Why has the messaging on Gaza changed so suddenly in the last few weeks?

[RainSoakedNights]

It’s really, really nice to see. Too little too late, but it’s still something. But it’s gone from covering it as if everything that was happening in Gaza was normal, firing people for speaking out (Gary Lineker), to showing the reality of what is happening and the knock on effects that will affect generations. I think we’re potentially a few weeks away from this being called what it is - a genocide. But what has caused this change?

100% it was horrifying.

First of all you must surely understand that we almost never hear directly from women who have been raped or assaulted. I can't even imagine how that would happen. Having been through that profound trauma there is no way the world should expect them to expose themsrlves to us to prove anything. How on earth would we 'hear from them' as you put it? The crimes were investigated as you expect and the person leading the investigation was a woman. Israeli women's groups were also advocating for them. https://www.jwa.org.uk/news/global-womens-rights-groups-silent-as-israeli-women-testify-about-rapes-by-hamas/

I din't know who stopped you expressing solidarity with sexually assaulted women. I can't understand that at all.

People like Eylon Levy did. People like Sheryl Sandberg. People who presented a false dilemma of:

"You either get to say you support Israel or you get to say you support sexual violence."

Edit: at which point ... seeing as I support neither of these and have precisely ZERO interest in re-litigating my personal trauma in a manner that will have everyone hate me regardless: I never said anything about that one.

Well that’s because most of the victims were slaughtered either during or after being raped. The few who survived are very likely to not want to talk about their trauma publicly considering the response to Oct 7th by a very vocal majority of pro-Palestinians.

There were also witness accounts from survivors of Oct 7th. Do you regard them as surrogates of the State?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67629181.amp

Are the Palestinian’s who have given testimonies alleging abuses by the IDF, surrogates of Hamas, or do you believe them unequivocally?

I mean stuff like this: https://x.com/Israel/status/1726228532005941710

And, no, I do not believe everything Palestinians say. But nobody has ever tried to emotionally blackmail me into "support Feminism and Hamas - or be the baddie".

It reminds me of the moment that the world was shown a picture of a Syrian toddler who had tragically drowned. We were moved. People are not that clever. The press is not that clever. We are being shown this because it is now a sufficiently arresting image to dominate the conversation. Showing it earlier would have made more sense but it didn't exist then. The world is not clever enough to be fascinated by something that will horrify it in the future. The press can't make a huge story out of something that hasn't happened yet, however much we would like it to. It reports the news.

His name was Alan Kurdi and it it believed that he was born in Kobane, ca. 2013. Remember his name!

He was the reason I took six months off work to go volunteer in Greece at the time.

I still don't undetstand how Eylon Levy or Sheyl Sandberg controlled what you said. I mean were you being called on by someone to state your position on some global stage? In your personal life did your friends an colleagues force you to talk about it only on the terms set out by Eylon levy? Could you not explain your position to them? This makes no sense, sorry.

It was you (or some other pro Israel poster), not me, who brought up "how could women stay silent?".

I merely explained why I did.

And, no, they obviously don't control what I say or don't say. But the fact that any statement at the time would have required a whole essay on "why I think some parts - but not others (the 'playing football with a severed boob' claim is physically implausible to the max!) - of Israeli propaganda may deserve empathy on an individual level but Israel as a state can still go get fucked; here's how my personal trauma (which is none of your fucking business by the way) informs my position" ... kind of not worth re-living some of the worst moments of my life while also getting eviscerated by literally everyone. Also: I don't owe anyone anything.

I remember this and was just as shocked and horrified as everyone else, especially the lack of dignity in his death and the picture of him laying face down in the water being used for political purposes (surely the immediate instinct would be to pick the child up and check for signs of life/get medical attention rather than take a picture FFS) but reading the background, my first thought was why the fuck would a parent risk their child’s life in this way and then blame everyone but themself for the foreseeable outcome.

I’m sure that poor little boy would have preferred taking his chances growing up in Turkey or waiting it out before returning to Syria at a later date (the ISIS seige had ended before they got in the boat which his family must have been aware of), if he’d been able to express his opinion, than be put in the sea in an over crowded plastic dinghy without effective life jackets, which his own father sourced and captained, speeding in it, according to another mother who lost her own children on the dinghy, to sail to a horrible death alone in the water.

TBH that’s exactly how I feel about Palestinian children and their grandparents/parents choice to elect/support Hamas and the foreseeable outcome.

There’s no proof that I’m wrong and plenty of circumstantial evidence that I’m correct

This is exactly how I feel. There didn’t feel like an option to have solidarity with the people that this happened to or any of the victims without using it as justification for how Israel, as a state, reacted.

I don’t doubt for one moment that there was sexual violence and rapes. I don’t need to read any individual reports. This is what men to do women in situations like this. Using rape as a weapon. It’s horrific and I completely condemn it and I have much sympathy with all the victims.

But from the start the Israeli government used this ( in general) as justification for their retaliation. And from the very beginning the writing was on the wall that the civilians of Gaza, so many of them children, would be paying the price for the horrors of what had happened.

Now I would never say it was all made up. But throwing full weight behind it was also agreeing with what happened after.

I can't actually get over this. You can't offer solidarity to an Israeli women who has been raped becsuse that would signify support for her governmen's actions?

Is this the case for the female citizens of any other country?

This is exactly what we have said all along and here we have people openly admitting it. No empathy for the victims of Hamas because they were Israelis. Even before Israel retaliated.

Utterly chilling.

I literally said that I have much sympathy for the victims. I feel solidarity with this as a woman with them personally. But I didn’t throw my weight behind it as I would normally because it was presented as justification for the war. Which is it not. Nothing would be.

Yes of course: I feel like this often when the rape of women are used as justification for more violence. This is very common. Men seemingly outraged by women being raped, sometimes, when it justifies their own violent agendas.

I can’t get my head around British citizens (and citizens from other countries) going to fight in the IDF and then just coming back to their lives.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/uk-confirms-citizens-can-legally-serve-in-israeli-forces/

It it too little and too late and it STILL isn't stopping!

This doesn't wash. On 7, 8, 9, 10 October and for some time after all we knew was that women had been raped and subjected to horrific sexual violence and abuse, some it livestreamed. We knew Israel would retaliate. Of course they would. No reasonable person would expect them not to. You did not have a crystal ball. You could nor predict where this situation would be today.

Yet you said There didn’t feel like an option to have solidarity with the people that this happened to or any of the victims without using it as justification for how Israel, as a state, reacted.
I suppose I applaud your honesty. But I find this chilling that you could not feel solidarity with women subjected to this level of horrific abuse because they were Israeli. I don't even know what 'there didn't feel like an option' means. You feel it, you say it. What other option are you looking for?

And every Jewish woman around the world saw and heard this reaction, or lack of it from women around the world, and so-called feminists.

Hamas want to annihilate Israel and have a judenfrei Islamic terrorist state from the river to the sea. There are at least 6 Muslim countries close to Gaza who can provide shelter, food, refuge. Also the UN, Red Cross etc. Why should Israel provide aid to its enemy. And why are people going oh about the war not starting oh 7.10 as if that is some sick justification for the rape and slaughter of entire families? The propaganda and Hamas PR machine need to win a fucking Oscar. I even saw a photo of the Fogel family being used as “proof” of IDF atrocities. 1936 all over again and it’s fucking terrifying.

Exactly this. Palestinians have been expelled from Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait over the years often because the then PLO brought trouble and terrorism to their door. Many nearby countries are hesitant to accept refugees because Hamas, the latest terrorist iteration will likely set up a new power base and bring the ire of the West to their front door. It’s why the British government isn’t just flinging open the doors either.

To understand this, you also have to take the biblical/cultural history into consideration. The biblical account says the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah were unable to have children. God had promised them they would have descendants ‘more than the stars in the sky’ but it wasn’t happening. Sarah told Abraham to sleep with her maid Hagar and Hagar had a son, Ishmael. Sarah then went on to have the miracle promised child Isaac. Straight up there was huge jealousy and division between the two families and Abraham exiled Hagar and Ishmael into the desert so that Isaac could continue as Abraham’s heir.

In Genesis, Ishmael is described as ‘a wild donkey of a man, his hand shall be against everyone, everyone’s hand against him. He shall dwell in the land of all his brothers’.
It’s believed by some that Ishmael was the forerunner of some tribes of Arabs and though Ishmael and Isaac were technically half brothers, there’s always been rivalry between them.

People talk often of a Palestinian ‘genocide’ but the term ‘Palestinian’ has only been used in the last few decades to describe people living in Gaza/West Bank. Previously it was a term used to describe inhabitants of the region of Palestine which included Jews, Christians and Arabs. The land has had a multi ethnic and religious population for thousands of years.

People who talk of the ancient Palestinians being ‘expelled from their land’ don’t understand the history.

Of course after the evils of the Holocaust when so many Jewish people had been murdered or displaced from across Europe, there was a desire to once again have a home and because of the enmity toward them it was necessary to create a secure independent country in the region. Over the decades, the PLO and then Hamas have invited enormous amounts of suffering and terrorist attacks against the state of Israel, resulting in retaliation.

Few ever ask why the West Bank is considerably more peaceful even though it’s the same bit of geography and the same people? The reason is governance. The Palestinian Authority who rule the West Bank cooperates with Israel in order to stop terrorist groups from rising to power. There’s greater freedom of movement and stability. The problems in Gaza are created entirely by Hamas, a rogue terrorist government.

In those early days I was as horrified as everyone else. But then rhetoric from the Isreali government was genocidal by at least Oct 9th @SharonEllis. This was all very predictable unfortunately. You’re also twisting my words.

@Jujujudo Israel doesn’t provide aid. They just need to facilitate the UN so they can bring aid (provided by others) . Aid that will save thousands of lives including children? How could you be against that?

When you say Muslim countries should provide shelter. Are you advocating for ethnic cleansing?

I actually get a little mordant comfort from the fact that you spent all that time typing out that pack of lies when now, at last, everyone knows them to be untrue.

Enjoy justifying genocide into the wind.

I’m not a fucking psychopath. And seeing as at least 10 Muslim countries ethnically cleansed over 100,000 Jews (including my parents from Yemen) then I’d say that was projecting. Jews want only one country. Muslims have 57. Who ethically cleansed who?????

Israel has announced today a tactical pause in military activity in parts of Gaza and designated humanitarian corridors are being set up for UN convoys.

I trust that we are all in favour of that.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/conflict-in-the-middle-east/5380809-israel-announces-tactical-pause-to-fighting-says-it-will-open-aid-corridors

All 100% true despite the very effective propaganda machine trying to change history. Hitler also tried that one.