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thot_experiment 16 hours ago [-]
US support for Israel is one of the most horrible things imaginable, really makes me ashamed. It is only the US standing between the current horrendous status quo and Israel being an true international pariah state. Hopefully we cut off support and usher in a find out era.
thot_experiment 16 hours ago [-]
(Though to be honest my position is probably that we need to go past cutting off support and US tax dollars should go toward reparations for Palesine, Lebanon and probably Iran and others, we are complicit in a lot of fucked shit.)
((I don't think those places are lead by great individuals and everything is amazing to be clear, I also think the people there have suffered immensely from a century of american, british and israeli meddling and we should be held accountable))
suburban_strike 1 hours ago [-]
This is "let's you and him fight" logic.
We've already given Israel almost $400 billion. Subrogate them for Palestinian reparations instead of billing everything to us like a teenage girl let loose at the mall with Daddy's credit card.
Allfodr 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tristanb 16 hours ago [-]
Why?
Allfodr 15 hours ago [-]
Because I don't think US tax money should go toward reparations for Palestine, Lebanon, Iran or anywhere else. We're not 'complicit' in the way you're framing it
thot_experiment 15 hours ago [-]
The only reason Israel is able to commit the horrors they are is because they can fuck around without finding out due to US protection paid for by our tax dollars, we are absolutely complicit. Of course that's only in the immediate term, I urge you to look at the history of the region even a little critically, so much of the conflict there is rooted in British, American and Israeli meddling, it's an insane take to claim that we are not responsible and that we have not benefited immensely.
Allfodr 15 hours ago [-]
No, money has nothing to do with it. The US military aid package to Israel is only around 2-3% of Israel's annual state budget. That's a relatively small amount, and far less significant than people tend to make it out to be.
The US provides this aid because it serves American interests. A large portion of the money is actually spent in the US, benefiting the American defense industry, not just financially but also through technological development and shared innovation.
What Israel truly gains from the relationship with the US is diplomatic cover, mainly the UN Security Council veto. Israel is by far the most condemned country at the UN in terms of resolutions passed against it, whether that's justified or not is a separate debate.
thot_experiment 14 hours ago [-]
I don't understand what the purpose of making a distinction between monetary support in terms of direct aid, and indirect aid. The entire apparatus of the US government is paid for by our taxes, we pay for it either way. We also pay for it in instability and negative sentiment.
> Israel is by far the most condemned country at the UN in terms of resolutions passed against it
It's crazy to me that you know this and yet it seems like you are still in support of the US protecting Israel? You still think this is a net win for the world? That's incomprehensible to me.
Allfodr 14 hours ago [-]
> It's crazy to me that you know this and yet it seems like you are still in support of the US protecting Israel? You still think this is a net win for the world? That's incomprehensible to me.
It's crazy to me that you know the UN is literally run by states that actually commit war crimes, kill LGBTQ people, suppress women and minority rights, countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and you still think UN condemnation means anything. They're condemning the only democratic country in the entire Middle East, the one place in the region where these rights actually matter and mean something. Arab citizens can vote, gay people can live openly, women sit in parliament and serve in the military. That's Israel. And that's who they keep putting on trial.
Of course I fully support the aid for Israel.
disgruntledphd2 8 hours ago [-]
> Arab citizens can vote
Call me when the citizens in Gaza and the West Bank get a vote.
Oh, they're citizens of another country you say? What country would that be?
Like, it's great that Israeli Arabs are treated (somewhat) well, but it doesn't excuse what's happening in Gaza and (particularly) in the West Bank.
Regardless of how progressive or democratic a state is, if they keep bombing other states and killing people, they will most likely be judged for it.
It's profoundly depressing that the Jewish people, fresh off of 2k years of oppression, have decided to speedrun the same behaviours against someone else.
thot_experiment 1 hours ago [-]
> It's profoundly depressing that the Jewish people, fresh off of 2k years of oppression, have decided to speedrun the same behaviours against someone else.
I know it can seem like this but it's important to make the distinction that Jewish people are not the same set as zionists and israelis, and that conflation is something the latter two parties DESPERATELY want you to make.
sillystuff 10 hours ago [-]
> They're condemning the only democratic country
An apartheid ethno-supremacist state is, by definition, not democratic.
In the last month, the Israeli Jews passed a law to allow the death penalty, but only for non-Jews*. The Israeli lawmakers celebrated their lynching law by wearing noose shaped lapel pins. There are several 10s of laws that favor Jews over non-Jewish citizens of Israel. Palestinian citizens are, at best, second-class citizens.
Non-Israeli Palestinians who were violently driven from their homes in previous Israeli Jewish genocides of the indigenous population, do not even have a right to civilian courts. In most cases, the Israeli Jews imprison these Palestinians without charge, trial, or fixed sentence-- including young children. Rape and torture by Israeli Jews is systemic in these detention centers.
Their "democratic" process includes mobs of Jewish Knesset (parliment) members threatening, on the floor of the Knesset, the rape of Palestian Israeli members of the Knesset including, Haneen Zoabi and Sa'id Naffaa.
* The law doesn't really change anything in reality, as Jews have always been able to rape, torture and murder Palestinians with impunity-- e.g., for the year prior to 7 Oct., Israeli Jews murdered, on average, one Palestinian per day, in the West Bank. That rate is much worse now.
Allfodr 9 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
disgruntledphd2 8 hours ago [-]
> And before you mention the West Bank, it is not part of Israel. The Palestinian Authority rules there.
What country is it, then?
And if it's not part of Israel, then why are the Israeli government protecting settlers there?
rozap 7 hours ago [-]
Genocide committed by a democratic country that is cool with lgbtq people that have tech jobs and hang out at cafes doesn't make it OK. You're concerned with aesthetics over everything else.
mcphage 10 hours ago [-]
> the one place in the region where these rights actually matter and mean something
What was the article about, again? Was it about respecting the rights of women?
Allfodr 9 hours ago [-]
We must make a distinction between the actions of the government (and the military) and the actions of some lunatic individuals, though.
mcphage 9 hours ago [-]
I don’t think we do in this case. This is the very first line of the article:
> Israeli soldiers and settlers are using gendered violence and sexual assault and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, human rights and legal experts say.
So here we’re talking about both the military and some lunatic individuals.
sheikhnbake 10 hours ago [-]
A norse mythology username extolling the evils of non-western countries while full throating a genocidal apartheid state. name a more iconic duo
sillystuff 10 hours ago [-]
Read up on "Operation Clean Break" / "The Clean Break Doctrine". Israeli Jews came up with a plan to overthrow Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran... Seven states in all that the Israeli Jews wanted to destroy so they could engage in genocide of the Palestinians without opposition, and steal the land of their neighboring states for their "Greater Israel Project" (Israel refuses to declare their borders as they plan to steal more land from their neighbors and the remaining surviving Palestinians).
The fun part was that their plan was that the US would do their fighting for them. And, it worked. US wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran. Millions dead in illegal wars of aggression, all to benefit genocidal messianic religious crazies who call themselves Israeli Jews / Zionists. Many trillions of the US debt is due to these wars for Israel. The US has gained nothing from any of these wars.
Professor Jeffrey Sacks is a good source for material about this.
Allfodr 9 hours ago [-]
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throwawaypath 4 hours ago [-]
>The only reason Israel is able to commit the horrors they are is because they can fuck around without finding out due to US protection paid for by our tax dollars, we are absolutely complicit.
The only reason Israel is able to win wars like they do is because they're much better soldiers than Arabs are. Even against all odds when the surrounding Arab states teamed up against Israel, they still beat them.
_DeadFred_ 6 hours ago [-]
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bryanlarsen 8 hours ago [-]
US support for Netanyahu is one of the most horrible things imaginable. US support for a non-Netanyahu Israel may not be so much. The distinction is important, at the very least so people don't call you an anti-Semite. But even without that, I think it's important. I'm anti-Trump, anti-Netanyahu, anti-Hamas, and anti-IRGC, but not anti-US, anti-Israel, anti-Palestine or anti-Iran. The citizens of those countries are the victims of their leaders.
thot_experiment 4 hours ago [-]
I said what I said; israel is the problem, I have no significant beef with Judaism (no more than any religion and less than some).
The first woman doctor in the Netherlands was Jewish.
Ofcourse nowadays Dutch/European Jewish culture is utterly despised by Israelis because it was secular and liberal.
antinomicus 3 hours ago [-]
Claiming that Israel is entirely a Netanyahu problem is ridiculous. No Netanyahu and what do you have left? An apartheid state, probably run by any number of awful replacements, like ben gvir or smotrich. Israel was founded in the shadow of the Nakba - they displaced million people and killed something like 15,000. That was only right when it was founded too. Post 1967, Israel ceased to have any left wing politics, and dove head first into their genocidal project, they’ve been doing it ever since. This is not antisemitic. I don’t care about religion and I’m not a baboon - I don’t care what you believe, I care what you do. And Israel has done, since the beginning, very bad stuff.
bryanlarsen 57 minutes ago [-]
I deliberately used the phrase "Netanyahu's Israel". The problem is much more than Netanyahu, it's the Israel Netanyahu epitomizes whether or not it got there via Netanyahu or other similar routes. Given that Netanyahu was legitimately elected, there are lots of similar routes.
anal_reactor 15 hours ago [-]
To be honest the more I started getting interested in geopolitics the more I understood that the humanitarian ideals we preach simply don't work in real world.
Iran is dangerously close to acquiring nuclear weapons. Nobody wants that because Iran is a dictatorship and in case of an already ongoing conflict dictatorships have a bias towards escalation - see how Russia is still fighting in Ukraine even though it's obvious that the whole operation has been a huge mistake. Either we stop Iran or we get a second North Korea - go to South Korea and ask how they feel about a nuke being pointed at Seoul at all times.
Before Trump it was kind of taboo that US would just go to Iran and shoot them, hence the necessary existence of Israel that gives zero fucks and will shoot everyone who even thinks of threatening them. The deal was, US gives weapons to Israel, Israel shoots everyone that US doesn't like, Israel takes the moral blame but in exchange maintains its independence.
The point is, being morally right means nothing if you die, therefore even good guys need someone to do the dirty job once in a while in order to survive against an opponent that is not playing by the same rules. Imagine a world where police have no guns and politely ask criminals to stop.
And from the point of view of Israel - there is literally no good solution for the Palestine situation. If Palestine gets independence it's a matter of time before they declare war on Israel. Whether justified or not, the entire Arab world hates Israel just because they exist exactly where they do, and that's the reality Israelis live in.
cassianoleal 15 hours ago [-]
> even good guys
I assume in your fantasy said "good guys" are the US?
Why? I'm not the one separating nations between "good guys" and "bad guys".
omnimus 13 hours ago [-]
You don't understand. The good guys are just giving preventive rocket medicine. The Palestinians and Iranians need it so they won't cause any atrocities. They should be grateful because if they got to live they could do something bad and then feel real bad about themselves.
thot_experiment 15 hours ago [-]
I wonder if Iran being a dictatorship has a cause? Why does the Arab world hate Israel I wonder? Everything you're talking about is basically a direct result of UK, US and israeli bullshit in the area. It's people with exactly the same sort of colonial geopolitical ideas as you that CAUSED THE MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
anal_reactor 14 hours ago [-]
When in doubt, blame the British. The British theorem: all life's problems can eventually be traced back to the British.
thot_experiment 14 hours ago [-]
They're almost certainly #1 global problem causers so it's usually the safest bet. Though I wouldn't be as expansive as you, the USA, Portugal, Spain and the USSR are no slouches. Can't be forgetting the Dutch either.
anal_reactor 14 hours ago [-]
So basically all powerful countries cause problems for other countries. Not exactly a resolutionary thing. Don't forget China, Japan, Mongolia, Romans, all sorts of infighting between native American groups before Columbus. And I assume that Africa wasn't exactly a paradise even before colonialism.
thot_experiment 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, history happened and people should be held to account for it, not ad infinitum, but you know, if my dad killed your dad and took all his shit, and then left it to me, I'm pretty sure I shouldn't get to keep it and all the benefits that come from it just because I had nothing to do with it.
chewz 54 minutes ago [-]
Well, God is British. It is customary to blame Him
AlecSchueler 11 hours ago [-]
The largest empire in global history had influence on contemporary geopolitics. Why should we pretend otherwise?
spwa4 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
thot_experiment 15 hours ago [-]
What are you on about lmao, what is "leftist thought". My ideology? I'm not my ideology, my ideology is an ever shifting set of ideals I explore to try to build an internally consistent model for decision making. How in the world does a belief in US/UK meddling being the proximal cause for many of the modern issues in the region have anything to do with the crimes of the Kremlin. Can you please engage with the substance of my claims in any way? I'm not here to defend whatever "leftism" means to you.
spwa4 11 hours ago [-]
> How in the world does a belief in US/UK meddling ...
Because you exclude all other meddling as an explanation. The Kremlin is the other big source of meddling (if you rate them by success in actually changing things, US is on top. Moscow is a distant second, and the third is so far behind it's barely worth mentioning, also it's unclear who that even is), so the assumption is you implicitly defend if you attack US meddling.
Compare to when 2 people are fighting in the playground and you complain only about ONE of them hitting things, without making any remark about the other, or taking any kind of measure to get the other to stop. People like to describe that as neutrality, but of course, it is anything but. Which then gets confusing because people who are badly informed might start to genuinely believe only one of them was hitting, and might even blame the first for all damages. Of course, this is exactly the point of one-sided reporting, even if the reporting itself is 100% true. Even the BBC is doing it these days, little to no reporting on what happens (imho, not because it's going well) in the UK, and "news in support of UK foreign policy" everywhere else. Oh and separate views for UK people and international viewers. And yes, that's in some ways the same Iran does, but there's no bullets or executions involved if you try to get around it, a pretty big difference.
In this conflict the US is defending, let's call it "international liberalism" (in the French revolution sense, ie. laissez-faire), or what the UN calls "freedom of navigation". Which is a euphemism for tax-free international trade over the seas. I get that there are name clashes with for example US politics, let's please not focus the discussion on whether those names are deserving, or who they (don't) match in US politics. And, yes, preventing Iran from getting a nuke falls under liberalism, as in Iran getting a nuke will definitely kill a freedom of navigation in that part of the world.
The other side, ie. Russia/China, if we're only counting UN SC members, is about locking down international trade behind political agreements (which is also a euphemism: these agreements were historically never agreements, but rather the outcomes of wars), ie. letting Russia and China, since they have nuclear weapons, decide who gets oil from the middle east and who doesn't. Through threats.
So you when you attack one side, getting criticized for supporting the other side, is fair. If you don't know the other side, that's called being badly informed, that's literally just dumb and then really you should shut up.
defrost 11 hours ago [-]
> In this conflict the US is defending, let's call it "international liberalism" (in the French revolution sense, ie. laissez-faire), or what the UN calls "freedom of navigation".
Utter nonsense - the majority of the world is well aware the Strait was open and free to navigate all the way up to the point the US stepped in.
The country directly responsible for the current lack of freedom to navigate is the US.
By the way, I'm not going to provide references, but the same goes for the Bab El-Mandeb strait and the "East Coast of Africa" (in other words Iran is trying to tax ALL shipping between Asia/India and Europe, even if it goes around the Cape of Good Hope)
> The country directly responsible for the current lack of freedom to navigate is the US.
Did you really believe that when you wrote it? I mean you must realize that no matter the motivation or other circumstances, when push comes to shove the person pulling the trigger is responsible ...
(and obviously that's Iran)
Hikikomori 21 minutes ago [-]
What might the reason be? Oh it's the first sentence.
>Tensions between Iran and the West have escalated since U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports took full effect in May and British naval forces seized an Iranian supertanker.
koonsolo 11 hours ago [-]
So Russia invades Ukraine, and somehow you blame leftists for that? You must be buried deep in Russian propaganda.
> when will you sign up for Ukraine's army
There is only room in your brain for extreme thoughts? There is a lot of space between not supporting Ukraine and going to the front lines. For example donating money (I sure do as a center-right wing):
> Of course leftists are responsible for the current state of Russia. I hear there was this thing called "Soviet Union", involved in getting this country to it's current state. I guess you must not now. Look it up?
Very strange that you claim the great state of affairs in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is thanks to the the leftist Social Union. But hey, if you want to make that claim, that's all up to you.
malfist 28 minutes ago [-]
I've heard Israel is close to a nuclear bomb since 1972. How is it different today?
atmavatar 8 hours ago [-]
Iran is dangerously close to acquiring nuclear weapons.
...
Before Trump it was kind of taboo that US would just go to Iran and shoot them, hence the necessary existence of Israel that gives zero fucks and will shoot everyone who even thinks of threatening them.
Before Trump, the US had a deal with Iran whereby they promised not to build nuclear weapons, and we had inspectors in the country to ensure they kept said promise. There was little to no threat they would acquire nuclear weapons.
Trump blew up that deal in his first term, proving Iran can't trust any non-proliferation deals, the recent attacks proved they need nuclear weapons to protect themselves, and the BS with the strait of Hormuz gave them a giant pile of cash to streamline things.
Congratulations, a country that once may not have built nuclear weapons in our lifetimes is virtually guaranteed to have them inside the next decade.
tmnvix 2 hours ago [-]
Don't forget the assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader - the man who issued a fatwa against Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.
It makes you think that ultimately, this is not simply about nuclear weapons. It is really about ensuring there is no possibility of a strong non-vassal state in the region (with the obvious exception).
antinomicus 3 hours ago [-]
This is a pretty naive post. First, Russia has nukes. You say Iran can’t have a nuke because dictatorships “tend toward escalation” yet in the same breath mention Russia who has nukes and does not use them against Ukraine. How about North Korea? They have nukes have they “escalated”?
You say Iran is “dangerously close” to a nuke. Do you know this has been said for decades at this point? Do you remember Netanyahu’s ridiculous bomb picture from like 2009?
Did you know Iran specifically had a religious policy AGAINST nukes, a fatwah? So most of your premises are wrong and most importantly, paradoxically:
In fact if Iran had the weapon, the whole region would be MORE secure.
ekam 4 hours ago [-]
Fascinating theory. Are there any statistics on how many Israeli soldiers have died for the U.S.? How many have been deployed to fight for the U.S.?
firefoxd 16 hours ago [-]
The language in the article would be fascinating if it wasn't such a horrible thing.
It's not that the Israeli soldiers are sexually assaulting Palestinians, instead they are using Sexual Assault.
Later they say "Sexualised violence is used...", "men and boys were Targeted..."
It's like there is a gun shooting people, or someone using a gun. But we can't connect fully understand how or who is perpetuating it.
Edit: some more:
"Israeli soldiers present during abuse had repeatedly failed to prevent it..." Who was abusing?
fwipsy 16 hours ago [-]
I don't think the passive voice is meant to protect the perpetrators. Instead, they are presenting sexual assault as a deliberate tactic or policy, or at least a common pattern. If true, this is a much bigger story than isolated incidents of violence. But sixteen reported cases over three years seems very low. Likely there are more cases they missed. Mainly it seems like they have very little data.
sillystuff 10 hours ago [-]
The passive voice and dishonest language is often used by British and US corporate and state media when describing atrocities committed by Israeli Jews.
"Some Palestinians are dead." Implying, "They seem to have just died. Nobody knows what happened." To describe the countless massacres of Palestinians by Israeli Jews
E.g., the BBC reported an IDF soldier, in uniform, who was captured as a prisoner of war as, "A young girl was kidnapped by Hammas." The BBC also reported on an 8 year old little girl who was kidnapped by the IDF and held as a hostage as, "a woman who was detained."
The BBC is still at it with the Israel-US illegal war of aggression against Iran. They reported that "180 people died" in the triple-tap strike on the school that murdered 165 young children, mostly little girls. The BBC also did not mention that it was a triple-tap strike where subsequent strikes killed rescue workers, parents coming to find their children, and 10s of children who had survived the first strike.
The UK (and Germany) are as bad as the US for media and government controlled by Zionists.
Hikikomori 18 minutes ago [-]
See it in EU news as well. They're essentially free PR for IDF.
datsci_est_2015 7 hours ago [-]
As the sibling comments point out, in isolation your argument would be reasonable, but within the context of the decades-long conflict, and English-language media in general, passive voice is very much used to soften the blow of damning reports against figures of authority and other privileged peoples.
appreciatorBus 15 hours ago [-]
More likely, they already knew what they wanted to say, data or no data: Israel/US, bad: global revolution, good. They have to keep the pressure up so they need to write papers and get articles written about those papers and then get them posted on hacker news regardless of what actually happened. It’s a constant grind, but I suppose it will all be worth it for them if they get appointed on the committee of the vanguard or something like that.
woggy 16 hours ago [-]
Look up the article in Ha'aretz recently "IDF Soldiers Talk About the 'Moral Injury' – and the Silence" for another example of this. I mean, I am glad they are talking about it, but the way it is framed is maddening.
sillystuff 10 hours ago [-]
> Who was abusing?
Israeli Jews. Both IDF soldiers and civilians.
Rape was always a weapon by the Israeli Jews. Remember that every accusation made by the Israeli Jews is an admission.
Israeli Jews recently got out into the streets to protest for the right to rape, after some soldiers were prosecuted for a recorded rape of a Palestinian prisoner where a long knife blade was inserted into body orifices during the rape. The whisleblower was condemned while the rapists were celebrated.
The settlers. They are there illegally and do illegal things but the soldiers are there to provide them with functional immunity
ojbyrne 16 hours ago [-]
The article starts with “Israeli soldiers and settlers” so presumably the answer to your question is settlers.
insane_dreamer 5 hours ago [-]
Most likely the settlers. If you start researching the violence by settlers in the West Bank and what they do to try to push out Palestinians and grab more of their land, it's horrifying. And the settlers are not your average Israeli -- they are the most hard-core Zionist Israelis (many of them foreigners)--that's explicitly why they are there in the first place. The pattern has been repeating for decades: Israeli army occupies some land in the WB, gives the land for free plus subsidized living to hardline Zionists who are armed and willing and able to defend and hold the land. Those people abuse the neighboring Palestinians to drive them away, and the now "empty" land can be occupied, the illegal settlement expanded, bring in more people. Rinse and repeat. Even though the settlements have been declared illegal over and over again by the UN and even previous US governments, Israel just ignores all of that. As long as there are "talks" going on, it can continue to slowly gobble up the WB and push the Palestinians into Jordan or an ever shrinking piece of land, just like Gaza.
throw_a_grenade 16 hours ago [-]
> Who was abusing?
It's possible that in some cases it was settlers. So technically not soldiers. But soldiers protected them, incl. from any resisting abuse.
appreciatorBus 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
16 hours ago [-]
throw_a_grenade 16 hours ago [-]
„There” — you mean where? Generally in the West Bank or intruding into Palestinian homes to abuse their children?
I'd wager Palestinians would throw them out of their homes. Instead, parents had to stand there helpless.
If you meant generally, I think they wouldn't be there without soldiers at all, illegaly tranfering own population into occupied territories.
woggy 16 hours ago [-]
Is this a joke?
aaron695 8 hours ago [-]
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culi 16 hours ago [-]
Nothing to say. Just absolutely maddening that this is what my taxes go to accomplish
sethammons 11 hours ago [-]
Sexual assault and violence is the biblical explanation for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah according to more and more modern biblical scholars. The Christian's who hate the gays should instead direct their bible and politicians at Israeli soldiers and their government.
datsci_est_2015 7 hours ago [-]
The reality that war goes hand-in-hand with sexual violence is rarely fairly portrayed in American / Hollywood media. It sickens me when I see warhounds in our government who are, by extension of campaigning for war, rooting for sexual violence against entire populations - though they might not realize it through their ignorance.
That’s why I appreciate anti-war cinema, like Come and See, which notoriously came from Belarusian screenwriters.
kennykartman 7 hours ago [-]
Yep, war is the shittiest of things and rarely it is described completely for what it is. Humans following orders are well known to be ruthless and humans in power places are known to abuse their power. Add this to brainwashing and religious propaganda and beliefs, makes this kind of war a particularly shitty one.
"War isn't Hell. War is war and Hell is hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse"
"How do you figure that Hawkeye?"
"Easy Father, tell me, who goes to Hell?"
"Hmm, sinners, I believe"
"Exactly, there are no innocent bystanders in Hell. But war is shot full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander"
Iridescent_ 16 hours ago [-]
Well it sure must seem real for Palestinians.
And it's just called life on Earth.
datsci_est_2015 7 hours ago [-]
I’m a fan of media that conveys the message that hell is real and it’s what we manufacture as humans, like 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. In fact, the broad theme of the 28 * Later series is that even with the most hellish events unfolding, humans are still capable of being depraved to the limits of our imagination.
gostsamo 16 hours ago [-]
The christian supporters of Israel can also think a bit about the itf soldiers destroying a statue of Jesus in Lebanon if they want to understand what they are supporting. Useful idiots doesn't even start to describe it.
It's ironic that netanyahu says that Christians are thriving in Israel and more than any other middle Eastern country.
Only 2% of Israel identifies as Christian, whereas Lebanon has 37%, which Israel is bombing
watwut 42 minutes ago [-]
I kinda feel like from all the things going on ... breaking statue is the least of the things. Like, who cares.
omnimus 15 hours ago [-]
Anything for Second Coming of Jesus
jalapenoj 6 hours ago [-]
And Iraq used to have Christians before the pointless wars for israel, now it doesn’t.
throwa632 9 hours ago [-]
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jamesfisher 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
appreciatorBus 16 hours ago [-]
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woggy 16 hours ago [-]
Straight from IDF soliders:
One incident did leave a scar. It happened at an army outpost in southern Gaza. "I was sitting there in the command room," Maya says. "Suddenly, the soldiers on watch noticed five Palestinians crossing the line they weren't allowed to cross, heading for northern Gaza.
"Everybody went crazy. There was a big mess. The battalion commander gave an order to overwhelm them with fire, even though they hadn't been confirmed as armed or anything like that. A tank started shooting at them with its machine gun. Hundreds of bullets."
She says four of the five Palestinians were killed. "A few hours later, a D9 [Caterpillar armored bulldozer] buried them in the sand. When I asked why, they said that it was so the dogs wouldn't eat them and spread disease. The one who survived was put in a cage at the outpost, and they said we had to wait for a Shin Bet man to interrogate him."
The Palestinian sat there, cuffed and blindfolded, and seemed to be freezing from the cold. "Suddenly, one of the soldiers took out his penis and started pissing on him. He told him, 'This is for Be'eri, you asshole, this is for Nova'"– Kibbutz Be'eri and the Nova music festival, two of the sites attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023. "Nobody could stop laughing. I might have laughed too."
appreciatorBus 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
woggy 16 hours ago [-]
We don't fund Hamas with our tax dollars. Actually, Israelis were funding Hamas with their tax dollars not too long ago. I wonder why?
Just like you are not neutral. You can't just say that any article after October 7 exist just as persuasion - everything and everyone is against Israel? This automatically seems extremely suspicious to anyone with basic knowledge of how conflicts work.
moinism 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
gib444 16 hours ago [-]
You only had to wait a few minutes
moinism 15 hours ago [-]
and now its flagged :D
Noumenon72 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
throw_a_grenade 15 hours ago [-]
> Not clear whether soldiers are acting on their own or following policy.
It mostly doesn't matter, unless they're punished. If they're not, then the policy is, what they did is okay. That's why it's important to keep army disciplined.
Noumenon72 6 hours ago [-]
It doesn't matter for things that are bad whether they are policy or not, like sexual assault. It matters for things that are okay if they are policy, like strip searches. If prison guards do strip searches on their own for fun, that is a problem, but the mandated ones are not. (Assuming the policy was made with a normal level of concern for human dignity and officer safety.)
totetsu 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
thrance 9 hours ago [-]
Mass rape has strictly nothing to do with "sexual liberation". In fact, you see way more rapes in conservative countries of the global south than in more liberal ones. Rape happens when there is a power imbalance and a total lack of repercussions: exactly the situation in the West Bank.
((I don't think those places are lead by great individuals and everything is amazing to be clear, I also think the people there have suffered immensely from a century of american, british and israeli meddling and we should be held accountable))
We've already given Israel almost $400 billion. Subrogate them for Palestinian reparations instead of billing everything to us like a teenage girl let loose at the mall with Daddy's credit card.
The US provides this aid because it serves American interests. A large portion of the money is actually spent in the US, benefiting the American defense industry, not just financially but also through technological development and shared innovation.
What Israel truly gains from the relationship with the US is diplomatic cover, mainly the UN Security Council veto. Israel is by far the most condemned country at the UN in terms of resolutions passed against it, whether that's justified or not is a separate debate.
> Israel is by far the most condemned country at the UN in terms of resolutions passed against it
It's crazy to me that you know this and yet it seems like you are still in support of the US protecting Israel? You still think this is a net win for the world? That's incomprehensible to me.
It's crazy to me that you know the UN is literally run by states that actually commit war crimes, kill LGBTQ people, suppress women and minority rights, countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and you still think UN condemnation means anything. They're condemning the only democratic country in the entire Middle East, the one place in the region where these rights actually matter and mean something. Arab citizens can vote, gay people can live openly, women sit in parliament and serve in the military. That's Israel. And that's who they keep putting on trial.
Of course I fully support the aid for Israel.
Call me when the citizens in Gaza and the West Bank get a vote.
Oh, they're citizens of another country you say? What country would that be?
Like, it's great that Israeli Arabs are treated (somewhat) well, but it doesn't excuse what's happening in Gaza and (particularly) in the West Bank.
Regardless of how progressive or democratic a state is, if they keep bombing other states and killing people, they will most likely be judged for it.
It's profoundly depressing that the Jewish people, fresh off of 2k years of oppression, have decided to speedrun the same behaviours against someone else.
I know it can seem like this but it's important to make the distinction that Jewish people are not the same set as zionists and israelis, and that conflation is something the latter two parties DESPERATELY want you to make.
An apartheid ethno-supremacist state is, by definition, not democratic.
In the last month, the Israeli Jews passed a law to allow the death penalty, but only for non-Jews*. The Israeli lawmakers celebrated their lynching law by wearing noose shaped lapel pins. There are several 10s of laws that favor Jews over non-Jewish citizens of Israel. Palestinian citizens are, at best, second-class citizens.
Non-Israeli Palestinians who were violently driven from their homes in previous Israeli Jewish genocides of the indigenous population, do not even have a right to civilian courts. In most cases, the Israeli Jews imprison these Palestinians without charge, trial, or fixed sentence-- including young children. Rape and torture by Israeli Jews is systemic in these detention centers.
Their "democratic" process includes mobs of Jewish Knesset (parliment) members threatening, on the floor of the Knesset, the rape of Palestian Israeli members of the Knesset including, Haneen Zoabi and Sa'id Naffaa.
* The law doesn't really change anything in reality, as Jews have always been able to rape, torture and murder Palestinians with impunity-- e.g., for the year prior to 7 Oct., Israeli Jews murdered, on average, one Palestinian per day, in the West Bank. That rate is much worse now.
What country is it, then?
And if it's not part of Israel, then why are the Israeli government protecting settlers there?
What was the article about, again? Was it about respecting the rights of women?
> Israeli soldiers and settlers are using gendered violence and sexual assault and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, human rights and legal experts say.
So here we’re talking about both the military and some lunatic individuals.
The fun part was that their plan was that the US would do their fighting for them. And, it worked. US wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran. Millions dead in illegal wars of aggression, all to benefit genocidal messianic religious crazies who call themselves Israeli Jews / Zionists. Many trillions of the US debt is due to these wars for Israel. The US has gained nothing from any of these wars.
Professor Jeffrey Sacks is a good source for material about this.
The only reason Israel is able to win wars like they do is because they're much better soldiers than Arabs are. Even against all odds when the surrounding Arab states teamed up against Israel, they still beat them.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extremes-of-israe...
Ofcourse nowadays Dutch/European Jewish culture is utterly despised by Israelis because it was secular and liberal.
Iran is dangerously close to acquiring nuclear weapons. Nobody wants that because Iran is a dictatorship and in case of an already ongoing conflict dictatorships have a bias towards escalation - see how Russia is still fighting in Ukraine even though it's obvious that the whole operation has been a huge mistake. Either we stop Iran or we get a second North Korea - go to South Korea and ask how they feel about a nuke being pointed at Seoul at all times.
Before Trump it was kind of taboo that US would just go to Iran and shoot them, hence the necessary existence of Israel that gives zero fucks and will shoot everyone who even thinks of threatening them. The deal was, US gives weapons to Israel, Israel shoots everyone that US doesn't like, Israel takes the moral blame but in exchange maintains its independence.
The point is, being morally right means nothing if you die, therefore even good guys need someone to do the dirty job once in a while in order to survive against an opponent that is not playing by the same rules. Imagine a world where police have no guns and politely ask criminals to stop.
And from the point of view of Israel - there is literally no good solution for the Palestine situation. If Palestine gets independence it's a matter of time before they declare war on Israel. Whether justified or not, the entire Arab world hates Israel just because they exist exactly where they do, and that's the reality Israelis live in.
I assume in your fantasy said "good guys" are the US?
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/09/20-years-us-torture-and-...
https://www.numberanalytics.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-us-wa...
https://theconversation.com/operation-condor-the-secret-syst...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
Because you exclude all other meddling as an explanation. The Kremlin is the other big source of meddling (if you rate them by success in actually changing things, US is on top. Moscow is a distant second, and the third is so far behind it's barely worth mentioning, also it's unclear who that even is), so the assumption is you implicitly defend if you attack US meddling.
Compare to when 2 people are fighting in the playground and you complain only about ONE of them hitting things, without making any remark about the other, or taking any kind of measure to get the other to stop. People like to describe that as neutrality, but of course, it is anything but. Which then gets confusing because people who are badly informed might start to genuinely believe only one of them was hitting, and might even blame the first for all damages. Of course, this is exactly the point of one-sided reporting, even if the reporting itself is 100% true. Even the BBC is doing it these days, little to no reporting on what happens (imho, not because it's going well) in the UK, and "news in support of UK foreign policy" everywhere else. Oh and separate views for UK people and international viewers. And yes, that's in some ways the same Iran does, but there's no bullets or executions involved if you try to get around it, a pretty big difference.
In this conflict the US is defending, let's call it "international liberalism" (in the French revolution sense, ie. laissez-faire), or what the UN calls "freedom of navigation". Which is a euphemism for tax-free international trade over the seas. I get that there are name clashes with for example US politics, let's please not focus the discussion on whether those names are deserving, or who they (don't) match in US politics. And, yes, preventing Iran from getting a nuke falls under liberalism, as in Iran getting a nuke will definitely kill a freedom of navigation in that part of the world.
The other side, ie. Russia/China, if we're only counting UN SC members, is about locking down international trade behind political agreements (which is also a euphemism: these agreements were historically never agreements, but rather the outcomes of wars), ie. letting Russia and China, since they have nuclear weapons, decide who gets oil from the middle east and who doesn't. Through threats.
So you when you attack one side, getting criticized for supporting the other side, is fair. If you don't know the other side, that's called being badly informed, that's literally just dumb and then really you should shut up.
Utter nonsense - the majority of the world is well aware the Strait was open and free to navigate all the way up to the point the US stepped in.
The country directly responsible for the current lack of freedom to navigate is the US.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/timeline-irans-recent-...
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/britain-says-iran-seiz...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-navy-says-iran-seized-marsh...
https://www.reuters.com/world/second-oil-tanker-week-seized-...
By the way, I'm not going to provide references, but the same goes for the Bab El-Mandeb strait and the "East Coast of Africa" (in other words Iran is trying to tax ALL shipping between Asia/India and Europe, even if it goes around the Cape of Good Hope)
> The country directly responsible for the current lack of freedom to navigate is the US.
Did you really believe that when you wrote it? I mean you must realize that no matter the motivation or other circumstances, when push comes to shove the person pulling the trigger is responsible ...
(and obviously that's Iran)
>Tensions between Iran and the West have escalated since U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports took full effect in May and British naval forces seized an Iranian supertanker.
> when will you sign up for Ukraine's army
There is only room in your brain for extreme thoughts? There is a lot of space between not supporting Ukraine and going to the front lines. For example donating money (I sure do as a center-right wing):
https://savelife.in.ua/
Very strange that you claim the great state of affairs in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is thanks to the the leftist Social Union. But hey, if you want to make that claim, that's all up to you.
Trump blew up that deal in his first term, proving Iran can't trust any non-proliferation deals, the recent attacks proved they need nuclear weapons to protect themselves, and the BS with the strait of Hormuz gave them a giant pile of cash to streamline things.
Congratulations, a country that once may not have built nuclear weapons in our lifetimes is virtually guaranteed to have them inside the next decade.
It makes you think that ultimately, this is not simply about nuclear weapons. It is really about ensuring there is no possibility of a strong non-vassal state in the region (with the obvious exception).
You say Iran is “dangerously close” to a nuke. Do you know this has been said for decades at this point? Do you remember Netanyahu’s ridiculous bomb picture from like 2009?
Did you know Iran specifically had a religious policy AGAINST nukes, a fatwah? So most of your premises are wrong and most importantly, paradoxically:
In fact if Iran had the weapon, the whole region would be MORE secure.
It's not that the Israeli soldiers are sexually assaulting Palestinians, instead they are using Sexual Assault.
Later they say "Sexualised violence is used...", "men and boys were Targeted..."
It's like there is a gun shooting people, or someone using a gun. But we can't connect fully understand how or who is perpetuating it.
Edit: some more:
"Israeli soldiers present during abuse had repeatedly failed to prevent it..." Who was abusing?
"Some Palestinians are dead." Implying, "They seem to have just died. Nobody knows what happened." To describe the countless massacres of Palestinians by Israeli Jews
E.g., the BBC reported an IDF soldier, in uniform, who was captured as a prisoner of war as, "A young girl was kidnapped by Hammas." The BBC also reported on an 8 year old little girl who was kidnapped by the IDF and held as a hostage as, "a woman who was detained."
The BBC is still at it with the Israel-US illegal war of aggression against Iran. They reported that "180 people died" in the triple-tap strike on the school that murdered 165 young children, mostly little girls. The BBC also did not mention that it was a triple-tap strike where subsequent strikes killed rescue workers, parents coming to find their children, and 10s of children who had survived the first strike.
The UK (and Germany) are as bad as the US for media and government controlled by Zionists.
Israeli Jews. Both IDF soldiers and civilians.
Rape was always a weapon by the Israeli Jews. Remember that every accusation made by the Israeli Jews is an admission.
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/report-of-the-commission...
Israeli Jews recently got out into the streets to protest for the right to rape, after some soldiers were prosecuted for a recorded rape of a Palestinian prisoner where a long knife blade was inserted into body orifices during the rape. The whisleblower was condemned while the rapists were celebrated.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/israelis-rio...
It's possible that in some cases it was settlers. So technically not soldiers. But soldiers protected them, incl. from any resisting abuse.
I'd wager Palestinians would throw them out of their homes. Instead, parents had to stand there helpless.
If you meant generally, I think they wouldn't be there without soldiers at all, illegaly tranfering own population into occupied territories.
That’s why I appreciate anti-war cinema, like Come and See, which notoriously came from Belarusian screenwriters.
"War isn't Hell. War is war and Hell is hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse"
"How do you figure that Hawkeye?"
"Easy Father, tell me, who goes to Hell?"
"Hmm, sinners, I believe"
"Exactly, there are no innocent bystanders in Hell. But war is shot full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd575n1znzo
It's ironic that netanyahu says that Christians are thriving in Israel and more than any other middle Eastern country. Only 2% of Israel identifies as Christian, whereas Lebanon has 37%, which Israel is bombing
One incident did leave a scar. It happened at an army outpost in southern Gaza. "I was sitting there in the command room," Maya says. "Suddenly, the soldiers on watch noticed five Palestinians crossing the line they weren't allowed to cross, heading for northern Gaza.
"Everybody went crazy. There was a big mess. The battalion commander gave an order to overwhelm them with fire, even though they hadn't been confirmed as armed or anything like that. A tank started shooting at them with its machine gun. Hundreds of bullets."
She says four of the five Palestinians were killed. "A few hours later, a D9 [Caterpillar armored bulldozer] buried them in the sand. When I asked why, they said that it was so the dogs wouldn't eat them and spread disease. The one who survived was put in a cage at the outpost, and they said we had to wait for a Shin Bet man to interrogate him."
The Palestinian sat there, cuffed and blindfolded, and seemed to be freezing from the cold. "Suddenly, one of the soldiers took out his penis and started pissing on him. He told him, 'This is for Be'eri, you asshole, this is for Nova'"– Kibbutz Be'eri and the Nova music festival, two of the sites attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023. "Nobody could stop laughing. I might have laughed too."
Also, this is what most of Gaza looks like now. Are you aware of this? https://static.972mag.com/www/uploads/2025/01/IMGL8385.jpg
It mostly doesn't matter, unless they're punished. If they're not, then the policy is, what they did is okay. That's why it's important to keep army disciplined.