[RD] War in Gaza: News Thread

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Absolute nonsense. Israeli troops invaded Gaza on a large scale in 2008-09, 2012, and 2014. Israeli military assets like drones have routinely operated inside the Strip or above it. Maintaining a siege of Gaza is also an act of war in itself (or would be if Gaza were an independent state, which it is not really).

Then why not hit those?

While we're on the subject of analogies, are the families of prison guards fair game for the rioting inmates?

 

[Gorbles]

While we're on the subject of analogies, are the families of prison guards fair game for the rioting inmates?

Nobody said any families were fair game. If you want to try your hand at an analogy, at least put the baseline of effort required to not make straw out of other peoples' positions

Like, I get it. The dissonance of maintaining inconsistent positions on occupational violence necessitate associating anyone with a different position to you as some kind of a defender of Hamas. But my understanding of that dissonance doesn't excuse your reliance on it!

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Nobody said any families were fair game.

Did I say that?

 

[Lexicus]

Then why not hit those?

They did, as I've pointed out repeatedly. The October 7th attacks targeted many Israeli military assets in the Gaza envelope including the key Israeli fortifications at the Eretz crossing on Gaza's nothern border. It has been framed in the western media purely as an attack on civilians as part of the propaganda justifying and inciting the genocidal response.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

But an attack on civilians nonetheless

 

[Gorbles]

Did I say that?

You asked that.

 

[innonimatu]

Why is Israel allowed to try and shut down our speech?

My favorite part of this whole thing is the idea that "we don't allow hateful violent speech in America"... wtf? There are Neo-nazi type rallies held around the US almost weekly. They are pathetic and stupid, but they are held, and I defend the right for those chuds to look pathetic and stupid. The reality (beyond the fact that the US has a long friendly history with nazi types) is that this protest threatens the empire's will... and thus it must be crushed, very similar to the Vietnam ones... Let's see if they are willing to shoot some of these kids over the next few days... The rhetoric for shooting them is ubiquitous now.

It isn't Israel that is shutting down speech. It's your country's government. The Biden administration is following the same playbook saint Obama used against Occupy Wall Street. They're surely coordinating the use of police to intimidate and attempt to supress demonstrations. They still think Israel is salvagable and will continue to have use value.

Israel exists at the US's pleasure. It isn't, and never was, the other way around. They have some influence sure, but they're more tools than manipulators. A colonial plantation to destabilize the Middle East, a strategy taken over from the UK, as so much of the US's imperial strategy post WW2.

 

[ConquestsMaster]

An article highlighting the absurdly high civilian death toll caused by Israel in Gaza, and the impact it has on a Palestinian American family in New Jersey. Almost 200 dead relatives... Their definition of relative might be generous, but still, to lose so many people you know is insane.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/us/palestinian-family-gaza-war-death.html

‘It’s Just Agony’: A Suburban Family Mourns Nearly 200 Gaza Relatives​

Adam and Ola Abo Sheriah absorb a loss few of their friends and neighbors in New Jersey can imagine, and scramble to help surviving family members in Gaza while trying to get their kids to school on time.

The call came in around 4 p.m., while Adam Abo Sheriah was still at work in his pharmacy in New Jersey. The voice on the other end was sobbing.
It took a few minutes for Adam to understand: His uncle’s home in Gaza City had been hit by Israeli airstrikes. His parents and his brother’s wife and children were inside, taking shelter after their own homes were bombed. Also struck nearby was a block of multifamily buildings in a neighborhood of Gaza City, home to many relatives and their families, who were hunkered down together.

It was the day before Thanksgiving, and Adam’s pharmacy in Paterson was packed with customers, some of them picking up turkeys he was giving away. But Adam couldn’t stay. After the call, he walked out in a daze. His mind swirling with questions, he got in his car and started driving nowhere in particular.

While on the road, he picked up his phone and started calling his family in Gaza. His father didn’t answer. Neither did his mother. He tried his brothers. Nothing. He tried every relative and friend in Gaza.

Over the next eight hours, his frantic calls continued, but few details emerged. Soon it was midnight in New Jersey. The sun was just rising in Gaza. Reports were finally starting to come in. His family’s Gaza home was flattened, the whole block was gone. Voices beneath the rubble cried for help, he was told. But there was no way to dig them out. Eventually, the voices fell silent. Adam’s youngest brother, Ahmed, 37, the ambitious, energetic civil engineer, the children’s favorite who brought toys and fireworks, was found dead in the street.

In the six months since the start of the war in Gaza, Adam and his wife, Ola, have suffered losses on a scale their friends and neighbors in New Jersey can scarcely imagine: In Adam’s family alone, his surviving relatives have told him that 122 immediate and extended family members have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, he said in early April. One of Adam’s cousins has compiled a list, a copy of which Adam keeps with him, of those who are gone. For some, the family has seen or recovered their bodies. Others have been missing so long — with many if not all believed to be buried under rubble — they are presumed dead.

The relatives lost span several generations of Adam’s immense extended family, a range that includes his 83-year-old father, his mother, one of his brothers, as well as aunts, uncles, cousins and second cousins, along with their families and many children. The youngest killed, Adam said, was an 11-month-old granddaughter of one of Adam’s cousin’s.

Ola’s surviving relatives, too, have told her that 70 of her extended family members have been killed since Oct. 7, she said in late March.

Many questions about the killings may never be fully answered. It is unclear why the family’s neighborhood was targeted during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and The Times could not independently confirm the majority of family members killed.

The Israeli military, when asked about the strikes, said it could not provide details without being given the coordinates of the attack, which were unavailable. It repeated its overall objective of dismantling Hamas while adding that it “takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.” The Israeli government has come under sharp criticism from allies for civilian deaths in Gaza.

But to Adam, larger questions about Israel and Hamas, and the politics in Gaza, only deflect from the deeply personal losses he has felt. “I always say, I am not a politician,” he said. “I am just here to tell you about our family suffering, how many people in my family have died, how many of them are still under the rubble.”

Many of Adam and Ola’s surviving family members in Gaza, including Adam’s brothers and their families, Ola’s father, three sisters and a brother are displaced, hungry, injured or battling disease. The luckiest relatives have managed to escape and squeeze into small apartments in Cairo.

“It’s just agony,” Adam said.

Adam, 55, and Ola, 43, Palestinian Americans living in suburban New Jersey, have long known the strain of straddling two worlds. But the war has cleaved their lives completely in two. They follow the daily routine of countless suburban parents: driving their daughters to school, running their business, picking up cat food, doing the dishes, juggling homework and bedtime.

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Yet they are always preoccupied with the news from their native Gaza. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s bombardment began in October, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 in southern Israel, where assailants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and kidnapped around 250 back to Gaza.

Like Palestinian Americans across the United States who are viewing the ever-increasing death tolls with a sense of both helplessness and outrage, Adam and Ola ache for any connection overseas. They stay up deep into the night trying to contact family members in the war zone. Most days, they say they make around 150 phone calls; many go unanswered.

And each day, they grow more frustrated, not just by the suffering in Gaza, but by their adopted country, wondering why the U.S. government remains committed to sending more military aid to Israel, and why it is not doing more for Gaza’s civilians.

Jersey guy​

“We feel guilty,” says Ola, far right, when hearing what her siblings and parents endure in Gaza. In New Jersey, her daughters Enjy, 13, and Elina, 11, help her prepare for the meal to break their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Adam grew up in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza with his parents, six brothers and one sister in a tiny home with a metal sheet for a roof. His father, Abdelaziz, a citrus merchant, was displaced as child to the camp after his town became part of Israel in 1948.
The family moved to Gaza City after his father’s citrus business took off. Adam was 11. Like many Palestinians, they built a home compound for their growing and extended family.

Adam stayed in Gaza until he graduated from high school, then in 1984, followed a brother to New Jersey and began what would become a conventional and comfortable American life. He delivered The Star-Ledger to homes in Irvington, N.J., while taking classes in math and science at Essex County College, and pursued a pharmaceutical degree at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

“I’m a Jersey guy,” he said.

Adam and Ola, both American citizens, married in 2010, the same year he opened his pharmacy. The couple and their three daughters, Enjy, 13, Elina, 11, and Taly, 6, live in a white, colonial-style house in Springfield, N.J., a picturesque suburb around 40 minutes from New York City. Adam’s 21-year-old son, Ameer, from a previous marriage lives nearby and works at the pharmacy.


Before breaking their fast, Adam thanked Allah for all of the blessings upon them, including the food on their table, “especially when so many people, including our family, don’t have any,” he said.

A Monday in March in the middle of Ramadan — the Muslim holy month — illustrated the dual nature of their lives since the start of the war. Adam’s day began as usual, with a round of phone calls to Gaza.

After he tried calling several times, one of his three surviving brothers in Gaza, Hossam, 54, answered. Like Adam, Hossam is a pharmacist. He told Adam that there had been an airstrike near their tent in Rafah the night before.

“This is the kind of answer I always get from them,” Adam said. “‘The bombing is around us, but so far we are OK.’”

While he was on the phone, his three daughters were busy getting their backpacks ready for school.

Afterward, Adam began the first of two school runs, driving his two oldest girls to middle school. They used to walk to school, he said, but after the shooting of the three Palestinian young men in Vermont last fall, he and Ola began taking the time to drive them.

Adam’s car has a Palestinian flag on the dashboard. Along the way, he drove past houses with lawn signs bearing the Israeli flag and reading, “We stand with Israel.” Adam said his day-to-day interactions with neighbors have cooled since the war started.


Back at home, he and Ola tried again to reach relatives in Gaza — brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces. Along with the worry, they carried the burden of knowing they were safe and their loved ones were not.

“It’s hard to enjoy our life,” Ola said, brushing Taly’s hair into a ponytail. Taly is the same age as one niece in Gaza. “We feel guilty,” Ola said.

Ola’s phone rang. It was one of her sisters, Raghda. A car had run over her foot while she was attempting to reach food aid. Ola began crying. Taly automatically ran down the hallway and returned with a tissue for her mother.

Shortly after, Adam received news from Hossam, whose wife had given birth to a baby boy several days earlier. The family is living in tents, and his brother feared that the newborn had contracted hepatitis A.

Adam’s relatives ask him what they should do, but he is reluctant to give advice about where they should go, for fear that the wrong guidance might get them killed.

“Mom, we’re going to be late for school!” Taly exclaimed. Adam and Ola snapped back to their routine and drove Taly to school.

“You drive so fast, bro,” Taly told her father in the car. Adam and Ola laughed. Where had she learned to say “bro?”

“My sisters,” Taly responded.

The survivors​

Over the last few months, Adam and Ola said that they have called and emailed the U.S. State Department for help evacuating their remaining family, but as of early April, Adam said that they had only been able to help Ola’s mother, who crossed into Egypt with the assistance of U.S. officials this month.

In total, around 20 of Adam’s relatives, including a brother, his elderly aunt and uncle, and the widow and children of his little brother Ahmed, had made it out of Gaza and into Egypt by the beginning of this month, either through their relation to citizens of other countries or by paying thousands of dollars for private evacuations. Many of them said they were present on the night of the airstrike in November and witnessed the destruction firsthand.

In early March, Adam flew to Cairo for several days to check on them.

Adam’s uncle, Ali Elhassaina, 87, spent most of the time on a bed. His back had been broken in the November airstrike, his face scarred by burns. Adam thought this visit might be the last time he saw him alive.

Before he arrived in Cairo, the news of his family’s death and suffering seemed like a bad dream, he said. Maybe he could wake up from it. But in Cairo, it became real and inescapable.

One cousin, Samira, told Adam about what she experienced the night of Nov. 22. First came one airstrike, she said, then another. The lights went out and rubble began falling on her. “I crawled to my father and mother and patted them. ‘Are you dead? Are you dead?’” From under the rubble, they said no. Her brother managed to pull her and her parents to the surface. But her sister, her sister’s husband and children were gone.

The widow of Adam’s little brother, Ahmed, and three of their children had arrived from Gaza the night before. Adam could barely get his sister-in-law to speak. His 15-year-old niece, Dima, said that when they entered Cairo, all she could think about was a family trip there with her father.

“He bought us anything we asked for,” she said through tears.

‘Helpless’​

Adam spent nine days in Cairo. After returning to New Jersey, he drove along the Garden State Parkway on his first day back at work, listening to recitations of the Quran that are traditionally played during Ramadan.

The pharmacy, located in a predominantly Hispanic area of Paterson, was busy.


One of his regulars, Fermina Romero, a native Spanish speaker, spoke enough English to ask him how his father was doing. She had remembered meeting him during the pandemic, when he helped his son at work.

Adam directed her to one of his Spanish-speaking employees, who explained that his parents had been killed. Ms. Romero returned to find Adam and embraced him. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Thank you,” he replied, then headed to his office in the basement of the store.

Minutes later, he saw on Al Jazeera that the United Nations Security Council had voted for a cease-fire in Gaza, though the United States had abstained.

Adam was disappointed, but not surprised, when U.S. officials later said the cease-fire decision was nonbinding. Palestinians, a relatively tiny minority in America with only around 170,000 people identifying as having Palestinian heritage in the 2020 census, have become accustomed to disappointment in the U.S. government, he said. Adam understands that the position and policy of United States has been to support Israel since its founding, but he wishes that at least conditions would be set on the use of the weapons sent there.

Ameer, Adam’s son, stopped in the office and watched the news with his father. He said he sometimes feels helpless.

“There’s nothing that you can actually do for them,” he said of his relatives. “At the end of the day, you can’t protect them, you can’t save them.”
Since the war started, Ameer has joined a few pro-Palestinian rallies. But, he said, he has felt a slight uneasiness, as emotions are high and at times the protests can get “a little bit unruly and don’t necessarily represent the movement properly.

A couple of weeks earlier, Adam had gone to the United Nations in New York, along with other Palestinian American families, to testify about his family and his experience in front of U.N. leaders, including members of the Security Council and the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Adam said he tried to convey a simple message about his dead family members, that “each one of them had a dream and a life.” Sometimes, to make his point at speeches and pro-Palestinian rallies, Adam carries his printed list of the names of his dead relatives that gets longer with every update.

At one point during the U.N. meeting, Adam said, he addressed his comments to the U.S. ambassador, frustrated that the United States has not backed a cease-fire.

“How many Palestinians do you want to kill? Isn’t 1,000 enough? 10,000? 20,000?” he said he asked. “Haven’t you seen enough?”

Giving thanks​

Back at home that night, Ola prepared the iftar dinner — the meal after sundown during Ramadan. The kitchen was filled with the fragrance of tomatoes, lemon and olive oil. Handmade meat and cheese pies cooled on a rack. Lentil soup and a stew made from okra simmered.

Ola had reached one of her sisters in central Gaza. Her sister said that bombs were all around them, and that it was hard to find food. “They ask me, when will the war stop?” Ola said. “What do I even tell them?”

Adam thanked Allah for all of the blessings upon them, including the food on their table, “especially when so many people, including our family, don’t have any,” he said.

A little while after the meal, the girls got ready for bed. Adam and Ola began another long night of phone calls. Outside, the neighborhood was dark and peaceful. Inside Adam’s house, the lights were on.

 

[Moriarte]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1783191454308864300

Meanwhile, kind uncle Bibi is drawing parallels between the USA and nazi Germany.

And Elon Musk helps him repost among 180 million of his followers.

 

[Broken_Erika]

US college protests: Hundreds more arrested across US in Gaza campus protests​

Police have arrested hundreds more protesters in locations across the US, as protests against the war in Gaza intensify across university campuses.

Some 108 arrests were made at Emerson College, Boston police told the BBC's US partner CBS News.

Earlier, 93 people at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles were taken into custody on trespassing charges.

Protesters and police also clashed at the University of Texas in Austin.

Authorities said 34 people were arrested there too.

Universities across the US have seen a growing number of students walk out of class or try to set up encampments to protest against Israel's military campaign in Gaza.

The latest arrests follow others at Columbia, Yale and New York University.

• House Speaker heckled by protesters in Columbia campus visit
• Columbia protesters vow to remain until demands met
• USC graduation speakers cancelled as tensions flare

The arrests at USC were made as students gathered in Alumni Park - where the university's main-stage graduation ceremony is scheduled to take place next month.

Police officers in riot gear cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment at the centre of the campus, preventing demonstrators from gathering.

Students received a 10-minute warning from police helicopters to disperse. Those who refused, were arrested on trespassing charges.

The protest was reported to have been largely peaceful at first, but then turned tense with the continued police presence.

As police tried to detain one woman, protesters threw water bottles at them and chanted, "Let her go!"

Protesters gathered around the officers, drowning out their warnings with "free Palestine" chants. Students, some wearing kaffiyehs were holding "liberated zone" signs, banging drums.

Elsewhere in the country, Boston police told CBS that three officers had been injured in the action in that city - one of them seriously, though their condition was not life-threatening. No protesters were hurt, police added.

Students are said to have been camping out since Sunday, allegedly ignoring warnings to leave.

Emerson College has not yet commented on the arrests. In a previous statement, it said it supported the right to peaceful protests - while urging activists to comply with the law.

Chaotic scenes at University of Texas​

Earlier, there were chaotic scenes on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin as hundreds of local and state police on horseback, holding batons, dispersed protesters.

Governor Greg Abbott deployed the National Guard to stop the demonstrators from marching through campus, saying, they "belong in jail".

Social media footage shows officers pushing into the crowd, while warning demonstrators on loudspeakers to leave the premises or face arrest.

"I command you in the name of the people of the state of Texas to disperse," the announcement said.

Thirty-four people were arrested, officials said.

A photographer for Fox News 7 Austin was seen falling to the ground with his camera while surrounded by riot police. The US outlet later confirmed that the cameraman was arrested.

Other protesters were seen bundled to the ground by riot police. But soon afterwards around 300 demonstrators regrouped, sat on the grass under the school's iconic clock tower and chanted "free Palestine".

Protests spread after Columbia arrests​

Protests against Israel's war in Gaza have spread across the country after more than 100 people were arrested at New York City's Columbia University a week ago, after police tried to clear an encampment.

Protesters at Columbia heckled the visiting Republican House Speaker, Mike Johnson, earlier on Wednesday.

The entire campus had been adorned by dozens of Palestinian flags and placards with slogans such as "real Americans stand with Gaza", "demilitarise education" and "there are no universities left in Gaza".

Last week, USC cancelled outside speakers for this year's graduation ceremony, following controversy surrounding the cancellation of the university's valedictorian speech, due to be given by Muslim student Asna Tabassum.

The university said her speech should not go ahead due to security concerns, after complaints that her social media presence was antisemitic.

Ms Tabassum said she was the target of "a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice".

Elsewhere across the US, protest tents have sprung up including at Columbia University, the University of California - Berkeley, Yale, Emerson and the University of Michigan.

Pro-Israel and Jewish groups claimed some protests included antisemitic elements and said they did not feel safe as a result.

At the Columbia University campus in New York City, several Jewish students expressed concerns about a threatening campus environment.

But other demonstrators argued that incidents of harassment of Jewish students had been rare and blown out of proportion by those opposed to their demands.

Activists have been calling for universities to "divest from genocide" and to stop investing large school endowments in companies involved in weapons manufacturing and other industries supporting Israel's war in Gaza.

Israel strongly denies any suggestion that it is committing genocide in the Palestinian enclave, though the International Court of Justice has said the accusation was "plausible".

The war began when Hamas-led gunmen carried out an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people - mostly civilians - and taking 253 others back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 34,305 people - most of them children and women - have been killed in Gaza since then, the territory's Hamas-run health ministry says.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68895250

 

[Estebonrober]

But an attack on civilians nonetheless

They were being used as human shields...

 

[Estebonrober]

Meanwhile the jackbooted thugs of the empire continue to attack peaceful protesters around the country.

 

[Lexicus]

They're surely coordinating the use of police to intimidate and attempt to supress demonstrations.

No, the police are just doing what they do and following the example of the NYPD at Columbia. Unlike in many (all?) European countries the police are controlled locally in this country.

Israel exists at the US's pleasure. It isn't, and never was, the other way around. They have some influence sure, but they're more tools than manipulators. A colonial plantation to destabilize the Middle East, a strategy taken over from the UK, as so much of the US's imperial strategy post WW2.

Correct.

 

[Crezth]

I love the German universities thing because these guys might actually cause the next generation to straight up equivocate the Holocaust without any reservation whatsoever, rather than the some reservation awkward gentiles have when they’ll hold up their hands and go “I like Seinfeld!”

 

[JollyRoger]

Meanwhile the jackbooted thugs of the empire continue to attack peaceful protesters around the country.

Too bad they didn't have such an enthusiastic response to Uvalde

 

[Estebonrober]

I love the German universities thing because these guys might actually cause the next generation to straight up equivocate the Holocaust without any reservation whatsoever, rather than the some reservation awkward gentiles have when they’ll hold up their hands and go “I like Seinfeld!”

I mean start counting up the numbers of displaced and murdered people since 48'? 70k dead (mainly civilians even by Israeli count) and likely higher given the likelihood of the low count during the current conflict. Two million displaced and that number is likely to double, at least, during this conflict. It is no holocaust; the German were a sick and broken lot by the 20s and after they systematically murder and displaced anything resembling the conscious of the society from 22'-32' it seemed pretty easy for the remaining Germans to look the other way... It was disgusting, hence my avatar and why we should never forget how this starts... systematically shutting down the objectors or the ones who hold our feet to the fire is always a dark, dark path and Israel has been walking that path for the past twenty years. Erasing any objectors from the discourse and bullying anyone who might fight back for moral reasons. Now we are seeing it spread over here again. The protesters in the US are a reminder that we should not walk this path as a society. I'm not ashamed that I've learned a lot in the past twenty years, and I will not repeat mistakes made earlier in my life.

 

[Crezth]

Finally, a real American!

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

They were being used as human shields...

the IDF was using the civilians killed on Oct.7 as human shields? I don't get what you're saying

anyway, the Gaza pier is already getting attacked, but no one claimed responsibility yet
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...lights-threats-to-us-pier-mission/ar-AA1nJ4lO

Israeli forces preparing for the U.S. military's pier to be built off Gaza's coast came under mortar fire this week, highlighting the threat posed to everyone involved in the plan to provide aid by sea.
On Monday, a "small number of mortars landed in the vicinity of the marshaling yard area" on the coast, according to Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder. U.S. forces who construct the pier and causeway will not be in Gaza. They will stay in the Mediterranean Sea and would not have been in the location where the mortars hit.
...
No militant group took responsibility for the mortar fire at the port site, and there were no casualties, though there were United Nations officials who had to scramble for shelter. A Hamas official seemingly threatened any outside military forces in a recent interview with the Associated Press.

 

[Crezth]

Every civilian you put into someone else’s territory with the promise that it’s their home is being put in harm’s way