Also, as I said at the time, it isn’t a ridiculous leap in logic to think that the people dropping bombs from the sky are responsible for a bomb dropping from the sky.
That is true. The fault lies in the ignorance of the conflict showed by thinking Israel was the only people dropping bombs from the sky.
The fault lies in the 24-hour news cycle and the capitalist desire to break the news first. Gotta get those clicks before anyone else.
A falsehood can get around the world before the truth has got out of bed, and all that; clarification and verification takes time that the ones wanting the views don’t care about.
Kind of like what Strongpoint does, making unsupported claims while demanding evidence of claims other people make, or laughing off extensive citations as gibberish.
Recently, the idea of pushing for the displacement of Gaza’s Palestinian population was given voice by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in what they called "voluntary migration," urging countries to take displaced Palestinians in.
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s remarks received immediate and international condemnation, including from the UK, Germany and France [...]
It just feels completely pointless trying to explain why ethnic cleansing is bad. [...]
Israel: Voluntary migration.
Netherlands: Voluntary migration? Irresponsible!
UN and LW: Forced migration!? Genocide!
US halts financing to UNRWA over Israeli accusations 12 employees were involved in October 7th attacks.
Funny how they still support Israel in spite of the four months of human rights violations, though.
UNRWA wasn't receiving rocket fire before their staff assisted in a terrorist attack. Surely a difference in standards between a supposed humanitarian aid organization and a country at war isn't too unexpected?
Israel receives rockets while at "peace". That's why the US funds Israel's Iron Dome.
Oh the funding goes there, sure, but
the stockpile of unguided bombs the US stores in Israel is also available to the IDF.The report may be classified, but earlier this year an unusually candid description of the stockpile’s contents emerged when a former US military chief recalled in an op-ed touring the WRSA-I warehouse.
“The current stockpile is full of so-called dumb munitions [those without sophisticated guidance systems],” he said, including “thousands of ‘iron bombs’ that are simply dropped from aircraft so gravity can do its work”.
Defence analysts say there is little transparency about the categories and quantities of arms that the US is providing to Israel, but one transfer from WRSA-I emerged in October when Axios reported that the US would supply Israel with 155mm artillery shells. The unguided munitions, intended for Israel’s ground campaign in Gaza, were held in large volumes in WRSA-I.
The 155mm shells are particularly hazardous, according to Marc Garlasco, a former UN war crimes investigator, as each shell releases 2,000 lethal fragments, and “their accuracy degrades over distance, increasing the likelihood of civilians and civilian infrastructure getting hit by errant shells”.
Images published by Gaza police’s explosive ordnance disposal team last month appeared to show munition fragments of 155mm artillery shells being removed from buildings in Gaza. It is not known whether they were of US origin or from its stockpile.
The IDF and Israel’s defence ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
Former officials said that where transfers from WRSA-I can differ from regular arms sales between the US and another country was that the equipment can be drawn from the stockpile before the processes that account for the transferred equipment are fully completed.
“We sort of retroactively build a foreign military sales case, which may or may not need to be notified to Congress, depending on what they took and what quantities,” said Josh Paul, the former state department official.
Paul, who until October worked on the US’s foreign arms transfers, said he was concerned by the expedited process as it could bypass the state department’s pre-transfer controls. “There’s no review of human rights, there’s no review of regional balance, there’s none of the conventional arms transfer policy review that would normally happen,” he said. “Essentially, it’s take what you can and we’ll sort it out later.”
A Pentagon spokesperson acknowledged it was “using foreign military financing and sales authorities to expedite delivery of security assistance, where feasible”. They said the US was “leveraging several avenues and sources to provide Israel security assistance, to include stockpiles in Israel and the US.”
Arms control experts say the speed and opacity of these transfers make it difficult to understand what is leaving WRSA-I, the legal mechanisms used for drawdowns and the extent to which Congress is being made aware of what support the US is providing to Israel via the stockpile.
TL;dr: US stockpiles of unguided bombs and artillery in Israel are open to be used by the IDF before the paperwork to clear it is done, possibly beyond congressional oversight. These unguided weapons are then used in one of the most densely populated areas in the world, while Israel claims it’s doing its utmost to prevent civilian casualties in that area.
The difference in this instance is Israel - who has a long history of criticizing the UN and its agencies, particularly the UNRWA - has accused 12 employees of the UNRWA of supporting Hamas, who were then immediately fired and an investigation started, while Israel simultaneously violates the rights of the folks in Gaza by doing things like dropping bombs on areas they’ve told people to evacuate to, or blockading basic necessities from getting in.
There is a very thin line between voluntary and forced migration and I have no doubts that a person like Ben Gvir will push that line as hard as he can but we have reached the point at which some people want to force the population of Gaza to stay in devastated Gaza even if they don't want to because it will help the cause of free Palestine. Perhaps. Few decades later... Meanwhile, ordinary Palestinians should suffer for someone else's political goals and agendas.
What, ordinary Palestinians like the millions of refugees and their descendants that aren’t allowed back to their homeland by Israel despite international law saying they have that right? Meanwhile a foreign Jew who has never been to Israel is allowed to settle the West Bank and become an Israeli citizen.
I wonder what the political goal or agenda is in doing that, and how it relates to the way Israel is treating the Palestinians in Gaza now…
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Topic: Israel-Gaza/Palestine war thread (Read 30491 times)