argaman01

[argaman01]

Haviv Rettig Gur on deaths in Gaza:

The full list of Gazans killed in the war has been released in Gaza. Possibly. At the very least, as Israeli analysts are now finding, there aren't duplicate ID numbers or other tells one finds in obviously manipulated data sets. But here's another reason to trust the data: It shows just how much Israel's warfighting tried to separate combatant from civilian. It seems unlikely that a faked Gazan data set would show such a result. The graph in the first tweet of this thread shows male to female deaths. If female deaths are assumed to be a civilian baseline (the age distribution is roughly the general Gazan population's age distribution), then the enormous spike of the blue line, right in the area of the graph that represents fighting-age men, is the best likely measure of combatant deaths. According to this analyst, the gap comes to over 16,000 dead, or almost exactly a third of total deaths. That's a Gazan data set, not an Israeli one. And it's the most complete one so far, the only one that claims to give all the names of all the dead, the one most likely to be an honest recording of the actual dead. And according to this data set, the death toll in Gaza is two civilians to each combatant, well in line with the highest standards of modern democratic armies. To be clear - this caveat is obvious, but it's important enough to say it explicitly nonetheless - the debate isn't over whether children died in Gaza or crimes were committed. The answer to both is yes. There were definitely and unquestionably war crimes committed in Gaza, air strikes that should not have been carried out. And there are thousands of dead children in this data set. The debate is over the extent, whether these are at a level consistent with the inevitable costs of even the most legitimate kind of war, which will always be horrible, or whether the best data we have shows wanton Israeli killing and disregard for moral rules and international laws. Israel's haters will tweet pictures of dead children in response. If they did that for every war, I'd take them seriously and sympathetically. But the vast majority of them don't. They don't care about dead children, only about destroying Israel. And so they can't actually tell us anything about whether our army, broadly speaking, has fought morally. But this data set can. All war is evil, all war is hell, all war is a kind of civilizational failure. But war is sometimes nevertheless legitimate and inevitable. International humanitarian law came about not to end war, because ending war is impossible, but to mitigate its evils. If this data set is correct - again, a data set released from Gaza and not at all intended to validate any Israeli argument about its battlefield standards - then the costs imposed on Gaza by Israeli warfighting methods are consistent with what is generally considered in the West to be moral and legitimate. It is a comparable ratio to the 2016 Battle of Mosul in which Iraq, the Kurds and America drove ISIS out of the city. War is bad. I respect people who vehemently oppose this one, who question the Israeli political leadership's decisions, who use the war to debate the larger question of Palestinian independence and statehood. These are all legitimate responses to the suffering of Gazans. As is the argument I personally agree with that this war was the only path available to us to rid ourselves and Gaza of the neverending and endlessly destructive scourge of Hamas. But it nevertheless matters - indeed, it may be the most important thing over the long term - that this war's civilian casualties were not worse than other comparable wars, and that even Gazan data sets show that to be the case.

The thread to which Haviv refers is here

[argaman01]

Yes, one of my best friends is 95 (I'm 68).

I need you people to realize that you can be friends with people older than you. like, much older than you. like, decades older than you. you can be friends with these people. regular friends, just like anyone your age. it is possible.

[argaman01]

“I can’t support Lady Gaga knowing she’s a Zionist and worked with Zionists” lol pop music communities are insufferable about this, but more for me (tbh idc about her thoughts on the term, but I do care about inclusivity towards Jewish creators!) 💖💖💖

the (((Zionists))) she worked with on Mayhem:

Michael Polansky, her Jewish fiancée

Andrew Watt, Jewish producer

Gesaffelstein (Mike Lévy), Jewish producer

Bruno Mars, has Jewish ancestry which he has publicly spoken about, condemned the 10/7 massacre and sent prayers to the victims because he was literally in Israel performing that day

why Lady Gaga is an evil Zionist:

performed in Israel

said people don’t understand what they’re talking about when they vilify the whole country (she’s right)

enjoyed Tel Aviv and was excited to see Jerusalem

loves a Jewish man???

[argaman01]

Jesus fed the 5,000, but the people of God can't fill the chasm left by USAID

I have a day job that has nothing to do with feeding people. I’m a missionary trauma surgeon, training Christian Malawian doctors to become surgeons. In Malawi, a country of 21 million people, there’s roughly one surgeon for half a million residents, and to my knowledge I’m the only critical-care board certified physician in all of Malawi. Because of my skills, I’m frequently consulted by the U.S. Embassy and on call for U.S. special forces when they visit Malawi. I really need to do my day job.  Last week I did a lot of things besides my day job. After discovering that 20 nursing students at the college that supports our hospital had lost their funding due to the sudden demise of the U.S. Agency for International Development, I spent time trying to find a donor for them, so they and the school might find a way to continue to train the professionals my hospital desperately needs. I spent several hundred dollars of my own money to feed them and paid my language teacher double, since much of his employment is also through USAID and has abruptly disappeared. The USAID shutdown caused the hospital’s HIV clinic to close and access to malaria medicine for our pediatric ward full of patients to be cut off, as well as tuberculosis medications. I made calls, sent texts and emails, stayed up late at night, trying to help. A few, mostly HIV-related programs, have partially restarted after limited waivers were granted, but there’s still mass confusion and fear, and all programs remain under threat. One friend said he had barely slept in three days. Christian aid workers across the world have similar stories. As the crisis unfolds, I’ve seen countless Christians happily proclaim on social media that “God will make a way,” or that “people of God on the ground” should be doing this kind of work, not the U.S. government. I am the “people of God” on the ground. My husband and three kids have barely seen me this week. Sometimes I have to spend hours in line to get gas for my car to go to work. So, no. The people of God cannot just take over.

[argaman01]

https://www.instagram.com/stories/ithacans4israel/3571727321587425714?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igsh=M3lxb2loYW54ejQw

[argaman01]

Amen!

How anyone can happily support and valorise the kind of people who kidnap babies in their pyjamas from their home, hold them hostage, murder them, and then hold their bodies for months while their families and communities continue to hope and pray for them and think for an iota of a fucking second they have the audacity to lecture anyone else about human rights or justice.

[argaman01]

[argaman01]

Fuck. Today really is shit.

it is very clear that hamas is doing this not because israel did a single violation, but because the world can see the state of our hostages.

evil fucking bastards.

[argaman01]

These men just stole the personal information of everyone in America AND control the Treasury. Link to article.

Akash Bobba

Edward Coristine

Luke Farritor

Gautier Cole Killian

Gavin Kliger

Ethan Shaotran

Spread their names!

[argaman01]

Pornbots - if you follow me, I will block you.

[argaman01]

Ok so the ICE arrests of US citizens and veterans of Hispanic descent.

Read Between Dignity and Despair by Marion Kaplan. Because this is part of a process called “social death.” We already have high level dehumanizing and quasi-genocidal rhetoric about Latinx Americans. We have internment camps. Now we have the Trump Admin and its just-following-orders ICE enforcers arresting citizens.

“Social death” is the process by which a group of citizens has its identity as lawful and ideological citizens questioned to such an extent that it becomes normalized among the “fits ideological notions of citizenship” group to view them as an inherently foreign Other before anyone starts revoking citizenship.

And we’re already ass deep into that process.

The USA is not a country in which ANYONE should feel as though they have to carry their citizenship/naturalization papers on them. That is not normal, and you cannot let the media normalize it.

Also, read Imagined Communities.

[argaman01]

Don’t comply in advance

An Executive Order is not a law

It’s a wishlist

The United States still has some (flawed and deeply eroded, but still standing) systems of checks and balances in play

Behave as though nothing has changed (if, of course, it’s safe for you to do so) until the Executive Orders go through the courts

Me? I’m going to keep behaving as though I have the Constitutional right to criticize our government until the (corrupt and degraded) SCOTUS retracts the First Amendment.

[argaman01]

she wrote this before the girls arrived safely home today, but it resonated with me deeply and I know others will understand.

(I think we should also clarify that Naama has not shared what happened to her, and it’s her choice whether to do so. thus I will not definitively speak to that, but include tw in the tags because of the triggering nature of what we saw that day.)

all of them, living and dead, will forever be part of us.

[argaman01]

It is so nauseating to see them captured and abused on October 7, and so much joy to see them free. I hope that they are able to recover from their awful experiences.

TW FOR MY JEWS AND ISRAELIS: this has footage of the girls’ kidnapping and abuse.

i am posting this for the inevitable “they were treated well” posts bc hamas held them at gunpoint and made them speak arabic.

[argaman01]

I'm so glad they're back with their families!

After 477 days

Liri albag,naama levy,karina ariev and daniella gilboa are back from captive

[argaman01]

[argaman01]

like I don’t know. do Jews have to begin any criticism of the pro-Palestine movement with #notallpropalestinians before people will take us seriously? do we have to explain at length how we understand the injustice against Palestinians? do we have to provide lists of the Palestinian authors we’ve read and films we’ve watched and lectures we’ve been to? do you want copies of law journal articles I’ve published advocating for Palestinian rights? records of my semester abroad studying Palestinian Arabic under Palestinian teachers? photos of me in Nablus with Palestinian friends? what level of performativity do non-Jews need to show until you take our criticisms of the left in good faith