Israel/Palestine Thread

Editor of The Times of Israel called the regime a rogue state this week as well.

The Times of Israel is an anti semitic rag! And as for the Israeli humanitarian organisations claiming its genocide, I heard an Israeli government spokesperson calling them far left communists.

It’s the “Theresienstad” film of our time.

Because as ex US and Israeli officials have admitted Islamists are both an enemy and ally to be used interchangeably by Likud.

. If Bibi really wanted to weaken Hamas he would not have authorised the money to keep flowing to Hamas from Qatar. Perhaps It's harder to sell annexation and an ongoing occupation if there is no bogeyman to point at as unreliable partner for peace. Bibi, according to the Times Of Israel, bragged to colleagues that the best way to maintain the status quo was to prop up Hamas in order to undermine the PA.

Sorry Sheepy - you said Ireland has the justified reputation as the most antisemetic country in the world, and that is not true.

But the fundamental view you are missing in your reasoning is that you don't believe that what Israel is doing is genocide, and most Irish people do.

Now whether it is or isn't (you know where I stand on that) - I'm sure when the Nazi holocaust became known, it could be construed that there was an enormous rise in anti German sentiment in Ireland.

That wouldn't have been indicative of some sleeping anti German racism ingrained in the Irish psyche. It would have been a direct response of enormous disgust and anger that Nazis had committed genocide and treated people that way.

If you cannot fathom Israel committing genocide, you will never understand the anger or disgust you see today.
If you are missing that piece of the puzzle, it is perfectly logical for you to conclude that it must be antisemetism - because, what else could it be?

But this is a flaw, and it is putting the responsibility of this anger on Irish people having some ingrained flaw in their psyche, and not as a response to the murderous actions of the IDF and Israel's politicians.

The ADL shows antisemetic views in Ireland have been around 20% for years - which indicates if anti Israel views are spiking now, it is borne from disgust at genocide, rather than some deep-seated inherent hatred of Jewish people in the Irish.

And lastly - I've said countless times, to paint disgust at this war as antisemetic is doing enormous damage to Jewish people who would absolutely reject that this slaughter is representative of them, or shooting starving people queuing for food has anything at all to do with Judaism.

On the last bit of your post, it reminded me of something i saw last night

https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/videos/1161207558871539/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

My pointless back and forth in recent days inspired me to look up some resources on Genocide that I haven't read in years, I'm posting these in full just to remind people (even the ones who cheerlead it on) why people are saying what the Israelis are doing in Gaza is possibly Genocide.

One was the definition itself:

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

I was going to say we haven't seen d & e in Gaza yet but the bombing of maternity hospitals could possibly fall under d.

Then the Ten Stages of Genocide which was developed by the president of Genocide Watch is another that came to mind. I'm posting a different link as I have little doubt our fearless defenders of mass slaughter will be keen to throw around accusations of anti-Semitism against Genocide Watch, well unless the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust are anti-Semites too.

The stages are:

1. Classification – The differences between people are not respected. There’s a division of ‘us’ and ‘them’ which can be carried out using stereotypes, or excluding people who are perceived to be different.
2. Symbolisation – This is a visual manifestation of hatred. Jews in Nazi Europe were forced to wear yellow stars to show that they were ‘different’.
3. Discrimination – The dominant group denies civil rights or even citizenship to identified groups. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship, made it illegal for them to do many jobs or to marry German non-Jews.
4. Dehumanisation – Those perceived as ‘different’ are treated with no form of human rights or personal dignity. During the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Tutsis were referred to as ‘cockroaches’; the Nazis referred to Jews as ‘vermin’.
5. Organisation – Genocides are always planned. Regimes of hatred often train those who go on to carry out the destruction of a people.
6. Polarisation – Propaganda begins to be spread by hate groups. The Nazis used the newspaper Der Stürmer to spread and incite messages of hate about Jewish people.
7. Preparation – Perpetrators plan the genocide. They often use euphemisms such as the Nazis’ phrase ‘The Final Solution’ to cloak their intentions. They create fear of the victim group, building up armies and weapons.
8. Persecution – Victims are identified because of their ethnicity or religion and death lists are drawn up. People are sometimes segregated into ghettos, deported or starved and property is often expropriated. Genocidal massacres begin.
9. Extermination – The hate group murders their identified victims in a deliberate and systematic campaign of violence. Millions of lives have been destroyed or changed beyond recognition through genocide.
10. Denial – The perpetrators or later generations deny the existence of any crime.

Edit: this is also worth a read re. why the IDF murdering people seeking food is illegal under International Law:

https://www.genocidewatch.com/_files/ugd/df1038_af88d1d66a274d94a900ed09a44342f0.pdf

Victims tried to reach four food distribution centers run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a joint venture of Israeli government and U.S. contractors. GHF was established following three months of an Israeli blockade of food and fuel to Gaza. The people seeking food were starving. Save the Children says more than half of those killed were children. Many children were shot in the head. Palestinians must choose between starvation or being shot by Israeli snipers. Genocide Watch and more than a dozen other human rights groups have condemned these killings as war crimes, crimes

There are links in that part of the PDF to Save the Children's and Doctors without Borders' websites, no doubt they are just making this up etc.

Focus groups. Focus groups were used to tailor the narrative to promote most sympathy and most outrage among a US audience. Rape and sexual assault as well as violence against children scored highest.
We were all told that the images of IDF soldier Naama Levy’s blood stained tracksuit bottoms were proof positive of not only her rape but mass and organised rape on October 7th.
Thankfully this wasn’t the case.

In fact in certain cases, for example Mia Shem, after enduring 2 months of captivity, they were raped by a former Israeli soldier in Tel Aviv.