Knightfox

https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1799715089936761144

Purportedly one of the hostages was being held in the house of an Al-Jazeera journalist/writer/editor and several members of his family were killed while trying to prevent the hostage from being rescued.

EDIT: Turns out he wasn't an employee of Al-Jazeera, but he wrote opinion pieces for them.

EDIT 2: New article https://www.yahoo.com/news/al-jazeera-denies-connection-journalist-194749492.html - It seems that the female hostage was not the one being held at this location, but rather the three men were. The location is an apartment building and the hostages were being held on the 3rd floor while the journalist was living on the first floor. The claim that the journalist and his family were killed comes from a European based Hamas affiliate.

EDIT 3: Another article - https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-confirms-abdallah-aljamal-was-holding-3-hostages-in-his-home-in-nuseirat-alongside-his-family/ - I don't read Hebrew, but it looks like IDF is confirming that the journalist and his family were the ones holding the hostages, not just someone in the same building.

EDIT 4: Looks like the US media has gotten hold of the story finally, but it's mostly NY Post and Fox news. Looks like they're behind the times because they're just running the Al-Jazeera angle.

Hey, I appreciate your response! I totally understand that people want to have their feelings confirmed in such a space, but that's also why I am critical in it. In this sort of environment the discussion is almost as much emotion and feeling as it is the words actually used. A sort of slang can develop where we can understand what each other means without the words we use being truly accurate. The problem with that is that this environment is also an echo chamber, we put meaning onto things that we want it to mean because it also confirms our beliefs.

This leads to situations where it's impossible to differentiate between radical statements and reasonable statements. A good example is the chant, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." When both extremists and normies use the saying it becomes hard to differentiate them. Another example is the Gadsden flag, on it's own there is nothing wrong with the flag with a deep historical heritage, but when the far right started using it as a symbol any rational centrist or leftist immediately stopped using it for fear of association. Back in school I had a friend who had the flag hanging on their wall, but around 2012 they specifically stated that they had taken it down because it had been co-opted by the far right.

I don't really like the use of the word colonizer in this context, it just doesn't fit right with me. The definition technically fits, but colonization to me is more like an invasive species moving in and slowly overwhelming the native population. This is more akin to what we were seeing with settlers moving into the West Bank.

What's going on in Gaza is more akin to straight up scorched earth takeover and land theft. Hell, calling it an invasion and genocide feels more accurate.

I never said I was ok with what Israel is doing, my argument was on the meaning of words. Leftists in general are really terrible about saying what they mean, because they don't seem to know the meaning of the words they use.

The cycle seems to go like this:

• make a statement
• realize the statement doesn't mean what they wanted to say
• double down and try to change the meaning of the words they used

I know I said we need to be clear in our language, but since we were talking about a "regime" from the beginning I didn't think I had to continuously spell it out throughout the discussion. Yes, we're talking about whatever regime is being referenced, but again the last guy said it wasn't Israel.

Regime Noun

a particular government or a system or method of government:

Your comparison between China and Israel is really terrible. If we're being super duper clear on what a regime is, it's the system of government. Israel is a parliamentary democracy, all citizens over the age of 18 can vote. Since the regime is democratically elected it's kinda hard to differentiate the Israeli people from their Regime. China on the other hand is a unitary one-party state, if you're not in the party and at the right level of the party then you don't have any voice. It's a lot easier to separate the people of China from their government.

Well that can't be what he thinks, I listed that as an option in my original response

Except this guy specifically said he hopes the current Israel is dismantled. At best they could be hoping that Israel changes into a better government, but I don’t think that’s their meaning.

But he clearly said

No where does that say dismantling Israel.

So what entity which has colonized Palestine for 76 years, but isn't the current Israel does he mean?

EDIT: Words have meaning, if the words you use don't mean what you mean, then admit that you used the wrong words and be more clear or else people must assume you mean what you say. Coming in after the OP and attributing meaning that they didn't give doesn't suddenly change what they said. A reminder, the original post was;

Hopefully this is a step toward dismantling the brutal apartheid regime that has colonised Palestine for 76 years."

that has colonised Palestine for 76 years.

So who are they talking about then?

The other part of it is none Americans on social media. For Europeans for example Biden looks center right for the most part. Then again Europeans have options further left.

My biggest beef with Europeans is the military spending discussion and immigration. Yeah, it would be nice if we cut military spending and used it to better our own society. Yeah, it would be nice to move to a country with affordable housing, public transportation, great education systems, etc.

Norway, Finland, and Belgium have great policies for their citizens, but combined have less than a million troops (active and reserve), spend less than $20 billion each year, and only let in 254k immigrant per year (50k Finland, 39k Norway, and 165k Belgium). In contrast the US has 2.6 million immigrants per year.

It's like NIMBY, pull the ladder up behind you, and leopards ate my face all had a threesome.

It's directly beneficial in the short term. The statement obviously needs some caveats like the world coming to an end as a result of Trump's reelection, but in general Trump policies are generally going to directly benefit the middle, upper middle, and upper class white people more than Biden's policies.

• DEI is good for society, but it doesn't add money to my pocket.

• Social Security is probably going to be gone by the time I can collect it, so cutting Social Security means I keep more money now.

• I don't have kids so cutting education funding or making it private would save me money.

• I have a job with great insurance, cutting medicare/medicaid would save me money.

• Global warming and emissions are a huge deal, but no truly meaningful progress is being made with Biden or the rest of the world. If you believe an apocalyptic scenario is the outcome of the current state of things, and we accept that that is inevitable, then why make things harder for myself now? It's like being in a burning house with one person running around with a glass of water and another guy getting out his lighter to light a joint.

Strictly speaking, if we take "everything is going to literally end" off the table as an outcome of a second Trump term then most likely his policies are going to be more directly beneficial to me.

Thankfully I don't feel this way, a rising tide lifts all ships, and we shouldn't look only to next quarter's profits. However, the far left shouldn't bark and bite at people helping advance their agenda for not doing it fast enough, it just alienates the altruistic people who want to help.

I've had this conversation with my SO. Technically speaking the best move for me as a white male would be to support Trump. Instead I vote for Democrats hoping for positive changes for all people. For most of my life I've thought I was "far left" for American standards, but since I've joined portions of Lemmy and Reddit you'd think I was a fucking Republican.

Certain portions of the left would rather spit in their own eye for unrealistic principles, even if it means that a worse alternative is the result.

This is known as a red herring fallacy, the fact that it fused her labia doesn't change the nature of the situation, nor does it increase the gravity of the situation.

"She placed the coffee cup between her knees and pulled the far side of the lid toward her to remove it. In the process, she spilled the entire cup of coffee on her lap. Liebeck was wearing cotton sweatpants, which absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin, scalding her thighs, buttocks and groin."

Additionanally:

"According to a 2007 report, McDonald's had not reduced the temperature of its coffee, serving it at 176–194 °F (80–90 °C), relying on more sternly worded warnings on cups made of rigid foam to avoid future injury and liability (though it continues to face lawsuits over hot coffee). However, in 2013 the New York Times reported that it had lowered its service temperature to 170–180 °F (77–82 °C). The Specialty Coffee Association of America supports improved packaging methods rather than lowering the temperature at which coffee is served. The association has successfully aided the defense of subsequent coffee burn cases. Similarly, as of 2004, Starbucks sells coffee at 175–185 °F (79–85 °C), and the executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America reported that the standard serving temperature is 160–185 °F (71–85 °C)."

So not only did it not change the temperature at which most major brands serve coffee, the temperature that was proposed as reasonable by the defense attorneys was also still hot enough to cause third degree burns. I get that she might want them to pay for damages, but she literally dumped it on herself, the reason she was so seriously hurt was because she was 79 years old. If you're buying hot coffee that's freshly brewed then it should be obvious it's hot enough to seriously burn you. If it's over 150 F then you will get major significant burns.

As to the idea that they had been warned:

"Other documents obtained from McDonald's showed that from 1982 to 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald's coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000."

McDonalds purportedly sells more than 50 million cups of coffee per year, over 10 years that was 500 million cups of coffee. 0.00014% is hardly a "warning."