Comment by GordonS

>fabrication

Electronic Intifada as a source: The EI is...quite the source. It has argued Hamas is akin to the ANC of South Africa,[1] quietly ignoring that the ANC did and does not do many of the horrific atrocities Hamas commits against its own citizens[2] (let alone Israeli citizens), glorifying Hassan Nasrallah[3], declaring without evidence that Israel is not a nation that is deeply traumatized (the majority of its citizens having been genocided for 2,000+ years) and also evidently not knowing the first thing about epigenetics[4], advocating against posters that simply state that people have been kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza and declaring such a thing to have 'genocidal sentiment'[5], defending and glorifying October 7 at least five times[6] and even referring to Hamas soldiers killed because...um...they were soldiers attacking civilians as martyrs[7], arguing Zionism--a Jewish idea from the start--is rooted in antisemitism, showing a drastic misunderstanding of what that implies (that a Jewish state is needed because the world simply cannot be trusted with Jewish safety)[8], do something effectively equivalent to asking the general US population what counts as transphobia or racism or Islamophobia, rather than the trans, Black, and Muslim communities respectively[9]. But I will humor them.

>["all" of Israel being built on land Palestinians were expelled from in 1948]

This claim is easily and demonstratably falsifiable. Much of Israel was owned by Jews in 1945[10]. And much of the rest of it was 'public and other' land, no more Palestinian than Jewish (and the public land could be transferred to the Jewish country by the UN or Britain, of course).

>[genocide claim]

This is a genuine question that I have asked people many times and never gotten an answer to - is this genocide or simply the high (and horrific) death toll that comes with urban warfare? Gaza, after all, has a population density higher than New York City. It would be difficult for even the most humanitarian army imaginable to wage war in New York City without many civilian casualties. Among urban warfare in similarly-dense areas, or projected death tolls for those (I'm sure the US government has done some report on the projected civilian deaths from a war in NYC), is Gaza exceptional?

Of course, there is much more to a genocide than the death toll -- but that is what outlets like EI tend to lean into, although a death toll does not a genocide make.[11]

>[rape as a lie]

This is a disgusting claim. The rapes have been corroborated by the UN (as the Electronic Intifada has noted). Furthermore, much evidence cannot be gotten, because the witnesses are dead, and the bodies themselves, one hopes, quietly buried. There was massive rape, and Hamas at least seems to have been lax about punishing it, if not encouraging it top-down.

They treat deaths by Hamas of fleeing fighters as somehow Israel's fault because Hamas was waiting for Israeli soldiers. By this logic, most if not all of the adult male Palestinian deaths in Gaza are actually Hamas's fault; Hamas, after all, is little-distinguished from the civilian population.

[The baby]

Their defense is that...er. They were trying to kill adult civilians? That's not a good defense.

[Hannibal Directive and civilian deaths]

Haaretz has published a thorough investigation of the deaths here: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-18/ty-article-st.... (If you can't read it, they accept email accounts generated with email services like Temp-mail or 10minutemail.) Very few of the deaths are attributable to the IDF, simply because the IDF was occupied defending its own bases and responding.

> history didn't start on October 7th

For hominids in that region, it appears to have started about 1.5 million years ago (https://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-9345_1988_num_14_2_4455), although they didn't have writing. Some of the earlier historical records we have (historical here construed to mean non-Biblical) are interesting because they appear to affirm a Hebraic presence three thousand years ago[12]. Other historical records confirm Rome's forced exile of Jews, the discriminatory policies Jews suffered under, the 1948 attacks by everyone around, and the 1948-67 failure of Jordan and Egypt to set up independent Palestinian states in the West Bank (including Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter, which Jews were expelled from and prohibited from entering to pray at the Western Wall, the holiest still-standing site; but that's another story) and Gaza respectively. There is a long history, and starting the clock in 1967 isn't accurate either.

[1] https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-west-wrong-about-...

[2] eg 44 (!) summary executions (https://www.btselem.org/inter_palestinian_violations/death_p...), torture (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/05/gaza-palestin...), summary punishment and more torture (https://www.hrw.org/report/2012/10/03/abusive-system/failure...), prison terms for exposing corruption (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/02/gaza-journali...), et cetera, et cetera.

[3] https://electronicintifada.net/content/hasan-nasrallah-died-.... For reference, Hezbollah is widely despised by Lebanese as well.

[4] https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-holocaust-tra...

[5] https://electronicintifada.net/content/kidnapped-posters-ser...

[6] https://electronicintifada.net/content/what-did-7-october-ac..., https://electronicintifada.net/content/myth-israels-invincib..., https://electronicintifada.net/content/just-another-battle-o..., https://electronicintifada.net/content/hamas-fighters-gaza-s.... See also citation 7.

[7] https://electronicintifada.net/content/tearing-down-gazas-ir...

[8] https://electronicintifada.net/content/anti-semitic-roots-zi...

[9] https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/c...

[10] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Palestin...

[11] Genocide requires intent. To take two examples - suppose Australia decides to attack Nauru, a small island nation of about 1,100 people. They embark on a campaign to systematically exterminate every Nauruan for some inexplicable reason, and succeed. This is a clear-cut case of genocide. But suppose on the way, Australia acquires a nuclear bomb and plans to detonate it over Nauru, ensuring no survivors. Unfortunately, the plane gets derailed, and the confused pilot accidentally detonates it over Singapore, killing 100,000 Singaporeans. While this killed many more people than Nauru, it was not a genocide itself; it was an accident (and an attempted genocide of Nauruans). The proportion of the population is also iffy. If Australia's plan was a small land invasion (which killed 2 Nauruans before being repelled) and then, if that failed, dropping five nukes on the island, but all five went off track and dropped on poor Singapore, killing 1,000,000 Singaporeans, despite the fact that that killed many more Singaporeans both in absolute numbers and proportionally than Nauruans, it could still be described as an attempted genocide of Nauruans and not one of Singaporeans.

[12] https://web.archive.org/web/20160304045731/http://prophetess...