Israel / Hamas Conflict in the West Bank

[Chulanowa]

In a rather surprising turn of events, the US was one of three abstentions (along with the UK and Russia) on a UN Security Council resolution calling for "humanitarian pauses" in the fighting in Gaza, the establishment of secure corridors to safeguard civilians, and the unconditional release of the hostages taken by Hamas. It passed 12-0. The US and UK abstained because the resolution did not "Condemn the Hamas attacks," which, let's be real here, is just a performative demand, and Russia because it wants a full cease-fire. Still, the US not reflexively vetoing it is a significant move.

Israel will, of course be ignoring this legally-binding resolution:

"Israel will continue acting according to international law" might be one of the silliest things I've read on its own, but as a response to refusing a binding UNSC resolution it's genuinely fucking absurd. But again, Israel is actively and intentionally conducting a genocide, so why would it respect a resolution calling for the protection and security of civilian lives?

[Chulanowa]

Oops, meant to include an embedded image of Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan's response after noting Israel's refusal:

The @UN Security Council’s resolution is disconnected from reality and is meaningless. Regardless of what the Council decides, Israel will continue acting according to int’l law while the Hamas terrorists will not even read the resolution at all, let alone abide by it. It is unfortunate that the Council continues to ignore, not condemn, or even mention the massacre that Hamas carried out on October 7, which led to the war in Gaza. It is truly shameful!
Hamas's strategy is to deliberately deteriorate the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and increase the number of Palestinian casualties in order to motivate the UN and the Security Council to stop Israel.
It will not happen. Israel will continue to act until Hamas is destroyed and the hostages are returned.

[GloomCookie]

I don't put a lot of weight into the UN given their track record. In 2022 alone, there were 15 separate resolutions against Israel, and 13 for the rest of the world. From 2006 to 2022, the UN Human Rights Council has adopted 99 resolutions against Israel, 41 against Syria, 13 against Iran, 4 against Russia, and 3 against Venezuela. 

https://unwatch.org/2022-2023-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-of-the-world/

So please, go on and tell me the UN is siding against Israel. This is just par for the course at this point.

[Chulanowa]

I don't put a lot of weight into the UN given their track record. In 2022 alone, there were 15 separate resolutions against Israel, and 13 for the rest of the world. From 2006 to 2022, the UN Human Rights Council has adopted 99 resolutions against Israel, 41 against Syria, 13 against Iran, 4 against Russia, and 3 against Venezuela.

https://unwatch.org/2022-2023-unga-resolutions-on-israel-vs-rest-of-the-world/

So please, go on and tell me the UN is siding against Israel. This is just par for the course at this point.

Well, there's a difference between a general assembly resolution and a security council resolution. The former is basically a general opinion of the body as a whole, while the latter is actually binding and can - in theory - be enforced through a number of measures up to and including use of military force. Now of course I'm sure the US will absolutely use its veto power to stop any enforcement of this UNSC resolution, the fact that it didn't do that in the first place is the news at hand.

Also... 11,100+ people are dead in Gaza. Probably more, as that article is two days old, and probably itself drawing on older numbers (getting information out of Gaza is rather hard to do in the last few days, after all.) 67% are women and children, and I'd be hard-pressed to buy that the remaining 33% are mostly Hamas / PIJ fighters, either. And as we saw from Ambassador Erdan above - and as we've been seeing from Israel's governments in general - there are no plans to stop. 

if you think it's "unfair" that the UNSC adopted this resolution, flimsy as it is? Well... tough, I guess.

[elone]

From Wikipedia:
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has adopted a number of resolutions stating that Israel's strategic relationship with the United States, a superpower and permanent member of the Security Council with veto power, encourages the former to pursue aggressive and expansionist policies and practices in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.^[3] The 9th Emergency Session of the UNGA was convened at the request of the UNSC when the United States blocked all efforts to adopt sanctions against Israel.^[4] The United States responded to the frequent criticism from United Nations organs by adopting the Negroponte doctrine of opposing any UNSC resolutions criticizing Israel that did not also denounce Palestinian militant activity.

Israel has ignored most resolutions. The US has vetoed many others. In all fairness, the Palestinians have also failed in their part for implementing many resolutions. It would seem that might makes right in the conflict.The UN seems to be an impotent body as far as Israel is concerned and is more broken than effective because of vetoes and inaction.

[Chulanowa]

Al-Jazeera reports that Israel has bombed two UNRWA schools in Gaza, where people had been taking shelter. At least 200 are confirmed dead between the two schools, with certainly more under the rubble and unknown injuries.

According to Haaretz and Israeli police, at least "some of" the people killed at that music festival on October 7th were killed by an Israeli attack helicopter. Which checks with this ynet article from the 15th of October. In case you were wondering how the ~200 Hamas operatives Israel removed from that original 1,400 death count could be "charred beyond recognition," a hellfire missile might do it. (By the way that entire interview is rather abhorrent, Regev is a real piece of work)

Joe Biden is again calling for the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza. Semes a little tone-deaf given Biden's current total support for the genocide in Gaza. Who are the PA supposed to govern, pigeons nesting in the rubble? Experts of course are pointing out how ludicrous this is, a "pipe dream."

[elone]

Israel bombs two schools in Gaza. Both where people are sheltering to be safe, clearly marked as UN establishments. It just continues with no end.  Vengeance knows no bounds apparently.


https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/18/world/gaza-school-strike-video/index.html

[GloomCookie]

Some good news is that Hamas has agreed to release 13 hostages after Israel and Hamas agreed to terms brokered by Qatar.

https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-was-gaza-news-11-23-23/index.html

The truce will begin Friday at 7am local time and will take place over 4 days, releasing a total of 50 hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners from Israel.

[Teo Torriatte]

I don't think anyone (or at least too many people) like to see the IDF bombing innocent civilians, but I think that it's worth pointing out that Hamas deliberately puts there military assets directly among the citizens of Gaza. This puts Israel in basically a no win situation, where they have to choose between just letting them build up for another attack, or hitting them anyway and then having to deal with consequences of hurting the innocents who have been put in harm's way.

[elone]

Gaza is so over crowded that there is little choice as to where to put armaments. Israel is in a no win situation because they cannot imagine a world of peace.  Hamas was the elected government, never recognized by the US or Israel and others. Israel has always been the aggressor, assassination, land and resource theft, bombing and blockading.  Had they treated Palestinians with the least bit of dignity for the last 75 years, things may have been different. Imagine a Gaza with an airport, clean water good government. Do you imagine that the people would like that?

Just as Hamas does not want an Israel, Israel does not want  a Palestine.

[inkybus]

I don't think anyone (or at least too many people) like to see the IDF bombing innocent civilians, but I think that it's worth pointing out that Hamas deliberately puts there military assets directly among the citizens of Gaza. This puts Israel in basically a no win situation, where they have to choose between just letting them build up for another attack, or hitting them anyway and then having to deal with consequences of hurting the innocents who have been put in harm's way.

That is the modus operandi of Hamas. The reason for their existence is to annihilate Israel in its entirety from the very beginning, because they are 'infidels that appropriated the holy land'. Very much thanks to the UN, who decided that the israelis should go back to their 'ancestral home', which was smack dab in the middle of very obsessively islamic, fanatic people.

Shit hit the fan and rapidly deteriorated from there.

[Chulanowa]

I don't think anyone (or at least too many people) like to see the IDF bombing innocent civilians, but I think that it's worth pointing out that Hamas deliberately puts there military assets directly among the citizens of Gaza. This puts Israel in basically a no win situation, where they have to choose between just letting them build up for another attack, or hitting them anyway and then having to deal with consequences of hurting the innocents who have been put in harm's way.

Israel has made it very clear that their target is the civilians. That the goal is the killing or expulsion of as many Palestinians as possible from Gaza into the Sinai. This isn't just wild-eyed-frothing, this is Israel's own government speaking.

I've already mentioned the Intelligence Ministry's recommendations to depopulate Gaza.

There's also Finance Minister / West Bank Settlement administrator Bezalel Smotrich's "Decisive Plan" which calls for the wholesale subjugation or eradication of Palestinians.

And oh yes of course... Netanyahu taking his advisor Ron Dermer to come up with a plan to "thin the population to a minimum" in Gaza, and force mass evacuations of Palestinians from Gaza, so it can be taken for "resettlement" (as per Smotrich's plan)


And for our part and party to this in the US? While we flat refuse to condition aid to Israel even while they do this, we are considering a law to condition aid to other middle eastern countries demanding further southward flight. By the way that image on the article is the Yarmoukh residential block in Khan Younis. Apartment buildings. Where people were sheltering, as instructed by Israel, before Israel bombed it. 

How far south? Well that's conflicting, some say Rafah (thus into Egypt), others to - even more awfully - al-Mawasi, a little corner of the Naqab desert with exactly no infrastructure, and certainly not able to handle any number of refugees.

70% of the 17,000+ people killed so far are women and children. I'd be hard pressed to believe that the remaining 30% are all militant fighters on basis of being adult men.

This, taken all together, cannot possibly be anything but a conscious and intentional action by Israel. The goal is to make gaza unlivable, utterly, kill or drive forth all the people living there, and in all likelihood, replace them. 

This is a genocide. I need that to be solidly understood. I do not mean this in the hyperbolic "people died so it's a genocide!" way that's so popular sometimes. I mean 17,000+ people, mostly women and children, have been exterminated, from north to south, in a campaign that Israel has very, very openly made clear, is about driving them out or destroying them, and is just as open about continuing to the "finish."

• A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
• A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
  
  
  • Killing members of the group
  • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
  • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
  • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
  • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Brushing all this aside as "well they're human shields!" is disgusting and dehumanizing. Were the Nova festivalgoers human shields too? The people at Kibbutz Be'eri? Because there were soldiers among both groups. No, they weren't human shields and you'd be offended by that, because unlike Palestinians, Israelis get to just be "human."

No. "human shields" is a propaganda tactic utilized by Israel to barbarize their targets, and somehow claim the moral high ground and be absolved of all responsibility for the death s they cause. I'll break my usual form of feeding you guys with Israeli and Major outlet sources and for once, bring you a Palestinian perspective.

These accusations are expedient, as they achieve two propaganda wins in one fell swoop. The first is the dehumanization of their target. Indeed, this is especially effective when the accusations are of using women and children as human shields. The message implied here is that only uncivilized and barbaric peoples would purposefully put their vulnerable in harm’s way. This automatically reinforces the position and narrative of the accuser by placing them on a higher moral ground. This accusation becomes harder to dispute if the target population had already been historically demonized.

Second, this accusation retroactively justifies the large amount of civilian deaths caused by the accuser, and lays the foundation for the justification of similar deaths in the future. In this scenario, the victimized people become culpable for their own deaths, and the responsibility is shifted away from the perpetrator of the deadly violence.

Due to the perceived effectiveness of such accusations, they have been weaponized by many forces throughout history. We can see such accusations being employed in other contexts, such as in India and Egypt in order to demonize protestors and blame them for their own repression.

So now that we understand the value of such an accusation to those in power, is there any truth to the Israeli claims against Hamas and Palestinians in general?

The piece goes on to make a fair point that if human shields were genuinely the cause of the hundreds of casualties, surely there would have been some journalistic proof of it. 

"Hundreds" kinda sticks out of that line, today in 2023.

[Chulanowa]

I'm not sure what happened to this part:

And for our part and party to this in the US? While we flat refuse to condition aid to Israel even while they do this, we are considering a law to condition aid to other middle eastern countries based on how many Gazan refugees they accept.

We have watched Israel systematically destroy hospitals, roads, power and water plants, and schools. We have watched them force evacuation from the north to the south claiming it was safe, then start bombing there as well, demanding further southward flight. By the way that image on the article is the Yarmoukh residential block in Khan Younis. Apartment buildings. Where people were sheltering, as instructed by Israel, before Israel bombed it.

[elone]

This was a week ago, much has changed.  Basically, Israel is destroying everything of any value for shelter or safe havens. They continue moving people south and then bombing them.  The latest, as per complaints about their brutality by Blinken, was to develop an interactive map for the people to use to flee.  So the bottom line is that Palestinians are like a rat in a cage and have to move constantly at a moments notice before Israel bombs the hell out of them. The US is supporting this crap. If only it were a fair situation and Tel Aviv was leveled.

[Chulanowa]

Also, just a little more evidence of targeting civilians and civil infrastructure.

On November 20, Israel seized the Supreme Court building in Gaza.

This morning (afternoon for them) they apparently blew it up. (yes, twitter, but the @MossadIl account, while "unofficial," has been reliably posting video from the IDF operations thus far)

Now obviously the building had been secured by the IDF. There's no fighters inside, nothing of military value. It's am empty courthouse. 

But at least it was (presumably) empty... unlike this Doctors Without Borders convoy that was attacked by Israel on November 18

I mean at this point, after all this, after years of this stuff... if someone is still going "nuh uh Israel would never target civilians!" then either that person is stupid as shit, or just a loathesome scumbag who thinks targeting civilians (at least these civilians) is totally great. 

[elone]

No place to  hide.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-ground-forces-operating-across-gaza-strip-offensive-builds-2023-12-04/

[AlizsahTheBard]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7OavZpgEqc&t=5m53s this is heartbreaking. Like constant bombing, that is horrific. This is genocide and there are people turning blind eyes because these people are not white. 

[Chulanowa]

Yesterday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99, demanding the Security Council vote on a resolution calling for a ceasefire.

While a vote has yet to take place, it seems the US is - of course - planning to veto.

The United States and Israel oppose a ceasefire because they believe it would only benefit Hamas. Washington instead supports pauses in fighting to protect civilians and allow the release of hostages taken by Hamas in a deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
"While the United States strongly supports a durable peace, in which both Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and security, we do not support calls for an immediate ceasefire," Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood told the council.
"This would only plant the seeds for the next war because Hamas has no desire to see a durable peace," he said.

I would of course love to have that flipped on its head, to see the US vote for humanity instead of its economic interests in the middle of a genocide. But it's not likely to happen. Especially since Israel is, according to Robert Wood, "our people."

I've seen people bring up UNGR 377, which essentially allows the General Assembly to bypass the Security Council in the case of a member pulling this shit (it was used to get around Russia last year.) But of course, each delay, each bureaucratic maze, leaves more Palestinians dead.

[Chulanowa]

Update: as expected, the US used its veto.

Loathesome.

[elone]

The State Department and Biden bypass congress to re-arm Israel and make sure hey kill more Palestinians. Biden apparently knows no bounds. Counting those under the rubble the death toll is probably over 20,000.  

An older female Israeli hostage released told everyone she did not sleep the whole time. If true then she just broke the world record 4 fold over from a healthy male. Lies, deception, the Israeli way. (From the Times of Israel) Oh, and of course, the hostages released were drugged to appear happier, by Hamas.  Is there no end to it?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/08/politics/state-department-congress-tank-munitions-sale/index.html

[elone]

No safe zones, the IDF keep moving them.  I guess thei raim is to drive al lPalestinians into the sea in hopes that someone will pick them up.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67646964

[Chulanowa]

Over 10,000 children and infants killed thus far, reports EuroMed.

For those wondering; that's at least four hundred more than the TOTAL civilian casualties in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Which at the most recent count stands at 9,614 - of whom 554 are children.

Israel has in two months, killed more children than Russia has killed men, women, and children combined in 21 months.

Meanwhile the only "victories" Israel has accomplished seem to be blowing up a poet and his family in a targeted bombing, sniping a 79 year old woman in front of her house, and violating the Third Geneva Convention's ban on displaying prisoners.

[Chulanowa]

The news is just a steady climb of atrocities.

Right now, roughly half of Gaza's population is in Rafah. That's over a million people, crammed in and around a city that strained under a combined population of 150,000 before it was the target of regular bombing. Rains are flooding the refuges - which are mostly just tents. Food and clean water are almost nonexistent, and medical care is of course also almost nonexistent. Diseases are spreading, including measles and smallpox.

20,000 dead is set to skyrocket. All while Israel yells about "there are no innocents" and "stopping Amalek" and so forth. Apparently even just straight-up murdering people seeking refuge.

Oh and they've been working the West Bank as well. Including vandalizing mosques. As you do.

And remember further up the thread, where I explained how the "Two-State Solution" is a pipe dream mostly because Israel doesn't want it? Yeah hey guess what, that's official now.

In brighter news, Resolution 377 was invoked at the UN, calling an emergency special session, which did pass a ceasefire resolution. What does that mean? I'unno, we'll have to wait til Friday for the special session to reconvene. I mean hey, I get it, it's the UN, it's 193 states and two non-voting observers, all having to go back and forth through apparatchiks and officials and offices to contact their governments, and then back through the chain to the ambassadors, yadda yadda, but seems there ought to be at least a little more urgency than taking an entire work week off. 

[Chulanowa]

Israeli bulldozers have reportedly plowed down a tent camp of refugees sheltering at Kamal Adwan hospital, killing at least 20.

The hospital has been under siege since early december.

Al Jazeera reporter Samer Abudaqa was killed by a drone strike. Well, more accurately, he was hit by a drone strike, and Israeli sniper fire kept civil defense rescuers at bay for five hours while he bled out. He is another casualty in Israel's apparent deliberate targeting of the press. 

And then we have the killings of Yotam Haim, Samer Al-Talalka, and Alon Shamriz. Three of the captives Hamas took in October. They appear to have escaped, only to be shot and killed by the occupation forces. The first story that the IDF put out was that "since Hamas dresses in civilian clothes, we thought they were a threat," which seems to indicate a policy of deliberately targeting civilians under the assumption that they're Hamas fighters. While yes, combatants are required to wear insignia of some sort (an armband or badge is sufficient, under the laws of war) the onus is on ALL PARTIES in the conflict to assume that what looks like a civilian IS a civilian, until shown otherwise. 

Especially if they are carrying a fucking white flag. While shirtless and unarmed. And calling out in Hebrew.

There is no indication that any of this is going to stop, or get better in the near future. Israel has been very clear that it's planning to keep this going for months, until "Hamas" (which Israel is apparently defining as "everyone breathing while in Gaza") is destroyed. Officials are spewing genocidal rhetoric left and right, and no one at the UN is going to invoke the Genocide Convention, because that would obligate them to act - which would mean a war against Israel - and the US.

But to be completely blunt, that's what it's going to take. 

[Al Terego]

‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7
A Times investigation uncovered new details showing a pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women in the attacks on Israel.

A New York Times article: link.