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Comment by robertoandred

2 years ago

You don't think the Hamas attack was a declaration of war?

Isn't blockading people and food and goods and putting the entire population of Gaza on a "starvation plus" diet and constantly and blatantly violating int'l law to throw West Bank Palestinians off their land further and further while laughing about it publicly a declaration of war?

When Palestinians protested nonviolently at the gates of Gaza and were shot to death, was that an act of war?

When Israeli West Bank settlers burned a home in Duma with a family still inside and laughed about the small child who burned alive their and taunted onlookers, was that an act of war?

  • Was Palestine suicide bombing buses and launching rockets declarations of war? Do you think Israel controls Egypt's borders with Gaza, or do you think Israel should allow terrorists to rape, torture, and murder their citizens?

It's difficult to declare war in the middle of a siege.

  • Did you think Gaza was under siege?

    • In that its borders are entirely under Israel and Egypt's control? Yes.

      In that Israel bombed and destroyed Gaza's airport in 2001? Yes.

      In that the Israeli Navy has blockaded the Port of Gaza since 2007? Yes.

    • They were freely trading, sailing their ships, moving around the country, leaving entering freely right?

Gazans are an oppressed people, who under international law are permitted to fight for freedom by any means necessary.

But regardless, as more of the truth has been teased out it's become plain that what Israel said happened on October 7th was... well, absolutely riddled with lies. Beheaded babies, baked babies, babies hung up on washing lines, mass rapes - all of it debunked, but still being used by the Israeli propaganda machine. We've also learned that of those killed, civilians were in the minority - most were Israeli soldiers, then armed "settlers". And now we know that Israeli tanks and helicopters killed a lot of Israeli civilians that day. It's also been reported that Israeli intelligence was forewarned of the attack, a month before and the day before - and chose to do nothing except extend the Nova festival for an extra day.

As it looks so far (IMHO): Hamas militant freedom fightets broke out of Gaza with the aim of taking hostages to swap for Palestinian hostages held by Israel. They find the Nova festival still on, and the plan falls to shit - civilians are killed by both sides in the firefight, but militants manage to escape with some hostages before helicopters arrive on the scene and start shooting every fucking thing that moves. And then Israel pumps it up like a balloon, and many fall for it (I'm ashamed to admit I believed it all at the start) - it's used as the pretence for genocide (or at the very least, ethic cleaning) and a land grab, and the US is happy to supply the bombs because money,

Since then, the Israeli lobby and propaganda machines have been working overtime! While much Israeli propaganda is comically bad, the tactic of slandering any anti-genocidal comments as anti-semetic has been quite successful. The lobbying has been incredibly successful, managing to control celebrity messaging, buy US politicians and control mainstream media in a truly alarming way. Hell, Israeli politicians are even openly making calls for genocide and other war crimes, and what major US or UK papers/channels have even reported it?

From a tech standpoint, the genocide being carried out by Israel, with full support of the US and UK, has shown how powerful and important Twitter and Instagram are - without them, many of us (likely myself included) would have no idea what Israel is doing now, or indeed has been doing in the recent past. IMO channels like these are simply too important to be controlled by billionaires - and indeed we're now starting to see pro-Palestine content being censored on Twitter and Instagram (I'm not on Facebook, but I heard it's heavily censored?).