Hamas/Israel conflict: news and discussion

[nino_savatte]

Labour party under Starmer think they are showing how capable of governing they are now, after Corbyn years. How they have moved on from being a party of people that protest.

Labour no longer a ‘party of protest’ says shadow minister after drop in members | Labour | The Guardian

Darren Jones says party had more members under Jeremy Corbyn but now has to make ‘difficult decisions’ to prepare to govern

amp.theguardian.com

From the start Starmer and his supporters have regarded the mass protests about Gaza with contempt. That those going along are not part of democratic culture that they see as valid.

I find that the terms "party of protest" and "student politics" are indicative of a generally dismissive attitude to ordinary voters'/citizens' concerns on the part of professional politicians, who see what they do as being more politically legitimate. These politicians believe that we should limit our political engagement to the ballot box, but, as many of us already know, protests and even riots actually change things and have a greater impact. Putting an 'x' on a ballot paper every 4 or 5 years achieves next to nothing. Worse, they seem to believe that giving people hope isn't part of their job. I mean, who really wants to vote for a party that tells them "this is the best there is"?

 

[Pickman's model]

I find that the terms "party of protest" and "student politics" are indicative of a generally dismissive attitude to ordinary voters'/citizens' concerns on the part of professional politicians, who see what they do as being more politically legitimate. These politicians believe that we should limit our political engagement to the ballot box, but, as many of us already know, protests and even riots actually change things and have a greater impact. Putting an 'x' on a ballot paper every 4 or 5 years achieves next to nothing. Worse, they seem to believe that giving people hope isn't part of their job. I mean, who really wants to vote for a party that tells them "this is the best there is"?

if i believed in parliamentary democracy that'd make me want to slit my wrists

 

[nino_savatte]

if i believed in parliamentary democracy that'd make me want to slit my wrists

Parliamentary politics is a cul-de-sac or a gravy train. Take your pick.

 

[Pickman's model]

Parliamentary politics is a cul-de-sac or a gravy train. Take your pick.

it's a cul-de-sac for those outside and a gravy train for the fat pigs inside

 

[agricola]

I did like Alan Duncan's J'accuse today, though it was at least six years too late.

 

[TopCat]

I'm trying to find out if the Sri Lankan government used hunger, and targetting of food aid workers, during its suppression of the Tamil Tigers in 2009.

The Tamil Tigers are now mainly remembered for the embarassment one of their t-shirts caused Jamie Oliver, but looking it up now, I see that they Sri Lankans were accused of killing 20,000 Tamil civilians in the course of dealing with the TT (IDF: hold our beers). But did this involved the deliberate creation of food insecurity, hunger and famine? Enquiring minds want to know.

It involved forcing as many Tamils as possible (lethal force) into a peninsula where not only were they deprived of food and water etc but were shelled until dead. Not a fucking word from most of the liberal comentariat.

 

[dylanredefined]

It involved forcing as many Tamils as possible (lethal force) into a peninsula where not only were they deprived of food and water etc but were shelled until dead. Not a fucking word from most of the liberal comentariat.

If I remember I don't think the end lasted long enough for famine to take hold it was a brutal and fast end to the war with the Sir Lankan army not caring about civilian casualties.

 

[likesfish]

Royal United Services Institute - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

been around since 1831 and full of very very bright people

 

[TopCat]

If I remember I don't think the end lasted long enough for famine to take hold it was a brutal and fast end to the war with the Sir Lankan army not caring about civilian casualties.

Yeah it was less death by famine and more death by massed artillery.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

 

[agricola]

That is one of the sort of the pieces or articles that he does every now and then that remind me why I cannot stand him a lot of the time.

For a start, what Gallant said was widely reported in the media - as Jones said, they were said publicly (as were all the genocidal rhetoric mentions). They were all commented about on here at length and elsewhere too, not just by him in his apparently prescient Guardian piece. This was not a failure of journalism if journalism is about honestly informing the public of events and what prominent people say about those events / future events; we all saw and read them. I would imagine what he means is that the commentary accompanying the reporting was wrong, that those who do what he does were and in many cases still are spinning a pro-Israeli line - but that is not journalism.

Secondly if you are going to critique journalistic conduct on this topic, and it is certainly something that should be criticized in many cases, then like October 7th it is impossible to understand why we are where we are without acknowledging everything that has led up to this horrific state of affairs. The Israeli state has a long history of targeting journalists or associated media types, with everything from professional confrontation to outright murder used against people from huge organizations (like the BBC, AFP and al-Jazeera) down to the level of local Palestinian journalistic community. It should surprise no-one that at least fifteen to twenty years of this sort of behaviour has resulted in a rather nervous form of journalism on this topic.

 

[likesfish]

Yeah it was less death by famine and more death by massed artillery.

though their was a side order of gang rape if i remember.

 

[Larry O'Hara]

Re bombing the Iranian Consulate, what exactly is the point? Are they trying to provoke Iran in order to drag the US in as a response to the softening of US support?

Sounds plausible

 

[krtek a houby]

About bloody time

Biden calls for ‘immediate ceasefire’ in Gaza

US president also warns Netanyahu that Israel must protect civilians and aid workers or risk losing US support

www.theguardian.com

 

[_Russ_]

Just words .........Action?......here's another few hundred Mark 84s Ben me old chap

 

[_Russ_]

Tories investigating Alan Duncan’s comments on party’s pro-Israel ‘extremists’

I have to admit I'm both shocked and gladdened

 

[teqniq]

This could have happened months ago but it seems that it takes the killing of some white people to make it happen:

 

[Larry O'Hara]

Tories investigating Alan Duncan’s comments on party’s pro-Israel ‘extremists’

I have to admit I'm both shocked and gladdened

Alan Duncan was shafted by the Israel lobby when he was a foreign office minister. Iirc he was shown in the Labour files as an embassy target. So good on him

 

[GarveyLives]

Tories investigating Alan Duncan’s comments on party’s pro-Israel ‘extremists’

I have to admit I'm both shocked and gladdened

This could have happened months ago but it seems that it takes the killing of some white people to make it happen:

Alan Duncan was shafted by the Israel lobby when he was a foreign office minister. Iirc he was shown in the Labour files as an embassy target. So good on him

​

 

[krtek a houby]

From the graun article

The Campaign Against Antisemitism said it was “not the first time [Duncan] has made accusations of parliamentarians being controlled by Israel”, and called for him to be expelled from the party.

In a later statement, Duncan said he was still awaiting formal notification of the investigation, or the reasons for it.

 

[Gramsci]

Have any of our squaddie colleagues had any dealings with the Royal United Services Institute? Sound chaps, or a system of outdoor relief for Lieutenant Tim Nice-but-dim?

"We could tell you, but the we'd have to kill you". I ask because of this link:

Israel’s Targeting AI: How Capable is It?

The ‘Habsora’ AI system used by the Israeli military is said to use intelligence data to generate targets for attack, including reports on the likely number of civilian casualties. But the odds of even the Israel Defense Forces using an AI with such a degree of sophistication and autonomy are low.

www.rusi.org

I think it partially answers the question posed by agricola in the post above - does Israel have a devilishly fiendish AI that guides its hand? No, but the human heads that control the hand may get some help from AI - and that's all. We're not in "open the pod bay doors, Hal" territory yet.

Note the concluding paragraphs:

"However, the absence of explicit AI targeting does not mean that Israel’s aerial war on Gaza is imprecise, or that it is unable to avoid civilian casualties in its strikes. Despite its extensive use of ‘dumb’ munitions, Israel has access to massive quantities of precision munitions. These precision munitions are available with a variety of warheads and capabilities, allowing the IDF to limit or expand the level of destruction at will, and indicating that the majority of civilian collateral damage from air strikes is intentional and accounted for.

The IDF has maintained an extraordinarily dense surveillance network over Gaza for many years, and retains absolute supremacy in electronic, communications, geospatial, and measurement and signature intelligence. Every decision to strike is made with near-comprehensive knowledge of conditions in the target location and anticipated effects of the strike, including anticipated casualties. Israel also has a rigorous legal core within its military, whose lawyers must sign off on every target – human- or AI-generated – even if there are hundreds in a single day. When Israeli air strikes kill or injure tens of thousands of civilians, it seems beyond any reasonable doubt that every single target is generated, approved, ordered and struck with the full knowledge and consent of human IDF operators."

Eyal Weissmann has chapter on this in Hollow Architecture.

Use of air power is not new. In 1920s Churchill experimented with replacing costly ground troops with RAF in Mesopotamia (Iraq).

When the colonial people have not answer to this then it can work. Bombing the natives to keep them in line. It was found to be efficient use of resources by British Empire in middle east in 1920s.

Israel did at one point think that air power could be more effective than troops on the ground. It also went with withdrawing troops form Palestinian areas and replacing this with surveillance from the air and targeted killings using attack helicopters armed with anti tank missiles. Later drones were used. This required Shin Bet and Air force to work together on intelligence. Drones also used to gather intelligence.

Even with this intelligence led targeting civilian casualties as collateral for assassinating a political target was normal. The issue was how many.

There is a massive amount of surveillance work involved in Israel colonial occupation of West Bank and Gaza. Not all that hi tech.

This isn't conspiracy theory stuff.

At the time of Eyal Weissmann writing his book the rationale behind a lot of this was "humanitarian" occupation

Intelligence led surveillance and targeting of militants. Rather than attacking whole communities.

This approach has appeared to have been shelved with the present attack on Gaza.

 

[Pickman's model]

Eyal Weissmann has chapter on this in Hollow Architecture.

Use of air power is not new. In 1920s Churchill experimented with replacing costly ground troops with RAF in Mesopotamia (Iraq).

When the colonial people have not answer to this then it can work. Bombing the natives to keep them in line. It was found to be efficient use of resources by British Empire in middle east in 1920s.

Israel did at one point think that air power could be more effective than troops on the ground. It also went with withdrawing troops form Palestinian areas and replacing this with surveillance from the air and targeted killings using attack helicopters armed with anti tank missiles. Later drones were used. This required Shin Bet and Air force to work together on intelligence. Drones also used to gather intelligence.

Even with this intelligence led targeting civilian casualties as collateral for assassinating a political target was normal. The issue was how many.

There is a massive amount of surveillance work involved in Israel colonial occupation of West Bank and Gaza. Not all that hi tech.

This isn't conspiracy theory stuff.

At the time of Eyal Weissmann writing his book the rationale behind a lot of this was "humanitarian" occupation

Intelligence led surveillance and targeting of militants. Rather than attacking whole communities.

This approach has appeared to have been shelved with the present attack on Gaza.

There's a very interesting book on language in the third reich. A study of the use of language by the zionists might be at least as illuminating

 

[hash tag]

"McDonald's was criticised after Alonyal started giving away thousands of free meals to Israeli soldiers." - Mc's feeding soldiers

McDonald's to buy back Israeli restaurants after boycotts

The deal follows protests against the firm after franchisee Alonyal gave free food to Israeli soldiers.

www.bbc.co.uk

View attachment 418654

 

[agricola]

Eyal Weissmann has chapter on this in Hollow Architecture.

Use of air power is not new. In 1920s Churchill experimented with replacing costly ground troops with RAF in Mesopotamia (Iraq).

When the colonial people have not answer to this then it can work. Bombing the natives to keep them in line. It was found to be efficient use of resources by British Empire in middle east in 1920s.

Israel did at one point think that air power could be more effective than troops on the ground. It also went with withdrawing troops form Palestinian areas and replacing this with surveillance from the air and targeted killings using attack helicopters armed with anti tank missiles. Later drones were used. This required Shin Bet and Air force to work together on intelligence. Drones also used to gather intelligence.

Even with this intelligence led targeting civilian casualties as collateral for assassinating a political target was normal. The issue was how many.

There is a massive amount of surveillance work involved in Israel colonial occupation of West Bank and Gaza. Not all that hi tech.

This isn't conspiracy theory stuff.

At the time of Eyal Weissmann writing his book the rationale behind a lot of this was "humanitarian" occupation

Intelligence led surveillance and targeting of militants. Rather than attacking whole communities.

This approach has appeared to have been shelved with the present attack on Gaza.

I am not sure about that, at least in terms of saying that the bulk of Israeli attacks are not targeted against specific people or objects - though is obviously a lot wider than "militants" as we understand the word. Throughout the conflict there has been a fairly clear trend of them hitting elements that support the functioning of a society - teachers and schools, medical staff / management and medical facilities, cops and security functions, local government workers and facilities, emergency support and aid workers / premises from which aid and shelter are provided, journalists, religious personnel and religious premises (of all faiths within Gaza).

I would imagine the argument is that because Hamas governs the Gaza Strip therefore everyone employed in government type functions is therefore Hamas, and of course (when talking about the AI the Israeli government is claiming to use to select targets) it should be pointed out that all of those people and places would be easy to identify from financial and other records - they'd all be paid, vetted, have their contact numbers in work and at home etc etc. They would be far easier to hit than genuine militants.

I don't want to repeat that odious claim that so many Zionists make (that indiscriminate bombing would kill many times more therefore what they are doing is not a genocide), but I do not think what they are doing from the air at least is indiscriminate; its highly targeted and with a clear ultimate goal of making a Gazan society impossible. It is to me one of the strongest pieces of evidence that the Israeli government has genocidal intent.

 

[likesfish]

two officers have been sacked the liasion plan wasn't passed onto those operational so what was was the fucking point if the people pulling the trigger arent told oh theres an aid convoy? that we have cleared.

theres no point having plans like this if they arent actually passed to the people who need them.

much like troops in the gulf finding out that hooding prisoners is illegal by accident. now it could be incompetence, deliberate policy but good luck finding proof.

 

[Larry O'Hara]

two officers have been sacked the liasion plan wasn't passed onto those operational so what was was the fucking point if the people pulling the trigger arent told oh theres an aid convoy? that we have cleared.

theres no point having plans like this if they arent actually passed to the people who need them.

much like troops in the gulf finding out that hooding prisoners is illegal by accident. now it could be incompetence, deliberate policy but good luck finding proof.

Sacking is a PR stunt only: allows those funding the genocide to continue

 

[planetgeli]

More than 200 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since October. There's your proof of deliberate targeting.

 

[hash tag]

More than 200 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since October. There's your proof of deliberate targeting.

Food famine. We will stop the supplies of food regardless of how it's delivered.

 

[barlimo]

There is hardly any difference betwween the the way that both Hamas and the IDF conducts itself.

More than 200 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since October. There's your proof of deliberate target

 

[TopCat]

There is hardly any difference betwween the the way that both Hamas and the IDF conducts itself.

Oh please do go into detail