxed morgue facilities." Additionally, "the government has not released explicit footage or pressed rape survivors to share their stories. Nor have the forensic services released formal reports on whether their findings were consistent with sexual abuse."
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/amp/).
I think it likely that, sadly, women were raped on 10/7. I think it equally likely that some of the rape stories we have been told are fabricated. It would be entirely out of character for Israel not to lie about rape, given that it has lied about virtually everything else and is particularly prone to lying about being victimized.
Wow. To me, a non-Israeli and non-Jew, this just reads as horrific sexual rape and torture apologia. I find your entire screed genuinely chilling. You probably don’t even care how vicious you sound, but it’s awful.
You know what I did immediately after 10/7? I went to Hamas’ own telegram channels and watched their own videos, which they kept up until they realized how bad it made them look. You obviously did not and obviously don’t care anyhow, given that the victims were Jewish. I will never forget what I saw. Never.
Did you see any videos portraying rape on the Hamas channels? I am genuinely curious.
Your assessment of my sentiments is entirely incorrect. I have never apologized for rape or torture, and I clearly call sexual abuse "horrific and disgusting," so your conclusions are unfounded. When I point out that the claims of babies being beheaded and hung on clotheslines are false (as in, people lied), this does not mean I don't care about beheading babies or hanging them up with the laundry (in truth, I strenuously object to roasting children or pinning them, either dead or alive, to clotheslines.) It means I have a commitment to the truth. Similarly, I am not detracting from the severity of rape when I point out that Israel has very little credibility, so it would be naive to blindly believe everything it claims (I did acknowledge that I think some of the claims are probably accurate). Perhaps you could try to separate my disinclination to embrace lies as support for whatever is being lied about?
If someone tells you that they met Elvis last Monday and Bigfoot last Tuesday, you could be excused for being a little skeptical if they told you they met Justin Bieber on Wednesday. While it's possible the latest claim is true, one might wonder if this person is prone to hallucinating or is perhaps just plain telling porkie pies.
If I may say so, it seems to me people with an agenda are being rather theatrical and performative about some of Israel's claims. We were all expected to work ourselves into a lather, despise Palestinians, embrace Israel unconditionally, celebrate massacring children in Gaza, and fall about clutching our pearls and collapsing on the fainting couch because Hamas baked a baby in an oven and hung dead babies on a clothesline, except ... that didn't happen. Why would we be stupid enough to blindly believe anything else Israel claims after that? And why would proof of such extreme stupidity be "chilling" or "vicious"? And why would one's very well-founded skepticism indicate lack of sympathy for the victims in the unlikely event something Israel claims actually turns out to be true?
Terrible, cruel, and unjust things undoubtedly happened on 10/7. I don't think anyone denies that. However, the Israeli authorities lie so compulsively that one would have to be extremely dull-witted or childlike not to want some independent verification of anything they tell you.
That’s a lot of words to say “I’m a vicious anti-Semite who freely uses the most ancient of anti-Semitic tropes.”
Do you realize just how awful you sound to rational people who aren’t gleefully stewing in anti-Semitism day in and day out? I’m genuinely curious, to quote you.
- non-Jew, since obviously if I were Jewish you’d start going on about the protocols of Zion or whatever. And I feel dirty even talking to you, like I’m giving credence to someone who would have watched the Hamas videos for fun.
You may be surprised to learn that I am a secular Ashkenazi Jew, but that's neither here nor there. Many orthodox Jews oppose Zionism in general and the current Israeli government in particular. Don't let that get in the way of trying to win a cheap point by screeching about antisemitism (which is antisemitic in itself).
What is relevant is that nobody has answered my question about rape videos. Do they or don't they exist? And why do you throw up smokescreens of insults rather than trying to address my arguments? Well, we know why, but couldn't you at least try to be honest enough to address my actual statements instead of lying about them? When you so obviously lie about and misrepresent what I have said, why do you expect me to naively believe anything else you might say?
Nobody has addressed my point about the lying. Given that the 40 beheaded babies/baby baked in an oven/babies on clotheslines stories were, well, flat-out lies, why is is "antisemitic" to wonder how true similar stories might be? It's the lying, stupid. When someone lies and lies and then lies some more, you start to wonder about the credibility of every story they tell. Kind of like when someone screams "antisemitism" again and again and again some more, you start to wonder if maybe they're trying to bury the truth under all that faux indignation and hysteria. Prove me wrong. Show you have some integrity and explain to me why I should believe the chopped-off-breast story when so many other stories have turned out to be lies. What differentiates that story from the babies-on-clotheslines story? Why would it be unreasonable to want some sort of verification, given that so many of these stories turned out to be false?
And please don't tell me I'm "denying atrocities" because I "hate Jews" or any similar dishonest and evasive craziness. I acknowledge that atrocities occurred. I even said I think there were probably rapes and that rape is "horrific." I am not dismissing unverified claims. Some may very well be true. Under the circumstances, however, I would simply like to see some sort of authentication before I make up my mind one way or the other. What is your problem with that?
Since you’re so fixated about the lying, let’s start with your lies first. Give me hard and solid proof that Israel — specifically Israel, not an individual Jew unless you are taking the position that one Jew speaks for all of Israel — but that “Israel” (your words) said that there were specifically 40 beheaded babies, a baby baked in an oven, and a baby on a clothesline. Show me where “Israel” as a single entity lied repeatedly about every single one of these, because that’s your assertion: that “Israel,” not an individual, not an entity in Israel, not an individual Jewish reporter, not a Jewish extremist, not even the IDF, but that “Israel” itself lies. So show me that proof. Find me the evidence that singular Israel collectively and repeatedly lied. You say it happened as a fact and you’ve repeated that “fact” over and over. So show me your mountains of evidence.
Spoiler alert: you are lying.
And yes. I will call out antisemitism when I see it, and it’s profoundly antisemitic to repeatedly and chillingly talk about how “Israel” lies all the time. That is the most ancient of antisemitic tropes and your anger at being identified for using that trope is not my problem.
Israel has discredited itself. Recent polls in Israel show that Israelis increasingly distrust Netanyahu. His ratings are plummeting and his nationalist base is beginning to desert him. There's a better than zero chance he may end up in jail on corruption charges, which might be the best thing to happen to Israel in a long time.
Why are you spreading false Hamas propaganda, and wild conspiracy theories that 10/7 was some kind of false flag staged by the IDF?
Now I'm truly puzzled. Where do I claim that 10/7 was staged by the IDF? This is (yawn) another straw man. Let me guess -- you will follow up with another ad hominem? Can I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF AND also believe that the babies on a clothes line stories is untrue? Or are you insisting that IF I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF, I must ALSO believe the babies-on-a-clothesline IS true? Do you understand that, as someone above just pointed out, two claims need not be mutually exclusive?
Wow. You really are a piece of work. Right above this,
"We now know that those burned on 10/7 were almost certainly burned by the Israeli military."
Unreal that anyone would try and claim that the 10/7 violence was Israeli military when we have HOURS AND HOURS of Hamas video showing it was in fact Hamas.
Stop playing dumb games here. You are really failing badly here.
She has no evidence that the IDF did any of the burning of Israel civilians just like she has no evidence that IDF stated “40 beheaded babies” anywhere. I hate calling her a she, because that would imply that she could potentially be a mother, and that would be the greatest tragedy.
There is ample evidence that “some” of the 10/7 damage was caused by IDF. That evidence is witness reports of helicopter and tank fire, the damage that can only be caused by tank and helicopter shelling, and burned bodies of Hamas militants who most assuredly did not self immolate.
What there is evidence of is that IDF responded to the Hamas attack on 10/7, killed many of the Hamas attackers, and that a few civilians were caught in the crossfire. But what there is NOT evidence of is that IDF was somehow responsible for a majority of the Israelis killed and burned. And again, there would have been ZERO people killed and burned if Hamas hadn't attacked on 10/7. Hamas was, and still is the party responsible for the violence. And, the bombing would end if Hamas capitulated and surrendered. No amount of "but Israel..." will change that. None.
Not the person you're responding to but to throw in my two cents. Israeli leaders have been caught out lying so many times that they have earned widespread distrust (including from many Israelis). This is NOT the same as pretending Hamas is all sweetness and light. It simply means many of us don't take every story coming out of Israel at face value.
How to apportion responsibility for the current tragic situation is a different but worthy debate. It has been percolating for a very long time.
Yes, both sides lied. And continue to lie. But that doesn't change the fact that Hamas is still the primary party responsible for the violence and fallout. None of this would have happened if Hamas hadn't engaged in its violent attack on 10/7.
Given what Israeli settlers have been doing to Palestinians in the West Bank, we can't say for sure that this wouldn't have happened if Hamas hadn't attacked on 10/7.
Anonymous wrote:The victim mentality is really beyond what I even imagined.
Literally murdering thousands of kids and still screaming “everyone hates us for no reason!!”
It’s certifiable
It is certifiable that so many people hate Israelis and Jews, no?
It that every Jew is responsible for what Israeli policy is. Must mean every Muslim is pro Hamas / pro terrorist.
This is a good point. "If you don't support Hamas and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an Islamophobe who wants to genocide all Muslims" makes as much sense as "If you don't support Israel and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an antisemite who wants to genocide all Jews."
I suspect the previous poster(s) understands this, but they're backed into a corner and can only spew a smokescreen of insults. Which is a very dishonest practice.
DP
Everyone here is 100.00% anti-Hamas. What about that fact don't you get? Stop trying to gin up a defense for what Israel is doing by arguing that those opposed to those actions are supportive of Hamas. It's pathetic. Even you can do better.
Perhaps my post wasn't sufficiently clear? Of course everyone here is anti-Hamas and, more specifically, opposes its actions on 10/7. I was making a comparison between absurd conclusions. Nobody believes that opposing Hamas means you're a genocidal Islamophobe who hates Muslims. Similarly, nobody believes that opposing Israel means you're a genocidal antisemite who hates Jews. Well, almost nobody in both cases. Some people are deliberately obtuse or deceitful or too fanatical to think straight, and my post was aimed at these folk. I don't support either statement, which is ... kind of why I put them both in quotes.
That's objectively false. Can't be anti-Hamas and yet be their direct mouthpiece repeating their false claims and conspiracy theories.
Which I have done ... where, exactly? Another straw man. Sorry, but this is getting very boring.
Don't know if it was you or who, as posts are anonymous, but I'm definitely not the only one here who keeps seeing Hamas propaganda and false talking points popping up over and over again.
Which makes your role here what...? A confused person who doesn't know what's going on? Someone who is naive and lacks critical thinking skills? Clearly not, since you are also hyperfocused on rhetorical devices, like "ad hominem" and "strawman" which tells me you are here specifically to argue. Yet if that's the case, then why are you ignoring the instances where Hamas talking points are being used? Perhaps you overestimate the notion of plausible deniability?
The PP keeps throwing around the terms “ad hominem” and “strawman” as an attempt to discredit the detailed NYT reporting. She’s using those terms (incorrectly but whatever) to distract from the objectively horrific and meticulously detailed description of the vicious sexual torture used by Hamas on 10/7. If she can get people to mentally associate that detailed reporting with cheap rhetorical devices, it helps her cause. It’s a classic propagandist move, albeit an easily identifiable one. She’s a propagandist, just not a very skilled one.
DP
The NY Times account is horrifying. It would be impossible to look into the eyes of those parents and not feel tremendous sadness for them (and for the world, frankly, since what happened to their daughter is just horrific for our shared sense of humanity).
I can't take the position that I'm sure the reporting is not true, but there is something about this reporting that doesn't seem to make much sense. I don't think I have ever come across reporting related to severe trauma (and this reported trauma is probably as severe as one can imagine) where the eyewitness accounts are even 10% as vivid and detailed as the ones featured in the Times. I'm not prepared to call anyone involved a liar, but I would just gently point out that shock and trauma, at least in my experience, just does not lend itself to a very vivid and detailed memory of the events in question - for most people, anyway.
You just did call everyone involved a liar.
I look forward to watching you say the same thing about the NYT’s meticulous reporting about the child deaths in Gaza and how those babies were killed and what their parents said they saw when their kids died in front of them. Are those parents, with their horrific details of watching their children bleed out and die in front them, also lying? Please do go on and tell me how the Palestinian parents who watched their children die in front of them are also lying.
DP. There is a mix of lies and truths. Yes, some Palestinian children have died, but there are also lies about how many died (such as the grossly exaggerated death count from Baptist Hospital). There are also lies about whose hands they died at. Yes, IDF killed some, but Hamas is also killing Palestinians, like when Hamas was trying to steal humanitarian aid for themselves rather than distribute it and they shot and killed hungry Palestinians who complained about it. Or when Hamas was trying to stop people from trying to evacuate. Or when civilians died because they were placed in harm's way by Hamas as human shields, or were killed because their home or shelter collapsed into Hamas tunnels when Hamas complexes were bombed.
Sure, but that’s not the point. The PP who is saying that the detailed eyewitness accounts of sexual torture must be lies because the shock and trauma should have prevented the creation of vivid and detailed memories of that torture needs to also then come out and say that the Palestinian parents who described watching their child bleed out in front of them in vivid detail are also lying because that level of shock and trauma should have prevented those parents from forming those memories. If she’s taking the position that the stories of sexual torture can’t be true because of “shock and trauma” then she needs to be consistent in how that theory is applied. Unless, of course, she’s taking the position that only Jewish women have this peculiar inability to remember unspeakable horrors, which is what I suspect she’s really getting at.
In any case, I look forward to reading her statements that the Palestinian parents who described the horrific and slow deaths of their dying children in front of their own eyes are also lying when they describe those deaths in excruciating and awful detail.
Exactly how mental are you???
The person used these exact words “I can't take the position that I'm sure the reporting is not true, but there is something about this reporting that doesn't seem to make much sense.“ and “ I'm not prepared to call anyone involved a liar, but I would just gently point out that shock and trauma, at least in my experience, just does not lend itself to a very vivid and detailed memory of the events in question - for most people, anyway.”
And from those two statements you walked away with an argument that the accounts “must be lies”? Must be lies? Are you literally deranged?
Right on. Carefully qualified statements from one poster. Complete misrepresentation of her position from the other.
Anonymous wrote:The victim mentality is really beyond what I even imagined.
Literally murdering thousands of kids and still screaming “everyone hates us for no reason!!”
It’s certifiable
It is certifiable that so many people hate Israelis and Jews, no?
It that every Jew is responsible for what Israeli policy is. Must mean every Muslim is pro Hamas / pro terrorist.
This is a good point. "If you don't support Hamas and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an Islamophobe who wants to genocide all Muslims" makes as much sense as "If you don't support Israel and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an antisemite who wants to genocide all Jews."
I suspect the previous poster(s) understands this, but they're backed into a corner and can only spew a smokescreen of insults. Which is a very dishonest practice.
DP
Everyone here is 100.00% anti-Hamas. What about that fact don't you get? Stop trying to gin up a defense for what Israel is doing by arguing that those opposed to those actions are supportive of Hamas. It's pathetic. Even you can do better.
Perhaps my post wasn't sufficiently clear? Of course everyone here is anti-Hamas and, more specifically, opposes its actions on 10/7. I was making a comparison between absurd conclusions. Nobody believes that opposing Hamas means you're a genocidal Islamophobe who hates Muslims. Similarly, nobody believes that opposing Israel means you're a genocidal antisemite who hates Jews. Well, almost nobody in both cases. Some people are deliberately obtuse or deceitful or too fanatical to think straight, and my post was aimed at these folk. I don't support either statement, which is ... kind of why I put them both in quotes.
That's objectively false. Can't be anti-Hamas and yet be their direct mouthpiece repeating their false claims and conspiracy theories.
Which I have done ... where, exactly? Another straw man. Sorry, but this is getting very boring.
Don't know if it was you or who, as posts are anonymous, but I'm definitely not the only one here who keeps seeing Hamas propaganda and false talking points popping up over and over again.
Which makes your role here what...? A confused person who doesn't know what's going on? Someone who is naive and lacks critical thinking skills? Clearly not, since you are also hyperfocused on rhetorical devices, like "ad hominem" and "strawman" which tells me you are here specifically to argue. Yet if that's the case, then why are you ignoring the instances where Hamas talking points are being used? Perhaps you overestimate the notion of plausible deniability?
DP there is very little Hamas propaganda. Most of the posts are Israel propaganda and fantasy. Every time israel goes on a murdering spree you will see stories like those in the NYT to justify their actions. There is no justification form Israel’s action in Gaza. I have moved from neutral on Israel to seeing it and its supporters as an evil force in the world.
DP. Well, Hamas’ own videos have moved me from being a supporter of a free Palestine in a two-state solution to being a supporter of Israel so I guess we balance out. I suppose you are correct, though, that the videos Hamas proudly distributed on its own are not actually Hamas propaganda. They are proof of what Hamas is doing, live-streamed torture that they cheer on. I don’t think it’s propaganda when you are live-streaming torture you are proud of. So in that sense, yes, Hamas isn’t actually showing propaganda in their snuff videos. They are showing who they are exactly.
Similar. I'd hoped both sides would get it together and choose leaders that could bring a two state solution and end 80 years of conflict. But the massacres on 10/7 changed everything.
The more we've learned about what Hamas did on 10/7 - chopping off breasts, beheading women, shooting them in the head as they raped them, driving nails into their genitals - the more clear it's become that Hamas and their supporters need to be obliterated from the face of the Earth. Vile, hateful, misogynistic, sadistic, religious extremists.
It's sad that UN Women and Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International turned their back on what Hamas does to women. Not to mention all the progressives cheering it on.
Clearly, anti-semitism is extremely deep rooted, particularly among the left. Globally. There has been zero empathy for the victims. And the victims were people living on kibbutzes and going to music festivals - the most liberal people in Israel.
My thinking has changed 100 percent. We all know now what Palestinians would do to Israelis if given the chance. Israel is perfectly within its rights to defend themselves from that horror. Obviously, civilian deaths, particularly children, is tragic. But that is the nature of war. It's why most countries avoid it. And Hamas fights and shoots their 13,000 missiles and counting from schools and mosques and hospitals. And it was Hamas who invaded Israel and launched this war.
It's baffling why so many progressives support or make excuses for Hamas. They are ISIS. They are Al-Qaeda. They are not allies of women or LGBTQ or POC. They are the scummiest men on Earth.
So, yeah, I support Israel 100 percent. If Palestinians aren't going to disavow Hamas, there's not much choice but for the IDF to go in and destroy them. Hamas - for the sake of humanity, and particularly women - is unacceptable. But this is what Palestinians in Gaza chose. And now they confront the consequences.
Do you want to tell us what West Bankers did to deserve land grab, water theft, evictions, admin detention, and settler violence. I’m sure you think they had it coming. Tell us.
Doesn't mean Israel needs to cease to exist or change its fundamental makeup as a nation. The West Bank issue can be addressed without any of that happening.
Russia does bad things but no one in America is calling for the country to go away.
So you do agree Israel does “bad things” in the West Bank? Two questions then:
What do you think is suitable punishment for Israel for its bad deeds in the West Bank?
What are the suitable forms of fighting the “bad things” Israel does in the West Bank?
I do not know a thing about what is going on in the West Bank, I say that with 100% honesty. Not playing dumb. I am going along with you in the discussion to try to see what you want us to do, the readers of your post, with the set of info you gave us. You seemed to be concerned about it, what do you want done? You should state up front instead of being coy.
Anonymous wrote:The victim mentality is really beyond what I even imagined.
Literally murdering thousands of kids and still screaming “everyone hates us for no reason!!”
It’s certifiable
It is certifiable that so many people hate Israelis and Jews, no?
It that every Jew is responsible for what Israeli policy is. Must mean every Muslim is pro Hamas / pro terrorist.
This is a good point. "If you don't support Hamas and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an Islamophobe who wants to genocide all Muslims" makes as much sense as "If you don't support Israel and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an antisemite who wants to genocide all Jews."
I suspect the previous poster(s) understands this, but they're backed into a corner and can only spew a smokescreen of insults. Which is a very dishonest practice.
DP
Everyone here is 100.00% anti-Hamas. What about that fact don't you get? Stop trying to gin up a defense for what Israel is doing by arguing that those opposed to those actions are supportive of Hamas. It's pathetic. Even you can do better.
Perhaps my post wasn't sufficiently clear? Of course everyone here is anti-Hamas and, more specifically, opposes its actions on 10/7. I was making a comparison between absurd conclusions. Nobody believes that opposing Hamas means you're a genocidal Islamophobe who hates Muslims. Similarly, nobody believes that opposing Israel means you're a genocidal antisemite who hates Jews. Well, almost nobody in both cases. Some people are deliberately obtuse or deceitful or too fanatical to think straight, and my post was aimed at these folk. I don't support either statement, which is ... kind of why I put them both in quotes.
That's objectively false. Can't be anti-Hamas and yet be their direct mouthpiece repeating their false claims and conspiracy theories.
Oh, brother! Another straw man! I'm losing interest and patience, but ... what Hamas "false claims and conspiracy theories" have I supposedly repeated? I've been calling Israel out about "false claims and conspiracy theories" (like the beheaded babies, etc.). Can you understand that many of think Israel is currently run by a bunch of fascists AND Hamas is a thoroughly unsavory enterprise? A AND B is not the same as A OR B.
The issue is how you want this to all end-the dismantling of Israel's Jewish majority.
I guess I hit the bull's eye (not much of a feat, to be honest) when I predicted this idiot would repsond with another straw man.
Because that is what you want to happen. Sharing all of these sad stories and incidents with us, you want people to turn against Israel as a concept and seek its destruction. Again, everyone on social media (including this site) has an agenda--there needs to be a purpose for your sharing all of these stories and incidents, there is something you want accomplished. So, it is ok to talk about your ultimate goal.
Anonymous wrote:I couldn't get through the NY Times article. The brutalization of women was planned and carried out in multiple locations on 10/7. Not only is Hamas and its supporters a death cult but it is filled with rapists.
Where were the protests, the signs, the marches for these women? Michelle "bring back our girls" Obama? Susan Sarandon? UN Women? It's like rape has become fashionable again when the victims are Jews.
The sexual abuse of women on 10/7 or on any other day is horrific and disgusting. I'm sure everyone here wishes none of that ever happened.
It's sad that the initial reports were met with guarded skepticism, but consider that we were also told that 40 babies were beheaded, a baby was baked in an oven, and dead babies were found hanging on a clothesline. These stories proved to be untrue. The more lurid and preposterous the claim, the less likely it was to be true, even though some assertions were allegedly based on "eyewitness testimonies" (which were later retracted). We also heard that Palestinian militants had burned many people alive. It turned out, and Israelis who observed the events of the day confirmed this, that in fact the IDF had done most, if not all, of the burning, including burning hundreds of Palestinian militants to death (as has been pointed out, they "did not burn themselves").
Unfortunately, Israel is currently led by some ethically challenged people. To put it bluntly, they lie. A lot. Given Israel's lack of credibility, it would be naive to unquestioningly accept any of its assertions. Israel's moral challenges also make it difficult to believe so-called confessions of rape by captured militants. Israel beats "confessions" out of its detainees, so these "admissions" cannot be assumed to be valid in every case.
Additionally, there is no available forensic evidence of rape. In a Times of Israel report, it is claimed that "physical evidence of sexual assault was not collected from corpses by Israel’s overtaxed morgue facilities." Additionally, "the government has not released explicit footage or pressed rape survivors to share their stories. Nor have the forensic services released formal reports on whether their findings were consistent with sexual abuse."
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/amp/).
I think it likely that, sadly, women were raped on 10/7. I think it equally likely that some of the rape stories we have been told are fabricated. It would be entirely out of character for Israel not to lie about rape, given that it has lied about virtually everything else and is particularly prone to lying about being victimized.
Wow. To me, a non-Israeli and non-Jew, this just reads as horrific sexual rape and torture apologia. I find your entire screed genuinely chilling. You probably don’t even care how vicious you sound, but it’s awful.
You know what I did immediately after 10/7? I went to Hamas’ own telegram channels and watched their own videos, which they kept up until they realized how bad it made them look. You obviously did not and obviously don’t care anyhow, given that the victims were Jewish. I will never forget what I saw. Never.
Did you see any videos portraying rape on the Hamas channels? I am genuinely curious.
Your assessment of my sentiments is entirely incorrect. I have never apologized for rape or torture, and I clearly call sexual abuse "horrific and disgusting," so your conclusions are unfounded. When I point out that the claims of babies being beheaded and hung on clotheslines are false (as in, people lied), this does not mean I don't care about beheading babies or hanging them up with the laundry (in truth, I strenuously object to roasting children or pinning them, either dead or alive, to clotheslines.) It means I have a commitment to the truth. Similarly, I am not detracting from the severity of rape when I point out that Israel has very little credibility, so it would be naive to blindly believe everything it claims (I did acknowledge that I think some of the claims are probably accurate). Perhaps you could try to separate my disinclination to embrace lies as support for whatever is being lied about?
If someone tells you that they met Elvis last Monday and Bigfoot last Tuesday, you could be excused for being a little skeptical if they told you they met Justin Bieber on Wednesday. While it's possible the latest claim is true, one might wonder if this person is prone to hallucinating or is perhaps just plain telling porkie pies.
If I may say so, it seems to me people with an agenda are being rather theatrical and performative about some of Israel's claims. We were all expected to work ourselves into a lather, despise Palestinians, embrace Israel unconditionally, celebrate massacring children in Gaza, and fall about clutching our pearls and collapsing on the fainting couch because Hamas baked a baby in an oven and hung dead babies on a clothesline, except ... that didn't happen. Why would we be stupid enough to blindly believe anything else Israel claims after that? And why would proof of such extreme stupidity be "chilling" or "vicious"? And why would one's very well-founded skepticism indicate lack of sympathy for the victims in the unlikely event something Israel claims actually turns out to be true?
Terrible, cruel, and unjust things undoubtedly happened on 10/7. I don't think anyone denies that. However, the Israeli authorities lie so compulsively that one would have to be extremely dull-witted or childlike not to want some independent verification of anything they tell you.
That’s a lot of words to say “I’m a vicious anti-Semite who freely uses the most ancient of anti-Semitic tropes.”
Do you realize just how awful you sound to rational people who aren’t gleefully stewing in anti-Semitism day in and day out? I’m genuinely curious, to quote you.
- non-Jew, since obviously if I were Jewish you’d start going on about the protocols of Zion or whatever. And I feel dirty even talking to you, like I’m giving credence to someone who would have watched the Hamas videos for fun.
You may be surprised to learn that I am a secular Ashkenazi Jew, but that's neither here nor there. Many orthodox Jews oppose Zionism in general and the current Israeli government in particular. Don't let that get in the way of trying to win a cheap point by screeching about antisemitism (which is antisemitic in itself).
What is relevant is that nobody has answered my question about rape videos. Do they or don't they exist? And why do you throw up smokescreens of insults rather than trying to address my arguments? Well, we know why, but couldn't you at least try to be honest enough to address my actual statements instead of lying about them? When you so obviously lie about and misrepresent what I have said, why do you expect me to naively believe anything else you might say?
Nobody has addressed my point about the lying. Given that the 40 beheaded babies/baby baked in an oven/babies on clotheslines stories were, well, flat-out lies, why is is "antisemitic" to wonder how true similar stories might be? It's the lying, stupid. When someone lies and lies and then lies some more, you start to wonder about the credibility of every story they tell. Kind of like when someone screams "antisemitism" again and again and again some more, you start to wonder if maybe they're trying to bury the truth under all that faux indignation and hysteria. Prove me wrong. Show you have some integrity and explain to me why I should believe the chopped-off-breast story when so many other stories have turned out to be lies. What differentiates that story from the babies-on-clotheslines story? Why would it be unreasonable to want some sort of verification, given that so many of these stories turned out to be false?
And please don't tell me I'm "denying atrocities" because I "hate Jews" or any similar dishonest and evasive craziness. I acknowledge that atrocities occurred. I even said I think there were probably rapes and that rape is "horrific." I am not dismissing unverified claims. Some may very well be true. Under the circumstances, however, I would simply like to see some sort of authentication before I make up my mind one way or the other. What is your problem with that?
Since you’re so fixated about the lying, let’s start with your lies first. Give me hard and solid proof that Israel — specifically Israel, not an individual Jew unless you are taking the position that one Jew speaks for all of Israel — but that “Israel” (your words) said that there were specifically 40 beheaded babies, a baby baked in an oven, and a baby on a clothesline. Show me where “Israel” as a single entity lied repeatedly about every single one of these, because that’s your assertion: that “Israel,” not an individual, not an entity in Israel, not an individual Jewish reporter, not a Jewish extremist, not even the IDF, but that “Israel” itself lies. So show me that proof. Find me the evidence that singular Israel collectively and repeatedly lied. You say it happened as a fact and you’ve repeated that “fact” over and over. So show me your mountains of evidence.
Spoiler alert: you are lying.
And yes. I will call out antisemitism when I see it, and it’s profoundly antisemitic to repeatedly and chillingly talk about how “Israel” lies all the time. That is the most ancient of antisemitic tropes and your anger at being identified for using that trope is not my problem.
Israel has discredited itself. Recent polls in Israel show that Israelis increasingly distrust Netanyahu. His ratings are plummeting and his nationalist base is beginning to desert him. There's a better than zero chance he may end up in jail on corruption charges, which might be the best thing to happen to Israel in a long time.
Why are you spreading false Hamas propaganda, and wild conspiracy theories that 10/7 was some kind of false flag staged by the IDF?
Now I'm truly puzzled. Where do I claim that 10/7 was staged by the IDF? This is (yawn) another straw man. Let me guess -- you will follow up with another ad hominem? Can I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF AND also believe that the babies on a clothes line stories is untrue? Or are you insisting that IF I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF, I must ALSO believe the babies-on-a-clothesline IS true? Do you understand that, as someone above just pointed out, two claims need not be mutually exclusive?
Wow. You really are a piece of work. Right above this,
"We now know that those burned on 10/7 were almost certainly burned by the Israeli military."
Unreal that anyone would try and claim that the 10/7 violence was Israeli military when we have HOURS AND HOURS of Hamas video showing it was in fact Hamas.
Stop playing dumb games here. You are really failing badly here.
She has no evidence that the IDF did any of the burning of Israel civilians just like she has no evidence that IDF stated “40 beheaded babies” anywhere. I hate calling her a she, because that would imply that she could potentially be a mother, and that would be the greatest tragedy.
There is ample evidence that “some” of the 10/7 damage was caused by IDF. That evidence is witness reports of helicopter and tank fire, the damage that can only be caused by tank and helicopter shelling, and burned bodies of Hamas militants who most assuredly did not self immolate.
What there is evidence of is that IDF responded to the Hamas attack on 10/7, killed many of the Hamas attackers, and that a few civilians were caught in the crossfire. But what there is NOT evidence of is that IDF was somehow responsible for a majority of the Israelis killed and burned. And again, there would have been ZERO people killed and burned if Hamas hadn't attacked on 10/7. Hamas was, and still is the party responsible for the violence. And, the bombing would end if Hamas capitulated and surrendered. No amount of "but Israel..." will change that. None.
Not the person you're responding to but to throw in my two cents. Israeli leaders have been caught out lying so many times that they have earned widespread distrust (including from many Israelis). This is NOT the same as pretending Hamas is all sweetness and light. It simply means many of us don't take every story coming out of Israel at face value.
How to apportion responsibility for the current tragic situation is a different but worthy debate. It has been percolating for a very long time.
Yes, both sides lied. And continue to lie. But that doesn't change the fact that Hamas is still the primary party responsible for the violence and fallout. None of this would have happened if Hamas hadn't engaged in its violent attack on 10/7.
Yes, both sides lie like rugs. I'm glad we agree.
As to the entirely different discussion about primary responsibility, I don't think it's that simple. The roots of this conflict go back a long, long way, well before 10/7. Israeli settlers have perpetrated atrocities against Palestinians in the West Bank for decades. They have murdered Palestinians living there and stolen their homes. This is all well-documented. You're no doubt familiar with "administrative detention," which is detention without trial. We know many Palestinians have endured this type of detention, and the Israeli Supreme Court has consistently denied detainees access to legal counsel. There are many reports of torture and ill treatment of detainees that need to be investigated. A UN inquiry determined that Israeli forces killed a journalist, Shireen Abu Aklah, "without justification." Other journalists and Palestinian writers have been killed by the IDF or detained without trial. IDF snipers in Gaza are killing non-combatants such as the two ladies in the Holy Cross Parish, possibly because the Israeli defense minister said he had removed "all restraints" on his soldiers. These are all behaviors of a fascist state. In the 1940s, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others warned of the potential for fascism in Israel in a letter to the NYT, in which they mention the Deir Yassin massacre (https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948).
Palestinians have valid complaints, and Israel's current far-right government has added fuel to the fire. Deir Yassin, settler violence, killing journalists, and administrative detention don't mean that innocent Israelis should have suffered on 10/7. What happened on 10/7 doesn't mean that thousands of Palestinian children should be suffering so terribly now. To use a cliche, two wrongs don't make a right. This situation has been a fiasco for decades. Much smarter people than me have been trying to help for decades, yet it's as bad as it's ever been and in danger of getting a lot worse. It's so, so sad.
That's a rather one-sided portrayal, conveniently leaving out how Palestinians have been firing hundreds and even thousands of rockets a year into Israel, every year for decades, and these rockets are not toys, but rockets of the sort that exploded at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. People were quick to characterize that one as a JDAM or 2,000 pound bomb, and to say it killed 500 people. That is some of what Israeli civilians have had to deal with every single day. It also leaves out how Arabs literally tried repeatedly to invade and exterminate the Jews, with wars in 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006 and so on - with Israel pushing them back and retaking territory, or taking new territory. By all rights, the Jews could have pushed all Arabs out completely. But they didn't. And let's not forget all of the rest of the continual terror campaigns, like the Black September incident where a Palestinian death squad kidnapped a group of Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Summer Olympics, holding them hostage, and ultimately massacring them. Portraying Palestinians as nothing but downtrodden victims isn't quite honest.
But meanwhile also consider that there are also more than 2 million Palestinian Arabs in Israel who DO NOT live in Gaza or the West Bank, but are instead full members of Israeli society, with citizenship, voting rights, some have even held seats in the Knesset and have held high ranking office including Cabinet posts. The difference is that they aren't indoctrinated in extremist ideology about destroying Israel and clearing all Jews out from the river to the sea.
The narrative keeps going to some warped notion that Israel is just pure evil and bent on genocide and exterminating Palestinians, for no reason whatsoever. That is just plain wrong and completely dishonest.
Look, if there was a button Israel could press that would remove all Palestinians and make their land available for Israeli expansion, the majority would vote for pressing it. And not just after 10/7.
What are we to do with this conjecture? How should we respond to this? Provide us instructions.
Please stop trying to normalize beating your children. It’s disgusting and you should be removed from society for implying that this should be done. Nobody needs to see your plea for instructions on how to beat children.
Wow, putting words in the mouth of someone else and blatantly lying about what they said, to the point of actually copying and pasting what they did say (which diametrically conflicts with what you have repeatedly argued they said) … it just feels gross.
How do you Zionists do it? Is morality an on/off switch for y’all?
Anonymous wrote:The victim mentality is really beyond what I even imagined.
Literally murdering thousands of kids and still screaming “everyone hates us for no reason!!”
It’s certifiable
It is certifiable that so many people hate Israelis and Jews, no?
It that every Jew is responsible for what Israeli policy is. Must mean every Muslim is pro Hamas / pro terrorist.
This is a good point. "If you don't support Hamas and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an Islamophobe who wants to genocide all Muslims" makes as much sense as "If you don't support Israel and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an antisemite who wants to genocide all Jews."
I suspect the previous poster(s) understands this, but they're backed into a corner and can only spew a smokescreen of insults. Which is a very dishonest practice.
DP
Everyone here is 100.00% anti-Hamas. What about that fact don't you get? Stop trying to gin up a defense for what Israel is doing by arguing that those opposed to those actions are supportive of Hamas. It's pathetic. Even you can do better.
Perhaps my post wasn't sufficiently clear? Of course everyone here is anti-Hamas and, more specifically, opposes its actions on 10/7. I was making a comparison between absurd conclusions. Nobody believes that opposing Hamas means you're a genocidal Islamophobe who hates Muslims. Similarly, nobody believes that opposing Israel means you're a genocidal antisemite who hates Jews. Well, almost nobody in both cases. Some people are deliberately obtuse or deceitful or too fanatical to think straight, and my post was aimed at these folk. I don't support either statement, which is ... kind of why I put them both in quotes.
That's objectively false. Can't be anti-Hamas and yet be their direct mouthpiece repeating their false claims and conspiracy theories.
Oh, brother! Another straw man! I'm losing interest and patience, but ... what Hamas "false claims and conspiracy theories" have I supposedly repeated? I've been calling Israel out about "false claims and conspiracy theories" (like the beheaded babies, etc.). Can you understand that many of think Israel is currently run by a bunch of fascists AND Hamas is a thoroughly unsavory enterprise? A AND B is not the same as A OR B.
The issue is how you want this to all end-the dismantling of Israel's Jewish majority.
I guess I hit the bull's eye (not much of a feat, to be honest) when I predicted this idiot would repsond with another straw man.
Because that is what you want to happen. Sharing all of these sad stories and incidents with us, you want people to turn against Israel as a concept and seek its destruction. Again, everyone on social media (including this site) has an agenda--there needs to be a purpose for your sharing all of these stories and incidents, there is something you want accomplished. So, it is ok to talk about your ultimate goal.
LOL! And yet another straw man!
Ok, I guess you just like to tell sad stories for fun, no purpose at all. Just like a reddit today I learned posts or something.
Anonymous wrote:I couldn't get through the NY Times article. The brutalization of women was planned and carried out in multiple locations on 10/7. Not only is Hamas and its supporters a death cult but it is filled with rapists.
Where were the protests, the signs, the marches for these women? Michelle "bring back our girls" Obama? Susan Sarandon? UN Women? It's like rape has become fashionable again when the victims are Jews.
The sexual abuse of women on 10/7 or on any other day is horrific and disgusting. I'm sure everyone here wishes none of that ever happened.
It's sad that the initial reports were met with guarded skepticism, but consider that we were also told that 40 babies were beheaded, a baby was baked in an oven, and dead babies were found hanging on a clothesline. These stories proved to be untrue. The more lurid and preposterous the claim, the less likely it was to be true, even though some assertions were allegedly based on "eyewitness testimonies" (which were later retracted). We also heard that Palestinian militants had burned many people alive. It turned out, and Israelis who observed the events of the day confirmed this, that in fact the IDF had done most, if not all, of the burning, including burning hundreds of Palestinian militants to death (as has been pointed out, they "did not burn themselves").
Unfortunately, Israel is currently led by some ethically challenged people. To put it bluntly, they lie. A lot. Given Israel's lack of credibility, it would be naive to unquestioningly accept any of its assertions. Israel's moral challenges also make it difficult to believe so-called confessions of rape by captured militants. Israel beats "confessions" out of its detainees, so these "admissions" cannot be assumed to be valid in every case.
Additionally, there is no available forensic evidence of rape. In a Times of Israel report, it is claimed that "physical evidence of sexual assault was not collected from corpses by Israel’s overtaxed morgue facilities." Additionally, "the government has not released explicit footage or pressed rape survivors to share their stories. Nor have the forensic services released formal reports on whether their findings were consistent with sexual abuse."
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/amp/).
I think it likely that, sadly, women were raped on 10/7. I think it equally likely that some of the rape stories we have been told are fabricated. It would be entirely out of character for Israel not to lie about rape, given that it has lied about virtually everything else and is particularly prone to lying about being victimized.
Wow. To me, a non-Israeli and non-Jew, this just reads as horrific sexual rape and torture apologia. I find your entire screed genuinely chilling. You probably don’t even care how vicious you sound, but it’s awful.
You know what I did immediately after 10/7? I went to Hamas’ own telegram channels and watched their own videos, which they kept up until they realized how bad it made them look. You obviously did not and obviously don’t care anyhow, given that the victims were Jewish. I will never forget what I saw. Never.
Did you see any videos portraying rape on the Hamas channels? I am genuinely curious.
Your assessment of my sentiments is entirely incorrect. I have never apologized for rape or torture, and I clearly call sexual abuse "horrific and disgusting," so your conclusions are unfounded. When I point out that the claims of babies being beheaded and hung on clotheslines are false (as in, people lied), this does not mean I don't care about beheading babies or hanging them up with the laundry (in truth, I strenuously object to roasting children or pinning them, either dead or alive, to clotheslines.) It means I have a commitment to the truth. Similarly, I am not detracting from the severity of rape when I point out that Israel has very little credibility, so it would be naive to blindly believe everything it claims (I did acknowledge that I think some of the claims are probably accurate). Perhaps you could try to separate my disinclination to embrace lies as support for whatever is being lied about?
If someone tells you that they met Elvis last Monday and Bigfoot last Tuesday, you could be excused for being a little skeptical if they told you they met Justin Bieber on Wednesday. While it's possible the latest claim is true, one might wonder if this person is prone to hallucinating or is perhaps just plain telling porkie pies.
If I may say so, it seems to me people with an agenda are being rather theatrical and performative about some of Israel's claims. We were all expected to work ourselves into a lather, despise Palestinians, embrace Israel unconditionally, celebrate massacring children in Gaza, and fall about clutching our pearls and collapsing on the fainting couch because Hamas baked a baby in an oven and hung dead babies on a clothesline, except ... that didn't happen. Why would we be stupid enough to blindly believe anything else Israel claims after that? And why would proof of such extreme stupidity be "chilling" or "vicious"? And why would one's very well-founded skepticism indicate lack of sympathy for the victims in the unlikely event something Israel claims actually turns out to be true?
Terrible, cruel, and unjust things undoubtedly happened on 10/7. I don't think anyone denies that. However, the Israeli authorities lie so compulsively that one would have to be extremely dull-witted or childlike not to want some independent verification of anything they tell you.
That’s a lot of words to say “I’m a vicious anti-Semite who freely uses the most ancient of anti-Semitic tropes.”
Do you realize just how awful you sound to rational people who aren’t gleefully stewing in anti-Semitism day in and day out? I’m genuinely curious, to quote you.
- non-Jew, since obviously if I were Jewish you’d start going on about the protocols of Zion or whatever. And I feel dirty even talking to you, like I’m giving credence to someone who would have watched the Hamas videos for fun.
You may be surprised to learn that I am a secular Ashkenazi Jew, but that's neither here nor there. Many orthodox Jews oppose Zionism in general and the current Israeli government in particular. Don't let that get in the way of trying to win a cheap point by screeching about antisemitism (which is antisemitic in itself).
What is relevant is that nobody has answered my question about rape videos. Do they or don't they exist? And why do you throw up smokescreens of insults rather than trying to address my arguments? Well, we know why, but couldn't you at least try to be honest enough to address my actual statements instead of lying about them? When you so obviously lie about and misrepresent what I have said, why do you expect me to naively believe anything else you might say?
Nobody has addressed my point about the lying. Given that the 40 beheaded babies/baby baked in an oven/babies on clotheslines stories were, well, flat-out lies, why is is "antisemitic" to wonder how true similar stories might be? It's the lying, stupid. When someone lies and lies and then lies some more, you start to wonder about the credibility of every story they tell. Kind of like when someone screams "antisemitism" again and again and again some more, you start to wonder if maybe they're trying to bury the truth under all that faux indignation and hysteria. Prove me wrong. Show you have some integrity and explain to me why I should believe the chopped-off-breast story when so many other stories have turned out to be lies. What differentiates that story from the babies-on-clotheslines story? Why would it be unreasonable to want some sort of verification, given that so many of these stories turned out to be false?
And please don't tell me I'm "denying atrocities" because I "hate Jews" or any similar dishonest and evasive craziness. I acknowledge that atrocities occurred. I even said I think there were probably rapes and that rape is "horrific." I am not dismissing unverified claims. Some may very well be true. Under the circumstances, however, I would simply like to see some sort of authentication before I make up my mind one way or the other. What is your problem with that?
Since you’re so fixated about the lying, let’s start with your lies first. Give me hard and solid proof that Israel — specifically Israel, not an individual Jew unless you are taking the position that one Jew speaks for all of Israel — but that “Israel” (your words) said that there were specifically 40 beheaded babies, a baby baked in an oven, and a baby on a clothesline. Show me where “Israel” as a single entity lied repeatedly about every single one of these, because that’s your assertion: that “Israel,” not an individual, not an entity in Israel, not an individual Jewish reporter, not a Jewish extremist, not even the IDF, but that “Israel” itself lies. So show me that proof. Find me the evidence that singular Israel collectively and repeatedly lied. You say it happened as a fact and you’ve repeated that “fact” over and over. So show me your mountains of evidence.
Spoiler alert: you are lying.
And yes. I will call out antisemitism when I see it, and it’s profoundly antisemitic to repeatedly and chillingly talk about how “Israel” lies all the time. That is the most ancient of antisemitic tropes and your anger at being identified for using that trope is not my problem.
Israel has discredited itself. Recent polls in Israel show that Israelis increasingly distrust Netanyahu. His ratings are plummeting and his nationalist base is beginning to desert him. There's a better than zero chance he may end up in jail on corruption charges, which might be the best thing to happen to Israel in a long time.
Why are you spreading false Hamas propaganda, and wild conspiracy theories that 10/7 was some kind of false flag staged by the IDF?
Now I'm truly puzzled. Where do I claim that 10/7 was staged by the IDF? This is (yawn) another straw man. Let me guess -- you will follow up with another ad hominem? Can I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF AND also believe that the babies on a clothes line stories is untrue? Or are you insisting that IF I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF, I must ALSO believe the babies-on-a-clothesline IS true? Do you understand that, as someone above just pointed out, two claims need not be mutually exclusive?
Wow. You really are a piece of work. Right above this,
"We now know that those burned on 10/7 were almost certainly burned by the Israeli military."
Unreal that anyone would try and claim that the 10/7 violence was Israeli military when we have HOURS AND HOURS of Hamas video showing it was in fact Hamas.
Stop playing dumb games here. You are really failing badly here.
She has no evidence that the IDF did any of the burning of Israel civilians just like she has no evidence that IDF stated “40 beheaded babies” anywhere. I hate calling her a she, because that would imply that she could potentially be a mother, and that would be the greatest tragedy.
There is ample evidence that “some” of the 10/7 damage was caused by IDF. That evidence is witness reports of helicopter and tank fire, the damage that can only be caused by tank and helicopter shelling, and burned bodies of Hamas militants who most assuredly did not self immolate.
What there is evidence of is that IDF responded to the Hamas attack on 10/7, killed many of the Hamas attackers, and that a few civilians were caught in the crossfire. But what there is NOT evidence of is that IDF was somehow responsible for a majority of the Israelis killed and burned. And again, there would have been ZERO people killed and burned if Hamas hadn't attacked on 10/7. Hamas was, and still is the party responsible for the violence. And, the bombing would end if Hamas capitulated and surrendered. No amount of "but Israel..." will change that. None.
Not the person you're responding to but to throw in my two cents. Israeli leaders have been caught out lying so many times that they have earned widespread distrust (including from many Israelis). This is NOT the same as pretending Hamas is all sweetness and light. It simply means many of us don't take every story coming out of Israel at face value.
How to apportion responsibility for the current tragic situation is a different but worthy debate. It has been percolating for a very long time.
Yes, both sides lied. And continue to lie. But that doesn't change the fact that Hamas is still the primary party responsible for the violence and fallout. None of this would have happened if Hamas hadn't engaged in its violent attack on 10/7.
Yes, both sides lie like rugs. I'm glad we agree.
As to the entirely different discussion about primary responsibility, I don't think it's that simple. The roots of this conflict go back a long, long way, well before 10/7. Israeli settlers have perpetrated atrocities against Palestinians in the West Bank for decades. They have murdered Palestinians living there and stolen their homes. This is all well-documented. You're no doubt familiar with "administrative detention," which is detention without trial. We know many Palestinians have endured this type of detention, and the Israeli Supreme Court has consistently denied detainees access to legal counsel. There are many reports of torture and ill treatment of detainees that need to be investigated. A UN inquiry determined that Israeli forces killed a journalist, Shireen Abu Aklah, "without justification." Other journalists and Palestinian writers have been killed by the IDF or detained without trial. IDF snipers in Gaza are killing non-combatants such as the two ladies in the Holy Cross Parish, possibly because the Israeli defense minister said he had removed "all restraints" on his soldiers. These are all behaviors of a fascist state. In the 1940s, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others warned of the potential for fascism in Israel in a letter to the NYT, in which they mention the Deir Yassin massacre (https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948).
Palestinians have valid complaints, and Israel's current far-right government has added fuel to the fire. Deir Yassin, settler violence, killing journalists, and administrative detention don't mean that innocent Israelis should have suffered on 10/7. What happened on 10/7 doesn't mean that thousands of Palestinian children should be suffering so terribly now. To use a cliche, two wrongs don't make a right. This situation has been a fiasco for decades. Much smarter people than me have been trying to help for decades, yet it's as bad as it's ever been and in danger of getting a lot worse. It's so, so sad.
That's a rather one-sided portrayal, conveniently leaving out how Palestinians have been firing hundreds and even thousands of rockets a year into Israel, every year for decades, and these rockets are not toys, but rockets of the sort that exploded at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. People were quick to characterize that one as a JDAM or 2,000 pound bomb, and to say it killed 500 people. That is some of what Israeli civilians have had to deal with every single day. It also leaves out how Arabs literally tried repeatedly to invade and exterminate the Jews, with wars in 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006 and so on - with Israel pushing them back and retaking territory, or taking new territory. By all rights, the Jews could have pushed all Arabs out completely. But they didn't. And let's not forget all of the rest of the continual terror campaigns, like the Black September incident where a Palestinian death squad kidnapped a group of Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Summer Olympics, holding them hostage, and ultimately massacring them. Portraying Palestinians as nothing but downtrodden victims isn't quite honest.
But meanwhile also consider that there are also more than 2 million Palestinian Arabs in Israel who DO NOT live in Gaza or the West Bank, but are instead full members of Israeli society, with citizenship, voting rights, some have even held seats in the Knesset and have held high ranking office including Cabinet posts. The difference is that they aren't indoctrinated in extremist ideology about destroying Israel and clearing all Jews out from the river to the sea.
The narrative keeps going to some warped notion that Israel is just pure evil and bent on genocide and exterminating Palestinians, for no reason whatsoever. That is just plain wrong and completely dishonest.
Look, if there was a button Israel could press that would remove all Palestinians and make their land available for Israeli expansion, the majority would vote for pressing it. And not just after 10/7.
What are we to do with this conjecture? How should we respond to this? Provide us instructions.
Please stop trying to normalize beating your children. It’s disgusting and you should be removed from society for implying that this should be done. Nobody needs to see your plea for instructions on how to beat children.
Wow, putting words in the mouth of someone else and blatantly lying about what they said, to the point of actually copying and pasting what they did say (which diametrically conflicts with what you have repeatedly argued they said) … it just feels gross.
How do you Zionists do it? Is morality an on/off switch for y’all?
Ok, you didn't answer the question...what are your instructions for us on this site? What are you ordering us to do? Because that is why you are sharing info, as a call to action. Let us know, and we all as individuals can decide "yes" or "no"--yeah both of those options are valid.
Anonymous wrote:I couldn't get through the NY Times article. The brutalization of women was planned and carried out in multiple locations on 10/7. Not only is Hamas and its supporters a death cult but it is filled with rapists.
Where were the protests, the signs, the marches for these women? Michelle "bring back our girls" Obama? Susan Sarandon? UN Women? It's like rape has become fashionable again when the victims are Jews.
The sexual abuse of women on 10/7 or on any other day is horrific and disgusting. I'm sure everyone here wishes none of that ever happened.
It's sad that the initial reports were met with guarded skepticism, but consider that we were also told that 40 babies were beheaded, a baby was baked in an oven, and dead babies were found hanging on a clothesline. These stories proved to be untrue. The more lurid and preposterous the claim, the less likely it was to be true, even though some assertions were allegedly based on "eyewitness testimonies" (which were later retracted). We also heard that Palestinian militants had burned many people alive. It turned out, and Israelis who observed the events of the day confirmed this, that in fact the IDF had done most, if not all, of the burning, including burning hundreds of Palestinian militants to death (as has been pointed out, they "did not burn themselves").
Unfortunately, Israel is currently led by some ethically challenged people. To put it bluntly, they lie. A lot. Given Israel's lack of credibility, it would be naive to unquestioningly accept any of its assertions. Israel's moral challenges also make it difficult to believe so-called confessions of rape by captured militants. Israel beats "confessions" out of its detainees, so these "admissions" cannot be assumed to be valid in every case.
Additionally, there is no available forensic evidence of rape. In a Times of Israel report, it is claimed that "physical evidence of sexual assault was not collected from corpses by Israel’s overtaxed morgue facilities." Additionally, "the government has not released explicit footage or pressed rape survivors to share their stories. Nor have the forensic services released formal reports on whether their findings were consistent with sexual abuse."
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/amp/).
I think it likely that, sadly, women were raped on 10/7. I think it equally likely that some of the rape stories we have been told are fabricated. It would be entirely out of character for Israel not to lie about rape, given that it has lied about virtually everything else and is particularly prone to lying about being victimized.
Wow. To me, a non-Israeli and non-Jew, this just reads as horrific sexual rape and torture apologia. I find your entire screed genuinely chilling. You probably don’t even care how vicious you sound, but it’s awful.
You know what I did immediately after 10/7? I went to Hamas’ own telegram channels and watched their own videos, which they kept up until they realized how bad it made them look. You obviously did not and obviously don’t care anyhow, given that the victims were Jewish. I will never forget what I saw. Never.
Did you see any videos portraying rape on the Hamas channels? I am genuinely curious.
Your assessment of my sentiments is entirely incorrect. I have never apologized for rape or torture, and I clearly call sexual abuse "horrific and disgusting," so your conclusions are unfounded. When I point out that the claims of babies being beheaded and hung on clotheslines are false (as in, people lied), this does not mean I don't care about beheading babies or hanging them up with the laundry (in truth, I strenuously object to roasting children or pinning them, either dead or alive, to clotheslines.) It means I have a commitment to the truth. Similarly, I am not detracting from the severity of rape when I point out that Israel has very little credibility, so it would be naive to blindly believe everything it claims (I did acknowledge that I think some of the claims are probably accurate). Perhaps you could try to separate my disinclination to embrace lies as support for whatever is being lied about?
If someone tells you that they met Elvis last Monday and Bigfoot last Tuesday, you could be excused for being a little skeptical if they told you they met Justin Bieber on Wednesday. While it's possible the latest claim is true, one might wonder if this person is prone to hallucinating or is perhaps just plain telling porkie pies.
If I may say so, it seems to me people with an agenda are being rather theatrical and performative about some of Israel's claims. We were all expected to work ourselves into a lather, despise Palestinians, embrace Israel unconditionally, celebrate massacring children in Gaza, and fall about clutching our pearls and collapsing on the fainting couch because Hamas baked a baby in an oven and hung dead babies on a clothesline, except ... that didn't happen. Why would we be stupid enough to blindly believe anything else Israel claims after that? And why would proof of such extreme stupidity be "chilling" or "vicious"? And why would one's very well-founded skepticism indicate lack of sympathy for the victims in the unlikely event something Israel claims actually turns out to be true?
Terrible, cruel, and unjust things undoubtedly happened on 10/7. I don't think anyone denies that. However, the Israeli authorities lie so compulsively that one would have to be extremely dull-witted or childlike not to want some independent verification of anything they tell you.
That’s a lot of words to say “I’m a vicious anti-Semite who freely uses the most ancient of anti-Semitic tropes.”
Do you realize just how awful you sound to rational people who aren’t gleefully stewing in anti-Semitism day in and day out? I’m genuinely curious, to quote you.
- non-Jew, since obviously if I were Jewish you’d start going on about the protocols of Zion or whatever. And I feel dirty even talking to you, like I’m giving credence to someone who would have watched the Hamas videos for fun.
You may be surprised to learn that I am a secular Ashkenazi Jew, but that's neither here nor there. Many orthodox Jews oppose Zionism in general and the current Israeli government in particular. Don't let that get in the way of trying to win a cheap point by screeching about antisemitism (which is antisemitic in itself).
What is relevant is that nobody has answered my question about rape videos. Do they or don't they exist? And why do you throw up smokescreens of insults rather than trying to address my arguments? Well, we know why, but couldn't you at least try to be honest enough to address my actual statements instead of lying about them? When you so obviously lie about and misrepresent what I have said, why do you expect me to naively believe anything else you might say?
Nobody has addressed my point about the lying. Given that the 40 beheaded babies/baby baked in an oven/babies on clotheslines stories were, well, flat-out lies, why is is "antisemitic" to wonder how true similar stories might be? It's the lying, stupid. When someone lies and lies and then lies some more, you start to wonder about the credibility of every story they tell. Kind of like when someone screams "antisemitism" again and again and again some more, you start to wonder if maybe they're trying to bury the truth under all that faux indignation and hysteria. Prove me wrong. Show you have some integrity and explain to me why I should believe the chopped-off-breast story when so many other stories have turned out to be lies. What differentiates that story from the babies-on-clotheslines story? Why would it be unreasonable to want some sort of verification, given that so many of these stories turned out to be false?
And please don't tell me I'm "denying atrocities" because I "hate Jews" or any similar dishonest and evasive craziness. I acknowledge that atrocities occurred. I even said I think there were probably rapes and that rape is "horrific." I am not dismissing unverified claims. Some may very well be true. Under the circumstances, however, I would simply like to see some sort of authentication before I make up my mind one way or the other. What is your problem with that?
Since you’re so fixated about the lying, let’s start with your lies first. Give me hard and solid proof that Israel — specifically Israel, not an individual Jew unless you are taking the position that one Jew speaks for all of Israel — but that “Israel” (your words) said that there were specifically 40 beheaded babies, a baby baked in an oven, and a baby on a clothesline. Show me where “Israel” as a single entity lied repeatedly about every single one of these, because that’s your assertion: that “Israel,” not an individual, not an entity in Israel, not an individual Jewish reporter, not a Jewish extremist, not even the IDF, but that “Israel” itself lies. So show me that proof. Find me the evidence that singular Israel collectively and repeatedly lied. You say it happened as a fact and you’ve repeated that “fact” over and over. So show me your mountains of evidence.
Spoiler alert: you are lying.
And yes. I will call out antisemitism when I see it, and it’s profoundly antisemitic to repeatedly and chillingly talk about how “Israel” lies all the time. That is the most ancient of antisemitic tropes and your anger at being identified for using that trope is not my problem.
Israel has discredited itself. Recent polls in Israel show that Israelis increasingly distrust Netanyahu. His ratings are plummeting and his nationalist base is beginning to desert him. There's a better than zero chance he may end up in jail on corruption charges, which might be the best thing to happen to Israel in a long time.
Why are you spreading false Hamas propaganda, and wild conspiracy theories that 10/7 was some kind of false flag staged by the IDF?
Now I'm truly puzzled. Where do I claim that 10/7 was staged by the IDF? This is (yawn) another straw man. Let me guess -- you will follow up with another ad hominem? Can I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF AND also believe that the babies on a clothes line stories is untrue? Or are you insisting that IF I believe that 10/7 was NOT staged by the IDF, I must ALSO believe the babies-on-a-clothesline IS true? Do you understand that, as someone above just pointed out, two claims need not be mutually exclusive?
Wow. You really are a piece of work. Right above this,
"We now know that those burned on 10/7 were almost certainly burned by the Israeli military."
Unreal that anyone would try and claim that the 10/7 violence was Israeli military when we have HOURS AND HOURS of Hamas video showing it was in fact Hamas.
Stop playing dumb games here. You are really failing badly here.
She has no evidence that the IDF did any of the burning of Israel civilians just like she has no evidence that IDF stated “40 beheaded babies” anywhere. I hate calling her a she, because that would imply that she could potentially be a mother, and that would be the greatest tragedy.
There is ample evidence that “some” of the 10/7 damage was caused by IDF. That evidence is witness reports of helicopter and tank fire, the damage that can only be caused by tank and helicopter shelling, and burned bodies of Hamas militants who most assuredly did not self immolate.
What there is evidence of is that IDF responded to the Hamas attack on 10/7, killed many of the Hamas attackers, and that a few civilians were caught in the crossfire. But what there is NOT evidence of is that IDF was somehow responsible for a majority of the Israelis killed and burned. And again, there would have been ZERO people killed and burned if Hamas hadn't attacked on 10/7. Hamas was, and still is the party responsible for the violence. And, the bombing would end if Hamas capitulated and surrendered. No amount of "but Israel..." will change that. None.
Not the person you're responding to but to throw in my two cents. Israeli leaders have been caught out lying so many times that they have earned widespread distrust (including from many Israelis). This is NOT the same as pretending Hamas is all sweetness and light. It simply means many of us don't take every story coming out of Israel at face value.
How to apportion responsibility for the current tragic situation is a different but worthy debate. It has been percolating for a very long time.
Yes, both sides lied. And continue to lie. But that doesn't change the fact that Hamas is still the primary party responsible for the violence and fallout. None of this would have happened if Hamas hadn't engaged in its violent attack on 10/7.
Yes, both sides lie like rugs. I'm glad we agree.
As to the entirely different discussion about primary responsibility, I don't think it's that simple. The roots of this conflict go back a long, long way, well before 10/7. Israeli settlers have perpetrated atrocities against Palestinians in the West Bank for decades. They have murdered Palestinians living there and stolen their homes. This is all well-documented. You're no doubt familiar with "administrative detention," which is detention without trial. We know many Palestinians have endured this type of detention, and the Israeli Supreme Court has consistently denied detainees access to legal counsel. There are many reports of torture and ill treatment of detainees that need to be investigated. A UN inquiry determined that Israeli forces killed a journalist, Shireen Abu Aklah, "without justification." Other journalists and Palestinian writers have been killed by the IDF or detained without trial. IDF snipers in Gaza are killing non-combatants such as the two ladies in the Holy Cross Parish, possibly because the Israeli defense minister said he had removed "all restraints" on his soldiers. These are all behaviors of a fascist state. In the 1940s, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and others warned of the potential for fascism in Israel in a letter to the NYT, in which they mention the Deir Yassin massacre (https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948).
Palestinians have valid complaints, and Israel's current far-right government has added fuel to the fire. Deir Yassin, settler violence, killing journalists, and administrative detention don't mean that innocent Israelis should have suffered on 10/7. What happened on 10/7 doesn't mean that thousands of Palestinian children should be suffering so terribly now. To use a cliche, two wrongs don't make a right. This situation has been a fiasco for decades. Much smarter people than me have been trying to help for decades, yet it's as bad as it's ever been and in danger of getting a lot worse. It's so, so sad.
That's a rather one-sided portrayal, conveniently leaving out how Palestinians have been firing hundreds and even thousands of rockets a year into Israel, every year for decades, and these rockets are not toys, but rockets of the sort that exploded at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. People were quick to characterize that one as a JDAM or 2,000 pound bomb, and to say it killed 500 people. That is some of what Israeli civilians have had to deal with every single day. It also leaves out how Arabs literally tried repeatedly to invade and exterminate the Jews, with wars in 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006 and so on - with Israel pushing them back and retaking territory, or taking new territory. By all rights, the Jews could have pushed all Arabs out completely. But they didn't. And let's not forget all of the rest of the continual terror campaigns, like the Black September incident where a Palestinian death squad kidnapped a group of Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Summer Olympics, holding them hostage, and ultimately massacring them. Portraying Palestinians as nothing but downtrodden victims isn't quite honest.
But meanwhile also consider that there are also more than 2 million Palestinian Arabs in Israel who DO NOT live in Gaza or the West Bank, but are instead full members of Israeli society, with citizenship, voting rights, some have even held seats in the Knesset and have held high ranking office including Cabinet posts. The difference is that they aren't indoctrinated in extremist ideology about destroying Israel and clearing all Jews out from the river to the sea.
The narrative keeps going to some warped notion that Israel is just pure evil and bent on genocide and exterminating Palestinians, for no reason whatsoever. That is just plain wrong and completely dishonest.
There have been horrible and repeated atrocities on all sides. I'm not sure that the idea that Israel, under its current government, is "just pure evil and "bent on genocide" is far off the mark. I'm one of those Jews who would like to see a one-party state with full equality for all rather than an ethno-nationalist state, but we're probably a century of evolution away from getting past the tribalism that prevents that. At this point, both sides need adult supervision and new leadership. And the humanitarian situation in Gaza needs to be addressed urgently.
Anonymous wrote:The victim mentality is really beyond what I even imagined.
Literally murdering thousands of kids and still screaming “everyone hates us for no reason!!”
It’s certifiable
It is certifiable that so many people hate Israelis and Jews, no?
It that every Jew is responsible for what Israeli policy is. Must mean every Muslim is pro Hamas / pro terrorist.
This is a good point. "If you don't support Hamas and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an Islamophobe who wants to genocide all Muslims" makes as much sense as "If you don't support Israel and believe everything it says unconditionally, you must be an antisemite who wants to genocide all Jews."
I suspect the previous poster(s) understands this, but they're backed into a corner and can only spew a smokescreen of insults. Which is a very dishonest practice.
DP
Everyone here is 100.00% anti-Hamas. What about that fact don't you get? Stop trying to gin up a defense for what Israel is doing by arguing that those opposed to those actions are supportive of Hamas. It's pathetic. Even you can do better.
Perhaps my post wasn't sufficiently clear? Of course everyone here is anti-Hamas and, more specifically, opposes its actions on 10/7. I was making a comparison between absurd conclusions. Nobody believes that opposing Hamas means you're a genocidal Islamophobe who hates Muslims. Similarly, nobody believes that opposing Israel means you're a genocidal antisemite who hates Jews. Well, almost nobody in both cases. Some people are deliberately obtuse or deceitful or too fanatical to think straight, and my post was aimed at these folk. I don't support either statement, which is ... kind of why I put them both in quotes.
That's objectively false. Can't be anti-Hamas and yet be their direct mouthpiece repeating their false claims and conspiracy theories.
Oh, brother! Another straw man! I'm losing interest and patience, but ... what Hamas "false claims and conspiracy theories" have I supposedly repeated? I've been calling Israel out about "false claims and conspiracy theories" (like the beheaded babies, etc.). Can you understand that many of think Israel is currently run by a bunch of fascists AND Hamas is a thoroughly unsavory enterprise? A AND B is not the same as A OR B.
The issue is how you want this to all end-the dismantling of Israel's Jewish majority.
I guess I hit the bull's eye (not much of a feat, to be honest) when I predicted this idiot would repsond with another straw man.
Because that is what you want to happen. Sharing all of these sad stories and incidents with us, you want people to turn against Israel as a concept and seek its destruction. Again, everyone on social media (including this site) has an agenda--there needs to be a purpose for your sharing all of these stories and incidents, there is something you want accomplished. So, it is ok to talk about your ultimate goal.
LOL! And yet another straw man!
Ok, I guess you just like to tell sad stories for fun, no purpose at all. Just like a reddit today I learned posts or something.
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