This is the reality of what Israel is doing (part 4)

I saw a photo of this somewhere. You see it and cannot believe the horror. It looked as though the filled plastic bags were from a butcher’s wholesaler but they were filled with people.

I was just coming to post this Guardian article too, @EasterIssland.

It is a long article but absolutely worth reading because of the understanding it brings to how Israelis are thinking about this war, how it has come to this, and also, interestingly too, how events have been seen in Israel through the Bible or poetry.

It shows how destructive ideology can enter the psyche of an army and population - on which subject the writer has spent years of study centred around Germany in WWI & WWII.
In my opinion though, it also shows sympathy for the Israeli frame of mind in that the reader can trace, and to some degree understand, the dynamic of how such thinking would arise while also seeing it as mistaken.

The writer is an Israeli and former IDF soldier, now an academic living in the USA . His son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren live in Israel.

The headline is:
As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov

I'm struggling with the stories from the bombing of the school. Relatives have been given bags of random body parts to bury weighed to represent roughly the weight of an adult or child, because the cargnage was so severe they don't know who is who.

I read testimony from a man who was burying a bag of...something...that he was treating as his little son. Imagine being given a bag of body parts that may or my not be your little child and having to accept that.

I can't imagine being a family member dealing with this. It's so disturbing.

While people are trying to persuade Iran not to attack Israel, while negotiations for the release of the hostages and a ceasefire are on the brink of coming to a head one way or another, Ben-Givr took 1,500 Israelis to pray on the Temple Mount in a clear infraction of the law.

Presumably he wants a full-on war with Iran, to leave the hostages to gradually die or be killed, the war with Gaza to continue, and to show the Israeli government that he is in charge.
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-814514

Thanks for the heads up on this, sounds like an interesting listen. Also, sounds like what’s been happening the whole time, except it keeps on getting less and less obviously believable.

Still, some people must believe it, and that’s why they keep saying it, most likely for the benefit of the portion (no idea how big this is) of Israeli people that are still holding on to it. Or, he has no idea how ridiculous he sounds to a different audience?

When I say people still believe ‘it’, I mean in a general sense, the idea that the Israeli response has been just and that (all) people who disagree must be antisemitic.

I guess it's hard to justify genocide so his insane statements, faux outrage when questioned about awful things the IDF/Israel do and his bizarre attacks on people like doctors and human rights organisations are on the increase.

In fairness there's nothing reasonable he can say to justify blowing up civilians, raping and torturing detainees etc so his answers have to be ludicrous because defending these war crimes is ludicrous.

Radio 4 iPlayer 2:10 into the programme.
My apologies for misspelling the interviewer’s name earlier, as the correct way is Mishal Husain.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0021x2v

Heard him on Irish radio before. He is a deeply unpleasant individual I can imagine what he was like in the interview. I can never figure out if he believes what he is saying, but the fact he goes on the attack and often accuses his interviewers of being Hamas supporters or antisemitic suggests he doesn't.

Every interview he gives is batshit crazy. The man is unhinged, to put it politely. He shouldn't be given airtime.

Ty @AhNowTed that is what a recalled reading :)

I never knew about that massacre and how the IDF was complicit.

Having looked it up I saw this harrowing description.

Janet Lee Stevens an American journalist, later wrote to her husband, Dr. Franklin Lamb, "I saw dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an alley wall; children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles."[71]

Holocaust scholar Amos Goldberg.

In most cases of genocide, from Bosnia to Namibia, from Rwanda to Armenia, the perpetrators of the murder said they were acting in self-defence. The fact that what is happening in Gaza does not resemble the Holocaust, writes Holocaust scholar Amos Goldberg, does not mean that it is not genocide

thepalestineproject.medium.com/yes-it-is-genocide-634a07ea27d4

At least they were targeting soldiers and not civilians.

You do know the attack was because of the Sabra and Shatila massacre by the invading Israeli army along with Lebanese Christians and the US peacekeeping forces just idly watched instead of protecting Palestinian refugees? Not really “stabilising” things were they?

“September 16, 1982, marked the start of a horrific 43-hour massacre, killing an estimated more than 3,000 Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila Refugee Camps in Southern Lebanon. Sabra and Shatila were home to Palestinian refugees who had been displaced from their homeland, primarily from the village of Balad Al-Sheikh.* *Within Lebanon, there are 12 UNRWA Palestinian refugee camps, including Shatila. Shatila was established in 1949, following the 1948 Nakba.
https://thejerusalemfund.org/2023/09/sabra-and-shatila-massacre-four-decades-of-unforgotten-tragedy/

Defending itself? Are you absolutely nuts? It's gone way, way beyond that. Israel has besmirched its reputation for ever in how it's behaved, and almost everyone sees it.

Genocide is the intentional act killing of a race or people, or destroying their society in total, to eliminate them or their ideals from existence.

@Sheri99
Sorry, but this is not the legal definition of genocide that the ICJ & ICC have used to declare prior conflicts to be genocides or to bring war criminals to justice for genocide.

So the rest of your rationale as to why you think Gaza is not genocide is meaningless.

In addition, experts in genocide have pointed out in numerous studies that genocidal fascists will declare the victim population to be an existential threat to their side in order to justify genocide. In other words the “self defence” justification is actually a red flag of impending or ongoing genocide and not evidence that genocide is highly unlikely or not happening.

Here is the definition of genocide.
”Definition
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Elements of the crime
The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.
The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:

1. A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
3. Killing members of the group
4. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
5. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
6. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
7. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

I missed the very start but wonder if anyone else heard Radio 4 Today with Michel Hussein interviewing a spokesman for the Israeli government, David Mencer. (English, now Israeli.)

He was extremely aggressive in avoiding questions. The more a question needed answering the more he attacked instead of answering and the more he accused her of being a spokesperson for Hamas and causing anti-semitism on the streets of London.

It was an extraordinary interview. I can only urge people to listen on radio 4 iPlayer because it would be difficult to say here what I think of him having heard this.

Yawn... It's been 10 months, the propaganda doesn't work anymore. Let's see how history judges the "they made me do it" contingent.

Genocide is the intentional act killing of a race or people, or destroying their society in total, to eliminate them or their ideals from existence. Think Rwanda - the nearly 1M who were killed; the Communists under Mao who killed 27 Million to be rid of Chinese society, The Rape of Nanking, Darfur, Pol Pot in Cambodia; Bosnia/Herzegovina. THOSE were genocide. Israel is hunting down Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist roaches who attacked because they are Jews. Iran supports these roaches because IRAN would like every Jew on earth gone. It isn't Israel who doing the genocide. That is like saying Russia was doing genocide by defending Moscow. If a nation is DEFENDING itself it isn't genocide it is a defensive action NOT an offensive action of which genocide is by the term "intentional act". Israel is no more intentionally killing Palestinians because of who they are, or to destroy their society than the EU or the US. The Palestinian "society" is being controlled by terrorist factions - and those factions are not a recognized government organization. it is a band of hoodlums seeking to kill all Jews - and some of them ALL Christians. The Palestinian Authority is no Little Bo Peep, either. Heaven forbid if you are gay in Palestine.

So that is what you're saying. Israel targets and blows up civilians for 10 months but it's not their responsibility or fault. Got it.

Using your logic the Israeli government is "hiding behind civilians" in Tel Aviv as they have built a military location in the middle of the city. I hope you keep that same energy if it is targeted.

"They made me do it" doesn't work as an excuse for bad behaviour at primary school. It isn't a valid excuse for bombing, shooting or starving civilians either.

Absolutely not: Hamas and Hezbollah, by hiding behind Palestinian (and other) civilians, cause the the deaths of the Palestinians. By "gleefully" I mean H and H happily use the emotion of the public and press rhetoric, social media, to make appear as if Israel is the "bad" guy. And Iran supports H and H, yet have little control over these terrorists.

Israel is attempting to defend itself against more future attacks by going after Hamas and Hezbollah. Hezbollah terrorists blew up the US Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon in Oct of 1983 and killed more than 200 Marine and Navy personnel. The US was there with other allied countries attempting to stabilize the region - the countries were there in peace but Hezbollah decided to bomb the barracks - and kill more than 200 Marines who were there for peacekeeping purposes.

"They gleefully get Palestinians blown up"

What do you mean by this? Is this you describing Israel blowing up Palestinians?

@Sheri99 I am glad you very rightly used the word genocide to describe the situation in Palestine. So many on here object to the word despite the repeated starvation, displacement and bombing of Palestinians.
Do you truly believe that Hamas are committing this genocide when it is Israeli (and American) bombs that are raining down on innocent civilians sheltering in a school?
Because "they made us do it" as an argument is probably not going to stand up when history examines this genocidal situation involving a democratic nation.