Polling shows:
•66% of Americans & 80% of Democrats demand ceasefire—yet they aren’t being listened to.
•73% of Palestinians in Gaza demand peaceful resolution contrary to Hamas—yet they aren’t being listened to.
•76% of Israelis demand Netanyahu resign—yet they aren’t being listened to
John Oliver perhaps said it best in his last episode—we need new leadership if we expect peace and Justice to prevail over war and death.
@ssfckdt @QasimRashid They’re a parliamentary system. Netanyahu isn’t running directly like a US candidate. You vote for a party, and the party that gets the most votes has the first shot at building a coalition to become prime minister.
Netanyahu will build a coalition with anyone if it means he stays in power. His “superpower” is getting fundamentalists, racist wackos, and otherwise relatively normal people to support him in exchange for concessions.
@72mz @QasimRashid why do you think the US is some kind of moral goalpost? What they did was awful.
Genocide is not an answer to terrorism.
@FortuitousMess @72mz @QasimRashid they're *targeting* terrorists. Collateral damage is not a war crime. It's a tragedy. I wish it weren't happening. I wish they were able to evacuate. But there is no war crime happening.
Note that the numbers come from Hamas, and they have not claimed that any of the victims were civilians. When they say "children," they mean people under 18, but they recruit terrorists much younger than that. Younger than 15, even—which *is* a war crime.
@72mz @DanHakimi @FortuitousMess @QasimRashid
No harm to one person can justify harming an unrelated, and therefore innocent, person.
If Israelis earned the right to kill innocent Palestinians in self-defense Hamas, then those Palestinians earn a commensurate right to kill innocent Israelis in return.
That kind of madness is why we’re in this situation now.
@HeavenlyPossum @72mz @FortuitousMess @QasimRashid Do you know what a target is?
Why does nobody in this thread seem to understand the concept of a target?
@DanHakimi @QasimRashid @FortuitousMess @72mz
I understand your euphemism, I just reject its validity.
Setting aside the fact that the Israeli state does deliberately target civilians, the argument that killing civilians is required by the security situation is both Hamas’ and the Israeli state’s argument.
The horrors of 7 October no more justify what Israel is doing now than the horrors of the occupation justified what Hamas did on 7 October.
@HeavenlyPossum @QasimRashid @FortuitousMess @72mz ugh, the word "target" is not a euphemism. Your lies and false equivalencies are not fooling anybody.
Hamas doesn't pretend that their targeting civilians is necessary for or has anything to do with security, they just want to instill terror in Israelis and bring about compromise through fear.
Israel does *not* target civilians, but Hamas embeds itself within the population *while firing rockets*. How should Israel fight back?
@DanHakimi @QasimRashid @72mz @FortuitousMess
The Israeli state does, in fact, target civilians both directly and collectively.
That aside, the Israeli state has also killed 10,000 civilians in the last few weeks. A policy that reliably and predictably produces civilian casualties—especially *mass* civilian casualties—is indistinguishable from a policy of deliberately attacking them, for anyone who isn’t a sophist.
I am not a military tactician; I can’t offer more specific military advice than “don’t murder children.”
@HeavenlyPossum @QasimRashid @72mz @FortuitousMess
Nobody in Gaza or elsewhere has claimed that Israel has killed 10,000 civilians since 10/7. Hamas has claimed that Israel has killed 10,000 people. Let's pretend we believe the number. They have not claimed that any of those people are civilians—it does not even pretend to delineate. We also know that some of those people were, in fact, not killed by Israel, but by stray Palestinian rockets or other Palestinian murderers.
@72mz @DanHakimi @QasimRashid @FortuitousMess
Mmmm my favorite kind of equivocation, quibbling over the exact number of thousands of innocent people murdered.
Without a doubt, amidst the 25,000 tons of ordinance the IDF has dropped on the 141 square miles of the Gaza Strip, some Palestinians have been killed by Hamas too. They should also not murder innocent people.
@72mz @DanHakimi @QasimRashid @FortuitousMess
OHCR has corroborated reporting that more than 4,000 children have been killed. Are they sufficiently innocent enough? What rough percentage of those 4,000 do you imagine were killed by Hamas rockets vs the IDF’s 12,000+ air and artillery strikes? Trying to get a sense for what actually counts for “evidence” in your reality.
@HeavenlyPossum @72mz @QasimRashid @FortuitousMess the only vaguely OHCR statement I've been able to find specifically quotes Hamas. Do you have a source on where OHCR did an independent report?
Hamas does not argue that any of those children were innocent. Once again, Hamas recruits child soldiers to commit acts of terror.
@HeavenlyPossum @QasimRashid @72mz @FortuitousMess Did you know that Hamas recruits child soldiers? And not just 17, but much younger, young enough that their recruitment is an actual war crime. Did you see the massive rocket-firing rack they set up in a mosque basement and youth center? https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-troops-in-gaza-discover-rocket-launchers-stationed-inside-youth-center/
Hamas not only uses children as human shields, it indoctrinates them as soldiers. Again, how the fuck do you want Israel to respond, just accept the rocket fire?
@DanHakimi @72mz @QasimRashid @FortuitousMess
“How the fuck do you want Israel to respond, just accept the rocket fire?”
“How the fuck do you want Palestine to respond, just accept the air strikes?”
@QasimRashid @72mz @DanHakimi @FortuitousMess
No, there are just pogroms in the West Bank. In Gaza, airstrikes have “targeted” individual Hamas leaders in crowded and dense civilian infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, but we can’t be sure if any of the civilians incidentally killed were bad so let’s withhold judgement.
@HeavenlyPossum @QasimRashid @72mz @FortuitousMess yes, some innocents have died. But there's no evidence that Israel targeted innocents. Israel has been evacuating the war zone. And every time it takes out a target, it goes through effort to warn any civilians who *might* be near them to evacuate that specific building. No other army calls targets in advance.
And your attempt to pretend that "targeting" is not a real concept by putting it in quotes is pathetic anti-intellectual bullshit.
Of course they’re not being listened to.
This shithole country doesn’t give a rats ass about its citizens.
Every single thing that’s ever been done to benefit anyone except the rich, has been something they’ve had to be dragged kicking and screaming before anything happened.
@QasimRashid whhhhyyyyy are all these people voting for the dipshits then???
( In the non-Palestine bits, I'm given to understand Palestine doesn't really have democracy)
@QasimRashid Another democratic future is possible
tomvdp
Qasim Rashid, Esq.
SSFC KDT (MOVED)
2xfo
Tyler Cohen
Laura Anne Gilman
Katherine Villyard
Daniel Hakimi
Skaly
molly in missouri
72mz
justpeachy
Erin
HeavenlyPossum
Muiris
Helgi Crookehorne
Dr. Motte
AutisticMumTo3
RodneyPetersonTalentAgency
excited for the mastodon rise
Alon
Itwasntme
Auntie Mame
MonarchLady
AlinskyDidNothingWrong
Thorsten Sterk
WhichOne'sPink 🇫🇮
Mrs Cloudy
Blamellors