Well...
Eurovision’s Songs of Shame
The uproar resulting from Israel's participation in Eurovision has ensured tonight's event will only be remembered as a failed attempt to whitewash its Gaza genocide.tribunemag.co.uk
[RD] War in Gaza: News Thread
- Thread starter Birdjaguar
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What is the point being made here? What relevance does any popular vote have to do with the quoted excerpt r.e. politics and Eurovision?
EnglishEdward
Deity
I suppose if we will be blaming it on the sort of east of the pond electoral college,
there is scope for pages and pages of fun debating the best voting arrangements.
My starter stances are:
(a) should be no rules on what they may sing about; and
(b) popular vote only, where voters have to pay ten euros in advance to vote.
New thread, mods ?
there is scope for pages and pages of fun debating the best voting arrangements.
My starter stances are:
(a) should be no rules on what they may sing about; and
(b) popular vote only, where voters have to pay ten euros in advance to vote.
New thread, mods ?
I'm pretty sure the link to the ongoing atrocities in Gaza will persist more in public memory than a passing popularity vote in a single set of Eurovision results.
EnglishEdward
Deity
They appear to have changed the rules:
And so I take particular delight in quoting the mirror !
www.mirror.co.uk
Perhaps this is bigly script FAKE NEWS.
And so I take particular delight in quoting the mirror !
Eurovision Song Contest sparks furious backlash over 2024 vote rule change
The 2024 Eurovision Song Contest has provoked controversy from viewers as the rules were dramatically changed in terms of voting - prompting an angry backlash from fans
www.mirror.co.uk
Perhaps this is bigly script FAKE NEWS.
pigswill
fly (one day)
The point is the attempt to legitimise Israel as a civilised democratic state despite their conduct in Gaza (edit: and the West Bank). Airbrushing war crimes with a pretty song.
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Klaus Hergersheimer
Prince
well, double dumb-ass on them then. I don't know why they had to ban Russia from the event. If someone shows talent and doesn't cause a ruckus, why wouldn't you let them participate? And if you don't want to hear what they have to say, well, there's the door...
Lexicus
Deity
This is complete nonsense. Israel's campaign in Gaza would probably have had to be stopped months ago if not for continued US supplies of aerial bombs and tank and artillery ammunition.
There has been much recent reporting on Israel's use of US-provided weapons in Gaza, e.g.
Gaza War Turns Spotlight on Long Pipeline of U.S. Weapons to Israel
President Biden sends arms to Israel under an Obama-era $38 billion aid agreement that runs until 2026. Israel’s purchases include the types of bombs dropped in Gaza.
And of course Biden finally admitted just a few days ago that Israel has used US-provided weapons to kill civilians in Gaza, in the context of him saying he would cut off weapons shipments if Israel invades Rafah.
No, we shouldn't. The Zionists have no right to govern one square inch of Palestine.
The dependence of Israel on the US, and its willingness to obey orders from Washington, has certainly been overstated at times. My post is not one of those times. The US should wash its hands of any participation whatsoever in Israel's crimes. Israel should be left to its own devices. Hamas and Hezbollah are both significantly less murderous than the Zionist regime has shown itself to be.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Israeli protesters block aid trucks destined for Gaza
Israeli protesters blocked aid trucks destined for Gaza on Monday, throwing food packages onto the road and ripping bags of grain open in the occupied West Bank.The lorries, which were set upon at the Tarqumiya checkpoint west of Hebron, came from Jordan and were headed to the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands of Palestinians face food and aid shortages.
The White House has condemned the attack, describing the "looting" of aid convoys as "a total outrage".
The group reportedly behind the protest said they were demonstrating against the continued detention of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Unverified footage shared on social media showed protesters toppling boxes from lorries onto the ground, and stomping on them once they'd fallen.
Some videos appeared to show vehicles being set on fire later in the evening. The BBC has not been able to independently verify these.
According to reports in Israeli media, the Tzav 9 activist group were responsible for organising the protest.
Israeli media reports describe it as a right-wing group which is seeking to halt humanitarian aid transfers into Gaza while Israeli hostages are held there.
One protester told AFP news agency she was at the checkpoint on Monday because she heard aid trucks were on "their way to the hands of the Hamas, who are trying to kill other soldiers and other Israeli citizens".
Hana Giat, 33, said "no food should go into Gaza" until Israeli hostages are returned "healthy and alive".
In a statement cited by the Jerusalem Post, Tzav 9 rejected some of the protesters' actions, saying that "acts were committed today that are not in line with the values of our movement."
It added, however, that "blocking the trucks is an effective and practical step in which we shout that 'no aid passes until the last of the hostages returns'".
Four protesters, including a minor, were arrested at the demonstration, according to a statement from their lawyers.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the protesters' behaviour was "completely and utterly unacceptable" and the White House was raising its concerns with "the highest level of the Israeli government."
The humanitarian situation in Gaza - the intended destination of the aid trucks - is a matter of grave concern among many in the international community.
The UN's World Food Programme has warned that Palestinians in northern Gaza are experiencing a "full-blown famine". While in the south, where most Palestinians have sought refuge, the humanitarian situation is worsening.
Israel has long maintained that it is committed to facilitating deliveries of humanitarian aid into and within Gaza and has accused Hamas of stealing the aid designated for civilians.
Monday's incident came on Israel's memorial day, as the country stopped to pay their respects to those who have lost their lives in war.
According to Israel's defence ministry, the names of 826 people from the security forces were added to the list of the country's fallen this year, alongside 834 victims of terrorist attacks.
Almost all of them were from the 7 October Hamas attacks, and the war that followed in Gaza.
Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to the group's attack on southern Israel last year, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 252 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 35,090 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
While the Israeli offensive has been focused on the Gaza Strip, tensions between Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank have heightened since the start of the war.
Around 700,000 Israelis live in 160 settlements alongside 2.7 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the settlement watchdog Peace Now.
Almost all of the international community regards the settlements as illegal, although Israel disputes this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg300jek94zo
This is one of those things that really shows up the myth of the "Israeli left" and "Israeli progressives" as a meaningful force that's meaningfully not supporting the occupation and attacks.
There's no Palestinian militants around, no scary armed conflict to get involved with. It's just fellow Israeli civilians trying to starve people in the name of genocidal nationalism. It shouldn't be "complex" for them to be trying to help this aid though - surely they would be out trying to stop this if they mattered and could offer any realistic vision of a democratic, secular and humane Israeli future.
Cloud_Strife
Deity
It's because israeli society fundamentally views those that aren't Jewish or white as intrinsically inferiority.
Unfortunately Palestinians aren't either, so they're treated like literal pests, to be done away with or put into concentration camps
Israel has learnt the wrong message from the holocaust; not that it's wrong but that they'd rather be the one's perpetrating it.
Unfortunately Palestinians aren't either, so they're treated like literal pests, to be done away with or put into concentration camps
Israel has learnt the wrong message from the holocaust; not that it's wrong but that they'd rather be the one's perpetrating it.
Dhoomstriker
Girlie Builder
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2006
- Messages
- 13,468
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/...ch-doctor-saw-in-gaza-as-israel-invaded-rafah
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May 9, 2024
Dr Zouhair Lahna has worked in conflict zones across the globe--Syria, Libya, Yemen, Uganda, and Ethiopia--but he has never seen anything like the Israeli war on Gaza.
In those life-threatening situations, the Moroccan French pelvic surgeon and obstetrician said, there was a route to safety for civilians.
on Tuesday, Israeli forces seized and closed Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt--the only escape for Palestinians from the war and the most important entry point for humanitarian aid.
“This is another injustice. ... It’s not human,” Lahna said ... from Cairo, Egypt, where he has been evacuated from the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis.
He laments having to leave his Palestinian colleagues behind.
“I am angry, troubled, upset ... because I left some people. They are my friends. I was with them, these doctors, these people. ... We eat together, we work together, and now I left them in trouble. They have to move their families, look for a tent, look for water, for food,” he said.
Lahna has spent months volunteering in Gaza’s hospitals as part of missions organised by the Palestinian Doctors Association in Europe (PalMed Europe) and US-based Rahma International.
On the morning that displaced Palestinians in eastern Rafah were ordered to evacuate and before Israeli tanks rolled in, Lahna and his foreign colleagues received text messages from the Israeli army.
“The Israeli army, they know everything. They know everyone who is in Gaza and how to reach them. They told us to leave.”
As they were departing, leaflets from the Israeli military printed with the evacuation order fell from the sky along with missiles from Israeli warplanes.
Before the European Hospital, Lahna and his team volunteered at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza’s northern city of Beit Lahiya. He is among the few foreign doctors to have travelled to the area.
They worked there for a week, the longest Israeli authorities permitted them to be there, he said.
There, the situation was even more dire, the doctor said, exacerbated by what the World Food Programme says is a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza.
He is sure all of Rafah will soon be occupied by Israeli forces, which will be deadly for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians there, he said.
“This world is blind,” Lahna said, dismayed that the Rafah incursion is likely to continue to occur despite warnings from the international community, which has not been able to stop Israel from committing mass atrocities, he said.
“Human rights is a joke. The United Nations is a big joke,” Lahna added.
He believes the war is as much a United States conflict as it is Israeli with the US approving an additional $17bn in aid to its top Middle East ally last month.
Asked if he is worried about being arrested, tortured, or killed for his work in the enclave, the surgeon barely bats an eye.
He said his time to die will come one day or another and if it happens while helping the vulnerable in Gaza, then that will be the time meant for him to depart.
“I am not more precious than Palestinian people,” Lahna said. “I am a humanitarian doctor. I work. I help people. [We] doctors come in for peace. We don’t come in for war.”
----------
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/...bs-us-complicity-in-genocide-remains-ironclad
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May 9, 2024
Biden administration’s decision to hold up delivery of 3,500 bombs hardly constitutes a betrayal of [Israel]
Rafah [is] the city in southern Gaza where an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians, including more than 600,000 children, are currently sheltering. The majority of these people were forced to flee to Rafah from other parts of Gaza, in keeping with Israel’s modus operandi of making Palestinians refugees over and over again.
And while Rafah has hardly been spared the terror and slaughter that have characterised the past seven months of Israeli operations in the coastal enclave as a whole, the threat of a full-scale assault on a mass of trapped civilians in the city has made even the global superpower--Israel’s devoted BFF--a bit squeamish.
Of course, given that the US has been actively abetting genocide and famine in Gaza for well over half a year with all manner of munitions and money, it’s not exactly clear why the case of Rafah should suddenly elicit such imperial concern. But, hey, it’s potentially good PR.
In a May 6 news briefing, for example, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby flat-out refused to confirm whether or not the reports were correct, instead announcing: “All I can tell you is that ... our support for Israel’s security remains ironclad. And I’m not going to get into the specifics of--of one shipment over another.”
For starters, Secretary Austin emphasised during his Senate subcommittee appearance that the paused weapons shipment will not affect the $26bn in supplemental aid to Israel that the US Congress approved in April. This is on top of the various billions of dollars already provided annually to Israel by the US--most of which money, the Council on Foreign Relations notes, “is provided as grants under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, funds that Israel must use to purchase U.S. military equipment and services.”
Nor will the suspension impact the additional $827m worth of military goodies that the Biden administration has just authorised for Israel.
In other words, it is mostly business as usual--kind of the equivalent of giving somebody hundreds of dollars on a daily basis and then making a show of withholding five cents.
According to the US Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, the US government is obligated to “prevent ... arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law”. And yet, what is US foreign policy itself if not one big violation of all of that?
----------
----------
May 9, 2024
Dr Zouhair Lahna has worked in conflict zones across the globe--Syria, Libya, Yemen, Uganda, and Ethiopia--but he has never seen anything like the Israeli war on Gaza.
In those life-threatening situations, the Moroccan French pelvic surgeon and obstetrician said, there was a route to safety for civilians.
on Tuesday, Israeli forces seized and closed Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt--the only escape for Palestinians from the war and the most important entry point for humanitarian aid.
“This is another injustice. ... It’s not human,” Lahna said ... from Cairo, Egypt, where he has been evacuated from the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis.
He laments having to leave his Palestinian colleagues behind.
“I am angry, troubled, upset ... because I left some people. They are my friends. I was with them, these doctors, these people. ... We eat together, we work together, and now I left them in trouble. They have to move their families, look for a tent, look for water, for food,” he said.
Lahna has spent months volunteering in Gaza’s hospitals as part of missions organised by the Palestinian Doctors Association in Europe (PalMed Europe) and US-based Rahma International.
On the morning that displaced Palestinians in eastern Rafah were ordered to evacuate and before Israeli tanks rolled in, Lahna and his foreign colleagues received text messages from the Israeli army.
“The Israeli army, they know everything. They know everyone who is in Gaza and how to reach them. They told us to leave.”
As they were departing, leaflets from the Israeli military printed with the evacuation order fell from the sky along with missiles from Israeli warplanes.
Before the European Hospital, Lahna and his team volunteered at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza’s northern city of Beit Lahiya. He is among the few foreign doctors to have travelled to the area.
They worked there for a week, the longest Israeli authorities permitted them to be there, he said.
There, the situation was even more dire, the doctor said, exacerbated by what the World Food Programme says is a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza.
He is sure all of Rafah will soon be occupied by Israeli forces, which will be deadly for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians there, he said.
“This world is blind,” Lahna said, dismayed that the Rafah incursion is likely to continue to occur despite warnings from the international community, which has not been able to stop Israel from committing mass atrocities, he said.
“Human rights is a joke. The United Nations is a big joke,” Lahna added.
He believes the war is as much a United States conflict as it is Israeli with the US approving an additional $17bn in aid to its top Middle East ally last month.
Asked if he is worried about being arrested, tortured, or killed for his work in the enclave, the surgeon barely bats an eye.
He said his time to die will come one day or another and if it happens while helping the vulnerable in Gaza, then that will be the time meant for him to depart.
“I am not more precious than Palestinian people,” Lahna said. “I am a humanitarian doctor. I work. I help people. [We] doctors come in for peace. We don’t come in for war.”
----------
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/...bs-us-complicity-in-genocide-remains-ironclad
----------
May 9, 2024
Biden administration’s decision to hold up delivery of 3,500 bombs hardly constitutes a betrayal of [Israel]
Rafah [is] the city in southern Gaza where an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians, including more than 600,000 children, are currently sheltering. The majority of these people were forced to flee to Rafah from other parts of Gaza, in keeping with Israel’s modus operandi of making Palestinians refugees over and over again.
And while Rafah has hardly been spared the terror and slaughter that have characterised the past seven months of Israeli operations in the coastal enclave as a whole, the threat of a full-scale assault on a mass of trapped civilians in the city has made even the global superpower--Israel’s devoted BFF--a bit squeamish.
Of course, given that the US has been actively abetting genocide and famine in Gaza for well over half a year with all manner of munitions and money, it’s not exactly clear why the case of Rafah should suddenly elicit such imperial concern. But, hey, it’s potentially good PR.
In a May 6 news briefing, for example, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby flat-out refused to confirm whether or not the reports were correct, instead announcing: “All I can tell you is that ... our support for Israel’s security remains ironclad. And I’m not going to get into the specifics of--of one shipment over another.”
For starters, Secretary Austin emphasised during his Senate subcommittee appearance that the paused weapons shipment will not affect the $26bn in supplemental aid to Israel that the US Congress approved in April. This is on top of the various billions of dollars already provided annually to Israel by the US--most of which money, the Council on Foreign Relations notes, “is provided as grants under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, funds that Israel must use to purchase U.S. military equipment and services.”
Nor will the suspension impact the additional $827m worth of military goodies that the Biden administration has just authorised for Israel.
In other words, it is mostly business as usual--kind of the equivalent of giving somebody hundreds of dollars on a daily basis and then making a show of withholding five cents.
According to the US Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, the US government is obligated to “prevent ... arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law”. And yet, what is US foreign policy itself if not one big violation of all of that?
----------
Last edited:
Bonyduck Campersang
Deity
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- Dec 11, 2022
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- 3,140
That's some real 'oh, so you're against animal cruelty? You know who else was against animal cruelty?' hocky right there
Bonyduck Campersang
Deity
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2022
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- 3,140
Israel War on Gaza | Live updates | Today's latest from Al Jazeera
Israeli military says it is continuing to operate with extreme force in Jabalia city, Jabalia refugee camp, vicinity.
Klaus Hergersheimer
Prince
This was from the politics thread.
Anyway.
Now if someone said "Israel treats Palestinians like trash" and so on, I don't have a problem with that opinion on the surface level. One can have that argument.
It's when one gets into the more legalese stuff like assertions of genocide and other Holocaust similes (e.g. actual crimes which require a prosecutorial response), without the extraordinary evidence to match it beyond "I don't like this thing", that I tend to think those folks are merely adopting the lines of Israel's enemies (Hamas, Iran) as fact. I guess because they think or hope Hamas will win (in the political sphere at least) and thus want to be on that side to toot their own horns or something. But as Hygro implied elsewhere, that's not really a side a liberal-minded person should want to be on.
So in sum, one can hamstring Israel's efforts and make it more accountable, without calling for its dissolving (edit: or at least isolated into such, as B.D.S. would have it) as a nation as its enemies would have us do since 1948 anyway.
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I'm not as convinced that this is true, however... I also reject the notion that "Israel would have smashed Gaza anyway" absolves the US of responsibility... just like I similarly reject the notion that "any hypothetical Israeli administration would be hardline/hostile/oppressive towards Gaza/Palestinians" absolves Netanyahu of individual blameworthiness for the state of the current invasion.
Also, while "the US" certainly includes Biden, since he is the current POTUS, the US policy of supplying Israel has been ongoing... Biden didn't start it, so he gets individual blame, but the US in general also gets a share of blame independent from anything Biden did or is failing to do. The flipside of that, is that if Biden is to be assigned blame, he should also get credit for the current stance he is taking (ie delaying/halting) some weapons shipments to pressure Israel. The Israeli government is railing against his actions, as are the Republicans (and some Democrats) so there is certainly a non-negligible impact, even if it is just optics/political.There has been much recent reporting on Israel's use of US-provided weapons in Gaza, e.g.
Gaza War Turns Spotlight on Long Pipeline of U.S. Weapons to Israel
President Biden sends arms to Israel under an Obama-era $38 billion aid agreement that runs until 2026. Israel’s purchases include the types of bombs dropped in Gaza.www.nytimes.com
And of course Biden finally admitted just a few days ago that Israel has used US-provided weapons to kill civilians in Gaza, in the context of him saying he would cut off weapons shipments if Israel invades Rafah.
No, we shouldn't. The Zionists have no right to govern one square inch of Palestine.
The dependence of Israel on the US, and its willingness to obey orders from Washington, has certainly been overstated at times. My post is not one of those times. The US should wash its hands of any participation whatsoever in Israel's crimes. Israel should be left to its own devices. Hamas and Hezbollah are both significantly less murderous than the Zionist regime has shown itself to be.
I will admit that I am pretty cynical about Biden holding back the weapons (as well as skeptical he will actually follow through/maintain this position)... ie I think he is only doing it in response to political pressure from Democratic constituents... his advisors are telling him that he needs to appease the folks who are potential Democratic voters who are/were part of the #abandonBiden movement in Michigan, specifically and voters who feel similar. The catch on that, is that I suspect that if those same folks (who are threatening to not vote for Biden, primarily on Gaza-related grounds) are perceived by the Biden campaign team as being unpersuaded/unpersuadable on the issue by Biden's overtures, they will advise Biden to cut his losses and return to staunch support of Israel's invasion, in order to keep the pro-Israeli-invasion voters from switching to Trump (who would most likely support invasion and increased hostility towards Palestine).
Lexicus
Deity
It's difficult to assess the exact degree of Israeli dependence on US munitions because they obviously don't want to broadcast the numbers publicly. But my guess is that at the very least without US supplies Israel would have had to run a much lower-intensity campaign.
So your argument here is that the International Court of Justice is "adopting the line of Israel's enemies as fact"?
Lexicus
Deity
What do you think happened in Palestine in 1948 exactly?
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