Israel's War Against Hamas - Updates

[Roudy]

Hamas didn’t start it you fool. Learn the history before posting stupid threads.

Go wipe your Gaza and flush the Mohammad down the Palestine, your lies aren't working (not that they ever did), all that you're getting is Americans to hate you even more.

 

[rosends]

I find it funny that people still love to throw around "genocide" as an accusation against Israel when, according to the ICJ, it isn't one.

Now, I'm not one to worship the gospel according to the ICJ but I imagine that had the court labeled Israel's behavior as genocide the world would have glommed on to the decision as "proof." Yet when the ICJ does not call it genocide, no one seems to feel bound by that.

 

[gipper]

I find it funny that people still love to throw around "genocide" as an accusation against Israel when, according to the ICJ, it isn't one.

Now, I'm not one to worship the gospel according to the ICJ but I imagine that had the court labeled Israel's behavior as genocide the world would have glommed on to the decision as "proof." Yet when the ICJ does not call it genocide, no one seems to feel bound by that.

They pretty much called it a genocide without using the word.

 

[Roudy]

They pretty much called it a genocide without using the word.

Bullshit. No genocide which is why they didn't ask for a ceasefire. They did however ask that the genocidal Hamas animals release the hostages immediately and without conditions. Any chance these subhumanoid Islamist savages will listen and release them? Of course not.

 

[rosends]

They pretty much called it a genocide without using the word.

They pretty much said it wasn't a genocide. You prefer your inference?

 

[gipper]

They pretty much said it wasn't a genocide. You prefer your inference?

No. They pretty much said it was and it obviously is.

 

[rosends]

No. They pretty much said it was and it obviously is.

No, they said it isn't and it obviously isn't. What if the icj had said "it is genocide" and I sat at my computer and write "though they used the word they pretty much said it isn't" you be having laughing fits.

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

Last week, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the IDF Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted a video on all his platforms comparing Hamas with the Nazis. It's title was "Woe to those who are against us."

He said, "This year, Holocaust Remembrance Day occurs while the State of Israel is at war with an enemy challenging its existence. The goals of the Nazis and the October 7 terrorists are the same, to exterminate the Jewish people."

Adraee went on to say that the difference between the two events is now Jews have an army to defend themselves.

Then he spoke in ways that Arabs speak about Jews all the time, saying, this is “a holy war, and that the Jews will remain in Israel.” He added, "We swear by the souls of the martyrs that we will remain and be rooted in this land, because truth and justice are supreme and unsurpassed.”



There is nothing inaccurate about these statements. This war to defend the Jewish people is indeed considered a mitzvah in Jewish law, and the Jews will remain in their land no matter what.

But one usually only hears such language among religious Zionists, not IDF spokespeople.

Adraee is speaking in a way that Arabs can relate to and are comfortable with when used against others, and the message resonates - even if the responses are predictably angry.

Al Jazeera published an op-ed about this video, and of course misinterprets it as a threat against the entire Muslim and Arab worlds. It isn't at all: it is only a threat to Hamas and anyone else who tries to destroy the Jewish state and Jewish people.

The author, Mahmoud Abdel Hadi, pretends to give the Zionist he hates friendly advice: "Adraee made a mistake, whether intentionally or not, in directing such provocative content, which harms peace and normalization efforts, and feeds the roots of hostility and revenge. Such a speech is not in the interest of the Jewish people in the future, as circles turn, and time does not remain the same, and history is the best witness to that."

But Hadi is against any normalization with Israel! He should be happy if Adraee is hurting Israel's relationship with its Arab peace partners, shouldn't he?

That is the best indication that Adraee knows what he is doing. Hadi is upset not because the short video hurts peace, but because it restates what the Abraham Accords said, that Jews are an indigenous people in the Middle East and are not going anywhere - a message to the Arab world signed by the UAE and Bahrain. He is upset because he knows that Arabs respect a message that is clear and straightforward: the Jews are rooted in the land and are not going anywhere, and will go to any lengths to protect themselves.

When Arabs threaten Jews with this exact kind of language, it rolls off our backs - we've been hearing it for a hundred years. But when Jews use that same language back to the Arabs, they are aghast: how can this be? But they understand the language and the message, and they respond with exactly the anger and despair that they try to force the Jews to feel.

It is the only language many Arabs understand.

Adraee's message is important for another reason. Palestinians and other anti-Israel Arabs harbor a fantasy that Jews are fearful foreigners who will run away as soon as things are a little difficult for them. Adraee is forcefully saying that not only are Jews not going anywhere, but they are also not afraid of war. Wars are sometimes necessary.

Hadi of course supports slaughtering Jews, making him exactly like the Nazis that Adraee compares Hamas to. Right after October 7, Hadi wrote, "Throughout the Islamic world in the four corners of the globe, you will not find anyone among the two billion Muslims who was not happy with what the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades accomplished in their flood on Saturday, unless they are a hypocrite or a dissenter. "

Al Jazeera columnist is upset when Jews speak of "holy war" and "woe to our enemies," like Arabs do

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 1

I. Obligation​

​

Israel’s war in Gaza is not a violation of its commitments as a contracting party to the 1948 Genocide Convention. It is, in fact, a fulfillment of its obligations under the treaty.

For Israel to do nothing in the face of Hamas’ actions on October 7, or to cut its actions short and somehow acquiesce to a reality where that orgy of murder, rape, torture, and abduction would recur, would be a violation of the first article of the Convention, which states:

“The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.”


The Second Article of the Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

When Hamas Einsatzgruppen swept into southern Israel on the morning of October 7, their rampage spared no one they were able to reach. It was not a military campaign targeting only security installations or key national infrastructure or targets of political, economic, or religious symbolism. Nor was it a terrorist attack on random civilians designed to shock or pressure others.

It was an attack on every Israeli they could get to. There are no stories of people spared for any reason. Wherever Hamas forces made contact with Israelis, they killed. And if they didn’t kill, it was to kidnap. Villages on the border that weren’t scenes of fire, looting, and murder were those where Hamas forces were either repelled successfully or which they never managed to penetrate before their forces were overcome. Wherever Hamas militants could kill Israelis, they did so, making no effort to distinguish soldier from civilian, man from woman, adult from child, or even Jew from Arab.

None of this is inconsistent with the basic ideological and theological commitments of Hamas as an organization or of the larger movement of which it is only one manifestation. Its Charter evinces a pathological and conspiratorial conception of Jews and openly calls for their physical annihilation. And its spokespersons openly boast of their intention to execute more October 7-style actions in the future.

These beliefs and actions meet all the minimal requirements of the definition in Article II of the Convention. There is the intent to destroy a national group, and that group is targeted “as such.” That is, the killing of civilians who are members of the target group is not a side effect of other acts war, but the goal itself, stated in words and observable in deeds.

If a Jewish state has any purpose at all, it is to prevent this. And if the State of Israel has any obligation under the Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948, the year of Israel’s birth, and conceived largely as a response to the genocide of the Jewish people which had just concluded three years before, it is to act forcefully against it.

At this moment, Israel stands accused of violating its commitments under the Genocide Convention, not because it hasn’t acted forcefully enough against the Hamas regime which has controlled the Gaza Strip for the last 17 years, but rather because it is acting at all.

Israel’s Obligations Under the Genocide Convention

I.

www.stateoftelaviv.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 2

II. Accusation
​

The case brought by South Africa before the International Court of Justice, alleging that Israel has committed genocide, rests on two claims: one regarding the conduct of Israel's war; and the second about the rhetoric of Israel's leaders.

Following the October 7 massacre, Israel launched a massive military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas targets, and Israeli ground forces moved house by house, school by school, hospital by hospital, eliminating weapons stores, tunnel shafts, and command posts.

The operation has led to widespread destruction, the displacement of nearly the entire population of Gaza City and the majority of the population of the entire Gaza Strip, and a death toll significantly higher than that of any Arab-Israeli war since 1982. The Palestinians report at least 22,000 fatalities compared to some 1500 Israeli fatalities, 1200 of which were on October 7.

Based on current estimates, the ratio of noncombatant to combatant fatalities in Gaza is somewhere between 2:1 and 3:1. It's a morally challenging figure to come to terms with, but it in no way is determinative of a war crime. Wars conducted by Western armies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia and elsewhere had slightly worse ratios; those conducted by armies of non-democratic regimes have been much worse.

A comparison with the US-led operations against ISIS in Raqaa or Mosul shows that the Israelis have done a better job protecting civilians while taking much greater losses to their own forces. This is notable since the combat environment in Gaza is much more challenging in virtually every way, from the presence of tunnels to the much higher population density. Furthermore, Hamas attacks on Israel were far deadlier than anything ISIS did in France or the US.

The rhetorical claims are even weaker. They rest on inflammatory remarks made by, among others, an Israeli pop star and a middling municipal official. Some of the remarks are indeed appalling, but they are not in any way different from remarks one could find from equally unimportant people in the US after 9/11 or France after the 2015 attacks.

The few remarks attributed to senior officials, including the Prime Minister and Defense Minister, don’t come close to indicating genocidal intent even by the most uncharitable interpretation.

"We are fighting human animals," the Israeli defense minister said on October 9, as the IDF was literally fighting Hamas still on Israeli soil, where some of its fighters were still holed up in Sderot and Kibbutz Be’eri.

The Israeli Energy Minister also declared that no electricity or water would be supplied to the Gaza Strip by Israel until the hostages were released. If not supplying your enemy with electricity and water during war is a crime, then every army in history is guilty of it.

The Prime Minister spoke of the Hamas massacre early on in the war and cited the biblical commandment to “remember what Amalek has done to you.” Amalekhas[SM1] long been an understood reference for Jews invoking both an ultimate evil and an incorrigible antisemitism.

There is a long tradition of antisemites claiming Jews reference satanic ritual injunctions in their holy texts for a host of imagined sins, and the claim that Netanyahu was secretly inciting mass murder in this instance is no different.

The injunction to “remember Amalek” is from Deuteronomy. The violent end of the Amalekites far away in a different part of the Bible (and not in the Torah) in Book of Samuel. It was those latter bits that were cited in all the learned commentary about Netanyahu’s supposedly genocidal dog whistle. It’s an incredibly poor reading that reveals just how deeply some want to believe in Israel’s irredeemable guilt.

The outrage over this is a mix of projection and ignorance. If someone describes a new lover as a “Romeo,” do we worry that she is secretly plotting a poisoning? This would be not only a misreading of Shakespeare’s play, but a willfully ignorant misunderstanding of a cultural touchstone and its symbolic meaning to readers and non-readers alike over generations.

Israel’s Obligations Under the Genocide Convention

I.

www.stateoftelaviv.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 3

III. Anticipation
​

There are other supposedly "dehumanizing statements" attributed to Israeli leaders, such as when the Israeli president counseled patience in Israel's war effort in Gaza saying "it will take time to eradicate a cancer."

Except, of course, that this phrase was not uttered by Israeli President Isaac Herzog. It was President Obama who said this when describing the war against ISIS, the one that included the battles in Raqaa and Mosul mentioned above. It shouldn't even be necessary to say this, but: Obama was not calling for a genocide. This is clear when one considers the full — and accurate — context of that quotation, as well as by a critical look at the goals and methods of the US-led operation and the kind of enemy it was fighting. All of which is equally true for Israel.

But despite this, accusations of genocide were not made against President Obama then. Or since. The explanation for this is not because of power differentials and not because of hypocrisy and not because the world is just so damn unfair. It goes much deeper.

Hanging over any discussion of Israel and any discussion of Jews and violence is the long, unremitting, and unfading shadow of the Shoah. It is impossible to understand just how much Israel bothers Western intellectuals without understanding how much the Holocaust bothers them. Haunts them. Frightens them. And, occasionally, thrills them.

Last year I spoke at a conference at the Oslo Institute for Social Research. I had no idea that Hamas was planning its October 7th massacre. (And, anyways, that was far from the topic of the paper I was presenting.) But I did tell my audience that at the next outbreak of Arab-Israeli violence, Israel would be accused by right-minded activists and NGO's of "genocide."

How did I know this? The campaign to appropriate this word in the cause of pathological obsessive Israel hatred was following in the well-worn path of previous rhetorical campaigns for the terms "collective punishment," "ethnic cleansing," and "apartheid", among others. Fringe elements were already using the term, with the mainstream of human rights organizations affecting a simpering and obviously temporary reluctance about it.

Days before I spoke in Oslo, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, was asked if she would use the word "genocide" to describe Israel's actions. "I personally refrain from it because I want to be absolutely sure of the argument when I make it. And I will get there. I will get there."

Less than a year later, she got there, and not coincidentally, she got there in the immediate aftermath — not of an Israeli action — but of an action directed against Israel. The genocide accusations began in the wake of the October 7th massacre, well before Israel had begun to mount a substantive military response. This, too, followed a well-worn pattern. Previous rhetorical escalations against Israel generally happened on the backdrop of some terrorist atrocity against it.

Albanese wasn't the only one who “getting there”.

Hauling the Jews in to plead their case before a special tribunal and face the charge that they are the real Nazis has been the fantasy of every antisemite since the first gavel hit a soundblock in Nuremberg in 1946. It is the dark fantasy behind the insistence over decades on speaking of controversial Israeli actions always in terms of "war crimes." This, and not a poor grasp of complex legal arguments, is the reason every Israeli military action in the last half century has been criticized as "collective punishment" or "disproportionate." As long as the Shoah looms large in the civilized conscience, there will be those among us who project our fears and our discomfort in the most transparent way.

The damage from this obsession is enormous, both to the cause of human rights and to the people this obsession claims to care about, the still-stateless Palestinians.

That it is impossible today to enter the milieu of people who care about global justice, climate change, international law, or world health without being committed to the theology of a uniquely evil Jewish state standing in the path of world peace is a moral travesty, but it is not an accident. A panoply of bad actors from decidedly non-progressive regimes have benefited enormously from turning the kinds of post-1945 institutions that should be protecting the world's most vulnerable into talk shops of Israel hatred. Every well-meaning institution and every progressive cause that has been colonized by anti-Israel activism has emerged from it hollowed out and irrelevant.

If the Genocide Convention goes the way of, say, the UN Human Rights Council, and becomes a meaningless provision used by failing regimes and wealthy petro-dictatorships to mobilize hatred against Israel and distract from their own problems, we will all be poorer for it.

For the Palestinians, the tragedy is compounded. The best hope for the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause remains making peace with Israel and establishing a state alongside it, rather than wasting another generation in a pointless attempt to eliminate it. What prevented the Palestinians from coming to terms with their previous defeats was the denial that they were defeated and the invention of a counter-narrative of boundless victimhood and ultimate triumph in a magical distant future.

This form of amnesia confers a kind of moral victory to efface the actual experienced defeat, but it also ensures a repetition of the mistakes and fantasies that led to the previous catastrophe.

Israel’s Obligations Under the Genocide Convention

I.

www.stateoftelaviv.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 1​

​

Myth 1: UNRWA is a UN organization.​

Well, technically it is, but in fact, UNRWA is a Palestinian outfit with Palestinian employees and Palestinian objectives. Of its 13,000 employees in Gaza, 99% are Palestinian, alongside a tiny number of international employees who cover for Palestinian corruption and Islamic radicalism. It is a Palestinian boondoggle.

Since most Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas, it stands to reason that many if not the majority of UNRWA employees are Hamas supporters too. According to Israeli intelligence, a full 10% of UNRWA Gaza staff are identifiable Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad activists; hundreds of others openly celebrated the October 7 rapes and murders; and 190 UNRWA employees are “hardened militants” – fighters and killers with unmistakable terrorist records.

This is far more than “a few bad apples in the basket,” as some champions for UNRWA said this week.

Myth 2: UNRWA is a relief organization for Palestinians.​

This has not been true for many years. UNRWA provides little food or humanitarian aid. The vast majority of its budget is devoted to Palestinian schools and hospitals, which is an anomaly without precedent anywhere else in the world.

There is no other UN organization that covers health and education costs for almost an entire population – in place of its local government. UNRWA runs the relevant institutions and pays the bills throughout Gaza, instead of Hamas having to provide health, education, and welfare for its own constituents. Hamas relies on UNRWA and its Western donors to operate core provinces of Gazan government, leaving Hamas scot-free to build terror attack tunnels and camp out in underground military bunkers for war against Israel.

Myth 3: UNRWA is a neutral organization.​

No, it is not. UNRWA is a political outfit that shapes the story of Palestinian victimhood, preserves and prolongs Palestinian refugeehood, and educates towards perpetual war with Israel including Palestinian dreams of destroying Israel through refugee “return.” UNRWA is the most deleterious driver of a narrative of Israeli criminality, for 75 years now and running.

In particular, UNRWA keeps conflict with Israel alive by granting fictitious refugee status to an ever-inflating number of Palestinians – 20 times beyond the scope of real refugee levels – while refusing to permanently resettle even one single refugee.

Myth 4: UNRWA is a moderating and calming force.​

Even though international wags (and even parts of the Israeli defense establishment) have made this claim for years, it simply holds no water. UNRWA is deeply impregnated and dominated by Hamas, and it certainly was of no taming or tempering effect before, after, or on October 7. Everybody can do without the make-believe soothing brainwaves of UNRWA.

Watchdog organizations tirelessly have documented the hate taught in UNRWA classrooms. Palestinian children learn that Jews are liars and fraudsters and that Jews spread corruption which will lead to their annihilation. Terrorists are glorified as role models. Lessons that incite violence are taught across all grades and subjects, including in math and science classes. Inevitably, the systematic teaching of hatred and violence within the UNRWA school system is Palestinian terror against Israel.

Myth 5: Palestinians in Gaza truly need global funding for their most basic needs.​

From what the IDF has discovered in Gaza over the past three months it does not seem that Gazans are exceptionally needy or helpless.

The Hamas government in Gaza appears to be perfectly capable of undertaking big, sophisticated, and expensive projects ranging from underground tunnel and bunker networks that rival London’s underground system, to industrial weapons factories built to the best engineering standards, to well-organized commando units with top-notch intelligence capabilities and crafty attack planning skills.

Palestinians in Gaza do not suffer from underfunding, sub-par education, or deprivation of skilled labor, but from self-inflicted wounds that stem from a distortion of priorities. For decades they have prioritized warfare against Israel over building their own society in a healthy way. They need Western guidance (pressure) in reordering their priorities, not necessarily more cash or other aid.

UNRWA: 10 myths about the UN Palestinian refugee agency debunked

UNRWA is rotten to its core. It validates and perpetuates the Palestinian war against Israel instead of helping to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is an obstacle to peace.

www.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 2

Myth 6: Palestinians in Gaza need UNRWA to keep them alive.​

This is not true according to Palestinians themselves. Even as some Western funders of UNRWA have suspended donations to UNRWA in recent days, the main concern expressed by Palestinians relates to a possible denouement in global recognition of their cause. They are much more distressed about the political blow to their status as privileged victims than they are about the money.

There are hundreds of social media posts and other testimonies indicating this; that Gazans see UNRWA far less as a critical provider of social services and emergency aid and much more as the vital validator of Palestinian identity in their never-ending war with Israel.

Myth 7: Without an immediate restoration of full UNRWA funding, Palestinians in Gaza will starve.​

There is no “dire crisis” in access to food and water in Gaza. Nobody there is on the “verge of starvation.” Hundreds of trucks with goods and fuels enter Gaza every day despite the war, based on donations from Arab and (still) Western countries. Hamas demonstrably confiscates millions of dollars worth of such supplies for its army and favored elites, about which UNRWA has done nothing. But a steady flow of goods into Gaza continues, even if UNRWA’s pockets are a bit less padded.

Myth 8: UNRWA is the most efficient way to deliver assistance to Palestinians.​

No, it certainly is not, and not just because UNRWA lets Hamas run off with lots of goods. There are far more efficient, less corrupt, and less grossly political aid agencies, some of which already are present in Gaza (and the West Bank), that can be mobilized to replace UNRWA. This includes USAID, UNICEF, and the World Food Programme. They could all do the work without succumbing to Palestinian legerdemain.

Myth 9: UNRWA can be fixed.​

UNRWA needs more than an “urgent audit,” as the EU reluctantly mumbled this week, and much more than “enhanced due diligence and other oversight mechanisms,” as one unfriendly-to-Israel congressman grudgingly called for.

UNRWA needs to be abolished so that Gaza’s transition away from aid and toward economic development, and away from genocidal fantasies and toward peace building can begin quickly. It is certainly true that the current division of labor – UNRWA services above ground, Hamas terror operations below ground and from within UNRWA facilities – cannot continue.

This requires different international actors that can develop productive industry and jobs in Gaza, and that can lead the construction and operation of civilian services. International funding may still be necessary, but it should be administered by foreign governments directly and by different organizations that are subject to continuous oversight and rigorous accountability.

Myth 10: Wartime is not the right time to shutter UNRWA.​

Now is the perfect time to do so. As Israel liberates Gaza from Hamas, the international community can unshackle Palestinians from UNRWA. At the same time Israel can unchain itself from destructive dependency on UNRWA and its problematic Israeli counterpart, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories – COGAT.

Then the rebuilding of Gaza can advance, free from rank corruption, destructive indoctrination, the coddling of terrorism, and overall moral rot that for too long has contaminated international aid politics for Palestinians.

UNRWA: 10 myths about the UN Palestinian refugee agency debunked

UNRWA is rotten to its core. It validates and perpetuates the Palestinian war against Israel instead of helping to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is an obstacle to peace.

www.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

(full article online)

WATCH: What Happens to Humanitarian Aid After in Enters Gaza?

"These video clips are just the tip of the iceberg of examples of the types of corruption and cruelty that characterize the lives of residents under Hamas’ control."

www.jewishpress.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]