#Hamas wants to claim it as a way to threaten Jews

[friendlyneighborhoodevilvillain]

The phrase alone is not a call for genocide.

Seems like a good time to remind people that the phrase "from the river to the sea" - while apparently popular on this hellsite, is basically a call for the total eradication of not just the Israeli state (and by that I don't mean the government, I mean EVERYTHING) but of every Jew in that area.

SO. If I see it on your blog? Bye. I do not trust you to have anything even remotely approaching a nuanced take to this fucking tragedy.

[jewishwarriorprincess]

Things that boggle my mind:

How Hamas bodycam and live stream footage is considered Israeli propaganda

Why those who celebrated what happened are also denying it happened

Any images and videos from Oct 7th is immediately called fake and Israeli propaganda

How people will still claim that Jews..oh sorry Zionists control the media and governments yet the media and governments are constantly condemning or spreading misinformation about Israel

How fast people will use photos from Syria to claim it's Gaza

How no one actually does any digging and research into what they see and immediately believe it as fact

The revisionism of history, including claims that Jews lived peacefully with Muslims in the MENA ignoring the fact that Jews were forced to pay a protection tax (Dhimmi) and could not be above Muslims in any way, often stripping them of their Jewish identities and the violence that occurred before the establishment of Israel

How the Left will immediately retweet and share screenshots of literal white supremacists because it's against "Israel" even though they are mainly extremely false or full of hate

How promoting the boycott of Jewish businesses, even ones owned by Israelis who have nothing to do with the government is not considered antisemitic (according to the Left)

And while promoting BDS, they still use Israeli and Jewish products, technology, medication, etc

How what Hamas did is still being considered by the Left as "freedom fighting"

How literally none of my Leftie goy friends posted any support for Israel and the Jewish people but will scream ceasefire

How people scream ceasefire and don't mention the hostages

How quick people were able to forget or brush off the atrocities of Oct 7th

How Hamas' literal war crimes are not being mentioned or condemned by the UN, WHO, etc but these organizations are so quick to throw Israel under the bus and scream war crimes when the retaliation and ways of retaliation are adhering to international law

How corrupt the UN is. How can you let Iran be on your Human Rights council and still be seen as legitimate? How can you turn a blind eye to your schools and hospitals being used by Hamas for firing rockets and teaching children that their only purpose in life is to kill Jews and be martyred?

How no one, including the media (besides Israeli Media) talks about the continuous rocket attacks done by Hamas and the PIJ since Oct 7th which is aimed at targeting civilians (also a war crime).

How ripping down posters, even smearing dog shit onto posters of hostages, especially children is considered ok and an act of protesting

How Jews are told to hide their identities, not wave their flags, literally just not exist around the pro Hamas, sorry pro Palestinian crowds due to safety concerns or a risk of upsetting the protesters

How the people claiming to care for Palestinians don't speak up about the conditions Hamas keeps their people under in Gaza, executing them for speaking out, stealing aid supplies and money, how their leaders are worth billions and reside in Qatar while they tell their people to be martyrs for the cause

Kapos... I don't understand the anti-Zionist Jews to be honest. Especially seeing how they help spread misinformation and support those who want to kill them.

How targeting Jewish social media creators, especially those who are Orthodox, and making videos to smear them and encourage harassment because they are Jewish, spoke out about what happened on Oct 7, and support Israel is seen as ok... trying to destroy their livelihood, their mental health, and even threaten their lives.

How organizations like JVP, INN, etc are not being investigated in regards to their legitimacy

How indigenous people in the West are being tokenized and allowing it to happen, not researching history to see that the Jewish people are actually indigenous to the land and are an example of decolonization

That there are politicians who refuse to condemn Hamas but are not being investigated even though there have been proof of ties to Hamas

There are so many videos of Imams around the world preaching to kill Jews and if you call it out you're Islamophobic

The silence from women, especially those in the MeToo movement and UN Women organization in regards to the rape of Israeli women during Oct 7th

How people misread a headline regarding babies being decapitated and somehow blame Israel for saying 40 babies were beheaded when that is not what the reporter said at all

People saying that everything Israel has said about the attacks has been proven to be a lie yet refuse to provide any sources and if they do provide a source it's usually from Quds, Al Jazeera, or Electronic Intifada

Speaking of Intifada, how the Left will proudly shout for an Intifada without knowing what it is or what happened during the 1st and 2nd Intifadas

How the words Genocide, Ethnically Cleansing, Apartheid, and War Crimes have become buzzwords that have lost all meaning since they are so often used incorrectly

How watermelons have been ruined for me because now every time I see even the emoji I think about how people use it to promote a Jewish genocide

How people will post onto social media very antisemitic crap but if you call them out, try to educate, or post anything relating to Israel it is removed by the platform for violating some kind of imaginary rules. Saying death to Jews is ok but calling them out on it is not?

That people don't understand this wasn't a war we wanted to fight but were forced into it

That Israelis are not the government and we are not Bibi

How people will use Ethiopian Jews as a "gotcha" but when Ethiopian Jews call them out on tokenizing them and to STFU they are Israeli propagandist

That apparently I am a paid by Israel to engage in combatting disinformation....still waiting on that check because I could desperately use the money

People saying Jews are wealthy with privilege. I grew up a poor Jew and I'm still a poor Jew, my bank account is crying, again I'm waiting on that Israeli check lol

How people are calling Jews white supremacist oppressors....huh?

How the LGBTQ+ crowd are openly participating in calls for a genocide to the Jews and to eliminate Israel, even though it's the only country in the Middle East they can be openly themselves in

How Hamas top leaders openly talk about their desires, their plans, and how they mistreat their people in their goal to kill Jews, and how they have the Left on their side and brag about it but when posting those interviews it's considered Israeli Propaganda

How people are telling Jews to leave Israel...telling them to go back to Europe even though a majority of Jews in Israel are from MENA countries that forced them to flee, taking their property, money, valuables, documents. And when confronted about this, they say they can go back to Iraq, Iran, Yemen.... showing how dumb they really are. Also considering a lot of Israelis ages newborn to 40 are a mix. For example, my husband is Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, where is he supposed to go and our children? These countries are unsafe for Jews and we refuse to go back to Dhimmi status

How people ignore and or support that there are so many Islamic countries but a tiny Jewish one is seen as a threat... that a Jewish country is not allowed or is "racist", but the Islamic majority countries are ok? Even Christian ones?

Honestly just how stupid people are, how the same people who call themselves free thinkers aren't at all. How the same people who chanted to punch a Nazi are participating in Nazi like behaviors. The same people who said they would hide Jews during the Holocaust are the same ones participating in the rounding up of Jews.

I have so many more thoughts and I needed to vent it out. I remember my grandmother, who was able to escape the camps as a child because her parents had her baptized and sent off with other children, feared that another Holocaust would happen. That so many older Jews, especially Israelis, have an emergency pack in case they had to flee... cash, valuables, documents, family heirlooms all hidden in a secure spot just in case.

[jewishvitya]

@turgidturnip I hope you don't mind me replying to this on a different post.

This is about "from the river to the sea" and the claim that it's an antisemitic rallying cry, calling to ethnically cleanse Palestine from Jews.

There's a misconception that this slogan comes from the Hamas charter, but it predates Hamas by, I think, a couple of decades. It's been used this way by more militant groups, and by Iraqi leadership at some point, but before that it's been used to call for a democratic secular nation state.

The reason you see these claims of antisemitism from Jewish people online is that this is the context where most of them will have seen it. Both because it is part of the history, and because that's how antisemites use it against Jews.

Both "Free Palestine" and "from the river to the sea" are thrown at random Jewish people, who are completely unrelated to Israel, to tell them essentially "You're not wanted anywhere and we want you gone."

This abuses the cause of the Palestinian people to weaponize against Jews. It's wrong and violent, but doesn't make the desire to be free in their homeland into something genocidal. And I'm not willing to just give antisemites this, but even if I was, I'm not Palestinian and giving up on a slogan because antisemites are abusing it is not my call to make. It's pretty obvious Palestinians don't want to put it away. Any slogans Palestinians might create can be used this way against Jews, because antisemites will always look for ways to be hateful towards us. But it doesn't make the antisemitism inherent in the desire for freedom.

Recognize where it's used in an antisemitic way from context: if someone uses those slogans to throw at a random Jewish person, or if it's used to disrupt a conversation about antisemitism, that's a misuse of it that does a disservice to Palestinians in favor of harming Jews. That's when it has genocidal intent applied to it.

Otherwise, don't let antisemites steal a slogan of a group of people who have been facing ethnic cleansing for over seventy years. Their real ethnic cleansing takes priority over the hypothetical one we're supposedly threatened with.

I'm not trying to tell other people what their liberation should look like. But when I talk to Palestinians, so far what I heard was a desire for one state that isn't an ethnostate. A civic state that tries to be safe for all the people within its borders. As far as I could see, Palestinians have been saying for a while that what they mean by this, is a state that will be free and equal to everyone.

The assumption that Palestinians will pull some sort of reverse ethnic cleansing against us is racist. And this assumption is the reason Israelis feel comfortable calling the carpet bombing of a civilian population "self defense." Killing them based on this is not self defense, it's a racially motivated crime against humanity.

Gaza is experiencing a genocide. This is because Israel wants the land - without the people. The manufactured Jewish majority can't be sustained if they're made equal citizens. Palestinians are risking the ethnostate by being alive.

So far Israel is the one practicing the genocidal interpretation of "from the river to the sea."

Palestinians deserve to be free on every single part of this land.

[virgjl]

Jews for a Free Palestine ✡️️✊🇵🇸

There are videos of Hamas soldiers taking care of Israeli children, rocking them in their stroller, putting socks on their feet, holding them, giving them water.

There are videos of Hamas soldiers telling an Israeli woman "No one will touch you! No one will harm you! Let them (Israel) know this is the humanity of Palestine!" and they let and her children go.

Israeli civilians report that they've been treated with "surprising kindness" by Hamas

... There are videos of Israelis PISSING on the corpses of Palestinian civilians. While cheering.

There are videos of Israelis driving their car over mutilated corpses of Palestinian civilians. While cheering.

There are pictures of Palestinian toddlers in cage. Israel tried to claim they were Israeli children, but it was debunked, the truth came out.

Israel and Western media: Palestinians want to kill all Jews! They are beheading babies! We have no proof of it but it's happening!

...

I am a Jew from northern Africa with Mizrahi ancestors. Mizrahi were Palestinian Jews living in Palestine along Muslims and Christians, before Israel was created. My grandmother was welcomed in Israel, but then escaped a few years later because her husband was a Christian man, and his whole family was threatened by Israel, their homes and belongings stolen to "make space" for other European settlers.

This is the story of Palestine. This is not Muslims vs Jews, as Israel says. Israel has killed Muslims and Christians for a century, to create a fascist, theocratic ethnostate. No other people in the world was ever given the right to create such a state. Israeli's feeling of entitlement to the land and lives of Palestinians is abhorrent.

And you know what, even if Hamas had done such horrible things, I would still support a Free Palestine. Someone could come and kill me tomorrow, and I would still support a Free Palestine.

The day before the Hamas attack, 4 Palestinian civilians were gunned down by Israeli forces in the West Bank.

Since the year 2.000, over 3.000 Palestinian children were killed by Israel.

Back in 2014, in Sderot, Israeli people would gather with binoculars and popcorn to watch the bombings on Gaza.

And Sderot was built on the ashes of a Palestinian village destroyed by Israel.

Western media refuses to talk about any of it.

BUT WE KNOW THE TRUTH.

Jews for a Free Palestine ✡️️✊🇵🇸

✊🏽❤️🇵🇸 THANK YOU FOR THIS!!! I saw that video you are taking about and I just know western media are going to find a way to twist it😭

I appreciate your kind words and your solidarity 💕

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia, a US-designated terrorist organization that has disrupted global shipping to display its support for Palestinians in the Gaza conflict, is now offering a place for students suspended from US universities after staging pro-Hamas, anti-Israeli protests.

For more than two weeks, university students have been amassing in the hundreds at a growing number of schools, taking over sections of campuses by setting up “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” and refusing to leave unless administrators condemn and boycott Israel. Footage of the protests has shown demonstrators chanting in support of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization that Israel is fighting in Gaza; calling for the destruction of Israel; and even threatening to harm members of the Jewish community on campus. In many cases, activists have also lambasted the US and Western civilization more broadly.

The protests initially erupted across the US but have since spread to university campuses around the world, primarily in the West.

Many of the schools, including Ivy League Columbia University in New York City, have called in police to quell the protests.

“We are serious about welcoming students that have been suspended from US universities for supporting Palestinians,” an official at Sanaa University, which is run by the Houthis, told Reuters. “We are fighting this battle with Palestine in every way we can.”

Sanaa University had issued a statement applauding the “humanitarian” position of the students in the United States and said they could continue their studies in Yemen.

“The board of the university condemns what academics and students of US and European universities are being subjected to, suppression of freedom of expression,” the board of the university said in a statement, which included an email address for any students wanting to take up their offer.

The US and Britain returned the Houthi militia to a list of terrorist groups this year as their attacks on vessels in and around the Red Sea hurt global economies. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a televised speech on Friday that the terrorist group will target ships heading to Israeli ports in any area that is within their range.

“We will target any ships heading to Israeli ports in the Mediterranean Sea in any area we are able to reach,” he said.

The rebel movement — whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — has also claimed responsibility for attempted drone and missile strikes targeting Israel.

The Houthi’s offer of an education for US students sparked a wave of sarcasm by ordinary Yemenis on social media. One social media user posted a photograph of two Westerners chewing Yemen’s widely-used narcotic leaf Qat. He described the scene as American students during their fifth year at Sanaa University.

In a similar move to the Houthis earlier this week, the head of a major Iranian university reportedly offered scholarships to students expelled from US and European universities over the anti-Israel protests, which have involved students and faculty holding unauthorized demonstrations, occupying school buildings, and in some cases blocking Jews from entering parts of campus.

Mohammad Moazzeni, who runs Shiraz University in the Fars province, made the announcement to show “solidarity” with the anti-Israel agitators.

[iamnmbr3]

I'm part of the MENA diaspora and I also think that many of the newly minted Palestinian rights activists (especially the very online ones) will abruptly lose interest in the cause for the rights of Palestinians whenever a ceasefire is declared. :/

I'm sending this anonymously because I don't need Hamas stans on this site screenshooting my blog right now and calling me a Zionist apologist or whatever, even though I absolutely cannot stand Israeli's government.

Absolutely. I would argue that even now a lot of them aren't interested in the cause of Palestinian rights. People who waste energy protesting outside of synagogues or barring Jews from college campuses in countries thousands of miles away from Palestine are not genuinely interested in the cause of rights and dignity for Palestinian people or serious about taking part in real activism to build a peaceful future in the region.

They are appropriating the suffering of the Palestinian people and the work of real activists to center themselves and shield hateful actions and terrorist apologism. The way they have attacked and tried to silence Palestinian people who have condemned Hamas (because guess what? terrorists are everyone's enemy) is so telling. A lot of them haven't even bothered to get educated about basic facts and spew a lot of hateful and harmful misinformation - for example confusing Hamas with the PLO or equating Gazan civilians with the Hamas terrorists who oppress them. Hamas claims to speak for and represent Palestinian people but they do not and anyone saying every day Palestinian people are the same as or represented by terrorists is a raging bigot and on the side of oppressors and murderers.

Literally wtf. I just look at these fake "activists" and I'm at a loss. Wow you yelled antisemitic slurs at some random Jews in a country on the other side of the world from Gaza. Literally what does that accomplish? Do you think people in Gaza who just want to live in peace are thanking you? Do you think that helps them in any way? Of course it doesn't. The only people who that helps are Hamas terrorists. Because Hamas wants to spread hate. The leaders of Hamas brutalize and murder the people of Palestine every day and became billionaires by robbing the people of Gaza. They don't care about the Palestinian people at all. These corrupt Hamas leaders are the only people who are served by spreading hate and attacking random people abroad.

Actual activism that would help the victims of this conflict takes work and compromise. And these so-called terminally online fake "Leftists" just want a movement to treat as a fandom where they can get attention and have an excuse to be bigoted. Like in the US they literally protested the DNC but not the RNC and are threatening not to vote for Harris even tho the Democrats and Harris support a ceasefire (and are actively working towards one) and the Republicans are virulently bigoted and Trump hates Palestinian people so much he literally uses "Palestinian" as a slur against people he doesn't like. It's appalling.

And yeah I hope Netanyahu and his government are kicked out soon. Before October 7 there were mass protests in Israel against Netanyahu and his whole government because he is so bad as a leader and so corrupt. He probably would've been forced out by now if not for this conflict. He wants to be a dictator and is absolutely terrible for regional stability and peace and ending his rule would benefit everyone in the region - Israelis as well as Palestinians. All these so-called activists just focusing on being antisemitic helps him a lot because they are taking attention away from the very deserved and legitimate criticisms that should be focused on him and his government.

But anyway, Hamas is absolutely the enemy of the Palestinian people (as well as of Israel) and acting like criticizing Hamas means you are against the people of Gaza or against Palestinian people or in support of Netanyahu is literally just repeating Hamas propaganda...aka the propaganda of the people who have terrorized and oppressed the people of Gaza every single day since Israel withdrew in 2005. Supporting Hamas doesn't make you woke or progressive or an activist. It makes you a fascist terrorist apologist and supporter of the oppressor.

So many Palestinian people have been forced to flee Gaza because of the brutality of the Hamas regime and then all these Western online "Leftists" cosplaying as activists attack them and shout them down because they don't want to hear that this conflict affects real people and is more complex than a cartoon drama. Real solutions involve work and compromise and nuance. And they aren't interested. Some even say that Palestinian civilians dying should be glorified because it makes them "martyrs." No. Palestinian people are not toys to be played with. They are human beings.

They deserve to live long and peaceful and happy lives - not to be fed into a meat grinder to be "martyred" for the benefit of Hamas's corrupt billionaire leaders or for the entertainment of Twitter warriors.

[edgarthepooh]

O.K., just red a piece written by an Israeli historian, living in the U.S., that claims Israel is committing genocide, and claims that the war in Gaza is solely blind revenge.

His main argument is:

-In October 7'th, Israel was humiliated, the same way germany was humiliated in WW1.

-The war in Gaza is the same as WW2 because germans also claimed they were threatened by communists, slavs and, of course, the jews.

But... here is the thing. The threat that germans felt was completely imagenery. It stemmed from mas psychosis. The jewish conspiracy was (and still) no different from Qanon, Poland didn't, in any way, wanted to destroy germany. The only justified threat I can think of was by the bolsheviks, and even then, most countries did just fine without going to war with them, at least not directly, and funnily enough, the war ended making them more powerful and de-facto occupying east germany. The threat on the lives of Israelis was, and still is, very real, and October 7th showed us very well that if the other side had power over us, there would be a second Holocaust. You just... can't ignore it. You can argue in favor of a more moderate reaction. You can argue that people like Ben Gvir and Smotrich can try to take advantage of the situation and deepen the occupation, using it as an excuse for ethnic cleansing and starting new settlements.

Furthermore, Hamas and Hizballah, and their puppet masters in Tehran straight up said, multiple times, that their problem is the mere existence of Israel. Not just specific atrocities, not just settlement in the west bank, not just the siege. But I don't hear from people like him any real mention of this side of the story this is the Achilles heal of their argument.

[eretzyisrael]

by Jonathan S. Tobin

Also featured in the Times Magazine article is Nicole Carty, one of Borgwardt’s black allies, a BLM activist who helped train IfNotNow members in radical tactics. Despite her ties to Jews who share her visceral hate for Israel, she bristles with contempt for Judaism, even complaining about the fact that Passover seders are about the Exodus of Jewish slaves from Egypt and not equally interested in the black experience. Just as repellent is the way she views the efforts of some Jews on the left to mourn the Oct. 7 victims equally with Palestinians who have been killed as wrongheaded and evidence of Jewish “trauma myopia.” For her, Jewish victims had it coming, so they deserve no mourning.

But it is the comments of Rabbi Susan Talve, the spiritual leader of the Reform synagogue where Borgwardt’s family belonged when she was a teenager, that illustrate the tragedy of liberal American Jewish institutions. Talve, a devout political liberal who marched in the Ferguson protests, was dismayed by the BLM rhetoric about Israel. She foolishly thinks that the Jewish community lost people like Borgwardt by not giving them a more even-handed education about the Middle East, although it’s clear that the IfNotNow leader seems to know little, if anything, of the arguments for the justice of the Zionist cause or even basic facts about the conflict. It is precisely Jews like Talve that Borgwardt regards with special animosity because they want to support African-Americans as well as Israel’s right to exist.

It is telling that Borgwardt claims that when she sees “Fiddler on the Roof,” all she can do is weep about the nakba—the Palestinian term for the birth of Israel that means “disaster” or “catastrophe.” For such people, Jewish experiences are not simply unimportant but deserve to be erased altogether, including the lives of the 7 million Jews of Israel threatened by her Palestinian allies.

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Her journey from a typical liberal Jewish background to activism for Israel’s destruction makes for a disturbing tale. It matters because it demonstrates that woke progressives aren’t so much interested in saving Palestinian lives as they want to erase Jewish life. For them, the only acceptable expression of Jewish identity is in support of other peoples—never their own interests or rights—even when it is a matter of life or death. They seem to be saying that Jews are the one people on the planet for whom self-determination must be forbidden. The ideas that helped transform Eva Borgwardt into a willing accomplice to Hamas’s genocidal campaign have not just turned some Jews against their own but have made antisemitism fashionable on campus and in the pages of The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Normally, I would not engage because I've already left it alone. But as it stands I'm a little bit annoyed. I keep seeing people effectively claim that I am just islamophobic or that I just believe Israeli propaganda or that I am a Zionist.

The issue however is that there are a lot of people who are on the anarchist far right and anarchist far left and just the far right and far left in general who have issues with States existing. Yet for some God forsaken reason or another most of their problem seems to be with a Jewish state. Often times you hear minimal to no discussion at all about what's happening to the uieger Muslims in China or literally any other country that's going through an actual genocide.

Genocide as a term means that it is either the actual completion of or the attempt of purging physically violently of a group of people with the intent to wipe them off the face of the Earth. The Nazis tried it that was definitely a genocide. My issue is the fact that they are people who are anarchist who very clearly hate Jews who pretend that they're just against Israel but want them to have no safe place to go. While leftist in the west are beating and harassing and threatening with death Jewish people who have nothing to do with Israel.

So effectively you want them to have no safe place to go. And to be called intellectually lazy is funny from people who just gag down to the nutsack on Hamas propaganda of whom we've now found out dozens of times that they've lied about the numbers of those who have died. It is not islamophobic to point out a fact that the Muslim religion does not like the Jewish religion on a fundamental level. It wouldn't be christophobic? To point out that Christians also at least to some degree not most but some also take issue with the Jewish faith. No my issue isn't the fact that I'm intellectually lazy it's that people in wartimes lie. And the number of people that Hamas killed unprovoked on October 7th mostly civilians is a testament to how evil they actually are.

No, you might say well oh well what about the Palestinians that Israelis should just lay down their weapons and leave Hamas alone because Hamas would never break ceasefires for the third fourth fifth sixth and 7th time in a row. No not at all it would never happen you must be crazy. No intellectual dishonesty and intellectual laziness is looking at Hamas and the propaganda that they've ingrained in the Palestinian people and thinking that there's no overlap. Civilians should not die I am 100% on board with that. The problem is Hamas is using Palestinians as human Shields so I guess what lay down their arms and just accept the bullets coming back at them? Yeah I know that sounds to me like you just want the Jewish people to f****** die.

So the only solution in my head that I can come to is that you just hate Jews. Because there's literally no other solution it could be. Because you seem to not care about any other Faith or country that is a state except broadly and the one that you seem to take the most issue with is literally just Israel. Which leads me to believe that it's more than just the country you have a problem with.

Having said that I think that it is perfectly reasonable to criticize anything that Israel does wrong as well as any other country on earth. What I don't agree with is the idea that a hostile force will lay down their arms when the people who they pissed off stop. Same thing goes with self-defense generally speaking you don't pull a gun to disable someone you pull a gun to put them down. Gun training 101 you do not point your gun at anything unless you plan to destroy it. Unfortunately retaliation goes the exact same way because in some ways it is a form of self defense. Because on a fundamental level it is a do this again and there won't ever be and again. Except Hamas and other extremist groups have done stuff like this again and again and again. And Israel has seeded back some of that land over the years even from Middle Eastern countries who have tried to conquer them.

So you know what like and reblog every anarchist douchebag that you want to. Because I know that I'm not an islamophobe I know that there are plenty of Muslims out there that don't hate Jews but I also know that there are a lot more that do. It's called having a nuanced understanding of reality; try it sometime. Because I'm sure that Israel has done not good things but such is war. And while I don't want war I have to consistently post questions to people who keep calling for no war. Which is do you think self-defense is okay? Because if so this is a war of self-defense with two areas that are extremely close in proximity. Hamas will not stop. Hamas will never stop. If Israel does not cut them off at the neck they will kill more people constantly over and over and over again and you know what I'm going to point to you and be like, "Oh how's that ceasefire working out for you". But then I understand that you won't care because you pretend it's about the state when it's about the fact that you just hate Jews. Because I don't see you calling for the dissolution of anywhere else except Israel. Because assuming even for a moment that Israel was dissolved and the Jews were forced to go random other places in the world so they weren't f****** massacred overnight and they would be, the entirety of the Arab world would conquer that area and turn it into a new state calling it something that was s******* on Jewish people and they would know that they have won. So you know what continued to be a dumb b****. I don't care. Because this is the absolute last time I actually plan on engaging and I'm not going to even bother tagging. And it's not because I'm a coward. It's because I'm sick of c**** like you pretending that you give a s*** and that you're against tyranny when it's very clear that you're for anarco tyranny. Just keep pretending that Islam is just this bastion of peace religion with no Mass sects of genocidal lunatics. Nah. Nope just Israel who's evil, no one else right?

And here's the fun part. Normally I'm against stuff like this so I'll say it in a different way.

I hope the day never comes where somebody massacres half your family because then I'm going to come to you and tell you to just keep laying down your arms because war bad. Oh and if you try to get into a semantic argument about war being a numbers thing or a country's thing I am going to cut you down right there and be like you said violets is evil so why are you fighting back? Oh that's right because you don't actually have a moral foundation at all you just pretend to so you can ride that far right or far left cock that is Jewish hate. Spare me.

[timetobeaghost]

Think about it a little bit objectively. Palestine doesn't have an army unlike Israel. Israel created Hamas and Hamas went against them, joined palestine in the war... isn't that a way to tell you that Hamas is palestine's army ? Are you going to ignore the fact that you basically want palestine to have no army and to get bombed when already 8k people died in a week while only 1k israelis died. It's fucking insane that you are calling this thing the genocide of jews when jews could literally end the war if they wanted but no I guess they are more busy making instagram pages about the future town they will create in Ghaza after destroying it. The fact that you support the idea of Israel cutting water, food,electricity and connection from people and that you don't even acknowledge the genocide says a lot about you. This isn't about being Jewish or Muslim, this is about being a human which is aware of the full situation. This is qbout the fact that the Israël army did worse than Hamas by baking babies, writing on their bombs that they wish it will kill a lot of innocent people, making offensive and racist songs,...of this is what you stand for then what can we call you since you called us antisemitic?

If Israel puts down its weapons there is no Israel, if Hamas puts down its weapons, there is no war.

At least that was true before Oktober 7th, now it also entails Hamas giving themselves up. As they attacked Israel viciously in a way you wouldn't ask anyone else to accept. No one ever should accept.

Do you really not know that Hamas is sending bombs at Israel every single day since they started on October 7th? Every day. Also Hezbollah and Yemen joined in. Israel is under attack. They didn't start the war and they can not just stop unless they want to submit, which would be suicide.

This is qbout the fact that the Israël army did worse than Hamas by baking babies,

??? There is unfortunately a story out there of Hamas putting a baby in the oven during October 7th and raping the mother while the baby screamed and died. People claim to have seen this in the Hamas footage. I hope against hope this is somehow not true. But it is possible as they were butchering families, including little kids, as brutal as possible on purpose and as a strategy. A strategy that obviously entailed provoking Israel into war. But Israelis definitely 100% did no bake any babies or attack any directly. This does not make the slightest bit of sense. Israel is called the epitome of evil for bombing Hamas and accidentally killing civilians in the process. Another strategy of Hamas is getting as many killed as possible to blame Israel. They are not protecting the citizens of Gaza, on the very contrary. Unfortunately they also threatened civilians not to leave after Israelis bomb warning, shooting those who did not comply. Israel is trying to kill as few civilians as possible, while finishing Hamas as quickly as possible. It's pretty darn hard with Hamas terrorist tactics. Few people thought that the army will be as quick as it ended up being getting to the heart of Gaza City and the terror centers. Yes, the situation in Gaza is awful, and this is 90% the fault of Hamas (and whoever is behind them).

Do I think Palestinians should have an army? Yes, they should have a state and an army that wants to protect them not get them slaughtered for Jihad! Hence why the Palestinians were failed by every government they has since 1947, as the refused the Two-state.-solution every time. Israel agreed every time.

I do not think Palestinians should have an Islamist, jihadist Terrorgovernment. I would be quite the fucking idiot to want that, as Islamists want me (European Christian) and everyone who is not an Islamist dead! And because they are horrible to their own population. In Gaza Hamas tortures and murders people with dissenting views, as well the gays, as well as everyone they freaking want. There is NOTHING GOOD about Hamas!! I do hope there is a solution possible, if 2 states or 1 state. Definitely the Palestinians need protection from Jihadist terrorists. And they also need protection from radical Israeli settlers too!

Israelis too 100% deserve protection from terrorists. Do you think they should not be protected?

[tienramadan]

Watching the watchdogs: How US media weaponised campus protests coverage

A great, novel experiment in political physics is under way in the United States, as the unstoppable moral force of youth-led protests against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza runs into the immovable object of the American power elite’s support for it.

In this clash, two critical forces have been weaponised: the US mainstream media that heavily disseminates Israeli propaganda and shapes many local, state and national policies, and the scourge of anti-Semitism that has been unfairly used to demonise and silence Palestinians and shift attention away from the US-enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Since Israel launched its assault on Gaza, President Joe Biden’s steadfast support for it has galvanised young Americans and pushed them to mobilise.

They have formed decisive coalitions with Muslim and Arab Americans, Jewish, Black, Hispanic and Native communities, labour unions and churches. They have given notice that if the US continues to support the war, they will abandon Democratic candidates in the November elections, which would likely be fatal for the party.

The American power elite largely ignored the initial criticisms of the young and the marginalised, until student encampments started springing up at universities across the country three weeks ago. The students demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a halt to US government financial and military aid to Israel, and the divestment of university investments from military industries that enable the Israeli genocide.

The mainstream media’s coverage of the campus encampments and the violence against them has exposed it as a central actor in the power elite that sustains Israel’s war and simultaneously tries to silence Palestinians and criminalise anyone who supports them.

As I closely followed US media outlets in recent weeks, I was shocked to see reporters, commentators and hosts use the exact same words and phrases that Biden and US and Israeli officials have used to smear the protesters. The mainstream media gives the impression of circling the wagons with Israeli and American officialdom to prevent at all costs an open, honest, comprehensive and contextualised public discussion on Israel’s behaviour while trying instead to focus public attention on spurious accusations.

The mainstream media has widely condemned students and accused them of using “hate speech and hate symbols” (in the words of the US president), endorsing terrorism, advocating for Israel’s destruction, resorting to anti-Semitic slurs and threatening and frightening Jewish students. Everywhere they look in the student protest encampments, the media oracles have seen “terrorists” in training, “anti-Semites” at work, “Jew-haters” being groomed, universities collapsing, and “Nazi mobs” in the making.

Prominent TV hosts have unleashed passionate, vicious diatribes against the students who have camped out to demand an end to America’s role in Israel’s genocide against Gaza, and peace and justice for all in Palestine.

MSNBC’s Morning Joe show – reportedly a Biden favourite – is one glaring example of systematically biased TV programming that sometimes veers into incitement against the student protests and the university administrators. One of its hosts, Joe Scarborough, has claimed that students want “to wipe out all Jews”, “they are Hamas on college campuses”, and they are “not helping those of us who want to fight fascism in America”. His co-host Mika Brzezinski has said that the campus protests “look like January 6”, referring to the riot by Donald Trump supporters on Capitol Hill in January 2021.

Such unsubstantiated allegations against the protesters are common to varying degrees across all the major networks, including ABC, CNN and NBC.

Most of the “expert” analysts I have heard on mainstream TV in the last few weeks commenting on the protests have been former US government or security officials, or people close to the Israeli viewpoint, including former Israeli officials. They have also offered variations on the themes of terrorism, radicalisation and anti-Semitism.

Except for some interviews I have seen on MSNBC, networks have avoided inviting Palestinians and knowledgeable Americans who could explain the actual meaning of expressions that the media and officialdom find offensive or threatening, and could address the actual nature and extent of the fears of those Jews who sincerely worry about how the protests impact them.

Unsurprisingly, most media outlets have covered US officials’ statements against peaceful protesters on campuses without much scrutiny as well.

This was apparent, for example, when Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and heads of several key congressional committees gave a press conference on April 30 where they threatened universities for allegedly allowing anti-Semitism to thrive on campus.

“We will not allow anti-Semitism to thrive on campus, and we will hold these universities accountable for their failure to protect Jewish students on campus,” Johnson said.

By reporting the many accusations against the protesters without seriously questioning or verifying them, the mainstream media itself appears to adopt the conflation of anti-Semitism with valid criticism of Israeli policies, which many scholars have warned is a dangerous practice. Israeli policies that warrant criticism include patently illegal ones that contravene international law, like expanding settlements, laying siege to Palestinian territories, and carrying out the genocidal attack on Gaza.

While mainstream media has struggled with its biases in covering the campus protests, there have been reports and commentaries by serious and knowledgeable people who actually have spent time among the defiant students, understood their motivations and their cause, and have not been beholden to domestic or foreign lobbies. Everyone I encountered – in person at universities or in the more honest, independent and progressive media outlets that do not see their job as supporting the power elites’ war-making frenzies – has reported calm, harmonious, often joyous gatherings of many faiths, aiming for a common goal of equal justice for all.

The alignment of mainstream media with the American political elites’ stance and all the exaggeration, misinterpretation, hysteria, lies and hallucination is unprecedented. It begs the question, why American officials and media leaders who traditionally parroted the Israeli line and simply ignored Palestinian voices are all up in arms now? Why would a gentle old man like Biden knowingly transform the Arabic word “intifada” (uprising) into what he calls “tragic and dangerous hate speech”?

I suspect this fanatical rhetoric reflects the power elite’s fear of being challenged in the domestic political arena for the first time ever by an issue related to Palestinian rights that also exposes and opposes Israel’s military extremism and genocide. They fear the growing coalition of Americans who are not afraid to challenge the falsehoods and distortions of staunch Israel supporters or ignore biased media offerings. They should worry, as a CNN poll last week suggested that 81 percent of Americans aged 18-35 disapprove of the American-backed Israeli war policy in Gaza.

Many young protesters have spoken of the US-enabled genocide in Gaza as “the moral issue of our age”. They feel they cannot stay silent in the face of Israeli-made starvation and American-made bombs ravaging Gaza.

But when this principled stance is distorted by the US mainstream media into an “anti-Semitic” and “pro-terrorist” frenzy, then it becomes clear that the commitment to truth-telling in large swaths of the media is far weaker than their desire to be close to the imperial seats of war-making power in the US and the Middle East.

[magxit]

Hi, Israeli jew here and I saw you interact with asks about the war. I want to share the experience from our side, cause most of the media focus on the Palestinian side. I'm not here to justify everything Israel does. I say both sides are at fault. You see, the problem is both sides governments and the civilians on both sides are the ones getting hurt. Hamas is controlling the Gaza strip and he threatens the Palestinians to vote for them. The Hamas is a terror organization that the U.S and Europe recognizes as a terror organization like Al Quieda and ISIS. the Hamas military fired more than 4,000 rockets to Israel in the past 4 days. Killed 900+ civilians, kidnapped 130 civilians back to Gaza and is using the Palestinians as human shields so in that way there will be more Palestinians casualties. On the Israeli side, we use a lot of military power against Gaza. No doubt about it. Just so you know the number of Palestinians casualties numbers are including the terrorists who fight Israel, not just civilians. On the Israeli side of the 900+ dead 128 are Israeli soldiers. The rest are innocent civilians.

My point is it's way more complicated than black or white. both sides are at fault. I hate our government bc it's far right wing government. There's a lot of militarism in Israel bc of the conflict. Both sides (the leaders) don't want to back down and reach an agreement. Every side claim they the right to be here. From my point of view, as someone who was born and raised here. I don't see an end to this conflict. Most citizens, on both sides want peace and quiet. It's our leaders through decades who want to keep it the way it is and they incite their crowd to vote for them with claims of "it's our right to be here" it's stupid and childish in my opinion. It's a tough reality to live in where, I specifically hate my government and their policies.

Thank you. I hope you stay safe.

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 1aug24

Not messing around

Street racing is dangerous.

***

Really want to wake up in the city that never sleeps?

A damning report by the New York Post is sounding the alarm after data sourced from the NYPD confirmed a surge of rape cases across the Big Apple.

According to law enforcement, New York City has seen a staggering 11% increase in reported rapes this year, with some areas experiencing more than double compared to the same period last year.

In total, 880 rapes were reported citywide from Jan. 1 through July 14, 2024. This number would be up from 796 in the same period in 2023.

Experts are pointing to several potential factors driving this abhorrent trend, namely a surge in the migrant population, anti-White bail-reform policies, liberal prosecutors like Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, and dwindling NYPD manpower.

Added context: While crime across New York City has often fluctuated throughout the years, the report was able to pinpoint specific trouble areas where rapes have seen a documented uptick.

Manhattan’s 10th Precinct, which includes Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen South, and Hudson Yards, has seen a 300% increase since last year.****

***

Antisemitic vandalism in Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH — Members of the Pittsburgh Jewish community in the city’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood woke up Monday morning to more vandalism and threats, as if in a recurring nightmare. Just six years ago, the worst massacre of Jews in the United States happened at the Tree of Life Synagogue, which claimed the lives of 11 worshippers here. Now personal and city property and the Chabad here have been covered in threatening graffiti. Among the messages were ones that said “Jews 4 Palestine” with a red inverted triangle — a mark that symbolizes a target that has been used in videos by Hamas’s military wing to identify Israeli military targets.*** The blatant attacks meant to intimidate and destabilize the tightknit community came less than two days after a pro-Palestinian march blocked traffic as it made its way through the city of Pittsburgh while chanting “F*** these racist a** police” and “Israel is a terrorist state,” even as they accepted the help of city police who escorted them through the downtown streets. The protesters stopped in front of the headquarters of PNC Bank, U.S. Steel, and UPMC, calling on all of them to divest from Israel.*** Last month, protesters at a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning set up an encampment on the campus while they clashed with police, eventually leading to the arrest of several people including Cory Roma, the newly elected vice president of the Young Democrats of Allegheny County. Pittsburgh police said in a statement they are investigating the incidents.

***

Secret Service debacle gets worse

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate and Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe are testifying right now, Tues, 30jul24 in front of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Judiciary Committee. FBI comes across as knowledgeable, professional, and helpful.

Rowe seems befuddled and week. He's made the point that Secret Service made fantastically stupid decisions and he's lost sleep for 17 days, but he hasn't fired anyone, and he clearly won't commit to firing anyone. How badly must you fail to get fired by the gov't?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/07/30/watch_live_fbi_secret_service_officials_testify_about_trump_shooting_in_senate_committee.html

One thing no one has asked yet is where is the oplan. There should be an operations plan for any event like the speech in Butler. I think if congress had a look at the oplan for that event, that responsibility for the failures and necessary improvements would be clear.

***

Don't vandalize places helping pregnant mothers

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—Attorney General Ashley Moody is announcing a victory in Moody v. Freestone involving criminal activists who threatened and vandalized crisis pregnancy centers in Florida. In March 2023, Attorney General Moody pursued civil action against the defendants for vandalizing and intimidating multiple centers in Florida. Due to the civil action and securing a settlement, several of the defendants pleaded guilty to felonies in federal court. The defendants will also be permanently banned from being within 100 feet of crisis pregnancy centers and will be ordered to pay restitution. ***

***

Satanic morons

About 40 years ago, Salman Rushdie published Satanic Verses, and it was highly critical of the Koran. Iran issued a fatwah, basically declaring him an outlaw and directing his execution.

Fast forward to Aug. 12, 2022 in New York, and Hadi Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, stabbed Rushdie repeatedly in obedience to the fatwah. He was initially charged in New York state court.

He has now been

*** indicted by a [federal] grand jury on three counts, including attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and providing material support to terrorists. The indictment alleges that he "knowingly did attempt to provide material support and resources" to Hezbollah, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and "had engaged, and was engaging, in terrorism." Matar was also charged with an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries for the attack against Rushdie on Aug. 12, 2022, at the Chautauqua Institution in southwestern New York. The indictment alleges that he "did knowingly attempt to kill, and did knowingly maim, commit an assault resulting in serious bodily injury, and assault with a dangerous weapon."*** The new charges come after Matar rejected a plea deal earlier this month that involved the state and not-yet-filed federal charges. The deal required a guilty plea to the top state count of second-degree attempted murder for a sentence of 20 years -- down from a maximum of 25 years for the charge, the Chautauqua County District Attorney's Office said. Under the deal, state and federal prosecutors agreed to the 20-year sentence "with the understanding that Mr. Matar would also plea to a charge in federal court and receive an additional 10-20 years in a federal facility," the Chautauqua County District Attorney's Office said in a statement to ABC News at the time.***

https://abcnews.go.com/US/salman-rushdie-stabbing-suspect-federal-terrorism-charges/story

Rushdie has the reputation of an irritating jerk and someone harshly critical of western liberal democracy while it's the only society that offers him protection. We can't have dirtbags like Matar stabbing people in the U.S. on behalf of foreign powers

***

Coach Pervert

A former youth swim coach was arrested Monday for allegedly filming teenage girls undressing in an Arizona locker room. David Laudati, 41, was detained by US Marshals in Connecticut and charged with 11 counts of voyeurism and eight counts of attempted voyeurism after police discovered his sick recordings during a September 2023 investigation in the Grand Canyon State. The perverted plot came to light in September 2023, when a parent of one of Laudati’s swimmers told police the coach was spying on girls after practice in Buckeye, Arizona — where Laudati lived before moving to Connecticut, officials said. The 14-year-old girl was changing out of her swim suit after a training session with the Arizona Dolphins club team when she noticed a camera in the bathrooms of the Center on Main recreation facility, according to Buckeye officials. Laudati had placed his recording cell phone in the mesh pocket of his backpack, which he then positioned on top of a changing table to have a view of the changing room, officials allege. The discovery sparked a raid on Laudati’s home — where they found “several photos showing female minors partially undressed or nude in the Center on Main restroom and the Litchfield Park Recreation Center locker room.” ***

***

If the air stinks, thank Gorilla

Diesel performance parts retailers GDP Tuning LLC and Custom Auto of Rexburg LLC, doing business as Gorilla Performance, and owner Barry Pierce were sentenced today in federal court in Pocatello, Idaho. Senior U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill for the District of Idaho sentenced Pierce to four months in prison. GDP Tuning and Gorilla Performance were sentenced to five years of probation. All defendants were ordered to jointly pay a $1 million fine. The companies and Pierce had previously pleaded guilty.*** Pierce told Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inspectors in 2018 that his companies sold kits to delete trucks and products to tune them, including tunes and tuners. In response to EPA’s later follow-up, GDP Tuning produced sales data indicating that it sold over 20,000 tuning products for approximately $14 million in revenue from January 1, 2018, through approximately August 7, 2019. EPA law enforcement agents conducted undercover operations to determine the extent of illegal activity at GDP Tuning and Gorilla Diesel Performance. Employees told an uncover agent that the companies routinely “deleted” trucks at the Gorilla Diesel Performance location. Evidence gathered showed that Gorilla Diesel Performance conducted hundreds of deletes and used GDP Tuning products, with at least seven employees conducting deletes or obtaining tunes for the deleted vehicles. Pierce was aware of and directed the conduct.***

***

Not sure why they had to shoot

More than six years after two U.S. Park Police officers shot and killed unarmed driver Bijan Ghaisar in Fairfax County, the officers — who were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing — have filed a federal lawsuit against the Interior Department. The agency took steps to fire officers Lucas Vinyard and Alejandro Amaya in 2021, but the officers remain on paid administrative leave. Their lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in D.C., asks a judge to order the Interior Department to make a final determination, saying the officers are suffering “significant career and financial consequences, including damage to their reputation, loss of overtime pay, and the ongoing stress.” In November 2017, Vinyard and Amaya followed 25-year-old Ghaisar’s Jeep Cherokee in a slow-speed chase on the George Washington Parkway. Ghaisar had driven away from a fender-bender. The chase ended in the Fort Hunt neighborhood, where the officers fired 10 shots at Ghaisar. In 2019, the Justice Department announced it would not pursue federal charges against the officers, saying it could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer willfully violated Ghaisar’s civil rights, and that it would not have been able to disprove the officers’ claims that they acted in self-defense. In 2020, Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano secured manslaughter indictments against Vinyard and Amaya. However in 2021, federal Judge Claude Hilton dismissed the charges, saying there was no evidence that the officers acted with “malice, criminal intent, or any improper motivation,” adding that the decision to shoot Ghaisar was “necessary and proper under the circumstances.”***

***

Let's reform criminal justice and see what happens!

Denver Post:

&

***

[clueingforbeggs]

1: Prismatic-bell is the username of a Jewish tumblr user. Xe is currently the antizionist's persona-non-grata, with claims being made from cutting up xir posts in order to make xir look like a kahanist instead of a two-(three-, I think, actually?)-state solution zionist. This is also often paired with a claim that xe threatened to doxx a Native American user, although the specific claim usually changes and no proof of this is ever given (and, as a mutual of xir, this does not feel like something xe would do, given repeated interactions I've seen between xir and a Native American user.

2: Because they think the pornbot is a Palestinian in need of money because it's also one of the Palestine donation bots.

3: No. No they do not. They'll call anything racist, even saying 'Hey uh I don't think you should be using blood quantum.' I think they think 'racist' is a thing you can call someone else in order to get them to do what you want them to do.

4: I think, having seen another post on this situation, that the example used is the one where the pornbot messaged a minor. That might be why. Here are the three I know of 1, 2, 3

5: El-shab-hussein is supposed to be the vetter. In the first post, he refers to himself as such, but then suddenly introduces this third party who I guess is the """real""" unknown vetter.

6: Yeah.

7: As a very basic overview: On the 7th October 2023 Hamas, the current elected government of Gaza, invaded Israel on a Jewish holiday, killing the highest number of Jews on one day since the Holocaust, and taking many hostages. Tumblr responded to this by ramping up the antisemitism. Also, suddenly all the Ukrainians e-begging in people's ask boxes disappeared, replaced with Palestinians. But this time, because for some reason people decided that they couldn't see the exact same scam tactic that has been used here for years, just with slightly changed tactics (you might know about the sick cat asks, or the 'I am a Black disabled who uses many medication, my nose freezes and I need my inhaler' asks), a bunch of people decided that if someone else (also a stranger on Tumblr) 'verifies' the scam in some way, that they must not be scams.

8: Yes. Yes, they are just going on the offensive on impulse, because they've decided that at the moment the All Incompassing Omnicause is Palestine, so anyone who doubts anything they believe to do with Palestine must be a Bad And Hateful Person. And as Palestine is the omnicause, then that also means to them that they are being attacked, personally.

@el-shab-hussein you are tripping over your own lies. Keep switching up the story, scammer. First he was ashamed of their behaviour for sending a multitude of (automated) porn bot asks:

and now suddenly when we provide massive proof it is a scam, you switched the narrative to 'they got hacked'?

Basel-1995 is clearly a bot and I am absolutely convinced you are a scammer abusing REAL people who need food and shelter for your own benefit. For more info: read this I stand by my last post:

@staff feel free to delete my blog if I am wrong but please look into @el-shab-hussein as I am convinced they are very adept at leading a scam ring. 

[analytik2]

Israel says Hamas weaponised rape. Does the evidence add up?

The Israeli government insists that Hamas formally sanctioned sexual assault on October 7, 2023. But investigators say the evidence does not stand up to scrutiny. Catherine Philp and Gabrielle Weiniger report on eight months of claim and counter-claim

On a cloudy morning in early spring, at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Pramila Patten sat down to deliver her findings on sexual violence during the Hamas-led massacres in Israel.

It had been five months since the October 7 attacks and the ensuing conflict in Gaza was raging, as was the seemingly irreconcilable war of narratives that had characterised the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the past eight decades.

Perhaps nothing arising from that day had been more contentious than Israel’s assertion that Hamas had not only burned and slaughtered its way through Israeli communities along the Gaza border, killing 1,200 and taking more than 200 hostages, but that it planned and carried out a campaign of mass and systematic rape as a weapon of war.

Patten, the UN secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence, knew what she was walking into. Her fact-finding mission to Israel came amid a furious row over whether such allegations should be accepted as fact and accusations that anyone failing to do so was guilty of antisemitic bias against Jewish women.

Litigating sexual violence within a conflict is difficult enough at the best of times, not least on a battlefield of the scale and complexity of October 7, 2023. It becomes even harder without testimony from any survivors, the usual linchpin of such investigations.

What would make the effort over October 7 harder still were the examples of false and misleading information from senior political figures and government-linked civil activists to those in the police and security services tasked with the official investigation. All this in an atmosphere of extreme national fear and trauma.

Lost in all this are the victims themselves, none of whom are definitely known to have survived. The only woman yet to testify about her own sexual abuse is a released hostage, Amit Soussana, who spoke to foreign media about how she was forced to strip and commit a sexual act on her male captor at gunpoint during six weeks in captivity in Gaza.

Those familiar with Soussana said she had decided to speak out following accounts from other hostages about abuse. They hoped it might help those still being held captive who may still be suffering sexual abuse.

“Specific survivors, the only reason they told their story was because they wanted some kind of political pressure on the Israeli government to work harder to release the hostages,” says Dr Sarai Aharoni, an academic at Ben-Gurion University who is helping to compile a historical archive of the events that will be closed for 50 years. “And that is a horrible decision to have to make.”

Relatives of those held hostage have become a powerful political voice in Israel, leading protests against what they see as the government’s failed covenant to protect its citizens and bring hostages home.

A female relative of one woman still held in Gaza tells us that government representatives are no longer even bothering to attend meetings with the families.

Meanwhile, the political establishment has opened a fresh battle with the UN over what the Patten report didn’t say: that sexual violence was beyond reasonable doubt, systematic, widespread and ordered and perpetrated by Hamas. Israeli advocates for the female survivors are now warning that the country’s refusal to co-operate with a full and legal investigation, which the carefully worded report was not, threatens the prospect of ever finding out the full truth about the sexual violence of October 7 and delivering justice for its victims.

FOR JEWISH ISRAELIS, THE SPECTRE OF RAPE was more closely associated historically with the pogroms of eastern Europe, in which thousands of Jews were killed and Jewish women raped by Christian soldiers and antisemitic mobs. That persecution would become one of the driving forces behind modern Zionism and the resettlement of European Jews in the Ottoman province that became British mandate Palestine. These “historical memories”, Aharoni notes, have become a cultural inheritance for the Jewish people, particularly those without a secular education, a fact that would come to play a role in the reporting of what happened on October 7.

The idea of the Arab male as an explicit sexual threat to Jewish women developed in tandem with the movement of Israeli politics to the right.

Months before October 7, national attention was seized by news of the rape of a young Israeli mother by a Bedouin man in southern Israel. The horror was amplified by the fact that the victim had been assaulted in front of her own children. In the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, attention became focused on the Arab ethnicity of the assailant, although police ruled out terror as a motive.

In July 2023, the Knesset passed legislation proposed by lawmakers on the right and far right, quickly dubbed the “sexual terrorism law”, which doubled the penalty for sexual assault or harassment committed with a “nationalistic motive”.

“Clearly it means that Arab or Palestinian men who are accused of rape might be tried according to a totally different procedure from Jewish men who rape,” Aharoni says. She calls the prospect “unthinkable”, pointing out that besides the racial implication, it sought to create “a hierarchy of victimhood” among rape survivors. Israel’s Association of Rape Crisis Centres (ARCCI) fought the law, unsuccessfully, on the same grounds.

IN THE EARLY MORNING OF OCTOBER 7, thousands of heavily armed Hamas fighters poured across the border having breached the special security fence, slaughtering the mostly female Israeli soldiers who monitored the border. The invasion was both minutely planned and chaotic: at least hundreds of civilians streamed into Israel unprompted, along with other militants armed and unarmed as well as Hamas-armed allies such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Their targets were the kibbutzim along the Gaza border. They also found a previously unknown soft target in the shape of the Nova music festival, where about 4,000 young people were dancing in the early morning light.

Hamas’s own live streams from body-worn cameras showed them ruthlessly gunning down men, women and children, torching homes, shooting dogs and hauling off screaming and crying civilians as hostages. When the scale of the carnage became clear, it was described as the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Less commented on is the damage it did to the Zionist dream of an inviolable safe country for the Jewish people, a place where “never again” could become reality after centuries of persecution and expulsions at the hands of European Christians. No event in the history of the modern state of Israel has more brutally demonstrated the logic of its necessity.

Talk of rape began circulating almost before the massacres themselves were over. Much of it came from what Patten would later call “non-professionals” who supplied “inaccurate and unreliable forensic interpretations” of what they found, creating an instant but flawed narrative about what had taken place.

Among the first responders on October 7 was Zaka, an ultra-orthodox volunteer force. Zaka members are not trained in forensics, nor were they directed to do any more than retrieve remains from what was still an active battle zone. The decision to send them in has come under heavy assault in the Israeli media, including from military officers who believe if they had been deployed, forensics might have been preserved.

Orit Sulitzeanu, the executive director of ARCCI, notes the volunteers’ lack of familiarity with the women’s bodies they were finding and their tendency to focus on injuries they believed pointed to sexual violence, such as smashed pelvises and gunshot wounds to sex organs, ignoring other injuries that muddied the picture.

“They are all religious guys; most of them are ultra-religious. They never saw a woman except their wife,” Sulitzeanu says. “So to see all these bodies, how did they deal with that?”

Aharoni and others are struck by how closely the Zaka accounts cleaved to stories handed down about the horrors of the pogroms. “The first framing of rape and sexual violence was automatically linked with European histories,” she says, particularly by those with a religious education. “So there is a Zaka volunteer whose main education is religious. He’s read a lot of Jewish texts that depict the raping of women. These texts kind of reappear again and again in Jewish stories and they reappear every time there is a major event against Jewish communities.”

Journalists first on the scene of the massacres spotted immediately the echoes of the collective historical trauma of the Jewish people. “You are about to enter Bergen-Belsen,” Richard Hecht, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman, told one of these reporters on October 10 as he ushered in the first group to enter Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Bergen-Belsen was the Nazi concentration camp where British forces found thousands of bodies exposed and unburied when they reached it in 1945.

Yossi, a volunteer from another religious group called United Hatzalah, told the reporters he had seen a “pyramid of bodies”, although no such thing was found. His description seemed to echo a photograph of a mountain of corpses at the crematorium mortuary at Dachau concentration camp. The now debunked story of the pregnant woman and her slaughtered foetus is well known from the pogroms. Many other erroneous tales involved babies — one Zaka figure claimed to have found a baby baked alive in an oven.

But women too made forensic assessments they were far from qualified to make, while others repeated stories after they were proved false. One of them was the legal expert Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who formed what she called a “civil commission” following the attacks to collect evidence of sexual violence. She was joined by Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a highly respected jurist and specialist in international women’s rights, who marshalled powerful legal assistance.

As time went on, however, Halperin-Kaddari grew increasingly anxious about the conduct and motives of her colleague — a close associate of the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu — whose work had included a legal manual on the force-feeding of prisoners. “I realised that I cannot accept the way she’s handling things — talking at some points irresponsibly without checking the credibility of information, repeating questionable accounts,” Halperin-Kaddari said. Among them was the apocryphal story about the pregnant woman and her foetus, which was also repeated by Michal Herzog, the president’s wife, in a still uncorrected Newsweek article. Elkayam-Levy also circulated photographs of murdered female soldiers that turned out to be images of Kurdish fighters in Syria. Halperin-Kaddari and her legal team quit the commission and turned to the UN for help. Elkayam-Levy has nonetheless remained the most prominent public voice on the sexual violence of October 7, winning the country’s highest civilian honour, the Israel Prize, in April.

Asked to address the allegations she has knowingly circulated false information, Elkayam-Levy’s spokeswoman tells us that she has been “meticulously working to collect information and testimonies that will serve for generations to come for justice and remembrance.

“The contested information reported on behalf of leading experts in the field regarding a pregnant woman tragically killed was, at the time, backed by both a testimony and several other reliable sources. We were all relieved to learn it was not from Israel and immediately ceased referencing it. Above all, this incident exemplifies the trauma and difficulties of giving voice to victims of atrocities.”

Aharoni expresses her concerns about how both political leaders and others linked to the prime minister’s Likud party “have used the feminist agenda in a very opportunistic way for a very specific political narrative associated with the Netanyahu government”, with little concern for the actual victims. “The politicisation of rape by the Israeli government was part of the political agenda of this government,” she warns. “The question of believing the survivors has become a test of your loyalty to the nation.” On November 11, the foreign ministry launched a campaign under the hashtag #BelieveIsraeliWomen. “I did not think that was sensible,” Sulitzeanu says. “They didn’t mean ‘believe Israeli women’. They meant ‘believe Israel’.”

CRITICS ARGUE THAT ISRAELI OFFICIALS have regularly wielded the rape claim as a cudgel to silence critics of their assault on Gaza. On November 11, the same day the hashtag campaign was launched and more than 300,000 people marched in London in support of a ceasefire, the Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy tweeted a photograph, quipping that, “I don’t think London has ever seen such a large demonstration of rape apologists before.” Levy was suspended from his job in March after picking an online fight with David Cameron over the blockade of aid to Gaza.

On November 14, the police held their first press conference for the international media on their investigations into sexual assault. Despite promising new evidence on its systematic nature, none was provided. A short video clip was aired with testimony by “Witness S”, who described in horrific detail witnessing a gang rape and murder while hiding at the festival. To this date, police have not interviewed a single survivor. On December 24, the police issued a decree to hospitals ordering them to hand over accounts of any rape survivor who had sought treatment. On January 4, the police put out a fresh appeal for witnesses, saying they had succeeded in interviewing just three and had been unable to match their accounts with the bodies collected from the massacre site.

On March 4, Pramila Patten sat down before journalists to deliver her findings. There were, she said, “reasonable grounds” to believe there had been rape and sexual assaults on October 7, particularly at the Nova festival ground, and “clear and convincing information” — a higher standard of evidence — of rape and sexual torture of hostages held in Gaza. She warned that sexual violence against hostages could be ongoing, confirming the fears of their families in Israel, who by then had evolved into a powerful political force against Netanyahu, whom they blamed for prioritising the unrealistic destruction of Hamas — and his own political survival — over the lives of their loved ones.

It was not a legal investigation, Patten explained, as Israel had not allowed one: that mandate could only be fulfilled by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which Israel has refused to work with since its inception. She hoped that would change.

Halperin-Kaddari praises the report as “excellent, a solid, serious piece of work” with a “very careful, meticulous analysis of the information.

“I think it’s a game-changer,” she says. “I think that after it, anybody with some degree of ethics and basic morality can no longer simply say it didn’t happen. It’s no longer possible to deny it outright.” What the report did not say was whether sexual violence was part of the battle plan. Nor did it name Hamas, given the chaotic array of actors that day. “I think that just strengthens the credibility of the report,” Halperin-Kaddari adds. The document calls out a number of fabricated and mistaken claims, including those about the discovery of raped young women in Kibbutz Be’eri and the false story about the pregnant woman.

Patten made it clear there was sufficient evidence of acts of sexual violence to merit full and proper investigation and expressed her shock at the brutality of the violence. The report also confirmed Israeli authorities were unable to provide much of the evidence that political leaders had insisted existed. In all the Hamas video footage Patten’s team had watched and all the photographs they had seen, there were no depictions of rape. We hired a leading Israeli dark-web researcher to look for evidence of those images, including footage deleted from public sources. None could be found.

The report would prove confusing to the Israeli political establishment. On the one hand, it gives substantial and substantiated credence to the sexual assault claims; on the other it does not show them to be systematic and specifically says Israel has been unable to produce evidence it has claimed to possess of Hamas’s written orders to rape. Patten also asked that Israel investigate “credible allegations” of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women and girls gathered by the UN’s legal mandate mission in the Palestinian territories. Israel swiftly rejected Patten’s request, calling it “a derisive and deliberate Palestinian manoeuvre aimed at creating an intolerable equivalence between the horrific crimes that were committed, and continue to be committed, by Hamas and malicious and baseless claims made against Israel and Israelis”.

Patten’s other recommendations included calling for a ceasefire to facilitate the rescue of hostages who she feared were suffering ongoing sexual abuse, and she asked the Israeli government to sign a framework of co-operation with her office so a full legal investigation could take place with international assistance.

Israel refused point blank, turning its ire away from Patten and towards the UN Secretary General, accusing him of trying to suppress the report — which Patten strongly denied — and blocking the naming of Hamas as systematic users of sexual violence even though Patten herself had said such a move would require the full legal investigation. Israel recalled its UN ambassador and the foreign minister, Israel Katz, travelled to New York for a showdown at an emergency Security Council meeting to discuss the report.

Patten spoke movingly of her encounters with communities left traumatised by the terror attacks. “I saw the pain in their eyes,” she said. “It was a catalogue of the most extreme and inhumane forms of killing, torture and other horrors.” But she also hit back with unusual force against Israel’s refusal to look into the allegations by Palestinian women — to “believe Palestinian women”, in its own cadence — both in the present climate, where detentions have soared, and in the past, over decades, in which such allegations have been raised.

“In this regard I wish to express my disappointment that the immediate reaction to my report by some political actors was not to open inquiries into those alleged incidents but rather to reject them outright via social media,” Patten said.

The Palestinian representative to the UN, where Palestine holds observer status, challenged the Israelis to agree with Patten’s recommendations and allow a full independent investigation into October 7 sexual violence. “Let the facts speak. Let the law decide,” Riyad Mansour said. He noted the same false reports Patten had dismissed in her report, which had fuelled many of the outright denials from pro-Palestinian and far-left commentators. “Shamefully this was never about the Israeli victims. This was about justifying the atrocities that Israel intended to commit against Palestinian victims,” Mansour argued.

WILL THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SEXUAL VIOLENCE OF OCTOBER 7 EVER FULLY BE KNOWN? Women’s rights advocates in Israel are doubtful. The mistakes that were made, say most, came from the hasty decision to send in Zaka to retrieve the slain rather than the IDF’s Home Front Command or another organisation. “These people deserved better volunteers,” Sulitzeanu says. In her report, Patten said the scale of what happened might never be made clear. But, she added, “I do not have numbers in the report because for me one case is more than enough,” she told reporters. “The first letter that I received from the government of Israel talked about hundreds or thousands of cases of brutal sexual violence perpetrated against men, women and children. I have not found anything like that.”

But Patten also spoke of the grave difficulties of ascertaining the truth in a case where most who suffered sexual violence were probably dead. Soussana’s account, along with that of other hostages, allowed for more certainty about the abuse of hostages; there remain 19 women either dead or still captive whose stories may never be heard unless they are freed alive. After a number of freed hostages spoke about the abuse of others still held, some families urged them to be quiet, fearful it was now too easy to identify them. We are aware of several stories of the abuse of women and children that, if recounted, would rob the victims of their privacy. Families have lobbied the government about their fear, including whether they could send abortion pills into Gaza in case their loved ones fell pregnant by their abuser.

About 10 out of 900 survivors treated by the non-governmental group SafeHeart recounted either hearing or seeing sexual violence, all of which ended in murder. None of them has reported being assaulted themselves. Dr Reut Plonsker, a senior psychologist with SafeHeart, believes the focus on sexual violence has been unhelpful for Nova festival survivors wrestling with their trauma. “I don’t think there were a lot of sexual assaults,” she says. “There was a lot of murder. That’s what happened there. People were hiding and watching very horrible things.” She is sceptical that political leaders have the victims’ interests in mind. “Therapists are interested in the victims and the survivors,” she says. “I think politicians are interested in the image of Israel.”

Halperin-Kaddari now heads Dinah Project 7/10, aimed at collecting evidence to support prosecutions for sexual violence committed that day. Dinah is a tragic figure from the Bible, a daughter of Jacob raped by Shechem, a prince from a rival tribe, setting in motion a chain of events during which Dinah’s brothers massacre the men of Shechem’s tribe and enslave the women and children. In anger, Jacob expels and curses the brothers. Dinah’s voice is never heard.

Halperin-Kaddari hopes to restore a voice to any future survivor who may emerge. “The question of even the estimated scope will probably remain unknown for ever,” she says. “Given how long it typically takes survivors of sexual violence to open up, the possibility that survivors will decide to speak out exists. And it’s really critical that there will be the most appropriately qualified mechanism to engage with them. We are very hopeful that Israeli authorities will understand the importance of further co-operation with the office of the special representatives.”

Patten is less hopeful. “When I discussed it in Israel I did not get any positive feedback,” she explains. “The ball is in the court of the government of Israel.” Angered by its stance, the families of some of those killed and taken hostage on October 7 are taking their complaint to the International Criminal Court, despite Israel’s refusal to engage with that body on a state level. In the meantime, Patten has seen her findings instrumentalised by both sides: the denialists who focus on the evidentiary failings in Israel’s version of events, and those who have used the claims in support of the brutal campaign being visited on Gaza and its civilian population. “On one hand we have the fog of war, and that often silences crimes of sexual violence. But we have also seen in history instances where sexual violence can be weaponised,” she told reporters. “Truth is the only path to peace.”

(source via 12ft.io)

[bamidbar]

interesting way to admit that you're being driven by 20 year old propaganda whose authenticity has been put into question many times since. if you read anything besides the palestinian account of what happened (and if you have a political agenda, it makes sense that you wouldn't), it should get you to ask questions at the very least. what exactly happened that day still hasn't been determined exactly, partly due to mishandling of evidence and an unwillingness to clear it up (on both sides, to an extent 🙃). that incident has done a lot of heavy lifting for the anti-israel side, so why would they want it cleared up. especially because (the little) evidence (that there is) points to Palestinian gunmen. it's funny how people insist on not examining evidence closer as soon as there's an inkling that it would threaten their narrative.

on a similar note, im glad that the al ahli hospital lie has been uncovered as hamas propaganda (and interestingly, all the prominent anti-israel influencers and bloggers on my radar never once stopped to question their side when doubts emerged hmmm), but it's maddening that so much damage had already been done to Jews in the diaspora in the name of retribution. this is why irresponsible reporting like that committed by respectable, mainstream media on October 17th is so dangerous, but past that, we all have a responsibility to not contribute to the propaganda machine by blindly believing every claim we see. especially when that claim comes from a terrorist organization. the fuck