The US will begin air dropping food aid to the people of Gaza, President Joe Biden announced on Friday, as the humanitarian crisis deepens and Israel continues to resist opening additional land crossings to allow more assistance into the war-torn strip....
The only leverage Hamas has is to keep being terrorists? No. Hamas can either surrender and give up or keep being bombed until they are gone. It is the only thing still killing people in Gaza at this point.
Not really. Israel didn’t build the terror tunnels under everyone’s houses and then tell everyone not to evacuate. Maybe your thinking of Hamas, and it’s regressive and religio-authoritarian genocidal violence?
Yes, we have to respect the right of a non-state actor to put terrorists in charge and cancel all future elections so they can continue living in a rich culture of stoning infidels to death? No thanks.
The other key distinction, of course, being that in the Holocaust, the Nazis were not striking military targets in the course of killing Jews. They were just lining up civilians and shooting them into mass graves, that is before that sort of up close violence affected the morale of the Nazis and they invented the gas chambers and death camps instead.
There is literally none of that going on in Gaza. There’s also the fact that for virtually all of these airstrikes there is a legit military target, being the tunnels underneath the cities.
Unfortunately, we can’t go back in time. Second-guessing Israel’s creation and settlement by Jews does literally nothing to address the current problem.
October 7 changed the calculus: the tunnels have to be destroyed now and Hamas cannot continue to remain in charge. It is Hamas who built the tunnels under people’s homes and it is Hamas who encourages people to ignore their own safety and stay in harm’s way so that they can be killed as proud Martyrs.™
Hamas should surrender right now and bring the violence to an end but it won’t. The West certainly isn’t going to demand a ceasefire, that’s a courtesy we might extend to a state power in a political settlement of the war, but not to literal terrorists that only recently stopped using suicide bombers.
The death toll is horrifying but I blame Hamas for these numbers. It’s why they built the tunnels under people’s houses in the first place, it’s called using human shields. Then, Hamas acts all shocked Pikachu, “why would the IDF do this?!,” which is called lawfare.
He doesn’t have the willpower and I don’t think anyone else in Washington really does, either.
A ceasefire, to me anyway, means Hamas remains the de facto leadership of Gaza, they get to keep whatever is left of their tunnels and weapons, and their fighters just have to lay low for a while before they go on fighting, which means more decades of Hamas terror attacks on innocent civilians, rocket attacks, kidnappings, more mass shootings of innocent’s and fitedt responders, maybe we’ll be back to their days of suicide bombings, and more decades of Israeli airstrikes in response. That cannot be allowed to happen, terrorists don’t get to have their own state. Biden knows that. Hamas can either surrender or be killed or imprisoned, then there can be a ceasefire.
The IDF uses one or two people as human shields. There’s literally like 25 reports of it, ever. It was made illegal and people were prosecuted for it.
Hamas used human shields 3,500 people at a time, building tunnels under their houses, forcing people to stay, convincing people evacuation orders are a hoax. There is zero denying this. There are five hundred miles of tunnels in an area 25 miles wide.
No, I did not ignore all the times the IDF have used human shields. It’s just not even remotely comparable to using the entire population of major cities as human shields.
Also, re: the ridiculous claim that Israel is an apartheid regime, totally ignores all reason. South Africa apartheid was a system of minority rule. When it’s a system of majority rule, it’s called democracy. I could understand if you said Israel has some apartheid like policies, but you lose all credibility and reveal yourself as a know-nothing when you say it’s literally apartheid. Like, for fucks sake guy, a Palestinian Arab sits on the Israeli supreme Court. You think there were any Afrikans on the South Africa Supreme Court during Apartheid? Ha.
Bro seriously in here defending Hamas building terror tunnels under everyone’s houses and you’re comparing it to Israel…checks notes…merely having military bases? Israel is a legitimate state. It is allowed to have military bases. Gaza is not.
What conclusion can be drawn from your hypocrisy other than that you just don’t like Jews?
Gaza is forfeit now and it’s because of the tunnels and it because it has no ability to govern itself.
Your human shield and apartheid analysis are nonsense. There’s a huge difference between a minority group controlling the majority in all things, without consent, as compared to a majority group, duly enacting laws that discriminate against minority. Discrimination is not great, but in a democracy that can be fixed.
You let me know when Hamas and their backwards ass culture does anything to stop discrimination. Actually, if you ask them to, they’ll will probably stone you to death as an infidel.
Neither side are responsible actors here; both are repressing internal dissent heavily, both have broken and reneged on treaties and ceasefires, both have taught their society to hate the other, and the international community shouldn’t support either while they both pursue a path of destruction.
One is a state and happens to be a democracy, with flaws albiet. The other is a failed terrorist territory with no right to continued existence. Hamas has to be destroyed now and if Israel has to annex all of Gaza to do it, that’s the moral and just outcome. Terrorists don’t get to have a state.
You’ve grossly overdramatized and exaggerated what I’ve actually said.
Hamas also thinks their position is a moral one. Does that make them Nazi propogandists too? When they cast east Germany as victims of foreign aggression, they were actually lying. Don’t have to lie to say literal terrorists are in charge of Gaza, and Gaza is not a sovereign state.
And yes, saying Israel is an apartheid state is an anti Jewish statement. You want to say it’s like apartheid, fine, but apartheid means something very different, and is in and of itself a crime against humanity. Not all discrimination by the state is a crime against humanity, though. The thing that makes apartheid a crime against humanity is that it is a system of minority control over the unconsenting majority.
Saying Israel is literally an apartheid state is to treat it as inferior; it is to say that, when other states do it, it’s a matter of local custom or just a different culture doing things differently; but when it’s Israel it’s a war crime.
Apartheid is a system of minority rule. Israel is it not a system of minority rule. It is not an apartheid state. It’s guilty of barbaric, racial discrimination, for sure. In no way is it literally apartheid, and I think you’ll find that there’s not very many serious people who say that it is, not in foreign service and not in law, anyway, which is what we’re talking about, here.
I’m advocating for equal rights of Palestinians, too, just that I realize that Gaza has no government and no capacity to rebuild itself since the tunnels were so extensive. It’s sad that Hamas put them under the highest density neighborhoods in Gaza and then encouraged people not to evacuate after using them for decades to indiscriminately target Israeli civilians, but hey that’s the strategy the people in charge of Gaza have chosen.
There’s a right enshrined in international law to disguise soldiers as civilians so they can more easily violate international law? Haven’t heard of that one but you’re the expert. ✅
Yeah actually though it’s you, Amnesty, HRW, and B’Tselem who have made up a new definition of apartheid that only applies to Jews.
Maybe your problem is that you believe reports from anyone who makes them. Anyone can make a report.
Why not check the peer reviewed law review articles on this subject, see how ridiculous everyone in the actual world of law finds these one-sided and biased reports. Because, once again, apartheid is a system of a minority control over the majority, the literal opposite of democracy. Israel is a democracy, period. It cannot also be an apartheid regime such as South Africa was, unless you redefine the word, which, again, is racist, and it is what you’re doing.
The only difference is time IMO. Same people. Same views. Just changed their name and fought against different people for different reasons. They will all still stone you to death for teaching math to women, they just disagree on who should be the caliph.
I have recently played 3 games that have forced a lengthy, unskippable tutorial section that runs for several hours of the game, just to unlock the most basic functions like buying the items, customizing features, multiplayer, and even 2-player split screen modes....
People won’t enjoy a game unless they learn the basic features.
It’s a fine line for devs between teaching the player what they need to know in order to even have a chance at enjoying the game, and jamming it down their throats.
The classic example is the game Portal. It’s a perfect tutorial. The player doesn’t even realize it’s the tutorial.
I am frustrated with Cities Skylines 2, lately. Text-based tutorial with optional progress checks which is okay, but they pop up as soon as you look at a newly unlocked feature, not necessarily when you are ready to build the feature.
I’ve been playing a ton of Cities Skylines II since its release a week ago. After building a 230k population archipelago I started playing around with the in game cinematic video tools and this is the result....
Also, compared to any other city builder, there really is no competition. Even if the launch was truly botched, the game was unplayable, nobody got about 12 fps, there’s not another full feature city builder. Not since SimCity blew it’s brains out.
Biden calls for 'immediate ceasefire' in Gaza (www.newshub.co.nz)
The US will begin air dropping food aid to the people of Gaza, President Joe Biden announced on Friday, as the humanitarian crisis deepens and Israel continues to resist opening additional land crossings to allow more assistance into the war-torn strip....
Israeli forces kill, wound Palestinians waiting for food aid in Gaza (www.aljazeera.com)
After years of avoiding extradition, Julian Assange’s appeal is likely his last chance. Here’s how it might unfold (and how we got here) (theconversation.com)
MFBC...
Taliban execute two men by gunfire in packed Afghanistan stadium (www.independent.co.uk)
Ex-FBI source charged with Biden lies is tied to Russian intelligence, prosecutors say (www.npr.org)
North Korean Workers in China Riot over Unpaid Wages; 2,000 Occupy Factory, Kill Plant Manager (japannews.yomiuri.co.jp)
Nothing was off-limits for retro game ads (startrek.website)
Games that require you to unlock the basic functions of the game can suck my nuts.
I have recently played 3 games that have forced a lengthy, unskippable tutorial section that runs for several hours of the game, just to unlock the most basic functions like buying the items, customizing features, multiplayer, and even 2-player split screen modes....
Cities Skylines II is an absolutely beautiful game (vimeo.com)
I’ve been playing a ton of Cities Skylines II since its release a week ago. After building a 230k population archipelago I started playing around with the in game cinematic video tools and this is the result....
Skull and Bones Has Yet Another New Release Window (www.ign.com)
It is a marvel this game hasn’t been cancelled yet.
Cities Skylines 2 reportedly runs with 7-12fps on an Intel Core i9 13900KS with AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX at 4K/High Settings (www.dsogaming.com)
Cities: Skylines 2 devs warn players of performance problems: 'we have not achieved the benchmark we targeted' (www.pcgamer.com)
Ahead of the city builder's release on October 24, the devs want to "manage expectations on performance."
New Atari 2600 is coming in November (www.forbes.com)