Israel will push on with its offensive against Hamas, including into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite growing international pressure to stop, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.
Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas after its fighters attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253, according to Israeli tallies. More than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s subsequent offensive, Palestinian health authorities estimate, prompting worldwide criticism and condemnation.
“There is international pressure and it’s growing, but particularly when the international pressure rises, we must close ranks, we need to stand together against the attempts to stop the war,” he said.
“There is international pressure and it’s growing, but particularly when the international pressure rises, we must close ranks, we need to stand together against the attempts to stop the war,” he said.
Sorry, why is Isreal not an isolated state at this point? If they won’t respond to international pressure, and indeed are intent on doubling down because of that international pressure, why even include them in international bodies?
It’s so odd
Oh dude. I can confirm that for you. I grew up Roman Catholic. I know 80 percent of practicing Christians around the world just want to live and let live.
But the polling for American Christian evangelism is fucking scary. There was a deep dive into Jan 6 2020 and it turns out the evangelical community was key in planning the entire thing. They will tell you with a straight face that Sharia is bad and we should replace the Constitution with the Bible. There was an article yesterday where they proudly said women shouldn’t be able to vote.
ChristoFascist is a descriptor, nothing more.
We had a crazy Christian in our office. He was 100% all-in on the prophetic books like Ezekiel and Revelations. He would go on and on about how all the current events in the Middle East, Russia, and the Caucasus were prophesied back in biblical times, and that the Rapture would happen any time now. He literally told me that if he didn’t show up for work for a few days it was probably because he’d been Raptured up to heaven, and that’s how we will know that the end times are upon us. Our previous CEO was also of the crazy Christian persuasion. He wasn’t as loud as Rapture-boy, but definitely into Christian prophesy and numerology and applying it to current events with an eye on the end times. And I don’t even live in a bible belt. This is not as uncommon as you would think.
Give him “The Salvation War” from Stuart Slate to read.
That will shut him up.
Sell it to him as a story about the rupture and the fight of the unbelievers against their destiny.
He will then find out that the story doesn’t play out like the bible told… as Humanity curb-stomps hell and heaven into dust without blinking. And if he ever dares to speak the topic again, cite the book. I personally love the part when a random US marine puts a janitor on Gods throne because that guy is the only one knowing what he is doing. Though the pope excommunicating god for being not worthy also has its merit. Ah, Satan gets it too. He hides in a dirt hole from B-52 bombers.
I think you’re talking about Christian Zionism which was at odds with many Orthodox rabbis who were anti-zionist early on. Crazy stuff
Fun fact: there are more Christian Zionists in the US than there are Jewish Zionists.
Why do people never follow “fun fact” with a fun fact?
Fun fact! If you befriend crows, they might bring you shiny things, but more importantly, descendants of the crows that you befriend will remember you and ALSO be your friend! Yay corvids, smart birdies!
For Crows this is also true. My Grandpa befriended a couple of Crows and even 40 years later their decendents visit us. We usually play with walnuts, they bring them to me, I open them for them and take some for myself. Smart birds, if I take more than half they get angry. But taking every second one - they are cool about that.
That’s what makes it so fun!
Wait, is that by percentage or raw numbers? I know there are a ton of Christian (especially Evangelical) Zionists, but Jewish people make up less than 3% of the U.S population, so if it’s by raw numbers that’s kinda a meaningless comparison. Like, there are less Jewish…pretty much everything in the U.S.
Right, but if you ask “to which religion does the average Zionist in the US belong?”, most people are going to say Judaism instead of Christianity.
I’d say many people don’t even know that Christian Zionists are even a thing.
Fair enough. I spend a lot of time learning about right-wing extremists, so I guess I forget that it might not be common knowledge that Evangelicals support Israel because it ties into their apocalyptic death-cult prophecies.
Well, you gotta remember that in the Bible, the Jews (then Hebrews before becoming Israelites) are God’s chosen people and God aids them in destroying other nationalities all the time in the Old Testament. Hence the 12 Tribes and Israel coming about.
Christians will back the 12 Tribes of Israel because they’re the foundation of their religion. You can’t have Christianity without accepting God chose the Jews as his people and created the Kingdom of God and distributed it amongst Jacob’s 12 sons. If this is not true, nothing after it is either including Jesus as the Son of God, gentiles being accepted, and being judged be the 12 thrones in End Times.
So I think you will find most Christians support it while those that don’t simply don’t know their own religion too well.
So, yup! Pretty fuckin’ scary. But it’s not like it’s anything new. Lots of people have been killed in the name of religion before us and lots of people will once we’re gone.
Not really. The Catholic Church vilified Jews for over a thousand years. There’s also the new testament/old testament debate. Basically Jesus 86’d the old rules and that’s why Christians don’t have kosher stuff.
What’s the Catholic church got to do with any of that, let alone the villifying part? This is literal thousands of years before them.
They controlled the Western Christian narrative until 1517. And if Jesus gave everyone a clean slate, then does Israel have a righteous claim to the holy land?
Spoiler, they don’t recognize Israel as an authority over Jerusalem.
Did not realise Western society and the Roman church were involved in the Torah—shit, don’t tell the Muslims.
You’re not incorrect, I just still have no idea why you’re raising such things way ahead in history.
Do you not understand how history works? That position between us and the alleged events means they got to edit, add, and delete all kinds of shit before we were ever born.
So when they control the European narrative from 300 CE to 1500 CE; that then informs what everyone after them thinks. Including the Protestants.
Even the Bible that people think of as the standard Bible was a project by King James because the Calvinists Bible wasn’t appropriately respectful of divine monarchy in his opinion. And having nothing much else to base it on at the time, it’s based on the Catholic Bible and a few previous attempts to convert the Catholic Bible to the English Church. Then Evangelists turned to the Scofield Bible in the 1900’s; which was just a well annotated King James Bible.
The evangelists who support Israel because they believe they’ll see Jesus again are still stuck on the Scofield Bible.
It’s not until you get to the NIV that people are trying to reach back to archeologically recovered Greek, Cyrillic, and Latin Bibles to create one not based on Catholic meddling for over a thousand years. And neither the Catholics or Conservative Evangelists are willing to do anything with the NIV. And congregations using the NIV still have to contend with a lifetime of using previous Bibles and dogma from other churches.
So do you understand why the Catholic Church is important to Christian ideology in the the US yet?
Great perspective, I enjoyed reading that thank you
Israel has a strong backing from the US. It is part of their Modus op since early 1900s which is to get a strong backer. Earlier, British was their patron and that’s how they get their foots in Palestine. Sometimes in 1930s or 40s (if I am not mistaken), they managed to get close support from the US, that became their new patron, and they reduced their dependence to the British at that point and even committed terror campaigned against them so that the British wouldn’t be in their way to gain Palestinian territories.
So, why would they care about international pressure/support when the US is with them. It’s not necessary, as the international community won’t be able to do much as long as some powerful body is always be behind them.
A couple of details you got wrong Israel didn’t exist until 1948, until then the area was the Brit Mandate over Palestine.
After WW1 the UK was granted control of the area from the former Ottoman Syria by the league of nations in 1920, under what was called Mandatory Palestine.
Yes I got it wrong. Instead of Israel, It should have written Zionism, the foundation of Israel that we see today. Zionism continues through modern Israel, and Israel doesn’t exist under thin air.
Anyway, I don’t see anything wrong with my statements of British and US backing. They reduced their reliance on the British after WW2.
They called it israel before 1948 so that statement is correct. According to countries surrounding Palestine your other statement is actually wrong.
Zionism continues through modern Israel, and Israel doesn’t exist
under thin air.
To watch the Biden administration continue to pretend that they have any effect whatsoever in preventing Israel’s murderous rampage is just embarrassing at this point.
I can’t wait to see how they completely fail to hold Netanyahu to account this time …
Can’t fail to hold someone accountable if you never try to.
The bare minimum would be to follow international law regarding supply of weapons to a genocide.
If you wanna go absolutely wild, you could stop vetoing UN resolutions demanding a ceasefire.
You don’t understand, they’re building a dock in Gaza!
The Biden Administration takes no responsibility for the 18 year old Israeli Naval Blockade or any internal checkpoints that may or may not be turning around aid convoys. Furthermore the American administration cannot guarantee any Gazans will be able to reach the docks without Israel deciding they are in fact Hamas because they’re conducting civil governance.
I really need the onion to make this comment into an actual ad with the fast talk side effect speech so I can link it anytime someone says Biden is helping Gaza
Israel already came out and said any ships have to go through Israeli customs on Cypress; They’re securing the dock area against Palestinians; and internal checkpoints throughout the strip will remain.
So… Yeah. Enjoy the new dock I guess?
Haven’t you heard?
Biden said they’ll be a ceasefire in a week, it’s like “infrastructure week” all fucking over again.
Yep - that prediction certainly aged like milk.
Hey, he’s just helping domestic yogurt production…
According to half of lemmy he can press a magic button to stop it.
Oh, and it’s his fault… Somehow.
It’s not his fault, but he has approved a number of military aid packages that get sent directly to Israel. So, in a way, it kinda is indirectly his fault.
Instead of dealing with our own problems in our country, he’s giving money to Israel to participate in genocide.
Biden could stop supplying weapons and ammunition until the radical Republicans finally pass a budget that includes money for that. He could put limitations on the weapons that we do supply to Israel, like we’ve put restrictions on the weapons we supply to the rest of the world - including Ukraine. He could put sanctions on the members of the Israeli government and the Israeli press and the Israeli religious community that have publicly called for Palestinian genocide. He could speak against Israel’s actions in his speeches, or send surrogates out to do so on his behalf. He could stop vetoing toothless UN resolutions calling for Israel to stop murdering civilians.
European view here, with a question:
I understand the US has always stood by Israel. Some reasons geopolitical, some religious and some business related.
Wouldn’t every president who would actively block military or financial aid to Israel or even whisper the word sanctions be a pariah in his own government?
How would the media react?
How would the big players and decision makers in politics, religion and business react?
That’s the real problem. Israel is a major ally because they’re in the Middle East and not many countries like the US there. So it’s in the US interest to support them.
There’s also a very scary amount of doomsday religious people with pull that believe Israel will trigger the end of the world, and they actually want that to happen.
The mainstream media would react better than you think. They’ve been running stories about Israeli war crimes for months.
Just one uhhh point.
If the UN got such a resolution past the security council, it could very well result in a peacekeeping force and Israel becoming a banned country as far as weapons and military technology sales.
The UN is toothless because of the security council vetoes.
Nice strawman.
What he could do, at the very least, is follow the tone already set by his VP, or even (dare I say it) threaten to pause US military support if the assault on Rafa goes ahead.
What’s the straw man I presented?
He’s personally stopped Netanyahu before. The Israelis stopped bombing Gaza in 2021 after one phone call.
Also supplying the bombs makes you pretty fucking complicit. Everyone understood this when Iran supplied AQ with roadside bombs in Iraq but now it’s some distant concept.
Yeah the button is labeled “stop transfer of bombs to Isreal”. All he has to do is push it. Without the unlimited firehouse of US taxpayer funded weapons flowing in, Isreal will have to decide whether they want to draw down their current stocks blowing up residential houses and hospitals, leaving them more vulnerable to actual threats, or pull back. Also, the US is the only thing holding back international accountability. If Isreal loses that support, they might face consequences for their actions, become isolated, lose trade, etc.
Now it doesn’t have to get all the way to that point, the US could just seriously threaten cutting off support, military or otherwise, and Israel would likely back down. But Biden calling bibi and saying “pwease don’t target civilians” is not asserting pressure.
Biden won’t do more because he knows if he puts real pressure on Isreal then Republicans would attack him as “weak on Hamas” or whatever, and that threatens his reelection. Biden cares about that far more than human rights.
Removed by mod
I’m disappointed to be a part of this species
I have a serious question!
What could Hamas do to end this blood sheet?
What could the Gazans do to end this blood sheet?
Please answer seriously. I am not asking for what anyone else could do. That has been discussed to exhaustion. I want to hear the options of the two mentioned. No one else.
Nothing because the people doing the murdering are the people self-determining who is and isn’t a “hamas soldier.”
Hamas has no soldiers because they don’t qualify for the Geneva definition of a soldier. For example they usually operate disguised as civilians which makes them unlawful.
They do qualify as “armed unlawful combatants” though. “Unlawful” means they don’t fall under the rules of war but under civilian Israeli law.
And to realize who is an armed combatant it is enough seeing he carries a weapon and then they are legit targets. If someone picks up his weapon he becomes the next legit target. And so on. The unarmed combatants - yes, those exist by the Geneva defintion too - are also legit targets although with more caveats. Overall it is a reliable way to get killed while holding a weapon. Much less if you drop it.
Just because came with a knife to a gun fight doesn’t mean you have extra rights.
And one more question, after all this guilt-mongering I would like to hear what options Hamas has to end the conflict.
I’m not sure what they can do when peaceful protests are responded to with live ammo and the Two State Solution has been wielded by Israel only as far as further annexation and denial of human rights for Palestinians. Hamas has been for a permanent ceasefire for months. It’s kind of like asking what the Jewish people in the Warsaw Ghettos could do to end the bloodshed when Nazi Germany was cracking down after the uprising.
Israel does hold all the power as the occupying force. This is a genocide. To Israel, Palestinians are subhuman animals. We need a lot of international pressure, and hopefully more internal pressure from Israelis, to get Israel to stop its ethnic cleansing campaigns.
About the attitude of Hamas:
https://ryanmcbeth.substack.com/p/why-the-jlots-wont-work-in-gaza
The “ceasefire” by Hamas looks like that they are still shooting 100 rockets per day at Israelian civilians. Not to mention the more than 1000 people they killed last year alone. In 2023 they shot 23.000 rockets and grenades at Israel - actually most of them BEFORE the October attacks. That is a typical Hamas-Ceasefire.
To Israel, Palestinians are subhuman animals.
The only one who called them subhuman animals is actually… you. Very interesting, indeed.
And btw, can you tell me what HAMAS could do to end the war?
“We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza,” “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.”
- Defense Minister Yoav Gallant
“They are not human beings and not even human animals, they are subhuman and that is how they should be treated,”
- Jerusalem Deputy Mayor
If you look at that link you’ll find documentation encompassing over 500 incitements of violence and genocidal incitement, appearing in the forms of social media posts, television interviews, and official statements from Israeli politicians, army personnel, and journalists.
You think Hamas would be the one to attack humanitarian aid and food for the Palestinians in Gaza? Israel has been the one responsible for the conditions in Gaza due to the blockade that it internationally recognized as an occupation.
Do you know what peace looks like under Israel as your occupier?
Over 4500 new settlements, dozens of Palestinian towns attacked in pogroms, thousands of Palestinian homes demolished, over a hundred Palestinian children held in Israeli Prisons.
In Gaza, thousands of homes hit by Israeli bombs, over half of Palestinians live under the poverty line, hundreds of buildings hit by rocket fire, 45% unemployment, no electricity 12 hours a day, 70% of requested medical goods denied, over 800 palestinians died by being denied travel for medical care, 80% of children suffer from PTSD, over 80% rely on international aid. 2023 was the deadliest year for children in Palestine, over 47 children were killed (over 2,280 children since 2000) by Israel, before Oct 7th.
Year before Oct 7 - Jewish Voice for Peace
2023 is ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinian children say human rights groups
Over the last five months we’ve witnessed more than 30,600 Palestinians killed, more than 12,300 children and 6,300 women killed by Israel. With more than 70,000 injured and 99 Journalists killed.
We’ve seen over 360,000 homes destroyed. Nearly 400 schools, 267 Places of Worship, over 130 water wells bombed and destroyed. 23 out of 35 Hospitals don’t function anymore since they’ve gotten shelled. With the other 12 only partially functioning. Over 85% of everyone, millions of people, in Gaza has been displaced.
Millions are at extreme risk of starvation and disease brought by a deliberate famine and water crisis. Dozens of children have already died from malnutrition.
You think Hamas would be the one to attack humanitarian aid and food for the Palestinians in Gaza?
They did that a lot actually. For Hamas their subjects are just animals. See 06:30 at https://ryanmcbeth.substack.com/p/why-the-jlots-wont-work-in-gaza
And while they are able to fire over 100 missiles per day into Israel they can take a good beating for quite while. Think about that: During their reign they fired 2 million missiles and grenades into Israel - during peace time as I might add.
They are pretty beaten anyway, pretty much every ally has meanwhile distanced from them: https://www.nzz.ch/international/gaza-krieg-die-hamas-will-auch-im-ramadan-weiterkaempfen-ld.1821648
I guess they want go down in flames and take as many Gazans with them as possible. And they are doing a great job, don’t you agree?
And now a serious question: What could Hamas do to end the violence?
Thanks Biden
Why does the United States not take all of these refugees? They could easily fit them all in Miami.
