Due to the severity of the situation and the fast flowing news cycle, we have decided to create a general megathread for discussion regarding the conflict.
Informal/Satirical news sources are not allowed on the main feed of the community but you are free to post them in this thread.
Please remember that all community and instance rules apply to this thread hence keep is civil.
Israel is doing a genocide, the us and its puppets are funding or arming the genociders, and Europe is banning protests of the genocide.
Western capitalist hegemony is a fascistic death cult that will destroy us all unless we destroy it first, and every day we don’t millions are condemned to horrific deaths
So far, it was only France that banned pro-Palestinean protests. But the French government is also far right, so it makes sense. Don’t equate their fascism to the rest of Europe, please.
Edit: Holy hell, that poll. 65% support the ban of pro-Palestine demos because it’s “too touchy”. Media did a great job programming the public to think “pro-Palestine” is on par with “pro-Hamas”.
Germany has been one of Israel’s staunchest supporters all throughout the Cold War - despite the fact that Germany’s security services have been festering swamps of nazi-ideology before all the WW2 rubble had been carted away.
The link is to a Swiss newspaper tho, which is why I was surprised.
One of the largest worker unions in Germany (ver.di) proudly and openly proclaims that they stand with Israel and they have been doing that for years. Now why are they doing this instead of focusing on their actual purpose? Senseless activism to avoid being labeled as nazis. In Germany, being a nazi is way worse than supporting a genocide.
Senseless activism to avoid being labeled as nazis.
The fact that it’s even possible to conflate criticism with Israel with anitsemitism just shows to what extent the west has avoided dealing with it’s own antisemitism - most westerners don’t seem to have the foggiest idea what it even is or isn’t. I wonder why the Apartheid-regime never tried deflecting criticism of itself by blaming everyone else of “reverse racism”…
Every country in Europe is flirting with overt far-right ideology… as opposed to just nurturing it covertly (which is the normal state of affairs for Europe, it seems).
I really wish I could have a permanent record of everything every liberal has ever said so I could easily demonstrate how full of shit they are in 10 to 20 years when they all collectively deny ever having supported Israel through the Palestinian genocide.
I’d say, “It’s the Internet”, but these days institutional powers seem to be able to convince even Internet archives to remove shit that’s too inconvenient for them.
Isreal is currently perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinian people. Kind of hard to argue they don’t want to when it’s exactly what they’re doing.
what do you call walling in 2 million people and cutting off food water and fuel then bombing the shit out of the walled enclosure? Israel is doing genocide right now it doesn’t matter if its official or not
IDF misinformation from the start of the conflict until now:
1. Hamas beheaded forty babies
Context: the reports of Hamas beheading babies came from an interview by i24 News of an IDF commander. This quickly spread through Western media outlets such as CNN, NBC, MSNBC, FOX News, the Telegraph, Daily Mail, etc. I haven’t done a comprehensive sweep of who picked up the story and who didn’t (and of course now it’s much harder to do so because of retractions, edits, my lack of direct TV access, and SEO), but from what I can tell AP News and Al Jazeera have been relatively reliable.
2. Shani Louk, claimed to be naked, dead, and sexually assaulted
Context: images circulated online about a video purporting to show Shani Louk, a German national attending the Nova EDM festival, on the back of a truck, face-down. Claims that she appeared to be naked, dead, and sexually assaulted circulated on the same media sources discussed above.
Misinformation: given the videos we have, we know with a decent amount of certainty that the video being shown is of Shani Louk. However:
A. She’s clearly not naked in the video and you can see that she is wearing black shorts as well as boots. A top is also visible (but she is face-down, so we can’t see much of it). Neither her shorts nor her boots appeared to have been removed. From what I can tell, she was initially wearing a long skirt that was likely lost in the chaos.
B. Her family claims that she is alive and receiving medical attention at a hospital in Gaza, which does explain why they would be transporting her. There is visible blood on the back of her head, but she does not seem to be bleeding profusely when the video was taken.
C. I will not comment on whether or not she was sexually assaulted.
3. 260 dead Israelis at EDM festival
Context: many news sources independently verified that 260 bodies were pulled from the EDM festival. Many sources reported that this was an act of terror with no strategic objective and a massacre of innocent civilians.
Lack of context: Nova was held in Kibbutz Re’im, mere minutes from Gaza, and also mere minutes from the IDF Gaza Division’s Re’im base. Tanks are clearly visible in videos leaving the festival, as are armed personnel. Hebrew-language interviews of released prisoners are providing more insight into these attacks, but I do not speak Hebrew so I will refrain from commenting on this further. Hamas has claimed that fighters were told to avoid harming or killing civilians.
Potential misinformation: Hamas claiming that fighters were told to avoid harming civilians does not mean that Hamas fighters did not harm civilians, obviously.
Potential misinformation: the reports indicate that 260 bodies were found, but their origin has not been confirmed. We know that armed personnel discharged their weapons against Hamas fighters (and vice-versa). How many of the dead are civilians, IDF, armed security, or Hamas?
Much of the media coverage on this conflict has been used to spread misinformation, even from traditionally “reliable” sources in the Western sphere. As a result, I would strongly recommend supplementing coverage of these events with those outside the Western sphere. The journalism being done is lazy.
I had a frustrating conversation with one person around the “40 beheaded babies” claim. Snopes dug into the claim. The IDF never I think we’ll never be able to verify that particular claim. The flip side is that in the end, a dead baby is a dead baby regardless of how it got that way. My objection is that facts matter, particularly with claims of particular brutality or when the situation is a powder keg.
Hamas has claimed that fighters were told to avoid harming or killing civilians.
I don’t buy this for one minute. Not a minute. Palestinian civilian casualties are high because Hamas and other organizations operate from inside of neighborhoods as guerrilla forces. Israel has separate forces. You wouldn’t get massive civilian casualties from Hamas targeting the IDF’s bases. They can make all the claims they want, but it doesn’t fit with the facts.
A lot of these settlements have either contracters or the IDF directly providing security. So the idea that Hamas could have broken out of Gaza and just found all the soldiers neatly in their bases seems unbelievable. The IDF is an occupying force, not a European military where it’s just some dudes with their thumbs up their asses in a barracks near some nature reserve.
Ultimately we can’t know how Hamas leadership told their soldiers to behave. But they do have a clear incentives not to condone the killing of civilians: they want to capture hostages and use them as leverage. They need to create the expectation that these hostages are treated fairly and can be returned safely so that it is entirely up to Israel whether it wants those civilians to die.
Tragically, civilians always die in wars. Both sides always propagandise this to claim that it is the other side that is just killing civilians as policy. The facts however, are abundantly clear when it comes to the question of which side shows the greater disregard for civilian casualties.
The impression I had gotten from interviews (Al Jazeera, the Guardian, Haaretz) was that Israeli civilian police were there and exchanged fire with Hamas but that it was HOURS before they came across any IDF personnel. I’ve been focusing on this less as the time goes on and the catastrophic situation in Gaza gets worse and worse, so maybe further sources have come out regarding the Nova Festival.
Regardless I would like to see consequences to the people who authorized a festival so close to Gaza in the first place…
That’s the part that really doesn’t make sense to me.
There’s literally an active military base RIGHT THERE. It’s literally based in Re’im. There’s no way the IDF could be that incompetent. It’s not like forces had to be deployed from elsewhere in the country.
Supposedly, they had another location in mind but it fell through so they had to use Re’im with two days notice.
here’s literally an active military base RIGHT THERE
Practically the complete IDF was in the West Bank at that time, when you have minimal staffing at a military base you really don’t want to leave it but hunker down as it getting captured would be even worse.
There’s no way the IDF could be that incompetent.
I’d say that’s a reasonable assessment. That Netanyahu and his goons are as competent, however, is a much more tenuous claim, or they wouldn’t have sent the IDF o the West Bank (to back up settlers harassing (and worse) Palestinians).
I don’t know how to confirm this myself but I have read and heard that before anything else, after it was known Hamas fighters were inside Israeli territory, the IDF first move militarily was to start bombing Gaza. No one can argue honestly that the IDF defends Israelis - its literally just the most reactionary of religious Zionists that they serve.
Secular Jewish Israelis? Nah they can fend for themselves for a few hours, we’ve gotta attack Palestinian civilians, says the IDF. And that’s not even bringing up that 20% of Israeli citizens ARE ARABS, some of whom were also attacked in their homes in Southern Israel 10 days ago, but of course the same people calling Hamas human animals will go after them next (not to suggest they aren’t already, only that Gazans face more immediate extermination).
That sounds pretty correct. From what I remember of the reporting at the time, we heard of the offensive, then immediately we had multiple reports, videos, and streams of the IDF bombarding Gaza.
The disinformation coming out is absolutely unbelievable. I cannot believe what is happening. Even on Lemmy there has been intentional apread of disinformation.
Time is running out for Palestinians drinking unsanitary unsafe drinking water and even that supply is dwindling. Hospitals are collapsing. Men women and children are dying in the streets. And only now at the final hour does the US government say anything about restraint. Even as they actively push pro-israel propaganda. Abhorrent. This catastrophe, this bare faced attempt at genocide happened before the eyes of the world and to the cheers of western democracies.
I read the source article but I’m not seeing a reference to what you’re quoting? It mentions that the government are planning to create an “independent” regulatory body that oversees media outlets and can issue them fines if they don’t behave in a way that the “independent” body sees fit, i.e. what the current government thinks is right or wrong, but I didn’t see anything about this being actual policy or anything mentioning hamas websites.
That’s the current UK policy, which of course condemns discussion on the massacres of babies (of which no proof has been given and which the White House has been forced to retract statements regarding) as “glorifying terrorism.”
Netanyahu is further to the right than the Tories, is more emotionally invested in the conflict, and has more to lose if pro-Hamas sentiment spreads. Moreover, given the context of how the Israeli government has enforced media laws in the past, it’s not that far of a stretch. The big leap being made I think is that the government is “planning” to do this, not that it’s already done so.
That’s the current UK policy, which of course condemns discussion on the massacres of babies
Does it condemn discussion of Hamas or does it condemn glorification of Hamas? There’s definitely a difference. I would find it hard to believe there’s an explicit law that prevents people discussing the massacres of babies.
From the article:
At a pro-Palestinian rally in Manchester on 8 October, a day after Hamas attacked Israel killing hundreds of civilians, a man wearing a red football shirt with “Palestine” written on the back told the crowd: “We have all seen the scenes and it is the most inspiring act of resistance.”
Emphasis mine. He’s not in trouble for discussing Hamas, he’s in trouble for glorifying the massacre. Not really the same thing as visiting a website.
But anyway, this is a bit of a distraction as we’re talking about Israeli policy, not the UK’s. I was just clarifying that the parent user made a statement as if it were a law, but it’s not, and the link to the article doesn’t mention anything about it being a crime to visit a Hamas website. From what I understand from the article the planning is about fining media outlets that I assume won’t toe the party line, not individual people for visiting websites. Yes, I agree, it’s not a stretch to assume this could be a thing in the future, but based on the linked article it doesn’t seem to be the case right now.
That and the outright censorship you see escalating all over the western world points to one thing - the massive failure of the western propaganda model itself.
Fuck both sides honestly, hamas sucks the most but the israeli goverment and army suck hard and are second only to hamas in the making of this war. Israelies are victims, Palestinens are victims. This sucks.
An Israeli think tank with ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a report on October 17 promoting the “unique and rare opportunity” for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.”
In a press conference, Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, Hosam Naoum, said the al-Ahli al-Arabi Baptist Hospital in Gaza was warned on Saturday, Sunday and Monday by the Israeli army to evacuate. It was then bombed on Tuesday.
Oh wow. They’re really trying to shove words in his mouth. He confirmed the facts he knew to be true, then whoever is asking the questions is trying to put together a narrative.
^At 1:43:50, Finklestein asserts that Israel would bomb a residential area, wait for people to come out and call an ambulance, and then bomb the ambulance.
10-minute video captured by AJArabic around the time the al-Ahli hospital was hit.
As per @Ted55643099:
Explosions on this video: (0:19) hospital. (0:16, 4:25, 4:49) behind and to the left of the hospital. (5:33, 5:56, 9:26, 10:46) behind hospital, most likely the same place. (9:38, 10:51) to the right of the hospital outside of the frame, likely the same place.
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