Discussion for the Israel-Hamas War: A thread in the Pit

The BBQ Pit
2281

Not openly, because he is a snivelling coward hiding behind plausible deniability (so long as we are in the “you are stronger than me” stage; should “Palestine be Free from the River to the Sea”, the open purge of the subhuman Jews “colonizers” will begin.)

But here he is openly saying that he thinks that being “unabashedly pro-Hezbollah and pro-Houthi” is a good thing:

I’m sure he’ll be a long shortly to explain that this isn’t the time and place to own his support of the Houthis and Hezbollah, either. Not until we get to the stage where HIS side is strong and WE are week.

2282

Keep it up, Babale. You definitely are coming across as the sane, non-psychopath here.

2283

Yep, who I’m sure is quite willing to call out and condemn atrocities…some day. It’s just, before that, (s)he needs to spend a dozen* posts accusing BB of being a terrorist sympathizer.

* …based on the last 50 or so posts. How far back in the 2,200 posts is it like this?

2284

Openly? Is this some sort of new, internet slangy definition of “openly”, like how “literally” now can mean “metaphorically”?

2285

…a while ago I went through severe hardship. I’ve practically lost my business. My power and phone got cut off. I had to spend days in darkness. I had to beg for charity. Of course, I also had to stop posting here for a while.

When I returned to the dope: Babale greeted me with a joke about how they thought I had gotten blown up by a pager. And when I told them what happened to me: they said I deserved it.

Just in case you wanted to know what sort of person Babale is.

I used to have respect for you. But you’ve gotten obsessed with me. Not just about Gaza. There was that weird thread a while ago about nuclear power where you kept insisting I was arguing for something that I clearly was not. And it’s crossed over to hate. And it doesn’t matter what I say any more. Babale will accuse me of the most vile and hateful of things.

In the meantime: the sixth Palestinian child has died this week of hypothermia. There has been an international call from doctors and humanitarian agencies for the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and the rest of the medical team detained a few days ago. Tedros Ghebreyesus reports that the remaining patients of Kamal Adwan were evacuated to Indonesian Hospital, “which is itself out of function.” In Gaza City: both Al-Ahli Hospital and Al-Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital were attacked and damaged. The war on hospitals and the war on children is ongoing.

2286

…there weren’t 240 terrorists.

There are 15 that Israel claims are mass murderers.

2287

He claims to denounce it while simultaneously denying that pretty much every aspect of it ever happened at all.

Dead babies? Hoax.
Rapes? The victims are lying.
Human shields who are shot at if they try to flee? “Too stubborn to leave their homes”.
Weapons caches in hospitals? Staged.
Rocket fire? Israel shooting at itself.
Confessions? Forced.
Tunnels? Fake.
Child soldiers? Umm… LOOK OVER THERE!
Charter calling for the death of all Jews? That was the old Hamas, they’re not like that anymore.

I don’t know where you got the idea that I or anyone else in this thread is a “Bibi apologist”. I’ve described him multiple times as a Palpatine-esque figure who enabled Hamas for years and is exploiting this war to keep himself in power. The sooner he’s gone, the better for everyone involved.

Have some Israeli soldiers gone too far? Obviously. Does that make the entire war illegitimate or constitute a genocide? Only if you think the Civil War was a genocide against Southern whites and the Pacific campaign was a genocide against the Japanese.

2288

…liar. For example: this.

I have never denied that Hamas killed children, killed babies, on October the 7th. They did. And it was an atrocity.

But 40 babies weren’t beheaded by Hamas on October 7th. That was my claim. And that claim is supported by all of the evidence that I’ve provided to you over and over again. Look how your claim has morphed from “saying that babies weren’t beheaded” to “dead babies was a hoax.” It’s a trick. Slight of hand. And this list is gish gallop. You can’t actually prove that these are my positions because either they aren’t, or you’ve taken what I’ve said out of context. Just like the hospitals claim.

I’ll trust the assessment of Amnesty International, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention over you on this. I’m pretty sure that none of these organizations have ever described the actions taken by the IDF as “pest control.”

2289

Cute, but the moralizing would work much better if we forget about the kind of person YOU are: the kind of person who says that there are plenty of reasons to support people whose motto is “death to my home country, death to the country I live in now, a curse on my people” - and who says “sorry bub, resistance is uncomfortable” when I express my dismay.

So, you know, I care about you and your misfortune exactly as much as you seem to care about me and the misfortune the Houthis would love to bestow upon me and my people.

I’m glad I rectified that error; respect from a braindead “West Bad” Tankie like you is the deepest mark of shame.

2290

…I support the innocent people being slaughtered by the IDF. I’ve said since the start of this “war” that Hamas are guilty of atrocities and should be held to account. But we’ve gone beyond that now. In fact: we went beyond that from the start. The genocidal rhetoric from Israeli leadership was there from the beginning. Its just back then: most people didn’t want to hear it.

2291

The irony of you posting this list after my last post where I said that attacks on BB were being used as a deflection from addressing points.

I can tell with many of these claims that, at best, they will be more nuanced than this summary because I’m aware that international news agencies have also disputed some of these claims, in whole or in part. So it’s easy to compile a list like that against anyone who isn’t an out-and-out IDF zealot.

But, for the sake of argument; I don’t care. I don’t care if BB at some other time said something bad, it seems Babale did too (e.g. the pager comments). All I care about is who is addressing the points being put to them now and it seems @Banquet_Bear is responding to points and e.g.
@Babale isn’t.

Well that’s a start, and I appreciate it.
I think it’s still diminishing things a lot though; both in not naming any specific event, and implying that the people deciding the whole strategy and armaments to be used aren’t at fault, just one or two “bad apples”.

2292

Wait, didn’t you know that those are all branches of Hamas? Everyone in Amnesty International must die! In a totally just and peaceful way, of course.

2293

So do you take back this?

2294

…take back what?

2295

God, your games are so fucking tiring.

2296

Are you saying there’s not a reason Piker praises hezbollah? That it’s just random chance?

2297

…what games?

I said yes, there are reasons why Piker is unabashedly pro-Hezbollah and pro-Houthi. And that resistance is complicated. I also said I don’t even like Piker. I find some of his positions contemptible.

So what exactly do you want me to “take back?”

While we are at it: do you take back your support of the IDF? Because they’ve killed more innocent children this year than Hezbollah and Houthi and Hamas combined. By orders of magnitude. Do you condemn those killings? Do you condemn the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza? Do you condemn the attacks on hospitals up and down the strip? Do you condemn the siege of Gaza? The deliberate and systematic destruction of housing that has started to result in the deaths of children from hypothermia? Do you condemn the deliberate targeting and killing of children by IDF snipers?

2298

All the way back.

2299

I haven’t seen a specific incident which would lead me to believe that the government or military is deliberately attempting to exterminate the Gazans. Most of the original reporting coming out of Gaza is coming from sources that are openly anti-Israel and cannot be taken at face value, and are being distributed by other sources that also have a baked-in anti-Israsl bias or which want western liberals talking about Gaza so they won’t talk about Ukraine or the Uyghurs. Pretty much all of what’s being brought up in this thread is simple collateral damage that is being presented out of context - the mere fact that children have been shot to death does not prove that Israelis shot them or that they were shot at on purpose or that the people doing the shooting were under orders to kill all Arabs whether they’re combatants or not.

I’m not seeing mass graves or concentration camps or gas chambers or execution squads or death marches or anything else that would indicate actual deliberate mass murder.

2300

There are reasons to be unabashedly pro Hezbollah, like wanting to see all Jews killed. There are reasons to be pro Nazi, or pro Trump, or in favor of the recent New Zealand treaty amendment.

Presumably, those aren’t the sorts of reasons that Banquet Buddy referred to here. If they were, he wouldn’t follow it up with “resistance is uncomfortable”.

Resisting Hamas’ attacks on Israel is, as you put it, uncomfortable.

This year, when those groups have been torn to shreds by targeted IDF strikes.

Over their lifetimes, though? You’d be surprised to learn just how many Arabs your precious Hezbollah has killed, or how many Yemenis starved (actually starved to death, not Gaza “starved”) due to the Houthis.

But you have “reasons” to support them.

I would certainly condemn such a thing if it ever happened.

I condemn the fact that Hamas attacks Israeli out of locations like hospitals, leading to civilian casualties when they are struck back. I do not, of course, condemn Israel for choosing not to refuse to respond.

I condemn Hamas for choosing to govern Gaza in such a way that every bit of material wealth that enters the region is harnessed for the war against Israel, and the blockade this necessintates. I don’t blame Israel for not taking the suicidal step of allowing Iran and Russia to freely arm Hamas.

Again, I’d condemn these things if they actually happened.