Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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malchior
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by malchior »

Defiant wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 6:15 pm
malchior wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 5:08 pm Of course the alternative is don't do it.
If history is any guide, they'll still get blamed when Palestinians die at Hamas's hands. Palestinians are always going to have the better optics.

(and there's only so long any country is going to be able to not respond to rocket fire).
Right but knocking down an apartment block seems...a tad much. They very much look like Goliath when they do things like that.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Fair enough.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by Kurth »

malchior wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 6:20 pm
Defiant wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 6:15 pm
malchior wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 5:08 pm Of course the alternative is don't do it.
If history is any guide, they'll still get blamed when Palestinians die at Hamas's hands. Palestinians are always going to have the better optics.

(and there's only so long any country is going to be able to not respond to rocket fire).
Right but knocking down an apartment block seems...a tad much. They very much look like Goliath when they do things like that.
That's not entirely unintentional on Israel's part. Take a look at a current map of the Middle East if you ever need a reminder of who Israel's neighbors are and why it might feel like it needs to demonstrate that it carries a Goliath-sized stick.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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dbt1949 wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 12:40 pm It boils down to the Jews got treated like shit in WW2 and decided to go back to the "old country" which didn't exist anymore because they had all left centuries before looking for a better life. They think god has given them this land for eternity.
They didn't leave on their own accord. After two rebellions against Rome, most Jews in Palestine were either killed or removed. Christians were predominate until the Muslim conquest.
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. – G.K. Chesterton
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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The best move for the Palestinians as this point would be to reject the two state solution and demand full rights as citizens of Israel and really push for that very hard. Dissolve the Palestinian government and all of its agencies, police forces, govt structures to show you are serious and go full on for unification and citizenship. Israel would freak out. I suspect Israel would give up a lot to prevent that public relations disaster. What Western nation could oppose a people just demanding the basic right to be represented and have a say in the government controlling their territory? At that point, regardless of what you think of the charge today, no one could deny that Israel would be an apartheid state, and this would create huge problems for Israel.
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. – G.K. Chesterton
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Grifman wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 1:55 am Dissolve the Palestinian government and all of its agencies, police forces, govt structures to show you are serious
Even if the Palestinian Authority would want to give up it's power, wouldn't that be cutting their nose to spite their face?

Unless it's coupled with a miraculous end to violence and terrorist groups (I imagine it would have the opposite effect and allow Hamas or another group to take over the West Bank), Israel would still have an excuse for continuing the occupation. And even if there was an end to it, the humanitarian crisis that would be exacerbated if Israel withdrew would be another excuse on top of that.
What Western nation could oppose a people just demanding the basic right to be represented and have a say in the government controlling their territory?
What nation, indeed
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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I laughed seeing the news from there in respect to the Palestinian leader.."We fired hundreds of rockets at them and they slapped us....slapped US!! Plz stop the bullies.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Defiant wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 6:47 am
Grifman wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 1:55 am Dissolve the Palestinian government and all of its agencies, police forces, govt structures to show you are serious
Even if the Palestinian Authority would want to give up it's power, wouldn't that be cutting their nose to spite their face?

Unless it's coupled with a miraculous end to violence and terrorist groups (I imagine it would have the opposite effect and allow Hamas or another group to take over the West Bank), Israel would still have an excuse for continuing the occupation. And even if there was an end to it, the humanitarian crisis that would be exacerbated if Israel withdrew would be another excuse on top of that.
What Western nation could oppose a people just demanding the basic right to be represented and have a say in the government controlling their territory?
What nation, indeed
The Palestinian Authority has periodically threatened to dissolve itself, basically because the PA police does most of the heavy lifting keeping order in the West Bank. If Israel had to use the IDF / Israeli police to keep order there, that would be a nightmare for them in ten different ways. So the threat of self-dissolution is one source of bargaining leverage for the Palestinians with Israel.

As to switching to petitioning for equal rights in one state, that is another threat that a lot of Israelis are worried about, in terms of staying as a Jewish state. I imagine the domestic political aspect of it for the Palestinian Authority is tricky, though - I don't think many Palestinians want to start calling themselves "Israeli", and if they try to claim equal rights as part of a state called "Palestine" that would make the international politics complicated.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Defiant wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 6:47 am Even if the Palestinian Authority would want to give up it's power, wouldn't that be cutting their nose to spite their face?
Why, what is your goal? Maintaining power for your organization or obtaining political rights for your people?
Unless it's coupled with a miraculous end to violence and terrorist groups (I imagine it would have the opposite effect and allow Hamas or another group to take over the West Bank), Israel would still have an excuse for continuing the occupation. And even if there was an end to it, the humanitarian crisis that would be exacerbated if Israel withdrew would be another excuse on top of that.
I'm saying what the Palestinians should do if they were smart, that includes Hamas. I'm not saying what is likely to happen.
What Western nation could oppose a people just demanding the basic right to be represented and have a say in the government controlling their territory?
What nation, indeed
Just because two things are similar do not mean that they are the same. Comparing internal US politics is to the international outrage what would occur if people peacefully sought their political rights is absurd.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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El Guapo wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 11:49 am

The Palestinian Authority has periodically threatened to dissolve itself, basically because the PA police does most of the heavy lifting keeping order in the West Bank. If Israel had to use the IDF / Israeli police to keep order there, that would be a nightmare for them in ten different ways. So the threat of self-dissolution is one source of bargaining leverage for the Palestinians with Israel.

But it would come at an extremely high cost to themselves and the Palestinians and would be a humanitarian nightmare and it would give extremists an opportunity to take control. Plus, given the amount of corruption in the PA, they'd lose all the bribes and other benefits they have now. I'm skeptical they would want to give that up to become like Gaza or worse.
As to switching to petitioning for equal rights in one state, that is another threat that a lot of Israelis are worried about, in terms of staying as a Jewish state. I imagine the domestic political aspect of it for the Palestinian Authority is tricky, though - I don't think many Palestinians want to start calling themselves "Israeli", and if they try to claim equal rights as part of a state called "Palestine" that would make the international politics complicated.
A one state solution is no solution to this dilemma, and will just result in civil war.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Grifman wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 12:58 pm
Why, what is your goal? Maintaining power for your organization or obtaining political rights for your people?
Well, for the PA, based on history I would imagine it's more about maintaining power for your organization than obtaining political rights. But I imagine even they would have a goal of not having their home turn into a humanitarian catastrophe as a priority somewhere up there.
I'm saying what the Palestinians should do if they were smart, that includes Hamas. I'm not saying what is likely to happen.
That seems to be amazingly wishful thinking to think it even remotely possible. But lets say, for arguments sake, that the Palestinians dissolve their institutions and terrorist groups and put down their weapons. That would just give Israel the opportunity to draw their own border (rather than negotiate for one), end the occupation and withdraw from the rest of the territories. (Obviously, there might be reasons it might not do that, like ultraright wing nationalists unwilling to do so, or in order to address the massive humanitarian crisis that would be on it's borders, but ultimately I don't think this move would help the Palestinians).
Comparing internal US politics is to the international outrage what would occur if people peacefully sought their political rights is absurd.
Why does this case of "a people just demanding the basic right to be represented" count as "internal US politics"?
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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When I was in the army we had mortar tracking radars. You would think in this day and age the Israelis could be a little more accurate with their counter battery fire and maybe cut down on civilian casualties.
But they would have to care about Palestinians for that to happen I suppose.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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dbt1949 wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 11:19 pm When I was in the army we had mortar tracking radars. You would think in this day and age the Israelis could be a little more accurate with their counter battery fire and maybe cut down on civilian casualties.
But they would have to care about Palestinians for that to happen I suppose.
Israel claims its Iron Dome has a 90% success rate. Problem is if Hamas launches 300 rockets, 30 are going to hit, and a few of those hits are going to hurt.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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I'm not sure how completely the missiles and rockets are obliterated, but it seems like even the debris from the hits could hurt.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by El Guapo »

Kraken wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 12:50 am
dbt1949 wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 11:19 pm When I was in the army we had mortar tracking radars. You would think in this day and age the Israelis could be a little more accurate with their counter battery fire and maybe cut down on civilian casualties.
But they would have to care about Palestinians for that to happen I suppose.
Israel claims its Iron Dome has a 90% success rate. Problem is if Hamas launches 300 rockets, 30 are going to hit, and a few of those hits are going to hurt.
You're kind of talking about different things. I think dbt is talking about Israel's return fire on Palestinians.

One other thing is that for Hamas, Palestinian civilian casualties are a feature not a bug, since it helps build domestic support for the most part and helps a lot with generating international sympathy and anti-Israel hostility. Hence they intentionally fire from civilian areas.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by Defiant »

Alefroth wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 1:55 am I'm not sure how completely the missiles and rockets are obliterated, but it seems like even the debris from the hits could hurt.
No doubt, but probably a lot less than the alternative. Sometimes, when trying to save lives, damage is caused. See: Injuries from airbags.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by Defiant »

So last night, the IDF tweeted this tweet:


IDF air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip.
That led the international media to report that Israel had ground forces in the Gaza Strip.

(The Hebrew version of the tweet did not say they were attacking in the Gaza Strip, just that they were attacking the Gaza strip)

Only Israeli forces weren't in the Gaza strip - the tweet was incorrect (or at least poorly phrased and misleading).


Instead, Israel spent the night attacking the Hamas's tunnels:
Some 160 aircraft flying simultaneously conducted a massive attack on a network of tunnels dug by the Hamas terror group under the northern Gaza Strip around midnight Thursday in the largest Israeli strike since the outbreak of fighting earlier this week, the military said Friday.
Some are suggesting that the whole blunder was really a ruse to get Hamas members to think Israel was attacking and hide in those tunnels, where Israel could attack them. But given Israel's history of not doing well when it comes to the media and PR, I'm thinking it was just a blunder.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Defiant wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 9:30 am
Alefroth wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 1:55 am I'm not sure how completely the missiles and rockets are obliterated, but it seems like even the debris from the hits could hurt.
No doubt, but probably a lot less than the alternative. Sometimes, when trying to save lives, damage is caused. See: Injuries from airbags.
For sure. I wasn't trying to imply a rocket exploding on your roof was preferable.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by Jag »

Defiant wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 10:32 am So last night, the IDF tweeted this tweet:


IDF air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip.
That led the international media to report that Israel had ground forces in the Gaza Strip.

(The Hebrew version of the tweet did not say they were attacking in the Gaza Strip, just that they were attacking the Gaza strip)

Only Israeli forces weren't in the Gaza strip - the tweet was incorrect (or at least poorly phrased and misleading).


Instead, Israel spent the night attacking the Hamas's tunnels:
Some 160 aircraft flying simultaneously conducted a massive attack on a network of tunnels dug by the Hamas terror group under the northern Gaza Strip around midnight Thursday in the largest Israeli strike since the outbreak of fighting earlier this week, the military said Friday.
Some are suggesting that the whole blunder was really a ruse to get Hamas members to think Israel was attacking and hide in those tunnels, where Israel could attack them. But given Israel's history of not doing well when it comes to the media and PR, I'm thinking it was just a blunder.
Pretty sure it was intentional subterfuge. It drove Hamas and their missiles into the bunkers which Israel then attacked with bunker busters.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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It always amuses me when the government manipulates the media for it's own design.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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The Isrealis just destroyed the bulidng where the AP and other media outlets are in Gaza. Not a good look there.

They rolled up orders everyone out and leveled it. I don't know what the plan is here. They hit a refugee camp and now this. They're very much losing all high ground.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Israel shared intelligence with the US showing how Hamas operated inside the same building with the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem said on Sunday.
“We showed them the smoking gun proving Hamas worked out of that building,” a source close to Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said. “I understand they found the explanation satisfactory.”
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israe ... say-668303
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Well in that case they could have destroyed the furniture and wrote graffiti all over the walls.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Defiant wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 9:30 am
Israel shared intelligence with the US showing how Hamas operated inside the same building with the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem said on Sunday.
They could have shown the US a paper napkin with the words "Hamas was there." and we would have found it satisfactory. I mean, our government is not exactly a disinterested party. Will they be sharing this with any other country, or the AP, who disputes this claim?

Cause otherwise....
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Defiant wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 9:30 am
Israel shared intelligence with the US showing how Hamas operated inside the same building with the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem said on Sunday.
“We showed them the smoking gun proving Hamas worked out of that building,” a source close to Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said. “I understand they found the explanation satisfactory.”
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israe ... say-668303
The answer is destroy the whole building? They claim the US is satisfied but US politicians are condemning it. I want to support them but they have to be smarter than this. They just handed Hamas another propaganda victory. Notably countries that were moving to normalization with Israel in the middle east were chastised as fools by other Muslim nations. Maybe the rocket attacks end but Israel may be less safe long-term as a result.

Times of Israel
“A building that has Hamas and Islamic Jihad assets in it needs to be brought down.”

The spokesperson adds that this operation was meant to deter terror groups from maintaining offices alongside media outlets in the future.

“If Hamas and the Islamic Jihad think that the media are their shield, then in the next operation in Gaza, we’ll find that media outlets’ offices are going to be popping up as covers for terrorist assets,” he says.
I think it'll have the opposite effect. Hamas was taught that they need to find ways to get Israel to attack the press.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Uh your comment is confusing because you quote yourself and attribute it to me.

I give Israel the benefit of the doubt based on repeated previous vindications of Israel in the past in similar scenarios, and the Biden administration being satisfied with the intelligence that would satisfy me.

As to the question, from elsewhere in the article:
The US was the only country to inquire about the IDF strike on the building, which the military said housed Hamas military intelligence offices, as well as AP and Al Jazeera, other news outlets, and other offices and apartments.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Someone is lying.
The Associated Press says in a statement that it has not seen any “indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building” where its Gaza bureau was located and destroyed earlier today by the IDF.

The wire agency calls on Israel to provide evidence justifying the leveling of the building.
It's probably the AP. :wink:
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Defiant wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 12:00 pm Uh your comment is confusing because you quote yourself and attribute it to me.
Fair. I did it quickly and didn't realize I messed it up.
I give Israel the benefit of the doubt based on repeated previous vindications of Israel in the past in similar scenarios, and the Biden administration being satisfied with the intelligence that would satisfy me.
I'm not questioning them on whether Hamas was present or not. I'm questioning whether it is wise to destroy a building with such obvious political ramifications. It looks disproportionate, unnecessary, and it's just terrible, terrible optics. That's what I'm getting at. There must have been a better way.

The NY Times article is a view into the optics. The article is less than flattering for the IDF. I think this was a pretty significant blunder tbh that'll haunt them.
The prominent 12-story building in Gaza City that was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday not only housed the offices of media organizations including The Associated Press and Al Jazeera.

It also offered a vantage point for the world on Gaza, as A.P. cameras positioned on the roof terrace captured Israeli bombardments and Palestinian militants’ rocket attacks during periodic flare-ups in fighting — including over the past week.

“The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what transpired today,” the A.P.’s president, Gary Pruitt, said in a statement following the Israeli attack.

The leveling of the al-Jalaa tower, which occurred as fighting between Israelis and Palestinians spiraled on several fronts, drew condemnations from across the world. The Israel Defense Forces said that its fighter jets struck the tower because it also contained military assets belonging to Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that rules the Gaza Strip.

...

Press freedom groups said that the strike — coming a day after the Israeli Army erroneously told foreign media that ground troops had entered Gaza — raised concerns that Israel was interfering with independent reporting on the conflict. In a statement, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists questioned whether the I.D.F. was “deliberately targeting media facilities in order to disrupt coverage of the human suffering in Gaza.”

A White House spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki, tweeted that the United States had “communicated directly to the Israelis that ensuring the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility.” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that he was “deeply disturbed” by the strike and warned that “indiscriminate targeting of civilian and media structures” would violate international law.

After the strike, journalists from other news organizations gathered near the rubble. Heba Akila, an Al Jazeera journalist who had been broadcasting from the tower when the warning call was made, said: “This is clearly to silence the truth and the voices of journalists."
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by Defiant »

malchior wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 12:48 pm Fair. I did it quickly and didn't realize I messed it up.
Actually, I wasn't replying to your post.
I'm not questioning them on whether Hamas was present or not. I'm questioning whether it is wise to destroy a building with such obvious political ramifications. It looks disproportionate, unnecessary, and it's just terrible, terrible optics. That's what I'm getting at. There must have been a better way.
Agreed that it's bad optics (and, along with their previous tweet misinformation, will strain relations with the media further), although to some degree, some amount of bad optics is inherent given the asymmetrical nature of the conflict. I don't know if the military objective was worth the bad optics in this situation, or if there were alternatives that would have been better.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by malchior »

Little Raven wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 12:47 pm Someone is lying.
The Associated Press says in a statement that it has not seen any “indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building” where its Gaza bureau was located and destroyed earlier today by the IDF.

The wire agency calls on Israel to provide evidence justifying the leveling of the building.
It's probably the AP. :wink:
Someone is lying is a pretty bad take on it. The AP at the level they are commenting about it could very well be unaware of it. I highly doubt they are lying. The IDF might be lying but I doubt that too. It's just possible they have bad or inaccurate intel.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by malchior »

Defiant wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 1:13 pmAgreed that it's bad optics (and, along with their previous tweet misinformation, will strain relations with the media further), although to some degree, some amount of bad optics is inherent given the asymmetrical nature of the conflict.
This is exactly what I'm worried about. The asymmetry is well understood, well-trod ground so to speak and it appears that Netanyahu is intentionally kicking the bee hive because he wants the bees to swarm out.
I don't know if the military objective was worth the bad optics in this situation, or if there were alternatives that would have been better.
Digging into above my concern is that not only do they not seem to care but that's what he wants. Possibly to shore up support to defend against his personal legal and political problems. Hamas is willing to lean into that since its inevitable the money spigot is now wide open with existing and net new supporters across the region. And in between are now scores of dead children. The whole thing is reprehensible all around.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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malchior wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 1:17 pmThe IDF might be lying but I doubt that too. It's just possible they have bad or inaccurate intel.
Depends on how you want to define bad intel.
Israel was a "full partner" in U.S. and British intelligence failures that exaggerated former president Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a report by an Israeli military research center has charged.

...

Israeli intelligence services and political leaders provided "an exaggerated assessment of Iraqi capabilities," raising "the possibility that the intelligence picture was manipulated," wrote Brom, former deputy commander of the Israeli military's planning division.
Did they just get that one wrong too?
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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We could also take a look at the AP, who've had a history of bias, ignoring stories and a willingness to cooperate with anti-Semites among other controversies.
But things changed in earnest in 2000, with the collapse of peace efforts and the outbreak of the Second Intifada. Israel accepted President Bill Clinton’s peace framework that fall and the Palestinians rejected it, as Clinton made clear. Nevertheless, Lavie recently told me, the bureau’s editorial line was still that the conflict was Israel’s fault, and the Palestinians and the Arab world were blameless.
When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.)
On March 27, 2009, the chief Palestinian negotiator, my old friend Saeb Erekat, a fellow night owl who was always ready with a comment on current events at 2 a.m., went on Al-Jazeera satellite TV and spelled it out. He said then that Abbas “could have accepted a proposal that talked about Jerusalem and almost 100 percent of the West Bank.”
No one else seemed to notice it at the time, even though Erekat said this in Arabic on television, and he repeated his words a few days later at a public gathering in Hebron. I spotted the translation of his Al-Jazeera interview on MEMRI and sounded the major-breaking-news alarm, but the bureau chief at The Associated Press in Jerusalem, where I worked at the time, along with the chief West Bank correspondent, determined that it was not newsworthy and banned me from writing about it.

Suffice it to say that later, when the official appointed by Abbas to investigate Palestinian corruption resigned his post in disgust for lack of backing from Abbas, took fourteen boxes of incriminating documents with him and offered the story to the AP – he was turned down. When Israel’s Channel 10 TV broke the story, the AP played it down, covering it only grudgingly and putting the emphasis on sexual misconduct by a Palestinian official instead of the first clear evidence of where those billions of dollars and euros of foreign aid to the Palestinians actually went.
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by Defiant »

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world thousands of miles away, anti-Semites under the guise of being pro-Palestinian supporters are attacking Jews.



(I've also heard of incidents in London, Paris, Berlin, NYC and Santa Barbara)
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

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Wow.

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\/ window into Outside Over There."
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Defiant
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by Defiant »

Fortunately, Israel isn't an apartheid state. It's a vibrant democracy where all citizens have equal rights, where they vote, which has Arabs in public office and in the judiciary. However, I'm sure that using loaded language like that will help calm rather than inflame things. /s
Last edited by Defiant on Mon May 17, 2021 7:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Little Raven
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by Little Raven »

Defiant wrote: Mon May 17, 2021 12:26 amFortunately, Israel isn't an apartheid state.
B'Tselem disagrees. So does Human Rights Watch.
About 6.8 million Jewish Israelis and 6.8 million Palestinians live today between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, an area encompassing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the latter made up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Throughout most of this area, Israel is the sole governing power; in the remainder, it exercises primary authority alongside limited Palestinian self-rule. Across these areas and in most aspects of life, Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.
But one expects that kind of language from human rights organizations. From US politicians...not so much.
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Kurth
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by Kurth »

Little Raven wrote: Mon May 17, 2021 12:12 am Wow.

Great nuanced take there, AOC. Let’s put it on the Progressives Greatest Hits Playlist along with “Defund the Police.”

Fucking brilliant.
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Jaymann
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by Jaymann »

That's a little over the top even for AOC. She could have expressed serious concern a bit more, eh diplomatically.
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Defiant
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Re: Israel–United States relations and associated politics

Post by Defiant »

(AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday he has asked Israel for any evidence of Hamas operating in a Gaza building housing news bureaus that was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike over the weekend, but hasn’t seen any.

Blinken spoke at a news conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, as pressure is increasing on the Biden administration to ask for a ceasefire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel destroyed a building housing The Associated Press and Al Jazeera and claimed that Hamas used the building for a military intelligence office. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the building a “perfectly legitimate target” and told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Israel passes such evidence through intelligence channels.

“Shortly after the strike we did request additional details regarding the justification for it,” Blinken said Monday. He declined to discuss specific intelligence, saying he “will leave it to others to characterize if any information has been shared and our assessment that information.”

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But he said, “I have not seen any information provided.”
https://www.kolotv.com/2021/05/17/blink ... ng-strike/
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