All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Maine Starfish]

gryphon just did

"the health ministry aka Hamas"

[Gryphon]

gryphon just did

"the health ministry aka Hamas"

Yea hamas is the government of gaza and thus runs the health ministry

[Maine Starfish]

you can condemn Hamas all you want

but it's not helpful to conflate them with Palestinians, and it doesn't justify war crimes committed by Israel

[Gryphon]

Im not conflating Hamas with civilians, Im pointing out they run the health ministry because they are the government in gaza. That is a fact.

The evidence that this was a misfired rocket is increasing constantly and yet you are denying that

[thwhtGuardian]

you can condemn Hamas all you want

but it's not helpful to conflate them with Palestinians, and it doesn't justify war crimes committed by Israel

He's not, he's stating that the source of the information saying that it was Israel that shot the hospital was coming from Hamas...which is true.

The truth of the matter is that currently we simply do not know for sure, the Israeli government says they had no activities in the area and that their intelligence says the rocket came from a failed attack by Palestinian Islamic Jihad which is an ally of Hamas. And there is now footage that seems to corroborate that claim.

Whether it does or not I'm not sure. No one is, which was why I was surprised to see politicians just going with the early reports.

[Catlady in training]

Yeah, let's just take a breath and wait a bit. Right now, it looks like everyone is searching for information that confirms what they want to believe, regardless of how credible the source is.

[shooshoomanjoe]

IDF spokeman has stated it was PIJ rocket that misfired

https://twitter.com/NadavPollak/stat...65415508283727

I suppose when the news is coming from two terrorist factions fighting each other, none is to be trusted until a third, reliable party verifies the news.

[Tami]

Yeah, let's just take a breath and wait a bit. Right now, it looks like everyone is searching for information that confirms what they want to believe, regardless of how credible the source is.

Agreed.

Bottom line, no one is really sure of anything right now. So yeah, now is not a time to jump to conclusions.

[kidfresh512]

Jordan failure renews calls to give powers to McHenry

Rep. Jim Jordan’s first failed bid to secure the speakership has renewed calls for expanding the limited powers of Speaker Pro Temp Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.)

Jordan’s loss of 20 GOP votes – one more than former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in his first of 15 votes to secure the gavel – has left the GOP even more uncertain when it can reach consensus over who should lead the party. A second planned vote was abruptly postponed from Tuesday evening to Wednesday.

Many in the party are rallying behind efforts that would give McHenry more power to act as a temporary speaker, expanding a role otherwise appears to be largely dedicated to organizing the process of electing a new speaker.

Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-Fla.) – who has pledged to continue to vote for McCarthy for speaker – told reporters Tuesday that moves to further empower McHenry have gained momentum – “as they should.”

Looks like Jordan is going to have to blackmail a few members to at least vote present if he can't get a whole lot more to switch. Democrats fault or something though.

[Mister Mets]

I definitely hope the Palestinian people refrain from violence, but your second part? There's not a whole lot there to support the idea that the current Israeli government is all that interested in a peaceful and equitable solution. If they were interested in a real and lasting peace they would not have been pumping all kinds of money into new settlements in the land they occupy for all these years.

There is real injustice going on in Israel that has caused people to embrace violence against them, and the Israeli government has to show that they are interested in correcting those injustices if they are going to make people feel that violence isn't the answer.

This is one of the few situations where it's almost a both sides situation. Both sides have committed heinous attacks against each-other over the years, though the "almost" that I said before is that one party is in a significant position of power over the other so the fact that they've committed just as many wrongs against the other party tilts the balance a little bit towards the Palestinian side as to who is more wronged in my eyes.

I don't depend on the Israeli government to do the right thing for no reason. I think there would be significant international pressure if Palestine had a Democratic government roughly equivalent at least the level of the Glasgow city government, and if the people were cooperating with investigations into the war crimes committed by Hamas.

The people had a choice about whether to embrace violence, and their options are worse every time they do that. And that's necessary as a way to discourage violence.

We don't have good enough relations with Hamas to get them to listen, but we do with Israel

The second part sounds like what Russia is saying to Ukraine - it's your fault for what we do.

Somehow Hamas got the impression that it will be helpful to murder Israelis.

We do not have good relations with Hamas, but we should have okay relations with someone they listen to or someone who someone they listen to listens to, so it would help if anyone considered part of the civilized world were on the same page about whether Hamas is right.

I do think the Russia comparison is sensible. But Hamas is Russia in the metaphor. They made the decision to commit violence, and it wasn't due to any recent aggression, but due to a sense that they'll have less power in a few years (Hamas was afraid that Israel was making deals with Muslim countries; Putin was worried that a shift to renewable energy means that Russia will have less leverage going forward.)

As a general rule, we should communicate with Hamas and the people they listen to the same way we would communicate with Russia and the people they listen to.

I really hope this attack on the hospital was either an accident, or a false flag operation carried out by Hamas. Because if Israel deliberately targeted a hospital, it immediately erodes any support they had gained. Not to mention, there were reports on at least one of the people taken hostage being taken to a hospital in Gaza for treatment.

This approach seems to reward Hamas for its strategy of using their own civilians as shields.

[Maine Starfish]

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...f-dfffed240000

official statements from Netanyahu and his government shouldn't be trusted

[achilles]

Yeah, let's just take a breath and wait a bit. Right now, it looks like everyone is searching for information that confirms what they want to believe, regardless of how credible the source is.

Sounds like the best policy.

[numberthirty]

Yeah, let's just take a breath and wait a bit. Right now, it looks like everyone is searching for information that confirms what they want to believe, regardless of how credible the source is.

On the one hand?

Sure...

On the other hand?

It's not like folks cannot take a minute to ask themselves if Israel hitting a hospital, and seemingly only a hospital, is less likely than the possibility than that one of the groups on the other side of the equation made a serious mistake and is attempting to cover that mistake up.

[Jack Dracula]

She absolutely is an anti-Semite. She's made many comments about Jews with all the horrible stereotypes. There's no denying it. She's not the only member of The Squad that is anti-Semitic, either.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/11/polit...ash/index.html

As the article suggest, she frequently uses anti-Semtic tropes. And this is the Democrats berating her for the most part.

Per Vox:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...-semitism-jews

There are dozens of other articles from very different sorts of news organizations, all saying the same thing, she's very anti-Semetic in her attacks on Israel, using all the tropes she can, and then denying she knew what they meant.

I wonder why you guys are defending her so much...

Sure you want to?

I read the articles and have to say in all honesty that I think she came off as more anti-Israel than antisimetic.
I don’t think “tropes” is a good enough argument to label someone as an antisemite and I wonder if she was a blonde, blue-eyed Lutheran from Wisconsin rather than a black Muslim if people would immediately go there.

[BeastieRunner]

Hasn't the IDF hit a hospital before?