As Palestinians pushes for statehood, Israel finds itself more isolated
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Monday, May 25, 2026 02:10
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Israel controls Gaza's access to water, food, electricity and fuel, making Gaza the biggest open-air prison in the world
SIX, since you buck being controlled by "the man" surely you can understand how Gazans feel about being completely under Israel's boot.
And since Israel shut off all of them, Gaza is RUNNING OUT OF WATER, according to the UN:
Quote:
A matter of life and death: water runs out for 2 million people in Gaza
No humanitarian supplies have been allowed into Gaza for a week
“It is a must; fuel needs to be delivered now into #Gaza to make water available for 2 million people”- UN RWA
A war crime. Israel is used to committing them by now.
*****
But apparently this isn't about Gaza, it's about the Al Aqsa mosque. We are all hostage to the information we do, or don't, see in our media.
Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, was in the process of being tried for corruption. The trial was interrupted by his winning election, but the only thing standing between him and jail (many say) is being PM. So he has a strong motive for staying in power!
His coalition includes extremely religious Mizrahi Jews... Jews from the Middle East (as opposed the European Jews, or Ashkenazi Jews, who tend to be secular and liberal). And these Mizrahi Jews are pushing Bibi to expand Israel to its Biblial borders and rebuild The Temple which they claim belongs on "Temple Mount". However, the al-Aqsa Mosque is there, and it would have to be destroyed. Israel has been controlling acces to al-Aqsa mosque for over a year, letting almost nobody in.
All of this is history.
What we DIDN'T read is that immediately prior to the Hamas attack, 800 Jewish settlers rampaged thru al-Aqsa Mosque, which is a touchstone for all Muslims. It's the equivalent of Muslims rampaging thru the Basilica in Rome, or Notre Dame, planning to destroy it to build a mosque. IMHO I have no religious attachment to these cathedrals, but they ARE significant historic and cultural monuments in addition to places of worship, and their wanton destruction would really piss me off. (Let's hope France rebuilds Notre Dame.)
So, if you wanted to piss off ALL Muslims - Shia, Sunni, Alwawite etc .... you should threaten the al-Aqsa Mosque!
That probably explains why Syrians are talking to Iranians and Saudis are talking to both.
Israel has sure stirred up a hornet's nest! Will we see retaliation in the form of an oil and/or gas embargo? Will USA bases be kicked out of the Muslim world? Will Israle be pressured into giving up the territories that it currently militarily occupies ... namely, the west bank of Jordan (far eastern side of Israel), the Golan Heights and the Gaza strip?
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Israel controls Gaza's access to water, food, electricity and fuel, making Gaza the biggest open-air prison in the world
SIX, since you buck being controlled by "the man" surely you can understand how Gazans feel about being completely under Israel's boot.
And since Israel shut off all of them, Gaza is RUNNING OUT OF WATER, according to the UN:
They are animals who had their brains hollowed out by a backwards and extremely violent religion. They're a bunch of murderers, rapists and pedophiles who are not only forgiven by their "god" for such behavior, but their "god" encourages it.
Fuck Muslims.
I'm no fan of Israel either, and I've never been comfortable with our relationship with them.
Cut them all off. No money. No arms. No munitions for anyone. Let them fuck each other up, with sticks and stones if it is still going on after the ordinance runs out, and we'll deal with whoever is left if they decide then that they want to bring their shit here.
Meanwhile, round them all up here along with the rest of the illegal invaders currently camping out in America on the Taxpayer's dime and make them Mexico's problem. If Mexico doesn't like it, tough shit. They better build a wall and make sure everybody in the world knows that they're not coming up to America through their country.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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The Jerusalem Post either wishes Violent Death for the bulk of Palestinians or else, albeit unlikely, this opinion piece was unintentionally posted:
How did God let Hamas massacre so many Israelis? - Opinion By Stewart Weiss
We must recognize Hamas and Hezbollah and the bulk of the Palestinians for what they indisputably are: the modern-day reincarnation of the Nazis. There is no limit to their evil.
October 14, 2023 09:47
In the aftermath of the horrendous Simchat Torah terror, we are left to grapple with not only the tragedy itself but also with its spiritual implications and our ability to carry on with “normal” life in its wake.
On a spiritual level, two theological questions cry out to us: Is there justice in the world? And what is the nature of a God of love and mercy in a world filled with evil? When we witness the brutal murder of both soldiers and civilians, the young and old, we are numbed and bewildered, at a loss to make religious sense of it all. We feel helpless at even beginning to comprehend the ways of God.
I must say up front that, try as we might, we will never find an absolute answer to these questions, one that will completely satisfy us and ease our existential pain.
In the words of Rabbi Yannai in Ethics of the Fathers, “It is not in our hands to understand either the serenity of those who are evil or the suffering of those who are righteous.”
Understanding God in a time of tragedy
To fully understand the mystery of life and death, to truly know God, we would, in essence, have to be God! And we are not God; we are mortals; frail, fallible beings, with a less than cosmic comprehension.
Yet, we can still try to explore different perspectives on these issues and gain some insight that may at least allow us to maintain faith and carry on with our lives. The rabbis, to begin with, make it clear that all events emanate from God.
Says the Talmud, “No one so much as cuts his finger in the world below unless it is so ordained in the world above.”
King Solomon, the wisest of people, declares in Proverbs: “God made everything for a purpose; even the evil person did God create for the day of evil.”
The great sage Hillel confirms God’s omniscience when he observes a skull floating on the water and concludes “Because you drowned others, so were you drowned. But those who drowned you shall themselves, in turn, be drowned.”
In other words, says Hillel, there is order and justice in the universe; there is a master plan, a guiding hand that makes sure things ultimately end up as they are meant to be.
YET THIS hardly satisfies our need for clarity in the wake of such terrible events as this week. We need consolation, something of substance that we can hang on to. And so there are two responses that we can turn to for solace. One is the plea of Moses, who witnessed the cruel abuse and torture of his people while in slavery, and – like us – pleaded with God, “Show me Your glory;” i.e., “Where is justice in the universe?”
God obliquely replies, “You cannot see My face; you can only see My back.”
Essentially, God is saying, “You see only a tiny glimpse of events in the world; you see life through a keyhole. When you will have perspective and look back at all that has transpired in a bigger picture, you will better understand and appreciate all that has happened.” And that is why, despite all our hardships and suffering in Egyptian bondage, we today celebrate Passover as a joyous, happy occasion.
But there is another approach as well, one which I personally connect and subscribe to. God created this world with imperfection built in, challenging us to do whatever it takes to perfect it. God gave us the tools, the inclination, the drive, and desire, as well as the capability to make this world better on every level – scientifically, medically, agriculturally, and spiritually.
We were commanded to hate evil and eradicate it from our midst, to pursue a moral, sanctified existence, and to wage war against those who would drag humanity down to their level of degradat
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Israel controls Gaza's access to water, food, electricity and fuel, making Gaza the biggest open-air prison in the world
SIX, since you buck being controlled by "the man" surely you can understand how Gazans feel about being completely under Israel's boot.
And since Israel shut off all of them, Gaza is RUNNING OUT OF WATER, according to the UN...
SIX: They are animals who had their brains hollowed out by a backwards and extremely violent religion. They're a bunch of murderers, rapists and pedophiles who are not only forgiven by their "god" for such behavior, but their "god" encourages it.
Fuck Muslims.
No, they're not. Not all Muslims are head-chopping backbirths. Just like not all Republicans are rabid pro-corporatist warmongers with blood on their teeth. Unfortunately Saudis funded a lot of extremist madrases with their enormous wealth, but many places outside of Saudi influence are quite reasonable. Hamas, BTW, and Saudi Arabia don't get along.
Quote:Agreed. Unfortunately the Zionist lobby has a stranglehold on both Dems and Repubs.
I'm no fan of Israel either, and I've never been comfortable with our relationship with them.
Cut them all off. No money. No arms. No munitions for anyone. Let them fuck each other up, with sticks and stones if it is still going on after the ordinance runs out, and we'll deal with whoever is left if they decide then that they want to bring their shit here.
Quote:
SIX: Meanwhile, round them all up here along with the rest of the illegal invaders currently camping out in America on the Taxpayer's dime and make them Mexico's problem. If Mexico doesn't like it, tough shit. They better build a wall and make sure everybody in the world knows that they're not coming up to America through their country.
Legal immigrants can stay, unless they break a law.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:
The current lethal iteration of Israeli/Palestinian Kabuki started, as far as the media and public opinion is concerned, with the Hamas attack last Saturday on young Israelis celebrating Sukkot in the arid fields adjacent to the Gaza Strip and the invasion of settlements and Israeli military outposts along that border. Hamas rightly earned the condemnation of most countries for the mass killing of civilians. If Hamas had only attacked Israeli military targets it would have been in a stronger political position as far as international opinion is concerned. But, Hamas has a long history of shooting itself in the proverbial foot.
The second act in this play was a flood of propaganda and emotional reactions. Israel was quick out of the starting gate with the now debunked claim that Hamas beheaded forty Jewish babies. That upped the outrage quotient, especially in American and Europe, to levels not seen since the Black September attack on Israeli olympians in Munich in 1972. Ukrainian flags disappeared throughout the West and the standard of Israel was unfurled in symbolic shows of support.
Now comes the third act. Israel sabotages itself by carrying out “retaliatory strikes” that, instead of blowing up military targets, kills journalists, children and mothers. Those images (such as the ones below) spread around the Islamic world, adding fuel to outrage and building sympathy for Palestinian claims that they are victims of genocide. Israel’s demand that the Palestinians in the northern refugee camps in the Gaza Strip abandon their homes and flee to the south simply adds to the narrative that Israel is the bad guy in this conflict. Barring a new Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, the political momentum is swinging back in Hamas’s favor. The three images/videos that follow illustrate what I am talking about: Today, for example, Israel bombed a civilian column heading south as requested by Israel. Most people in the West will not see this video but muslims around the world will.
Go here for the videos, the url won't copy.
https://sonar21.com/the-malevolent-kabuki-theater-of-israels-war-with-
palestinians/
Quote:
An Al Jazeeras cameraman, along with two of his colleagues, also was shredded by an Israeli bomb on their vehicle:
And no, 40 babies weren't beheaded, and an Israeli school was not attacked (on Saturday??)
Just to add one more thing: Remember the 6-day war, when Israel said it felt "threatened" by Egypt?
Menachim Begin,then PM, admitted long afterwards that Israel did not feel threatened by Egypt, that it was simply a war to acquire land.
Quote:
Israel Defense Forces launched preemptive air strikes that crippled the air forces of Egypt and its allies. Israel then staged a successful ground offensive and seized the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
******
Quote:
Living in the “West,” consuming what passes for mainstream media in the West, it would be almost as hard to understand the motives and methods of the Jewish Fighting Organization in 1943 by reading Nazi propaganda as it would be to understand Hamas today through the western media’s distorted lens.
We can start with where they start the narrative. Very predictably, because their narratives always start the same way. It always begins with “Hamas launched an attack.”
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Israel controls Gaza's access to water, food, electricity and fuel, making Gaza the biggest open-air prison in the world
SIX, since you buck being controlled by "the man" surely you can understand how Gazans feel about being completely under Israel's boot.
And since Israel shut off all of them, Gaza is RUNNING OUT OF WATER, according to the UN...
SIX: They are animals who had their brains hollowed out by a backwards and extremely violent religion. They're a bunch of murderers, rapists and pedophiles who are not only forgiven by their "god" for such behavior, but their "god" encourages it.
Fuck Muslims.
No, they're not. Not all Muslims are head-chopping backbirths. Just like not all Republicans are rabid pro-corporatist warmongers with blood on their teeth. Unfortunately Saudis funded a lot of extremist madrases with their enormous wealth, but many places outside of Saudi influence are quite reasonable. Hamas, BTW, and Saudi Arabia don't get along.
I never said they were a hive-mind. They're far too stupid to ever coalesce like that.
But they NEVER come out and condemn any terrorist actions. Never. Not once. Not even the ones who were here legally. They condone it, even if they are too housebroken to do it themselves anymore.
Quote:Quote:Agreed. Unfortunately the Zionist lobby has a stranglehold on both Dems and Repubs.
I'm no fan of Israel either, and I've never been comfortable with our relationship with them.
Cut them all off. No money. No arms. No munitions for anyone. Let them fuck each other up, with sticks and stones if it is still going on after the ordinance runs out, and we'll deal with whoever is left if they decide then that they want to bring their shit here.
It's a good thing that we don't have a working house right now. Israel isn't getting any money from us without Speakership. I hope they finally vote somebody in and then just one person steps up and gets the process to rip them right out again.
Quote:Quote:
SIX: Meanwhile, round them all up here along with the rest of the illegal invaders currently camping out in America on the Taxpayer's dime and make them Mexico's problem. If Mexico doesn't like it, tough shit. They better build a wall and make sure everybody in the world knows that they're not coming up to America through their country.
Legal immigrants can stay, unless they break a law.
Agreed. But no more immigrants, legal or otherwise, no matter where they come from. I'm not saying never again, but at least until we finally start making this country work for the legal citizens again. We're broke and we're broken. We don't need anybody else in here taking the dwindling resources.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:This country already works well, but not for people who are financial ignoramuses. The article that explains what you need to learn so that your life works well is "I Saw Thousands of Bank Account Details as a Teller. It Taught Me 3 Lessons Millions Never Learn." In the title, the word Millions should be replaced with 200 Million to make the size of the problem clearer.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Agreed. But no more immigrants, legal or otherwise, no matter where they come from. I'm not saying never again, but at least until we finally start making this country work for the legal citizens again. We're broke and we're broken. We don't need anybody else in here taking the dwindling resources.
https://www.inc.com/kelly-main/i-saw-thousands-of-bank-account-details
-as-a-teller-it-taught-me-3-lessons-millions-never-learn.html
After all, it's not just about what you earn, it's also about what you keep. And from my time as a teller, those who employed these three principles were those who were the most well-off -- not just in terms of financial well-being, but also in terms of happiness and general well-being. Because when you don't have the burden of immense financial stress, you have something everyone wants and the overarching goal of having money: financial freedom.
Then there is "My in-laws are terrible with money. What should I do?"
https://www.vox.com/even-better/23912950/parents-money-personal-financ
e-advice-how-to
Start talking to your husband, right now, about what you’re going to say when your in-laws ask to live with you. Given the current housing market, it’s a much more likely scenario than the one in which they travel the world.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Peril in Declaring ‘I Stand With Israel’
Such sentiments stymie discussion of the harder questions around Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
By Howard W. French, a columnist at Foreign Policy.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/13/i-stand-with-israel-hamas-war-gaz
a-palestinians-human-rights-occupation/
The cascade of emotion and revulsion over the heinous tactics used by Hamas to deliberately target, kill, and kidnap Israeli civilians in surprise cross-border raids from Gaza last weekend has been remarkable to behold, and entirely appropriate.
Like millions of others, I have followed the news compulsively over the last several days. I saw journalists from the United States and other countries jettison their customary guise of studied neutral objectivity as they reported on the unspeakable nature of these events. Many freely exuded their empathy and even identification with Israelis who had just lost loved ones or narrowly escaped attacks on unarmed civilians. In one instance, I watched a reporter from the U.S.-based PBS network tear up as he spoke remotely from a studio with an Israeli woman whose husband had gone missing during these awful events.
Amid this outpouring of feeling and support, a short and blunt statement has been adopted so widely by U.S. President Joe Biden and other U.S. officials and politicians that it has almost instantly achieved the status of a stock phrase: “I stand with Israel.”
But one effect of an expression such as this that so thoroughly captures a well-justified sense of outrage—as in the case over the recent Hamas attacks—is that it can block out further thought, and especially the asking of hard and necessary questions. Those who violate the unwritten decorum established amid the shock of atrocities face the shushing disapproval of others that signals that now is not the time for deeper thought.
The unfortunate reality is that it has almost never been the right time for Israel or the Western countries that count as its steadiest supporters—led by the United States—to probe the hard questions that stem from the existence of millions of Palestinians who subsist in various states of what have come to seem, evermore, like permanent inequality and legal inferiority under Israel’s authority or control.
In the wake of Hamas’s crimes, we have been told with metronomic regularity that there can be no excuse for organized armed attacks against defenseless Israeli civilians—and that much is true. We are also told there can be no legitimate equivalency drawn between the actions of Israel and those of violence-prone nonstate enemies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and other militant groups. This is a more complicated matter, given the role of both the Israeli state and Israeli settlers in killing Palestinians with relative impunity over the years. But even if one accepts this principle, neither of these notions encourage further thought. And this is precisely the time when further thought is most desperately required.
It should not require condoning the violent tactics of groups such as Hamas or the atrocities they commit to understand that Israel’s own behavior toward Palestinians has long been deeply troubling and problematic. It is not establishing a false equivalency or blithely writing off acts of terrorism to observe that Israel has not been willing to grant rights to Palestinians that would be recognized by a dispassionate observer as anything remotely approaching equal or fair. In fact, under the long rule of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as a string of his predecessors, meaningful conversations about a just dispensation for Palestinians have been largely off the table.
I don’t write these words as a deeply credentialled expert in the Middle East, or even as an expert in this region at all, even if I have traveled a bit in it, and once, years ago, interviewed Netanyahu myself by telephone. To some extent, my thoughts are informed instead by universal notions of justice, as well as by common sense.
Most of all, though, they lean on what many
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Despite the daunting obstacles, I still see little alternative to a two-state solution. It is even possible that the current hostilities will help to persuade Israelis as well as Americans that the long and uncertain road to a two-state solution is worth pursuing. The attack by Hamas showed that the threat posed by Palestinian radicals is greater than had generally been understood. It is, of course, very unlikely that Hamas or Hezbollah or any other hostile force will be able to conquer and hold Israeli territory. (Some news reports suggest Hamas intended to capture territory, but this is so crazy it is hard to believe.) But the ability of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other groups to rain missiles down on Israel and overwhelm Israeli defenses will likely grow, and improvements in drones and other technologies may make Israeli society perennially vulnerable to highly damaging attacks. It is not inconceivable that perpetual conflict with Palestinians and other opponents armed with more numerous and sophisticated weapons will make it difficult for normal life to proceed in Israel, just as the threat of ongoing conflict with Russia could undermine an economic recovery in Ukraine, even if Ukraine recaptures all of its territory.
https://angrybearblog.com/2023/10/the-two-state-solution-still-looks-l
east-bad-to-me
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Israel is warned by Lebanon’s Hezbollah that Israel should stop its attacks on Gaza
Israel considers Hezbollah its most serious immediate threat, estimating it has some 150,000 rockets and missiles, including precision-guided missiles that can hit anywhere in Israel. The group, which has thousands of battle-hardened fighters who participated in Syria’s 12-year conflict, also has different types of military drones.
Hezbollah fighters have been on full alert along Lebanon’s borders with Israel following last Saturday’s attack by the militant Palestinian group Hamas that left hundreds of Israeli civilians and soldiers dead.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/14/irans-foreign-minister-warns-
israel-it-could-suffer-a-huge-earthquake-00121580
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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