After 29,000 bombs dropped, about 70% of homes and half of all buildings are in ruins. 
The Wall Street Journal has some amazing scrolling and interactive before and after images.
Please consider The Ruined Landscape of Gaza After Nearly Three Months of Bombing
That is a gift link courtesy of the Journal. Here are a few snips.
The war in the Gaza Strip is generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record.
By mid-December, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on the strip. Nearly 70% of Gaza’s 439,000 homes and about half of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. The bombing has damaged Byzantine churches and ancient mosques, factories and apartment buildings, shopping malls and luxury hotels, theaters and schools. Much of the water, electrical, communications and healthcare infrastructure that made Gaza function is beyond repair.
Most of the strip’s 36 hospitals are shut down, and only eight are accepting patients. Citrus trees, olive groves and greenhouses have been obliterated. More than two-thirds of its schools are damaged.
The destruction resembles that left by Allied bombing of German cities during World War II. “The word ‘Gaza’ is going to go down in history along with Dresden and other famous cities that have been bombed,” said Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and the author of a history of aerial bombing. “What you’re seeing in Gaza is in the top 25% of the most intense punishment campaigns in history.”
Three months ago, Gaza was a vibrant place. Despite decades of Israeli occupation, sieges and wars, many Palestinians enjoyed living there beside the Mediterranean Sea, where they gathered in cafes and seaside restaurants. Families played on the beach. Young men crowded around TVs in the evening to watch soccer.
Today, Gaza is a landscape of crumpled concrete. In northern Gaza, the focus of Israel’s initial offensive, the few people who remain navigate rubble-strewn streets past bombed-out shops and apartment blocks. Broken glass crunches underfoot. Israeli drones buzz overhead.
In the south, where more than a million displaced residents have fled, Gazans sleep in the street and burn garbage to cook. Some 85% of the strip’s 2.2 million people have fled their homes and are confined by Israeli evacuation orders to less than one-third of the strip, according to the United Nations.
Questions Abound, Many Unanswerable
The immediate question on many minds is: Who’s to blame?
Some will blame Hamas for starting this war. Others will blame Israel for Palestinian suppression. No one will change anyone else’s mind.
Hamas wanted to provoke a response and it did. Many Palestinians cheered Hamas in Gaza and the US.
Chanting ‘700,’ Pro-Palestinian Activists in New York Fete Hamas Attack
Flashback October 9, Chanting ‘700,’ Pro-Palestinian Activists in New York Fete Hamas Attack
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators on Sunday in New York celebrated Hamas’s massive deadly terror attack against Israel, as supporters of the Jewish state held rallies to mourn and express outrage over the slaughter.
Several hundred pro-Palestinian demonstrators rallied in Times Square, waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Resistance is justified,” “Globalize the intifada,” and “Smash the settler Zionist state.”
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” they chanted. Some made mock crying gestures toward the Israelis to taunt them.
Among the pro-Palestinian side, the mood was celebratory and spiteful. Demonstrators chanted “700,” apparently referring to the confirmed number of Israeli fatalities in the attack so far, and held up the number seven on their hands while making throat-slitting gestures. Others flashed victory signs with their hands while shouting insults.
Is anyone aware of Israelis marching on the streets cheering the death of over 20,000 Palestinians, flashing victory signs?
Palestinian Death Toll
On December 20, the BBC commented on What Gaza’s Death Toll Says About the War.
At least 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been reported killed since Israel began bombing the territory in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October attacks.
On average, nearly 300 people have been killed each day since the start of the conflict, excluding the seven-day ceasefire, data from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry indicates.
Israel began its military campaign in Gaza in the wake of Hamas’ attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians.
“What we’re seeing in terms of civilian deaths has already far outpaced rates of harm from any given conflict we have documented,” said Emily Tripp, director of Airwars, an organisation which has monitored civilian deaths in wars and conflicts since 2014.
Current Estimate
The current death toll estimate is 21,672 Palestinians with 56,165 more injured. That’s roughly 1 percent of the 2.2 million Gaza population.
With 70 percent of Gaza homes destroyed it will likely take decades to reconstruct. But before reconstruction can begin, the war must stop.
More Questions
Q: When will the war stop?
A: No one can say, it depends on conditions.
Q: What conditions?
A: Israel has three conditions, see link below.
On December 26, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Names Three Prerequisites for Peace
- Hamas must be destroyed.Hamas’s leaders have vowed to repeat the Oct. 7 massacre “again and again.” That is why their destruction is the only proportional response to prevent the repeat of such horrific atrocities. Anything less guarantees more war and more bloodshed.
- Gaza must be demilitarized. Israel must ensure that the territory is never again used as a base to attack it. Among other things, this will require establishing a temporary security zone on the perimeter of Gaza and an inspection mechanism on the border between Gaza and Egypt that meets Israel’s security needs and prevents smuggling of weapons into the territory.
- Gaza will have to be deradicalized. Schools must teach children to cherish life rather than death, and imams must cease to preach for the murder of Jews. Palestinian civil society needs to be transformed so that its people support fighting terrorism rather than funding it.
How Long Will Those Three Requirements Take?
- Arguably a better question might be: Are those conditions even possible?
- Regarding point one, If the leadership is destroyed, will others spring up?
- Regarding point two, how long is temporary?
- Regarding point three, numerous questions arise: Who will teach the Palestinian kids? How many decades will it take to remove hatred?
I keep asking questions for which there are no clear answers. I started this article with one question in mind.
Hello Hamas, Was it Worth It?
I wonder if the idiots cheering the slaughter of innocent kids at a concert are cheering now. Idiots being idiots, who knows?
Asking who is to blame is the wrong question because no one will convince anyone else and also because blame leads to retaliation.
We need to start somewhere, but where and how is that?
Until Palestinians reject massacre of civilians outright and are willing to turn in Hamas militants, violence will only beget more violence.
70 percent of Gaza has been destroyed. Was it worth it? If so, what was achieved?
I have not see the stacks of body’s that they would surely have shown, play with matches you might get burned.
I think, as expected, neither Hamas nor the Israeli government is suffering as much as the regular person in either streets of Gaza or Israel for their decision making. Israeli has been fighting the rightwing for years on their belligerence. Hamas doesn’t give a toss about anyone except their Swiss bank accounts.
Incredibly, like most Western secular countries, Israeli birthrates have fallen except for the conservatives who are having tons of kids. So its not going to get any better
To bad it’s not 100% homes destroyed, Israel is being to kind to those animal vermin.
I wish I could see u in person you woman
The math is suspect.
70% of 439,000 homes is 307,000 homes supposedly destroyed or significantly damaged by 29,000 bombs. That’s more than ten homes per bomb, plus all the other buildings as well….
what do you expect he’s Aussie . He’s used to committing genocide.
….and to think that Mr Putin was declared a war criminal by the ICC and its perverse, corrupt cronies, the Nato gang in particular, following the 100% staged ‘crimes’ in Bachmut, ….a text book example of double standards by ‘exceptional, democratic, human rights respecting’ nations !….
Stick to market analysis – nobody wants to hear that a financial guru supports apartheid and genocide.
And yes, the murdering of innocent Israeli’s is 100000% wrong. In case you were going to use that against me.
I write about the global economy and global events. This could escalate with US involvement. Even if not, this is a global event. Whether or not anyone likes it, it’s newsworthy and needs to be discussed.
Are you against the existence of prisons in your country…?
If not, you support a type of “apartheid”
We keep separate those who intend to harm us
The whole thing as destroyed the commercial shipping routes. So look for prices to increase especially to Europe
2023 – the year Israel became exactly what Germany was in 1939, and the year that the US became a state sponsor of terrorism. Who would have thought this possible?
That’s a bizarre comment….
So you equate the wartime Allies with Hamas…?
You can see the real bigots by the ones who support israels bombing with no ceasefire.
Hamas doesn’t want to cease fire – they have exactly the war that they wanted right now
When you support terrorists like Hamas, and Hezbollah, while they caused untold terror prior to oct 7 th. for years !
And Israel had put up with their terror plots, killings and crippling of innocent people, and the fact Palestinians supported Hamas, and Hezbollah while they did nothing to stop it,
Then Gaza deserves every bit of this for their part in supporting Hamas and Hezbollah,
So you don’t like my comment.
The truth hurts but a lie is agony,
Because you voted against my comment,
Learn history and learn and study the past what Palestinians did for years to Israel.
Israel was always warning those people before they attacked, after Hamas terrorized Israel. and this is the final result your seeing now, and if you studied the bible, you will know that those people living in Gaza will be the receivers of what they deserved for how they treated God’s people,
It is written in the bible.
In fact , all things well considered, Israel, and its exceptional sophisticated, intelligent people, have absolutely no business there among primitive tribal Arabs, let alone stealing more and more arab territory in recent decades on top of that ….Wtf are djews doing there ?
Israel was nearly established in Australia – it might have avoided a few problems….
link to sbs.com.au
30% to go then.
Thanks for an insightful post.
What would the US do if 75000 were murdered, raped, and kidnapped on XMass by the Mexican drug cartels, let’s say?
And, 15 million (5%) residents displaced along its borders due enemy artillery and risk of more attacks like Oct7?
The US government doesn’t care about Mexicans murdering, raping, or kidnapping Americans.
And Americans and Israelis LOVED it when Hamas was killing people in Syria, when the USA & Israel were actively bankrolling and supporting Hamas and other Sunni militias in the Syrian civil war. Christians and Jews thought it was WONDERFUL that women were being raped and babies were being killed by Hamas back then. Only when they did it to Israelis and Israeli-Americans did people start clutching pearls and stop laughing and cheering. Like the saying goes: You get what you pay for.
First thing I would do is stop stealing from the Mexicans, Israel is a nation built on theft….
Every country was occupied by different groups at various stages….
link to youtube.com
Sure, what if aliens crawled out of the earth and raped all the grandmothers how would we feel. The grannies might like it, but their husbands might not. Some things are not comparable.
Widen your viewpoints people.
Hubris.
It’s always the hubris that destroys the previously successful. It’s how Jim Cramer got everyone doing well in the market to stay in the market days before it collapsed and why everyone ignored Rubini.
Israel and the US and the systems that have controlled these entities take for granted, “the winning will go one for ever”. When has that ever happened? Our hubris has now run up to the wall, the Cramers in the State Department keep crowing we are the greatest “City On The Hill’ without noticing we have crossed the event horizon into the toxic nudist-colony-of-shame where the “Emperor Wears No Clothes.”
In this dimension, once an idea (we suck) become rooted with sufficient gravitas, the idea (west sucks) becomes possible everywhere and it has. No matter what we do, the genie is not going back into the bottle. Our Credibility is DEAD.
STEAL UNFAIR MODEL:
Everyone ignores the fact, we live like we do, in the west, because the Global south was pushed into anarchy, ignorance and poverty to allow us to steal all their stuff. We are still stealing their stuff. Syrias oil is being stolen as you read this. Resources are being stolen worldwide everywhere.
VS
STEAL FAIRER MODEL:
It’s over for the west. The only sure hail-mary is to steal Russias resources. Without them it’s over since we are already stealing everything else – there is nothing else to steal, no fresh blood. The bigger problem is the “Play Fairer Chinese and Russian development model” will continue to erode the Wests existing “Spice Stealing Operation”. I dare you to look up the modern miners towns China built in Peru. The miners previously lived in stone shacks with thatch roof now it look like they live in Houston. It took China a minuscule fraction of the mines output to build them incredible homes, parks, schools and roads
It’s over.
Put a fork in it.
Israel has lost all credibility.
The West has lost all credibility.
As Putin said, the Colonial Grift is Done
Well, I suspect the US government would NOT bomb Mexico city, kill 750,000 (using your proportions), make northern Mexico uninhabitable to try to push the Mexicans into Guatemala so that the US could take Mexico for itself, because that would be immoral. The same as the British did NOT flatten Belfast despite IRA bombing pubs in in London. There are moral and immoral responses available. Two wrongs still don’t make a right.
Your screen name for posting is apropos, No one in power really cares what your opinion is. So why not follow your screen name and go back to sleep?
You mean like the 100,000 poisoned by fentenal last year?
What would the US do if 75000 were murdered, raped, and kidnapped in XMass by the Mexican drug cartels, let’s say?
We got a demo in 2001, when 3k were murdered.
True. If Mexicans committed a mass casualty event in the USA, we’d probably invade Iraq again.
The only answer is to ban Islam worldwide and burn every copy of the Koran.
In case you didn’t notice it was the Zionists that did this. No more aid for Israel. Also, Netanyahoo and those responsible for this should be tried at the Hague and sent to jail.
A two state solution for the displaced Palestinians is the only solution. Unfortunately, our politicians and political system is hijacked by AIPAC and Zionists.
link to instagram.com
“Ceasefire Now”: why not on Oct 6?
“One Solution”: is this the one?
“Self Defense”: why not on Oct. 7?
Remember the Palestinian Death Toll of 20,000 comes from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry and Government Media Office – the definition of propaganda.
All war news is propaganda. All sides. All the time. Since forever.
Past crises have shown their numbers to be accurate, according to other sources including Israeli sources. Are you denying that some 20,000 Palestinians have been killed? Now do “beheaded babies” and “command center under al-Shifa”.
death toll.is.nearing 30000 by all confio sources like the UN. You are a racist like Mish
Hamas chose the battlefiled. They chose to fight from and within Gaza. Where else is Israel supposed to fight the war starded by Hamas?
All it takes to stop the war is Hamas surrendering and returning the hostages alive.
Alternatively, Hamas marching on Tel Aviv.
Right. Clearly there was no problem before Oct 7th. Palestinians lived peacefully in their sovereign countries, without any Israeli oversight.
“Oversight”… What a terrible thing!
Israel was trying to stop Hamas importing weapons. Clearly, more oversight might have solved a lot of subsequent grief
no they chose freedom from a racist apartheid state.
Actually, the “battlefield” may have been chose by the hundreds of thousands of Jews that moved to the region beginning in the first aliyah in the late 1800s with the intent to form a country (notwithstanding the 2-5% of the population living in the region previously). But that’s old history. Today, the Pali’s are still denied political self-determination, even if we just consider Gaza and the (still occupied and under ongoing encroachment) West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“Beware that when you fight monsters, you do not become a monster” – Nietzsche
Those who are animated by Moses are under the Old Covenant, which was a physical earthly based agreement that was initially made at Mount Sinai with the children of Israel. It required obedience to the letter of God’s law. I repeat: It required obedience to the letter of God’s law.
The Old Covenant promised that a person or a nation would be physically blessed or cursed depending on their obedience to the Almighty’s commandments and judgments. It is an unwinnable covenant because it employees human interpretation of the knowledge of good and evil. Many think they are so smart and able to keep the covenant perfectly, or have the proper pedigree to be a shoe in for Gods Blessing, but this is obviously not true. This promise of blessing was to be through God’s intervention, and not through Bombs, Bullets, and Tyranny.
The proof is in the Gefilte fish:
40 years of wandering in the desert for a journey that should have only taken 6 days to travel from the parted Red Sea to Gaza. These six possible days are represented by the days of Unleaven Bread.
Jewish Captivity in Babylon Iraq, only to be released from captivity by Persia Iran.
Jewish captivity by Assyria by which 10 of the Tribes of Israel disappeared.
Roman captivity in the time of Jesus
Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 AD
This was all a sign of a Nation Breaking the Old Covenant, and is evident in the last two thousand years of history, and now.
There is a New and Better Covenant based on God’s Love, Forgiveness, Benevolent Charity, Kindness, and reverence for all mankind as Children of God. God keeps both sides of this Covenant. This new covenant allows all of Humanity with access to the Almighty without a intermediary religious priesthood or political leader. Divine access to redemption is available for all those who choose to receive it. Today is the day of Salvation,“No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Choose whom yee serve God or Mammon.
If someone killed my son I would do everything possible for retribution.
Lots of genocide supporters here. The question really is ‘Hello Israel, was it worth it?’ Israel and the United States are now perceived as pariah nations and Hamas is more popular and likely stronger than ever. ‘Operation Protect Genocide’ is not winning, it is losing – Israel won’t be able to coast along on the ‘holocaust’ for another minute.
So we won’t be getting XMAS cards next year from the UN? [lol]
Between support for Ukraine and support for Israel, we continue to self-isolate. US financial sanctions on other countries makes us an unreliable partner. Trade goes to other currencies, bypasses the US. It’s happening already, your sarcasm belies ignorance that this is already happening. (NO worries, though. At least the US budget and debt situations are healthy. Nothing to worry about.)
[roflol] you’re delusional boy. Here is the most recent GDP figure from the BLS.
“Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 5.2 percent in the third quarter of 2023”
Sometimes I speak in non-sequiturs and other times… cat. Your post is not responsive to mine.
Genocide is not a word you can use when 20.000 people of 2.4 million is dead. If the Israeli’s wanted to kill more they had lots of opportunity to do that. Gaza has an annual population growth rate of 1.99% (2023 est.), the 39th-highest in the world, if Israel is doing a genocide of Gaza they are doing a very bad job of it. The population growth is not because of immigration.
War is messy and people get killed and even more people get a worse life. Still no sign of the Gaza population helping the Israeli’s getting the hostages back which I perceive av still strong support for Hamas and the ani Israelis attitude.
“Gazan Holocaust.” There, is that better? As in “Israel initiates modern Holocaust in Gaza, won’t stop indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, schools, refugee centers and safe zones, killing thousands of innocent civilians each week.”
The “indiscriminate” bombing is the tens of thousands of un-guided missiles that Hamas has launched into civilian areas of Israel, including 12,000 just since Oct 7th.
The Israeli response to Oct 7th has been with precision weapons preceded with warnings
The Jewish population in Germany also went up before it went down. People are saying the Russians are committing genocide in Ukraine when 560 Ukrainian children have been killed in 22 months. 8000 children in Gaza have been killed in 2 months. It’s pretty sad when Putin has better morals than all of the Israeli rabbis and American priests.
Putin has better morals than many evangelical pastors who are co- mingling the old covenant with the new, and proclaiming 1948 as a sign of Jesus return. Many evangelicals believe the spiritual malpractice of suporting Israeli non Christian behavior as a sign of God’s salvation.
I wonder if it were 20,000 Israelis how you would respond.
“War is messy”, yet civilized peoples try to minimize civilian casualties. The US dropped one 2000lb bomb when fighting ISIS. Israel has dropped hundreds in a much smaller space. Shooing people from the north in order to destroy the north, followed by bombing them in the south is vengeance and bloodlust. It very much shames Israel and its society.
I agree the hostages should be released, much as I want uncharged Palestinian detainees released from Israeli prisons.
Remember the USS Liberty.
Most here don’t know about it or don’t give a rat’s ass that Israel killed and wounded our men and almost sunk a ship. Lyndon Johnson is hopefully rotting in hell where he belongs.
America is controlled by Zionists and AIPAC. Not a fan of those liberal gals in Congress (the Squad), but at least they have the courage to speak out against Israeli interference in American politics.
100% correct. America has Stockholm syndrome with regards to their Zionist masters.
And don’t forget the Boston Massacre. Our “special relationship” with Great Britain is controlled by the British royalists, the House of Windsor.
Israel lobby with aipac promoted Iraq war and Afghanistan war. the israelis killed JFK and set up 911. Remember the dancing mossad zionists
You forgot, the assassination of James Forrestal, starting WW2 and the Russian Revolution.
It is terrible what they did to Forrestal.
jojo part Israeli information agency.
Say hello to Adolf for us.
Idrather talk about Jewish mass murders like Genrikh Yagoda or Lazar Kaganovich. One can now add Bibi Netanyahu.
Actually, Stalinist mass murderers, but Jew-haters pick out their target and ignore the rest. Leon Trotsky was of Jewish background but murdered by the Stalinists for the crime of remaining a revolutionary and revealing the Stalinist bureaucracy for what it was. And that’s what marks you as a fascist-minded little bigot, your double-standard in the service of reactionary hate.
The Palestinians have shown they cannot be trusted to be good neighbors. The only solution is for Israel to take Gaza back and not give Hamas any safe place close to israel to operate. The only.ppl who deserve Israel are the jews because they’ve there over 5k yrs and more importantly they are holding the land. BTW the term Palestinian was the Roman way of referring to Jewish and there weren’t any Muslims then either. The new palestinians can gf themselves because they’re what they deserve and what they cultivated
The Israelis NEVER were good neighbors…
Yawn. Is there any other country for which you would apply the 2 or 5K year old possession as current claim on land? You can answer the question first for the US.
The red herring about muslims not existing until later is laughable. Point is – there were people living there when Israel was created. And Israel expelled many and took their land and homes. This is true in places where there was never any ancient Jewish population, like Ashdod and Ashkelon. And Israel continues to take land that isn’t Israel: Golan, WB. Yet somehow, it’s always the Palestinians’ fault.
Many of the same Jews who play the “indigenous peoples” card to seize homes from families in the Middle East also have homes in the USA but they never turn the keys to those homes over to Native Americans.
Israel shouldn’t have funded Hamas and propped them up all these years. The Israelis got what they literally paid for and they’re taking their anger at their poor decision out on babies in Gaza because rabbis in Israel are as big of a failure as Rev. Billy Graham was when he urged Nixon to bomb dikes in North Vietnam in his attempt to kill a million Vietnamese peasants. Luckily Nixon was a better human being than the “reverend” Graham.
I’ve seen several videos that have been uploaded to instagram that are very graphic of children being blown to bits that I’ll never forget. If this were shown on television people wouldn’t support large military operations that target civilians anywhere. Just seeing those videos has opened my eyes. I understand the Israeli desire for vengeance but I’m also aware (because I read Haaretz) that their military also killed a lot of their own people on October 7 by being grossly indiscriminate in their response. The Netanyahu government seems to desire ethnic cleansing and also plunging the United States into a much larger and far more dangerous war.
I’ve seen those same videos. The fact that Netanyahu was the biggest one for wanting to prop up Hamas and keep them in power to keep the people in Gaza under different administration from the people in the West Bank, this whole thing falls on him. If any babies were beheaded, that’s on Netanyahu. The buck stops there. He funded that. He knew the type of people he was bankrolling and supporting, so this whole thing is on him and the Israeli government.
100% agree
The lead subject in this story claims there isn’t enough water to support his EIGHT(8) children and a wife! I wonder what he did to support a family this size prior to Oct 7th?
———-
There’s a water crisis in Gaza that the end of fighting might not solve
By Scott Neuman, Anas Baba
December 29, 2023
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — For Nidal Al Barrawi, his wife and eight children, the struggle to get enough water in Gaza has become a big part of the family’s daily routine.
The family fled to Rafah, near the Egyptian border, in recent weeks as fighting intensified around their home in northern Gaza.
Now, just filling containers with the 20 liters (5 gallons) they can get per day for drinking, cooking and bathing means waiting in line from early morning until noon at a water distribution point.
Still, he says, “it is not enough for the children.” It’s not enough for him or his wife, either. “Personally, I haven’t had a shower in 20 days due to lack of water,” he says.
The United Nations recommends a minimum of 50 liters (13 gallons) of water per day per person for drinking, cooking and bathing. But like Barrawi and his family, most are making do with a fraction of that.
…
link to npr.org
Is number eight is a minimum to get lots of bleeding hearts and welfare in Germany or Sweden?
Israel has solution.
Flush Gaza with sea water.
Bonus – Gaza will be inhabitable.
fun fact: Half the water consumed by northern israel comes from aquifers under the West Bank.
The bigger question at large is, who’s going to be sending humanitarian aide.and get stuck paying for the reconstruction of that mess?
I assure you, the US will be sending BILLIONS more over there, untowhich we don’t have.
It’ll just get added to the national debt.
The US taxpayer is stuck on the hook paying for a mess we didn’t make.
China would be interested to get another toehold in the ME.
—–
China, Iraq begin construction of new city near Baghdad
Iraq’s government seeks to build 15 new cities in Iraq in partnership with Chinese firms
DEC 29, 2023
Iraq broke ground on 29 December on 30,000 housing units near Baghdad, as part of a $2 billion project in partnership with Chinese firms to build five new cities across Iraq, Bloomberg reported on 29 December.
The government of Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani is seeking to build 250,000 to 300,000 housing units for poor and middle-class families. The new city on the outskirts of Baghdad will include universities, commercial centers, schools and health centers and should be completed in four to five years.
Contracts to build the housing units were awarded to East China Engineering Science and Technology Co., Ltd. and China National Chemical Engineering Co., Ltd along with their Iraqi partner Shams al-Binaa.
…
link to new.thecradle.co
I guarantee you Israel will send the “BigGuy” 10% and then there is their skim….sorry about the dead babies but there is money to be made…
We, as in biden, created this scenario when he unfroze billions of funds to Iran and when he left $80 billion in weaponry behind in Afghanistan!!!!
Maybe go back a little further to the Anglo-French occupation and division along Imperial boundaries and then their granting of Palestinian land for Jewish settlers. The Jewish expansion and forced removal of Palestinians. The US backing of various unpopular tyrants and regents in the region in trade for oil supply. The US bombing of various countries for not doing what they were told. The continuing occupation of Iraq and Syria. And the continuing supply of weapons to kill Palestinians and Yemeni.
While at the same time saying that the Russians are evil monsters and war criminals.
Reconstructing the countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, LIbya, Vietnam.
It’s not too late to buy some Blackrock stock to profit on the rebuilds in Ukraine and Palestine. You can even start a charity to help Ukrainians and Israelis and pay yourself a six or seven-figure salary. Or start a Zionist church in the USA, bilk the townspeople out of 10%+ of their salary in a legalized tax shelter. There are so many ways to be a “Hutt” like Nuland and profiteer off the misery of others.
How UNRWA Grooms Terrorists
by Bassam Tawil – Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.
December 26, 2023 at 5:00 am
– By providing the residents of the Gaza Strip with various services, UNRWA exempted Hamas from its responsibilities as the governing body, such as creating a working economy that would pay for education and healthcare, and allowed it, instead, to invest resources in building tunnels and manufacturing weapons.
– “They [UNRWA] teach us that the Al-Aqsa Mosque belongs to us [Muslims], that Palestine belongs to us,” said Atif Sharha, a student at an UNRWA school.
– “Yes, they teach us that the Zionists are our enemy,” said Nur Taha, a third-year student from Kalandia. “We should carry out an [terror] operation against them [Zionists].”
– “The Palestinian matriculation exams [at UNRWA] have become a finishing school in extremism. It is as if the Palestinian Authority is cramming as much hate into the tests as possible, to ensure the twelve previous years of indoctrination stay with them into adulthood.” — Marcus Sheff, CEO at the Institute for Cultural Peace and Tolerance in School Education, i24news.tv, July 23, 2023.
More than 50% of UNRWA’s annual budget of $1.6 billion is dedicated to funding Palestinian schools. These schools have been fostering war-mongering hatred against Israel, and against Jews in general, while predictably churning out their final product: terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. Pictured: A still shot from the documentary film “Camp Jihad,” featuring a summer camp in Gaza sponsored and funded by UNRWA. (Image source: Nahum Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research)
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was originally a small agency mandated to provide basic humanitarian relief for Palestinians, including a vote for renewal every three years. Seventy-three years and four generations later, and with more than 30,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $1 billion, it has astonishingly become one of the largest UN agencies.
…
link to gatestoneinstitute.org
Now do US yearly aid to Israel, censorship of Israeli criticism as “anti-semitic” and education among Israeli “settler” children in the occupied West Bank. You’ll find much of the same.
I agree that the Palestinian refugee agency has grown too large and lasted too long.
They weren’t much of a house to begin with.
Yes, life can be easy when Arab governments, like Qatar, were sending $30 million/month in cash into Gaza (presumably to keep the Palestinians there from leaving for other Arab countries and causing trouble for the rulers) and the UNRWA was providing 500 trucks of free aid DAILY. What’s not to like?
But Hamas said “screw it” and foolishly attacked Israel. Now the Gazans experience the result of kicking the giant in the big toe because that is about the equivalent of what Hamas did on Oct 7th.
UNRWA was providing 500 trucks of free aid DAILY. What’s not to like?
What’s about Jews Imprisoned in Gaza and getting free aids?
Now this was an honest column that I could give thumbs up to!
There is only one sure way to stop the war. It’s not that difficult. Hamas has lost. There is no way they will allowed to salvage their government nor their control. Therefore there is only one solution for them.
Do this and Israel will not have to keep fighting and killing Palestinians.
Personally I don’t think Israel wants surrender. Lets say Hamas is a large as estimated (30,000) and that so far they’ve killed say 1/4 of them (7500).
What would they do with the remained 20K who surrendered? Israel doesn’t have enough prisons to house that many so their choices would be to mass murder those who surrendered or let them go free (sans weapons) and risk them getting weapons in the future.
It’s far better for Israel that they fight to the last man so that there is no need to deal with prisoners.
Likely true but OTOH, you have all the bleeding hearts pining over the deaths of Gazan civilians that Hamas is hiding behind.
Were they to surrender, unlikely as it may be, Israel would then have to farm them out to Syria or Iran to get rid of them.
Yes, you’re right. Who, other than bleeding hearts, would care about the dismemberment deaths of thousands of children? They’re probably antisemites anyway.
The primary rule of thumb about running a Zionist Christian tax shelter “church” in the USA is do not, under any circumstance, preach about the words attributed to Jesus of Nazareth in Matthew 25: 41-46. You have to keep the congregation lathered up so they can punch down on the least among you, including the babies. That’s how you can really turn your tax shelter into a cash cow.
Israel was moving toward normal diplomatic (recognition) and economic relations with many Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, etc. Part of the reason for the Hamas attack was to complicate or end that movement. Israel had ended direct military occupation of Gaza in 2005, there was little or no reason to want the cycle of attack/retaliation with Hamas, many large reasons to want that cycle to end. The world is full of thinking that in some way Israel wants the continuation of Middle Eastern hostility, but if you step away from that perspective you can see that is not accurate.
Israel wants to level Gaza and purge the Palestinians so it can get some extra Lebensraum.
The current government has no desire to stop until they have cleared the way to build some nice retirements homes and tourists villas along the Gaza coast.
Only 20,000 dead? Israel is making a mistake playing nice. Make like the ancient Romans according to Tacitus: create a desert and call it peace.
Are you asking us to care?
I mean, there are over 200 countries in the world, and countless conflicts and associated atrocities, do any of us have enough carefruit to squeeze the juice from?
In all things, reality is what determines outcomes… reality can come in the form of geography, economics, physics, all kinds of things.
The realities in this situation is that a small terrorist force fuelled by an economically exasperated population of poor, attacked soft targets of a more powerful neighbour, the retaliation was swift, harsh, and inevitable. Perhaps the terrorist act was too. Perhaps the backlash against both sides from different sets of people was too.
Can those people (whether Gazans, Ukrainians, or any similarly affected population) move back into rubble? Not realistically… there is no infrastructure, it has to be rebuilt. Can it be rebuilt? Not realistically, because the sequence of events has forced the hands of all into worse situations. In a scenario of complete devastation like this, with continuing and indefinite hostility closeby, it doesn’t seem very realistic to restore much of what went before… ditto Ukraine, ditto elsewhere…
What realities are tagging along? The presence of sympathisers in the west, where the money hoses are. Egypt and Jordan are swamped with refugees; Syria are Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, are failed states; Saudi, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, simply aren’t interested. Further flung states with tenuous ties are not really up to it or up for it either. As with post-WW2 Japan and Germany, the reality that seems most likely is that America takes over Gaza and rebuilds and runs it for many decades to come. The EU is not a viable administrator, and nowhere else is a realistic candidate.
Reality… is that Gaza becomes like a new American Samoa in the Middle East.
Good points!
Slaughters happening for years back-and-forth across boarders in Africa … little/no news or WSJ coverage. I’d offer my thoughts on why but probably get AI banned for using bad words.
Maybe “expert” economists will finally agree the broken window theory belongs in the trash.There’s no way destroying all those buildings is good for Gaza’s economy.
Israel plans to raze as much of Gaza as possible, making it unlivable. So far, agree or disagree, they’re having great success.
No, not yet. Only 3% of population have been killed or maimed.
That’s partial success.
100% PTSD. Post traumatic stressed disorder.
Even soldiers who committed genocide suffered PTSD.
Who is reimbursing the non-hamas palestinians for property destruction? This is Hague war crime level destruction on a huge number of people not involved with hamas. We are talking less than 65,000 in hamas in a population of over 2,000,000.
Hamas was elected by the Palestinians, then they killed and drove out the Palestinian Authority 14 years ago. No elections since. Hamas took money designated for the “refugees” and either stole it outright (Hamas leaders worth $Billions living in Qatar) or used it to build tunnels and rocket launchers. The Palestinian people support all this. They bear the responsibility for Hamas and their own misery now.
What happens next? The idiots at the UN, EU, World Bank and the US Government will pour $Billions of our tax $ into Gaza, much of which will be stolen by Hamas or whoever comes next. And the Arabs, Russians and Iranians (and the Chinese) sitting on their oil $ will laugh at the world.
You must be joking.
Have you heard of ‘collective’ ?
Back in 2005-06 the Gazans voted to give Hamas power as the PLA was full of corrupt officials. So they swapped scum for scum ( sounds like the USA today or Germany in the early 1930s) and that scum that have been elected by the Gazans are now the cause of the bombing of Gaza. No different to the bombings of German cities during the war where both those who voted for Hitler and those who didn’t get to suffer. And the proportion of Gazans who voted for Hamas was 70% compared to under 35% for Hitler so by comparison the Gazans deserve bombing twice as hard.
Those who voted for Hamas are to blame for their childrens suffering as they chose these past 15 years not to kick the murderers out.
Was it worth it? Israel has been committing Oct 7s every year since.its inception. A racist apartheid state on stolen land and the spheres tip of white colonialism.
U must be joking. Oct 7 level atrocity has NEVER occurred by Israeli’s. Invading refugee camps in past was again, due to constant attacks emanating from them. These same camps were attacked by Arab states as well. No one looking forward wants those looking backward to muck it up.
Israel murders children by the hundreds every year. Rabin break their bones policy.Nobody likes Israel. they buy their mudering
Stolen land that they built 3500 years ago , where were the palatines then ?
fake Israelites who converted . tribe of Abraham long dead. Monsters do exist
It’s true that a lot of them are Slavic Ukrainian “Khazars/Sephardim” by blood/DNA, not Semitic at all.
Show me the fake records.
Yeah, and the Jews were TOTALLY living in the Hamptons 3500 years ago. That’s why they’re not turning the keys to those mansions over to Native Americans.
Prior to 10/7 and since 2005, Israel was not occupying Gaza.
The Hamas dogs who murdered babies & raped women are worst than racist. The subhuman.
they control all food and supplies into gaza. they murder at will stop lying
Egypt have a border with Gaza and could have helped Gaza if they wanted. Israel provided 50% of the electricity and most of the water for free. Egypt did nothing to help. Israel would wanted nothing more than all the people in Gaza left for Egypt but Egypt is very afraid of something like that. They do not want Hamas in their country.
Israel published a list of the dead from Oct 7 and soon after. There were less than 10 children.
Israel has killed that many Palestinian children every years for decades
Post a link with some evidence of that.
Bibi supported Hamas. Israelis and American taxpayers bankrolled them and propped them up. The blood of every dead Israeli and Gazan alike falls on Bibi and American taxpayers.
And the US supported the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot after the Vietnamese government helped drive them out of power. And in Afghanistan the US/UK/others also supported Bin Laden and the grouping of Jihadis that became Al Qaeda. MANY governments support despicable forces in the mindset of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Bankrupt leadership practices bankrupt politics, but that doesn’t make the people, especially working people, an acceptable target for terrorism, pogroms, and other atrocities like 9/11. That is the fundamental character of Hamas, another political grouping like Al Qaeda, ISIS, Pol Pot.
There are no “good guys” in this conflict. Too many (though not nearly all) Palestinians support groups that employ terror tactics in the conflict. Israel takes land illegally, expels the people living there if they are of the “wrong” religion, and criss-crosses the remaining land with illegal settlements run by armed religious fanatics to eliminate any chance of a state for Palestinians. Over time both Palestinian and Israeli’s views have metastasized into outright racism that fuels tribal violence.
“Is anyone aware of Israelis marching on the streets cheering the death of over 20,000 Palestinians, flashing victory signs?” – Mish
There are equivalents, yes. Youtube will helpfully provide video of Israelis on beach chairs having drinks while enjoying watching the bombing/shredding of (overwhelmingly) innocent Palestinian bodies, housing and infrastructure. There are plenty of videos calling for more destruction, and TikToks of israeli families dressed up as caricatures of Palestinians (all missing teeth), while they gleefully show how their lights and water work, while Gazans’ don’t. That’s just as ugly as cheering Oct 7.
Here’s a fun compilation too: link to twitter.com
Both are behaving deplorably.
I don’t get it.
We have prominent US senators(Romney, Graham and others) telling us how good it is to kill Russians. Yet Biden, among others, who are complicit in bombing Gaza 29,000 times are telling us that we should go easy on the Gazan population.
That’s an interesting point, since it’s Israel that’s radicalized Palestinians. Apparently stealing people’s land, shoving them into a ghetto and then dropping bombs on them doesn’t make you very popular. Who could have guessed?
Israel is now a pariah state, despised globally, so in that sense Hamas succeeded.
If you read history, this has been the story of all civilizations. The swings between seemingly right and wrong move in both directions for the same players. They are still fighting over the sins of their forefathers; it’s impossible to keep track of all the tits for tats.
Was it worth it? Depends if Israel’s strategy works out long-term and that no one here has the faintest idea. Nevertheless destroying the buildings and bulldozing the rubble makes it impossible for those hiding in the tunnels to escape and fight another day. Normally at this time I would express sorrow for the people of Gaza except they were all for it when Hamas was killing, raping and torturing the women and children they got their hands on so they don’t have my sympathy.
Hamas are dogs & those who support them deserve to have their homes blown to pieces.
Israel (especially Netanyahu) supported Hamas and American taxpayers did too. Americans living in Section 8 housing shouldn’t have their homes blown to pieces since they don’t pay taxes that go to Israel to be given to Hamas. But most homes in the USA and Israel, especially Bibi’s, deserve to be blown to pieces for supporting Hamas all these years.
KooKoo alert on aisle 5. Where’s Zardoz?
Mish, thanks for the intelligent dispassionate post. Hope lies dormant.
Israeli policy is far from blameless but the hatred I believe is taught from birth by only Hamas. Even Saudi Arabian wahhabi madrassas have seen the error in their ways and have shifted desire to a prosperous future to replace the hate.
Mish, you read too much MSM. It has been well established now that most of the slaughter at the rave festival was Israeli friendly fire. Israel is constantly putting out propaganda to justify its behavior. Since the beheaded babies story lost credibility, they now have a mass rape story. The low brow public will probably buy it.
At the end you put all the blame on Hamas by asking, “was it worth it?” I guess Israel is right no matter what crimes they commit. And Hamas should sit there and take it. There is such a think as proportionate response and Israel has went well beyond this.
Also, if you were aware of the history and the incidences leading up to Oct. 7 you would see that Hamas was fighting back against and ongoing brutal occupation.
Try listening to Judge Napolitano for a change. He has on some great guests on and you’ll be better informed about both the Urkaine and Israel wars.
link to youtube.com
There was certainly friendly fire at the kibbutzes (im?), but “most of the slaughter at the rave”? I’m gonna have to see some evidence for that.
Alex has been spouting this nonsense for weeks now. He posts links to sources that are not credible. There were ZERO Israeli troops at the Re’im music festival. The Hamas dogs killed 364 innocent Israelis, wounded many more and took 40 hostages.
He’s an antisemite and either doesn’t know or is ignoring the fact that the Israeli occupation of Gaza ended in 2005.
For all we know he changed his call sign from Zardoz & deserves a kookoo award.
Fair enough. Claim unproven. Now, there does appear to have been friendly fire at the kibbutz’s AND the reason for the initial body overcount is that some 200 Hamas were burnt beyond recognition, most likely due to Israeli artillery. Presumably some non-trivial number of Israelis were also killed this way. So there’s that.
Lastly, the occupation of Gaza ended in 2005, but the blockade of Gaza continued. Some definitions of occupation include blockades. Let’s stick to balanced truth and neither side’s narrative. It is misleading to say “occupation ended” without acknowledging that Gazans aren’t allowed an airport or the use of their ports without Israeli approval. It’s not like they are sovereign – they are subordinate to Israel. Even if Israel has no rights to that land.
But let’s not default to “anti-semitism” because someone doesn’t believe an Israeli narrative. It isn’t always so.
In terms of occupied vs blockade, you’re playing semantics. From 2005 to 10/7, Israel was forced to control the border. Otherwise, they’d have Hamas terrorist running through to kill Jews every day.
I’ll default to calling Alex an antisemite any day of the week, bro! The shoe fits. Per M&W:
“a person who is hostile to or prejudiced against Jewish people”
That’s Alex.
* <- That’s TomS
Maybe check sources other than from the Israeli government.
Check the damage at sites with the most deaths. Destroyed houses, masses of bombed cars. Hamas must have really effective AK-47’s.
Looks much more like air attacks and/or tank fire.
Exactly. But these clowns have their agenda and don’t want to see.
Try the grayzone with Max Blumenthal
Jews have been stealing lands and homes of Palestine for 70 years.
Nobody will sit silently when theirs are stolen.
What’s about you?
The tank crew that fired into the residential homes in one of the videos I watched should be reassigned to cooks or janitors.
This Christmas, mass murder of christians in Nigeria. Thousands of killings in Sudan last months, women beaten in Iran, yesterday massive bombings in Ukraine…
¿How many buildings stay in Bakhmut?
Fake news : only 19,000 buildings out of 439,000 were destroyed, damaged, or slightly damaged. Most high rises buildings are standing tall. There are not enough bombs in Israel and US to destroy 70% of Gaza. There are not enough planes to carry them. Dresden didn’t reach 70%. Tokyo bombing burnt 40%/50% of the buildings made of pressed paper and wood, killing 100,000 people. WSJ bs !
Apache and drones can damage military targets. Bombs cost 3K. GPS kits cost 20K.
The IDF will not waste tenths of billions on civilian targets
You’re either dreaming mate, or need some new specs
What an A-hole!
The figures from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry (the BBC graphic notes this) should be taken as suspect as well. Does the figure of 20,000 Palestinians also include Hamas “fighters” who died in combat with the IDF? The Israeli government estimates having killed 7,000 Hamas troops among the 20,000 figure. People have to pay attention to the reality that a lot of the data entering the media in the US and elsewhere is coming pretty much unfiltered from Hamas and its supporters. Hamas strategy has been to refuse to negotiate any peace, launch provocative attacks on Israel, then hide behind the civilian population and use civilian suffering from Israeli counterattacks to garner international sympathy, support and resources, and bring Israeli attacks to a halt. Then they rebuild their capabilities, lie low, and eventually repeat the cycle.
link to themilitant.com
And there are no 2mn displaced people, the hospitals are all working, there is plenty of food, there were 40 beheaded babies, the Al-Shifa Hospital was the command center for Hamas, Israel killed no journalists. And anyone saying otherwise is a rabid anti-semite. Right?
No, the Israeli government operates in the interests of the Israeli capitalist class. And it operates with the methods and aims that capitalists governments tend to work with—brutal force, measures that undercut working class unity, and often a reliance on reactionary sectors of the population. Only the Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, working classes united can resolve the issues. None of that can happen under a leadership like Hamas, which is committed to killing Jews, and driving them out of the Middle East entirely. Want to see what THAT leadership will make the area look like? Look at ISIS, that is a model for what Hamas will carry out. The Nazi party of the 30s is a model as well, and has been historically.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0914386395?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
Peace was achievable decades ago, and you can argue the terms, but not on the basis of “colonizer” BS that no longer applies as anything more than another “final solution”. The October 7th pogrom was an existential assault on Jews, it was a call for another genocidal attack on Jews worldwide, and a siren call for the gathering of forces that WILL move in the direction of fascism. The question of anti-semitism ultimately can’t be settled under capitalism, that’s why the Israeli government can’t be the vehicle for that, but an organization like Hamas has to be destroyed before we have any chance of a resolution.
https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Question-Marxist-Interpretation/dp/160488116X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=NJ5FVVWZZOJ5&keywords=the+jewish+question+abram+leon&qid=1703975617&sprefix=Leon+abram%2Caps%2C223&sr=8-1
But once Israel destroys all the tunnels under Gaza, many of the foundations of still standing buildings will collapse. In fact, Israel may have to demolish many still standing buildings to fill in the tunnels underneath.
Mish, the sooner what was the U.S. gets to its 12/25/1991 moment, the better. Biden For The Win!
Don’t hold your breath.
Too bad its not 100%
Q: When will the war stop?
A: Yes, I can easily say. It will stop when there is nothing left for anyone to come home to and we will know it is over when Bibi, who knew this was going to happen in advance and allowed it to happen, says “the gaza strip has been taken as recompense to IL for damage done by Hamas at the start of the conflict.”
There was never any intention to let Gazans move back home. All of the homes will be razed to the ground. IL is tired of having a terrorist breeding center sucking up some prime real estate like the Gaza strip. Count on it. If bibi lets even 1 Palestinian back into Gaza he pisses on the graves of all those Israelis that he purposefully martyred in order to achieve his political goal.
And the water is polluted. Previously, Gaza had something like 150 desalination plants operating to provide it with potable water. These are all shut down now and many are damaged. They consumed a lot of power. They also cause environmental problems as something has to be done with the leftover salt. It can’t simply be flushed back into the Mediterranean.
It is possible that Israel’s near term goal is to essentially reshape Gaza from a southwest to northeast orientation to something closer to a southeast to northwest orientation (hugging more of the Egyptian border, although that likely would require some handoff of nominally Israeli land – mostly empty but Israeli).
Everything there is tragically on top of one another (Israeli is pretty tiny, Gaza much tinier still) but the Israeli rationale would be that even pushing Gaza’s northeastern border back 5 or 10 miles (out of just 20 total) would 1) push some fraction of Gazan missiles out of range, 2) lengthen the distance that enemy forces would have to travel to try another 10/7, and 3) cause the Gazans to have to focus on reconstructing 50% of their enclave in raw lands rather than planning/provisioning the next 10/7.
These points would explain the large expenditure of bombs to essentially flatten northern Gaza – Israel could be trying to create a destroyed no man’s land in order to create a tiny buffer between itself and the Gazans. They’ll reconstruct the wall/fencing but in a geographically reoriented Gaza. This would also address the issue of the existing tunnel complex in Northern Gaza…few to no buildings up top, much easier to monitor/destroy the tunnel complex underneath.
Just speculation but it would explain Israel’s military approach so far (29k bombs dropped ain’t trivial, even from Israel’s military perspective).
Israel has some of the best integence services in the world. I am sure that there was enough evidence to prevent what happened before it even started. The people governing Israel are the ones that caused and keep the destruction going. Deja vu 911. This gives Israel the excuse to anex and control Palestin. Almost like Putin wanting to anex Ukraine.
Why can’t more people see this obvious truth both about the hamas attack, the purposeful release of bioweapon covid 19 and GWBush’s blind eye that allowed 911. Wasn’t the sudden collapse of WTC7 a dead giveaway to everyone? How could it NOT be?
Not to mention the breakup of Pangea.
Antisemitic crap. And self-serving justification for what was a truly genocidal attack on Oct. 7 and an overall genocidal policy from Hamas, an organization that can trace its political heritage back to Hajj Amin al-Husseini, central Arab collaborator with Hitler and German Nazism during and after WW2. Israel WAS a colonial-settler state but has settled into the same class relations, civil rights standards, diplomacy and stability that typify “colonial-settler” states like the US, Mexico, Brazil, etc. Are you for “decolonizing” those countries in the same manner as Hamas? Go for it. FYI, the Israeli ruling class gave up the possibility of an expanded “Greater Israel” 2-3 decades ago when they recognized that Israeli/Palestinian/Arab demographics and population growth made it impossible. The Israelis then began to seek negotiated peace, and a stability that might insured the continuance and development of Israel as a refuge for the Jewish people. The current war is occurring in that dynamic, not the “colonial/settler” BS that the “resistance” wants to camouflage under.
Israel is a war criminal nation occupied by a bunch of psychopaths. Need proof.
link to youtu.be
I notice your modus operandi is to call people “a-holes” and then post this video from YouTube. That’s not argumentation, and it’s certainly not “proof”.
Alex is a mentally challenged Hamas supporter. Ignore him.
Damn Mish. Bring back the ignore button!
Israel had my sympathy in the beginning. At that point, they were taking out individual buildings, leaving everything around still standing. How did it go from targeting precisely to wanton bombing? They may as well have nuked Gaza from the get go if their intention was complete destruction.
It was always intentional destruction. Nearly all the hospitals in Northern Gaza are deatroyed. Same for schools, water and sanitation. The intent is to destroy the civilian infrastructure so they have nothing to return to. This is an ethnic cleansing operation and only the dimwitted believe the stuff being put out by Israel.
By their deeds you shall know them.
Hamas has built and maintained their tunnels, command centers, and weapon/supply storage under civilian areas, hospitals, and schools. With no shelter for the civilian population when it inevitably, intentionally incites Israeli attacks. Hamas cares for the Palestinian population about as much as you care for the Israeli population, including Palestinians living as Israeli citizens. Arab-Israelis, Thai migrant workers, Bedouins, Palestinian-Israelis were killed in the October 7 pogrom and rocket attacks. They’re all invisible to you because you’re blinded by your hatred of Jews.
You’ll have to include Fidel Castro among the “dimwitted” since in an interview in Le Monde in 1967 he said, “True revolutionaries never threaten to exterminate a whole country,” in response to Arab governments and others calling for Israel’s destruction.
Since the pogrom by Hamas and its allies, Stalinists and middle-class radicals have been organizing actions under the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” — a call for the destruction of Israel and slaughter of the Jews. That’s the exact opposite of what Fidel Castro, the central leader of the Cuban Revolution, had to say about Israel and Jew-hatred.
Castro often strongly disagreed with the Israeli government. At the same time he openly expressed his support for the right of Israel to exist as a refuge for the Jews.
In 2010, after then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had proclaimed the Holocaust — the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis — was an “unprovable and mythical claim,” Castro invited Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg to come to Cuba and interview him.
Fidel told him the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the “unique” history of antisemitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.
“I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims,” Castro told Goldberg. “They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything.”
“Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms,” Castro said. “The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.”
“Let’s imagine that I were [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Castro said, “I would remember the 6 million Jewish men and women, of all ages who were exterminated in the concentration camps” when making decisions.
Goldberg asked Castro, “Do you think the State of Israel, as a Jewish State, has a right to exist?”
“Yes, without a doubt,” Castro replied.
One has to ask why have the Jews always been so persecuted / hated. Could it be related to their fairytale claim that the are ‘Gods chosen people’? And that with such a deluded belief, they think that any action by them is blessed by their imaginary benefactor?
The equivalent of “She was raped because she was asking for it.” Look back on history and you’ll find that Jews were diasporaed because they resisted the Roman Empire, and they were persecuted as convenient scapegoats of the powerful who diverted popular anger toward the Jews and away from the corrupt rulers. Why were Native Americans persecuted/hated? Basically the same reasons. Read “The Jewish Question” by Abram Leon for some of that history.
What was achieved is an interesting question, but it goes back a bit further, what did they ever hope to achieve? Maybe the real question is what did Iran hope to achieve? Maybe (opinion here), it was Iran helping Russia. Since we have announced weapons inventory issues (amount), Russia would benefit greatly if munitions that might have gone to the Ukraine were diverted to Israel. Does Russia or Iran care about Hamas or Palestinians, heck no, they are just pawns.
What hogwash. I hope and pray Russia and Iran would supply Hamas with more advanced weapons to even up the fight. But it would be a great opportunity to get back at the neocon for their proxy war in Ukraine. It would hit them where it really hurts, since all neocons are Israel Firsters.
I’m betting we will be paying for all this damage, fair or not, we will get the bill.
Don’t whine because we are “paying” using fake money that nobody ever worked to earn. IT was just printed up out of thin air. If it cost us gold then I would be singing a different tune.
We’re also paying for the bombs and artillery shells they’re using. This makes us complicit in the crime.
Does that make Iran complicit in the Oct 7th crimes? Or are you a raging apologist for them too.