#and Israel is trying to actively not kill civilians in the process

[darcylightninglewis]

Supporting a population of people in mourning who suffered a terror attack (of which the death & kidnapped toll is still growing) and largely don’t support the actions of the current regime isn’t the same as supporting the government’s actions.

I know everyone wants one side to be bad but it’s not cut and dry. The Palestinians largely don’t support Hamas (their governing body) and I have to believe, for my own sanity and faith in humanity that you know the difference between the two.

[matan4il]

Hello. Can I ask why everybody is calling Israel a "colonial" state? Because it annoys me very much when I see that for three main reasons:

1. My country was a former member of the British colonial rule. Do you know what happens when a country gets colonised? Every bit of the wealth generated went to the Crown, every political decision had to be approved by the Crown, laborers were exploited as much as possible, my people were directly under the orders from a British Monarch who actively hated them. The economy was in shambles after we got independence. As far as I know, since the state of Israel was created, it does not answer to any foreign country (the UN is not a country). How is this a European 'colony'?

2. Most(All?) people who immigrated to Israel were refugees. If Jewish people living in Europe did not have any ties to the land of Israel and were completely 100% European, why were most of them killed horrifically during the Holocaust for not being the right race? Why does nobody talk about the expulsion of Jews from the surrounding Arab countries? Where should these people go?

3. People also seem to forget that governments can be stupid. Just because they are the ruling party does not mean they're capable of making sound decisions for their people. Even a non-colonial government makes bad decisions. If you can separate Trump from the rest of the US, why can't you do the same for Israel?

I do not want to reduce the suffering of the Palestinian civilians. However using the wrong terminology is not the way to help these people. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm really tired of this 'colonizer' takes.

(I hope I made my point clear as English is not my first language?)

Hi, lovely Nonnie!

Please, your English is great! I would have never guessed you're not a native speaker. :D

And you are absolutely right about every single point. Also, my heart goes out to you! I'm so sorry that your people have also suffered due to colonialism. I'm sending you BIG hugs!

Colonialism is what destroyed my people. After our homeland was repeatedly colonized, the Roman colonizers went even further than previous regimes, and expelled most of our ancestors from this land (a small Jewish minority wasn't, and that's why there has been a documented continuous Jewish presence in Israel for over 3,000 years). The expelled Jews became a spread out minority in other countries. With such small numbers in each country, it was easy to vilify us, we were vulnerable to every attack, with hardly anyone defending us, and no real option to defend ourselves. The Holocaust happening to us is directly linked to this way that we were forced to exist for almost 2,000 years in the diaspora.

Meanwhile, our land continued to be repeatedly colonized by different regimes. Each one did exactly as you said, exploited our country for their own benefit. The Ottomans, as just one example, cut off so many trees to build the Hejaz railway (which connected today's Syria to today's Saudi Arabia for the purpose of Muslim pilgrimage to the Saudi mosques), that the Land of Israel went through a desertification process. When Jews started returning in substantial numbers (because in small ones, there were always individual Jews who tried returning to our ancestral land), we did exactly what native populations try to do, restore the land, through continued research and development, to its pre-colonized state.

That's on top of the fact that, as you mentioned, we don't answer to or serve any European (or western) country. Colonies serve a metropole, but there is none for Israel. It's just our country. It's just the place where we live, even when it's incredibly difficult, because it's our ancestral homeland, which we've returned to, after our ancestors prayed for that for almost 2,000 years.

You're also spot on about the fact, that Jews were always discriminated against and persecuted in every country in the diaspora (with a few exceptions in South East Asia, the most important one being India). We were treated that way precisely because there was a historic recollection that we are foreigners. That we were south west Asians, living as a minority in countries that never truly wanted us, like Norway, or Spain, or Morocco. That's why it was so easy to kill us in the Holocaust. That's why it was so easy to expel us from Arab countries. Because we were never truly accepted by the locals.

But even after expulsions and surviving the Holocaust, there are so many places in the world Jews could have turned to! Places where there would be less resistance to us forming a country. Yet, the overwhelming majority of Jews rejected such suggestions. If they hadn't, then we would have truly been colonizers. But that's not what we yearned for. We always dreamed of returning to our homeland, so eventually it became evident to everyone that there's only one real option for a Jewish state, and that is in the Jewish ancestral land.

The reason why people claim that Jews are colonizers of their own land (some deny all historic ties Jews have to Israel, despite every piece of evidence to the contrary, while others acknowledge the Jewish history of Israel and the continued Jewish presence there, but claim that it's been so long ago, it doesn't count anymore. I've never seen any other native group being told that there's a time limit on their native rights. Have you?) is because it allows a narrative that once again vilifies Jews.

When the worst thing Jews could have been was of an evil religion, they described us as evil in religious terms (accusing us of having killed Jesus, and accusing us of using the blood of non-Jewish kids to bake a special kind of bread meant for religious purpose). When the worst thing Jews could have been was of an evil race, they described us as evil in racial terms (describing us as being sub-human, and accusing us of wanting to take over the world, to destroy it for the rest of the human race). Now that de-colonization is such a powerful (rightfully so) narrative, the worst thing Jews can be is evil colonizers... So guess what we're suddenly described as? Evil colonizers, who plot, steal, abuse and genocide another population (when in reality we consented to coexist with it 76 years ago).

I hope that sort of answers it? Basically, it's the newest form of the same age old antisemitism. Find the worst thing Jews can currently be, and depict them as that.

Thank you for seeing past the vilification! It means a lot. I'm sending you lots of love! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[beardedmrbean]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Israel has agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in its assault on Hamas in northern Gaza starting on Thursday, the White House said, as President Joe Biden pressed Israelis for a multi-day stoppage in the fighting in a bid to release hostages held by the militant group.

Biden said Thursday that there was “no possibility” of a formal cease-fire at the moment, and said it had “taken a little longer” than he hoped for Israel to agree to the humanitarian pauses. Biden had asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to institute the daily pauses during a Monday call and said he had also asked the Israelis for a pause of at least three days to allow for negotiations over the release of some hostages held by Hamas.

“Yes,” Biden said, when asked whether he had asked Israel for a three-day pause. “I’ve asked for even a longer pause for some of them.”

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that the first daily humanitarian pause would be announced Thursday and that the Israelis had committed to announcing each four-hour window at least three hours in advance. Israel, he said, also was opening a second corridor for civilians to flee the areas that are the current focus of its military campaign against Hamas, with a coastal road joining the territory’s main north-south highway.

Similar short-term pauses have occurred over the last several days as tens of thousands of civilians have fled southward, but Thursday’s announcement appeared to be an effort to formalize and expand the process, as the U.S. has pressed Israelis to take greater steps to protect civilians in Gaza.

Biden’s push for an even longer pause comes as part of a renewed diplomatic push to free hostages taken by Hamas and other militant groups to the Gaza Strip during their Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel.

Israeli officials estimate that militants still hold 239 hostages, including children and the elderly, from the attack that also saw 1,400 Israelis killed. U.S. officials say it believes fewer than 10 Americans are among those held captive.

Kirby told reporters Thursday that pauses could be useful to “getting all 239 hostages back with their families to include the less than 10 Americans that we know are being held. So if we can get all the hostages out, that’s a nice finite goal.”

“Humanitarian pauses can be useful in the transfer process,” he added.

Indirect talks were taking place in Qatar — which also played a role in the freeing of four hostages by Hamas last month — about a larger release of hostages. CIA Director William Burns was in Doha on Thursday to discuss efforts to win the release of hostages in Gaza with the Qatari prime minister and the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, according to a U.S. official.

Burns met with Mossad chief David Barnea and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said the official, who talked to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Qatar is a frequent go-between in international dealings with Hamas, and some top Hamas political leaders make their home in the Gulf country. The U.S. official stressed Burns was not playing a lead role in the negotiations.

Kirby confirmed that the U.S. continues to have “active discussions with partners about trying to secure the release of hostages,” noting in particular Qatar’s help.

“We know they have lines of communication with Hamas that we don’t,” Kirby said of Qatar. “And we’re going to continue to work with them and regional partners to try to secure the release of all the hostages.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken had warned Israel last week that it risked destroying an eventual possibility for peace unless it acted swiftly to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza for Palestinian civilians as it intensifies its war against Hamas.

In a blunt call for Israel to pause military operations in the territory to allow for the immediate and increased delivery of assistance, Blinken said the situation would drive Palestinians toward further radicalism and effectively end prospects for any eventual resumption of peace talks to end the conflict.

French President Emmanuel Macron had opened a Gaza aid conference on Thursday with an appeal for Israel to protect civilians, saying that “all lives have equal worth” and that fighting terrorism “can never be carried out without rules.”

Kirby said Uzra Zeya, the State Department’s under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights; special envoy David Satterfield; and Sarah Charles, who leads the USAID’s bureau for humanitarian assistance, were representing the U.S. at the Paris conference. Israel has not been invited by France to the conference. Kirby demurred when asked about the decision to leave Israel out of the international talks.

“We’re focused on trying to have the most constructive conversation there that we can,” Kirby said.

[tomorrowusa]

For anybody still desperately clinging to Twitter/X in the empty hope that it may soon return to its glory days: IT WON'T. It's just getting worse.

The recent terror attack on Israel and the Israeli response have highlighted the continuing descent of Twitter.

[T]he platform now called X has become a vortex of false claims and doctored footage. It’s a fog-of-war machine. That’s been the unmistakable reality in the days after Hamas’ deadly terrorist attack on Israeli civilians—a land, air, and sea operation that has killed at least 1,200 people in Israel and led to another 900 deaths in Gaza following Israel’s military retaliation. Musk’s changes to the foundation of how Twitter works have not only rendered Twitter useless as a means of making sense of the conflict as (or even hours after) it unfolds, but made it actively counterproductive for users trying to figure out what’s going on. As Musk and Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino have rolled back the platform’s rules of engagement and rid their ranks of the content-moderation teams and tools that actually keep X trustworthy, they’ve also put in place a system that fundamentally incentivizes the spread of misinformation during times of mass panic and confusion, in part because X is now a platform that pays for viral content. The end result is that Twitter, more so than any other platform right now, is fertile ground for a new kind of war profiteering.

A few debunkings – relatively minor ones. It would be an exhausting effort for somebody to keep up with them all. A problem with debunkings is that they can sometimes continue to spread the lies which are debunked. But here are some which don't do that.

On Oct. 8, the day after the initial Hamas attack, an account called @AGCast4 posted a video supposedly showing a Hamas rocket attack in Israel. The BBC journalist and fact-checker Shayan Sardarizadeh debunked it: The footage wasn’t from the ongoing conflict or any real-life war but from the video game Arma 3. The account was—and still is—verified with a blue check mark. Two days later, the investigative outfit Bellingcat, known for its visual forensics work, had to debunk some fake news … about itself. A doctored “BBC” video was circulating on social media, claiming that Bellingcat’s journalists had confirmed Ukrainian weapon sales to Hamas. “We’ve reached no such conclusions or made any such claims,” Bellingcat’s official account wrote on Twitter. In a screenshot, Bellingcat showed that a Twitter account called Geopoliitics & Empire had shared the video. Like the account that posted video game footage, this account was also verified with a blue check mark. (The account owner deleted the post and called it an “honest mistake,” simultaneously posting a meme captioned “We are going to be famous.”)

Those blue check marks have lost all meaning.

But now anyone who pays for Twitter Blue—recently renamed X Premium—can just buy a blue check mark for $8 a month, along with the veneer that they are a notable person or a legitimate source of information. Just last week, X removed headlines from linked news articles, making the site exponentially more confusing to scroll through.

“There is a difference between platforms that take steps to mitigate harm, platforms that have not yet started taking these steps, and platforms that take steps to undo processes that mitigated harm,” Chinmayi Arun, the executive director of Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, told me. “Users who are accustomed to a different version of X may not know how to process or understand what they are seeing now.” It’s been mere days since the war broke out, but European regulators are already peeved with what they’ve seen. In a posted letter to Musk, European commissioner Thierry Breton asked the X owner to comply with the continent’s sweeping Digital Services Act. He urged the billionaire to respond within 24 hours with assurances that he’s taking the spread of “illegal content and disinformation” seriously or face legal penalties.

I wish the European regulators luck. But the best move is for people to abandon Twitter/X. You feed the trolls and the disinformation machine by remaining there.

Musk may want to prioritize “free speech” and being “open source,” but millions of people rely on his platform for reliable information. And, as it’s played out time after time, there are often very scary real-world consequences when conspiracy theories and fraudulent stories are allowed to run rampant. The only thing that’s transparent is the owner’s inattention.

Seriously, those people need to stop treating Twitter/X as a news source. The best way to do so is to simply leave. Get the word out!

[apollo-enthusiast]

The same number of rockets were shot into Israel from Gaza.

Israel is also very small, just 6 hours north to south and 90 minutes west to east. At least 1500 of the dead from Gaza were terrorists eliminated in Israel after murdering civilians in cold blood. Almost 1000 of the 1300 Israeli deaths were innocent civilians. They were murdered in a music festival promoting peace. Hamas terrorists murdered families in their homes. THEY BURNED THEM ALIVE, AND DECAPITATED BABIES. I can't believe we actually need to show you the burned, headless, tiny corpses. Even then you don't believe us. Sometimes after cutting their arms off first. They tortured children in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children. They kidnapped children without their parents, helpless elderly people, injured and sick.

Their water and electricity will be turned back on when they return all the hostages. What other country supplies their enemies with those things on the regular anyway? That's right, just us. Egypt doesn't help them at all, in fact they build an impromptu concrete wall to keep Palestinians from coming to Egypt.

In contrast to Egypt's inhumane treatment of Palestinians, Israel is the only country in the middle east that grants them full rights when they are civilians (there are PLENTY of Israeli arabs here). In Lebanon, Palestinians can't even own property. Israel has given the Palestinians over 25 hours to evacuate from north Gaza, instead of giving them a suprise attack. BECAUSE WE DON'T WANT CIVILIAN CASUALTIES. On the other hand, Hamas is trying to keep them there to use as human shields. The concept of human shields only ever works on Israel, because Hamas shoot into dense civilian populations, FROM dense civilian population (that's two war crimes btw), killing LOTS of Palestinian civilians in the process.

Western Christian leftists don't see us as people. Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis. We're all just pawns to you, in your game of armchair "activism". You all take a side from the safety of your own home. You're hypocrites. It's "believe all women" until it's Jewish women. Human rights but not for Jews. You cheer on murder, rape and torture.

You're fooled by partial information, fake news and your own hero complexes. You don't see any of us as human beings equal to you.

FREE PALESTINE AND ISRAEL FROM HAMAS AND WESTERN STUPIDITY

Source

Source

[influencermagazineuk]

New Developments in Gaza: Must-Read Updates on the Escalating Conflict

The situation in Gaza remains tense as the conflict intensifies; thus global intervention is necessary. Ideally, one should remain as updated with the newest events as possible so that one can keep up with what is going on.  Hospital Evacuations  New weapons orders from the Israeli military have displaced some of the most famous hospitals in the regions such as the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital and the Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society Hospital. These evacuations have greatly affected the health care sector in that patients, along with health workers, continue to run helter-skelter amidst airing raids and shelling. Forcing people of Gaza into a humanitarian crisis, vital infrastructure within hospitals in Gaza continues to deteriorate.  Humanitarian Crisis  One million six hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians in Gaza are displaced iteratively – Even the sick cannot stay in a shelter for more than fifteen days. Recent mentions include The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) that describe deplorable status of patients due to lack of humanitarian products reaching the needy as a result of the war.  Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) in contract with APAimages, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Political Reactions and Statements  Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh has threatened that the Cairo brokered truce will have disastrous consequences if Israeli operations including massacre and expulsion continue in Gaza. The United States through the National Security spokesman John Kirby alongside the Egyptians, Israeli, and the Jordanians are still involved in the process of trying to broker the ceasefire. Political leaders from different countries have decried on the soaring violence and urged for intervention to be made in humanitarian crisis.  Casualties and Damage  The latest casualty figures reveal a devastating toll: more than 38,000 Palestinians have died, and thousands have been wounded since the crisis began on October 7. In Israel, the killed has been 1,139 with further concern for people held hostage in gaza. Both incidents do this by increasing the count of human casualties and overall level of ruined infrastructures.  Israeli Military Actions  The military actions have escalated in the last 24 hours with Cumraiches striking both Gaza Strip and the Syrian seaport of Baniyas. In the occupied area of the West Bank the Israeli forces have been surrounding the refugee camps and hospitals in Tulkarem which has led to worsening of the relations and denial of medical facilities. The international community is concerned about the protection of people and humanitarian law in light of these activities. Civilian and International Responses  Vice President of the United States of America Kamala Harris questioned regarding the extreme scarcity of food and water in Gaza and stressed on the aspect of the crisis. An evacuation order was issued, housing supplies and services have shut down or were restricted, and as many as thousands of people have been displaced: Gaza City was severely affected by Israeli military actions – according to the United Nations report. International presidents as well as the organizations still urge to put ceasefires and to allow the humanitarian supplies to be delivered.  Economic and Social Developments  In order to encourage free trade and peacemaking measures, Brazil has backed the free trade deal with the Palestinian Authority. On the one hand, it is seen in the case of Israel who recently opened Zikim beach though the conflict with the Palestinians persists, which shows that the social relationship in conflict is in reprieve stages.  As much as this conflict in Gaza continues, it is very evident that timely intervention through the international community should be arranged for among other things, alleviate the situation and bring lasting mutually acceptable solutions. Therefore, it is vital to monitor updates as world’s societies and businesses confront the ongoing transformations and issues of all the actors involved.  Read the full article

[arpov-blog-blog]

Just weeks before Hamas launched its 7 October surprise attacks on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage, the US had been trying to broker a historic deal to normalize relations between longtime adversaries Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Biden administration, gunning for a major foreign policy achievement before the 2024 presidential elections, had hoped to strike an agreement in which Saudi Arabia would establish formal relations with the Jewish state in return for a defense pact with the US. Saudi Arabia was also seeking Washington’s aid in developing a civilian nuclear program and progress toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Talks were shelved by Riyadh in October over Israel’s war in Gaza, which has so far killed more than 27,000 Palestinians. They have since resumed but Saudi Arabia now insists Israel must first end the war in Gaza and put Palestinians on a path toward statehood.

The US, UK and Israel, unlike nearly 140 other UN member states, have not formally recognized Palestine. The US has long stressed that Palestinian statehood should be achieved through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which oversees parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, while Hamas controls Gaza. Earlier this month, however, the state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, told reporters that the US was “actively pursuing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state” after the war in Gaza.

His remarks came amid reports that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has asked the state department to conduct a review and present policy options on possible future recognition of a Palestinian state.

But Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said he doubted the US would actually invest a lot of manpower or resources in that goal on its own. “They’re more interested in stabilizing and rebuilding Gaza but also Saudi-Israel normalization,” he said. “That’s the big prize that they’re chasing. For them to achieve that, they have to look more serious about a Palestinian state.”

What are the main obstacles?

Netanyahu has dismissed US calls for a path to a Palestinian state, insisting that he would not “compromise on full Israeli security control over all territory west of the Jordan River”. The Israeli prime minster, who has boasted that he was instrumental in preventing Palestinian statehood, is trying to cling to power and elude the threat of prison by appeasing the far-right members of his coalition government.

Biden continued to maintain that the creation of an independent state for Palestinians was still possible, claiming that Netanyahu was not opposed to all forms of a two-state solution.

Other countries are vital to a two-state process

The US is certain to lead any fresh negotiations. Saudi Arabia has told the US that it would not open diplomatic relations with Israel unless it recognizes an independent Palestinian state on 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem, which Israel has unilaterally annexed, as its capital. Israel’s coalition government includes far-right parties who are adamantly opposed to a Palestinian state, and Netanyahu himself blocked progress on the issue for many years.

What hope is there?

Aaron David Miller, who served six US secretaries of state as an adviser on Arab-Israeli peace talks, believes the chances of the US unilaterally recognizing the state of Palestine are slim to none, but that talks on establishing Palestinian statehood form part of a “grand bargain” with Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi-Israeli normalization deal faces many obstacles, Miller says, but “it’s a serious proposal from the administration, and they’ve actively working on it.” He noted, though, how unlikely Israel was to agree to what Blinken on Tuesday called for: a “time-bound, irreversible” path to a Palestinian state.

[eretzyisrael]

A Drastic Proposal

In my morning paper there is a discussion of the home front defense drill that will be taking place today, simulating an all-out war with Hamas and Hezbollah. Warning sirens will be activated in various places, and note will be taken of whether schoolchildren and others are able to reach shelter in time. My personal situation is good compared to that of most Israelis; there is a shelter on every floor of the apartment building I live in, and we get about a minute’s warning of rockets from Gaza (flight time is 90 seconds). Rockets from Hezbollah will take a bit longer.

Unfortunately, only about 42% of Israelis (according to my newspaper) have shelters in their homes. That means that they can’t possibly make it to the nearest public shelter in time, so they end up spending long hours or even days in them when there are rocket attacks. Or they depend on the somewhat dubious protection of stairwells. Even a shelter in the basement of a multistory building takes too much time to reach.

Iron Dome and other antimissile systems have provided good protection during the small conflicts that we’ve had in recent years, but in a war with Hezbollah, which is said to have some 130,000 rockets aimed at all parts of Israel, including some dozens of rockets with precise guidance systems that will be targeted at airbases, power stations, fuel depots, and other critical infrastructure, there will not be enough systems to protect most civilians.

There is money budgeted to fix this, but nowhere near enough, and the process is slow and (of course) bogged down by bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, the prospect of a conflict with Iran draws ever more likely as the Iranian regime plays for time with the Western powers. Unless something unexpected happens, like a revolution in Iran, the moment is near when Israel will have to decide: do we permit Iran to become a nuclear power or will we go to war? There is no third option.

War with Iran will involve Hezbollah, which has no other reason for existing. It will certainly trigger Hamas, and the other terror providers in Gaza. It will probably include missile and drone attacks on Israel from the territory of Syria and Iraq, and possibly directly from Iran. Estimates are of more than 1,000 rockets per day; the worst damage will be to border communities, which are in range of Hezbollah’s massive mortars. There will be ground incursions in the north, to try to overrun military installations and civilian communities, kill people and take hostages. We can expect a wave of terrorism from Judea and Samaria, and perhaps even the participation of Palestinian Authority “security” forces. Finally, terrorists among Israel’s Arab citizens will certainly join in, as they did in the last small war with Gaza.

Such a war would extremely traumatic for Israel’s home front, maybe worse than any of her previous wars. Nobody would be safe, and the country would not be the same afterwards, even if we win.

At the same time, war, no matter how it starts, would be portrayed in the international media as a vicious attack by Israel on helpless Lebanese, Gazans, and others. The international anti-Israel conspiracy – there is no other expression that adequately describes the coalition of organizations dedicated to the extirpation of the Jewish state from the world – will launch a coordinated antisemitic campaign throughout the world. This isn’t speculation: we’ve seen it in action every time Israel has acted to defend herself against rocket attacks from Gaza. The objective will be to pressure the international community to prevent an Israeli victory and allow our enemies to prepare for the next round.

I expect that the Biden Administration, like that of Barack Obama, will try to embargo shipments of essential weapons and ammunition to Israel. I believe that the overall climate in the administration and Congress is more anti-Israel today than in the days of Obama, although they have tried to avoid direct public confrontations so far.

What, then, is the best strategy for Israel in this situation?

Can we avoid war by appeasement? We can only delay it. The Iranian leaders do not want a conventional war at this time; the regime prefers to wait until it has prepared its nuclear shield. Once it is in place, it can unleash Hezbollah against Israel while deterring us from retaliating directly against them.

But even without war, a nuclear Iran would be disastrous for Israel. Iran would proceed to establish a sphere of influence over the entire region. It would gain economic and political power. The regime could demand concessions from Israel – a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, prisoner releases, withdrawal from all or part of Judea and Samaria, an airport in Gaza – and Israel, without allies, would be forced to comply. Each time, the alternative would be war; conventional war, but backed by a nuclear threat.

Little by little our sovereignty would evaporate, foreign investment and trade would dry up, Israelis with foreign passports would leave – and then there would be more demands. It would not be as dramatic as nuclear bombs on Tel Aviv, but just as final.

Israel needs to act soon, and with overwhelming force, against both Iran and Hezbollah simultaneously, in order to prevent massive damage on our home front. Their military capabilities and leadership must be destroyed, and very quickly, before they can strike back and before the US and Europe can intervene. I am talking about a few days, not weeks. It might be that the only way to do that is with unconventional weapons. We need to be prepared to use them.

I understand that this is a drastic proposal. Do you have a better one?

Abu Yehuda

[reasonandempathy]

For a "we need nuance" post, this post is relatively not nuanced.

Apply this to basically any other nation.

People do apply this to other nations. There are swaths of Europe that, to this day, have contested lands between them. There's contested land between Russia and China, China and India, India and Pakistan, Canada and Denmark (I think), and there are countless places across Europe that have records of French, German, Italian, and Austrian "well, they were all here at some point." Europe recently had a series of massive wars that straightened out the borders, until you get to Ukraine and Russia...

Even keeping it within the USA and Canada there are significant movements to literally "give the land back". Remember the ruling that Oklahoma actually needed to cede large swaths of land back to indigenous people a couple years ago?

The difference here is two-fold.

There are still some of the original people who had their land stolen still alive. There are Palestinians who were pushed out in the process of what would be the IDF committing well-documented War Crimes, who are not allowed back home. It's not just "250 years ago the US bought land from the French that was actually Indigenous." It's people taking pictures in front of their still-living grandmother's stolen house, and active theft still going on right now, today. Literally just not stealing more land would be better.

Israeli claims to land are rooted in exactly that line of argument. "This land was stolen from us, so we're getting it back." is explicitly the same thought process militant Palestinians have. Except you're pushing to accepting Israeli claims (2000+ years old) over claims from 100 years ago. Or 10 years ago.

You condemn the attacks.

I sincerely can't remember or think of a single non-Palestinian who didn't condemn the attacks. Even then, there were also Palestinians who condemned the attacks, went in-depth into how brutally unacceptable and barbaric they were, that the civilian deaths were unforgiveable, and then were explicitly told that they were refusing to condemn the attacks when they shifted to trying to talk about Palestinian deaths and suffering.

The attacks are 6 months ago and on the other side of 100,000+ dead or maimed Palestinians. They have been condemned almost universally, by everyone except for some Palestinians, or those who use their lack of condemnation explicitly to to reject the framing of the conversation in "what about the attacks?" framing.

It's like condemning Arson when talking about the Civil War because Sherman enacted total war, or "Do you condemn 9/11?" when discussing the Afghan war.

It's certainly something you should be concerned about, but comparing them to Nazis is not useful at all.

To you. There are parallels between Nazi rhetoric/policy and Israeli rhetoric/policy. Sure, they're not the only fascist regime that Israeli looks like, but everyone says Nazis nowadays anyway.

But, explicitly, Lebensraum comes to mind. As does the general framework of setting up a religious-defined ethnostate. The adoption of Nazi rhetoric.

Yes, if you want to explicitly ignore Israelis adopting Nazi rhetoric, calling for genocide, taking on a practice of stealing land from its neighbors so it can continue to grow, redefining the definition of anti-semitic, and invoking a "restoring Israel to the glory days" of the past then we can agree that there's a lot less nazi-esque parallels.

If it helps you and I can reframe it as PNF-esque, since there isn't a "we need to explicitly wipe out every single Palestinian" component, but that's not actually a much better comparison.

They do not have a policy of killing Palestinian civilians.

I know this post is 2 days old, so the timing probably could not have been worse.

But they do. They literally do. They named the system where they wait for Hamas soldiers to get home (where their families live) before bombing them "Where's Daddy?"

They know what they're doing.

They make damn sure that, if you want to bomb them, you are taking civilians with them.

I'm not even necessarily denying this, because the "this is literally the densest place to live on Earth and it is physically impossible to have infrastructure separate from/outside of residential areas because they have to live somewhere" argument has been made by smarter and better people than I am, and if you don't buy that already I don't imagine you're going to.

But that doesn't explain how cavalier the IDF is with war crimes. With all of them. With intentional starvation, famine, and shutting down power and water to Gaza. Even by Israel's own admission it isn't impacting Hamas too much since they've been banking resources, so it literally is only starving people.

It doesn't explain Israel trying to drag the USA, Iran, and Jordan into a multi-front regional war.

All I'm saying is you can't look at this as a totally one-sided thing.

This is true. And it's why I took the time to respond, really. Because you're literally regurgitating Zionist talking points with zero visible reflection on it, because you're taking those talking points as one-sided and missing the facts on the ground.

I'm begging the pro-Palestine movement to inject even the slightest bit of nuance into their rhetoric. I'm basically pro-Zionist at this point, but even I believe you SHOULD be pro-Palestine to an extent.

Here are some things to consider.

Israel has a right to exist. They didn't steal the land. You can say Britain did, but it doesn't matter. It's their land now and they have a right to live there, just as Canadians have a right to live in Canada despite the history of the indigenous people. Apply this to basically any other nation.

The October 7th attack happened. It was bad. It was an act of terrorism. They killed innocent civilians on purpose. The civilians didn't deserve to die for living in Israel. You condemn the attacks.

Hamas is a valid military target. They are a terrorist organization who are constantly attacking Israel. They're not freedom fighters. They may use the plight of Palestinians as an excuse, but they cannot be taken in good faith. You condemn Hamas.

Israelis are not Nazis. There are far right people in Israel as there are anywhere. Right now Israel's right wing is exaggerated due the attacks they've experienced. People's rhetoric can get extreme when such a thing happens. It's certainly something you should be concerned about, but comparing them to Nazis is not useful at all.

Generally speaking, Israel has a good track record of taking a lot of care to avoid civilian deaths. They have a strong history of calling areas by phone to warn civilians. They will then drop a knock bomb onto the roof to scare people out before dropping the actual bomb. They do not have a policy of killing Palestinian civilians.

The reason why Israel has the reputation they do for killing civilians is threefold. 1) Palestine is densely populated which creates huge complications in war. 2) Individual IDF soldiers or groups sometimes commit attrocities, on purpose or by accident. 3) Hamas has one of the most devious PR strategies the world has ever seen.

Hamas uses human shields. And I'm tempted to say they use them more effectively than anyone has in the history of the world. They operate in or under civilian infrastructure... seemingly exclusively. They make damn sure that, if you want to bomb them, you are taking civilians with them.

Combine that with the fact there's basically no way to identify a member of Hamas from a civilian and Hamas can generate an insane civilian death toll. Why? Because they can sell it to us. The western liberal is horrified by civilian deaths. Especially if the skin color of the victims is darker than the people doing the killing. It's the perfect plot for a terrorist group to pretend they have noble intentions of freedom fighting and whatnot.

So is being pro-Palestine just utterly foolish? Absolutely not. Palestinians are in an utterly horrible position in this world and you'd be absolutely insane not to care about that. They absolutely should have their own nation with their own government. They should have the opportunity to live in peace. They should have the opportunity to live in freedom. It's almost self-evident.

Of course Israel is too expansionist. The settlements are a disgrace. The IDF's reputation is not totally unearned and neither is their government's reputation. There is the stench of far right rot in both their military and their government. Netanyahu is absolutely a religious zealot.

All I'm saying is you can't look at this as a totally one-sided thing. Most of the people posting pro-Palestine stuff are being misleading at best and spreading flat out lies more often than not. This is not a valid strategy to enact change. And, frankly, you deserve better for yourself.

You do not need to lie about Israel to be pro-Palestine.

[alexsmitposts]

Opposition or Terrorists: Who is Syria and Russia Bombing in Idlib? Scott Lucas – a professor at the University of Birmingham UK – would decry with the rest of the Western media – resumed joint military operations carried out by Syria and Russia in and around the northwestern governorate of Idlib. Reuters in their article, “Syrian army resumes military operations against rebels in northwest Syria,” would claim: The Syrian army said on Monday it was resuming military operations in a Russian-led campaign in northwest Syria that has uprooted tens of thousands and killed hundreds, blaming Turkey for not abiding by its commitments under a truce deal. Both Lucas and Reuters – like many other Western media fronts and personalities – are careful never to fully characterize who the “opposition” actually consists of – instead attempting to imply Syria and Russia are waging war on civilians and “moderate rebels.” When asked by journalist Peter Hitchens to give a run down on who the Syrian opposition actually was, Lucas in a post on social media would respond: Hi, Peter! #Syria situation, across not only northwest but northeast, is web of local councils, local military groups, and local activist organizations to provide services. You’ll need to specify a particular area, such as a town or city in #Idlib or #Hama Province. Yet the accompanying picture Lucas used to illustrate his point was of a meeting organized by the IHH (Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief). IHH is based in Turkey and is by no means “local.” IHH is also linked directly to Al Qaeda, serving as a logistical support network for the terrorist organization, merely couching itself behind its humanitarian mission statement. IHH’s ties to terrorism are not recent. A 2012 article by Israeli media outlet Ynet titled, “Report: IHH financially linked to al-Qaeda,” would report: IHH director Bulent Yildirim is reportedly being investigated by Turkish authorities for allegedly creating a financial partnership with the infamous terror group. Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily reported Friday that Yildirim has allegedly been transferring funds to al-Qaeda through his organization. The Israeli-based International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) in a much more recent report titled, “IHH: The Nonprofit Face of Jihadism. An In-Depth Review,” would admit: IHH (The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief) is a Turkish NGO active in 135 countries and seemingly dedicated entirely to humanitarian aims. In fact, mounting evidence suggests that IHH also operates as a hidden arm of the Turkish government in the conflict zones of the Middle East and Southeast Asia. It has been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel since 2012 and has been investigated by European prosecutors as a key logistical supporter of Al Qaeda. It is a particular irony that Israeli media and policy institutions have helped expose IHH when many elements of the current Israeli government have been involved in backing terrorist organizations in neighboring Syria alongside Turkey, the United States, other Western states, as well as several Persian Gulf autocracies since the conflict began in 2011. That the one picture Lucas was able to find where the “opposition” wasn’t overtly exposing itself as armed terrorists still depicted a known, verified foreign terrorist organization operating within Syrian territory – masquerading as humanitarians – speaks to just how deeply rooted terrorists are in Syria’s Idlib governorate. Strategic Patience Were the situation reversed and the West was faced with an entire province or state occupied by Al Qaeda and its myriad of affiliates – total war would commence and would not end until the targeted region was purged entirely of militants. Civilian causalities would either go uncounted and under-reported, or spun as a necessity in confronting an otherwise intolerable bastion of armed terrorism. In fact – similar narratives were used during the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan despite Washington’s objectives being geopolitical rather than counter-terrorism related. The strategic reality is that despite how well Damascus and its allies have weathered and overcome Washington’s proxy war in Syria – the US remains a potent military, political, and economic threat. Strategic patience, multiple “truce deals,” and geopolitical concessions will be required to finally wrest Idlib back from foreign-backed terrorist forces currently entrenched there. Terrorist forces have been concentrated in Idlib as Syrian forces pushed them out of virtually every other populated region of the country. Even the liberation of the City of Aleppo took years to achieve. Idlib is an entire governorate bordering Turkey which is still arming and protecting terrorist organizations both within Turkish territory itself and in Syrian territory occupied by Turkish forces. While Turkey has recently shown signs of shifting objectives and moving closer to Russia geopolitically – it will be a long and agonizing process to undo the tensions this 8-year conflict has created. If there is one point of hope amid this still dangerous and deadly conflict – it’s that the Western media and inveterate war propagandists like Scott Lucas are no longer able to conceal the true nature of terrorists they have aided and abetted since 2011. They will continue trying nonetheless – but as Lucas just managed to do – will succeed only in exposing more of the network the US and its allies used in their proxy war against Damascus – thus further undermining regime change efforts in Syria and complicating similar attempts to target and overthrow other nations in the future.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

The biggest news out of Israel today is that Hamas released two of the hostages. They're a mother and daughter from Chicago, who were visiting the grandmother in Israel when Hamas attacked. The family says it still has 8 more family members held as hostages in Gaza. The updated number of hostages after the release of Judith and Natalie Raanan (seen in the picture after arriving in Israel) is at least 210.

Fighting with Hezbollah continues, and today the army confirmed that yet another Israeli soldier was killed on the northern border, and at least one more Israeli civilian was wounded.

After Israel, the US and the UN, now France has also come forward to say their data analysis shows the hospital explosion in Gaza was the result of a misfired rocket, not an Israeli strike. A lot of bloggers online continue to spread misinformation saying it was Israel. Jewish bloggers responded with this message:

Several Palestinians who had entered Israel illegally were arrested in the central city of Givatayim today, after residents reported suspicious behavior, where these men were going around and taking pictures of buildings.

Israeli embassies and Jewish institutes continue to be targeted around the world. Tonight, a bomb went off by the Israeli embassy in Cyprus. Altogether, at least 5 Israeli embassies had to be evacuated, and at least 20 had to be closed. On Oct 17 in Tunisia, a Jewish synagogue was attacked and ruined.

In the UK, the police instructed trucks, which were showcasing ads with the pictures of the Israeli hostages, to shut down the images. Despite not contesting that this was a privately funded campaign, which had every right to be run, and it was breaking no laws. The claim was that it was done for their own safety. The police men and women also tried to physically stop a Jewish activist from Campaign Against Antisemitism (the NGO which is running the ads) from being able to stand by and hear the conversation with the truck drivers. Again, it was said to be done for his own safety. An official response basically repeated this claim. Since when are completely legal activities stopped due to the threat of violence? Will pride events be shut down every time a violent homophobe threatens them? Will campaigns against racism be taken down every time white supremacists will be believed to be upset, and possibly turn to violence? How is the British police's actions doing anything other than rewarding those who use violence to silence others?

Lastly, I'm going to add this from the constant horrors coming out of the south, that Israelis are still trying to process:

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[berniesrevolution]

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

When a government guns down dozens of members of an oppressed group engaging in civil disobedience, it’s natural to feel any number of emotions: shock, sorrow, anger.

But if you felt any of these at the sight of Israel’s brutal repression of Palestinian protesters last week, the mainstream press has a message for you: don’t worry about it.

The Washington Post editorial board labelled the protest — which saw Palestinians try to cross the border fence between Gaza and Israel before being met with tear gas and bullets, both real and rubber — a new type of “war,” one in which Hamas deployed “nominal civilians” to carry out civil disobedience “in the calculation that many would be killed.” The endgame, according to the editorial, was “moral and political defeat for Israel.”

The New York Times’ Tom Friedman charged Hamas — Gaza’s ruling party that is widely, and wrongly, cast as the driving force behind the protests — with carrying out “an act of human sacrifice.” “When you throw thousands of your youth, the flower of your youth, against an Israeli fence, supposedly to get in Israel, some of them surrounded by Hamas fighters, it was inevitable that a lot of people were going to get killed,” he said. “Israel was not going to open the border to them, and Hamas knew that.”

“We’ll surely hear a great deal about the misery of Gaza,” wrote conservative columnist Bret Stephens. “Try not to forget that the authors of that misery are also the presumptive victims.”

Stephens questioned why there was no outrage over the fact that “Hamas kept urging Palestinians to move toward the fence” even after Israel warned protesters not to, or why women and children were apparently at the front lines. “Elsewhere in the world, this sort of behavior would be called reckless endangerment,” he fumed. “It would be condemned as self-destructive, cowardly, and almost bottomlessly cynical.”

The Times’ other conservative columnists were in agreement. David Brooks called the Palestinians’ “theatrical thinking,” aimed at creating “a martyrdom performance that will show the world how oppressed we are,” both “cynical” and “messianic.” Meanwhile, Bari Weiss complained on Bill Maher’s show that the protests appeared to have been timed to coincide with the opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem in order to create the most damaging photo-op possible. “Let’s not fall for a trap that is being set by a theocratic, authoritarian group that are sending women and children to be human shields,” she said.

“Columnists like Brooks, Weiss, and Stephens love to cite King to back up whatever point they happen to be making at the time. Yet it seems all they know is how to use King and the movement he represented as some kind made-to-order moral authority while ignoring their actual lessons.”

It’s difficult to imagine such repugnant arguments being employed against any other oppressed group. But we don’t have to imagine, because it was only fifty years ago that the forebears of Brooks, Stephens, and Weiss were using these same talking points to attack Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement.

In an April 20, 1965 column for the National Review titled “The Violence of Nonviolence,” senior editor Frank Meyer charged that King’s nonviolent approach had a “violent essence,” in that it was based on the “provocation of violence.” By pushing segregationists into a heavy-handed response, King was not only guilty of “hypocrisy on a grand scale” but was ultimately aiming to “destroy the processes of constitutional government.” Just as Palestinians’ recent civil disobedience has been termed a new type of warfare, Meyer would complain that King’s Poor People’s Campaign of civil disobedience constituted “insurrectionary methods.”

Lionel Lokos, a conservative author from the time who authored an unfavorable biography of King after his death, likewise complained that King’s success depended on the threat and provocation of violence, leaving behind a “legacy of lawlessness.” When King won the Nobel Prize, the US News and World Report asserted that many Americans thought it “extraordinary that this prize should go to a man whose fame is based upon his battle for civil rights for Negroes — and whose activities often lead to violence.” Years before that, as sit-ins sprung up across the South, Georgia senator Richard B. Russell accused CORE of trying to “provoke race riots in the South” so they could bring a “terrible incident” to the Senate to justify civil rights legislation.

It’s little wonder that King’s segregationist critics sound like today’s defenders of Israel, when the civil rights marches looked so similar to the recent Palestinian protests. Black civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s were likewise walking unarmed into what they knew would be brutal retaliation from local law enforcement, and the ranks of protesters attacked by Southern police with dogs, fire hoses, and batons also included women and children.

Would any of these columnists use such language to condemn the protesters of the Civil Rights Movement, urging readers to shut off their justified feelings of outrage and injustice?

(Continue Reading)

[winterbirb]

These are all really, really good ideas and I don't have any articles on hand but I have some additional thots from the perspective of a white flyover american:

John Oliver (and more importantly, his enormously talented team of writers) managed to create a show that packages non-mainstream activism into a mix of comedy and hard-hitting journalism in a way that centrists and the generally uninformed are able to process.

The american mainstream has become much more internationally aware. I think people were already trending toward this in 2014, but even momentous changes are gradual.

Also, between 2014-2021 American Exceptionalism has taken a huge hit. Well, the rhetoric is still used, but the mainstream post-Cold War victory lap of "oo-rah god bless America freedom is the best and we're always right so obviously the world would would be a better place if we bombed them into submission" has turned into "hey, obv we know freedom and democracy is the best shit ever, but Xi Jinping said we're a bunch of sissies who don't know how to build a bridge or provide a basic standard of living, so let's prove him wrong!" (A very true and accurate paraphrase of Biden's address. Trust me). Needless to say, it's much harder to fit "the US supporting Israel killing innocent civilians" into the second paradigm.

I think this being a recurring issue combined with the current political atmosphere makes it more sensitive too. Like to be blunt I think a lot of people in 2014 were like "what the fuck is a Hamas and an IDF and why should I even care" but of course it's been a while and so people have had plenty of time to slowly, unhurriedly learn about the situation (or at least get basic name recognition), and so now there's not the baseline knowledge hurdle. Combine this with a mainstream sense of disillusionment that's even spread to centrist legacy media gatekeepers and most of the stumbling blocks in the way of an issue gaining momentum have just been removed.

None of this would've been possible without the tireless work of activists mentioned above. I just find it fascinating to try and figure out how mainstream consciousness shifts.

I do have to say, I have never seen this level of US public opposition to Israeli activities in Palestine before. I remember being online during the Israeli bombing campaigns in 2014, and there was no public outrage, no serious discussion on news programs, and very little sympathy for Palestinians outside of the traditional leftist circles. Now, there’s large marches from Chicago to Miami, Israeli crimes are being discussed as crimes on MSNBC, and multiple members of congress have given speeches condemning Israeli actions. All of that would have been beyond inconceivable just a few years ago.

[newstfionline]

Friday, December 18, 2020

Snow continues to fall on Northeast US, with vaccines in tow (AP) Snow continued to fall Thursday, days after the start of the U.S. vaccination campaign and in the thick of a virus surge that has throngs of people seeking tests daily. Snow fell from northern Virginia to parts of New England on Wednesday. It carried on north into the evening, sustaining a storm that was poised to drop as much as 2 feet (0.6 meters) of snow in some places by Thursday. The National Weather Service said Wednesday that the storm was “set to bring an overabundance of hazards from the mid-Atlantic to the Northeast,” including freezing rain and ice in the mid-Atlantic, heavy snow in the New York City area and southern New England, strong winds and coastal flooding, and possibly even severe thunderstorms and some tornadoes in North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

New York Spent $1 Billion on Virus Supplies. Now It Wants Money Back. (NYT) As the coronavirus ravaged New York this spring, state officials faced a terrifying prospect: Casualties were mounting, and the reserve of ventilators and masks was dwindling. As doctors considered rationing lifesaving treatment, the state rushed into $1.1 billion in deals for supplies and equipment. Now, New York wants much of that money back. State officials are trying to get at least partial refunds on a third of that spending, by clawing back millions paid to vendors that they said failed to deliver on time, and working to extricate the state from deals now that stockpiles are sufficient, an analysis by The New York Times shows. The same is true in New York City, where officials have canceled $525 million in agreements for virus-related goods. The reversals follow a frantic buying spree during the virus’s ferocious surge through New York. After Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio suspended normal rules for bidding and oversight, their administrations sometimes turned to companies with colorful résumés and claims of access to manufacturers, but little experience. On the chance these suppliers might deliver, officials made quick agreements involving a used car seller, a shoe importer, a military consulting company, an old acquaintance of the state’s health commissioner, and even a company that sold sex toys along with medical devices. They sometimes paid up front—a practice not normally sanctioned—to secure the merchandise.

Civil asset forfeiture (ProPublica) Many states allow police departments to confiscate money and possessions of people accused of crimes, a process known as civil forfeiture that was rolled out with the notion that if you take assets away from people you think are criminals, crime will go down. A new study of crime in New Mexico, which banned civil forfeiture in 2015, has determined that’s wrong, and that arrest and offense rates were flat after ending forfeiture, indicating that it was less a “disincentive to do crime” and more “the government ripping money away from poor people who can’t fight it.” The data revealed that civil asset forfeiture—rather than removing the ability of sophisticated criminal syndicates to obtain capital—just rips the bottom dollar of low-level offenders, as the median forfeiture average across 21 states studied was just $1,276. In Michigan, half of forfeitures were less than $423, and in Pennsylvania half were less than $369. Those smaller dollar forfeitures, rather than giving the police a reason to get INTERPOL on the line to land the big bust, mainly are making it functionally impossible for indigent and poor defendants who can’t afford a lawyer to recover.

As Mexico’s security deteriorates, the power of the military grows (Washington Post) When President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office, his senior aides were blunt. Mexico’s security system was “in ruins,” they warned. Homicides were at record highs. Local police forces were infiltrated by crime groups. Tens of thousands of people had been forcibly disappeared. The country, they concluded in an analysis sent to the national Congress, had been “transformed into a cemetery.” López Obrador, an icon of the Mexican left, was a longtime critic of the U.S.-backed war on drugs. “Soldiers should be returned to the barracks,” he had insisted. But confronted with the highest levels of violence in 60 years, he responded as his predecessors had: He called on the military. Two years into López Obrador’s term, Mexico’s armed forces have assumed a broader role in the country’s affairs than at any point since the end of military-led government in the 1940s. The government has deployed record numbers of troops to deal with the deteriorating security situation. They’re patrolling cities, raiding drug labs and protecting strategic installations. But it doesn’t stop there. The military is increasingly the president’s go-to force for tasks previously managed by civilian agencies, from running ports to repairing hospitals to building airports.

French President Macron tests positive for COVID-19 (AP) French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for COVID-19, the presidential Elysee Palace announced on Thursday. It said he would isolate himself for seven days. “He will continue to work and take care of his activities at a distance,” it added. It was not immediately clear what contact tracing efforts were in progress. Macron attended a European Union summit at the end of last week, where he notably had a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He met Wednesday with the prime minister of Portugal. There was no immediate comment from Portuguese officials.

Putin Faces Grilling After a Rough Year (Foreign Policy) Russian President Vladimir Putin hosts his annual end-of-year press conference today. Like most world leaders in a pandemic year, Putin has had a mixed 2020. On the positive side of the ledger, he succeeded in making changes to Russia’s constitution—allowing him to run for two more terms as president if he so wishes. Russia also continued its opportunistic foreign policy in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, proving kingmaker in the latter conflict. Other developments cast a shadow, however. Falling oil prices depressed the country’s economy and could spell more trouble if global demand remains low. Months of protests in Belarus against President Aleksandr Lukashenko showed the weakness of a key ally. Closer to home, a challenge to Moscow’s leadership in the southeastern city of Khabarovsk over the summer revealed that all is not well on the country’s periphery. The poisoning of opposition figure Alexei Navalny, allegedly carried out by Russian security forces, won’t make it any easier for the West to accept Russia back into the fold. International sanctions will likely persist. Putin will also have to face up to a new U.S. president in Joe Biden, who has named Russia as “the biggest threat to America right now in terms of breaking up our security and our alliances.”

China Brings Moon Rocks to Earth, and a New Era of Competition to Space (NYT) China may have been a latecomer to the moon, but when its capsule full of lunar rocks and soil returned to Earth early Thursday, it set the stage for a new space race over the coming decades. The country’s Chang’e-5 spacecraft gathered as much as 4.4 pounds of lunar samples from a volcanic plain known as Mons Rümker in a three-week operation that underlined China’s growing prowess and ambition in space. The United States and the Soviet Union competed for supremacy in an epic space race in the 1960s and ‘70s, during which they brought back lunar samples, but that was a different era. Now China is in the fray, and today’s competition—once seemingly the realm of science fiction—could be equally intense and more mercantile. The Chinese are eager to flaunt their technical skills and explore the solar system. Like the United States, the country has a broader goal to establish a lunar base that could exploit its potential resources and serve as a launching pad for more ambitious missions.

Tokyo says strain on hospitals is severe (Reuters) Tokyo said on Thursday the strain on its medical system was severe, raising its alert level to the highest of four stages as the number of cases spiked to a record daily high of 822. A health official said it had become difficult to balance the care of COVID-19 patients with regular ones as hospital beds filled up, assigning a “red” alert for medical preparedness for the first time.

‘The fear is intense’: Afghan ‘sticky bombs’, used by Taliban, on the rise (Reuters) Killings by small, magnetic bombs slapped under vehicles are unnerving Afghan officials, activists and journalists, who blame the Taliban for the attacks that are increasing despite peace talks aimed at ending two decades of war. At least 10 government officials and their aides have been killed by “sticky bombs” in recent weeks, mostly in the capital Kabul. The tactic, senior security officials and Western diplomats say, is meant to instil fear while avoiding large-scale civilian casualties. “Internal intelligence memos reveal that the Taliban are systematically eliminating mid-career, ambitious government officials and other prominent individuals who are clearly against their hardline stance,” said a senior Western diplomat responsible for Afghanistan. The rebels “are not killing the government’s top brass as they can’t afford to generate large-scale furor, for it would impinge upon the peace process,” the diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Palestinians left waiting as Israel is set to deploy vaccine (AP) Israel will begin rolling out a major coronavirus vaccination campaign next week after the prime minister reached out personally to the head of a major drug company. Millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control will have to wait much longer. Worldwide, rich nations are snatching up scarce supplies of new vaccines as poor countries largely rely on a World Health Organization program that has yet to get off the ground. There are few places where the competition is playing out in closer proximity than in Israel and the territories it has occupied for more than half a century. Israelis could soon return to normal life and an economic revival, even as the virus continues to menace Palestinian towns and villages just a few miles (kilometers) away.

Nigerian security forces rescue more than 300 schoolboys kidnapped by gunmen (Reuters) Security forces on Thursday rescued nearly 350 schoolboys who had been kidnapped in northwestern Nigeria and taken into a vast forest, the governor of Katsina state said, bringing relief to many families. It was not immediately clear whether all the missing boys had been recovered. The abduction gripped a country already incensed by widespread insecurity, and evoked memories of Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok.

Cookies, hot cocoa, pick-me-up notes: ‘Sparks’ of kindness (AP) A tin of cookies is left on the running board of an ambulance outside a nursing home with a note for the emergency workers who operate it: “You’re AMAZING! Yes, you!” A baggie sits on the edge of a fountain with dozens of copper coins and another message, for anyone who passes by and fancies tossing one in: “Take a penny. Make a wish! Hope your dreams come true.” This is the world of Sparks of Kindness, an online community of people going out of their way to put a smile on the faces of others through small but touching good deeds, especially in tumultuous times of pandemic, protests and political division. “There’s so much bad in the world, and that’s kind of what we hear about,” said Debbie McFarland, a 53-year-old photographer from Peachtree City, Georgia, who founded the group on Facebook. “But I found that there’s so many people that want to do good—they just don’t really know how to start.” That’s where Sparks of Kindness comes in. It has lists of ideas for “sparks,” or small kindnesses people can do such as thanking a teacher with candy or leaving coloring books in a hospital waiting room. McFarland said she encourages people to do “sparks” when they’re struggling in their own lives. It helps them cope with their own traumas.

[covid19updater]

COVID19 UPDATES 04/02/2020

MORNING:

New Jersey: NEW: Bergen County Jail has FIVE ICE detainees with suspected cases of COVID-19 who are awaiting test results, per a declaration from the jail warden in federal court. As of Monday, ICE reported that 4 ICE detainees had tested positive -- all in New Jersey jails

RUMINT (Illinois): Checking in from central Illinois -My wife runs her own tax and accounting business. About five minutes ago one of her clients, an over-the-road trucker called her to go over some banking info. He told her he is finishing up his last delivery this evening and “making a bee-line home” Reason being, he has been informed that several grocery distribution centers around the country are about to shut down and he wants to get back here to make sure he and his wife are suitably stocked up on food and supplies. She has epilepsy and does not venture far from the house, and we sometimes check up on her as they live just a few miles away.

Texas: NEW: Texas Health Officials Say 9-Year-Old Has Contracted COVID-19

Nevada:  Gov. Sisolak activates Nevada National Guard in response to pandemic [link to fox5vegas.com (secure)] via @fox5vegas

Michigan: Henry Ford Hospital: COVID-19 patient developed nervous system infection LINK

Tennessee: Tennessee tells nurses to try diapers if they run out of surgical masks

NYC: New York City as of Wednesday Apri 1. Nearly one-quarter of the city’s paramedics are out because of illness or injury amid the deadly pandemic. About 23 percent of all EMS members — about 950 — were out on medical leave as of Sunday, the most recent data available, according to an FDNY spokesman. A total of 282 FDNY members — EMS, firefighters and civilian workers — have tested positive for COVID-19.

US: Over the past 24 hours, ...the U.S. reported 26,885 new cases And 1,029 new deaths, Raising the total to 215 429 cases and 5 068 dead. This is the first time any country has reported more than 1,000 new deaths in one day

Florida: Franklin County Sheriff: Infected Georgia Senator says he's leaving St. George Island vacation home LINK

World: "One Of The Worst Coverups In Human History": MSM Attention Turns To Chinese Biolab Near COVID-19 Ground Zero LINK

NYC: (New York City) EMTs have stopped taking people in cardiac arrest to coronavirus-strained hospitals. LINK

Italy: Three more doctors have died of Covid-19 in Italy since Tuesday – bringing the total number to 69, the Italian Doctors’ Association says.

Italy: Italy is undercounting thousands of deaths caused by the coronavirus in the areas worst hit by the pandemic, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows 

US: Trump is weighing whether to restrict flights from New York and Miami over virus.

Portugal: PORTUGAL CONFIRMED CORONAVIRUS CASES RISE 9.5% IN DAY TO 9,034

US: BREAKING: 6.6. million Americans filed for unemployment last week, by far the biggest surge in U.S. history amid coronavirus shutdown

World: New study shows that "coughs can project liquid up to 6m (20 ft) away and that sneezes, which involve much higher speeds, can reach up to 8m (26 ft) away."

Germany: Only in four hours today (fromn 11:15 till 15:11) 3100 new cases, 45 new deaths

World: The Neuroinvasive Potential of SARS-CoV2 May Play a Role in the Respiratory Failure of COVID-19 Patients   LINK   

US: GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC CEO DAVID SOLOMON SAYS 'THERE'S NO QUESTION' THE U.S. CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE WAS 'LATE'

World: Postal services of 22 countries are no longer able to process or deliver international mail or services originating from the United States due to service disruptions related to the #COVID19 pandemic, according to @USPS.

Italy: A “healthy and strong” family of four all died of COVID-19 in the same Italian hospital within the same week, according to reports.LINK

AFTERNOON:

World: “Health experts say they now believe nearly one in three patients who are infected are nevertheless getting a negative test result” -WSJ

UK: An NHS worker has died from coronavirus after treating patients with only gloves for protection, leaving his family feeling "let down". Thomas Harvey collapsed on Sunday after falling ill having helped a patient who later tested positive for Covid-19. The 57-year-old healthcare assistant's family claim with the "right" personal protective equipment (PPE) at Goodmayes Hospital, London, he may not have died. The hospital said there were "no symptomatic patients on the ward".

Italy: #BREAKING: Italy has confirmed 4,668 new #coronavirus cases and 760 new deaths, raising the country's total to 115.242 with 13.915 confirmed deaths

New York: BREAKING: New York state reports 8,669 new cases of coronavirus and 197 new deaths in morning update, raising total to 92,381 cases and 2,373 dead

US: More young people in the South seem to be dying from COVID-19. Why?   LINK

NYC: A frontline doctor at a major NYC hospital told me he lost his first patient this morning to rationing of care — not enough ventilators to go around. The lack of supplies and testing is real — and costing lives — no matter what the daily reality show tries to sell you.

Washington: A Washington state nursing home tied to at least 37 covid-19 deaths faces a fine of more than $611,000, federal inspectors said, and could also lose Medicare and Medicaid funding if it does not correct a slew of deficiencies that led to the country’s first major outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

World: If You Have Coronavirus Symptoms, Assume You Have the Illness, Even if You Test Negative LINK

Florida: Melissa Barton-Schmitt was arrested in Stuart, Florida. Police say she took a walk through Downtown Stuart and was live on Facebook discussing the fact she was recently tested for COVID-19 and didn't have the results yet. She is charged with violation of the executive order.

Louisiana: Louisiana confirmed a massive number of new covid cases Thursday--2,726, bringing the total statewide above 9,100--but officials said the figures don’t accurately show the growth rate of the virus because of a backlog in testing. #lalege #lagov

Texas: #BREAKING: Texas announced an additional 674 positive tests for #COVIDー19, bringing the total to 4,667. (2,822 additional tests were reported.) An additional 12 people died, bringing the total to 70. 143 counties have reported positive tests, eight more than yesterday.

US: The US recorded another major surge in its confirmed cases. The country added 21033 new #COVID19 cases, bringing the total number of cases to 236036. There are also 675 new deaths, increasing the total number of deaths to 5777.

World: BREAKING: More than 1 million confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide

New Jersey: Healthy 30-Year old New Jersey Baseball Coach dies of COVID LINK

Ohio:  #BREAKING The #Ohio Department of Health is reporting 2,902 confirmed cases of COVID-19 #coronavirus with 802 hospitalized and 81 deaths

World: #COVID19 cases worldwide 000k - 100k - 110 days 100k - 200k - 12 days 200k - 300k - 4 days 300k - 400k - 3 days 400k - 500k - 2 days 500k - 600k - 39 hours 600k - 700k - 34 hours 700k - 800k - 38 hours 800k - 900k - 29 hours 900k -1000k - 24 hours

France: France reports 2,116 new cases of coronavirus and 1,355 additional deaths, including 884 people who died at nursing homes and had previously not been counted

Georgia: @drsanjaygupta on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp saying that he just learned coronavirus can be transmitted by asymptomatic people: "This is inexcusable. I mean, it's just inexcusable...My kids who go to school in Georgia knew that a month ago."

Thailand: Man with coronavirus spits in man’s face before boarding train and apparently dropping dead. LINK

Massachusetts: BOSTON (WHDH) - More than 230 employees across the Beth Israel Lahey Health system have tested positive for coronavirus, officials confirmed Thursday. A total of 232 workers at 13 Beth Israel Lahey Health facilities have contracted the virus, a spokesperson for the healthcare system said. Ninety of the cases originated at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and 54 cases are from Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington.

EVENING:

Ohio: An Ohio woman says the coronavirus has “destroyed” her family — killing her parents and brother as her husband remains hospitalized on life support, according to reports.LINK

Louisiana:  NEW: Coronavirus cases in Louisiana jumped 42% in one day, climbing from 6,424 reported cases statewide yesterday to 9,150 today. The death toll in Louisiana has risen to 310.

World: AFTER THREE MONTHS OF THIS PANDEMIC LESS THAN 4% OF THE TOTAL NUMBER OF INFECTED HAVE RECOVERED

World: Experts tell White House coronavirus can spread through talking or even just breathing LINK

NYC: New York City is now advising residents to cover their nose and mouth with a scarf, bandana, or a piece of clothing while out in public to limit the spread of coronavirus

RUMINT NYC: Footage of bodies being loaded onto refrigerated truck in NYC. LINK

Florida: Florida Coronavirus numbers just released: -9008 total cases (up from 8010 this morning) -144 deaths (up from 128) -1167 hospitalizations (up from 1058) -2886 in Dade (up from 2448) -1481 in Broward (1346 yesterday) -737 in Palm Beach (up from 630)

NYC: UPDATE: New York City reports 165 coronavirus deaths since morning update, raising city's total to 1,562

World: Coronavirus may cause brain damage by triggering dangerous inflammation that can cause bleeds and cell death LINK

UK: Mother, 48, of six-year-old twin boys dies of coronavirus three days after first showing symptoms despite having no underlying health conditions LINK

[go-redgirl]

TLAIB AND OMAR WEREN’T BANNED FOR DISAGREEING WITH ISRAEL-jihad advocacy is far worse than that FrontPage Magazine ^ | August 19, 2019 | Robert Spencer

It is unlikely to come as a surprise to anyone except the most blinkered Leftist ideologue that Ilhan Omar’s response to being banned from entering Israel, along with her fellow antisemitic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, was outstandingly disingenuous. But she knows, when she retails her outrageous falsehoods, that the establishment media will never call her on them or reveal the true depths of her alliance with jihadis and agitation against Israel.

“The irony of the ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East making such a decision,” said Omar, “is that it is both an insult to democratic values and a chilling response to a visit by government officials from an allied nation.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to restore some realism and honesty to the discussion, saying: “As a free and vibrant democracy,” he said, “Israel is open to critics and criticism, with one exception: Israeli law prohibits the entry into Israel of those who call for, and work to impose, boycotts on Israel, as do other democracies that prevent the entry of people believed to be damaging to the country.”

There’s the rub. Omar and Tlaib are not just Congresswomen with opinions that are critical of Israel. They are not just spokesmen; they are activists. They are active apologists for the jihad terror networks Hamas and Hizballah. The Washington Examiner reported in May that “Rep. Ilhan Omar appeared to take the side of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Sunday night after terrorists fired hundreds of rockets at civilian targets in Israel this weekend.” Omar tweeted: “How many more protesters must be shot, rockets must be fired, and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends? The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unsustainable. Only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace.” About Hamas’ genocidal incitement and celebration of the murders of Israeli civilians she was silent. Nor has she ever uttered a murmur of protest against the fact that Hamas is dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel, which, if it ever happened, would result in the deaths of millions of Israelis.

Tlaib, meanwhile, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, “was photographed with an avowed Hizballah supporter in January – just after being sworn in to the U.S. House of Representatives.” When this came to light, “she claimed she didn't know the guy or what he stood for. But just two months later, Tlaib did it again. In a March photograph just discovered by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Tlaib poses with Nader Jalajel, a Palestinian activist who last year mourned the death of a terrorist who led a shooting attack that murdered a rabbi.”

Hizballah is a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is also dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel.

Both Tlaib and Omar have also spoken at fundraisers for the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.) CAIR chapters frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented and has been declared a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates. CAIR’s Hussam Ayloush in 2017 called for the overthrow of the U.S. government. CAIR’s national outreach manager is an open supporter of Hamas.

In a sane society, fundraising for such a group would be political suicide. But in a sane society, neither Omar nor Tlaib would ever have been elected to Congress in the first place. Their lies would have dashed their political hopes. Tlaib’s would have been done in by her risible claim that her “Palestinian ancestors” worked “to create a safe haven for Jews” after the Holocaust.

In reality, as I show in detail in my forthcoming book The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process, the Muslim Arabs in Palestine actually carried out numerous pogroms against the region’s Jewish residents and new arrivals. No Palestinian Arabs, none, worked to create a safe haven for Jews there or anywhere else.

But the most egregious falsehood that both Tlaib and Omar energetically propagate is the fiction that Israel is an occupying power, and that the Palestinian Arabs are suffering under this Israeli occupation. In reality, there never was a state of Palestine for Israel to occupy, in whole or part. Following the right of self-defense itself that all nations have honored throughout history (until the case of Israel), the Jewish state took control of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt, after defeating the aggressive war of the neighboring Arab Muslim states. No Palestinian Arabs uttered a word of protest against the “occupations” from 1948 to 1967 by Jordan and Egypt of what they claim is their territory. Their rhetoric about Israel “occupation” now is designed to discredit Israel in the court of international opinion, and ultimately destroy it.

It is also worth noting that all the political parties in the “Palestinian territories” are pro-terror and dedicated to the destruction of Israel. This is what Omar and Tlaib support. Those who are comparing their ban with the banning of Pamela Geller and me from Britain are ignoring the fact that we never have called for or justified any violence or terrorism. The same cannot be said of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

TOPICS: Editorial; Israel; Politics/Elections KEYWORDS:

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OPINION:  More than likely, these two women of not only Anti-Americans but under cover terrorists!  Don’t put it pass them because they are women. Their is no place in our Constitutions that says we must allow anti-americans to be elected to serve in Congress just because they are citizens.

That’s reason enough to expel them for their positions in Congress.  We are not obligated to keep these women serving in Congress. In fact, its our ‘obligation’ to have them expelled immediately for their Anti-American movement in Congress On Tax Payers dollars.  

They will have the right in court to defend themselves and prove otherwise. But, not on tax payers dollars.  

And we will see them in Court as they try to depend themselves.👍

THE ENEMIES FROM WITHIN!