This is the reality of what Israel is doing (part 2)

[Eyesopenwideawake]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/28/one-in-five-pregnant-women-in-gaza-clinic-are-malnourished-doctors-warn

How lovely of Hamas to pop a matress over the bodies of the hostages to keep them alive and then protect them. Such heroes. What nice men they are, so misunderstood.

Of course you might argue that the hostages shouldn't have been taken 5 months ago and held captive against their wishes so they wouldn't then need to cover them with mattresses whilst the fighting went on nearby.

I mean all of this could have been avoided.

This is an excerpt from a much longer article in yesterdays Guardian recounting Yam Almog-Goldstein's experience of being a hostage for 40 something days and the absolute fear and terror she experienced - much of it in her own words

It's nothing to do with bigging up Hamas

Are you aiming your sarcasm at Chen Almog-Goldstein?

One of the main points she was making was about the great danger she feels the remaining Israeli hostages may be facing under Israel’s retaliatory actions.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/03/we-were-constantly-in-terror-israeli-hostage-tells-of-captivity-in-gaza

She and her remaining g children should never have been captured. That they are alive in spite of it is something surely something.

Thanks @ScrollingLeaves that's the one

This is the very grim reality of Israel’s plans for Gaza.

There certainly will not be peace.

Netanyahu plans for Israel to stay in Gaza for 10 years | The Times of Israel

www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-plans-for-israel-to-stay-in-gaza-for-10-years/
www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-plans-for-israel-to-stay-in-gaza-for-10-years/amp/

Was Amichai Eliyahu dismissed? Last I saw he had been un-invited to a few meetings for a few months and that was it? I did a quick search and he is showing as still in the same post/job as Culture and Heritage Minister.

Yeah, you see, the main issue with those statements would have been "endangering Israel's nuclear ambiguity".

Because if - I repeat: IF(!!!) - Israel had nukes the primary issue with nuking Gaza would be that coastal winds might lead to the contamination of Ashkelon.

No, seriously, I'm so fucking done with "how not only right-wing politicians, but apparently also mainstream society in Israel de-humanises Palestinians"! These are my friends and family you are talking about! Just tonight, I feel majorly worried about one of my Palestinian friends - no longer in Palestine - who seems to have caught a bad case of a respiratory infection in a place not particularly well equipped to treat the same. I feel the same level of worry about him as I did about my sister when she was stuck in Central America during the height of the COVID crisis and as coffins were stacking up in Bergamo, Italy! I only called and yelled at the foreign office about one gazillion times back then!

That'll be because Palestinians, too, are fully human! They have friends and family who love them and worry about them and would, literally, fly to an active war zone to look after them if it had to be!

You know, just: "also human", "not LESS"!

IF!! Israel had nukes the primary issue with nuking Gaza would be that coastal winds might lead to the contamination of Ashkelon.

They do have nuclear capability, the ambiguity is on just how many warheads they have and all the delivery means they have. I don’t think Israel would ever use them first- only as a response to being nuked. The point of them these days is exactly this kind of deterrence as they’ve not been used since WWII. As in, for example, they are mostly there to deter pro Palestine Putin or feared to secretly have nukes Iran from interfering by nuking Tel Aviv.

That is why the comment was so irresponsible and inflammatory genocidal rhetoric. I think Nethanyu should have punished it more seriously, but there have been many statements by himself and others that are a whisker away from being that bad so his awareness of how toxic his cabinet has become must be skewed.
https://armscontrolcenter.org/fact-sheet-israels-nuclear-arsenal/

I'm all sorts of things - a "fucking moron" happens to be "not one of them".

Of course the "nuclear ambiguity" has been a laughing stock all along.

But, no, of course he wasn't sanctioned more seriously! The operating assumption is "nuclear ambiguity" is essentially a joke already - "would they go there" ambiguity, on the other hand ...

(And, no, they arguably wouldn't - because of the aforementioned fall-out, not because of Palestinians! If there were such a think as "smart-nukes that only selectively target Palestinians", there would, arguably, at the very, very least, be many more people calling for their deployment!)

x.com/amanpour/status/1765440963751678400?s=46

"“Death is better than this.”

Shocking images of starving, emaciated children from inside Gaza are laying bare the desperation inside the strip, as @nadaabashir reports."

Shocked to see reporting like this on cnn.

I haven’t implied you are not intelligent and would never use an ableist slur like that,

The nuclear ambiguity isn’t a joke or laughing stock. It is quite real and every nuclear capable country has some level of it for national security reasons. There is no nuclear transparency required or practiced, some of it will always be classified- which means what is in the public domain will always be ambiguous to different degrees.

@inkworks273
It is beyond words that children and elderly are now dying of starvation in a man made crisis.

Things are so bad in Gaza, that I fear the deaths are on a steep incline that cannot be averted any more. The aid agencies warned everyone for months this would happen. It takes months of starvation to kill a human being, and months to reverse it. Even if full aid started tomorrow morning, I fear many more will still die of malnutrition and starvation because their bodies may be past the point of recovery being possible.

The Ammunition used for the Flour Massacre was 5.56x45mm NATO bullets. The IDF definitely did it.

https://twitter.com/SohiubN/status/1765240179936071996

@10UsernamesNotAvailableTryAnotherOne see that these bullets were likely made in the UK according to the tweet

250 aid trucks went into Gaza yesterday which is a big improvement on 34/day throughout February - still not up to the 500/day pre-war* and obviously it needs to continue at this higher level

UNWRA official saying that Israel has become 'much more co-operative' with them since the 'flour atrocity' last week as they now realise how difficult it is to safely police aid convoys. UNWRA have been pushing for weeks to use an Israeli military road which runs along the border fence in Israel to deliver food aid into northern Gaza rather than drive it all the way thro' Gaza - seems like this might be tried in the near future.

Hopefully this will happen soon because the air-drops aren't sufficient by a long stretch - there's also been some problems with some of the US meals dropped which need microwaving and some were accidently dropped into Israel - teething problems hopefully

Israel also claims to have provided a number of incubators last week

*not all the 500 trucks contained food water medical supplies

That's unfortunately a possibility. ☹️ It's shocking how many countries are complicit in this genocide. My country, Australia, isn't clean of it either. Our country also sells weapons to Israel. Prime Minister Albanese and Senator Penny Wong have also been referred to the ICC for their complicity.

I've just opened up Instagram to find footage of 2 decaying bodies of a Palestinian father and his son just laying on the ground in Khan Younis. They appear to be wearing the white overalls that Palestinians have been forced to wear when they've been taken captive by the IDF. It's horrific and something from a horror movie. I won't post the link as it's graphic and upsetting.

Prominent Israeli government officials such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant have recently made visits to Bnei David academy, a military preparatory school that has come under scrutiny in recent years. The school is in the West Bank. The rabbi of this school has things like “non-Jew will become our slaves”

https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1765500767719530594

should things like these be taught in the school? Should Israel pm be visiting a school in the West Bank ?

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/06/05/at-bnei-david-academy-young-jewish-settlers-prepare-to-join-israel-s-military-elite_6029198_4.html

https://thegrayzone.com/2024/03/06/leaked-israel-lobby-officials-war-gaza-mass-rape/

This needs its own thread. Horrifying, but a quick look around these threads show it's working on plenty of people who support Israel.

@ConnieCounter I'm always shocked at how many people fall for their propaganda because it seems so transparent to me.

Frank Luntz was also responsible for drafting the "Hasbara" handbook that a lot of online "marketers" rely on. It contains the do's and don'ts for preserving Israel's reputation online.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/israelgaza-conflict-the-secret-report-that-helps-israelis-to-hide-facts-9630765.html

So it seems that the US are going to build a port on the Gaza coast and send a load of aid in that way. I'm not sure I've ever heard of a situation where a country backs one side, and then tries to mitigate the result on the other side...

Thank goodness some aid is going in though.

Seems like Biden has finally lost patience with the Israeli government faffing about with promises to improve the food aid situation whilst babies and children are actually dying of starvation and widespread famine is looming

Hope it happens and happens soon

Calling it a 'port' seems a little excessive on their part - sounds more like a substantial pier

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/07/biden-us-port-gaza-aid-delivery

It said three weeks didn’t it? Is that realistic? Won’t come soon enough.