This is the reality of what Israel is doing (part 3)

[Eyesopenwideawake]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/15/babies-children-gaza-famine

Continuation of the previous thread.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/conflict-in-the-middle-east/5018751-this-is-the-reality-of-what-israel-is-doing-part-2?page=39&reply=134623626

Was coming to post about this too. It is all over the news
https://jweekly.com/2024/04/26/berkeley-novelist-ayelet-waldman-arrested-during-protest-near-gaza-border/

part of the reality of what Israel is doing includes their brave peace activists marching for a ceasefire.

Well said by Bernie Sanders in response to Netanyahu's statement.

www.instagram.com/reel/C6PIJBkoARy/?igsh=MXdjcG9vN3AxZnJzbQ==

@anotherlevel
wow. Bernie Sanders should have been President years ago. He is far better a leader and person than anyone else the Democrats have put forward.

Well done Bernie. I have been disappointed in him of late but good to see he's found his voice again. Fantastic clear speech

He's too left wing Americans are a very conservative society he would never have the broad appeal to win a Presidential election. The more I see of the American election system the less democratic it appears

For those who dont want to click on the link this was Bernie Sander's message to Netanyahu

"No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 – seventy percent of whom are women and children.
It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless – almost half the population.
It is not antisemitic to note that your government has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure – electricity, water, and sewage.
It is not antisemitic to realize that your government has annihilated Gaza’s health care system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 health care workers.
It is not antisemitic to condemn your government’s destruction of all of Gaza’s 12 universities and 56 of its schools, with hundreds more damaged, leaving 625,000 students with no education.
It is not antisemitic to agree with virtually every humanitarian organization in saying that your government, in violation of American law, has unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, creating the conditions in which hundreds of thousands of children face malnutrition and famine.
Mr. Netanyahu. Antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts. It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your actions."

He did have the broad appeal during the election Trump won. He had the larger voter base (from all parties and independent voters) but the Democratic Party decided to pick Hilary Clinton over him. He had a better chance of winning than Hilary Clinton did- as evidenced by the fact that Trump won!!

Bernie Sanders is Jewish btw, for those who don’t know much about him.

”1. His father’s family was wiped out in the Holocaust
Sanders grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, as the son of working class Polish Jewish immigrants. His mother was a housewife and his father sold paint. He has said that he was “very conscious as a kid that my father’s whole family was killed by Hitler.”

1. He was a young kibbutznik

After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1964, the young Sanders made an early foray into socialist life when he spent several months on an Israeli kibbutz.

1. He’s “proud” to be Jewish but isn’t religious

Sanders recently told the Christian Science Monitor that his Jewish roots taught him about the importance of politics. “A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932,” he told the Monitor. “He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including 6 million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.”

1. He stands up for Israel; but don’t think he’s an Israeli citizen

In a radio interview last month, NPR host Diane Rehm mistakenly asserted that Sanders had dual Israeli-American citizenship. An offended Sanders called the assertion nonsensical and defended his American loyalty. “You know, my dad came to this country from Poland at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket. He loved this country,” Sanders said.

1. He’s not a big fan of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Sanders boycotted Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in March that protested the Iran deal. Sanders also issued a statement after the speech.” https://www.jta.org/2015/07/13/politics/is-bernie-sanders-jewish

Obviously this isn't anything that Israel is doing - but worrying nonetheless with such a vulnerable population - temperature in gaza has been up to 30 degrees this week

Girl dies from 'extreme heat' in Rafah - OCHA

An infant girl has died from extreme heat in Rafah as rising temperatures exacerbate the sanitation crisis for more than 1.7 million internally displaced people lacking adequate shelter and essentials, it has been reported.
**

Destroying the wells and desalination plant as well as blocking aid could be a contributory factor as I read many nursing mothers are losing their milk due to dehydration and famine, and so they cannot feed their babies. Many babies are dehydrated and starving.

This relates to the economy not the Conflict, but I found this conversation between Sanders and Biden interesting at the time after Sanders stepped down from the electoral race. I don't always agree with Sanders but I think it gives a good measure of what a fundamentally decent guy he is. His ideas and intelligence shit all over Biden's IMO.

Yes everything stacked against them in coping with this - tho' these are not unusual summer temperatures in the area - and is an additional 'normal' stressor they don't need

.

I think we completely agree. A dehydrated baby forced to live under a sheet of plastic in the hot sun because of the war on Gaza is at more risk to heat stress than a baby in a brick and mortar home with a mum that has breastmilk to feed them.

The thing to bear in mind is that Israel only left a few undefended girls to defend the border on Oct 7.

What Israel needed were minds that were capable of taking all sorts of prior threats they had been warned about seriously, and then they could have easily stopped the Oct 7 invasion.
What they did not need to do was slaughter 34000 Palestinians instead.

@ScrollingLeaves those female soldiers recognised something was going on, escalated their concerns, and were ignored and left without either backup or the means to defend themselves either through holding their position or withdrawing. Misogyny was a contributing factor to the security failures.

I saw the other day that a senior military from idf had resigned because of what happened on 7-10

https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-intel-chief-aharon-haliva-announces-resignation-over-october-7-failures/amp/

@ScrollingLeaves and @SammyScrounge

Please do not blame Israel’s IDF for Hamas’ attack on IDF and innocent civilians or blame Hamas for Israel’s retaliatory 200+ days of attacks on Hamas and innocent civilians.

They both chose this war.

Both groups are also responsible for any criminal actions that they have done during their decades long armed conflict between each other. It all hopefully will result in war crime prosecutions and punishments against both Hamas and IDF leaders who gave the orders for war crimes and against the on the ground armed fighters who did war crimes.

Very brave indeed, and an example of what following the best kind of religious beliefs means when put into practice.

Absolutely.

I was not ‘blaming Israel’ for the Hamas invasion.

I was questioning the IDF/Netanyahu’s need to kill 34,000 Palestinians mainly women and children in order to defend themselves against Hamas, instead of having done something basic like defending the border and listening to intelligence about impending attacks on that border. Everyone knows something went badly wrong there.

I have posted this link on other threads too. I like it’s simplicity and clarity. Short essay from Rabbi Lara Haft
“At this year’s seder, the same war criminals who have forced Palestinian families to flee their homes will lift up their matzah and wax poetic about the Israelites’ rush to escape Egypt. The same politicians who have manufactured a famine in Gaza, leading millions to the brink of starvation, will proudly declare: “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”
https://jewschool.com/let-all-who-are-hungry-come-and-eat-174209

Exactly this.

Your comment sounded like it was putting blame on Israel for October 7th. You said in addition to questioning the death toll that:
“What Israel needed were minds that were capable of taking all sorts of prior threats they had been warned about seriously, and then they could have easily stopped the Oct 7 invasion.”

that was the sentence that I felt crossed a line into victim blaming.

Not related with thread but day after this jas happened

ISRAELI MINISTER HAIM BITON IN A CAR ACCIDENT MAKING IT THE SECOND IN 2 DAYS AFTER BEN GVIR’S ACCIDENT

Morally the blame for Oct 7 is all Hamas’s. They alone invaded, massacred, raped, captured people including women children and old men. They alone are holding people hostage.

Practically speaking, the Israel government and defence taking warnings* of Hamas plans seriously might well have lead to the Israeli defence forces being able to prevent the Oct 7 attack.

The victims are the female surveillance soldiers, the people of the kibbutz, the Nova Music festival goers, and the IDF soldiers who came to their defence. They are obviously not to blame in any way at all.

(*Warnings from female surveillance soldiers and also from a high ranking female security officer.)

Re: blaming the government of Israel, this is a headline from the Jewish Chronicle from January.

Nova festival massacre survivors sue Israeli army over failures to prevent Hamas atrocities
Survivors are seeking £44 million in damages after ‘incomprehensible’ security failures

Re: blaming the government for the death or capture of the undefended surveillance women (barely women,really girls) at the border, this is from The Times of Israel including what one of them, Roni Eshel’s, father said:

Roni was considered missing for more than a month, as her parents begged publicly and desperately for information. On November 9, the IDF finally confirmed that she had been killed during the initial attack.

She had been in the army for a year and two months and had warned her superiors numerous times that Hamas terrorists were studying the border in preparation for something unknown, her father has said in multiple interviews.

Fifteen surveillance soldiers were killed on the Nahal Oz base on October 7, and six were taken hostage. One of the abducted soldiers, Cpl. Ori Megidish, was rescued by the IDF in late October, but the other five remain in captivity, their condition unknown.

“Five hostages, such precious and wonderful girls, are there right now,” Eyal told Channel 12 of his late daughter’s fellow soldiers and the country’s failure to protect them. “The time has come to make changes in the chain of command.”
Eyal said he wished he didn’t have to issue that kind of criticism, but that it was unavoidable. “It hurts, it really hurts.”
www.timesofisrael.com/oct-7-radio-transmission-by-slain-surveillance-soldier-roni-eshel-aired-for-first-time/

Re: Women surveillance being ignored:
This is just a few paragraphs from a long and detailed Haaretz article you can read on archive ph with the headline:

”The Women Soldiers Who Warned of a Pending Hamas Attack – and Were Ignored”

A month before the war, there was an apparent change of approach among some spotters: A senior officer from the Gaza Division came to the operations room on one of the bases along the Gaza border in order to talk about the sector, so one of the spotters decided to tell him exactly what was on her mind.

“I told him there was going to be a war and we’re simply not ready,” she says, recalling the conversation. “That what’s happening with Hamas along the border fence is not normal. That they’re mocking the IDF, that our hands are tied and we’re not even [firing] warning shots.”

The response of the senior officer was to ask for her name, to regard her with admonishing eyes and to “put her in her place” for having the temerity to address him directly rather than going through the proper channels.

“He said to me, ‘I’ve been in the sector since 2010. I was a commander here, an intelligence officer, I know Gaza inside-out, and I’m telling you that everything’s fine. You’re here only six months and I’ve been here 12 years. I know the sector like the back of my hand.”

The Times of Israel
https://www.timesofisrael.com/surveillance-soldiers-warned-of-hamas-activity-on-gaza-border-for-months-before-oct-7/

Re Warnings of a highly respected female military intelligence officer having been ignored, excerpt from The Guardian:

The source of the warning is a highly respected career military intelligence NCO identified in Israeli media reports as V who warned her chain of command during the summer that Hamas was planning a large-scale incursion
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-military-had-warning-of-hamas-training-for-attack-reports-say