Nothing to see here, just another day of Israelis firing on an aid convoy waiting at an Israeli checkpoint. A convoy of marked UN vehicles that had coordinated their passage with Israeli authorities prior to passage.

Just another day with the Most Moral Army in the World (tm).

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240723-israel-attack-on-aid-convoy-heading-to-gaza-city-not-isolated-incident-unrwa-says/

"[... bibi nutnyahoo,] the butcher of Gaza
to speak before all the House
lawmakers who've voted to
enable the genocide
of Palestinians."

it's not a "war"
it's shooting bombing
starving depriving a Captive
population of water medicine
medical care shelter; that so many
sociopaths can see No Problem with
supporting this ONGOING GENOCIDE

tells us precisely
whom Not to
listen to

YOUR tax dollars
enabling a
genocidal
fucking
lunatic.

arrest this War Criminal
and send him straight
over to The Hague
where he can Fi-
nally Face
Justice.

@1: Now that you’re done telling us you know nothing about courts and laws, you can tell us how little you know of how military operations work — or don’t.

@2: You do understand a Harris Administration will probably pursue the same Middle Eastern policies as the Biden Administration now does, right?

Athens, Ohio isn't Appalachia. It's real close but you gotta cross the Ohio to get to it, son.

Tensor's sociopathic and mentally ill apologism for genocide can be safely ignored.

"Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (good location, bad on Palestine)..."
And by "bad on Palestine" do you mean "holds the same position as the majority of voters" or "holds the same position as the top of the ticket?" or... something else? But what could be the secret ingredient that makes Shapiro "bad on Palestine" and disqualifies him from office, in spite of his position not differing substantially from Harris' or indeed from others on this list? I can't imagine what it might be.

The reason that people are likely to vote down the long-term care program, is that it is not really a long-term care program. The maximum benefits would come nowhere near to meeting even a year or two of long-term care cost. If the state wanted to provide some sort of short term, rehab insurance for injured workers, they should’ve done so and been honest about it. But the program that was put in is in no way of substitute for actual long-term care insurance. Anyone who does have adequate insurance is throwing their money down a hole if they also pay taxes for this program. And requiring participation just makes it that much harder to pay the premiums for your real LTC policy. In my case, the premium for a policy that actually does provide for long term care is not much more than the WA Cares tax.

Who in their right mind reads "the news" about HB Vance?

Trump had to search long and hard to find a running mate who's even more racist than he is.

Proof positive that Trump is going to win the next election. All those monster pickup trucks with Texas license plates are driven by somebody.

@7 not to mention it actually chased private insurance out of the market so now the only option is a lessor plan that costs more. It’s a terrible program and needs to be cancelled.

@5 no matter how many times you and your pro Hamas comrades repeat that line it will never be true.

Depriving people of food and medical supplies may not necessarily meet the criteria for genocide but it also does absolutely nothing to advance Israel’s stated objectives of getting the hostages released and ending Hamas. It will only result in more death and suffering for the Palestinian people. You are more concerned about the potential misuse of a word than people dying horrifically from conditions that are entirely preventable.

@5: I'm honestly curious to know what caused you to use the words "sociopathic and mentally ill" to describe what I wrote @3. Was it noting that casualties from "friendly fire," and accidental attacks upon civilians, happen in pretty much every war ever? Was it noting that a Pres. Harris will likely follow the pretty much the same policy which VP Harris has now executed for several years? Was it some combination of those two observations? They seem to be not merely valid observations, but very obvious, even banal, ones at that. What, exactly, made them seem "sociopathic and mentally ill" to you? That's a serious question.

Also, thanks to the Wall Street Journal, we know Sinwar believes that a high civilian casualty rate in Gaza serves Hamas' purposes. What do you think blaming Israel, and only Israel, and in wildly wrong and inflammatory terms ("genocide") for these deaths might do for his continued pursuit of civilian casualties? Do you believe it would deter him from continuing to get civilians killed, or would it encourage him to get more civilians killed? Given your use of the term "sociopathic," implies you know what the word means, what do you believe Sinwar might do?

@3 Ah yes, it's /entirely/ normal for a properly-functioning military to fire shots on marked UN vehicles. Stopped at your own military's checkpoint. Or perhaps you have another explanation for why IDF forces are so incompetent as to be shooting at marked vehicles waiting at their own checkpoints, endangering their own soldiers?

Or perhaps they're deliberately firing on a marked, pre-cleared UN convoy? Either way, shouldn't someone be relieved of duty? Oh, my bad. I forgot that this is the Most Moral Army in the World (tm), where the army acts with Extremely Moral Impunity. You can see their extensive morality that they operate under because nobody ever gets punished for committing war crimes like firing on humanitarian relief convoys. Why, they probably have extensive morality training where they teach snipers when to shoot nuns too!

@12: The only way to prevent such incidents is to stop or end the conflict. Please describe how your obsessive focus with every action you don’t like, but only by one side, will help end this conflict.

@1,@2,@5,@12 and Greenwoodbob,

How is your theory of change to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza working out for Gazans? How effective is it in securing an end to hostilities where Gazans are caught as human shields/cannon fodder between Hamas and the IDF as they strike at each other?

How effective have rulings of international courts been in changing anything on the ground for Gazans?

How effective has it been demanding another feckless U.N. Resolution, maybe in bold letters this time, or yet another ruling by another international court, of theoretical jurisdiction?

How much has it changed U.S. policy or moved the electorate? Palestine is a top priority for 3% of Washington voters after all your efforts, meaning they will ignore an incumbent's or challenger's views on the issue, in favor of views on higher priority issues. If its 3% in progressive Washington State, how high do you think it ranks in Texas, Kansas, or Illinois, which are less so? That seems hardly enough to cause the President or Congress to change course with funding to Israel, nor is Israel dependent enough on that to change course even if you did?

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/poll-finds-big-divide-in-top-issue-for-wa-democrats-and-republicans/
So how about we, or the international community aid one side or the other in the conflict with enough help to coerce the other side into quit. Historically, that is how wars end. Historically, that gets the most non-combatants out of the crossfire the fastest, and saves the most lives.

Go away.

@9, Bruh. You can't even consider opposing viewpoints on the topic, like those proposed by the IDF top brass to have an endgame and plan to rebuild Gaza (you know, instead of open-ended destroy Hamas with reckless abandon while fostering an insurgency through wanton destruction and collateral damage of innocents) without declaring that anyone who points out the ill-fated and war crime methods of the thought police just hate Israel. Your binary thinking is a clown show.

Tensor, I base your mental illness on the last 8 months of repeating the same nonsense ad nauseum and expecting a different result. I could carbon copy every post where you just spout off the same tired talking points like a broken android.

Tensor gets caught up on definitions, even when those definitions Tensor claims to use meet the textbook definition of genocide. Before genocide, it was fascism.

Oh oh, you can't call genocide genocide! That's not genocide because of my mental copout for everything horrific but genocide. Hamas is committing genocide on the Israelis and themselves! There are no other actors at play or weapons being used that Hamas's own against themselves on a land they don't even belong in because they aren't a real ethnic group anyway except Arabs (tensor literally said this), and and and human shields!! HUMAN SHIELDS!! OH THE HUMANITY, human shields shielding their own innocent against their own self genocide which isn't genocide when the IDF does it but is when they do! Good, perfect, sanitized and righteous IDF self defense in all things. The most perfect and justified acts of gentle and meek precision 2,000 lb. bomb airstrikes and children starving and shot in the head with kindness and due restraint. How dare you, antisemite!

On and that isn't fascism! You are the fascist for using the word fascism! Your comparison to the rebirth of historical tropes and patterns of rhetoric and action isn't fascist but only the latest and most precise monolithic definition of what its existential essence is irrespective of all history! Hear no evil see no evil speak no evil!!

Yep, coocoo for cocoa puffs. And these people reproduce, yikes.

"Yep, coocoo for cocoa puffs. And these people reproduce, yikes."

Is that where these new accounts come from? Metaphysical, I Guess You'll Never Know, welcome to SLOG AM

@13 Ah, deflection. Can't take being shown that the IDF is a war crimes machine? No defense for this incident, not even that you support and (invisible) investigation that will never see the light of day? You're kind of slipping. I expected more from you.

Maybe it would help a few people survive if the IDF didn't casually kill civilians. Like, probably those nuns would have made it. Not to mention the WCK staff. And more people would survive if the IDF didn't sabotage food delivery as it did in this instance.

@14 I was wondering what sockpuppet Ahab was going to come back as. Now we know.

Wars end when there's a negotiated cease-fire. That may come for all kinds of reasons that may or may not have anything to do with either sides' willingness or ability to fight on. Given that Bibi has been actively sabotaging cease-fire talks, maybe you should point your ire at him.

Sinwar is a shitbag too who has no business throwing his own people into the meat grinder for the sake of PR. Gaza deserves new leadership but not at the cost of their entire polity being wiped off the map and the babies thrown out with the bloody bathwater.

@19, And why does one side, or both, agreed to a negotiated cease-fire? Because they get more of their aims from the cease-fire, at lower cost, then the high cost, and low-benefit of continuing.

I'll believe your care for Gazans caught in this slaughter is sincere, when you embrace evidence-based policies that have a shot at actually ending the conflict. Israel and Hamas both (Blinkin, Egypt, Quatar have been particularly pointed of late that Hamas keeps getting what they ask for and then moving the goalposts) keep putting poison pills in ceasefire offers. What does that tell you? It costs less, and advances their aims better, to keep shooting at each other with Gazans in the middle.

So what coercion, that can actually be achieved in the real world, where all the actors, including the U.S. and international community, pursue interests, not justice, or peace for peace's sake, do you support?

When you articulate that, I'll believe your concern for Palestinians is sincere. I.e. You support something that will actually end the combat, rather than endless idealized solutions and virtue signalling.

War, by definition, is the rejection of principle and rule of law, for might makes right.

@22. Go away, Ahab. Thousands of years of just war theory necessarily constrain the limits of might and right among nations, the extent to which has been debated by political philosophers as long as war has existed. We have long established that you are a nihilistic moral relativist who consumes your own pretentious word salad sophistry regurgitant time after time with ever less substance and more bullshit.

thank Gawd the Nihilist
& Sociopathic POVs're
Well-represented here
on Derr Schlogg

they're what keeps
America shitty nah
the Whole Damn
Planet actually.

so -- how do we
move Beyond
them?

I know well what
Their answer'd be

perhaps we need
only Listen to
them ~ Just
Once?

@21 Didn't even deny being Ahab's new sockpuppet. You folks are disappointing me right and left today. But on to the substance.

Hey, at least you recognized that Israel is adding poison pills too.

As far as my achievable policy goals that would end the conflict, there are a few things that the US can do:
* Increase sanctions against members of the Israeli government who are actively calling for genocide. There's several in the Israeli cabinet to choose from.
* Increase sanctions against Israeli factions who are destroying food aid crossing the West Bank.
* Publicly support the factions in Israel who are advocating for cease fires and plans for post-conflict Gaza.
* Publicly support the ICJ ruling against new settlements.
* Publicly end all shipments of offensive weapons, citing the Leahy Law against arming governments who commit war crimes.
* Publicly consider ending direct cash aid to Israel under the same laws.

What solutions do you propose? Bombing all of Gaza to the finest rubble possible and destroying the territory and its entire population in order to save it?

@22 Now I definitely know you're Ahab.

Pshaw, DIET Mountain Dew isn't racist, noob. THROWBACK Mountain Dew is! But oh that real sucrose! No high fructose corn syrup here! Truly the champagne of pops.

@23, You are the one who is nihilistic. Without moral absolutes of some kind, from some source, what is right is SOLELY in the eye of the beholder, and their ability to will it to power as Nietzsche would put it, and impose it on others, is all there is. Another way to put it would be the ability to impose it on others by coercion, including force.

If one value is as good as another, it logically follows that no value is better than any other. What value you choose is just a preference. All choices are without meaning.

If "just war" is decided by humans, through some sort of precedent, then all you can say is the IDF and Hamas are acting to change the precedent, as those before them acted, to change prior precedent in their favor. If Hamas and/or the IDF succeed, then whatever they change precedent to is the new justice, until someone in the future changes that precedent to something else.

In your own construct, or frame, there is no such thing as justice other than the definition someone, or some group, is able to impose on the world, or some area of it. Under your construct, you, or your group, don't have to change your actions to be acting "justly," you merely have to change the definition of "just" so that it matches what you have been doing, and/or want to do in the future.

That is Nihilistic.

@9

"PRO-Hamas"?
your Fascism's
showing yet
again d13r

orwell'd
be proud
Bugger off

"If one value is as good as another"

sure wormtongue jr
Nothing matters
EXCEPT Who's
got thee
Biggest
Dick

YOUR type's
what keeps
this Planet
in Flames
Famines
& Tears

What is the sound of shit happening?

Israel must kill as many Palestinians as possible to save them. Hamas will not break until Israel slaughters and starves to death enough of the people Hamas treats as disposable human shields. There are no moral absolutes because [incomprehensible pseudo-philosophical bullshit]. I am the smartest person in any room I have ever set foot in. Go away.

Shorter @27 "I'm rubber, you're glue, bounces off me and sticks to you!"

I'm glad you stopped any pretense that the IDF is following any of the post-WWII laws of war. That was getting kinda embarrassing how wrong you were every single time.

And I see that you have no proposed solutions other than killing them all and letting God sort them out. You're kind of off your game today. Usually you have something besides a Mudede-level incomprehensible philosophical screed.

@31, Until and unless they are convicted at a trial, and the perpetrators are actually held accountable, the IDF has violated nothing! Neither has Hamas until that occurs.

Don't hold your breath. If and when that comes to pass, it will have saved not a single non-combatant life. It's the least of either parties concern at the moment. For Hamas, its just more martyrdom. For Israel, they are too busy to give two shits about about some paper tiger of a court.

What ended war crimes in Yugoslavia? The threats and pontification of international courts and bodies? Nope. It was the NATO, lead by the U.S. putting their thumb on the scale, so the Serbians found it too costly to continue. That, not the threat of some court, is what saved non-combatant lives.

For Israel, its even less of a concern. Nobody is dragging anyone in Israel in front of such a court, until they are occupied by a foreign power that can make their own arrests.

So you continue to value virtue signalling over what actually will save a single Gazan from continuing to be in the crossfire.

@32. So the Nazis violated nothing until the Nuremberg Trials?

now THAT’s what
I’m Talkin’
‘Bout:

nyt:

Harris
Rallies Exuberant Democrats
in Wisconsin: ‘The Baton Is in Our Hands’

Vice President Kamala Harris gave her first speech as the de facto Democratic nominee to a deafening crowd, keeping up her offensive against Donald Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/23/us/politics/harris-speech-wisconsin-rally.html

they said it Couldn’t
be Done! but it
IS

Thanks for the
Joementum
Uncle
JOE!

Now Go KICK
bibi’s ARSE.

@33
faxtodisuadeyourAss
can out-type A I &
just as mindlessly
justifying war
crimes's just
a piece o'
cake for
some

They ALL
do it!

@6 ...But what could be the secret ingredient that makes Shapiro "bad on Palestine" and disqualifies him from office, in spite of his position not differing substantially from Harris' or indeed from others on this list?...

Could be the support of genocide. Or it could be the undemocratic tendency to sick state troopers on students who disagree with his Israel politics.

And, a lot of Kamala supporters support the other Jew, Bernie. But nice try playing the race (or is it religion) card.

@10: "You are more concerned about the potential misuse of a word than people dying horrifically from conditions that are entirely preventable."

Words mean things. If we're to have dialog on what to do about those preventable deaths, then we need to agree on what our words mean. Instead, the Stranger and supportive commenters here abuse the word "genocide," using it as a club, in their attempt to bully everyone else into submitting to their demands of what to do about those preventable deaths. I'm refusing to be bullied, and in many of their comments in this very thread, you can read their resultant rage and frustration.

And they're not merely dishonest, but hypocritical. Try asking them, as I have, if anyone else has committed "genocide" in that same region of late. Immediately, all of their certainty about the meaning of that word, and whether it applies, completely vanishes, and nothing but silence or verbal abuse results.

If you're upset that no dialog is taking place, please take your concerns to those responsible.

@32 Crimes can be committed before convictions come down, as @33 notes. Saying that there's no crime means that you can never investigate to prove a crime. Which is handy because it means nobody is ever convicted. Do you take the same view of, say, a murder downtown? There's no crime until a trial, so no point in investigation, right?

Of course, you have somehow forgotten that people are, in fact, hauling Israel in front of courts. It's odd that you forgot about that, because you rail against those court cases on a regular basis. But hey, intellectual consistency has never been your strong suit.

So what's your solution? Just bombing Gaza into finer rubble?

@36 Words do mean things. And you regularly decide that words like genocide don't mean what they actually mean. And always in a double standard that benefits Israel. For example, you correctly point out that intention is the key factor (as opposed to body count) in determining whether a genocide is happening when you discuss Hamas committing a genocide against Israel. But then when anyone brings up the notion of Israel committing genocide against Gazans, you say that it can't be genocide because not enough people are dead. When someone points out your hypocrisy, you get all butthurt and run off in a huff.

If we’re being technical it’s ethnic cleansing but genocide is easier to type and we’re not being graded on this.

@31. Mudede's philosobabble is cheeky and fun. Ahab's philosobabble is cruel and tragic.

@37: “And you regularly decide that words like genocide don't mean what they actually mean.”

I have always used the definition of “genocide” in the Genocide Convention, which is the definition the entire world has used for 75 years. That definition has been rejected by the Stranger, and supportive commenters here, because it obviously applies to Hamas’ attacks in Israel on 10/7, but may or may not apply to the IDF’s actions in Gaza. The Stranger’s position is the exact opposite, so the Stranger has decided to redefine the word to fit its political agenda. (George Orwell had plenty to say about that, all of it bad.)

“But then when anyone brings up the notion of Israel committing genocide against Gazans, you say that it can't be genocide because not enough people are dead.”

No, when the Stranger and supportive commenters insist that Israel is committing genocide, and use the body count as “proof,” I note that body count does not determine genocide. I further note that the death rate in Gaza is a fraction of what Hamas accomplished in Israel on 10/7, so IF body count determines genocide (the false argument the Stranger makes) then Israel is doing a really, really bad job of it.

(And, of course, proof that Hamas intentionally drives up said body count either gets flat-out ignored, or results in a torrent of verbal abuse.)