So, at this point basically all hopspitals in Gaza are shut down, forcibly, or just barely running. None of them were proved to have any significant Hamas presence beyond that would be expected by the fact that Hamas is Gaza’s government. (Does the US have a presence in American hospitals?)
The obvious point here, is that if you want to kill the most people possible, hospitals are bad since they keep people from dying.
Then there’s this beautiful bit:
Israeli General Giora Eiland’s weekly call for genocide: “The international community warns of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from it, as hard as it is. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Strip will hasten victory”
I mean, I admire the honesty.
It’s clear that the Israelis want to remove every Palestinians from Gaza if they can, and if not to confine them to an even smaller area. Convincing other countries to take them has proven difficult, and they’ve floated plenty of ways, including a bunch of countries taking 50K each.
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If no one will take ’em, killing ’em gets rid of them too.
Given the food embargo, the water embargo and the power embargo, it’s hard not to think that Israel’s goal is to kill as many civilians as possible and they’ve also destroyed something around 90% of the housing stock: completely uninhabitable.
If it looks talks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. If everything you’re doing a reasonable person would know would kill tons of civilians, you’re probably trying to kill tons of civilians.
Anyway, one of the questions Israel supporters love to ask is you support Israel’s right to exist.
No, not any more. Once you cross that genocide line, your legitimacy is lost.
(Actually, I’m not sure I accept any government’s legitimacy any more, but Israel has walked way farther over line than most.)
Update: A little image showing what happens when food is cut off:
He posted this image earlier today. Seeing the people of Gaza become so emaciated is heartbreaking and certainly harkens back to the darkest history one can recall. https://t.co/uAVsb4WLxc pic.twitter.com/esiQYSmbmE
— LadyIzdihar (@LadyIzdihar) November 20, 2023
GrimJim
The God of Abraham has always considered genocide a sacrament, from the days of the Hebrews and the Canaanites, through the Christian Europeans and Muslim Arabs and Turks, to the German Nazis (yes, Christians) and now the Israeli Jews, who are right back at genociding the Palestinians (ironically, descended from a mix of Arabs, Crusader Europeans, and the Hebrews who were not exiled, who were themselves descended from invading Hebrews and native Canaanites).
It’s right there in the Torah, the Bible, and the Koran. One of the core Abrahamic Traditions. Not that it is exclusive to them, mind you, but they seem to feel a need to sacrifice the blood of innocents to their god.
Soredemos
@GrimJim
This is completely irrelevant, but the Hebrews never invaded. There was never an Exodus, and all the evidence is that what became the Hebrews emerged from *within* the Caananite tribes, gradually differentiating themselves before forging a national myth of themselves as outsiders. The Old Testament is filled with stories about the Israelies and Judeans ‘adopting Canannite idolatry’, but the evidence is robust that the idolatry is what they practiced first, and they kept either backsliding into it, or refused to convert to the central monotheistic Temple cult at all. The stories of the Prophets are a kind of retconning lecture meant to shame and berate the stubborn rural peasants into doing what their city dwelling betters wanted (at Persian behest, which is why so many of the monotheistic ideas have a Persian origin. Before that the folk religion of the Levant had a heavily Babylonian flavor).
The Bible itself, being a lightly edited compilation of ‘sacred knowledge’ stretched over a millenia, is littered with bits that give hints at the actual development (like how God had a wife, named Ashura, who is totally a pagan idol, honest, and we better not catch anyone continuing to worship her around any trees).
GrimJim
@Soredemos
Truth? With the right books, you do not need truth, just what the priests tell you!
Truth is truth, but most folks don’t operate under truth, they are motivated by myth and propaganda (myth being propaganda that has gone to seed).
RE: origin of the Hebrews, I think that they were formed from a merger of Canaanites with some latter day wild tribes, which is why they settled in the highlands, being shepherds (and the highlands were mostly uninhabited by the Canaanites who lived in the valleys).
The nomadic groups, a mix of various Semites, descended from exiles and outlaws from other tribes, started moving into Canaan as raiders; some settled in their own, others were allies of various valley native groups,both mixed with the locals by raid and trade. Assimilation occured over time.
Hebrew Monotheism was forged in the exilic crucible of Babylon, as the leaders of that group were the priests of the Hebrew war god, who quickly became the only god, and absorbed all the traits of the discarded deities (the Elohim, aka the Canaanite Anunnaki).
When they returned, large and in charge, as you say, they purged out the local pantheistic faith, which had trundled along, mixed with bits and bobs from the settlers, like the common Hebrews who had been left in the territory mixed with the forced settlers to become the Samaritans.
And so it continues to this day. Only the languages and names have changed, it’s all still just one big family squabble…
Oakchair
Look on the bright side. Israel just proved Jewish people are the same as other groups of people. When given power they will cheer on as they commit genocide.
mago
It amazes me that you’ve lost patronage and readership by pointing out the obvious.
Ideologies triumphing reason I guess. It’s all so visceral and eviscerating.
Soredemos
@GrimJim
I’ve always loved the fact that Jersualem comes from Uru Shalem, City of Shalem, Shalem being a Canannite deity.
Feral Finster
“No, not any more. Once you cross that genocide line, your legitimacy is lost.
(Actually, I’m not sure I accept any government’s legitimacy any more, but Israel has walked way farther over line than most.)”
Israel doesn’t care, as long as their American gorilla will beat any dissenters into submission.
Rob
When a people worship a serial mass murderer as their god, that they embrace genocide should come as no surprise. Their bible reads like Mein Kampf writ large: Noah’s Ark isn’t about so much the wrath of god, as it is about a cold and calculated plan for the final solution, one that made Himmler sound like a humanitarian.
In the intro to Hannah Arendt’s “the Origins of Totalitarianism”, it is suggested that she “came dangerously close to suggesting that the Jews had a hand in their own extermination”, as though that were an absurdity beyond the pale. However, since the god they worship “had a hand” , as in brought about, the first Jewish holocaust, with the aid of a Jew who dutifully led his neighbor’s goat onto the Ark while refusing admission to his fellow Jew to save that goat, as per Yahweh’s dictum, leaves the rest of us with no hope but ultimate destruction. When your holy book details the annihilation of your own people by your own god, as you don’t quite “measure up”, the rest of us don’t matter a jot.
Mankind has handed over the reins of power to Supernaturalists who we all pretend aren’t mentally deranged, but putting our future into the hands of people who believe they are immortal once they “have shuffled off this mortal coil” is also mentally deranged, yet we willingly do so as though it is they, and not ourselves, who know better.
Soredemos
@Rob
I gave up arguing with ‘supernaturalists’. One of the most epic, long form exercises in collective gaslighting the human race performs on itself is the insistence there is any there there, that religion is ‘deep’ and that ‘spirituality’ is a real thing. Many people to a greater or lesser degree believe in this abject nonsense, and to a greater or lesser degree let that belief dictate their behavior. It’s asinine, but it is what it is, and is unlikely to change at scale.
Jorge
As so many on Twitter pointed out, hospitals are important because they count the dead. Destroying hospitals cuts the information flow about the murders.
Jan Wiklund
May it be that the Israeli government is in a hurry? It seems that the support among American Jews is shrinking, see https://jewishcurrents.org/recent-polls-of-us-jews-reflect-polarized-community. And without that support, what could AIPAC achieve?