By Alice Cuddy BBC News, Jerusalem
The call to Mahmoud Shaheen came at dawn.
It was Thursday 19 October at about 06:30, and Israel had been bombing Gaza for 12 days straight.
He’d been in his third-floor, three-bedroom flat in al-Zahra, a middle-class area in the north of the Gaza Strip. Until now, it had been largely untouched by air strikes.
He’d heard a rising clamour outside. People were screaming. “You need to escape,” somebody in the street shouted, “because they will bomb the towers”.
Everytime I read an article like this, my immediate reaction is posting a comment expressing my disgust with the Israeli State’s actions and everytime I hesitate because I don’t want to suffer the inevitable wave of people defending the Israeli State’s actions as somehow justifiable because Hamas did something vile first.
It’s a continuing cycle of violence and the Israeli State holds a humongous power advantage. They don’t use that power disparity to deescalate and integrate the Palestinian people to prevent Hamas from having support. Instead they do shit like this where they drive Palestinians straight into Hamas’ hands, because the Palestinian people are given no other option to turn to.
May Hamas, the Israeli gov’t, and the IDF spend an eternity in Hell for the crimes they’ve committed against humanity and innocent civilians.
If the mods/admins want to ban me for saying that, feel free. I don’t want to be part to any group that supports and advocates for murders and war crimes.
Imagine trying to justify thousands of murdered children because some people decided to attack a festival.
An attack, I might add, the government had been informed of and bafflingly did the opposite of adding protection to heavy traffic areas…
I posted this article even though I nominally support what Israel is doing here. This war has a legitimate human cost and there’s no reason to belive that reasonable people will never view that cost as too high.
I think the story painted here shows both the horrid cost on civilian life that these bombings have and the extensive efforts to avoid civilian casualties that the IDF takes.
Short of an Jeff Bezos takeover of Gaza to turn it into the world’s biggest Amazon warehouse, I literally don’t know what could possibly solve the situation. It’s clear from the cheering crowds praising raped corpses that there’s too much hatred to reasonably integrate Gaza into greater Israel. And it’s clear from the massive terror the Muslim Brotherhood caused in Egypt, that they could never integrate into an Egyptian society . And is clear from the 4-6x Marshall Plan per person they’ve received in aid that aid to Gaza is a black hole that will never lead to a thriving society. After 2004 I remember this optimism and a belief that this Israel/Palestine thing was really back on pace for a 2 state solution. And now I just don’t see it.
Some solution has to be found. If Israel just empties Palestine of Palestinians and claims it all as Israel, that won’t give them the safety they want from attacks by nutters. The crazy thing that is, there are right wing nutters in Israel wanting to exactly that. Ethnic cleansing is no way to peace. Even the US won’t support them doing that. Even doing it salami slicing with nutty settlers isn’t going unnoticed.
There needs to be a justice system to deal with nutters. You can’t deal with harsh collective punishment. It’s a nutters response that just creates more nutters on the other side. Which nutters of the side partly want to justify their own nuttiness and to create more of them on their own side.
I don’t think that goal this time is to evict Palestinians from Gaza. I think the goal is simply to try to get a “new deal.” Most terrorist organizations aren’t as evil, incompetent and aren’t as ridiculous as Hamas is. I mean imagine how much better Gaza would be with a Taliban-esque leadership group in charge. Or even just a leadership group physically located in Gaza.
Like how many jihadists can really be left in Gaza? At some point, they’ve got to run out of these idiots.
There are some who are calling for it to be the end of Palestinians. Nuking them and other means of clearing the land.
You never run out of idiots. They will be coming to Palestinian to fight. Young men are prone to look for causes to fight for and there is a real injustice happening to Palestine.
Israel can’t just kill it’s way to peace. No justice, no peace.
Hamas aren’t helping the Palestinian cause either because they are clearly terrorist nutters.
Oh I’m sure there are some people at that point on the Israeli political spectrum. I just don’t think the ruling coalition is there.
It doesn’t take much sanity to see nuking would be a terrible idea.
It doesn’t take much sanity to see that attacking your much larger and stronger neighbor and indiscriminately murdering their elderly and children and parading raped corpses through your streets would be a terrible idea. But we have idiots on both sides.
the inevitable wave of people defending the Israeli State’s actions
I think that wave has broken. They were a very vocal minority and some of them have been banned already.
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Post it anyways and block all of the disgusting comments afterwards, you’ll be gradually cleaning up your Lemmy experience as you do
See, on one hand that seems like a good idea, but whilst people can have reprehensible views on one topic they might also have reasonable contributions for another.
Fair enough!
Most of the working class stands with Palestine.
Citation needed.
Where are the pro-Israel rallies?
The working class doesn’t go to rallies.
🤡
They don’t. They’re working.
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Yeah but how else will they virtue signal
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Because I’m here to have constructive discussions? IDGAF about votes; I, unfortunately, give a fuck about having to deal with people like you and the above.
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You seem to be making points which don’t apply to me.
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I feel the same way here (Lemmy) because I support Israel. Funny, how being a minority works.
EDIT: to be fair, I don’t have the numbers to claim who is a minority or not.
It’s so cool how people who support a genocide will just straight up tell you like this.
Poor fucking you. Could try having some sympathy for the kids killed in a paediatric hospital in the last week.
Empathy for 4000 dead kids is a controversial opinion apparently.
I’ve been called a terrorist supporter for explicitly expressing concern for the innocent victims 🤷
Yeah but did you condemn Hamas thrice daily before doing so? Common mistake.
Lmao, this is exactly what they were talking about
I corrected myself. You are not a minority in the world, as I don’t know the numbers and there are clearly a lot of sympathizers of the Palestinian cause in England, Spain, France and the US. I don’t even know what is going on in the rest of the world.
I can only empathize with the writer’s original emotion of feeling like a persecuted minority.
EDIT I retract my use of the word “Persecuted”. At best, this is lack of tolerance.
You’d think as an oppressed minority in the world, you’d be more outraged at Israel for their continued oppression of Palestinians. I know plenty of other Jews that feel this way.
Who says I don’t? Israel should definitely stop the settlements, push to join the Palestinians into the abrahamic accords, do what they can to bring actual peace instead of placating their religious fanatics for an easy vote.
I said I support Israel. In which I meant that I support Israel’s fight against Hamas. Yes, that entails hurting civilians. Yes, that is a sad state of affairs.
Almost no one out there is supporting Hamas, and if you unilaterally support Israel, you are anti-Palestinian. The fact that you think fighting Hamas includes indiscriminately bombing civilians shows you are in support of the ongoing genocide of an ethnic minority. And to call yourself a minority to try to gain sympathy is pathetic at best. The KKK is also a minority, so by your logic, we should all try to sympathize with their plight.
Almost no one out there is supporting Hamas, and if you unilaterally support Israel, you are anti-Palestinian.
You are willfully ignoring my last comment to give your strawman some hay.
The fact that you think fighting Hamas includes indiscriminately bombing civilians shows you are in support of the ongoing genocide of an ethnic
minority Strawman, I never said that the IDF should or is bombing indiscriminately. That is YOUR belief and you’re forcing it upon my words.
And to call yourself a minority to try to gain sympathy is pathetic at best.
Yet another misunderstanding. I didn’t say that to garner sympathy. I said that to make the point that this situation is just a classical case of the Majority’s tyranny. Granted, @risk suffered it worse, but the situation is just two sides of the same coin except I hang around in Lemmy and he hangs around in News websites.
The KKK is also a minority, so by your logic, we should all try to sympathize with their plight. Oh look, it’s your favorite rhetorical instrument. A strawman.
imagine hearing a neo nazi talk like you do. That’s how people are starting to associate Israel and their genocide.
You aren’t a persecuted minority, you’re just a person that willingly doesn’t want to understand so the hate can continue. What is happening is clearly not okay to anyone with even a hint of a moral compass.
I don’t think criticizing Israel is wrong here, nor do I wish for more civilian bloodshed. I do, however, see the end of the war with Hamas no longer being able to actively threat Israel a legitimate goal.
Why does that mean I’m a Nazi?
I brought up neo Nazis so you would understand that you are as much a persecuted minority as they are. By supporting Israel and not criticizing them loudly, you are encouraging more civilian bloodshed.
I never outright called you a nazi, but you are someone that supports a racist apartheid state that is currently in the middle of a genocide. It’s not a good look.
I know it’s hard to realize that all the truths you were raised on were lies, that even family members can be downright evil in what they say and hope for. You can either keep the cycle going or be an adult about it.
Funny how you just completely confirmed OPs hesitancy to post. You are not a minority for supporting the IDF.
Seems like they are on Lemmy
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I did correct myself in that I only share his feelings as being persecuted. I clearly don’t know who is a minority in this debate and it was wrong to assume so.
If you look at the actions of Western media and governments, it’s pretty clear who is the minority. Palestinian activists have become much more vocal because they’re the minority, and no one is standing up for Gazans.
Regardless, you are not being persecuted, by saying so you’re trivializing those that are.
I said only on Lemmy.
I actually empathized with the man. I think he should be allowed to express himself without being persecuted EVEN THOUGH I THINK HIS OPINION IS WRONG.
It came out wrong because of my talk of minority.
I think you need to look up what it means to be persecuted
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I agree with your statement and would retract the use of the word “persecuted”, as it is a matter of severity.
The inflicting of suffering, harassment, imprisonment, internment, fear or pain are all factors that may establish persecution, but not all suffering will necessarily establish persecution. The threshold of severity has been a source of much debate. Source: Wikipedia
Being ostracized in a Lemmy debate clearly isn’t persecution. It is a lack of pluralism or tolerance. Something you can criticize, but definitely isn’t something anyone owes anyone else here. It’s more of a matter of civility.
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No need to get personal. I was empathizing with a person who is getting harassed for his opinions. Kinda like what you’re doing right now.
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To say that it is wrong that @Risk can’t express himself freely on a news article? I’m pretending to care for his opinion? Why? How am I a fraud?
Notice how the comment you replied to, despite claiming they “always get hate” has nothing but supportive people upvoting, while you have 3 angry lions going for the neck because you dare to say you support Israel…
It has come too far to ever work. This community, @world, is no longer a place for biased news. I have had to block for a long time, but just came back to see if it was still such a mess. Turns out it is.
The worst thing is that the mods here are directly supporting this.
Did you mean unbiased?
Well, that would mean a whole lot of work than just making sure people are civil. That would mean fact checking, confirming and banning accordingly.
That is a LOT of work… Can’t fault the mods for that.
As long as it is civil, it should be what it is. At least that’s my opinion.
Yes, I meant unbiased, sorry.
But look at our scores. We are voices that defies the echo chamber. Therefor we must be silenced.
It sucks, because I actually genuinely was happy for Lemmy, and had moved all my browsing over here. But alas, it seems that I can no longer use this platform for news. I will go back to having this community blocked.
PS) Try going to r/worldnews and Reddit, and check what the tone of audience is over there. Much more biased towards Israel, which is a no-brainer in my world.
Did you just equate downvotes with being silenced?
After many years on r/worldnews I learned to spot the organic content from the astroturfed. Regulars were absolutely in no way pro Israel. It was always obvious when the brigade would show up
I can’t imagine packing up and leaving in 2 hours with my whole family and all my cats and everything
You dont have two hours to pack. You have two hours to not be in the area anymore
That’s literally what they said tho
If you still live in Northern Gaza to this day, after all that’s being going on, and all the warnings to GTFO… you better keep your cats and belongings pre-packed and ready to be several blocks away in 30 minutes, don’t even wait the 2 hours.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Directed by the voices of strangers, who always seemed to know how to reach him even when his battery ran out, he pleaded for the bombing to stop and screamed until his throat hurt for people to run away.
Since the war had begun, messages had been circulating in the community Facebook group warning of hoax calls and offering tips on identifying real Israeli evacuation orders.
The area - just north of the Wadi Gaza river, a point that Israel has been ordering civilians to move south of since the early days of the war - was made up of modern blocks of flats as well as shops, cafes, universities, schools, and parks.
Mahmoud led the crowd, which included not just residents of the tower blocks, but also other displaced people who had sought shelter in al-Zahra after fleeing their own homes elsewhere in northern Gaza.
Mahmoud had been keeping his distance from his wife and five children all day - both because he was busy evacuating people and because he feared that his contact with Israeli intelligence made him a target.
Strikes on military targets were subject, it said, to “relevant provisions of international law, including the taking of feasible precautions to mitigate civilian casualties”.
The original article contains 2,956 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 93%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Hamas sets up military operations in a civilian building by force - the civilians have no say in this and get killed if they protest
Hamas then uses that building to launch rockets, store ammunition, communication stations How does Israel proceed to neutralize those sites? what they do is:
“Roof knocking”: Hitting the building’s roof with a small explosive to announce that it will fall in 15 minutes
(see video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teevWpXlRZY example)
Automatic SMS and phone calls impacted areas warning and urging to evacuate
Precision strikes that make the building fall vertically with minimal damage to the areas
As a result, civilians (and potentially military personnel) are given a chance to evacuate while ammunition stashes, rocket launching stations etc stay in the building and are destroyed.
Weirdly enough, since the operation began, Hamas has repeatedly instructed Palestinians to ignore these warnings.
To be honest, I’m shocked those protocols are still used after Hamas’s attack. I would absolutely not be surprised of these measures stopped.
Incredibly, people don’t care that during a war, Israel is bending over backwards to minimize human suffering while fighting a decades long war against people who are deliberately hell-bent on genocide of the Jews of the world.
Over the course of 20 years, the US and its coalition allies in Afganistan killed approximately 50,000 civilians and there we calls for war crimes investigations. In the course of one month Israel has killed over 10,000 civilians.
I did two tours in Afghanistan and can tell you now, they are not bending over backwards to minimize it. They are using this as an excuse to indemnify themselves from war crimes prosecution.
“Bending over backwards” is a bit excessive… but maybe “slightly reclining in their chairs”?
At least they’re doing “something”, instead of bombing out of the blue… and if it works to indemnify themselves from war crimes prosecution… yay, international law at work, right?
They aren’t roof knocking anymore, that policy has been abandoned since recently.
Also, this is how it looks like: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=69icTMgIjlw
