Israel

[Irrev-Black]

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 10 (Reuters) - A child is killed on average every 10 minutes in the Gaza Strip, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the United Nations Security Council on Friday, warning: "Nowhere and no one is safe."

He said that half of Gaza's 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary healthcare centers were not functioning and those that were operating were way beyond their capacities, describing the healthcare system as being "on its knees."

"Hospital corridors crammed with the injured, the sick, the dying. Morgues overflowing. Surgery without anesthesia. Tens of thousands of displaced people sheltering at hospitals," Tedros told the 15-member council.

Israel has vowed to wipe out Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, after an Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel in which it says the militants killed around 1,200 people and took more than 240 hostages. Israel has struck Gaza - an enclave of 2.3 million people - from the air, imposed a siege and launched a ground invasion.

"On average, a child is killed every 10 minutes in Gaza," Tedros said.

Since Oct. 7, the WHO has verified more than 250 attacks on healthcare in Gaza and the West Bank, while there had been 25 attacks on healthcare in Israel, Tedros said. Israel says Hamas hides weapons in tunnels under hospitals, charges Hamas denies.

While the truth of the hospital thing is disputed, the toll is all too real.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-ea ... 023-11-10/

[Irrev-Black]

And observers draw their own inferences...

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This is part of the reason sources are important in clear communication.

[joele]

Decent article, I think, from the Australian Jewish perspective. I wanted to quote the whole article, lol, but selected a few paragraphs. The whole article was a really thoughtful and well articulated read, IMHO.

In recent weeks I have had to hear chants of “Gas the Jews” in my own city — outside one of my favourite concert halls in the world no less, where my own grandmother heard me perform a Mozart concerto when I was nine years old. I have not even been allowed to grieve the faces of the dead because of the threat of what was coming in response to the atrocities of 7 October from a corrupt right-wing government that purports to speak for me and other Jews. I have been berated for suffering in the “wrong way”, using history as the only anchor that I and many others have.

I have to see the faces of innocent Palestinian children smeared with ash and soot from a relentless bombing campaign, and I have to see the charred corpses of Israelis, men, women, and children, slaughtered because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have to read details of unspeakable tortures inflicted on women and children and, in the very same hour, read blanket denials of these very tortures — not, as might be expected, from right-wing conspiracists but from a loud minority of people on the far-left. I have to see the blankness and rage smeared across the faces of thousands of Gazans who had nothing to do with the original outrage, but had their homes and entire families destroyed all the same — thousands of their children blown to dust, their infrastructure pulverised, their food and water supplies cut off, even as “freedom fighters” purporting to represent them hoard billions of dollars in wealth elsewhere. I have had to read of an Islamic preacher in my own city who openly called for Jews to be killed, while in America a US congresswoman has called for all Palestinians to be killed. I have even had to read a few instances of academics with large followings arguing that those attacked by Hamas, including babies, were not “civilians” at all.

How on earth did we get here?

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/simon-t ... /103096210

[Irrev-Black]

Standard Disclaimer: I support neither Hamas nor the Israeli Government. Put me down as "Supports Non-Combatants".

I'm reporting this as it helps disambiguate some of the errors-by-conflation that people commonly make.

John Oliver excoriated Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) for his “disgusting” assertion that there are “very few innocent Palestinians” in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

In a House floor speech earlier this month, Mast criticized “the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians” and said: “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II.”

Oliver delivered a sharp takedown on “Last Week Tonight” Sunday.

“There are absolutely innocent Palestinian civilians,” he said. “In the same way there are Floridians who aren’t brain-dead bigots with a penis for a head. A region’s worst does not represent them.”

More than 11,100 Palestinians, many of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli attacks since the Hamas incursion on Oct. 7, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel declared war after Hamas militants killed at least 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages back to Gaza.

Human rights experts have accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and called for Israel to cease its relentless bombardment of the densely populated Palestinian enclave as the civilian death toll continues to skyrocket and the humanitarian crisis deepens.

Oliver also criticized “dipshits” on Fox News and Newsmax for suggesting Hamas represents the people of Gaza because it won the region’s last election in 2006.

“Look, it is true that Gazans did at one point elect Hamas,” Oliver said. “But if you think that makes them all complicit in war crimes their government commits, then boy, do I have bad news for you about decades of U.S. foreign policy.”

He also noted that there were also “huge asterisks” on “Gazans electing Hamas,” considering the election was nearly 17 years ago, when much of Gaza’s population — which is nearly 50% children — had not even been born, as well as multiple other factors that were at play.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-oli ... 9500aaeebb

[stylofone]

I thought the report on ABC 7pm news about the work of an ambulance driver in Gaza was very powerful. They've also put it on facebook and youtube. I have a thick skin, but a first-hand account can still get under it.

[Irrev-Black]

Did a certain government release a video of a Very Neat Arrangement of Very New Equipment laid out in a hospital, despite the firearm to ammo ratio being suspicious, and then suddenly withdraw the video?

It almost makes me suspect the truth isn't being told.

[stylofone]

Did a certain government release a video of a Very Neat Arrangement of Very New Equipment laid out in a hospital, despite the firearm to ammo ratio being suspicious, and then suddenly withdraw the video?

It almost makes me suspect the truth isn't being told.

Fairly often you'll hear reporters give some information or show some video and say "the claims/pictures couldn't be independently verified, but according to XYZ this is what happened". In this war that phrase probably needs to be inserted after just about every sentence. They haven't been doing it because it would make it impossible to tell a story in a way that makes you look like you have enough of a clue about what's going on, and if you are making a big name news show you really want to give that impression.

The ambulance driver story I lauded yesterday had a postscript - the ABC just apologised, saying somehow some of the footage used was from a different crisis at an Egyptian hospital 10 years ago. It's not a good look.

[Irrev-Black]

Poped.

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[stylofone]

I think Zoe Daniel's response showed good awareness of the culture war issues which are damaging and dangerous. People like me don't have a personal connection to the conflict, no relatives or friends in Israel or Gaza. The closest I have is former work colleagues, neighbours etc. who are Jewish, Muslim, Arabic (including Christians) or, in one notable case Palestinian. They were all, without exception, moderate and humane people. And even if I did know someone in that position who let slip some opinion which was, for want of a better word, intemperate, surely it's better to keep things mellow, and if you can, stay with them and look for ways to keep them on the path to peace. The most prominent person pouring petrol on this fire, in my mind, is Peter Dutton, he is disgusting.

Speaking about a pro-Palestine rally that gathered near a synagogue in her electorate after Burgertory’s Caulfield store was severely damaged in a blaze last Friday morning, Daniel said:

The level of anxiety and tension in our communities right now I think is at an unprecedented level.

That protest happened at a time when people were actually about – there were people in the synagogue.

So to have that unfolding on our streets was really terrifying for people in my community, the grief and the pain is not only in the Jewish community in Australia, obviously, Palestinian communities and Muslim communities are feeling that grief and pain as well. What that creates is this real tinderbox of potential despair, overflowing into hatred and anger.

If you call for a ceasefire, you’re letting down the Jewish community, if you don’t you’re allowing death and destruction to happen in Gaza.

She continues:

At the end of the day, if I say to you right now, yes, I support ceasefire, that will make zero difference to what is happening in in Gaza.

I’m a former foreign correspondent. I know the logistics of this, of course, a ceasefire is where we need to get to, but you have a terrorist organisation in the middle of this. If there’s just a ceasefire, and there’s no capacity there to try to dismantle Hamas, does that allow Hamas to regroup? What does that actually lead to? That said, I’ve said to you before, very clearly, and I still stick to the position that the Israeli government has to adhere to international law and the rules of war, and I think, in some ways, has not been.

The above is from teh Guardian live feed:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... r-rosmarin

[wadaye]

MOD NOTE: This poster was warned about providing sources for their claims. Readers are advised to fact-check.



Just to explain my absence from this forum for some time and perhaps indefinitely, that I believe that there is a special case going on here where anecdotes in favour of israel, claimed anti--semitism, personal fears, can be made but different standards are applied to expressions against the genocide of Palestinians by the Isrealis.