Israel declares War - Destruction of Gaza / Growing conflict in Middle East

[gry60]

So much for the narrative that "Israel does the bidding of the US:"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/11/13/israel-trump-netanyahu-lebanon-ceasefire-kushner/

And there appears to be a new X-factor in Israel’s peace plan for Lebanon: Russia, a country whose ties with Trump complicated his first term. According to the Israeli official, the proposal calls for Moscow to prevent Hezbollah from rearming via Syrian land routes, which for years have been the main conduit for arms from Iran, the militant group’s main patron.

Russian officials visited Israel on Oct. 27 to discuss the plan, according to the Israeli official. Dermer made a secret trip to Russia last week for follow-up discussions, the Israeli and U.S. officials said.
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment. The U.S. official said Russia would not be involved in the implementation or supervision of a cease-fire agreement.

On the competing claims over Moscow’s involvement, Lowenstein said, “it’s possible that both are true: no role for the Russians now under Biden, but a big one later when Trump takes over.”

Russia, an ally of Iran, has maintained a presence in Syria since sweeping in during the country’s civil war in support of President Bashar al-Assad, working hand-in-hand with Hezbollah to brutally crush the armed uprising against his government. Now, Israel appears to be counting on Russia to pressure the Syrian president into cutting off Hezbollah’s supply lines.

Israel cares about Israel first.

 

[Belgium]

I'll admit to being one of those people who never really followed the conflict prior to 10/7.

Nothing wrong with that, everyone’s gotta start somewhere. Modern history shows that genocide is viewed as relatively insignificant. The Saudi coalition’s strategy of bombing and mass starvation in their war against Yemen for example is mostly ignored despite at least 100k deaths and estimates in the 300k range.

 

[Raji Lowenthal]

Nothing wrong with that, everyone’s gotta start somewhere. Modern history shows that genocide is viewed as relatively insignificant. The Saudi coalition’s strategy of bombing and mass starvation in their war against Yemen for example is mostly ignored despite at least 100k deaths and estimates in the 300k range.

It's not a good place to start. I feel like we're living in the misinformation age. Is the US supplying the arms in the SA- Yemen war as well?

 

[earldagoat]

C.I.A. Official Charged in Leak of Classified Documents About Israeli Military Plans

Asif Rahman, who worked overseas, was arrested on Tuesday by the F.B.I. and faces two counts of violating the Espionage Act.

www.nytimes.com

 

[DLF]

it’s a big club

and we ain’t in it.

 

[degenerate423]

 

[earldagoat]

 

[Methodical Management]

It's definitely good to understand what more you can do as a platform, but the first thing that came to my mind was why? What problems are you trying to solve trying to do more and what are you trying to achieve?

In this instance, the problem being discussed was Elon Musk.

We’re always trying to consider ways to reduce minimize the spread of hate speech and misinformation, both of which have skyrocketed since Musk acquired Twitter.

These aren’t easy calls. If you block access to the major algorithmic social media platforms (Youtube, Meta, Twitter, etc.) then you aren’t just suppressing hate speech and misinformation. You’d also be suppressing genuine information from those who are otherwise marginalized and use large platforms as a megaphone.

There's room for a nuanced discussion here, but if someone wants to engage in binary absolutes, like "genocide is bad, politicians supported it, therefore all politicians are bad and we should just concede our electoral power because I saw it on Twitter and stop asking questions" I don't think it's unfair to ask them to account for why those absolutes are selectively deployed. (Lesser of two evils for me, but not for thee.)

If you're going to share an idea with a group, you're not above being asked to show your work/reasoning.


Humans are adept at nothing if not rationalized selfishness, so if you believe you’re making the best choice available out of an imperfect set of options, you can at least guard against complacency by continually asking yourself, “who does this choice serve and what can we do to improve our options in the future?”

I also hate that other platforms are meant to instil addictive habits to keep you engaged with the platform while NT doesn't do that as much.

Those platforms use algorithms to promote engagement, and often do so in ways with destructive consequences.

Controversial content generates more engagement than benign content. Facebook’s algorithm assigned the “angry” emote at five times the weight of the “like” reaction.

What’s going to generate more engagement?

“Killing innocent civilians is bad and it should be stopped.”
“If civilians support terrorism, they should be treated as combatants.”

The second statement is going to draw more argument. That’s the one social media algorithms are vastly more likely to favor and promote.


This is why people who suspend critical thought and let the algorithm take the wheel invariably start to skew far right - because the algorithms skews far right.

Twitter’s research shows that its algorithm favors conservative views

Twitter doesn’t know what causes this issue

www.theverge.com

In terms of what DLF 's decision with voting, I understand how tough it is to make a decision, it's one thing to talk about it on paper, it's another when you see your own family dying over there (I had my extended family completely erased from the face of the earth, an entire family gone after following the IDF 's direction to enter a safe zone).

• Voting for the status quo is a really tough pill to swallow, but looking back, it should been the same strategy as BDS where efforts needed to be unified and strategic which I think it wasn't. And the reason it wasn't was because Kamala made it clear that the genocide will continue.

First, I'm sorry for your loss. When we talk about this, I think it's essential to bear in mind that we're talking about the fate of people - not abstract principles.
What choices, what strategies, will best prevent what happened to your relatives from happening to anyone else? Is that goal not worth personal discomfort?

If at any point over the past year someone had said, "at least things can't get any worse," they'd have been proven wrong.

As you said, we have to be purposeful and strategic in our actions. I've asked how playing spoiler for Harris would help anyone and could never get an answer - just a lot of both sides talk that rings pretty hollow given all that we've seen since the election.

The election is over. If we want better candidates in the future, it's worth discussing how we get there.

I'd say yes, unfortunately.

I was referring to active participants here. In this thread's early days, we had a lot of tone policing about the use of the word "genocide" and people arguing that "Israel has the absolute right to defend itself" and only Israel's political leaders get to decide what the word 'defend' means.

While, sadly, I've no doubt that there are many people out there who still believe that Palestinian civilians are deserving of death, our moderation team has worked hard to try and keep such sentiments off our forums. Obviously our policies differ from those of other platforms where any criticism of the Israeli government has been treated as hate speech. Earlier this week, the ADL successfully lobbied Twitch to start selectively treating the word "Zionist" as a slur.

We know that this topic is like a magnet for actual hate speech - the contents of our support inbox can attest to that - so we do our best to proactively monitor this discussion but there are thousands of other active threads and only a handful of moderators - so everyone's support and cooperation are greatly appreciated.
If someone is promoting violence, making dehumanizing statements, or otherwise violating our policies, please use the report feature to bring it to the attention of our moderation team.

This isn't a multi-billion user platform. Every single report is reviewed by a human moderator. We'll continue to make our best effort to keep our community safe and respectful.

 

[Moheezy]

Thank you for your thoughts on my deceased family and I absolutely agree that a place like this is more welcomed for a nuanced discussion.

The only personal exception here is if someone uses the umbrella of "nuanced discussions" to defend the genocide which I am quite pleased and thankful that no one is doing here (unlike twitter and facebook).

It does feel like the more extreme someone is with their views, the more you force the other party to do the same just to defend their stance instead of welcoming critical thinking.

The election is over. If we want better candidates in the future, it's worth discussing how we get there.

I think this is key and something that no one really talks about. Unless Super Pacs are removed from buying/ influencing US politicians, there is no short term solution to what is going on. Whatever impact Jill Stien would have made, it was too late for this election to do anything about it, it would have been next election at the very earliest.

As unfortunate as it is, this genocide cannot be resolved overnight and the Palestinian people cannot get their freedom yet, they will have to play the long game which means more seas dead bodies for the Palestinian and Lebanese people.

The momentum and public perception has shifted against the apartheid state in a major way and ironically, a major reason for that is due to Meta and Twitter given these marginalized people and audience they never has like you said.

 

[earldagoat]

 

[moe200069]

This kinda **** is maddening. The amount of human suffering, death, disease displaced Palestinians are facing in real time and yet “expansion” is what these settlers are focused on. Human trash.

 

[Public Enemy]

What plans are there to do a massive protest at Trumps inauguration, if any?

 

[DLF]

israel sponsored palestinian gangs stealing aid. found out and executed by hamas

 

[earldagoat]

 

[DLF]

 

[DLF]

please pray for the monopoly man

 

[earldagoat]

 

[fluid hips]

 

[DLF]