Don't forget that nasty human rights record that Egypt has too!

Yet that doesn't change the fact that actually both Turkey and Egypt, and Saudi-Arabia (the home of the majority of the 9/11 terrorists) are allies to the US. Which just shows how messy the Middle East is.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hamas-rape-israeli-women-oct-7-rcna128221

Hamas are a bunch of animals and the people who voted them into power aren't much better.

[ When Israel has an HRW report it's not relevant because the other side are animals because there are HRW reports saying so.

Or, we can't trust what Hamas says so their charter is irrelevant. Here is a Hamas leader saying they want to destroy Israel and we must trust what he says.

Do animals have a reason for their behaviour?

When Israel has an HRW report it's not relevant because the other side are animals because there are HRW reports saying so. — Benkei

I am in the belief that in a democracy an individual can be totally consistent and to argue for a rule based international order, then those rules are universal for everyone. Too many times there's a difference if it's "the others" doing something or "our side" same thing. Hence for example South Africa is quite right to say that the West is hypocritical when condemning Russian actions in Ukraine, but not condemning the actions of Israel in the occupied territories. This is the obvious case where in Europe it's basically Ireland (with it's history of British occupation) that is most vocal in the support of the Palestinians.

If you argue for human rights, for thing that are on the UN charter, you will be guaranteed to criticize nearly everyone and that simply won't fit the typical left/right lines. I don't find any problem in supporting Ukraine in their fight against and criticizing the way Israel is occupying the West Bank and Gaza. But for some reason this would be by the 'culture wars' something inconsistent.

Or, we can't trust what Hamas says so their charter is irrelevant. Here is a Hamas leader saying they want to destroy Israel and we must trust what he says. — Benkei

The problem is simply picking up facts that suit you and leaving out other points that don't fit your agenda.

Hamas are a bunch of animals and the people who voted them into power aren't much better. — RogueAI

Is exactly the kind of rhetoric Hamas would use. Or any other person justifying mass murder.

Odd that someone would seriously adopt this rhetoric on a philosophy forum where, we should assume, they have sufficient time and capacity to evaluate their words before they post them.

Better than calling Nazi Germany "civilized".

I gave reasons for my statement, which you chose to ignore.

What are your reasons? Care to explain to us how calling the citizens of Gaza "not much better than animals" is not a tacit justification for their "extermination"?

Interesting comparing Hamas to animals. I suppose all people are animals. But no non-human animals rape and pillage (AFAIK), not to say drop bombs, in quite the same way humans manage to do. I guess dehumanising language has the effect of making the context irrelevant. The actions come out of nowhere, for no reason, a bit like the weather. That's just what they do, there's no explanation.

Hamas has participated in one fair election. It was held almost twenty years ago now. In that election they won a slim plurality of the vote, not even a majority. The garnered 44.45% versus Fatah at 41.43%.

Hamas never allowed elections to challenge its rule again. It attack Fatah in a violent coup, resulting in a short war in which Palestinians were fighting each other in Gaza. Fatah took heavy losses and withdrew from the Strip.

Hamas does not allow challenges to its rule. When protests against them have cropped up they have been violently suppressed. They have been reported to international organizations for using torture, rape, and disappearances to enforce their rule.

That said, it hardly seems fair to the Hamas' slim electoral success to Gazans. A poll from 2022 had a full 70% of Gazans in support of Fatah returning to run the strip and Hamas' military being completely disbanded. This is saying something, since Fatah has plenty of problems with corruption and misrule as well.

"An overwhelming majority of Palestinians, both in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, expressed their support for the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, a poll by Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) found.

AWRAD is a research and consulting firm based in the Palestinian Authority capital Ramallah in the West Bank.

The poll surveyed the opinions of 668 residents across the West Bank and Gaza during the fourth week of the war in face-to-face interviews conducted online.

In its most revealing find, 85% of those polled support the “October 7 attacks” either strongly or at least somewhat."
https://allisrael.com/85-of-palestinians-express-support-for-hamas-massacre-on-oct-7-palestinian-poll-finds

I think if you polled college students in the U.S., there might be as much as 50% support for Hamas.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/07/business/penn-emergency-meeting-liz-magill/index.html

"The hastily arranged meeting, which concluded by midday Thursday, comes as Magill faces intense pressure following Tuesday’s hearing in the House. Magill and the presidents of Harvard and MIT struggled to answer questions on Tuesday about whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates their respective school’s code of conduct on bullying or harassment.

It is unclear whether the board gathering Thursday is related to Magill’s future at the school, but that topic is sure to be on the minds of board members.

A disastrous hearing
During Tuesday’s hearing, none of the school leaders explicitly said that calling for the genocide of Jews would necessarily violate their code of conduct. Instead, they explained it would depend on the circumstances and conduct."

...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren told CNBC on Thursday that “advocating for genocide is fundamentally wrong, full-stop. We just can’t have this.”

Warren is right, of course.

Scott Ritter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLnWZVU5MFs&t=2104s

Posted on the YouTube channel QUỲNH HƯƠNG 239K subscribers

Brazil

What do you think, and how does this bear on what is happening?

Iran uses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to further it's own Islamic Revolution. Simple as that.

Since Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries have either made a peace-deal with Israel or have normalized their relations, there is a window of opportunity to get support from the Arab street with this conflict as the general population is disgusted how Palestinians are treated in the occupied territories.

I would not look to Scott Ritter for information about anything. He's not even a Tucker Carlson-tier propagandist but a full on state mouth piece. He's on the payroll of Russian state media and jettisoned whatever remaining credibility he might have had claiming that Ukrainian military raped and massacred their own civilians in order to blame it on Russia in Bucha.

He also has a history of famously bad takes (see below). He tries to leverage his "experience as an intelligence officer," for credibility, but the guy was an O-3 after 12 years.

Since his convictions as a child sex offender essentially preclude his working in the defense industry he seems to have decided peddling Russian talking points, no matter how ridiculous, was a solid career move.

Major resignations at UPenn:
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/liz-magill

During Tuesday’s hearing, none of the school leaders explicitly said that calling for the genocide of Jews would necessarily violate their code of conduct. Instead, they explained it would depend on the circumstances and conduct." — RogueAI

We have to see their code of conduct, and it has to be changed. Maybe.

I would not look to Scott Ritter for information about anything. He's not even a Tucker Carlson-tier propagandist but a full on state mouth piece — Count Timothy von Icarus

All information is welcome, for me, even false statements contain information. He knows that his false claims will be found out, but he goes ahead anyway. So we simply reverse his false statements to get at the truth. So Israel is winning, and will win. The last two world wars were settled by bombing, right? It works, right? It is horrific but that is the price they are willing to pay. Interesting.

Do we really know whose payroll he is on? Is he freelancing for the Palestinian cause as well?
We do not really know, but the way his videos are presented on YouTube with an unknown knitting latdy from Brazil, that channel, it looks like a clumsy attempt at obfuscation.

During Tuesday’s hearing, none of the school leaders explicitly said that calling for the genocide of Jews would necessarily violate their code of conduct. Instead, they explained it would depend on the circumstances and conduct."
— RogueAI

We have to see their code of conduct, and it has to be changed. Maybe. — FreeEmotion

You have to see their code of conduct to determine whether calls for genocide against Jews are tolerated? That was the kind of answer that caused the uproar in the first place, and led to the firing of the president of UPenn. Calls for genocide against Jews on college campuses should be treated the same way Holocaust denial is treated here: with extreme prejudice.

Maybe they have a weird code of conduct, who knows these days anything is possible.

AIPAC hard at work, I see. :lol:

"Scott Ritter is an unreliable source who often makes things up," doesn't entail "the opposite of what he says is true in all cases." It means he's an unreliable source who has a terrible track record.

do we really know whose payroll he is on?

Yes. He works for Russian-stated-owned media companies. Sputnik and RT being owned and run by the state isn't a secret. Ritter being a contributor for them isn't a secret or some sort of supposition either. His crimes, also aren't innuendo but actual convictions, which are relevant to the degree that they explain his career choices and that multi-time pederasts who get multi-year prison sentences don't tend to be the most morally upright folks in the world.

Since his convictions as a child sex offender essentially preclude his working in the defense industry he seems to have decided peddling Russian talking points, no matter how ridiculous, was a solid career move. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. This is the thing. One has to make a living.

Scott Ritter's apogee was when, as a former weapons inspector, he published a small booklet that convincingly stated that in 2003 Saddam Hussein didn't have any nuclear weapons program. That naturally did get him to be a persona-non-grata in Washington, but the former marine still was respectful. Then it got even worse after the sex offenses. So it brings enough bucks to tow the Russian line, that's for sure.

I'm just waiting when he will defend Venezuela, if it comes to war there.

Lots of people spoke out against the Iraq WMD claims and the claims of a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If this was a short term liability, it was a long term benefit. Folks who had been sceptical of the claims were tended to be those who were elevated in Bush's second term shake up, while the hardliners got the boot in 2005-2006. The IC was certainly not unified in promoting the Bush administration's interpretation of intelligence, sort of the opposite.

And it was even more of a boon to have spoken out against the war come the Obama years.

Ritter's problem had more to do with his claims and the manner in which he made them. For instance, he sometimes takes credit for pointing out that the US would "lose the war."

Now, the government the US set up, with its same constitution still rules Iraq, so it's debatable if the war was wholly "lost," although it's certainly fair to say the US did not attain its nation building goals in Iraq. But this is aside the point. Ritter's claims were that the US wouldn't be able to remove Saddam or take Baghdad, that it would face atrocious losses, etc. That is, Ritter was predicting a military defeat. In reality, the US routed the Iraqi military easily. It's problem wasn't defeating Saddam's military, but rather policing the civil war that broke out due to their inflexible, and awful occupation planning.

I think this, like the assertion that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was going "splendidly" months into the war, shows either dishonesty or incompetence.

Fears about policing Iraq were well warranted. Fears about overcoming the Iraqi military given the outcome of the Gulf War were sort of nonsense. The US had already defacto partitioned a third of the country, and the Iraqi military had been significantly degraded by 2002-3.

Fears about policing Iraq were well warranted. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As someone noted earlier by surprising people:


Same people talking then with sanity. What difference some years make. (And being the CEO of Halliburton)

"Scott Ritter is an unreliable source who often makes things up," doesn't entail "the opposite of what he says is true in all cases." It means he's an unreliable source who has a terrible track record. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Alright. Let's take this one first. Some of Scott Ritter's claims are testable. Some are not, let's drop those. First one to take up is will Ukraine lose the war and surrender? That is still ongoing.

The second one is about Israel. What does he say there?

27:52 warheads so now Israel is facing a double existential threat which tells me they really need to focus on um a 27:59 negotiated settlement because it's the only option they have genocide isn't the option because here's the reality of it.. — Scott Ritter

So, Scott Ritter says Israel's only option - only option - is a negotiated settlement. Since he is not on the side of the United States, and he is on the side of Russia, assuming Russia is in support of Palestine, then he is parroting the Russian line, right? He wants Hamas to win, right?

I do not think anyone coldly looking at the facts thinks that there is no other option, war is an option for Israel, if they do not care about collateral damage. I hope I am wrong, but Scott Ritter is wrong, and the following account is much more insightful, based on current trajectory, no matter who says it: this is a view, one view, and presupposes the destruction of Hamas, Gaza, the civilian infrastructure, population - everything, close to a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. " A social, economic, and humanitarian collapse in Gaza"

According to this view, Israel is seeking to win. The way things are going, looks like they will.

Israel was eventually planning to announce an international zone in Gaza, and then proceed to bring an impotent Palestinian government, like the one in the West Bank, to power. But as the regime has not been able to reach any of its initial objectives, it is now trying to make a complete social collapse unfold in Gaza. That way, Hamas and the people of the territory would have to spend a significant time to recover and hence have less energy to fight occupation forces. It would take Palestinians several months or perhaps years to recover from such dire circumstances. A social, economic, and humanitarian collapse in Gaza would now be in Israel’s best interest, as the regime failed to make the scenario it envisaged during the 1990s come true. — Tehran Times

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/492355/Social-collapse-another-tactic-of-the-apartheid-regime

As for his criminal charges, read the Wikipedia article and see if it changes anything. I am more inclined to believe in the moral bankruptcy of his enemies, knowing what he is saying, and knowing what they are capable of. Who is he working for, Russia, and that puts him in the cross hairs of whom exactly? Is that reasonable?

Ritter was the subject of two law enforcement sting operations in 2001 — Wikipedia

I can see here that getting someone convicted in this way diminishes his credibility in the eyes of people, and that itself may be a temptation to the powers that be, right? The question is, is he worth the effort?

The big question is what Israel will do after the military operation (and how long the operation will last).

At least the Israeli government has made it quite clear what it would like to do with the Palestinians in Gaza, the over two million that still are there.

Gila Gamliel, the minister of intelligence, wrote in the Jerusalem Post November 19th with the headline: ' Victory is an opportunity for Israel in the midst of crisis - opinion'

First he rejects the Palestinian Authority to take Gaza over. Then the answer what to do with the Palestinians in Gaza is simple: they go somewhere else.

(Jerusalem Post) Instead of funneling money to rebuild Gaza or to the failed UNRWA, the international community can assist in the costs of resettlement, helping the people of Gaza build new lives in their new host countries.

See here

That was an opinion of one minister in Bibi's administration. And seems like there has been more than just an idea of minister behind this. From Associated Press:

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli government ministry has drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, drawing condemnation from the Palestinians and worsening tensions with Cairo.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office played down the report compiled by the Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise — a “concept paper.” But its conclusions deepened long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt’s problem, and revived for Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.

But now the idea has gotten support from the US, namely one of those neocon hawks John Bolton:

Israel isn’t going away. Muslim governments have recognized Israel and, before October 7, more were coming. Moreover, the two-state solution is definitively dead: Israel will never recognize a “Palestine” that could become another Hamas-stan. Besides, Gaza is not a viable economic entity, and neither would a “state” consisting of Gaza and an archipelago of Palestinian dots on the West Bank be viable. Israel has made clear it rejects any “right of return” for Palestinians, and has announced it will no longer even grant work visas to Gazans seeking employment.

So no two-state solution and no Hamas-stans. And the refugees in the Nakba isn't a problem for Bolton, for he continues on The Hill:

Western peace processors trying to create a Palestinian state under the “Gaza-Jericho first” model made a cruel mistake, the victims of which were its intended beneficiaries. The real future for Gazans is to live somewhere integrated into functioning economies. That is the only way to realize the promise of a decent life and stability for a people who have been weaponized for far too long. The sooner the Biden administration realizes it, the better.

Refugee status is not hereditary.

So where to ethnically cleanse the nasty Palestinians? Bolton has a rather populist answer:

Iran, Hamas’s principal benefactor, should certainly be willing to accept large numbers of people in whom it has long shown such an interest. Most other Gazans should be resettled in the regional countries that previously weaponized them.

See Resettlement from Gaza must be an option

And now even the neighbors are getting extremely worried that this will be the final solution:

AMMAN, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Jordan's foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, on Sunday said that Israel was implementing a policy of pushing Palestinians out of Gaza through a war that he said meets the "legal definition of genocide", allegations that Israel rejected as "outrageous".

Safadi, whose country borders the West Bank and absorbed the bulk of Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948, also said that Israel had created hatred that would haunt the region and define generations to come.

@BitconnectCarlos @RogueAI @tim wood @schopenhauer1

Can you handle some more truth?


"This is not a war against Hamas"
by Jeremy Scahill, 11Dec23
https://theintercept.com/2023/12/11/israel-hamas-war-civilians-biden/


addendum to ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/847621

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/856307

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/858450