Open Thread Wednesday

By on April 3, 2024 12:06 am in open thread

What’s on your mind? Comment away!

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  • End Jew Hatred

    Oops. Jorale-man your true colors are showing. Just a subtle jab with the ‘ole antisemitic trope of the “Jewish Lobby”. Way to go. Can’t wait to see what you bring up next.

    And sure, China has no power. It’s only the second largest economy in the world and the third largest US trading partner after Canada and Mexico. And, it has the largest army in the world — no power at all.

    Again, if we’re talking about lobbies. Let’s not forget to throw Qatar which funds Hamas and is also the largest foreign donor to US universities.

    And of course it’s totally indiscriminate bombing. Israel only tell speople where they are going to go before they do it to let civilians get out of the way. Sadly, Hamas prevents civilian movement by shooting and killing their own citizens. No other army in the world does as much or has even come close to attempting to avoid civilian deaths as Israel in the history of the world.. Sadly deaths are an inevitability in war. Which is why Hamas should agree to a ceasefire. Israel has offered up multiple ceasefire proposals and Hamas has rejected them all.

  • Jorale-man

    I really can’t waste time engaging on this any further. You seem to be rather paranoid and defensive over the presentation of simple facts like the existence of wealthy political lobbies that support Israel or the fact that their barbarism is completely one-sided (1000 Israelis killed in October vs. 33,000+ Palestinians now). But I don’t think either of us will change the others’ mind.

  • fu

    You can take your anti-Semitic self and see how you fare in any Muslim country. It’s not “playing the Semitism’ card when people like you don’t have a word to say about any Arab/Muslim (or any other) regime in the world committing unspeakable atrocities on a daily basis. But Jews try to defend themselves – as ever! – from annihilation and we’re the criminals. Truly, many of the people in this city are sickening beyond belief. All you watermelon emoji Nazis can truly burn in hell.

  • Ebenezer

    Nice

  • Sandy McCroskey

    A small fraction of the people now in Gaza had any chance to vote for or against Hamas in the last election—17 years ago—which Hamas won by a mere plurality, not a majority. The average age of the Gazan popoulation is (or was…) 18 years. Most of the Gazans killed have been women, chuldren and the elderly—civilians. The terrorists killed about 1,200 Israelis (some of whom were IDF) and now Israel has killed over 30,000 Gazans. If “eye for an eye” makes the whole world blind, as Gandhi said, what does this do?

  • Sandy McCroskey

    AIPAC is the Israel lobby, true, not the “Jewish lobby.” But AIPAC is evil incarnate.

  • Karl Junkersfeld

    Aside from the disproportional death count is the total destruction of the housing and infrastructure of Gaza. Over one million people have been displaced, no water, no food, and no law and order. Total anomie by design. No proportionality. US has lost any moral authority to lecture Russia regarding its disgusting military operations in Ukraine.

  • Stop This Hatred

    It’s another sad day Sandy. When journalists like yourself who work and write at publications like The Nation, show their unsourced, true opinions and remove any veneer of impartiality. I’m glad to know where you stand, but incredible sad to call you my neighbor.

    I don’t understand how you can side with a governement that was chosen by its people and puts in its charter that it wants to annihilate another nation. Have you read it: I quote article 7 “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”” or their total rejection of peace, now quoting Article 13 of the Hamas Charter “”[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam… There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.”

    How is it that you would propose negotiating with people actively seeking your death and who outright reject any notion of peace?

    There was a ceasefire on Oct 7th and Hamas broke it. They broke it because htey never believed it in as was proscribed in their charter.

    Instead, talk with the millions of Arab citizens who live in peace and freedom in Israel. They can be gay , straight, drive cars, be doctors, or do anything they want with their lives, as the good readers of The Nation would want.. Good luck with that in Gaza. You will be executed and dragged through the street if you are gay. You have no chance to vote. And your “govt’ will shoot you for any perceived slight.

    As for the numbers you cite. I’d trust The Wall Street Journal before I trust what Hamas says. I really wish reports were still impartial and would look for their own sources vs. just parroting what’s heard. Here’s what was published last week in the Wall Street Journal

    “Hamas’s Casualty Numbers Games
    Journalists and Joe Biden lend credence to bogus counts from the Gaza Health Ministry.
    By David Adesnik
    April 4, 2024 5:12 pm ET

    As Israeli troops batter Hamas and drive its surviving forces to the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, the Gaza Health Ministry has etched in the public mind a statistic that casts Israel’s war of self-defense as a bloodbath: 70% of the dead in Gaza are women and children, the Hamas-run ministry says, and more than 30,000 lives in total have been lost. Is it true?

    President Biden, who pledged in October that Israel would never stand alone, has recently talked about “red lines” to prevent the Jewish state from eliminating Hamas’s final stronghold—because, as Mr. Biden put it, “they cannot have another 30,000 Palestinians dead.”

    Mr. Biden isn’t alone in taking Hamas’s numbers at face value. The United Nations also relies on the Health Ministry’s data. The U.S. news media include the ministry’s latest numbers in its daily updates on the war. In October the Washington Post’s Adam Taylor vouched for Hamas, writing: “Many experts consider figures provided by the ministry reliable, given its access, sources and accuracy in past statements.”

    Yet in a series of lengthy reports, the ministry admits that the figures the media treat as authoritative rely in part on reporting from . . . the media. The ministry says its casualty counts include two types of fatalities: those recorded by medical facilities and those reported by “reliable media sources.” In its March 31 report, the ministry attributes 15,070 of the dead, or 45.9%, to news reports. From which outlets? The ministry never says.

    Its choices are limited, since Gaza has no independent media. It has networks like al-Aqsa that are extensions of Hamas and other armed factions. It has Al Jazeera, the Qatari state network that describes the atrocities of Oct. 7 as an “incursion” and denies that any “widespread and systematic” sexual assault took place. Western outlets report from Gaza, but they rely on the ministry for their casualty data.

    Initially, the ministry’s data earned the confidence of foreign journalists because Gaza health officials had direct access to information from local medical facilities. Yet the ministry’s reports concede there has been an “interruption of communication” with many hospitals in the strip—meaning those from which Hamas withdrew amid the Israeli offensive. At present the ministry receives fresh data from only two facilities, both in southern Gaza.

    While acknowledging the issues with its data, the ministry hasn’t made much effort to educate those who rely on its numbers. It distributes its statistical reports via Telegram, a social-media app, and only in Arabic. The ministry’s daily updates don’t disclose underlying issues with the data.

    All the same, an enterprising correspondent with a willingness to question the dominant narrative could easily have found and translated the reports. Gabriel Epstein, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, did this soon after the ministry published its first statistical report in December. He found that the deaths attributed to “reliable media sources” consisted almost entirely of women and children. Of the 6,629 fatalities attributed to media, 1,941 were women, 4,678 children and only 10 men.

    Over time, media reports have accounted for an ever larger share of the ministry’s data. Of nearly 11,000 fatalities reported between Jan. 1 and March 31, the ministry derived 77.7% from media reports. Adult males account for only 9% of fatalities attributed to the news, even though Gaza’s sex ratio is close to even and more than half its residents are adults.

    If one removes the questionable data from the ministry’s numbers, it becomes clearer that Israel has made considerable efforts to minimize the war’s effect on civilians, while Hamas continues to use hospitals as fortresses. Instead of drawing so-called red lines for a U.S. ally, as if it were a threat to American values and interests, Mr. Biden should encourage Israel to dispatch Hamas swiftly, since the terror group has brought nothing but misery to Gazans and Israelis alike.

    Mr. Adesnik is director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

    .

  • B.

    No, but I remember a Horn & Hardart in the mid-1960s. Where, that’s the question. Clinton?

  • clarknt67

    I don’t think it’s hypersensitivity. It’s deflection.

  • Sandy McCroskey

    I don’t side with Hamas. That doesn’t in any way follow from what I wrote. I find you astoundingly ignorant about the conditions on the ground there and the impossibility of a purely military solution, which has, however, been pointed out by many people much better informed than either you or I.

    After all, the American Enterprise Institute, of which you are a proud member, doesn’t even see the reality of climate change. So who can trust a single word you say? Who’s playing with figures? Why don’t you go over there and count the dead, and check their ages, yourself? Independent reporters have done so.

  • Sandy McCroskey

    “Unsourced”? Just whom do you think you’re talking to? Ha.
    What do you want? Date of the last elections in Palestine?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Palestinian_legislative_election
    Palestinian demographics?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_State_of_Palestine
    Just ask. I can back up anything I say.

  • RickP

    Before my time. I moved to the Heights in 1969.

    The “Pepsi Restaurant” was just east of the Bossert on the same side of Montague. The appeal was that it was open late, or maybe all night.

  • End Jew Hatred

    No one is fact checking election dates, Sandy. What is unsourced and unfounded opinion is “evil incarnate”. This type of hyperbole and statement only adds fuel to a fire and is morally objectionable. Has AIPAC raped women? Mutilated and burned children, no, but Hamas has and you know that to be true. Hamas is the true evil

  • Sandy McCroskey

    AIPAC supports Republican evangelical candidates who “support” Israel only because they believe that Armageddon in the Middle East will bring about the Second Coming—Trumpists who disdain democracy and who would gladly end the American experiment of a non-nativist, secular democracy. That’s what I meant, and that’s what I mean, by “evil incarnate.

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