I'm not sure a million Gazans crammed into the SBAs would be any easier to provide for than the same million Gazans still in Gaza, and ships can bring in food a lot more efficiently than they can bring people out.
I hope that whatever Islamic authorities have sway in Gaza will make it clear to the population that they should forgo the Ramadan fast if their food and water supplies are already inadequate.
I'm not sure a million Gazans crammed into the SBAs would be any easier to provide for than the same million Gazans still in Gaza, and ships can bring in food a lot more efficiently than they can bring people out.
I hope that whatever Islamic authorities have sway in Gaza will make it clear to the population that they should forgo the Ramadan fast if their food and water supplies are already inadequate.
Not disagreeing with any of that, but there is what is "ideal" and what is "necessary" and from what I've seen it appears that the Americans in particular seem to be accepting that Gazans can't be helped in Gaza for the foreseeable future.
I've also just seen a report which suggests the temporary barge idea put forward by the US military would take weeks to construct. It seems like essential supplies need to arrive at scale much more quickly than that.
It looks increasingly likely that aid is going to arrive in Gaza by sea, although I can't see how it can possibly be enough for the millions of people there.
My guess, which is really just intuition, is that there will be US military with the aid. Presumably the thinking being that the IDF will not shoot the US military.
This - like the air drops - is just another play for time. The Israeli Government Spokesman Eylon Levy[*] has been tweeting that the IDF would "welcome a maritime corridor .. (to) increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza after proper security checks". So this is going to get caught up with American/Israeli wrangling. If the Americans were serious they would have got started with the pier already, they aren't so they haven't.
There are plenty of geared coasters that could already dock in Gaza to deliver aid without a complicated floating pier.
[*] Who is - incidentally - the former student that Galloway refused to debate way back when.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Saturday that Ankara “firmly backs” the Palestinian militant group Hamas, reports AFP.
“No one can make us qualify Hamas as a terrorist organisation,” he said in a speech in Istanbul. “Turkey is a country that speaks openly with Hamas leaders and firmly backs them.”
The fast for Ramadan began in the Cape this weekend with the sighting of the crescent moon, and Moslem spokespersons across the Western Cape (there is a substantial historical Moslem community here) announced there will be a Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimage from Simonstown to Cape Town planned for 21 March 2024. To show interfaith solidarity with the Free Palestine movement, those attending will walk 4km, the length of Gaza, from the port of Simonstown to the city of Cape Town. Many Christians and other faith groups including Jews For a Free Palestine, will also be fasting in protest at the starvation of Gaza's civilians.
I am more and more convinced that there is an element within Israel that does not see Palestinian lives as having any value. Killing a Palestinian is of no more significance to this element than a broken window.
I was thinking last night that Israel's actions can be explained as a game of Chicken.
Hamas saw an opportunity and took it for a quick win. Clearly (in my opinion) they were calculating that there would be an overwhelming response from the IDF but I doubt even they imagined Gaza would be completely flattened.
The hardliners in Israeli government believed that they needed to show strength to stand up to neighbouring countries and almost dare Hezbollah and others to 'have a go if you think you are hard enough'.
But nobody, not Egypt nor Syria, Iran, Jordan or Hezbollah have the cahones.
By continuing until Gaza is completely ransacked, Israel is trying to be a kind of 'nobody likes us and we don't care' Alpha power in the region. The message being put strongly across being that 'Israel will do absolutely anything it likes whenever it likes' and that it doesn't even need positive words from the USA any more. Even Iran seems stunned into inaction.
Of course, the trouble here is that Israel gets high on its own supply. I'm not really convinced that it is as Alpha as it thinks it is and the massacres in Gaza are not likely to win long-term friends.
The terrible toll on Palestinians will take generations to recover from. For one thing, even if millions stay in Gaza (which I still doubt), it is in ruins. Many are dead, many have left and will never return. Society there is never likely to return to the way it was, inadequate as it has been for many years.
My suspicion is that life is going to also get much harder in the West Bank.
Peace seems much further away than it has been in the last decades.
I am more and more convinced that there is an element within Israel that does not see Palestinian lives as having any value. Killing a Palestinian is of no more significance to this element than a broken window.
Much of the supporting evidence in the ICJ case consisted of statements by various Israeli government officials, ranking military officers, media figures and members of parliament along just these lines.
Noting a possible major escalation of ocean trade route conflict by Yemen (reports via Al Jazeera): Sayyed Abdul-Malik, commander of Ansarallah (Houthi leader), has announced that ships linked with “Israel” will be prevented from even crossing through the Indian Ocean and rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and not just the Red & Arabian seas and the Gulf of Aden. This would involve targeting Israel-bound ships in the Indian Ocean and preventing them from sailing toward Bab al-Mandab Strait. The strait is known as a geographic 'chokepoint' and key to the control of almost all international shipping between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal.
Yesterday, a number of us from secular and interfaith groups or organisations, joined a Gaza Ceasefire Now! march across the Cape peninsula in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and with local Moslem communities. I hadn't realised how many people here had relatives and colleagues living or working in Gaza city. It was an arduous march, especially for those fasting for Ramadan and many disabled or elderly people were amongst those attending. Forty-one kilometres, the length of Gaza in geographic terms: there were stops for resting, most managed at least 10km.
It was also a public holiday. Human Rights Day in South Africa is historically linked to the Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March, 1960, in which 69 unarmed protesters were killed and 180 wounded by police. In Cape Town, there were other marches for protesting around climate change, energy, water, food, land, housing and gender-based violence. Many marches to do with global solidarity on these and other issues.
The peace talks are either stalled or making painfully slow progress. And Netanyahu has entered the debates about the US Presidential election. The IDF does not seem likely to stop or even pause without a Hamas concession. Hamas seems to be pinning its hopes on World opinion while holding the remaining hostages as its lever. A kind of Mexican standoff.
Brutal, horrifying, things continue to happen in Gaza. Plenty of crucifixion. No real signs of resurrection.
The peace talks are either stalled or making painfully slow progress. And Netanyahu has entered the debates about the US Presidential election. The IDF does not seem likely to stop or even pause without a Hamas concession. Hamas seems to be pinning its hopes on World opinion while holding the remaining hostages as its lever. A kind of Mexican standoff.
Brutal, horrifying, things continue to happen in Gaza. Plenty of crucifixion. No real signs of resurrection.
The new is bleak and the famine worsening. @Barnabas62 ,I don't know that the global groundswell of protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza will have any direct result or put any governments under pressure to change policies, but those trapped in Gaza have asked for international support to raise awareness of their plight.
It's hard for me to tell how many living in Gaza are hostages of Hamas, how many really want to see the obliteration of Israel. I'm reminded of Winston Smith's agonized words from 1984. "Four, five, whatever you want. But please stop the pain!" Something like that anyway.
Power struggles are always at their worst when winning is so important that consequential suffering is of little or no account. This is another horrible illustration of that truth. There is no global collective conscience. For the time being.
@Barnabas62 a global collective conscience is another issue altogether from what I'm talking about. We have a long history in South Africa of symbolic and pragmatic gestures of solidarity.
It's hard for me to tell how many living in Gaza are hostages of Hamas, how many really want to see the obliteration of Israel.
I think on the surface probably the latter, in much the same way that the North Vietnamese would have liked to see the US obliterated, or Koreans Japan. When your land is occupied and your kids are being slaughtered your views of the occupying power don't tend to be nuanced or temperate. The better question is what, if anything, would change that desire. I suspect the answer is the usual things - peace, freedom, a certain degree of prosperity. Grudges and prejudice would likely last a long time, but that's a long way from desiring obliteration.
When your land is occupied and your kids are being slaughtered your views of the occupying power don't tend to be nuanced or temperate. The better question is what, if anything, would change that desire. I suspect the answer is the usual things - peace, freedom, a certain degree of prosperity. Grudges and prejudice would likely last a long time, but that's a long way from desiring obliteration.
If you want people to be peaceful, give them something to lose by fighting.
The IDF has attacked a World Central Kitchen aid convoy in a series of (at least) three air strikes. Seven aid workers were killed. Via Dimi Reider's Twitter feed, though the original account comes from Haaretz:
The IDF's early explanation re the killing of the World Central Kitchen team is in - per "security sources" speaking to Haaretz. Before we get to the putative pretext for the attack, they also disclose a harrowing detail - the drone bombed the convoy THREE TIMES in succession..
because team survived one hit and tried taking cover in another vehicle, and then survivors moved to a third - and were finished off there. Deliberate, repeated targeting of convoy, making sure no one was left alive.
And this actually doesn't stack up w the alleged pretext:
"According to sources acquainted with the details of the incident, the Operation Room in charge of securing the route identified an armed person on the truck and suspected this was a terrorist. By the time preparations were made for the attack, the truck arrived....
at the warehouse, together with the three WKC vehicles carrying seven volunteers... minutes later, the three vehicles left the warehouse, without the truck on which an armed person was allegedly sighted. The cars traveled on a route already confirmed to WKC by the IDF. The IDF
was also made aware of the timing of this particular convoy. At some point, while convoy was traveling on the authorised route, the Operations Room ordered the drone operator to strike one of the vehicles. Some passengers were seen leaving the stricken vehicle and moving...
to the other two. They had time to alert superiors they had been attacked, but seconds later were struck by a second missile. They began moving wounded to 3rd car, and that's when the 3rd missile hit. All seven volunteers were killed."
This is actually far worse than I imagined.
The first and last vehicle targeted were over 2km apart:
This is the first time aid workers who were citizens of western countries have been killed by the IDF, though of course Palestinians working for the UN aid agencies have been targeted and killed for some time now.
Netanyahu is claiming this was "unintentional", but if a clearly marked convoy traveling a route they had pre-cleared with the IDF at the time they had pre-cleared with the IDF is going to be bombed repeatedly until everyone is dead it's impossible for these organizations to continue operations in Gaza. Which is what WCK and two other aid organizations have concluded and ceased operations in Gaza. Which will make the famine worse, which it's hard not to suspect was the goal all along.
The IDF has attacked a World Central Kitchen aid convoy in a series of (at least) three air strikes. Seven aid workers were killed. Via Dimi Reider's Twitter feed, though the original account comes from Haaretz:
The IDF's early explanation re the killing of the World Central Kitchen team is in - per "security sources" speaking to Haaretz. Before we get to the putative pretext for the attack, they also disclose a harrowing detail - the drone bombed the convoy THREE TIMES in succession..
because team survived one hit and tried taking cover in another vehicle, and then survivors moved to a third - and were finished off there. Deliberate, repeated targeting of convoy, making sure no one was left alive.
And this actually doesn't stack up w the alleged pretext:
"According to sources acquainted with the details of the incident, the Operation Room in charge of securing the route identified an armed person on the truck and suspected this was a terrorist. By the time preparations were made for the attack, the truck arrived....
at the warehouse, together with the three WKC vehicles carrying seven volunteers... minutes later, the three vehicles left the warehouse, without the truck on which an armed person was allegedly sighted. The cars traveled on a route already confirmed to WKC by the IDF. The IDF
was also made aware of the timing of this particular convoy. At some point, while convoy was traveling on the authorised route, the Operations Room ordered the drone operator to strike one of the vehicles. Some passengers were seen leaving the stricken vehicle and moving...
to the other two. They had time to alert superiors they had been attacked, but seconds later were struck by a second missile. They began moving wounded to 3rd car, and that's when the 3rd missile hit. All seven volunteers were killed."
This is actually far worse than I imagined.
The first and last vehicle targeted were over 2km apart:
This is the first time aid workers who were citizens of western countries have been killed by the IDF, though of course Palestinians working for the UN aid agencies have been targeted and killed for some time now.
Netanyahu is claiming this was "unintentional", but if a clearly marked convoy traveling a route they had pre-cleared with the IDF at the time they had pre-cleared with the IDF is going to be bombed repeatedly until everyone is dead it's impossible for these organizations to continue operations in Gaza. Which is what WCK and two other aid organizations have concluded and ceased operations in Gaza. Which will make the famine worse, which it's hard not to suspect was the goal all along.
The IDF has attacked a World Central Kitchen aid convoy in a series of (at least) three air strikes. Seven aid workers were killed. Via Dimi Reider's Twitter feed, though the original account comes from Haaretz:
The IDF's early explanation re the killing of the World Central Kitchen team is in - per "security sources" speaking to Haaretz. Before we get to the putative pretext for the attack, they also disclose a harrowing detail - the drone bombed the convoy THREE TIMES in succession..
because team survived one hit and tried taking cover in another vehicle, and then survivors moved to a third - and were finished off there. Deliberate, repeated targeting of convoy, making sure no one was left alive.
And this actually doesn't stack up w the alleged pretext:
"According to sources acquainted with the details of the incident, the Operation Room in charge of securing the route identified an armed person on the truck and suspected this was a terrorist. By the time preparations were made for the attack, the truck arrived....
at the warehouse, together with the three WKC vehicles carrying seven volunteers... minutes later, the three vehicles left the warehouse, without the truck on which an armed person was allegedly sighted. The cars traveled on a route already confirmed to WKC by the IDF. The IDF
was also made aware of the timing of this particular convoy. At some point, while convoy was traveling on the authorised route, the Operations Room ordered the drone operator to strike one of the vehicles. Some passengers were seen leaving the stricken vehicle and moving...
to the other two. They had time to alert superiors they had been attacked, but seconds later were struck by a second missile. They began moving wounded to 3rd car, and that's when the 3rd missile hit. All seven volunteers were killed."
This is actually far worse than I imagined.
The first and last vehicle targeted were over 2km apart:
This is the first time aid workers who were citizens of western countries have been killed by the IDF, though of course Palestinians working for the UN aid agencies have been targeted and killed for some time now.
Netanyahu is claiming this was "unintentional", but if a clearly marked convoy traveling a route they had pre-cleared with the IDF at the time they had pre-cleared with the IDF is going to be bombed repeatedly until everyone is dead it's impossible for these organizations to continue operations in Gaza. Which is what WCK and two other aid organizations have concluded and ceased operations in Gaza. Which will make the famine worse, which it's hard not to suspect was the goal all along.
The IDF has attacked a World Central Kitchen aid convoy in a series of (at least) three air strikes. Seven aid workers were killed. Via Dimi Reider's Twitter feed, though the original account comes from Haaretz:
The IDF's early explanation re the killing of the World Central Kitchen team is in - per "security sources" speaking to Haaretz. Before we get to the putative pretext for the attack, they also disclose a harrowing detail - the drone bombed the convoy THREE TIMES in succession..
because team survived one hit and tried taking cover in another vehicle, and then survivors moved to a third - and were finished off there. Deliberate, repeated targeting of convoy, making sure no one was left alive.
And this actually doesn't stack up w the alleged pretext:
"According to sources acquainted with the details of the incident, the Operation Room in charge of securing the route identified an armed person on the truck and suspected this was a terrorist. By the time preparations were made for the attack, the truck arrived....
at the warehouse, together with the three WKC vehicles carrying seven volunteers... minutes later, the three vehicles left the warehouse, without the truck on which an armed person was allegedly sighted. The cars traveled on a route already confirmed to WKC by the IDF. The IDF
was also made aware of the timing of this particular convoy. At some point, while convoy was traveling on the authorised route, the Operations Room ordered the drone operator to strike one of the vehicles. Some passengers were seen leaving the stricken vehicle and moving...
to the other two. They had time to alert superiors they had been attacked, but seconds later were struck by a second missile. They began moving wounded to 3rd car, and that's when the 3rd missile hit. All seven volunteers were killed."
This is actually far worse than I imagined.
The first and last vehicle targeted were over 2km apart:
This is the first time aid workers who were citizens of western countries have been killed by the IDF, though of course Palestinians working for the UN aid agencies have been targeted and killed for some time now.
Netanyahu is claiming this was "unintentional", but if a clearly marked convoy traveling a route they had pre-cleared with the IDF at the time they had pre-cleared with the IDF is going to be bombed repeatedly until everyone is dead it's impossible for these organizations to continue operations in Gaza. Which is what WCK and two other aid organizations have concluded and ceased operations in Gaza. Which will make the famine worse, which it's hard not to suspect was the goal all along.
Meanwhile this time around defense officials have told Haaretz that the IDF has essentially implemented 'kill zones' in Gaza which casts some doubt on their claims to have killed 9000 members of Hamas:
The IDF has attacked a World Central Kitchen aid convoy in a series of (at least) three air strikes. Seven aid workers were killed. Via Dimi Reider's Twitter feed, though the original account comes from Haaretz:
The IDF's early explanation re the killing of the World Central Kitchen team is in - per "security sources" speaking to Haaretz. Before we get to the putative pretext for the attack, they also disclose a harrowing detail - the drone bombed the convoy THREE TIMES in succession..
because team survived one hit and tried taking cover in another vehicle, and then survivors moved to a third - and were finished off there. Deliberate, repeated targeting of convoy, making sure no one was left alive.
And this actually doesn't stack up w the alleged pretext:
"According to sources acquainted with the details of the incident, the Operation Room in charge of securing the route identified an armed person on the truck and suspected this was a terrorist. By the time preparations were made for the attack, the truck arrived....
at the warehouse, together with the three WKC vehicles carrying seven volunteers... minutes later, the three vehicles left the warehouse, without the truck on which an armed person was allegedly sighted. The cars traveled on a route already confirmed to WKC by the IDF. The IDF
was also made aware of the timing of this particular convoy. At some point, while convoy was traveling on the authorised route, the Operations Room ordered the drone operator to strike one of the vehicles. Some passengers were seen leaving the stricken vehicle and moving...
to the other two. They had time to alert superiors they had been attacked, but seconds later were struck by a second missile. They began moving wounded to 3rd car, and that's when the 3rd missile hit. All seven volunteers were killed."
This is actually far worse than I imagined.
The first and last vehicle targeted were over 2km apart:
This is the first time aid workers who were citizens of western countries have been killed by the IDF, though of course Palestinians working for the UN aid agencies have been targeted and killed for some time now.
Netanyahu is claiming this was "unintentional", but if a clearly marked convoy traveling a route they had pre-cleared with the IDF at the time they had pre-cleared with the IDF is going to be bombed repeatedly until everyone is dead it's impossible for these organizations to continue operations in Gaza. Which is what WCK and two other aid organizations have concluded and ceased operations in Gaza. Which will make the famine worse, which it's hard not to suspect was the goal all along.
Meanwhile this time around defense officials have told Haaretz that the IDF has essentially implemented 'kill zones' in Gaza which casts some doubt on their claims to have killed 9000 members of Hamas:
That 9000 is obviously bollocks. It's only mathematically possible if, as @Arethosemyfeet said, the IDF counts virtually every male casualty over 12 as a Hamas terrorist.
That 9000 is obviously bollocks. It's only mathematically possible if, as @Arethosemyfeet said, the IDF counts virtually every male casualty over 12 as a Hamas terrorist.
Sure, yes it is, and the article is yet another reason to doubt it.
The New Yorker have an interview by Isaac Chotiner of a former senior State Department figure reflecting on the mood/approach of the current Administration that is well worth reading to the end.
I am astonished and horrified if those whose predecessors were starved to death or shot when they were unarmed think it OK to starve others or shoot them to death!
Listening to one of the spokespeople this morning, it’s as if there is no sense of moral responsibility at all, that every death at their hands is shrugged off!
I am astonished and horrified if those whose predecessors were starved to death or shot when they were unarmed think it OK to starve others or shoot them to death!
There are two possible responses to being on the receiving end of oppression: ensure that oppression if fought whenever it occurs, or ensure that in future you're the oppressor.
I think the latter is common. Hang on, Freud had a phrase for it, identification with the aggressor. You can see how it works, a victim flips and seeks a new victim.
I am astonished and horrified if those whose predecessors were starved to death or shot when they were unarmed think it OK to starve others or shoot them to death!
Listening to one of the spokespeople this morning, it’s as if there is no sense of moral responsibility at all, that every death at their hands is shrugged off!
This has been quite some time in development though; you can track the gradual escalation across the decades under governments of both stripes; and if Herut and Likud were the most voluble in recent decades, the earlier Labour governments of the 60s/70s didn't have a particularly great track record either (and since the 70s settlements have been expanded under governments of all stripes)
I think the difference now is that there's an immediacy to footage of dispossession, and the even limited ability to see the rhetoric in the Hebrew language press means such things are far harder to obscure.
"For example, sources explained that the Lavender machine sometimes mistakenly flagged individuals who had communication patterns similar to known Hamas or PIJ operatives — including police and civil defense workers, militants’ relatives, residents who happened to have a name and nickname identical to that of an operative, and Gazans who used a device that once belonged to a Hamas operative. "
"Lavender and systems like Where’s Daddy? were thus combined with deadly effect, killing entire families, sources said. By adding a name from the Lavender-generated lists to the Where’s Daddy? home tracking system, A. explained, the marked person would be placed under ongoing surveillance, and could be attacked as soon as they set foot in their home, collapsing the house on everyone inside."
This amounts to a policy of signature strikes using criteria against personal meta-data - subject only to the level of control around the definition of a valid target.
You beat me to the punch with this - it's beyond horrible. I wonder if we need a new set of international standards to deal with uses of AI in war like this? Though it's not as if we're great at enforcing the human rights standards we're already meant to have.
It's become clearer and clearer that Palestinians have very little value in Israeli eyes.
That is racism, pure and simple. Of the most extreme, murderous type.
Not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank too; the land grabs go on and settler violence against Palestinians goes on with impunity. Meanwhile a Palestinian child does so much as hold a firework and they're summarily executed. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68557147
It is, again, racism, pure and simple. Of the most extreme, murderous type.
You beat me to the punch with this - it's beyond horrible. I wonder if we need a new set of international standards to deal with uses of AI in war like this? Though it's not as if we're great at enforcing the human rights standards we're already meant to have.
What we're talking about here are not autonomous war robots, but about humans blindly following a kill list generated by an AI system. The systems were designed to target anyone having the appearance of being associated with Hamas's military in their homes - by construction, wiping out whole families in order to kill one probable fighter. Those choices were made by humans. This isn't Terminator - there's no rogue AI deciding that all Palestinians are the enemy, and killing them itself. Humans - Israeli humans in senior positions in the IDF - made that choice. Those people own the culpability for this indiscriminate killing.
The reports about the Lavender system claim that the IDF accepted a 10% error rate. In other words, they expect that 90% of the families that they bomb will contain one member who is associated with Hamas's fighters, and 10% of the families they bomb will be random civilians with no association with Hamas at all.
Average households in Gaza are about 6 people. So going by the IDF's own numbers, they're happy to kill a minimum of 67 innocent civilians in order to kill 10 people who have some sort of association with Hamas's fighters.
You beat me to the punch with this - it's beyond horrible. I wonder if we need a new set of international standards to deal with uses of AI in war like this? Though it's not as if we're great at enforcing the human rights standards we're already meant to have.
What we're talking about here are not autonomous war robots, but about humans blindly following a kill list generated by an AI system. The systems were designed to target anyone having the appearance of being associated with Hamas's military in their homes - by construction, wiping out whole families in order to kill one probable fighter. Those choices were made by humans. This isn't Terminator - there's no rogue AI deciding that all Palestinians are the enemy, and killing them itself. Humans - Israeli humans in senior positions in the IDF - made that choice. Those people own the culpability for this indiscriminate killing.
The reports about the Lavender system claim that the IDF accepted a 10% error rate. In other words, they expect that 90% of the families that they bomb will contain one member who is associated with Hamas's fighters, and 10% of the families they bomb will be random civilians with no association with Hamas at all.
Average households in Gaza are about 6 people. So going by the IDF's own numbers, they're happy to kill a minimum of 67 innocent civilians in order to kill 10 people who have some sort of association with Hamas's fighters.
And then claim that around a third - so 26 of that 77 - were "terrorists".
But it's probably worse than your figures imply. We're not talking about individual detached houses here. We're talking about apartment blocks and high density housing. I live in a semi - what would my chances be if someone launched high explosives at either of my neighbours' houses?
In the eyes of the Israelis who are making the decisions. In the eyes of the Israeli state which is setting policy. In the Israeli eyes which are actually dictating the Palestinian experience on the ground.
You beat me to the punch with this - it's beyond horrible. I wonder if we need a new set of international standards to deal with uses of AI in war like this? Though it's not as if we're great at enforcing the human rights standards we're already meant to have.
What we're talking about here are not autonomous war robots, but about humans blindly following a kill list generated by an AI system. The systems were designed to target anyone having the appearance of being associated with Hamas's military in their homes - by construction, wiping out whole families in order to kill one probable fighter. Those choices were made by humans.
I'd actually move one step back. This is a way of laundering morality via a computer to reduce legal culpability. The design, development and use of these systems is a deliberate choice, and one has to ask why - even before you get to the perverse incentives it generates[*]
This is obviously true, but remember that polling consistently shows that the majority of Israeli's remain in favour of the current action in Gaza (with a sizeable majority thinking that the IDF should use even more force) https://time.com/6333781/israel-hamas-poll-palestine/
[*] There's a strong implication here that when there were enough targets for the available ordinance, the dials on the system were juked to the point where enough targets were produced.
Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus on the 1st. Since when Iran have been pushing the US for a condemnation of that attack. This appears to be the Iranian reaction.
Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus on the 1st. Since when Iran have been pushing the US for a condemnation of that attack. This appears to be the Iranian reaction.
Comments
I hope that whatever Islamic authorities have sway in Gaza will make it clear to the population that they should forgo the Ramadan fast if their food and water supplies are already inadequate.
Not disagreeing with any of that, but there is what is "ideal" and what is "necessary" and from what I've seen it appears that the Americans in particular seem to be accepting that Gazans can't be helped in Gaza for the foreseeable future.
I've also just seen a report which suggests the temporary barge idea put forward by the US military would take weeks to construct. It seems like essential supplies need to arrive at scale much more quickly than that.
This - like the air drops - is just another play for time. The Israeli Government Spokesman Eylon Levy[*] has been tweeting that the IDF would "welcome a maritime corridor .. (to) increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza after proper security checks". So this is going to get caught up with American/Israeli wrangling. If the Americans were serious they would have got started with the pier already, they aren't so they haven't.
There are plenty of geared coasters that could already dock in Gaza to deliver aid without a complicated floating pier.
[*] Who is - incidentally - the former student that Galloway refused to debate way back when.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240219-israeli-protesters-block-aid-convoys-bound-for-gaza
One of the leaders of the protests is suspected of planting a bomb in the US which killed a Palestinian activist:
https://adc.org/murder-suspect-gaza/
This story, and the response of Ben-Gvir to it, seems to reinforce that. I am beyond words: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68557147
Hamas saw an opportunity and took it for a quick win. Clearly (in my opinion) they were calculating that there would be an overwhelming response from the IDF but I doubt even they imagined Gaza would be completely flattened.
The hardliners in Israeli government believed that they needed to show strength to stand up to neighbouring countries and almost dare Hezbollah and others to 'have a go if you think you are hard enough'.
But nobody, not Egypt nor Syria, Iran, Jordan or Hezbollah have the cahones.
By continuing until Gaza is completely ransacked, Israel is trying to be a kind of 'nobody likes us and we don't care' Alpha power in the region. The message being put strongly across being that 'Israel will do absolutely anything it likes whenever it likes' and that it doesn't even need positive words from the USA any more. Even Iran seems stunned into inaction.
Of course, the trouble here is that Israel gets high on its own supply. I'm not really convinced that it is as Alpha as it thinks it is and the massacres in Gaza are not likely to win long-term friends.
The terrible toll on Palestinians will take generations to recover from. For one thing, even if millions stay in Gaza (which I still doubt), it is in ruins. Many are dead, many have left and will never return. Society there is never likely to return to the way it was, inadequate as it has been for many years.
My suspicion is that life is going to also get much harder in the West Bank.
Peace seems much further away than it has been in the last decades.
All witnesses to this horror will never escape from the nightmares - the perpetrators will have their actions written on their souls.
Lord, have mercy. 🙏
Much of the supporting evidence in the ICJ case consisted of statements by various Israeli government officials, ranking military officers, media figures and members of parliament along just these lines.
It was also a public holiday. Human Rights Day in South Africa is historically linked to the Sharpeville Massacre on 21 March, 1960, in which 69 unarmed protesters were killed and 180 wounded by police. In Cape Town, there were other marches for protesting around climate change, energy, water, food, land, housing and gender-based violence. Many marches to do with global solidarity on these and other issues.
Brutal, horrifying, things continue to happen in Gaza. Plenty of crucifixion. No real signs of resurrection.
The new is bleak and the famine worsening. @Barnabas62 ,I don't know that the global groundswell of protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza will have any direct result or put any governments under pressure to change policies, but those trapped in Gaza have asked for international support to raise awareness of their plight.
Power struggles are always at their worst when winning is so important that consequential suffering is of little or no account. This is another horrible illustration of that truth. There is no global collective conscience. For the time being.
In general, there is a line from a fictional Foreign Secretary in the comedy series “Yes Prime Minister” which comes to mind.
“We’ll provide every assistance we can. (Short of actual help)”
When it comes to power struggles, the world has a long way to go in providing good and timely solutions.
I think on the surface probably the latter, in much the same way that the North Vietnamese would have liked to see the US obliterated, or Koreans Japan. When your land is occupied and your kids are being slaughtered your views of the occupying power don't tend to be nuanced or temperate. The better question is what, if anything, would change that desire. I suspect the answer is the usual things - peace, freedom, a certain degree of prosperity. Grudges and prejudice would likely last a long time, but that's a long way from desiring obliteration.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68625406
If you want people to be peaceful, give them something to lose by fighting.
Will anything make a difference?
This is the first time aid workers who were citizens of western countries have been killed by the IDF, though of course Palestinians working for the UN aid agencies have been targeted and killed for some time now.
Netanyahu is claiming this was "unintentional", but if a clearly marked convoy traveling a route they had pre-cleared with the IDF at the time they had pre-cleared with the IDF is going to be bombed repeatedly until everyone is dead it's impossible for these organizations to continue operations in Gaza. Which is what WCK and two other aid organizations have concluded and ceased operations in Gaza. Which will make the famine worse, which it's hard not to suspect was the goal all along.
It is also of a piece with all the other evidence that the IDF will call any male Palestinian over 12 victim of its violence a Hamas member, and the report earlier today of sniper drones shooting kids with impunity:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war
Fuck me. It just gets worse.
This is of a piece with the events in 2014, when snipers bragged of shooting protestors in the knees during the Great March of Return:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-created-kill-zones-in-gaza-anyone-who-crosses-into-them-is-shot/0000018e-946c-d4de-afee-f46da9ee0000
If you can't get through the paywall, there are extracts posted here: https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-snipers-brag-about-deliberately-crippling-gaza-protesters
Meanwhile this time around defense officials have told Haaretz that the IDF has essentially implemented 'kill zones' in Gaza which casts some doubt on their claims to have killed 9000 members of Hamas:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-created-kill-zones-in-gaza-anyone-who-crosses-into-them-is-shot/0000018e-946c-d4de-afee-f46da9ee0000
That 9000 is obviously bollocks. It's only mathematically possible if, as @Arethosemyfeet said, the IDF counts virtually every male casualty over 12 as a Hamas terrorist.
Sure, yes it is, and the article is yet another reason to doubt it.
The New Yorker have an interview by Isaac Chotiner of a former senior State Department figure reflecting on the mood/approach of the current Administration that is well worth reading to the end.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/bidens-increasingly-contradictory-israel-policy
(archived here: https://archive.is/OkIKP )
Listening to one of the spokespeople this morning, it’s as if there is no sense of moral responsibility at all, that every death at their hands is shrugged off!
There are two possible responses to being on the receiving end of oppression: ensure that oppression if fought whenever it occurs, or ensure that in future you're the oppressor.
This has been quite some time in development though; you can track the gradual escalation across the decades under governments of both stripes; and if Herut and Likud were the most voluble in recent decades, the earlier Labour governments of the 60s/70s didn't have a particularly great track record either (and since the 70s settlements have been expanded under governments of all stripes)
I think the difference now is that there's an immediacy to footage of dispossession, and the even limited ability to see the rhetoric in the Hebrew language press means such things are far harder to obscure.
https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ (content warning for distressing images)
The guardian is covering this too:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes
It raises a number of troubling issues:
"For example, sources explained that the Lavender machine sometimes mistakenly flagged individuals who had communication patterns similar to known Hamas or PIJ operatives — including police and civil defense workers, militants’ relatives, residents who happened to have a name and nickname identical to that of an operative, and Gazans who used a device that once belonged to a Hamas operative. "
"Lavender and systems like Where’s Daddy? were thus combined with deadly effect, killing entire families, sources said. By adding a name from the Lavender-generated lists to the Where’s Daddy? home tracking system, A. explained, the marked person would be placed under ongoing surveillance, and could be attacked as soon as they set foot in their home, collapsing the house on everyone inside."
This amounts to a policy of signature strikes using criteria against personal meta-data - subject only to the level of control around the definition of a valid target.
That is racism, pure and simple. Of the most extreme, murderous type.
Not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank too; the land grabs go on and settler violence against Palestinians goes on with impunity. Meanwhile a Palestinian child does so much as hold a firework and they're summarily executed.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68557147
It is, again, racism, pure and simple. Of the most extreme, murderous type.
What we're talking about here are not autonomous war robots, but about humans blindly following a kill list generated by an AI system. The systems were designed to target anyone having the appearance of being associated with Hamas's military in their homes - by construction, wiping out whole families in order to kill one probable fighter. Those choices were made by humans. This isn't Terminator - there's no rogue AI deciding that all Palestinians are the enemy, and killing them itself. Humans - Israeli humans in senior positions in the IDF - made that choice. Those people own the culpability for this indiscriminate killing.
The reports about the Lavender system claim that the IDF accepted a 10% error rate. In other words, they expect that 90% of the families that they bomb will contain one member who is associated with Hamas's fighters, and 10% of the families they bomb will be random civilians with no association with Hamas at all.
Average households in Gaza are about 6 people. So going by the IDF's own numbers, they're happy to kill a minimum of 67 innocent civilians in order to kill 10 people who have some sort of association with Hamas's fighters.
And then claim that around a third - so 26 of that 77 - were "terrorists".
But it's probably worse than your figures imply. We're not talking about individual detached houses here. We're talking about apartment blocks and high density housing. I live in a semi - what would my chances be if someone launched high explosives at either of my neighbours' houses?
Far too many, possibly a majority given election results in the last few years.
In the eyes of the Israelis who are making the decisions. In the eyes of the Israeli state which is setting policy. In the Israeli eyes which are actually dictating the Palestinian experience on the ground.
I'd actually move one step back. This is a way of laundering morality via a computer to reduce legal culpability. The design, development and use of these systems is a deliberate choice, and one has to ask why - even before you get to the perverse incentives it generates[*]
This is obviously true, but remember that polling consistently shows that the majority of Israeli's remain in favour of the current action in Gaza (with a sizeable majority thinking that the IDF should use even more force) https://time.com/6333781/israel-hamas-poll-palestine/
With a majority opposing humanitarian aid to Gaza (as well as any kind of two state solution) : https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-788114
[*] There's a strong implication here that when there were enough targets for the available ordinance, the dials on the system were juked to the point where enough targets were produced.
From the Guardian's live blog:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/apr/13/iran-launches-drone-attack-against-israel
Lord, have mercy.
So it seems. Is this Armageddon?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/14/raf-shot-down-iran-drones-israel-sunak
Early days, maybe, but I have a bad feeling about this. One can only hope (and pray?) that Netanyahu shows some sense for once.
Meanwhile, maybe the IDF will have to concentrate on things other than destroying Gaza, and perhaps allow some relief into the area...