Say no to authoritarianism, say yes to socialism. Free Palestine 🇵🇸 Everyone deserves Human Rights
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6·11 days agoStrange how even the Israeli intelligence service disagree with you
By June 19, 2024, 37,396 people had been killed in the Gaza Strip since the attack by Hamas and the Israeli invasion in October, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.
In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip. A report from Feb 7, 2024, at the time when the direct death toll was 28 000, estimated that without a ceasefire there would be between 58 260 deaths (without an epidemic or escalation) and 85 750 deaths (if both occurred) by Aug 6, 2024
If you consider international law definitions ‘very unique,’ sure lol
Do you support Apartheid or genocide? Israel is currently doing both. Pro-palestinian people support equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians
0·1 month agoI am voting Harris. This isn’t about me, people want more. Anti-genocide is a line for many.
Are you anti-immigration too? Immigrants aren’t responsible for any crime wave, they’re responsible for less crime per capita than US citizens. Neither are they responsible for bringing drugs like fentanyl over the border, that’s done overwhelmingly by US citizens. Those are the points she’s conceited to right wing framing on, both completely made up and not backed up by any evidence. The crisis at the border is our two-tier immigration system, our inhumane treatment of immigrants such as separating families, and rejecting of those seeking asylum
In that respect, yeah. Not when it comes to capitulating to right wing framing on immigration and having more hawkish rhetoric on foreign policy. People want progressive policies that will improve their lives, she needs more of that
No, she didn’t. She didn’t promise people from Pennsylvania anything to help their situation. She didn’t promise to bring jobs to those towns dependent on oil companies by shifting subsidizing to renewable energy companies in those towns. She needed to convince them that her policies would help improve their access to jobs and improve local development.
I’m not saying Harris needs to ban fracking, I’m saying it’s a much more effective message to promote more opportunities for those towns by improving the subsidizing of renewable energy companies, public and/or private. Their main concern is jobs, which can easily be addressed.
Or give them other job opportunities like in the renewable energy sector? They only want fracking because oil companies exploit those small towns to make them entirely dependent on the oil companies for employment
1·1 month agoHere is the latest Amnesty has on the issue. I don’t know if it constitues genocide, but it it certainly crimes against humanity when it comes to torture and mass imprisonment
1·1 month agoIn terms of the reasons why they chose to attack, these are the three main reasons. Which you can find more about in the three different analysis articles below. In terms of the exact date, I’d say it was due to the shift in IDF forces in the region at that time.
First, the policies of the far-right Israeli government enabling settler violence in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem led to a sense of desperation among Palestinians and growing demands for a reaction. At the same time, the rising tensions in the West Bank caused by these policies necessitated the shift of Israeli forces away from the south and into the north to guard the settlements. This gave Hamas both a justification and an opportunity to attack.
Second, the Hamas leadership felt compelled to act due to the acceleration of Arab-Israeli normalisation. In recent years, this process further diminished the significance of the Palestinian issue for Arab leaders who became less keen on pressuring Israel on this matter.
Third, Hamas was emboldened after it managed to repair its ties with Iran. In recent years, the movement had to reconsider the political position it assumed in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011, in opposition to Iran and its ally, the Syrian regime.
Before October 7, the group not only limited its own rocket attacks on Israel but also publicly punished those who instigated attacks within Gaza to break the fragile ceasefires. Hamas has let the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fight Israel alone, not joining the fray between Israel and the PIJ in August 2022 or in May 2023.
At the same time, there was incendiary far-right political rhetoric and rising levels of violence against Palestinians. Both 2021 and 2022 set records as the deadliest years for Palestinians, as the Netanyahu government green-lit the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and settlers themselves conducted pogroms against Palestinians.
Israel’s focus on the West Bank may also have created an operational opportunity for Hamas. According to Uzi Ben Yitzhak, a retired Israeli general, the Israeli government has deployed most of the regular IDF forces to the West Bank to manage the situation there, leaving only a skeleton force at the Gaza border. The effort to secure permanent Israeli control over the West Bank, in this assessment, created conditions where a Hamas surprise attack could actually succeed.
He’s highlighting the hypocrisy. Israel is directly responsible for the prevalence of this disease during this genocide.
Criticism of the Human Rights Abuses of the Israeli State and Anti-zionism are not antisemitism. You are choosing to be willfully ignorant. Israel does NOT represent all Jewish people, nor does their actions. There have been prominent Jewish people extremely critical of Zionism since it’s inception, are you seriously saying they are antisemitic too?
Israel is the one that intentionally conflates the two in order to deflect from criticizm. When Israel commits war crimes, or human rights abuses, or land grabbing, they are the ones that claim they do so for all Jewish people. When Zionist actions are criticized, they call it antisemitic. The conflation of the two is genuinely antisemitic, as the actions of Israel in no way represent all Jewish people.
If you don’t want to be naive, I suggest you read the reports by human rights organizations. They are not antisemitic, unless you think advocates for a Secular Bi-National State with equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians is also antisemitic, which is insane.
Year before Oct 7 - Jewish Voice for Peace
2023 is ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinian children say human rights groups (Oct 6th)
The Apartheid is very much real, and, while to a much lesser extent than the Palestinian Occupied Territories, also applies to the Palestinian Citizens of Israel
Socio-economic gaps between Palestinian and Jewish Israeli citizens are the result of discriminatory policies pursued over decades. Historically, Israel prevented its Palestinian citizens from accessing livelihoods under its 18-year-long military rule, and used them, at different times, as a source of cheap labour in order to preserve the interests of the Jewish majority. In addition to cruel land seizures, other discriminatory policies have led to Palestinians’ social and economic deprivation: the exclusion of Palestinian localities from high priority areas for development, the discriminatory allocation of land and water for agriculture as well as discriminatory planning and zoning, and the failure to implement major infrastructure development projects in Palestinian communities.
The blockade and Israel’s repeated military offensives have had a heavy toll on Gaza’s essential infrastructure and further debilitated its health system and economy, leaving the area in a state of perpetual humanitarian crisis. Indeed, Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, the majority of whom are children, has created conditions inimical to human life due to shortages of housing, potable water and electricity, and lack of access to essential medicines and medical care, food, educational equipment and building materials.
- Amnesty International Report pg 26-27
Other reports about how Israel is an Apartheid State:
B’TSelem Report with quick Explainer
They really care about (terrorizing) civilians
This is not a normal temporary occupation. The West Bank and Gaza as occupied territories were created by the Ethnic Cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian people from the Zionist Campaign of Plan Dalet starting in 1947. The West Bank, Gaza, and the rest of Israel are all Historic Palestine. The permanent occupation / apartheid is a direct result of Settler Colonialism.
These are not ‘neighboring territories’ like France and Spain would be. Would you also ignore the bantustans of Apartheid South Africa when determining if that government was a dictatorship or not? Or the Native American reservations of America during Manifest Destiny?
It’s about Netanyahu. Are you going to pretend he is responsible for all of that?
Considering he’s part of the Likud party which was created out of the Lehi and Irgun, it’s certainly relevant.
Dictatorship is about having a power against the will of too many citizens, also silencing them, jailing them, killing them etc.
That is the reality for Palestinians, yes
Palestinian citizens are about 20% of Israeli population. Black people are about 14% of the US population. Both of them hold legal citizenships and rights but often face disparities. Does that make the US an apartheid by your logic?
Again, you are conveniently ignoring the Palestinians within the Occupied Territories. And yes, America during Chattel Slavery, where Black people did not have citizenship, was certainly a form of Apartheid.
Sure, if you ignore the discrimination and inequality of the millions of Palestinian citizens of Israel, on top of the millions within the Occupied Territories that have been under Israeli Military Control since 1967. If you ignore all of that, then your criteria of ‘how well government cares about its citizens’ could make sense.
Yet holding elections is not enough. Totalitarian regimes also engage in a process they refer to as “elections,” but this does not make them democracies. Democratic elections must reflect core principles such as equality, liberty and freedom of expression. These allow not only the act of voting itself, but also the free exchange of ideas and meaningful participation in shaping the future. Democratic elections must also ensure one vote for every citizen that is exactly equal to all others, and allow all citizens to run for office, present their platforms and work to further their agendas. Legal restrictions on voting and on running for office must be extremely limited, if at all permitted.
Roughly 5.5 million Palestinian subjects live in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967: about 3.5 million in the West Bank (including roughly 350,000 in East Jerusalem) and some 2 million in the Gaza Strip. None of them are allowed to vote or run for Knesset, and they have no representation in the political institutions that dictate their lives.
Your criteria doesn’t make sense, and ignores the reality of Apartheid. If you consider a democracy based on equality, liberty and freedom of expression, and also consider all aspects of the Apartheid Regime; Israel falls tremendously short of being a Democracy.
The Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it contols (Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.
B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.
President Joe Biden has said that there is “every reason” to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is continuing his assault on Gaza for political gain, appearing to acknowledge that Netanyahu is not interested in pulling out of the region despite the Biden administration’s insistence that the latest ceasefire deal is backed by Israel.
Protesters demanding new elections in Israel clashed with police near the Jerusalem house of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday after he dissolved the government’s War Cabinet, leaving him as the unquestioned decision-maker regarding the eight-month-old conflict in Gaza.
No, there is certainly not ‘ample evidence.’ On the subject of Human Shields, there are some independent reports for past conflicts of Hamas jeopardizing the safety of civilians via Rocket fire in dense urban areas, two instances during Oct 7th, but no independent verification since then so far. None of which absolve Israel of the crime of targeting civilians under international law:
HRW on Laws-of-War Violations 2009
Agency Demands Full Respect for the Sanctity of Its Premises in Gaza - July 2014
HRW - Palestinian Armed Groups’ October 7 Assault on Israel
Israel/OPT: Israeli attacks targeting Hamas and other armed group fighters that killed scores of displaced civilians in Rafah should be investigated as war crimes
HRW - Gaza: Unlawful Israeli Hospital Strikes Worsen Health Crisis
Additionally, there is extensive independent verification of Israel using Palestinians as Human Shields: IDF uses Human Shields, including Children (2013 Report), and in the latest war Israel “Systematically” Uses Gaza Children as Human Shields, Rights Group Finds