Turn down the volume of media, cut off internet access to Gaza. Massacres are best executed in darkness.

yup. those "bloody cribs" photos really dent the fundraising.

I’m stunned. With every new development of this conflict the US continues deeper and deeper into the wrong side of history.

The obvious conclusion to a policy of unconditionally supporting our "ally" in the middle east.

Will the world still be able to trust the US pretending to be blind?

The US isn't pretending to be blind, the US has clearly picked a side, and it isn't the side of being opposed to genocide.

The US has not picked the side of Hamas, which is the side advocating genocide (from the river to the sea), and the side committing unspeakable attrocities.

No, the US has picked the side of Israel, which is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. What Israel is doing is unjustifiable, even under the premise of "fighting Hamas."

From you point of view, what would be a justifiable response (by Israel and by the US) to the attack that was done by the Hamas on 7th of October?

I have always thought the principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was grounded in a tradition of enormous gravitas.

Figure out why the much hyped IDF professional forces got clowned on by Hamas would be where I’d start.

Bombing infrastructure, hospitals, and a dense city filled with civilians is not.

I'm curious what your answer is to this same question.

Raz Segal, an israeli historian and expert in modern genocides has called this "a textbook case of genocide." Is this where you stand on it? Or is there some sort of middle ground between genocide and another thing you'd like to occupy?

I am honestly and genuinely curious.

I'm just an armchair expert.

I think it's clear - what was done before is not working (including 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza, humanitarian aid and donations). It's clear that Hamas are dark age scum that need to be dealt with force. It's also clear that most of the population of Gaza supports Hamas, and that Hamas will also will use them as body-shields.

Now, I was born in a 3rd world country and had to deal with a lot of scum. You can't have a conversation with people like those: any concessions you make - will be considered as a weakness and you will be pushed even more.

I don't support Israel in what they do, but I don't see any other options I would choose if I was them.

Jesus fuck man it's a genocide get a grip. It's children. The median age is like 17, when you call these people "dark age scum" and call for their murder you're talking about kids. Coward shit.

If you kindly read my comment again, you will see that I DON'T call the general population of Gaza scum. It's Hamas, who are in my opinion, are scum.

If you disagree with that statement then I invite you to read more about the organization history, their worldview, their goals and actions.

I just want you to always and forever remember and admit that this is what you were doing during this. Hemming and hawing about who you can call scum without quite admitting to yourself you're advocating for genocide. You can never pretend that you didn't know what we were doing, or that you meaningfully opposed it.

I know what I'm doing, and I don't see myself advocating for genocide. Can you help me to understand where do you think I do that?

The organization of the gunmen has created a situation where military victory comes at incalculable moral cost. Probably intentionally. It is a deep personal test to see which outcome one thinks means "letting them win."

Personally I do not believe it is conscionable to drop a bomb on a bank where the staff is being held hostage even if it would probably hit the robbers.

There is a reason why most of governments don't negotiate with terrorists. Nothing good even came from other tactics in the long term.

There's a huge difference between not rewarding hostage takers with ransom and killing the hostages to kill the ransomers.

Agree, and I don't think Israel has a goal to kill hostages but to eleminate Hamas no matter the cost

Sure, but if that comes at the cost of the hostages they're killing the hostages to kill the ransomers.

I don't know, I'm not an Israeli general. But it wouldn't involve the intentional targeting of civilians, as Israel appears to be doing.

Beyond that is a rabbithole of decades of Israel/Palestine conflict, the Gaza strip, occupation of the West Bank and settlements that I really don't want to go down.

Neither of the warring parties stands in opposition to genocide; both have both used the genocidal “no innocent civilians” argument in PR, and acted consistent with it.

This would be a tricky thing for the US to address on its own, but its made more complex by the fact that one of the genocidal warring parties is also acting as a proxy for a foreign power who is also waging a proxy war on multiple fronts against the US, and their actions (while it would be oversimplifying to call them merely a part of it) are not disconnected from that proxy war.

I feel like the current administration could have handled things in such a way as to not look so... eager for blood?

And sure, neither side is an angel but not supporting genocide or terrorism either way and supporting a ceasefire or at least condemning the violence on both sides is a legitimate stance to take and the US didn't even go that far.

I am only not more directly critical of the Administration's response as there are indications that they are working to (and maybe a having some, though far from enough success) moderate Israel's actions (delaying a ground invasion, among other things), and cannot discount the possibility that a better rhetorical position would have worse substantive results.

At the same time... I don't disagree with any of your characterization of the problems with the positioning of the Administration, outside of that consideration.

What a fucking horror. I will never forgive us for doing this.

I feel like I have to speak against the guilt you're referring to being unable to forgive. Collective guilt is only believed in by people who haven't thought through the horrific enormity of the implications and others who want them... it is also falsely implied by a partial reading of the scriptures. Yes, "the people of Israel" were lead into captivity or out of it together, but God used the Babylonians to save Jeremiah, and all of the poor in the area who were previously living innocently and with nothing got to take the vineyards and the farms, along with the prophet, who lived among them. Individual guilt can be synchronized by the same peer pressure forces as synchronize the movements in the histories of all sons of Adam equally. Nonetheless, it remains individual guilt even when it appears to rest on many people who did the same bad thing all at once.

What a time to well-actually someone lol. Anyway it doesn't matter, it's not even my place to forgive here, that's not a power I have.

They should never forgive us, all of us individually, each for our personal complicity in this.

I don't think it is a small issue, collective guilt is the concept that justifies dropping bombs on homes where children live because of the horrific attack carried out by a government that stopped holding elections before they were born, that justified said attack being carried out against whoever the gunmen running out of the cage could find unprotected, and that justified the logic of every antisemitic conspiracy theory ever devised (which disagree on the "facts" but universally assume that there's a connection between allegations of distant events and Jewish people the reader might actually meet). It justifies the association of criticism for Israel with antisemitism being used to manufacture consent in the US, (through the implication that collective guilt is such an obvious principle that anyone who criticizes Israeli foreign policy must extend the blame to everyone supportive of their recognized religion, and consequently must be silenced before they express that which they are thus calculated to believe) and it is why hate groups have picked up the story and are trying to run with it, which is ideal for the enemies of the peace movement because the impression that belief in the existence of collective guilt is an immutable and universal fact in American culture (it isn't, nobody feels guilty over the disasters of the past 50 years; rather everyone imagines themselves part of the peace protests) makes it appear to people associated with Israel that denial is a matter of serious self-interest. I don't know of any other way to resist such an abstract bordering on philosophic evil but to annoy everyone with essays like this, yes, even at such a time... a time as we are living through and people no different from us will not live through.

I heard in a report today (on NPR) that 50% of the residents of Gaza live below the poverty line.

Few things create a tinder box better than deprived people with nothing to lose. But maybe censoring Al Jezeera is the way to go?

It is good to add to the discussion other metrics around the world, like in Argentina poverty is above 40% [1]. To be considered below the poverty line in Argentina a family of four should receive less than USD ~56 per month while an individual (not a family) is receiving less than USD ~41 per month.

[1] https://buenosairesherald.com/society/argentine-poverty-reac...

Argentina has had an enormous amount of instability in its recent history.

Also Gaza.

I think the genocide is a bit more motivating and painful than the poverty line.

the two things go hand in hand

A bit more data - at the start of the conflict, some 47% of the residents in Gaza were children (under 18). Hamas gained power in Gaza in 2005 and 2006.

Another way to put it, almost half of the residents were not even alive or babies when Hamas was put into power.

Young (males) with free time and in need of an outlet for their anger? We've seen that before. This most recent war will end eventually but it feels like many of the root problems will persist. It's only a matter of time before there's another flare up.

Is Al Jazeera allowed to talk about that?

It also make ya wonder what "suggestions" come down from the WH for our own media.

The arrogance of sending weapons to a country that is killing journalists and their families, and then telling those same journalists to stop talking about it, is astounding.

[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/11/shireen-abu-akleh-i...

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/26/arab-world-speaks-...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-killed-11-p...

Al Jazeera is a known mouthpiece of Hamas. They amplified the Hamas misinformation about that explosion in the hospital parking lot, caused by a missile fired by themselves, into a mass casualty event that never happened. They laundered Hamas propaganda and NYT and others then picked it up.

Reuters "fact checked" the hundreds of killed at the music festival and said it didn't happen. Of course, their fact check looked at the wrong images.

I'm not going to dispute that there are hidden agendas behind news organizations. The point is that in any case, the work they do is important, and the people working for these organizations should not be targeted and killed.

Do we know they were targeted? From what I have heard, the attacks have been so broad that anyone could have died in them.

> Reuters "fact checked" the hundreds of killed at the music festival and said it didn't happen. Of course, their fact check looked at the wrong images.

This is such an absurd misreading of the situation that I can comfortably discount your other points without any further consideration. Reuters fact checked a specific video that was claiming to be people running from the festival, but was footage from a Bruno Mars concert 2 days earlier. Show me where Reuters claim the attack didn't happen.

>They weren’t [running for their lives]—at the Oct. 4 concert depicted in the video—but Reuters makes no mention of the fact that hundreds of Israelis were actually slaughtered at a concert three days later.

This is the dispute over the video.

> No specific offending examples of the station’s output were given but it is thought Blinken was referring to its Arabic-language rather than its English-language channels.

Just incredibly lazy and arrogant behavior. Qatar has been working hard to position itself as a chief mediator in the region, and largely it's worked. But there is tremendous popular pressure now on regional governments to stand with the Palestinians and Israel has vaporized any ability for these governments to continue rapprochement. Egypt had its first demonstration in a decade. Al Jazeera could shut down tomorrow and nothing would change; the anger across the region, and indeed across the world, are due to the realities of what is happening, not how it's being reported.

“Generally we know the target. For example, today there was a target: the family of an Al Jazeera reporter. In general, we know.” Channel 13 journalist Zvi Yehezkeli admits Israel purposefully targeted the family of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh. (Al Jazeera reporter's son, daughter, wife and several grandchildren of his colleague Wael al-Dahdouh killed in an Israeli airstrike). So it is not all about hamas...

I haven't forgotten what GWB's "crusader" did. And what his poodles did too. The double standard of the west is astounding.

Freedom of expression is no longer seen as an important value. It's a shame.