Makeship is having a sale on their new Glow in the Dark plushies. It’s not a huge discount, but the proceeds go towards supporting independent artists which is always a good thing.

https://www.makeship.com/shop/gitd-2023

What strikes me is the complete discordance of the realities of Israelis and Palestinians shown in the pictures attached to the article. There’s multiple pictures of a grand funeral with flags, pomp, and circumstance…and compare that to the white sheets and mass graves in Gaza. The Israeli soldier gets a military funeral with honors and fanfare while innumerable Palestinians are interred in barely marked mass graves with little to no ceremony because the number of dead simply does not allow for paying respects to each victim.

Let’s rewind to the part where you look at why they are mortal enemies, and realize that the same problem is still happening in the West Bank at the same time as the mass murder in Gaza.

Israel lost 0.014% of its population to the Hamas attack. Gaza has lost about 0.52% of its population to Israel’s rampage and that over 40% of those deaths are children. How is that comparable at all?

I’ve had it for years and one of the biggest features that I find worthwhile is being able to easily download videos to watch on the plane or play like podcasts when I’m driving. When I first got it, I had a really long commute, so being able to download stuff and play it with my phone screen off is helpful.

I’m asking about your opinion. If Hamas refuses to cooperate, how many Palestinians does the IDF have to kill for it to be too many in your mind? When does the mass murder of Palestinian civilians exceed a reasonable metric for “defense”?

Why does Hamas have insights into your personal opinions and beliefs?

That’s not answering my question. How many Palestinian lives is too many?

The fact that Netanyahu has supported Hamas in the past as a foil to the PA says otherwise to me. To a certain extent, Israel has made its own monster out of Hamas and Gaza through their policies and positions.

I think you are misunderstanding how the demographic shift in Gaza has happened. They didn’t have a baby boom, it’s just that many of them do not survive very far into adulthood because of violence, health and environmental problems, and, when they can manage it, emigration.

Secondarily, I’m interested to hear how you justify calling Hamas genocidal without making the same observation about the Likud and Netanyahu.

So how many is “too many” for Israel to have killed? Or do the citizens of Gaza not count the same way Israelis do?

If the citizens of Gaza aren’t offered anything better, why would they gamble what little they have on overthrowing the local oppressors? They don’t really have anything to gain by overthrowing Hamas and trying to do so would be putting their lives and their families at risk. If Israel and the wider international community can offer them something better than life under Hamas and the Likud, they’d be much more likely to eschew Hamas’ control.

You’re talking about a population with extremely limited resources that is literally 50% (or more) children that has been under two fascist boots for the last decade and a half. There does come a point where a level of desperation combined with a possibility of a better future will instigate a revolution, but right now? They don’t see a possibility of a better future. With Israel’s Likud on the other side of the wall and no resources to rebuild after a coup, what’s the point in gambling everything on maybe being able to overthrow the more local oppression?

Also, education in Gaza is very inconsistent and most political revolutions are started by people with education and nothing to lose.

They took power illegally years before the literal majority of Gaza citizens were even born.

Edit: My apologies, the ones that are almost legal adults would have been infants or toddlers at the time Hamas seized power. They really should have done something about that while they were learning how to walk and speak. /s

Why does “radical action” always mean “radical violence”?

“Radical action” can and should include radical kindness in which past wounds can be forgiven and a cooperative future can be built. Right now, all the violence is doing is ensuring that Hamas will be enumerated and maintained for generations by the people that Israel is considering to be sub-human and disposable. Radical violence creates radical ideologues and only ever begets further violence in the absence of total and absolute annihilation.

Would you get your kid out if you didn’t know whether or not they would be adequately cared for? Would you get them out if it meant that you will probably never see them again and that they will be taken to another country speaking another language with no one there to look after them and no plan for how to take care of them after the medical treatment is done?

This would most likely be a permanent separation and the child would effectively, or maybe even literally become an orphan in a foreign country with nothing. Not their vital documents, not their family, not anything that would give them any hope of ever getting home. Getting your kid out in this situation means gambling your child’s life on the good will of strangers and most likely losing them for good.

It is not unreasonable to demand to go with his child. Especially since he needs medical care as well.

If the child did go through alone, what are the chances that family would ever see him again? Who would care for the child and advocate for his best interests away from his family? All communications have been shut down by Israel. There is no way for the family to know what happens to their children if they are taken away.

It doesn’t matter what the IDF or Netanyahu say at this point; this is entirely indefensible and there is no explanation behind this attack besides cruelty and intentional mass murder.

I hope that everyone involved in dropping those missiles suffers a guilty conscience for the rest of their days, but I know that it probably won’t bother them at all.

I don’t have the time to pull quotes from the articles, but I tried to pull articles from a variety of sources to prevent claims of source bias.

About reallocation of weapons and forces: https://archive.ph/20231021154000/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-20/ty-article/.premium/idf-took-away-weapons-from-gaza-border-towns-and-armed-w-bank-settlers-in-the-thousands/0000018b-4d6d-dbe0-a38b-cdfd0d4f0000

Article from September about Israeli invasion into the West Bank: https://archive.ph/C27qm

Settler attack from the day before the Hamas attack: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-killed-during-settler-assault-west-bank-town-palestinian-officials-2023-10-06/

Ongoing violence from the settlers:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67173344

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/21/gaza-palestinians-west-bank-violence-attacks-israeli-settlers

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231020-israel-soldiers-and-settlers-blindfold-beat-urinate-sexually-assault-palestinian-activists-in-west-bank/

https://archive.ph/20230730000151/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-07-01/ty-article/.premium/settler-violence-in-the-west-bank-isnt-an-oversight-its-a-long-standing-policy/00000189-0abc-d572-af9b-0afffdd50000

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-settlers-soldiers-severe-abuse-report

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-west-bank-settlers-riot-shot-abducted

Then perhaps Israel should have maintained their border security with Gaza instead of pulling IDF forces away to assist with the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. If the “settlers” didn’t need IDF protection for their raping and pillaging, the border of Gaza would have been better watched during when the Hamas attack happened.