Israel at War

[Big RR]

Eradicate them with gas; now where have I heard that before?

[BoSoxGal]

Jarl apparently falls into the camp of people like the old man in Illinois watching right wing news who decided to murder a six year old Palestinian American boy and to try to murder his mother, too.

I have never been so glad to be childless, this whole fucking world is a toxic dump in so many ways thanks to Homo sapiens.

[Econoline]

Then eradicate them. No prisoners, no survivors, just a couple billion cubic feet of nerve gas.

"Them"????? But who is "them", precisely?

Hamas? Every living being in Gaza? Every Palestinian any where in Gaza AND the West Bank?? Any Palestinian anywhere in the world? Any Muslim anywhere in the world?

(Will there be a "Mischling Test" for those of "mixed blood"?)

[Jarlaxle]

Then eradicate them. No prisoners, no survivors, just a couple billion cubic feet of nerve gas.

"Them"????? But who is "them", precisely?

Hamas? Every living being in Gaza? Every Palestinian any where in Gaza AND the West Bank?? Any Palestinian anywhere in the world? Any Muslim anywhere in the world?

(Will there be a "Mischling Test" for those of "mixed blood"?)

At the moment, Gaza.

[Jarlaxle]

Jarl apparently falls into the camp of people like the old man in Illinois watching right wing news who decided to murder a six year old Palestinian American boy and to try to murder his mother, too.

I have never been so glad to be childless, this whole fucking world is a toxic dump in so many ways thanks to Homo sapiens.

That's bullshit.

[BoSoxGal]

I’ve been trying to start this thread for the last few hours but don’t even know what to say.

The horror.


What awful things will happen next?

I can’t watch the news or even open it on my phone it’s all so terrifying and despairing.

Someone tell me if they start launching nukes. Until then I’m going into a streaming binge cycle. I’m going to try being one of those people who doesn’t even pay attention.

[Econoline]

Then eradicate them. No prisoners, no survivors, just a couple billion cubic feet of nerve gas.

"Them"????? But who is "them", precisely?

Hamas? Every living being in Gaza? Every Palestinian any where in Gaza AND the West Bank?? Any Palestinian anywhere in the world? Any Muslim anywhere in the world?

(Will there be a "Mischling Test" for those of "mixed blood"?)

At the moment, Gaza.

I'd be willing to bet that, at the moment, everyone involved in planning and leading the Hamas attacks on Israel is far away from any danger posed by this upcoming IDF retaliatory attack.

It is conventional wisdom in the USA halls of military planing that in a war on terrorism, where the terrorists are integrated within the larger society, that killing ONE non-involved civilian, produces Fifteen new terrorist recruits. In the current world, the Carthage solution is not possible. Gaza, Jordan, Syria, Sudan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, etc will all quickly become part of this new Carthage.

And that was probably the whole point of the Hamas attacks: to provoke an Israeli over-reaction—which will quickly raise a large number of new terrorist recruits.

[Sue U]

I can’t watch the news or even open it on my phone it’s all so terrifying and despairing.

I totally get it. I've been skipping and scrolling past war news since late last week. I just want it to stop.

[Burning Petard]

BB wrote: " The problem in Israel and the Gaza right now is eerily similar to the quandary the US found itself in during the Vietnam conflict — or just about any other military incursion we (the US) has found ourself in since then."

Gee, BB I am sorry you think this. I thought you were old enough to remember the pertinent events during the US military involvement in Viet Nam. I was of the proper age to serve then, but proudly clutched my DD214 indicating I was released from active duty just in time to avoid advanced training in jungle warfare..

I do not remember any instance of Ho Chi Minh telling the world America should be wiped from the face of the earth, or Viet Nam sending rockets, drones, mortar fire, no people sneaking around bedrooms or farms to kill American children in their sleep. Not even in Hawaii or Okinawa. Even in the 'Gulf of Tonkin Incident' that was so loudly discussed on the floor of congress Viet Nam did not fire the first shot. Rather there is pretty good evidence that they did not fire any shots at all.

I fail to see an eerily similarity in the actions of USA then or Israel now. Now, since the morning of Saturday, the Seventh of October, the people of Palestine and the people of Israel both seem to have no choice except mutually assured destruction. Perhaps Allah and Jehovah can step in together and stop it. I have no other suggestions.

snailgate.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I think you'll find, snail, that BB was not claiming parity of actions between Hamas and the NVA. His point surely was about the nature of a guerilla war - which the Viet Cong were fighting - and the degree to which superior metal/supplies/training/equipment is rendered ineffective. Mi Lai proved that the only real way (in some troops minds) to separate the guerillas from the peasants was to shoot them both. It's not a new thought. The British army and gov 't had to deal with the same situation in N Ireland with equally unpleasant results for many. Mao Tse Dong used it to his advantage in China to overcome the Nationalist armies.

The dilemma for Israel, with all its military superiority, is how to kill Hamas without killing everyone who looks Palestinian and drawing more people into the conflict. That's what happened in Vietnam too. With the USA looking more likely to retain power, North Vietnam was drawn in. Not all that reluctantly of course. But it could all have been avoided post WW2 if the Viet Nationalists had been accorded their rightful role in the undivided country of Annam. Ho Chi Minh was an ally in the Big One and was turned into an enemy by the French desire to continue to rule and then USA fear of communism (read China), which Uncle HO also feared.

IMO

[Bicycle Bill]

I think you'll find, snail, that BB was not claiming parity of actions between Hamas and the NVA.   His point surely was about the nature of a guerilla war - which the Viet Cong were fighting - and the degree to which superior metal/supplies/training/equipment is rendered ineffective.
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.
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The dilemma for Israel, with all its military superiority, is how to kill Hamas without killing everyone who looks Palestinian and drawing more people into the conflict. That's what happened in Vietnam too.

Thank you, Meade.   That is exactly the point I was trying to make.

-"BB"-

[liberty]

Eradicate them with gas; now where have I heard that before?

Israel doesn’t need to use poison gas since CO2 is one and a half times heavier than air; all they need to do is take out the ventilation systems to the tunnels, that will do it. Without ventilation ever breath that the occupants take will produce the gas that will kill them. And most likely the ventilation systems are in nearby buildings; when the building come down so does the ventilation. Without ventilation Hamas would eventually have to come out of the tunnels or die. If Israel has enough drones to keep the area surveyed well, the IDF will be able to kill them when they come out.

[BoSoxGal]

Opinion: Many Palestinians in Gaza hate Hamas. My father certainly did.

Editor’s note: Yasmine Mohammed is the author of “Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam.” She is also the president of the nonprofit organization Free Hearts Free Minds. The views expressed in this commentary are her own.

When my father, who was born and raised in Gaza, was still alive, he often spoke out against Hamas, calling it the ugly face of the Palestinian struggle everywhere.

Since Hamas’ attack on Israel, as I have read post after post on social media referring to Hamas as freedom fighters involved in anti-colonial resistance, I have been struck by the devastating weight of this lie. It is an insult to Palestinians to refer to these terrorists as our freedom fighters.

At the hands of Hamas, the Jewish people have endured horrors not seen since the Holocaust. And, like the Nazis, Hamas does not view Jewish people as human beings. According to its 1988 covenant, every Jew must be eradicated from this earth. Its goal is not the genocide of Jewish people in Israel; its goal is the genocide of all Jewish people on this planet, period.

My father hated that Hamas had dominated the conversation and positioned itself as the face of Gaza worldwide. My dad was born and raised in the Gaza Strip and lived there until he went to Egypt to attend university. Although he left Egypt for San Francisco and later moved to Montreal, he always carried Gaza in his heart.

He had a Facebook page and a YouTube channel dedicated to sharing images and videos of a Gaza before it was overrun with terrorists. There is nothing he hated more than Hamas. In words he posted to social media: “May God curse the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, they have brought us nothing but backwardness in our Arab societies.”

He would not be surprised to see the massacres of families, of babies, of the elderly by Hamas because he knew its brutality already. Like many people from Gaza, my father knew that if you spoke up against these tyrannical oppressors, you were swiftly dealt with. And your family, too, for good measure. Hamas has never shied away from violence.

To throw all Gazans in the same bucket as Hamas is a grave insult — one that people on both sides of the political spectrum are committing.

Many people on the left, for example, conflate Hamas with all Palestinians and then deem them all the oppressed — the minority group, the victims, the besieged. Hamas is happy with this misguided and confused perspective because it allows the group to hide under the umbrella of “oppression” to justify its violence. It would rather, of course, be seen as freedom fighters than terrorists.

Among the hard right, many people are conflating Palestinians with Hamas to justify the flattening of Gaza. While cutting power and water to civilians violates international law, cutting water and electricity to terrorists is justified, according to that line of thinking.

The truth is, Hamas is not Gaza, and Gaza is not Hamas. Gaza is an area of land with people who are trying to do the best that they can to survive under abysmal circumstances. Gazans are just human beings, like their Israeli neighbors. They want to live in a peaceful environment where they do not have to be concerned about the safety of their children. While there are many Gazans who say they support Hamas, a poll conducted in July showed that 50% of Gazans agreed that “Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction, and instead accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.”

Hamas stands next to al Qaeda and ISIS in perpetuating deadly terror attacks against civilians. I believe Israel has every right to protect its people from a vicious, violent and ugly terrorist group. Jewish history is fraught, with generation after generation having to face various groups wanting to eradicate the Jewish population.

I am heartbroken, of course, that Gazans will now have to pay the price for Hamas’ depravity. It is brutal and horrific. War always is. It was also brutal and horrific when al Qaeda was responsible for the loss of so many Iraqi lives or when ISIS was responsible for the loss of so many Syrian lives.

Sadly, Hamas will likely continue its destruction. Its funding will still flow in from Iran, though perhaps it will need to rebrand under a different name. Like the mythic Hydra, it will grow two heads when this one is cut off. It is Gazans who will never recover. It is Gazans who will have to give up on their dream of a homeland forever.

If you want to help Gazans, conflating them all with a terrorist group is not the way. Instead, you can help them to get out from under the tyranny of Hamas. Share the voices of peace-loving Palestinians such as activist Bassem Eid. Elevate the words of secular politicians who do not use religion to sow division and encourage hate of the other.

I fear none of us will ever get to see Gaza as an independent state freed from the clutches of terrorists. I will never see my family’s two buildings there that my father so desperately wanted me to visit. They probably won’t be left standing. I will likely never set eyes on his beloved olive trees. They will return to the earth as he has.

It could have been so different. Ignorance and religious zealotry ripped away any chance that Gaza had. Mercifully, my dad died thinking that one day his dream of freeing his homeland from the clutches of Hamas so the Gazan people could breathe and flourish might be realized. He didn’t have to endure the heartbreak of seeing the reality playing out today.

When my dad died, I mourned mostly for what could have been in my relationship with him. Now I am mourning for what could have been for his homeland.

[Big RR]

You really want that blind and toothless world, don't you Lib?

But don't worry, paraphrasing what they said in Star Wars, the tighter you clench your fist, the more pleople slip through your fingers. At least while there are people left (OK, that part was mine). But sometimes there is truth in fantasy.

[BoSoxGal]

Okay so I tuned out yesterday and watched a bunch of mindless crap and today I tuned back in and apparently there was a summit scheduled which doubtless our country was instrumental in putting together but then it got canceled because a rocket was ‘accidentally’ launched into a hospital killing hundreds of Palestinians?

Does anyone really think that rocket was Israeli?

Does anyone really think it was an accident?


I would love to unleash a lifetime of rage instilled by being crushed by misogyny on say, 5-10 Hamas members. I think I have enough rage that I could easily take that many of them. Let’s arrange a summit, whiny murdering boys.

[Bicycle Bill]

I would love to unleash a lifetime of rage instilled by being crushed by misogyny on say, 5-10 Hamas members. I think I have enough rage that I could easily take that many of them. Let’s arrange a summit, whiny murdering boys.

Spoken like a true man-hating bitch.   You could take the statements you made about Hamas and just substitute 'men' wherever the word 'Jews' appears.   Yet on those rare occasions when you do interact with me, you keep telling me that MY attitude and mindset on various topics needs to change — while you blithely and almost proudly continue to rail against misogyny, patriarchy, men in general, how they've fucked up your life...   and constantly remind us how, despite these seemingly insurmountable odds and with everybody standing against you, you've courageously triumphed and shown those bastards (at least in your own mind).  Hello, Mrs. Trump.

You're beginning to sound like (beginning to sound like?   You've been playing that same one-stringed fiddle almost as long as I've seen your posts on this board!) articles from the Root, the Grio, or the Atlanta Black Star, whose writings taken en masse would make it sound that black people don't ever do anything wrong and are still being put down at every turn.

-"BB"-

[liberty]

I would love to unleash a lifetime of rage instilled by being crushed by misogyny on say, 5-10 Hamas members. I think I have enough rage that I could easily take that many of them. Let’s arrange a summit, whiny murdering boys.

Spoken like a true man-hating bitch.   You could take the statements you made about Hamas and just substitute 'men' wherever the word 'Jews' appears.   Yet on those rare occasions when you do interact with me, you keep telling me that MY attitude and mindset on various topics needs to change — while you blithely and almost proudly continue to rail against misogyny, patriarchy, men in general, how they've fucked up your life...   and constantly remind us how, despite these seemingly insurmountable odds and with everybody standing against you, you've courageously triumphed and shown those bastards (at least in your own mind).  Hello, Mrs. Trump.

You're beginning to sound like (beginning to sound like?   You've been playing that same one-stringed fiddle almost as long as I've seen your posts on this board!) articles from the Root, the Grio, or the Atlanta Black Star, whose writings taken en masse would make it sound that black people don't ever do anything wrong and are still being put down at every turn.

-"BB"-

I don’t know Bill she doesn’t seem like such a man-hater to me. She’s liberal but not all liberals are bad; some are just misguided. She carries some baggage from her childhood the same as I do. When I was young, I hated my stepfather with an intensity that was dangerous, but in time I got over it. I still have an intense hatred of bullies and thugs and arbitrary power in general. Sometimes our childhoods follow us for life, but for the most part I overcame pretty well, and I hold out hopes it will be true for BSG as well.

I am curious just what kind of person BSG really is; I might just take $1000 out of my contingency fund and spend a day in her city that is if she is willing to meet me in a public place with no real names and no photographs and a promise to keep any personal information confidential.

BSG, if you are willing to meet in a restaurant you can get a free meal out of it, but I can’t promise you a five-star restaurant, I am not an extravagant person, some large public place like Red Lobster or Olive Garden would be what I’m thinking. This is Conditional on me being able to do it for under $1000 and my wife letting me do it.

[BoSoxGal]

liberty you can buy me dinner at Pagliuca’s in the north end of Boston anytime you like - it’s not very expensive and since I’m at most a single glass of wine drinker, I’m a fairly cheap date. Name the day and time and I’ll meet you there - bring your wife so there is someone at the table we both enjoy talking to (assuming she is up for the travel).

I’m not sure that anyone ever ‘gets over’ watching their mother raped and beaten when they were just a toddler or preschool aged, nevermind being beaten and cruelly bullied themselves. But even if I’d been lucky enough to have a loving healthy father, I would still have been outraged by the misogyny I have witnessed and experienced my whole life in the world outside the home and I’m quite sure that most if not all women have similar life stories and some are just better at keeping zipped about it (because we’ve all been socialized to know that what men want is to see our pretty smiling uncomplaining faces and not to hear our criticisms of them or their pig brothers) and some even internalize the misogyny so much that they believe they deserve it and that this is just how life has to be because men and women are different blah blah blah and some of them even turn into the kind of women who get off on being cruel to other women just as they’ve learned to from the culture or from the men in their own families.

I think I’ve said it before but it’s worth saying again: I make ZERO apologies for being angry and rageful and fed up with men and their misogyny.

I’m 53 and while I had several opportunities over the years I eschewed marriage because I couldn’t abide the unequal division of labor that even most of the progressive men expect (see tons of social science research and the many dozens of marriages, many of them ‘good’, which I’ve observed over the decades) - I just don’t have the bullshit tolerance that some women have and I’m far from alone or ‘damaged’ in this regard. I’m just grateful for the positive single female role models (maiden aunts and divorced mothers of friends and widowed women who never ever looked again, etc.) I had in my youth and beyond who showed me there was a different way to live and that domestic servitude to a man who expects his whims and wants and interests to take precedence was not the only choice.

I got to live my life like a man, and with every passing year I am more and more grateful for that. And I’m grateful for a changing world that is making it possible for more and more women to make that choice and no, I don’t feel sorry for the INCEL freaks who are so offensive to women that they cannot win the right to have sex with one because they are just that repulsive and I don’t mean physically.

Beyond the regular experience of a woman in this culture which I have enjoyed (ha!), I have also spent thousands of hours buried in the toxic violence and fallout of violence that men perpetrate on women. Imagine if you’d ever spent an hour - much less dozens - looking at the photographic evidence of adult men raping toddler girls, likely their own daughters, and posting it online for other sick perverts to see. Imagine if you’d spent dozens and dozens and dozens of hours dealing with the photographic and other evidence of men’s sexual violence on women’s bodies, or their rageful violence on women’s bodies - would you be just a tiny bit sick of misogyny?

Sure, sure - the story goes ‘not all men.’ But sorry guys, ALL you motherfuckers are complicit. It’s been tens of thousands of years and you can’t rein in your sick cousins? Sick violent man culture is grown among men, and far too many of you don’t say anything about it 99% of the time across the course of your lives when you have the chance to - don’t want to rock the boat, or be a not cool bro instead of a cool bro. But some of you will sure take every opportunity to rage at women who are MAN HATERS for simply refusing to be silent about the sick violence of men which destroys the lives of tens of millions of women and children. Don’t make me feel bad!!!! The whiny mantoddlers cry.

Whatever. Does BB honestly think I give a flying fuck about his INCEL opinion of me or any woman or girl on this planet? It would be laughable if not so pathetic.

We need to figure out how to solve the problem of testosterone- it’s valuable and important in some quantity, but it is at the root of the mass of most human violence and I’m sick to death of it.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Sounds more than bad growing up, BSG. Sorry for that. Are you convinced that living like a man is a good thing? Who is the role model for that?

Maybe I don't hang around with the scum you seem to live among. I'd agree that there's no equal division of labor in the home, even mine, but we (Margareta and I) don't think that's even possible. Example: she does all the thinking for meals and writing an indecipherable shopping list. I take the list and do the shopping and phoning home to ask "what are cffgrtls?" We split the cooking but I do the dishes - don't allow my wife anywhere near a dishwasher or the sink most of the time. Women can't pack a dishwasher or the back of a car properly.

Now she does the laundry - in he machine and dryer - I bring it down, fold it and bring it back up when its dry. I put my own stuff away and place hers in the approved location pending her systematic sub-arrangement. I drive. I'm a rotten passenger. On long trips, I allow her to ask if she can drive for an hour or two and am responsible for saying "No. I'm fine". She does the gardening. I kill things, including plants, so she's happy if I don't.

I find out why her computer has gone wrong and fix it. Ditto fixing other things. She plans how the place looks. I mess it up. We rarely disagree with any vehemence but when we do, I am wrong. Or if not wrong, then responsible for the apologetic reconciliation. My wife does 100% of the financial jiggery-pokery. She prefers me not to touch money or an financial instruments.

We try to be servants to each other. Most of the men and women I know have similar working relationships with their respective spouses.

Which causes me to wonder how many awful people with whom you come into contact.

[BoSoxGal]

‘An all-American boy’: Classmates mourn six-year-old Muslim boy stabbed to death

Carrying signs including the words “I am not a threat”, classmates and friends of six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume stood on an Illinois basketball court on Tuesday night at an emotional vigil for the Muslim boy stabbed to death in a weekend hate crime.

Hundreds of adults, including Dilawar Syed, the highest-ranked Muslim official in the Biden administration, joined the children in Plainfield to pay tribute to the child. The Palestinian American boy died after he and his mother were stabbed by their landlord, whom authorities say was fueled by rage over the Israel-Hamas war.

Joseph Czuba, 71, is charged with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of a hate crime and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon for Saturday’s knife attack that killed Wadea and seriously injured his mother, Hanaan Shahin, 32, at their apartment.

The suspect allegedly shouted “You Muslims must die!” during the attack.

On Tuesday, a succession of speakers paid tribute to a boy known for his smile and love of basketball, and who was born in the US to parents originally from a village in the West Bank.

“What you see is an all-American boy,” Juhie Faheem, a therapist and member of the Will county mental health board, said, according to CNN.

“He didn’t wear a sign or necklace stating he was Muslim. He wore a smile on his face, stating he was a child, a child filled with love and not any hate.”

“With Wadea gone, I don’t think there’s room for me to speak English any more,” he said.

Pointing to a displayed giant photograph that has become the most widely shared image of his son, celebrating his sixth birthday just eight days before his death, and holding up curled fingers, he added: “Do you know what Wadea is doing in this picture? He was waiting for me to complete the half of the heart he was making.”

He was hugged by Cynthia Glass, mother of Wadea’s best friend Dexter. Speaking through tears, she said: “This is about two boys who will never get to play together again. They will never, ever get to sit next to each other in class again. They will never get to ride the bus together again.

“We need to learn from these two sweet, sweet little kids.”

Syed, an official in the Small Business Administration, echoed Joe Biden’s words following the attack.

“President Biden has been very, very clear. There is no place for hate in America,” he said. “The president has and will continue to do everything in his power to fight Islamophobia and antisemitism in our nation.”

Syed was interrupted by shouts from the crowd, before community leaders stepped in to ask for calm and to focus on the victims.

“One of the elements of this village is a desire by this community, and so many thousands in this community, to make a statement rejecting hate because that is not who we are as Plainfield,” John Argoudelis, Plainfield’s mayor, said.

Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), remembered Wadea as a typical six-year-old who enjoyed coloring, playing with toys and any game with a ball.

“He loved his parents, he loved his family and his friends, he loved life and he was looking forward to a long, healthy, prosperous life,” he said.

Rehab said the boy’s mother, who remains in a hospital in Joliet, is “dealing with her injuries, dealing with her emotional trauma and dealing with the biggest hole that can never be filled, the biggest gap of all, the loss of her child”.

The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, and the Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, met the boy’s family following a vigil at the hospital on Monday. Wadea’s mother was unable to attend his funeral or Tuesday’s gathering in Plainfield. She is expected to recover.

Czuba remains in custody in Will county after an initial court appearance on Monday. Court documents allege he knocked on the family’s door on Saturday morning and began arguing with Wadea’s mother about the Israel-Hamas war.

After Shahin suggested they pray for peace, the argument became violent. Shahin was stabbed, and locked herself in a bathroom and called 911, while Czuba attacked the boy with the knife and stabbed him 26 times, it is alleged.

His next court appearance is scheduled for 30 October.