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

[Eyesopenwideawake]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/09/israel-gaza-hamas-hospitals/

I see the old thread is sadly almost full. I wonder how many of these I will start? 😢

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]

Ty @AhNowTed that is what a recalled reading :)

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

That was a really interesting piece, incredibly bleak though.

This is heartbreaking. I don't know what else to say.

www.instagram.com/p/C-m1-kjup_C/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Could someone explain how visiting or praying on Temple Mount which has been sacred to Jewish people for thousands of years is awful when Islam, a newer religion calls it their 3rd most important site and it didn't enter the religion until a couple of thousand years later?

Why can't all religions pray or visit as long as peacefully?

I did not understand the significance at all but I was looking it up earlier and this site explained it sorry for the long link
well.www.ajc.org/news/what-to-know-about-jerusalems-temple-mount-and-the-status-quo-agreement#:~:text=Jewish%20visitors%20are%20allowed%20to,to%20avoid%20provoking%20interreligious%20conflict.

Thank you.

It's seems a but unfair that Jewish people are not allowed to pray on their most sacred site (only allowed to pray nearby) but Muslims are. It wasn't even holy to them until thousands of years later. Religions are strange.

Yeah it does.
To be fair though it does seem like it's a compromise that works between the two. I liked the words of the Israeli Defence Minister at the time "We did not come to conquer the sacred sites of others or to restrict their religious rights, but rather to ensure the integrity of the city and to live in it with others in fraternity.”

Thanks for sharing this, just read through it now and it's certainly eye opening.

Netanyahu is spineless, what sort of Prime Minister continuously allows members of his government to openly go against his own words and continue to act in ways that are harmful to diplomacy in such a crucial time.
Religion aside, you think Ben Gvir doesn't know the impact of his actions on Israel and it's relationship with allies. So much so that he was criticised by the EU and the US today. He is like Trump, a narcissist who loves chaos and the limelight.

@Mellowdramadrama does it? Or does it seem like there was a consensus reached for quite complicated religious and political reasons? That consensus now having been breached just because Israel now does whatever it likes.

Sorry! This was meant for @Martymcfly24

Oh my god, sorry. That post was aimed at another poster because I don't think their 'oh this is a bit mean for jewish people isn't it since Islam is a much younger religion' seemed quite goady.

Don't worry I understood and I agree with you.

I agree with you completely about what Ben Gvir did. He took what was obviously a fragile compromise and turned it into an act to goad Muslims.
The irony of using prayer to incite violence .
I just didn't know anything about the issue and wanted to read up on it today ..