All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[Tendrin]

[QUOTE=sunofdarkchild;3664357]Hamas Gaza Chief Yahwa Sinwar: “The March of Return will continue… until we remove this transient border.” The protests “mark the beginning of a new phase in the Palestinian national struggle on the road to liberation and ‘return’… Our people can’t give up one inch of the land of Palestine.”

Hamas published maps detailing the shortest routes to the nearest Israeli towns once they broke through the border. The kites that were sent with firebombs attached to them also had swastikas painted on them.[\quote]

Sourcing on the latter claim? hamas is full of jerks but I haven't seen that one before in latest reference.

For better or worse, defending the border from violent attack is very different from a normal protest or a peaceful demonstration. Any civilians who were killed should have their deaths investigated. But until proof beyond shock over sheer numbers is presented being better armed does not negate one;s right to self-defense.

I don't blame individual soldiers for doing what they have to do to get through a day. if they're being approached with violent intent, they've already been left with very few options. Most of the blame lays on the hands of an Israelis government that's done little to improve conditions in Gaza, permits continual inflammatory expansion of settlements, and is comitted to the idea of Greater Israel as a matter of policy and now the USA embassy.

When your self defense becomes the abject oppression of another people, who are now confined to living in the densest population centers in the world, you don't get to tell them to suffer and die quietly. People like to lay the blame entirely on the Palestinians, far easier to do than to acknowledge that Israel's geopolitical and social interests play a pretty big role as well.

There is also a decent article on the matter in Haaretz though I can't link it at the moment.

[sunofdarkchild]

[QUOTE=Tendrin;3664388]

Hamas Gaza Chief Yahwa Sinwar: “The March of Return will continue… until we remove this transient border.” The protests “mark the beginning of a new phase in the Palestinian national struggle on the road to liberation and ‘return’… Our people can’t give up one inch of the land of Palestine.”

Hamas published maps detailing the shortest routes to the nearest Israeli towns once they broke through the border. The kites that were sent with firebombs attached to them also had swastikas painted on them.[\quote]

Sourcing on the latter claim? hamas is full of jerks but I haven't seen that one before in latest reference.



I don't blame individual soldiers for doing what they have to do to get through a day. if they're being approached with violent intent, they've already been left with very few options. Most of the blame lays on the hands of an Israelis government that's done little to improve conditions in Gaza, permits continual inflammatory expansion of settlements, and is comitted to the idea of Greater Israel as a matter of policy and now the USA embassy.

When your self defense becomes the abject oppression of another people, who are now confined to living in the densest population centers in the world, you don't get to tell them to suffer and die quietly. People like to lay the blame entirely on the Palestinians, far easier to do than to acknowledge that Israel's geopolitical and social interests play a pretty big role as well.

There is also a decent article on the matter in Haaretz though I can't link it at the moment.

Gaza would not be suffering at all if its leaders did not decide to attack Israel instead of building up their economy in peace. They had 2 years before Israel and Egypt imposed a partial blockade as a result of the Hamas takeover, during which many thousands of rockets were fired at Israel. Thousands of tons of humanitarian aid enter the Gaza Strip from every week despite Hamas and Israel being officially at war. Much of it, including nearly all of the cement that has been sent to Gaza, is stolen by Hamas to use in its war efforts, particularly the construction of tunnels under the border. Some estimates put the amount of cement steals at 95% of all cement that enters Gaza. If Hamas wasn't stealing humanitarian aid, life in Gaza would be much better.

In addition, Hamas members have attacked the crossing used to deliver the majority of that aid to Gaza 3 times in the last week, deliberately setting fire to the gas pipelines that provide Gaza with fuel. Who tries to damage the very conduit by which their people receive humanitarian aid?

And while acknowledging that there is a lot of hardship and poverty in Gaza, the situation is not as dire as the headlines would make it seem. There is in fact a lot of wide open space in Gaza, and there are such things as shopping malls, luxury resorts and hotels, and the people are not on the brink of starvation. Things are bad, but somehow Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza actually have one of the lowest death rates in the world as well as lower infant mortality rates and higher life expectancies than many of the surrounding Arab and Muslim countries like Jordan and Turkey.

The problem in Gaza is Hamas. It failed as a government because it was never interested in building a government except as a means to wage war on Israel.

As for the source for the map, https://twitter.com/LTCJonathan/stat...29800048447489

There's also this which was taken from the Hamas Facebook page. http://s22592.pcdn.co/wp-content/upl..._Facebook.jpeg

[Michael Watkins]

So tired of the propaganda

[Dalak]

So tired of the propaganda

You and me both, "And we're not the only ones."

(Yes I paraphrased John Lennon )

[Tazirai]

Hamas continues to get the PR it wants at the cost of Palestinian lives.


As far as the WH apology, the media continuing with the story after it is clear the WH is not apologizing (Sadler did) will only hurt the media's perception. We have bigger issues.

We don't believe he Hamas Lies anymore. Keep trying though.

[Tazirai]

The hell we do. We're talking about a horrible insult of not just a decorated war hero his displayed a hundred times more courage than Trump will ever know, but someone fighting cancer to boot. Having lost a loved one (my mother) to that disease, for Senator McCain to have been heartlessly disparaged like he had been by that miserable bitch angers me no end. This is a matter of basic human decency that been trampled by this White House, and it can't be allowed to be swept under the rug because we have so-called "bigger issues".

Not only that, the dude was LITERALLY tortured, and when given an out because of who he was, he stayed, and got tortured more. I'm not the biggest McCain fan, but as one human to another, that was uncalled for.

[sunofdarkchild]

Trump's treatment of McCain has been abominable.

[Tazirai]

Hamas is gonna do what Hamas is gonna do. Clearly, Israel needs to get better at not giving them these PR victories or something.

Neverminding, of course, that none of this would be happening were it not for the intentionally provocative act of moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, a move spearheaded by a particularly strange and toxic alliance of the American far right and the Israeli far right.

Exactly. Every President since they created Israel has decided NOT to move the Embassy, even though they contemplated it, Trump is the only one dumb enough to do it.

[InformationGeek]

Well, there you go. North Korea cancels talks with South Korea.

North Korea has cancelled high-level talks with South Korea because of anger over military exercises, state media reports.

The North's official KCNA news agency said the exercises between the US and the South were a "provocation".

It also warned the US over the fate of the historic summit between Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump that is scheduled for 12 June.

[ZombieHavoc]

Good thing Trump already got like 12 Nobel Peace Prizes.

[kidfresh512]

Well, there you go. North Korea cancels talks with South Korea.

How fast can Jared get over there and salvage this? Mid East is peaceful now right?

[ZombieHavoc]

Also, what are the odds that instead of just saying, "Well, we tried", Trump berates NK in a bunch of tweets again, which is the now normal US policy...

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Also, what are the odds that instead of just saying, "Well, we tried", Trump berates NK in a bunch of tweets again, which is the now normal US policy...

I’d say the chances are pretty damn excellent. Trump will be back to calling Kim “Rocket Man” and any other juvenile insults he can come up with.

[Dalak]

I’d say the chances are pretty damn excellent. Trump will be back to calling Kim “Rocket Man” and any other juvenile insults he can come up with.

Agreed, I just wonder what will be said when he whizzes this peace process down his leg to defend him. While it will be amusing it will also be mightly depressing to see the lengths of illogic I suspect will be reached.

[Iron Maiden]

I’d say the chances are pretty damn excellent. Trump will be back to calling Kim “Rocket Man” and any other juvenile insults he can come up with.

I smell a set up. I want to know if the drills with over 100 F-15s and B-52 was already planned or was this just something they did all of a sudden. What if the military did it deliberately knowing that it would anger Kim Jong-un and that way the talks would be off. I wouldn't trust Trump as a negotiator if I were the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He's liable to say anything.