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Nancy Pelosi’s Rant Against Cease-Fire Supporters Will Hurt Biden’s 2024 Campaign
(www.thenation.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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politics
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She's completely right. Some of the opposition is astroturfed. It's part of Hamas's strategy of "lawfare."
It would be a betrayal of national security for the DOJ or FBI not to investigate the source of a lot of this messaging.
Yup.
Idk. Seems pretty natural to look a genocide and say that sucks. Maybe we should do something about it.
Since the dead kids don't seem to be an issue, maybe these moderates would do it to deny the Russians their issue. Democratic moderates will fall all over themselves to coopt rightwing issues to deny them the ideological ground, maybe they can be convinced to actually adopt something good for once.
Well, that's the point isn't it? If there's a legitimate military target and a reasonable warning tailored to minimize civilian casualties, that is not a war crime, let alone a genocide. It's standard operating procedure, and morally and legally valid.
People seem to be completely unaware that before Israel bombs a building, it calls cell phones in the area and warns people to leave. One thing Hamas likes to do is tell people that those warning calls are a hoax, so that more civilians stay in the building to be killed. Nothing makes Hamas happier than more inncoent Palestinians killed with Israeli weapons.
People also seem to believe that every time a building is destroyed, there are never any Hamas members or weapons or tunnels. The extent of the tunnel systems in the Gaza Strip are well documented and if you threw a dart at a map of the strip, you're pretty much going to hit a tunnel. I'm exaggerating, but not by much.
Again, if they are striking valid targets and warning the people to leave the area, it sucks and it's horrible and of course it makes Democrats very uncomfortable because we are caring and empathetic people, but it's not objectionable from an international law standard. Humanitarian corridors are open, supplies are flowing, and the daily death tolls have been decreasing for weeks. I agree with Pelosi that it's delusional to call that genocide.
If it comes out that Israel does not really have valid military targets, or made no contemporaneous attempts to warn people in the target area, and that's part of a policy or the result of training, as opposed to isolated war crimes, I agree it would be a genocide all day long. So far though, the evidence is overwhelming that that's not what's happening. Add to that the evidence that Israel is actively prosecuting people for war crimes and incitement to genocide.
And what about when Israel tells Palestinians to head to an evac zone, and then bombs that evac zone?
This is what I mean. Even in the evac zone, the IDF calls and texts people before bombing.
Yes, people were told to leave the north and head south. Nobody said "everywhere south is safe."
People keep making this point to me and it would be a good point if it was as black and white as coverage keeps implying. My observations have been as follows:
These stories are exaggerated by media outlets that do not publish sufficient detail to identify the date and location of the bombing. This makes it impossible to know if you have just read 10 articles about 10 bombings or 10 articles about one bombing. It also makes it impossible to look up and see if one can find evidence of the warnings that were given or the IDF explanation for the bombing.
Many of the articles that do contain enough information to identify the date and location but does not include idf's explanation or any information related to any warnings. This gives the false idea that Israel is just bombing people. Indiscriminately, and it just isn't true. Because literally every single time I have been able to identify the date and location from any reports of civilians being killed in bombings, I've been able to find for everyone some explanation from the IDF and some eyewitness account including videos or screenshots of the warnings that people have received.
Here's a good example. It is unique only because everyone evacuated, despite Hamas's attempts to mislead people into staying in the buildings:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67327079.amp
The IDF caller at one point even said "we will not bomb until you say it is safe to do so," and they did not. That doesn't sound very genocidal to me.
If Israel shut off the electricity into Gaza, how do they charge their cell phones?
Then stop doing it.
Israel is running into Gaza like a Fuze player on hostage gameplay, and wondering why the hostages keep getting in the way of the bombs. Either it is stupidity or maliciousness.
When it should be treating this like a gang or mafia that has infiltrated the population of Gaza and using them as unwilling participants.
People don't understand shit. Me included. In fact, me the example. However, people can empathize with human suffering.
People have eyes and can think, maybe Israel should stop bombing indiscriminately. Maybe Israel, should tone it down a bit?
Then Israel says stuff like "Yo dudes, we are going to wipe out Gaza and every civilian, man, woman, baby, child, dogs, cats, sheep, salt the earth."
It doesn't inspire any confidence you either don't know what you are talking about, or don't know that Israel has a completely different philosophy from what you are arguing.
I mean, but you're lying about indiscriminate bombing. The evidence is absolutely overwhelming that Israel is effectively warning people and striking valid military.
It is delusional to say as you have that the bombing is indiscriminate if they're literally calling people on the phone and telling them where the bombs are going to hit before they land. That's very discriminate.
The Rohygna were targeted indiscriminately. Myanmar had helicopter gunships strafing crowds of refugees, burning down whole villages without ever even pretending that there was a military target. Clearly war crimes.
It's not a mystery why the civilian casualties are so high. It's because Hamas is a terrorist organization that employees a strategy of martyrdom and voluntary and involuntary human shields specifically for the purpose of gaining international sympathy, and because Hamas dug tunnels under where most people live and then used them for decades to launch tens of thousands of rockets and finally on October 7 a massive border incursion and a campaign of actually indiscriminate mass shootings of Isreali civilians, on purpose, the tunnels must now be destroyed.
And that means that unfortunately whatever is above them is also likely going to be destroyed or at least rendered inhabitable from a structural engineering standpoint. Israel didn't put the tunnels there, that was also Hamas, and also part of their strategy of martyrdom and human shields.
Don't argue with me,argue with math.
Half of Gaza is gone
Israel dropped almost as many bombs in a week then the US did in a year in Afghanistan.
Israel almost dropped more bombs in a week, then the US did in a year. Do you know what a high bar that is? For a place like Gaza?
I'm not sure what relevance you think this is. Are there military targets or not? Are there warnings or not? The targets in Gaza are pretty much underground.
You've been warned about denying genocide before. 30 day ban.
Intentionally starving, targeting journalists, and killing 1% of the population is not legitimate.
Having government ministers on tv talking about displacing the whole population is genocidal language.
Bibi using biblical references to people genocided at gods command to describe current day Palestinians also points to genocidal intentions.
But you are blind to it.
If what a few extremist representatives in a democracy said actually matched the facts on the ground, I would credit this line of reasoning. There is clearly not an effort to wipe out the Palestinian people or the killing apparatus would become more efficient over time, not less.
Israel is actually sending more food and supplies into Gaza right now than anyone, and it's ridiculous to say that they are intentionally starving people when they are the ones bringing in the food. I understand there's widespread food insecurity in Gaza. It would have been super cool if Hamas did not build tunnels and then use them to launch terrorist attacks from underneath people's markets and roads.
If Israel actually goes ahead and lets all of these refugees starve to death, or fails to rebuild the units of lost housing, I would tend to agree that war crimes are afoot. It's too soon to tell.
But my friend, the daily civilian casualties has been dropping for weeks. Where is all this intentional killing your9 talking about?
500 trucks used to go in on a daily basis. "Aid" (provided by a number of agencies and counties and not Israel) that had to be painfully inspected by Israel has been far below that. In other words, Israel actually withheld aid from Gazans, despite "allowing it in".
Here is a good article that describes how less than 200 trucks were allowed in every day despite a daily basic need of 500. On one day in January, only 30 crossed in.
It's Israel doing genocide and trying to get away with dirty lawyer tactics.
(not interested in a discussion with you, just adding this fact based piece of evidence here, because people deserve to know that that is inaccurate)
have you seen the civilian casualty numbers?
If that's minimized I would hate to see their idea of maximized.
Tailored to minimize civilian casualties. Hard for it to be effective sometimes when Hamas tells the civilians the warning calls are a hoax and not to leave.
This story is exceptional only because everyone evacuated and no civilians were killed. When Hamas tried to convince residents to stay by telling residents the calls were a hoax, the IDF fired warning shots to prove it. They said "we will not bomb this building until you say it is safe." And they did not. Sometimes Hamas packs their whole family into the room above the tunnel shafts and forces them to stay to die proudly as martyrs.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67327079
God how ridiculous are the things you believe to keep yourself from seeing Israel is butchering mostly civilians. Why would Israel know the room is full of civilians before bombing? Imagine, you're whatever heinous evil you see Hamas as, and you're trying to avoid being bombed in your secret tunnel. Why would you pack a room full of civilians right above your location? Are you doing it in secret so IDF doesnt see where you are, if so that doesnt give you any protection because they wouldnt know about the civilians to be deterred from bombing anyway. Or in broad daylight to make sure they know civilians and you are there, in this war where the presence of civilians has not stopped them from leveling neighborhoods at all.
They do it to gain sympathy. The tactic is well documented.
by anyone other than the people doing the civilian slaughter?
I'm not going to go tit for tat on sources with you and documentation.
The US, EU, UK, NATO, France, Germany, Iceland, Poland, Japan, and Canada, all say it's not genocide for the reasons I've cited. You will see as it plays out before the ICJ.
Speaking of delusions, I havent mentioned genocide. I been talking about the majority of people Israel is killing are civilians, by an insane margin. Even from Israel themselves saying a 2:1 ratio of civilians to militants, and that ratio is disputed.
Compared to what? The tunnel warfare system is unprecedented.
Sorry for calling you delusional, I deleted that part. Nancy shouldn't have called you it either.
This is not the uplifting story you seem to think it is. Someone rung this poor random guy and made him evacuate his entire community under extreme time pressure, only to destroy all the infrastructure so they can never return.
And towards the end:
They didn't care about this man. They took everything he had apart from his actual life and he had done nothing wrong. You think it is a story of IDF benevolence but it is literally a war crime.
Yeah no I read it, nor do I find it uplifting at all.
But it speaks for itself as evidence in refuting the claims people are making about indiscriminate bombing and intentionally targeting civilians. It's just not true, at least not any more than a handful of isolated war crimes. It's shitty but that's the reality of it.
Israel is and will likely continue to prosecute people responsible for war crimes.
Think they hold any war crimes trials in Gaza? No. The fact is that in Gaza the governing power will pay you well if you indiscriminately target a bunch of Israeli civilians, as they did on October 7.
The tunnels are forfiet now, as a matter of proportionate response and self defense. If Israel has to destroy several city blocks to get to whatever part of the tunnel system Hamas has dug underneath them, that's not Israel's fault. Hamas put them there. Hamas used them to launch terrorist attack after terrorist attack, decades of rocket attacks, decades of suicide bombings, and now mass shootings, all while actually indiscriminately targeting civilians. How does that go over in Gaza? Hamas is more popular than ever.
They destroyed the whole civilian area. You know that intentionally destroying civilian infrastructure is a war crime right?
Source
The dentist office is not a military objective just because there's a tunnel 20m below it.
More importantly, there are 26 THOUSAND dead Palestinians, mainly innocent civilians. If they are not intentionally targeting them they are the most careless and/or incompetent army in the world.
Oh well that's ok then, just a "handful" of "isolated" war crimes 🤣
Israel is an incompetent state
You've been warned about genocide denial previously. 30 day ban.
>if they are striking valid targets
what is a valid military target in a ghetto?
>People seem to be completely unaware that before Israel bombs a building, it calls cell phones in the area in warns people to leave.
they cut power and telecoms already..cellphones are dead.
She's directly linking any protestation of the war with Putin. She's essentially saying if you protest for cessation of hostility in Gaza you're a tool of Putin.
It's incredibly disingenuous and will definitely hurt their numbers. And in a race that's going to be as close as this is, it could easily lead to a red Presidency.
Dude, you're wildly misrepresenting the article and her quotes.
Actual quote:
I think you're buying into her attempt to soften the blow.
She starts off the statement by immediately linking protests with Putin, then follows it up by putting up a front as though she's in some way neutral.
John Stewart did a pretty good show about this sort of thing about a decade ago about Glenn Beck. "She's only asking questions! How do we know these protestors aren't all Russian agents, after all?"
It's hilarious to me how Nancy Grace used to be the caricature for this shit and now Democrats employ the same tactics with zero sense of hypocrisy.
So do I. I want to know who's paying Pelosi.
She doesn’t need to get paid, she has that sweet Congress gig with all the legal insider trading.
Russia would also fund pro-Israeli activists to help promote a rift.
We need to investigate every pro-Israeli supporter for their ties to Moscow.
That could be plausible but a pro Israeli narrative neither needs no amplification nor benefits Russia's political agenda.
Russia's goal more than division is to reelect it's agent, Trump. I find it hard to believe Russia would go out of its way to amplify to any significant extent the position taken by the US, NATO, EU, UK, France, Germany, Iceland, Poland, Japan, Australia, and Canada, which is that Israel is legitimately defending itself and not committing genocide.
Trump would immediately start a hot war with Iran and immediately cede all of Ukraine to Russia.
The GOP is clamoring to bomb Iran and pull Ukrainian funding today. The Democrats wants to avoid a hot war with Iran (for humanitarian reasons) and is bending over backwards to support Ukraine. The idea that Russia would push a pro Biden narrative (to sew division at the risk of reflecting him) is not plausible.
It benefits Russias political agenda by creating division between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel people.
And being against genocide does not need amplification, it should be the default side if anything.
I think it's also plausible that Russia would astroturf to help Trump get back in office. By turning people against the Democrats and toward a third party to split the vote.
Then again, Russia is all about weaponizing the cracks in the target society. Adding to the discord over this situation by astroturfing both sides is right out of their playbook.
(Ed) And I'm guessing Israel is doing some of its own astroturfing. And probably same for Hamas and sympathetic entities.