Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion

[Aladdin]

Which social media, not social media generally. Look at that account that you used when first talking about organ harvesting for example, and you've used similar the last few weeks a few times.

Also you're spectularly missing the point I made when you say this, "I am not antisemitic. I abhor what was done to the Jews worldwide throughout history and particularly what Nazis did during the holocaust."

Again, it is possible for that to be true, and for you (and anyone) to be posting or thinking anti-semitic things. It doesn't make you a 'bad' person generally.

As an example; I am white, I was brought up in the UK where there is structural and institutional racism that works in many complicated and subtle ways. I am against racism. But to think I never have racist ideas, feelings or tendencies is a mistake, and politically dangerous as it lets me off the hook in the constant battle we need to have against that. It doesn't make me a bad person if I have those, infact the whole division of people into those with 'good' ideas and 'bad' ideas itself is very problematic.

Ok.. what Social media should I be looking at? I don't actually follow the owner of that account. It was the video that caught me. An interview with someone working in the Israeli Skin Bank..where she laughed when asked about Israeli donors. Is that video fake? I do want to know what is real and what is fake?

Is Shaun King someone I should not watch? Are all the videos of Palestinians sorting through body parts to find one with their loved ones name on it, fake? I see a Paledstinian man carrying whats left of his children in 2 plastic shopping bags crying as he made his way to a hospital. Is this all fake? Are the videos uploaded by Palestinians on the ground fake?

I honestly need to know.. who is showing the truth?
How do I know who is showing the truth?

 

[Pickman's model]

Ok.. what Social media should I be looking at? I don't actually follow the owner of that account. It was the video that caught me. An interview with someone working in the Israeli Skin Bank..where she laughed when asked about Israeli donors. Is that video fake? I do want to know what is real and what is fake?

Is Shaun King someone I should not watch? Are all the videos of Palestinians sorting through body parts to find one with their loved ones name on it, fake? I see a Paledstinian man carrying whats left of his children in 2 plastic shopping bags crying as he made his way to a hospital. Is this all fake? Are the videos uploaded by Palestinians on the ground fake?

I honestly need to know.. who is showing the truth?
How do I know who is showing the truth?

trust no one

 

[Cloo]

That’s fair in this case. What we may not find out for a while is how many people were killed by Israeli forces on that day.

Indeed, for all the difficulties they are having I identifying the dead, I can't imagine what it's like for the Palestinians. And the fact is, whatever precise casualty figures we hear from the Palestinian authorities, in the scale of destruction and intensity of bombardment it doesn't matter what the exact numbers are - they can only be far, far too many.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Now saying a two-day extension is likely.

 

[LDC]

Ok.. what Social media should I be looking at? I don't actually follow the owner of that account. It was the video that caught me. An interview with someone working in the Israeli Skin Bank..where she laughed when asked about Israeli donors. Is that video fake? I do want to know what is real and what is fake?

Is Shaun King someone I should not watch? Are all the videos of Palestinians sorting through body parts to find one with their loved ones name on it, fake? I see a Paledstinian man carrying whats left of his children in 2 plastic shopping bags crying as he made his way to a hospital. Is this all fake? Are the videos uploaded by Palestinians on the ground fake?

I honestly need to know.. who is showing the truth?
How do I know who is showing the truth?

I have absolutely no idea who Shaun King is, but if he's the US 'writer & activist' one that comes up with a quick Google then he's clearly not to be trusted at all.

But all that is missing some much wider and more important points I think...

It is just not important to 'know' or see all this stuff on social media or to get to 'the truth'. 'Knowing it' (even if is true) makes no difference to what happens or the eventually outcome. We're encouraged to 'watch' it to in some ways convince us that we have some agency through consumption of it.

My position on this (or any) topics isn't made through a collection and analysis of isolated bits of information to arrive at a position of what 'side' is better or worse or right or wrong here. Whether the IDF harvest organs, or whether Hamas murdered babies shouldn't be the influential factors in what shapes my broader political position on this topic, however grim they are or aren't.

I think broadly what this stuff shows is that instead of people having worked out collective political positions they now often have individualised free floating emotional feelings on situations that are fueled by click bait social media outrages (IDF sniper shoots baby! Hamas terrorist stabs dog!) and people somehow try and come to a position on the political situation through some emotional calculation of which side has come out worse on TikTok or Instagram.

Then there's people who already know what 'side' they're on (for whatever reason) and all they see or believe is stuff that supports that. And there's been plenty of that on here, hence the uncritically quoting shit that usually wouldn't get the time of day as they otherwise have horrible politics.

 

[Aladdin]

I have absolutely no idea who Shaun King is, but if he's the US 'writer & activist' one that comes up with a quick Google then he's clearly not to be trusted at all.

But all that is missing some much wider and more important points I think...

It is just not important to 'know' or see all this stuff on social media or to get to 'the truth'. 'Knowing it' (even if is true) makes no difference to what happens or the eventually outcome. We're encouraged to 'watch' it to in some ways convince us that we have some agency through consumption of it.

My position on this (or any) topics isn't made through a collection and analysis of isolated bits of information to arrive at a position of what 'side' is better or worse or right or wrong here. Whether the IDF harvest organs, or whether Hamas murdered babies shouldn't be the influential factors in what shapes my broader political position on this topic, however grim they are or aren't.

I think broadly what this stuff shows is that instead of people having worked out political positions they now often have free floating emotional feelings on situations that are fueled by click bait social media outrages (IDF sniper shoots baby! Hamas terrorist stabs dog!) and people somehow try and come to a position on the political situation through some emotional calculation of which side has come out worse on TikTok or Instagram.

Then there's people who already know what 'side' they're on (for whatever reason) and all they see or believe is stuff that supports that. And there's been plenty of that on here, hence the uncritically quoting shit that usually wouldn't get the time of day as they otherwise have horrible politics.

Ok. Fair enough

I think I may be biased by my ancestry, my upbringing ... being Irish having felt, albeit in a not major way, (just guns pointed at me) the brunt of colonialism in tbe form of the UK government policies and soldiers in NI.
I may be seeing the oppression of Palestinians through my own eyes as a child

 

[Larry O'Hara]

Again. You accused me of anti semitism. I am not.

The accuser is a bell end. I have him on ignore, suggest you follow suit!

 

[Idris2002]

Ok.. what Social media should I be looking at? I don't actually follow the owner of that account. It was the video that caught me. An interview with someone working in the Israeli Skin Bank..where she laughed when asked about Israeli donors. Is that video fake? I do want to know what is real and what is fake?

Is Shaun King someone I should not watch? Are all the videos of Palestinians sorting through body parts to find one with their loved ones name on it, fake? I see a Paledstinian man carrying whats left of his children in 2 plastic shopping bags crying as he made his way to a hospital. Is this all fake? Are the videos uploaded by Palestinians on the ground fake?

I honestly need to know.. who is showing the truth?
How do I know who is showing the truth?

Trump's guy Steve Bannon talked about "flooding the zone with shit." The thing with social media is, The zone is the shit.

There's nothing there - except maybe the videoes where it's clearly an innocent person who's been injured and killed for no good reason (and face it, you don't want to watch too many of them).

Crack open the books instead. There was a link floating around to about 1700 books on the Palestinian situation, downloadable as pdfs instead. You can read them on your phone (I use an app called Xodo for that).

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Confirmed it's two more days.

Worrying that it's shorter than before - Israel wanted one day, Hamas four. But at least it's in place.

 

[tim]

Again. You accused me of anti semitism. I am not.

I didn't accuse you of being an antiSemite. I criticised you for repeating some random claim, about Palestinian organs being harvested, that you read on social media without bothering to check whether it was actually true or not.

 

[Aladdin]

I didn't accuse you of being an antiSemite. I criticised you for repeating some random claim, about Palestinian organs being harvested, that you read on social about media without bothering to check whether it was actually true or not.

Maybe read the rest of the thread. ..thanks.

I don't want to engage with you again.

 

[krtek a houby]

There's one or two antisemites on urban. Aladdin ain't one of them.

There's so much crap online designed to target Jewish or Muslim people... some subtle, some not so much... and sometimes mistakes in postings are made.

This horrible fucking conflict goes beyond the physical slaughter and into the daily internet intake. It's all pervading and sometimes, some of us will be caught out.

I'm sticking to the books and contributors I trust. Social media... well, that's another story

 

[tim]

The accuser is a bell end. I have him on ignore, suggest you follow suit!

Odd that you have me in ignore but at the same time are obsessively interested in anything I post and are so keen to besmirch my reputation.

I must have really rattled your cage.

 

[magneze]

I thought the UK police often trained other countries. I'm sure that's come up on here before.

 

[Raheem]

I thought the UK police often trained other countries. I'm sure that's come up on here before.

Trained an entire empire, presumably.

 

[magneze]

Trained an entire empire, presumably.

More recently, but yeah I guess that too.

 

[teqniq]

Theoretically Elmo doen't need their approval what the the satellites being, after all in orbit but he appears to be be in fairly deep shit due to accusations of a rise in antisemitism on X/Twitter including him endorsing an obviously antisemitic tweet

Israel tells Elon Musk Starlink can only operate in Gaza with its approval

In case anyone was curious:



The tweet is still up if anyone cares to look

 

[redsquirrel]

There's one or two antisemites on urban. Aladdin ain't one of them.

But no one has accused them of being an anti-semite. People have criticised Aladdin for re-posting some dodgy social media threads without doing some checking first.

LDC's posts are bang on, this idea that people are/are not racists/anti-semites, as if it some sort of binary switch shows a real lack of understanding of modern racism/anti-semitism - both with respect to people broadly on 'the left' sometimes sharing anti-semitic tropes, and with 'deplorables' just being written off as fascists/racists.

 

[Aladdin]

But no one has accused them of being an anti-semite. People have criticised Aladdin for re-posting some dodgy social media threads without doing some checking first.

LDC's posts are bang on, this idea that people are/are not racists/anti-semites, as if it some sort of binary switch shows a real lack of understanding of modern racism/anti-semitism - both with respect to people broadly on 'the left' sometimes sharing anti-semitic tropes, and with 'deplorables' just being written off as fascists/racists.

I think you might need to look back and read the last 3 pages.
I definitely felt I was being called out as antisemitic by someone.

 

[PTK]

I think you might need to look back and read the last 3 pages.
I definitely felt I was being called out as antisemitic by someone.

Profound apologies to Aladdin.

 

[Dystopiary]

PTK Aladdin didn't write that.

 

[TopCat]

PTK Aladdin didn't write that.

I can guess the poster

 

[TopCat]

I thought the UK police often trained other countries. I'm sure that's come up on here before.

The PSNI are favoured for train a trainer.

 

[xenon]

This.

This topic came up years ago in another discussion I was part of, and there was article that debunked this claim, it showed various police forces and militaries all over the world train others, and the IDF and Israeli police actually trained fewer globally than many other countries, but portraying them as behind all the militarised police forces is a variation on the 'hidden hand of the Jews' anti-semetic trope.

There is a massive militarisation of police. But yeah it’s not Israel. It’s just arms companies finding new markets. Small town America with police forces with APV automatic weapons and body armour et cetera.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Confirmed it's two more days.

Worrying that it's shorter than before - Israel wanted one day, Hamas four. But at least it's in place.

IIRC in 2014 it was similar, extension upon extension until the heat of the moment lowered and so much aid was getting in it made it harder. The big difference today is direct ground operations by Israel which is probably why the extensions are days rather than weeks.

I suspect the ploy is to keep getting extensions agreed so it brings it so close to Christmas “something must be done” .etc

 

[xenon]

I have absolutely no idea who Shaun King is, but if he's the US 'writer & activist' one that comes up with a quick Google then he's clearly not to be trusted at all.

But all that is missing some much wider and more important points I think...

It is just not important to 'know' or see all this stuff on social media or to get to 'the truth'. 'Knowing it' (even if is true) makes no difference to what happens or the eventually outcome. We're encouraged to 'watch' it to in some ways convince us that we have some agency through consumption of it.

My position on this (or any) topics isn't made through a collection and analysis of isolated bits of information to arrive at a position of what 'side' is better or worse or right or wrong here. Whether the IDF harvest organs, or whether Hamas murdered babies shouldn't be the influential factors in what shapes my broader political position on this topic, however grim they are or aren't.

I think broadly what this stuff shows is that instead of people having worked out collective political positions they now often have individualised free floating emotional feelings on situations that are fueled by click bait social media outrages (IDF sniper shoots baby! Hamas terrorist stabs dog!) and people somehow try and come to a position on the political situation through some emotional calculation of which side has come out worse on TikTok or Instagram.

Then there's people who already know what 'side' they're on (for whatever reason) and all they see or believe is stuff that supports that. And there's been plenty of that on here, hence the uncritically quoting shit that usually wouldn't get the time of day as they otherwise have horrible politics.

This is actually worth a separate discussion. The point of posting social media links. I don’t mean Twitter posts in general. But I mean why discussion about the point of sharing stuff from social media because most of it is outrage emotional jabbing. That’s not criticism of anyone on his thread per se and not even of urban. But the engagement algorithms and when we share an engage with social media on such a topic It’s human of course, to want to share ‘look at this I can’t believe this horrific thing is happening.’ But how does it further our understanding, our positions and the context.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

This is actually worth a separate discussion. The point of posting social media links. I don’t mean Twitter posts in general. But I mean why discussion about the point of sharing stuff from social media because most of it is outrage emotional jabbing. That’s not criticism of anyone on his thread per se and not even of urban. But the engagement algorithms and when we share an engage with social media on such a topic It’s human of course, to want to share ‘look at this I can’t believe this horrific thing is happening.’ But how does it further our understanding, our positions and the context.

The simplest trick is to find credible sources and stick to them or check with them when something dramatic gets your attention…

The harder path is to do the work and learn about your own cognitive biases and work to create habits which curtail them…

 

[xenon]

I think you might need to look back and read the last 3 pages.
I definitely felt I was being called out as antisemitic by someone.

He wasn’t doing that TBH. You are not an anti-Semite. And you don’t come across as one. For what that’s worth. but it’s difficult when sharing social media posts to know the source the history. I mainly don’t post them because of laziness. And I don’t find it useful. This isn’t a criticism by the way. Of you or anyone in particular on this thread. I’m just pondering out loud about the use of social media in general.

 

[PTK]

I offer my deepest apologies to Aladdin. I mistakenly attributed a post by someone else to you. I don’t know how to make amends. I promise to not do this again. I am truly sorry for falsely accusing you of something that you did not do.

 

[TopCat]

I offer my deepest apologies to Aladdin. I mistakenly attributed a post by someone else to you. I don’t know how to make amends. I promise to not do this again. I am truly sorry for falsely accusing you of something that you did not do.

You could prostrate yourself, naked, covered in bear grease. I reckon that would suffice