It’s a very good morning. Nice to have a little bit of hope that things can get better.

I’m not really sure what that adds.

When you declare war, as Hamas did on October 7th, you don’t get to set the terms of your own surrender.

The more Palestinian civilians Hamas throw into the meat-grinder, the more upset Westerners, who no longer understand war nor believe in anything worth fighting for, become.

The more upset they become, the more they pressure their governments to put pressure on Israel.

Eventually, Israel is forced to let Hamas live.

Hamas recover, then unleash even more violence a few years down the line.

Rinse. Repeat.

I wasn’t aware of that link.

Very grim…

Yup. Israel desperately needs to hold new elections. If necessary, Gantz should threaten to collapse the coalition government if that’s what it takes. Israel needs sensible leaders like Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Lapid, and Gallant who actually understand that while it’s necessary to exterminate Hamas, the only way of ensuring long-term peace and stability in the region is to reach a political solution with a pathway towards Palestinian self-rule.

The majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi Jews who fled to Israel after almost all of them, some 850,000 in total, were expelled or pressured out of Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries from 1948 through the 1950s. About 72% (650,000) settled in Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world

The notion that Jewish Israelis are just Europeans is a profoundly racist and ignorant belief.

Blaming Jews for the antisemitism they experience is antisemitism 101, buddy.

That’s is a blind ideological position, with a very poor evidence base, that frankly is wearing pretty thin across the entire continent.

Sweden is currently dealing with its capital city turned into the gun-murder capital of Europe by drug-trafficking gangs who are migrants and ‘refugees’. France and Germany have both suffered numerous appalling mass terrorist atrocities in recent years. You had an Algerian-born man go into a school in Ireland and stab a bunch of children just last year.

Antisemitism is skyrocketing with appalling hate crimes against Jews, and it’s largely coming from Muslim communities who’ve done nothing to address the frightening levels of antisemitism within their communities.

These are issues that need to be addressed. The levels of extremism among immigrant communities are a threat to many European countries, and there has to be a way to fix the problems that exist in that respect. If you’re just going to ignore these problems, other people are going to point them out and begin to address them, and you’re going to lose the argument in the real world, not just online.

I think suggesting they’re proposing killing is a wild overstatement, but the prospect of mass deportations of German citizens – people born in Germany – is really disturbing.

everybody I don’t like is an authoritarian

I’m not interested in either The Grayzone or your own attempts at Holocaust denial. Blocked.

Numerous women who were released have testified that they and many of the other women they met in the tunnels had been brutalised, sexually assaulted and raped, as well as verification by doctors.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-least-10-freed-hostages-were-sexually-abused-by-hamas-in-captivity-doctor-says/

At least 10 of the Israeli civilians released by Hamas, both men and women, were sexually assaulted or abused while in captivity, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

In a report detailing allegations of severe and widespread sexual abuse by Hamas terrorists during their October 7 onslaught and later against hostages, a doctor who treated some of the 110 hostages released from captivity told the AP that at least 10 men and women among those freed were sexually assaulted or abused.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html

Many of the accounts are difficult to bear, and the visual evidence is disturbing to see.

The Times viewed photographs of one woman’s corpse that emergency responders discovered in the rubble of a besieged kibbutz with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.

The Times also viewed a video, provided by the Israeli military, showing two dead Israeli soldiers at a base near Gaza who appeared to have been shot directly in their vaginas.

[…]

The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.

She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast.

“One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,” Sapir said.

She said the men sliced her face and then the woman fell out of view. Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women.

Sapir provided photographs of her hiding place and her wounds, and police officials have stood by her testimony and released a video of her, with her face blurred, recounting some of what she saw.

Jamal Waraki, a volunteer medic with the nonprofit ZAKA emergency response team, said he could not get out of his head a young woman in a rawhide vest found between the main stage and the bar.

“Her hands were tied behind her back,” he said. “She was bent over, half naked, her underwear rolled down below her knees.”

Yinon Rivlin, a member of the rave’s production team who lost two brothers in the attacks, said that after hiding from the killers, he emerged from a ditch and made his way to the parking area, east of the party, along Route 232, looking for survivors.

Near the highway, he said, he found the body of a young woman, on her stomach, no pants or underwear, legs spread apart. He said her vagina area appeared to have been sliced open, “as if someone tore her apart.”

The idea that Hamas “treat hostages well” is such a viciously stupid and deceitful claim I don’t even know where to start. You should be ashamed of yourself for spreading such vile idiocy, and for accepting at face value the message of a desperate hostage held at gunpoint in a Jihadist terror dungeon.

Hamas recruit from the age of 13, we’ve known this for more than two decades.

Isn’t really surprising that Palestinian Islamic Jihad do the same, just as we know the Houthis do as well.

I’m so sorry. I’m keeping your friend and all the other hostages in my prayers.

the people in it is native.

Some were, some weren’t. Depends how far back you want to go, which wave of mass migration you’re talking about.

Israel is nonexistent before 1948 and the people were brought from outside

Except, of course, that none of this is correct.

First, there’s the ancient Kingdom of Judah. The Jews are the same people.

Second, Jews maintained a continuous presence in the land of Israel-Palestine ever since then. They are, therefore, indigenous to the land.

Third, the majority of Jewish Israelis are Mizrahis – Jews from Arab lands who’ve lived there since the Second Temple Period (516 BC - 70 AD), who were forced to flee from these neighbouring Muslim states due to violence, pogroms, repression and the theft of their property.

We know from numerous scientific studies of Jewish and Palestinian DNA that they’re almost identical, and share a common root, most likely both being descendents of the ancient Canaanites. Here’s a very recent one. There’s almost no genetic difference with ‘European’ Ashkenazi Jews either, because they very rarely intermarried with other faith/ethnic groups. Here’s another from 2015 in Haaretz.

Palestinians and Jews are basically cousins, genetically speaking, and both are indigenous to the land. Palestinians perceive it as an invasion, and that’s understandable despite not being true. To the Jews, they were returning from exile to their homeland only to find that there were squatters who’d let the place fall to ruin while they were gone, which is also understandable though not true.

They’ll find a way to live together one day, but it’ll require both sides to accept the rights of the other.

So was the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

They’re not going anywhere, and the people who call for the abolition of those countries are nutcases and will always be accurately understood as nutcases.

Pakistan and India were formed just like Israel was: according to international law and by partition.

If the Palestinians want a state, they can have one: alongside Israel. Those are the terms. And until they accept that, they will suffer. Sucks for them.

I’d be willing to bet good money that this is pretty fucking terrorising to the people who live in Gaza.

This is not, in fact, the definition of terrorism.

There’s no evidence this was Israel. Iran has plenty of enemies in the Middle East.

There’s going to come a point where Mexico, and increasingly other parts of Latin and Central America, follow in El Salvador’s footsteps in terms of how they deal with the Narcos and gangs.