Thread by @JewishSpaceLazr on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Israel journalist @Roi_Yanovsky just published an amazing piece in Hebrew about what Gaza is REALLY like, based on his personal observations there. Here is an English translation that you NEED to read...
1. Gaza is seen as a backward area, the "most densely populated in the world" which has been under Israeli "siege" for years. There is no bigger lie than this. Gaza is a modern, beautiful, developed city, with large modern houses, wide boulevards, public spaces, a promenade by the sea and parks. Looks much better than any other Arab city from the Jordan to the sea, much more similar to Tel Aviv than to Kfar Qasim or Umm Al Fahem. And of course it is very far from being "the densest in the world".
2. If it's a siege, let me live in a siege. the houses are bursting with goods and food from all countries of the Middle East, latest furniture, electronics and whatnot. There are also luxurious mansions that wouldn’t embarrass Savion and Kfar Shemariahu (rich areas in Israel) There is absolutely no shortage of wealth in Gaza. In general, most of the houses I've been in were much bigger than the apartment I live in in Tel Aviv. The sentence "If only they had a chance for a good life, they wouldn't fight in Israel" is simply not relevant to Gaza.
3. The most common thing in the houses of the Gaza Strip: a map of the Land of Israel the heading "Map of Palestine". There is no mention of Israel or Israeli towns in general. And it is found in almost every home, in every school and in every public institution, the goal of erasing the State of Israel is neither hidden nor suppressed, it is almost everywhere. The historical distortion of this map which is taught from age 0 is a topic for another discussion that only emphasizes the distorted perception of reality by the residents of Gaza.
4. In all the neighborhoods we were in, there are ready-made Hamas combat complexes - weapons, tunnels, charges, launching complexes, all inside residential houses, some of which are also prepared with openings in the walls for passing between buildings and what not. The residents of the Gaza Strip who live in the combat zones know this, they have received countless notices to evacuate. Long before the IDF entered. IDF announcements are still there everywhere. Those who decided to stay in the fighting areas are either Hamas members in various positions or people who consciously decided to stay in the areas used by Hamas for fighting, for their own reasons.
5. Hamas members rarely walk around armed. They are neither stupid nor suckers. They know they won't be shot if they go in "civilian" guise. They prepare the weaponry ahead of time at the entrances to the buildings and arm themselves just a moment before they attack. That’s why the fighting is much more complex than any other arena. those judge from the outside why soldiers shot X or didn’t shoot Y - enter Gaza for a week or 2 and you’ll return with insights.
6. The circle enabling Hamas is much larger than its tens of thousands of terrorists. The ideology of Hamas is found in almost every home, in pictures, in propaganda materials. Hamas in Gaza is like Messi in Argentina.
7. The strengthening of Hamas at this level requires active assistance of a population. There is no way that the residents of the compounds where we located rockets and weapons did not know that the place is used as a launching complex where they try to massacre Israelis daily. And I find it hard to believe that the parents in the kindergarten where there was a tunnel shaft do not know this. Who chooses to send their children to a kindergarten that serves as a terrorist infrastructure?
8. Hamas's strongest weapon is lies and propaganda. It's his fuel. This is how you will maintain the "siege" lie for years, this is how they are doing now with the photos of the innocent victims and the killing of the "journalists" who turn out to be terrorist operatives. Gaza is the only place in the world where 500 deaths are reported half an hour after an explosion. Even in earthquakes and heavy disasters it takes the rescue forces a few days to identify and estimate the number of dead, but the Palestinian Ministry of Health already knows a minute after the explosion what the damage is. This is ridiculous and the world media quoting the numbers as living words of God is pathetic. I would attribute the same level of credibility to the reports this week about "hunger" in Rafah."
Ismail Haniyeh: We Should Build On October 7 - "Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh spoke at a conference of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) in Doha, Qatar, which was aired on Al-Jazeera Network (Qatar) on January 9, 2024, about the role of Islamic scholars worldwide in the wake of October 7. He said: "We should hold on to the victory that took place on October 7 and build upon it," and he added: "Time is on our side." Haniyeh said that Islamic scholars should advocate for the Palestinians in their respective countries and that donations to Gaza were not humanitarian aid, but "financial Jihad." He stated that "the time has come for the Jihad of the swords.""
Hamas losses: Up to 60% of terror forces out of action - analysis - "48-60% of Hamas’s forces are out of commission – meaning either killed, wounded, or arrested."
Meme - Nisreen Khuffash: "We will Never forget .💔 We will NEVER stop sharing ᖴᖇᗴᗴ ᑭᗩᒪᗴSTIᑎᗴ !!🇵🇸 #ChildrenKillers #IsraeliCrime #ZionismIsTerrorism #IsraeliOccupation #genocide #HumanityForAll #EthnicCleansing #forthesakeofGod #ceasefireInGazaNOW #FromTheRiverToTheSea #FreePalestine #ZionistTerror #GazaUnderAttack #GazaGenocide #IDFterrorist #IsraeliApartheid #WarCrimesInGaza #NetanyahuWarCriminal #StopGenocide #Jerusalem #AlAqsa #IsraelTerroristState"
"Israel's Security Minister Tells IDF Soldiers to Shoot Any Palestinian in Sight, Even If They Do Not Pose Any Threat"
"Ben Gvir tells officers to shoot 'terrorists' who don't pose threat, then backtracks. National security minister's office says original statement was misquote, and he meant to say only 'armed terrorists, amid attempts to ease open fire rules during wartime"
Terrorism supporters are either lying as usual or admitting that all Palestinians are (armed) terrorists
Shaiel Ben-Ephraim on X - "The ICJ has released a mostly fair interim decision. Unfortunately, it found plausibility in South Africa's claim. But that was to be expected. Notably, the court did not call on Israel to desist from genocide. That is because it is not convinced that it is taking place. Most importantly, it was not convinced that Israel needed to stop the fighting. That was the main concern Israel had at this point. Probably thanks to the brilliant performance of the Israeli legal team. Another major victory for Israel was that the court did not order that Israel allow the citizens of Gaza to return to the north. I was very surprised by that. Another surprising outcome was that Israel was not told to allow international aid organizations into the strip. Meanwhile, it issued the following interim orders. It said Israel should “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocide against the Palestinians (15 votes to 2). That is, of course, a perfectly fair demand. It ordered Israel to take steps to prevent and punish incitement to genocide against the Palestinians. This has been a genuine problem in Israel and must be addressed (16 votes to 1). It ordered Israel to take urgent measures to alleviate the “adverse” humanitarian situation in Gaza (16 votes to 1). Prevent the destruction of evidence related to allegations of acts of genocide (15 votes to 2). That, of course, is an essential part of any investigation. Overall, this interim stage went surprisingly well for Israel. Now it needs to obey the reasonable interim orders of the court and cooperate with the ICJ fully. That will allow it to beat the spurious allegations that it has committed genocide in Gaza. These decisions show how important it is for Israel to engage with the ICJ and the international community. We have the facts on our side. We have brilliant legal professionals. There is no need to surrender on the legal front. We need to fight there. Like in Gaza, Israel can win in court."
(((Civil_DiscourseNY)))🇺🇸🇮🇱🇺🇸 on X - "Israel is already doing everything the ICJ is asking for it to do."
Meme - "Isn't it interesting that the only two jurists on the ICJ panel who have actually witnessed genocide - Barak during the Holocaust and Sebuntinde in Sudan and Rwanda- voted to dismiss the charges? They're like we've seen genocide, and this ain't it."
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib on X - "Another implicitly anti-Hamas protest in southern Gaza called for peace, a ceasefire & the release of hostages. I've said this repeatedly: polls are inaccurate; displaced/hungry/battered & frustrated Gazans are against Hamas but fear retribution & repression. This is significant."
Hillel Neuer on X - "History will record that in 2024 it was more socially acceptable to march against Hamas in Gaza than in Harvard"
Amjad Taha أمجد طه on X - "Breaking: Video experts have confirmed that the footage aired by Al Jazeera today, which was purported to show injuries from #Israel's airstrikes in #Gaza, was in fact staged by the cameraman and Al Jazeera staff. The staging included poor acting, clearly fake blood, and individuals moving in sync with the camera while pretending to be injured. Such deceptive practices are not only unethical but also deeply disrespectful to those who are truly suffering from this conflict. There is no need for 'Pallywood' theatrics; shame on those involved. #HamasislSIS #Hamas #Hamasisterrorists"
Hussain Abdul-Hussain on X - "Hamas rejects two-months ceasefire, wants a permanent cease-fire instead, but opposes peace. Sounds like 1993 Oslo, 1998 Wye River, 2005 Israeli Unilateral Withdrawals, and a dozen other concessions that #Israel has made to the Palestinians in the past, only to get to a "no-war, no-peace" arrangement. Why do Palestinian always want ceasefires but never peace? Because ceasefire keeps their claims alive that Israel has no right to exist, gives them an opportunity to launch war on Israel from time to time, to shore up domestic and regional (#Iran) support, and the opportunity to keep killing Israelis, which they think -- in the long term -- will unsettle Jews, make them leave Israel, and dissuade diaspora Jews from coming to Israel. How has the "no-peace no-war" arrangement so far worked for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Palestinian Authority (PA), Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP, Lion's Den, etc? The answer is "same-old, same-old:" Palestinian leaders pile billions in foreign banks, while the population lives in nylon tents and finds itself always caught in the crossfire of the perpetual war for the liberation of imagined Palestine."
Meme - Marina Medvin: "A new restaurant in Jordan opened up. They named it October 7. The contempt for Jews in Jordan is astounding, and it's palpable. Kids are actually indoctrinated with antisemitism in Jordanian government schools - antisemitic content in both middle and high school textbooks."
Daniel Wachtel @WachtelDan: "A new restaurant opened in Jordan. We will also reckon with them when the day comes."
Meme - "Didn't the King of Jordan cry about how "the West doesn't value Arabs' lives" two months ago? Now Jordan opens a restaurant celebrating the slaughter of Jews. If you want the West to value Arabs' lives, maybe you shouldn't celebrate massacres, King."
Meme - Quds News Network @QudsNen: "Displaced citizens sheltering in Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis shared a photo of Israeli snipers' bullets fired at the hospital."
Imam of Peace @Imamofpeace: "That is an unfired bullet. You habitual liars."
Hamas bigwig rejects 2-state solution, says Oct. 7 'revived dream to free Palestine' : theworldnews - "Hamas and their leftist allies can't decide if their narrative on the October 7 atrocities is "they never happened" or "those Jews deserved it"."
"Which is, somehow, they’re able to believe both simultaneously. Isn’t that wild?!"
""Oct 7 revived the dream of free Palestine" proves that by free Palestine they mean free of jews."
"If an Israeli says no two state solution it causes an international uproar. When the Palestinian leadership says it then it’s just a Wednesday."
Meme - "IT'S CEASEFIRE THEN LIFT THE SIEGE THEN END THE OCCUPATION THEN FREE PALESTINE"
Terrorism supporters claim they just want a ceasefire, but really they want to destroy Israel
Toronto Public Library criticized for hosting author with 'antisemitic' views - "Toronto councillor James Pasternak, who represents York Centre-Downsview, asked TPL to cancel Finkelstein’s appearance, calling the invitation “particularly hurtful in this period of extreme antisemitism.” “To invite an author who has been accused of making false accusations and misrepresentations in his book about the Holocaust and survivors and justifying the October 7 terrorist attacks against Israel is the last thing we need in the City of Toronto,” wrote Pasternak. “We should not be welcoming someone who spreads disinformation and conspiracy theories about Jews and the Holocaust.” Pasternak added that Finkelstein’s views toward Holocaust survivors and the justification for the Oct. 7 attacks “are not welcome in Toronto and should not be welcomed to our public spaces.” Canada’s oldest independent Jewish Human Rights organization, B’nai Brith Canada, has also urged TPL to cancel the event and highlighted the criticisms of Finkelstein’s work, including descriptions of The Holocaust Industry as “unnuanced propaganda.” “Peter Novick, a noted historian, whose research strongly influenced the book itself, later described Finkelstein’s work as ‘a charge into darkness that sheds no light’ replete with ‘false accusations’ and ‘egregious misrepresentations,'” the organization said in a statement on Nov. 30 . “The irony in the TPL’s decision to feature Finkelstein in their speaker series is that his anti-Zionist worldview already represents the ‘dominant narrative’ on university campuses,” said Michael Mostyn, B’nai Brith Canada’s CEO... Finkelstein has held faculty positions at Rutgers University, New York University and DePaul University, among other institutions. In 2007, Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul in a case that drew national and international attention. In the 4-3 decision, those opposed to Finkelstein being tenured stated his “unprofessional personal attacks divert the conversation away from consideration of ideas, and polarize and simplify conversations that deserve layered and subtle consideration.”"
So much for the left being against hate speech and misinformation, and protecting minorities
Harvard professor apologizes after suggesting Hamas attack on Israel was attempt to hide Netanyahu corruption - "X users hit back at Harvard professor emeritus Laurence Tribe for tweeting out (and then deleting) a conspiracy theory that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pursuing war against Hamas militants to distract from his own corruption in government. Tribe has now expressed regret for the "ill-informed" statement. Following Netanyahu’s Saturday statement declaring that Israel is "at war" after the deadly Hamas attack on his country resulting in the death of more than 100 Israelis, the progressive legal scholar posted that the prime minister was "wagging the dog of war" to keep the focus off his own authoritarian behavior. Multiple prominent X users refused to entertain the theory, and blasted Tribe as an "idiot" who needs to "go commit" himself somewhere. Even liberal firebrand Keith Olbermann had criticism for Tribe’s post, calling it "moronic and indefensible.""
The left loves their conspiracy theories
Hamas releases propaganda doc denying Oct 7 atrocities - "Hamas has published a 16-page document presenting a justification for its actions on October 7. The document denies that the terror group committed atrocities against civilians, and calls for an international investigation into the events of the day, branding Hamas a “national liberation” group, battling “colonialism.”... the document alleges hypocrisy on the part of those who would accept civilian casualties as collateral damage in Gaza while condemning Hamas’s actions during its massacres on October 7."
Of course, all the terrorism supporters lap it up, since Hamas knows how to bedazzle them with the right language, even though they have repeatedly proclaimed that they want to kill all the Jews
Clearly, intentions don't matter, which is why Hamas wanting to commit genocide doesn't matter (until it does, when it's good because it's "resistance")
Comment: "It's like Turkey with the Armenian genocide. It never happened but if it did its all their fault"
Meme - Arab man: "mother I want to die and become a martyr"
Mother: "inshallah my son"
Soldier: "your son died"
Mother: "why did you kill him?!"
Muslim Antisemitism and the Western Left - "no image was as disheartening as the photo of Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish environmental activist, holding a sign reading “Stand with Gaza” in a photo taken mere days after the killing of around 1,400 people, mostly Jews, along with a smattering of Israeli Arabs and East Asian agricultural workers, by the Palestinian fundamentalists. “Stand with Gaza” appeared with no qualifiers. Given the circumstances, it meant “we oppose the Israeli counterstrike against the terrorists in Gaza.” And perhaps it also meant that Israel had no right to exist, and that Hamas are right... Among the Artforum letter’s signatories was Judith Butler, a philosopher and gender studies professor from the University of California, Berkeley, who back in 2006 declared: “Understanding Hamas [and] Hezbollah [the sister Iranian-backed fundamentalist Shi’ite militia/terrorist organization that controls Lebanon] as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of the global Left, is extremely important.” At the end of the nineteenth century, what the “global Left” consisted of was fairly clear. But today? Does Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine is backed by Iranian drones, belong among the Left? Or totalitarian China, with its repression of the Uyghurs and suppression of freedom in Hong Kong? Who knows where Butler and her ilk stand on these questions. But to call Hamas “progressive” and “Left” is about as ignorant and wrong-headed as one can get. Hamas is proudly theocratic, anti-democratic, anti-socialist, misogynistic, homophobic, and antisemitic. The terrorist group seeks to resurrect the values and goals of seventh-century Islam, and to impose them across the Middle East and—Allah willing—eventually across the globe...
Thunberg and Butler and their colleagues, feminists all, might also ponder the Charter’s designated role for women: 'The Muslim woman… is the maker [i.e., birther] of men… Woman… plays the most important role in looking after the family, rearing the children and imbuing them with moral values and thoughts derived from Islam… She has to be of sufficient knowledge and understanding where the performance of housekeeping matters are concerned, because economy and avoidance of waste of the family budget, is one of the requirements.'
Hamas’s—that is, the Muslim Brotherhood’s—ultimate goal reaches well beyond the Middle East. As the Charter, with calculated vagueness, poetically puts it, it extends “everywhere across the globe… to the depth of the earth and… out to heaven… The movement is a universal one.” Europeans and Americans should take note. The Charter has never been rescinded, revised, or updated—not by a single word. What has brought together the hundreds of thousands of pro-Hamas demonstrators in the West in the past weeks? Most of the Muslim participants were no doubt driven by the gut instinct of identification with the Palestinians as fellow members of the Muslim ummah (nation) who are being victimized. “Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the issue or of cause and effect,” they might say, “we are with you, our brothers in Allah.” But this global Muslim gut instinct is selective. One rarely sees Muslims in Paris, Brussels, or Berlin or at Berkeley or Harvard demonstrate when Sudanese Muslims are murdering tens of thousands of fellow Muslims in Darfur; or when the Assad regime is using poison gas to murder hundreds of thousands of brother Muslims in Syria; or when the ayatollahs in Tehran are murdering, torturing, and raping thousands of Muslims across Iran. Indeed, this brotherly instinct only comes into play—and brings them out into the streets—when “whites” kill Muslims and especially when it is “the Jews.” Which brings us to the antisemitism embedded deep in the psyche of Islam—and not just in that of Hamas. That antisemitism is historically rooted in the non-acceptance of Mohammed and his new religion by the Jewish tribes of Hijaz in the seventh century and in how that episode is treated in the Quran, where the Jews are defined as a “base people,” “killers of prophets,” and “sons of apes and pigs” (the theme of Jewish “apedom” appears in the Quran three times). Hence, the Jews are reviled throughout the Islamic world as “enemies of Islam.”... The curious thing is that antisemitic incidents increased exponentially after the massive Hamas slaughter of 7 October, even before the Israelis launched their counterattack on Gaza. In other words, it is signs of Jewish—meaning Israeli—weakness that initially triggered the recent antisemitism in the United States, rather than perceived Israeli wrongdoing against Arabs, though that surely didn’t help. In this, there are echoes of 1930s Poland, where antisemitism increased in response to German attacks on Jews and signs of Jewish weakness. Jewish students on Western campuses are often harassed by both Muslim and “liberal” fellow students and testify to threats, intimidation, and real fear... The Jews who turned to Zionism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries were driven toward Palestine by the persecution they faced in the Russian Empire and in the Muslim Arab lands. They were not the agents of any imperial or colonial power—even though, from 1917 to 1937, they were briefly supported in immigrating to and settling in Palestine by the British Empire, which subsequently turned against them and supported the Arabs... Zionism, in essence, was, and remains, a nationalist, not a colonialist phenomenon... Youngsters in the West—including many university lecturers, especially in cultural studies, literature, and gender studies—are profoundly ignorant of history and of the ins-and-outs of the Arab–Zionist conflict and think in—or at least brandish—simplistic slogans that depict history and reality in strictly black-and-white terms"
The left and progressives hate the West. So does Hamas and Hezbollah. So it's correct to call them progressive and on the left
