r.e. Full Steam Ahead...Not sure if I'm missing anything here, some wrinkle of jurisprudence... but Trump was a Candidate when he used political monies for hushing true stories about him. Why did the judge not throw this out and fine the Defense for a spurious motion. Unless Presidential Immunity now applies to one's enture lifetime.
Also, if the IDF wasn't waging war
on Hamas, why aren't they carpet
bombing? They obviously are not
concerned about deniability. See
recent aid convoy targeting.
Semantics matter.
JINO (Journalist In Name Only)
or riding a popular agenda for
readership?
Anyone with a brain & a heart
that both work would pray for
everyone involved: Hostages,
civilians, armed combatants,
and leaders: on all sides.
Hoping the entire region can
skip life long PTSD and the
psychological trauma no one
on earth is good at recovering
from.
One can only hope.

All in all, good reporting.
About getting locked out of your
own house, what is up with THAT?

Inquiring minds want to know.

“Tuesday night, about 300 migrants, including 70 children, camped on the tennis court at the Garfield Community Center. […] Yesterday, the City would not commit to paying for housing and would not confirm suspicions that the Mayor might order a sweep to clear the refugees for tennis season.”

Are they “migrants” or “refugees”? If they are refugees, then resettling them is a federal responsibility, not a local responsibility. If they are migrants, then no government has any responsibility to them.

Other questions:

How’d they wind up on the Garfield tennis court in Seattle, when they were previously reported living in Tukwila?

Why has this group bounced around in one of the country’s most expensive rental markets for over a year?

Why does the Stranger assume Seattle has any responsibility for them?

"The sources also claimed that during the early weeks of the war, Israel allowed its military to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on 'low-ranking militants.'"

Perfectly legal within the Geneva Conventions and Laws of Armed Conflict.

Also consistent with internationally codified rights of self-defense. If it wasn't, an aggressor could attack without the ability of the opponent to legally strike back, provide the aggressor surrounded themselves with lots of non-combatant human shields, hospitals, etc.

When Hamas used Al Shifa Hospital for military purposes, on multiple occasions, how did that work out for the non-combatants that used to rely on that hospital? The IDF left the facility intact the first time they cleared it of Hamas. When Hamas reoccupied it a second time, the IDF didn't leave it standing to be reoccupied a third time. Now Hamas can no longer use it, but neither can the doctors and nurses that remain to provide medical care to the non-combatants that remain. All perfectly legal by the IDF.

@3
Give them pickleball paddles!
Then they can stay on the tennis courts as long as they want! It's far cheaper than any other solution!

Of course The Stranger IS STILL TOTALLY IGNORING the news that former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn's son, Jack Francis Lynch McGinn, was arrested for possessing and distributing CHILD PORNOGRAPHY.

https://komonews.com/news/local/greenwood-seattle-police-department-child-exploitation-material-pornography-cp-tip-crimes-against-children-investigators-king-county-jail-search-warrant

@4 When Israel allowed kibbutzim to stockpile arms, they made them a legitimate military target. If the IDF didn't want Hamas to attack the kibbutzes, they shouldn't have put arms there. It's all perfectly legal to shoot civilians in the process of taking those militarized spaces.

Good for the goose, good for the gander.

@3
Seattle should be tripping over itself to take care of the migrants. Isn’t that the point of being a sanctuary city?
Progressives were ever so smug about it, but when the time comes to actually do something, you all start saying it’s someone else’s responsibility.
All that bluster and passing the buck reminds me of Trump. Y’all are no better

"and I got locked out of my apartment"
LOL
"That's so Hannah!"

@3 I'd still like to know how they even got to Washington to begin with. I haven't seen any stories of Abbot or one of the southern state governor busing people up here like they are doing to NY, DC and Chicago so I'm assuming some "non-profit" paid to bring them up here which should mean they are the responsibility of said non-profit. Bringing people to a place with no plan to help them settle and get on their feet is abjectly cruel and whoever did that needs to be called out (and no, expecting WA or Seattle to just pick up the tab once they are here is not a plan).

Quite honestly at this point the only thing we owe them is a one way ticket back to Venezuela. They are not refugees in the sense they are fleeing for personal safety or persecution. They are migrants who cut the immigration line and expect us now to support them for the better part of a year while they get established. There is no country in the world that would allow that to happen. These are glaring examples of how badly the current administration has screwed up immigration and will undoubtedly be a major issue during the upcoming campaign.

I guess the lesson from Tacoma is "death threats work"?

The hush-money payoff happened BEFORE motherfucker was president, so fuck off with that absolute immunity BS.

I'm sure Ukraine would like to end the war. Putin doesn't plan to stop until they destroy Ukraine's future. Maybe if the UN passes a resolution demanding a ceasefire? Or the president of UW? Maybe the Seattle City Council?

@6: Better to roll with the flow and accept that Slog AM is not a rundown of top stories, but rather what delights the staffer finds that day in choosing from smorgasbord of tasty news items.

(i.e. who wants to discuss that!)

So the encampment disappeared as soon as the residents were given actual housing, however temporary? Huh, I wonder if that would work on other encampments...by the way one-night-at-a-time congregate shelters that often don't allow families, pets, or storage for personal items are not housing.

@7, Perhaps; however, that also ignores that Hamas was the aggressor and not acting in self-defense.

Israel, in 2005, withdrew all Jewish settlements and troops from Gaza and only attacked back into Gaza for brief periods in the intervening years, when attacks against Israel were made from Gaza (self-defense).

So Hamas had no lawful basis to attack Israel on 10/7.

Then you have the matter of those kibbutzes not having uniformed soldiers, IDF facilities, etc. The kibbutzes were armed non-combatants, not engaged in hostilities, unless attacked domestically (e.g. burglar, terrorists) or internationally (at which point if they are militia, they put on uniforms. Unlike Hamas, the IDF segregates and delineates combatants from non-combatants with uniforms and segregates military infra-structure from non-combatant infra-structure.

Where Hamas attacked IDF bases and IDF soldiers on 10/7, that's not a war crime. It's an illegal war perhaps, but not a violation of Laws of Armed Conflict.

Your analogy doesn't work under international law.

"After receiving death threats, Burbank resigned just two days after getting hired."

Give those people Presidential Medals of Freedom

"One of the baddest apples: Christopher Burbank, (a Tacoma cop acquitted .... )"

If he was acquitted under the laws that have been democratically adopted, by what democratically determined and enacted standard can he be a "bad apple."

Talk about contradicting your own argument! Talk about engaging in anti-democratic (dare we call it fascist) argument!

Long live Palestine
Free Free Palestine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhEFrv-Xwtw

@14 Hamas and Israel were in a state of conflict long before 10/7. Attacks by both sides happened regularly, and Hamas considered Israel's blockade of Gaza as an act of war, and Israel declared Gaza to be hostile territory.

Ah, so non-uniformed armed kibbutzim are noncombatants? Good to know! How exactly are they different from non-uniformed armed people in Gaza that you declared to be legitimate military targets? After all, you treat any discovery of arms in Gaza as clear evidence of Hamas' presence and justification for an IDF attack. If there can be armed noncombatants, how do you tell the difference?

Or maybe you just use the IDF's definition--if they killed a person, the person was by definition a terrorist. Saves a lot of trouble in counting civilian casualties if you've already decided that there are none.

Hannah WTF? You think threatening drivers with bricks at a crosswalk is funny - LOL? And posting this from an obviously toxic masculinity X account? Wow! You are losing your way, getting sucked into the same old crap, or at least how you otherwise present yourself.

@7, @18: We’re still waiting explanation on how Hamas’ raping civilian women was ok.

Hannah, you ROCK and everyone in our property loves you. (Well, one of the goats initially claimed she was "on the fence", but turned out that was a misunderstanding because she wanted the fluffy pine branch that had fallen on the fence. She agreed when offered said branch for her opinion.)

Great job, getting locked out sucks, and thank you. I really hope The Stranger provides antidepressants for their political reporters because in my 56 years on the planet I have yet to see any city's politics more truly fucked-up and impotent than Seattle's government. If they openly tried to be more inconsistent, tone deaf, and utterly fail at reading the room they couldn't do worse than they have throughout my lifetime.

Keep fighting the necessary and progressive fight. People like you keep us from utterly giving up.

Tracy & Jeni in Olympia area, plus a number of dogs, cats, and goats.

🫶 🏳️‍🌈 ☮️ 🎸 🤟

@18: A kibbutz is a place. A kibbutznik is a member of a kibbutz. Kibbutzim is the plural of kibbutz.

@10: “Quite honestly at this point the only thing we owe them is a one way ticket back to Venezuela.”

(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kCXTq-fWWio)

“What did we learn, Palmer?”

:-)

@20 I've never defended rape. Do you defend Israel's rape of Palestinian women in custody? How about Israel's threats of rape as an interrogation tactic?

@22 Thank you for the correction.

@23 "I have no f'n idea either"....haven't seen that one in a while.

Source for @24:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/22/claims-of-israeli-sexual-assault-of-palestinian-women-are-credible-un-panel-says

Israel also regularly beats prisoners. Is that OK too?

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-detainee-palestinian-deaths-hospitals-51d4727a1365b9e06198579c3eb856f8

@24: You defended terrorist assaults upon civilian communities via a combination of two very dubious claims, @7 and @18. I was wondering just how far your extremely permissive attitude towards deliberate assaults upon civilians goes. I’ll take “I’ve never defended rape,” as the high point of your morality in this regard.

Per your sources, please note there have been several allegations of rape and sexual misconduct by Israeli forces in months of war. By contrast, Hamas was clearly using rape as a matter of policy on 10/7.

(And for the last time, every allegation of war crimes should be investigated. I’ve never deviated from that statement, no matter how many times you try to imply I have.)

"I wish they would have joined us in voting “uncommitted,” but it's still cool to make Biden a lil scared."
This falls under the heading of Damn Fools. Jayapal, Tlaib & others did a fine job of 'scaring' Hillary & guaranteed the election of Trump. Protest as much as you want. Bitch as much as you want. Rabalrouse as much as you want.......BUT NOT DURING THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN AGAINST YOUR OWN BEST CANDIDATE!!!!!!!!!!!! Jeeeeezzzzzeee, how stupid can you get...how stupid can you stay?

@3, Thank you. This is more support for my claim that Journalism is dead in the USA. At the very least, no one is hiring editors any more. Also support for my claim that today's protesters have absolutely no idea of how non violent non cooperation is organized & executed. (Watch & then meditate on the scene in the movie Selma where MLK's character importunes the local Selma NAACP leadership to let King & the National organization manage the Selma protests because the local chapter doesn't have the understanding of the optics of the situation.)

Which brings me to my bitch: For all those so concerned with running down the police, how about directing a little of that energy toward condemnation for all the smash & grab that's going on in department stores, jewelry stores, pot shops, car jackings.....forget the crap about poor people forced to steal. These are nothing but organized, 'professional' thieves. (The quotes are a tip to how sloppy & unprofessional today's 'professional' thief is.) I don't have all that much sympathy for retail businesses, but we're all the ones who pay for that theft in higher prices.....for goods, autos, taxes, POLICE SALARIES, personal safety.....

@4, I totally agree. All these people crying for the 'innocent' people of Gaza. NONE of those people dropped a dime to Israel when Hamas was digging tunnels & filling them with ordinance in plain view of the residents. Toward the end of WWII, the USA was firebombing (FIREBOMBED for Christ's sake!!!) German & Japanese civilian targets because at the end it was realized that those entire nations were at war against us. Egypt & Israel are at peace. I think there are at least 2 other neighboring countries which are at peace with Israel (Jordan?). Yet Hamas & Iran still fight for the annihilation of Israel. I'm sorry. Much as I cringe at the tactics Israel has come to use, I just don't blame then any more. And I no longer have understanding or connection with the pro Gaza protesters.

@7, so then you feel that it's OK that Israel annihilate Gaza because Gaza did the same?

@8, please read @3

@20, Thank you!

@27 I was illustrating to the good Captain Ahab exactly what his declarations on the laws of war mean when applied to his favored people. 18 makes that clear. He's been trying to have it both ways for this entire conflict.

OK, so you support investigations into war crimes. Great! Do you support actually doing anything about those investigations, or just investigating and then ignoring the results? Even Ahab agrees that denying food to Gaza is a war crime. Do you actually support Israeli soldiers being punished for war crimes, or do you just sweep them under the rug like Ahab does?

@28 Gaza annihilated Israel? That's news to a whole lot of folks. Israel seems to be doing just fine, bombing and shooting civilians with impunity. Also, see 29.

@18, "How exactly are they different from non-uniformed armed people in Gaza that you declared to be legitimate military targets?"

1) They, unlike Hamas fighters, weren't paid by their government to fight their government's wars (unless they are in the reserves and until they are activated into the reserves.) 2) Kibbutz occupants and festival goes, unlike the Hamas fighters going after Israeli's, weren't engaged in combat with Palestinians or seeking combat with Palestinians. 3) Your assertions aside, there wasn't any active state of warfare on 10/7, and hadn't been hostilities in Gaza, Southern Israel, or along that border in years. 25,000 Gazans a day were peacefully passing back and forth over the frontier to work in Israel. The IDF wasn't on alert, there weren't active declared or undeclared hostilities.

You seem more concerned with whether the IDF primarily, and Hamas in theory (although you rarely lead with their latest violation of the rules of war that expose let's say, non-combatant hospital patients, to lawful attack by the IDF, by virtue of being in a facility Hamas had made into a legitimate target), are adhering to arbitrary, and largely unenforceable, rules for war, that attempt something impossible and infeasible. I.e. A neat, orderly, war, with few who didn't sign up for military service, or who weren't conscripted, getting killed or hurt.

Von Clausewitz has observed that war is the attempt to achieve political objectives by other means.

Once a war begins, the imperative for both sides is to win. Hamas either achieves their objectives for the conflict or they die. Israel achieves their objectives or an existential threat to their existence continues. Governments stand or fall based on the outcome. Once you commit to war, you better win, at all cost.

The Laws of Armed Conflict and subsequent human rights theory about war, predominantly come from an era where what happens on the battlefield, between uniformed combatants, in a few battles, was decisive to the outcome. Now what is more decisive is the size of the economy and manpower that the combatant has to draw from.

Ukraine's soldiers, adaptability, strategy, logistics, command and control, etc. appear to be better than Russia's man for man and unit for unit. Yet absent continued support from the West, they are doomed to lose. Even at 3:1 kill ratios favoring Ukraine, Ukraine will run out of manpower before Russia, and run out of artillery before Russia. Russia can throw both at Ukraine in a relentless meat grinder and still have men and artillery left, when the last Ukrainian is dead. That has been the Russian method of war for centuries.

So arguably, its the non-combatants of each side, and attacking them, that is more critical to success, and than Russia's (or some other country's) purely military competence. In that conflict, and all others, the non-combatants and the economic output and manpower they provide are more deadly and decisive to the outcome in the long-term than the combatants. Bill Clinton's, "It's the economy stupid," wasn't just about domestic politics, but the decisive factor in international relations and the success of the U.S. in future armed conflict.

In the context of the Israel-Arab conflict, if the Arabs had the will, Israel would cease to exist. Even with Israel's superior economy, tech, and even nukes, they will run out of munitions and manpower, mowing down and nuking Arabs, before Arabs will run out of bodies to die under Israeli munitions. Outside of Hamas, and a few other Islamic movements, the Arabs aren't willing to pay the price that would guarantee success.

Combatants rarely see each other on the battlefield. Indirect fire (artillery and bombs) kill 70% of the enemy combatants and non-combatants. You use those when you have intelligence to show where enemy soldiers are.

When you don't know where the enemy is, a combatant pushes infantry forward as a last resort. The enemy hides and remains concealed until they must be discovered or open fire. Then they open fire from behind cover. The advancing infantry seeks cover and fires at the fire coming at them, not the soldiers identified as pulling the trigger, because unlike what is unrealistically shown in movies, so that there is enough human drama to make the movie compelling and not boring as shit, humans don't fire and other humans, they fire at hostile fire. If the advancing infantry wants to live (and their commanders do want them to live because they hardest and most expensive thing is to recruit and train more of them), no effective means are possible to try and identify and separately target combatants only. That means any non-combatants in that direction will be slaughtered. Nor is there a requirement in humanitarian law for the advancing (and now ambushed) infantry to be more discerning than to blindly spray bullets in the direction that the threat is coming from.

But it gets worse for the non-combatants. The advancing infantry doesn't maintain small arms fire longer than they have to. They are on the radio to the artillery units and aircraft supporting them to open fire in the general vicinity they are taking fire from with overwhelming volume. They also will employ their own man-portable mortar artillery within their unit (if any). The artillery and bombs kill and destroy anyone and everything, without distinction or prejudice in the area they are aimed at. School children, women, hospital patients, soldiers, livestock, the surgery suite, and the non-surgery suite next to it that a combatant is firing from go up in a pile of gore, building materials, and dust.

War is indiscriminate, brute destruction, and not the precision-narrative propaganda fed to us by Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War, and ever since, by our government, and the governments of others, so that their populations don't become resistant to, tacitly or implicitly, consenting to war.

Humans err constantly. The more stress and jeopardy you put them under them, particularly under a compressed time-frame for decision making, the more they err, omit, and do what might be considered negligent things. The less discriminant they become in choosing the least-bad options.

A more disciplined, discerning ROE by the IDF might have reduced non-combatant casualties in this conflict. To the extent that it would have it is marginal. Probably single-digit percentages. Assuming its as high as 10% (highly doubtful), that's 3,000 fewer dead Palestinians over six months, in a conflict that kills 1,153 per week. Wipe out Hamas three weeks sooner, so that they can't effectively resist, or quit, and more Palestinian lives are preserved than from any changes to ROE.

Yet you are obsessed with the trees of whether outdated rules to civilize the uncivillizable are being observed, and people and countries are being hauled before a feckless IJC, rather than the forest of accelerating one or more of combatants becoming unwilling, or unable to continue, so there is no cross-bombardment (artillery and bombs) for Palestinian non-combatants to die in.

Once the war starts, non-combatants, by magnitudes of order, will die. No rules, or attempts to apply them, to try and bring order to the chaos of war, precision to the imprecise, civility to incivility, justice to the ultimate injustice, are going to change that. The place to make a difference is to stop the conflict from starting in first place, and if that fails, apply so much overwhelming force to one or both sides they lose the ability or will to continue as quickly as possible. That is what saves non-combatants, not treaties worth the paper they are printed on, and courts with no armies or police forces to carry out their orders.

@30, Israel's continuation against Hamas is about limiting the future capability of Hamas and future attacks, not current retribution, or the current state of the battlefield. It is much like the U.S. initially went big in Afghanistan, stayed there for 20 years, and continues lower-intensity War on Terror (with non-combatant collateral damage) to this day, to prevent future attacks. Israel and the IDF will follow that template. They can't afford not to.

The 10/7 asymmetric attack killed the largest number of casualties in the history of the current Jewish state in nominal and proportionate numbers. They can't risk equal or greater success by Hamas going forward.

Ahab has surpassed raindrop and tensorna recently as biggest asshole troll and overall just like bad person recently. Someone get this dummy a trophy.

@32 it's true!
fax II's la Machine
cause he can put it
Out there like NO one
else can even if some of
it may be entirely facts-free
due to AI hallucinatarily delusions
and a severe fealty to winning regardlessly

and makes for
awfully fine
filler/fod-
der for
Free.

you
cannot
Beat the price
tho the messenger
seems a much better target

Every state primary operates according to its own rules. New York State primary ballots do not allow a voter to choose "Uncommitted".

New York and Georgia's "Blank" votes are no less a part of the "Uncommitted" movement than Nevada's "None of these candidates", Massachusetts and North Carolina's "No preference". The only reason it's the "Uncommitted" movement is that's the option Michigan law provided for, and that's where it started.

I get that Slog AM isn't supposed to be a deep dive, but all of this is clear with 3 minutes of googling.

@32: Please don't conflate commentary with trolling.

@31 I only got halfway through your TL;DR before giivng up, but you accidentally said something very illuminating:

"So arguably, its the non-combatants of each side, and attacking them, that is more critical to success, and than Russia's (or some other country's) purely military competence. In that conflict, and all others, the non-combatants and the economic output and manpower they provide are more deadly and decisive to the outcome in the long-term than the combatants."

Your contention is that it's more important to attack civilians than combatants. Which is, of course, exactly what Hamas does. And you decry them for it. And exactly what Israel is doing. And you support them for it. Can't your AI be a little consistent (and have a word count)?

The problem with your theory is that it has been tested and it has /never worked/. Not in WWI or WWII. Not in Korea or Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan or Ukraine. Not when fighting states or insurgencies. It's just not effective. It's just straight-up cruelty.

For the record, the reason I don't generally pile on Hamas is that everyone already knows who they are. They're a bunch of vicious murderous bastards who think nothing of killing civilians and other war crimes. I pile on Israel because they use the same tactics but try to pretend that they're the Most Moral Army In The World (tm). At least Hamas is honest about their bastardry. Israel pretends to be a civilized country while using the tactics of dictatorial regimes. we called out Assad for torture and indiscriminate killings of civilians, but give Israel a halo for doing the same.

bibi's
keep-
outta-
Prison
Gambit's
taking Israel
and possibly
the Planet right
Straight into the
Terlet. good Luck
Smokin' Joe trying
to Extricate yourself
and Ours from the War
Crimes Tribunals. "good"
thing we cannot Afford to
take the WCT very Seriously.

where does that End?

@36, "Your contention is that it's more important to attack civilians than combatants. Which is, of course, exactly what Hamas does. And you decry them for it."

I decry Hamas for attacking period, not who they attacked and didn't attack in Israel. I.e. Being the aggressors and resorting to war on 10/7.

I am suggesting that international conventions that attempt the separate war making capacity into non-combatants and combatants is naive, and unrealistic. If you want to fight a war to win, which is the only reason a war should be fought, then its logical to go after those in society that supply and manpower, beans, bullets, and cash to sustain the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. The attempt to differentiate non-combatants and combatants is unrealistic and outdated.

I am further suggesting that it logically follows that the best way to protect the greatest number of "non-combatants" is to:

1) To accomplish national interest by political, non-war means.
2) Failing that, for one side to achieve victory over the other as fast as possible, even if that means higher death-rates earlier in the conflict, to make it shorter.
3) For the international community to war (use force) against both sides to make either getting their objective in warring against the other a bust and to destroy the means or will of the parties to war against each other.

The IJC, et. al., is a bust. (Until and unless they get their own army/police - and then what is the safeguard against them remaining a benevolent force for good?)

@28: "Protest as much as you want. Bitch as much as you want. Rabalrouse as much as you want.......BUT NOT DURING THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN AGAINST YOUR OWN BEST CANDIDATE!!!!!!!!!!!! Jeeeeezzzzzeee, how stupid can you get...how stupid can you stay?"

Hannah has made her purpose explicitly clear: "...the movement to vote uncommitted serves a deeper purpose than unseating Biden." (https://www.thestranger.com/elections-2024/2024/03/18/79433368/make-sure-your-vote-got-counted) If "unseating Biden" means Trump's re-election, then so be it; Hannah does not care. Causing these problems is her purpose; it is a feature, not a bug. Anyone who tells you that "uncommitted" was merely a protest vote is telling you that person does not understand what is going on here.

@29: You've been ignoring context this entire conflict. Hamas has done everything it possibly could to increase civilian casualties, in both Israel and Gaza. The IDF thus has to operate in an environment Hamas created to increase the probability of bad outcomes for civilians in Gaza. While this does not automatically absolve the IDF for any crimes it commits, it creates what in actual criminal trials would be called "extenuating circumstances," which may reduce the severity of judgments against the IDF in actual trials. Your lack of knowledge of criminal procedures really shows here.

"OK, so you support investigations into war crimes. Great! Do you support actually doing anything about those investigations, or just investigating and then ignoring the results?"

Christ, you're tedious. Yes, former City Attorney Pete Holmes, even in Seattle, voters will punish a prosecutor for "ignoring the results" of the SPD's criminal investigations.

"...Even Ahab agrees that denying food to Gaza is a war crime. Do you actually support Israeli soldiers being punished for war crimes,"

Sure. Do you understand that videos you found on the internet are not actually the same thing as evidence, introduced under the rules for evidence, into a court of competent jurisdiction? I ask because you've repeatedly conflated those two things in these threads.

@38 Calling Hamas the sole aggressor on 10/7 requires ignoring 3000 years of history. The question of who is the aggressor depends on what time period you look at. And it's full of shades of gray, which naturally your AI can't process.

And so the solution to reducing civilian casualties is to bomb the shit out of civilians. Bold theory Cotton.

@29 What, and bombing published "safe evacuation routes" isn't intended to increase civilian casualties? Suuuuure. If you think that being asked whether you oppose [bad thing] is tedious, maybe don't do the same to others? I have repeatedly called out Hamas on their bastardry, yet Every. Single. Time. you ask whether I oppose [thing that Hamas did]. So cut that shit and I'll stop asking whether you support Israel raping prisoners.

@40: Ha! Knew it. At last, after six dreary months of pseudo-legal sophistry, it emerges: "Calling Hamas the sole aggressor on 10/7 requires ignoring 3000 years of history."

So, should Israel now sue only Rome, or all of Italy, for tearing down their Temple? (I'm guessing Rome, as the Eternal City, should get the blame, correct?) For, not to file such a suit is to ignore 3,000 years of Mediterranean history.

Don't worry; South Africa can file an amicus curae brief, saying that to the absolute best of their legal knowledge, Rome was never an Imperial power.

@41 Hamas and Israel have been at war for decades. Pretending that Hamas is suddenly the sole aggressor because of one of the larger flareups ignores the rest of that history. Both sides have attacked the other. Neither's hands are clean.

@36, The difference is that Israel was sitting there doing nothing when Hamas attacked CIVILIANS without warning......and NOT the first time. Israel is very well justified in some pretty dirty tactics this time.

But I must confess I have my own day dream on how to end all this. In the military, any military, if one guy in a company screws up, they punish the whole outfit. If two guys are fighting, disrupting things, they punish the whole outfit. My day dream is that we carpet bomb the entire Middle East with nukes, from the southern border of Turkey to Djibouti. If they can't learn to play nice with each other, they don't get to play at all. That wouldn't fix their problem, but it would fix OUR problem. (If you're horrified by that, read the last paragraph for my real solution.)

@39, "If "unseating Biden" means Trump's re-election, then so be it; Hannah does not care."
And I maintain that this is a childish, naive, infantile approach to ANYTHING. And it's more support for my belief that today's protesters need to learn to think more with history & education than with their crotches. For the simple reason that their solution (unseating Biden) makes things worse, NOT better. Any fool can burn down a barn. It's always easier to destroy things than to build things. And it's always more satisfying to bask in the afterglow of an orgasm of destruction than to sleep off the exhaustion of construction. But the next day you're up to your neck in manure, whereas you were only up to your knees the day before. Maturity is what's needed here, not teen age pique.....which is what we get from the columnists at the Stranger. This is why Biden, Obama, & the Clintons were some of the finest politicians we've ever seen: They had the patience to build & compromise rather than pout & destroy.

@40 & 41, you give more fuel to my daydream of carpet bombing the Middle East. The ONLY solution to all this is the one they found in South Africa. Everyone confesses their atrocities & asks for forgiveness. Everyone then forgives everyone and, WITHOUT PUNISHING ANYONE, they move on with love & tolerance. And those who won't participate in the reconciliation are cast aside and shunned forever.

But Desmond Tutu is no longer with us.

@42: In 1870, France attacked Germany, without provocation. In 1914, they attacked each other, not to defend themselves, but because of treaty obligations each had to other countries -- and because France wanted to re-conquer the long-contested territories of Alsace and Lorraine. Pretending that Germany was suddenly the sole aggressor in 1940, because it was the largest of those flareups, ignores the rest of that history.

If your logic can be employed to excuse even Nazi Germany's unprovoked military aggression, then there is definitely something wrong with your reasoning. Such as the nice moral equivalence you've made between a country which came into existence with the express consent of the United Nations, and a terrorist group, funded by longtime enemies of that country, which exists to destroy that country. As I've written elsewhere in these threads, and @41, it's nice to see your mask finally come off. What it reveals is not pretty, but it is real.

@42, Hamas will accept nothing less than another holocaust, even if they have to sacrifice themselves doing it.

Israel will accept nothing less than Hamas not being able to carry that out from Gaza (or anywhere else) and will attack Hamas wherever they find them and whatever supports them.

The faster one, or both sides, loses the willingness and capacity to fight the other over those irreconcilable objectives, the faster Gazan's quit dying.

No amount of trying to civilize the uncivilizable as they attach one another's means to kill each other, with whatever non-combatants are caught in the middle, can civilize the barbarity of war.

If you want the barbarity to end for Gazans, one side had to make the cost so high for the other, that the are incapable of continuing or quit. No "gentlemens rules for warfare" (a contradiction if there ever was one) on a worthless peace of paper will help the Gazans. No amount of finger waggin' by the ICJ, or the like, trying to enforce making the barbarity of a war zone, somehow un-barbaric, is going to help. Like all wars, it ends when it becomes to costly for one side, or both, to continue to fight it.

I've heard it here before
but perhaps the assuaging
of Guilt might've been better
Served had we not handed the
Jews Israel (occupied by Other People)
but instead given to them the Homeland of
the Perps Responsible for the gotdam Holocaust:

Germany.

I wonder if they
might have something
Useful to add to the Convo.

"No amount of finger waggin' by the ICJ, or the like, trying to enforce making the barbarity of a war zone, somehow un-barbaric, is going to help." --@el Capitan

we'll just hafta
Wait till one of 'em
Gives Up or a Third Party
takes Matters into their Own
Hands and atttacks Israel provoking
US (GO, JOE!) and Finally starting the War
to End all Wars -- fucking Armageddon where
Jesus comes back and 20,000 Souls fly Away with

Him to greener pastures in Heaven
leaving the Rest of Us to burn
in Hell for Eternity -- or for
two or three seconds

which Ever
comes first.

all This
just to keep
Nutnyahoo the
FUCK outta Prison

sure seems
like a Waste
to me but what
do I know, ya know?

@46: Sigh Once you swallow that propaganda, you just stay gulled.

First, leaders of the British Empire started contemplating a modern state of Israel right from the moment they seized Palestine from the Ottoman Empire. That was 25 years before the Holocaust started. 'Balfour Declaration, (November 2, 1917), statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”', https://www.britannica.com/event/Balfour-Declaration

Second, Jews were already resident in that region of the Ottoman Empire when the British seized it, and the founders of Israel in 1948 were mostly either from Palestine itself, or from other places in the Middle East.

Third, Palestine was a mix of ethnicities then, and Israel has an ethnic mix now. Arab Israelis are the largest minority in their country, which also has a Christian minority. (The difference in outcomes between the Arabs of the expiring British Mandate who accepted the U.N.'s plan for Palestine, and the ones who chose war, is pretty large, isn't it?)

Fourth, Germany and the surrounding regions in 1945 were war-torn wastelands, populated by impoverished locals and refugees; rebuilding them AND imposing a Jewish State (which would have meant somehow bringing large numbers of Jews from the Middle East into Europe, or getting Stalin to expel westward large numbers of Jews from the Soviet Union) on the very place which had just organized the most violently murderous exhibition of anti-Jewish hatred in thousands of years would (to engage in epic understatement here) have greatly complicated American efforts to reform Western Europe along peaceful lines.

Fifth, whilst the Holocaust was of course organized by Nazis, they succeeded or failed based upon the help they received from the local populations. Denmark simply refused to consider deporting Jews, and so the Holocaust didn't happen there, while Poland had both the largest pre-war population of Jews, and the smallest post-war population of Jews. The Holocaust was organized in Germany, but it had many willing executioners across Europe. Trying to impose a Jewish State there would have been the absolute definition of imperial overstretch.

did they Ask the
People living there
if they Minded giving
up their Homes? they
don't bother asking W.
Bankers if they Mind get-
ting the Fuck outta their Homes
Now -- did they way back then, too?
or did they just Imminent Domain them

the fuck off their Land?

it seems Israel's
quite Used To using
their Best Equipped Military
in the whole Middle East to get

what they WANT
or perhaps what their
Reactionary "Right" Wants

bibi's SO
Gotta GO.

if he Hasn't
he's gonna
Destroy
Israel

all to
keep his
ass outta Jail.

@46: “…occupied by Other People…”

Well then, it’s a good thing North America had no human population when the white Europeans “discovered” it, because if there actually had been people living here, and they had been forced to move out to accommodate Europeans, then the United States just wouldn’t have any right to exist, would it? (How can there be such a thing as an American citizen with rights, if the very country of America has no right to exist?)

@49: “did they Ask the
People living there
if they Minded giving
up their Homes?”

Nope. The Israeli government ethnically cleansed all Jewish settlers from Gaza without regard to whether each settler wanted to leave or not.

That was in 2005. Please do educate us on the lasting peace Israel obtained in Gaza for having removed all Jewish settlements from it.

time to re-think your argument?
my favorite reader’s
comment on
the nyt’s:

The Israeli
Censorship Regime
Is Growing. That Needs to Stop.

the comment:

Israel
and its
proponents
have been caught
by surprise at the global
condemnation to its campaign of retribution.

The savagery of
Hamas on October 7 was
bestial, ruthless and appalling.

But it was also very successful. Hamas
knows it cannot destroy Israel on its own,
but it can goad Israel into doing it for them.

Israel under the reactionary regime of Netanyahu
has attacked an unarmed civilian population
with absolutely no consideration of mass
casualties, Geneva Convention rules,
guilt or even humanity.

[speaking of dehumanizing]

Netanyahu in particular is fighting
for his political life and personal freedom,
and no number of piles of dead Palestinian children
or acres of stolen Palestinian property in the West Bank
will instill an iota of compassion or even common sense in him.

Israel's genocidal fury
is unjustifiable, dispro-
portionate and horrifying.

It is also serving to separate Israel
from the protection of the West
which it has taken for granted.

This
is precisely
what Hamas was
striving to achieve, and will
leave Israel alone and vulnerable.

The response has been
to try to shut down
all criticism.

Israel will not permit journalists in Gaza be
-cause they do not want facts recorded
nor Palestinians presented favorably.

The various pro-Israel groups in the West,
particularly in the US, target free speech
that demands Israeli accountability.

Shutting down speech will destroy Israel, not protect it.

--Shar; Atlanta

more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/opinion/gaza-journalists-censorship-israel.html#commentsContainer
[formatting mine]

‘Israel's genocidal fury
is unjustifiable, disprop-
ortionate and horrifying.

It is also serving to separate Israel
from the protection of the West
which it has taken for granted.

This
is precisely
what Hamas was
striving to achieve, and will
leave Israel alone and vulnerable.’

Leaving Jews
PLANET-Wide
Vulnerable. Dump Bibi
Before it’s Too Fucking Late

Oh and END
The GENOCIDE