Israel And The Palestinians (now with added Iran/Lebanon)

[Melanius Mullarkey]

Pagers ffs.

 

[PWL]

So Mossad can arrange an operation of this complexity and magnitude, but were unable to spot 1,500 Hezbollah fighters gathering on the border......?

[Silvio Tattiescone]

The numbers of wounded seems to go up exponentially with every report. Dozens, hundreds then thousands. 

 

The injuries are quite bad because most of them carried them in their front pockets supposedly. 

 

eta

 

Edited Tuesday at 18:52 by Silvio Tattiescone

[Venti]

Must be unlucky if you have the pager in the inside breast pocket of a jacket.

[Freedom Farter]

[BFTD]

Quite astounding the places that Bibi and co have taken lessons from.

Hopefully they've not seen Resident Evil or Aliens.

[Dunning1874]

Even when nothing should surprise you about media coverage of Israel after the coverage of Gaza and the West Bank which amounts to complicity in their crimes, the outright glee coming from organisations like the BBC celebrating an Israeli tactical and strategic triumph is horrifying. We're talking about literally thousands of indiscriminate terrorist attacks on a civilian population here.

You'd think someone with a brain might want to stop and consider the consequences of it becoming a global norm that anyone directly or indirectly employed by a state actor can be described as part of the political entity running the state apparatus, and what happens when it isn't just Israel's enemies this total fallacy is deployed against. It's a fiction enabled by Western governments and media unquestioningly adopting the "Hamas-run health ministry" propaganda line to discredit the (undoubtedly now hugely underestimated) official death toll in Gaza, and it's taken us to the point that Lebanese healthcare workers and their children being blown up in their own homes apparently deserve it for working in "Hezbollah hospitals".

In the event that Britain was at war with another state and that state's intelligence service found a way to detonate British communications device en masse, then they claimed to have targeted everyone who works at GCHQ with explosions which went off when those employees were at home, in supermarkets, walking down busy streets or on buses and trains, maiming thousands and killing dozens of uninvolved civilians in the process, no one would be talking about the audacious tactical triumph on the part of the foreign state. They would be calling it a terrorist attack against the civilian population and a war crime, because that's what it is.

Now imagine it turned out those device explosions weren't actually aimed solely at GCHQ (an organisation actively taking a role on the conflict) at all because the foreign security services who tampered with those communication devices earlier in the supply chain before they entered the UK obviously couldn't control what the UK would use them for. Some of them were distributed to civil servants in entirely civilian roles, some of them to NHS staff, some of them to transport workers.

Is it fine that all of those public sector employees get blown up along with anyone who happens to be in their vicinity at the time, because they're employed by the British state currently at war, therefore they're clearly not just part of the war effort but active combatants who are legitimate targets? If you think Israel's actions here aren't a war crime, then your only logically consistent answer is yes.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

NOthing that comes from the BBC should surprise anyone anymore. Utter shit show of a "media" organisation.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Good tune, this

 

[Granny Danger]

This is sickening.  Yet western politicians will not utter a peep.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/20/middleeast/idf-investigating-soldiers-throwing-bodies-off-west-bank-roof-intl/index.html

[Freedom Farter]

15 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

Even when nothing should surprise you about media coverage of Israel after the coverage of Gaza and the West Bank which amounts to complicity in their crimes, the outright glee coming from organisations like the BBC celebrating an Israeli tactical and strategic triumph is horrifying. We're talking about literally thousands of indiscriminate terrorist attacks on a civilian population here.

You'd think someone with a brain might want to stop and consider the consequences of it becoming a global norm that anyone directly or indirectly employed by a state actor can be described as part of the political entity running the state apparatus, and what happens when it isn't just Israel's enemies this total fallacy is deployed against. It's a fiction enabled by Western governments and media unquestioningly adopting the "Hamas-run health ministry" propaganda line to discredit the (undoubtedly now hugely underestimated) official death toll in Gaza, and it's taken us to the point that Lebanese healthcare workers and their children being blown up in their own homes apparently deserve it for working in "Hezbollah hospitals".

In the event that Britain was at war with another state and that state's intelligence service found a way to detonate British communications device en masse, then they claimed to have targeted everyone who works at GCHQ with explosions which went off when those employees were at home, in supermarkets, walking down busy streets or on buses and trains, maiming thousands and killing dozens of uninvolved civilians in the process, no one would be talking about the audacious tactical triumph on the part of the foreign state. They would be calling it a terrorist attack against the civilian population and a war crime, because that's what it is.

Now imagine it turned out those device explosions weren't actually aimed solely at GCHQ (an organisation actively taking a role on the conflict) at all because the foreign security services who tampered with those communication devices earlier in the supply chain before they entered the UK obviously couldn't control what the UK would use them for. Some of them were distributed to civil servants in entirely civilian roles, some of them to NHS staff, some of them to transport workers.

Is it fine that all of those public sector employees get blown up along with anyone who happens to be in their vicinity at the time, because they're employed by the British state currently at war, therefore they're clearly not just part of the war effort but active combatants who are legitimate targets? If you think Israel's actions here aren't a war crime, then your only logically consistent answer is yes.

A further point, here is who was murdered in Israel last October by Gazan militants:

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social-security-data-reveals-true-picture-of-oct-7-deaths

The "71 foreigners" will've been foreign workers so adding them to the 695 Israeli citizens means a total of 766 civilians were murdered by Gazan militants. The rest of the slain were IDF, ie. combatants. So when folk cite the rounded up "1200" figure, they're including Israeli combatants.

To remain consistent those folk need to then apply the same standard to deaths in Lebanon. They must include slain Lebanese combatants (Hezbollah) in the figure for Lebanese victims. Yet they don't.

Edited Friday at 23:52 by Freedom Farter

[Black_and_White_Stripes]

On 20/09/2024 at 09:04, Dunning1874 said:

Even when nothing should surprise you about media coverage of Israel after the coverage of Gaza and the West Bank which amounts to complicity in their crimes, the outright glee coming from organisations like the BBC celebrating an Israeli tactical and strategic triumph is horrifying. We're talking about literally thousands of indiscriminate terrorist attacks on a civilian population here.

You'd think someone with a brain might want to stop and consider the consequences of it becoming a global norm that anyone directly or indirectly employed by a state actor can be described as part of the political entity running the state apparatus, and what happens when it isn't just Israel's enemies this total fallacy is deployed against. It's a fiction enabled by Western governments and media unquestioningly adopting the "Hamas-run health ministry" propaganda line to discredit the (undoubtedly now hugely underestimated) official death toll in Gaza, and it's taken us to the point that Lebanese healthcare workers and their children being blown up in their own homes apparently deserve it for working in "Hezbollah hospitals".

In the event that Britain was at war with another state and that state's intelligence service found a way to detonate British communications device en masse, then they claimed to have targeted everyone who works at GCHQ with explosions which went off when those employees were at home, in supermarkets, walking down busy streets or on buses and trains, maiming thousands and killing dozens of uninvolved civilians in the process, no one would be talking about the audacious tactical triumph on the part of the foreign state. They would be calling it a terrorist attack against the civilian population and a war crime, because that's what it is.

Now imagine it turned out those device explosions weren't actually aimed solely at GCHQ (an organisation actively taking a role on the conflict) at all because the foreign security services who tampered with those communication devices earlier in the supply chain before they entered the UK obviously couldn't control what the UK would use them for. Some of them were distributed to civil servants in entirely civilian roles, some of them to NHS staff, some of them to transport workers.

Is it fine that all of those public sector employees get blown up along with anyone who happens to be in their vicinity at the time, because they're employed by the British state currently at war, therefore they're clearly not just part of the war effort but active combatants who are legitimate targets? If you think Israel's actions here aren't a war crime, then your only logically consistent answer is yes.

I 100% agree with this. 

The West has essentially aided and abetted the Israelis for decades despite the atrocities committed by that state. Take the King David Hotel bombing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

Quote

Ninety-one people were killed, most of them being staff of the hotel or Secretariat: 21 were first-rank government officials, including under-secretary Robert Paus Platt, the most senior official among the victims, and seven assistant secretaries; 49 were second-rank clerks, typists and messengers, junior members of the Secretariat, employees of the hotel and canteen workers; 13 were soldiers; three policemen; and five were bystanders. By nationality, there were 41 Arabs, 28 British citizens, 17 Jews, two Armenians, one Russian, one Greek and one Egyptian. Forty-nine people were injured.^[8][9] 

Right from its inception, Israel can be described as a 'terrorist state' - it was literally created as a result of acts of terrorism. What I find truly remarkable is that the West has supported it despite this. Some of their tactics have been truly Machiavellian: 

In the 1950s, there was the Lavon Affair, though this didn't cause civilian deaths it was a false flag operation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair

Quote

As part of a false flag operation,^[1] a group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence to plant bombs inside Egyptian-, American-, and British-owned civilian targets: cinemas, libraries, and American educational centers.

 

They even have operatives who assimilate with the Arab populations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mista'arvim

Quote

Members of mista‘arvim units are specifically trained to assimilate among the Arab population and operate within Arab societies to accomplish their missions

There's a lot of speculation - and I want to emphasise that it amounts to 'conspiracy theories' or claims made by allegedly discredited authors (e.g. Viktor Ostrovsky) - that these operatives commit or organise 'false flag' attacks.

Are folk on here familiar with the USS Liberty incident? Imagine the reaction if any other country in the world sank a US ship!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

 

I am not a fan of Israel, at all, however @Nkomo-A-Gogo makes a valid point of sorts - Israel may be a terrorist state, but it is innovative, deceptive and has the chutzpah to attack its chief ally and get away with it! Consider how much military aid the US gives Israel. I think much of it has to be credited with (at least pre-internet) favourable media coverage and powerful lobby groups (AIPAC).

Look at how Netanyahu has previously been received in Washington:

 

[Black_and_White_Stripes]

I just had a look at the BBC News website and saw this:

 

Apparently three children were killed, but the headline focuses on the Hezbollah cammanders. Imagine if that was Russia, the headline would be the children. Just an observation. It's amazing how the media shapes the narrative.