Israel government justified its genocide of Gaza with its supposedly targeted strikes of Hamas. This narrative has lost all credibility. And we have seen with Gaza what effect “PR” has on stopping the atrocities committed there - none.
The Israeli government views non combatants affected as expendable targets with zero value. This is what we are seeing with the strikes on residential areas. It’s not that they are “flattening” Tehran in the initial stages of war, but that Israel military policy so disregards the lives of non combatants that attacks on residential areas are justified in its view.
Thus, the notion that the Iranian people are supposed to unite with the Israeli government to overthrow the “common enemy” (the Iranian government) is absurd; the Israeli war machine should be viewed as having zero regard for the Iranian people; they are expendable as long as Israeli military objectives are furthered; that is an established pattern now and that is what is evidenced by the strikes against residential areas considered against the backdrop of the atrocities in Gaza.
> This is what we are seeing with the strikes on residential areas. It’s not that they are “flattening” Tehran in the initial stages of war, but that Israel military policy so disregards the lives of non combatants that attacks on residential areas are justified in its view.
The death toll in Iran is not really consistent with that. (At least based on what has been reported so far. Admittedly there is much uncertainty)
The narrative that there is a genocide in gaza has lost all credibility. The gazan population has grown since the war started, its completely ludicrous to claim a genocide while the population is literally growing. People have been making claims of genocide since Israel took over in '67, it never made any sense then and it makes even less sense today. People who make such claims should be seen for what they are: charlatans and liars looking to discredit zionists and jews everywhere.
You are replying to the alleged false narrative with a rather thin Zionist talking point of your own. The legal definition of genocide does not require total population numbers to go down. The deliberate systemic slaughter and use of starvation are enough on their own.
GHF has ramped up to distributing about 3 million meals per day now. Reportedly 58 Gazans have starved during the conflict [1], implying an FMR of something like 0.0005. Any starvation is awful, but it's nothing compared to global averages. There are actual famines (with FMR over 2) in other parts of the world, but few people seem interested in those.
There's certainly more work to be done to fix food insecurity in Gaza, but aid distribution challenges are hardly evidence of genocidal intent.
The aid distribution “challenges” are because Israel is blocking all aid except that which comes from the GHF itself. Israel has created the conditions for starvation by destroying agriculture and blocking all aid except for four GHF aid stations. The GHF aid stations weaponize starvation by concentrating Gazans near the Egyptian border and providing a token nod to humanitarian concerns (Israel’s policy throughout this genocide) - never mind the regular shootings that take place at these stations. Prior to October 2023 there were 400 aid stations in Gaza requiring 500 truckloads of aid [1]. Today there are four GHF stations run by military contractors.
The insufficiency of these aid points is also evidenced by the people dying of starvation in this hell hole. Low numbers of people dying from starvation indicates its early stages. It takes a while for people to starve to death. Typically a population suffers malnutrition for some period before the death toll rapidly balloons. The famine deaths, far from pointing to the absence of famine, indicate we are in the early stages of mass starvation brought on by Israel’s policy.
Do not forget that the Israel government created this famine and is blocking all aid except for the aid to can weaponize. And starvation is just one of the many weapons it is using to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Starvation shows every sign of worsening under this system. Rather than aiming to resolve mass starvation (manufactured by Israel’s policies in the first place), it should be seen for what it is, part of Israel government’s very consistent policy of paying humanitarian lip service and offering token humanitarian gestures while intensifying genocide.
The latest IPC snapshot from May 12 starts that while the entire population is facing acute food insecurity, 470,000 are facing catastrophic levels using the IPC classification. It alerted that under current conditions of military action and blockade a full blown famine under its classification would
be occurring now, during the current period (May 11-September) [1].
At the end of May the four GHF stations were opened. However the amount of food supplied could only conceivably feed half of Gaza’s population if distributed equally [2]. Many people are already starving and need much more than 1.5 meals a day; besides, logistically this kind of food distribution is impossible for many reasons not the least of which is the mass destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure by Israel’s military.
As of the IPC report, starvation was worst in northern Gaza and in Rafah (in the south). The GHF aid stations are located in the south; in Rafah the military operations have only worsened food scarcity there.
It is quite telling that people every day attend these stations despite the horrible killings of civilians by the military contractors running them. That in itself shows the degree of starvation the Gaza people are experiencing.
3 million meals a day doesn't seem like a token gesture. It may not be enough, but GHF has been operating for less than a month and is still ramping up. You can criticize their implementation, but I don't see how you can deny that it's a serious effort to address food insecurity.
We've been hearing "risk of famine" almost since the start of the conflict, when the reality is 58 deaths linked to malnutrition during the conflict. Nigera has had over a million starvations in the same period, and even that isn't a famine. There's a real food insecurity problem, but we shouldn't call it something it's not.
Now you’re dismissing all food scarcity concerns, including ignoring the recent intensification of food scarcity under the blockade, because supposedly a subset of humanitarian concerns expressed earlier in the genocide were overstated. But we have strong reason to believe famine is occurring today, thanks to the IPC reports, our most thorough picture of the food scarcity situation in Gaza, which show a consistently worsening picture, now tipping into famine thanks to the blockade.
To properly evaluate the GHF system we must note:
1) Israeli policy is to provide humanitarian gestures while perpetuating genocide.
2) Israeli policy manufactured this famine in the first place.
3) The GHF system is widely seen as inadequate and inhumane among humanitarian organizations. The inadequacy is corroborated by the IPC reports as I described in my last reply to you, providing token aid in the south that does not address the mass starvation in the north or Rafah.
4) Israeli military are continuing to block all aid except for the GHF stations under the control of the war machine.
5) GHF aid stations are the sites of frequent killings of starving civilians.
6) Mass starvation is occurring (again, we know this from our most thorough picture, the IPC reports).
Thus the purpose of the four GHF stations cannot be to significantly address starvation.
You claim that the stations will ramp up enough to stop the famine that Israel policy has created. However if we soberly assess the situation we must conclude that that scenario would be utterly inconsistent with the facts we have available.
I'm not dismissing food scarcity concerns, just asking that we use accurate language to describe them. You seem to maintain that a famine is occurring or probably occurring. I pointed out that starvations would need to be something like 4,000x higher for that to be true. Is your position that starvations are under-reported by some massive factor like 4,000x? Or that we should drastically relax the threshold of what we consider a famine in order to make the Gaza situation fit?
I was using famine colloquially to mean mass starvation in a wide area. But your comment prompted me to educate myself more about the IPC classification system which depends on 1) 20% of the population face catastrophic food insecurity) 2) more than 30% of children face acute malnutrition and 3) 2 deaths per 10,000 per day (or 4 child deaths per 10,000 children per day) due starvation or malnutrition & disease.
The first two criteria are very likely met. The question is the third piece. Your position is that death rates reported from starvation are low so we have not met the third criteria.
There are a few issues with this argument.
1. it is excess mortality which constitutes famine, not deaths from starvation directly. Admittedly this metric is impossible to accurately determine in the current conditions in Gaza.
2. The starvation numbers we have are from a month ago, already out of date. Deaths in famine balloon, so we are not able to conclude that there is not famine today by IPC criteria. We do know that famine was imminent as of that report so this is a valid concern.
3. Excess mortality due to starvation numbers is what counts, and excess mortality is underreported. Reasons include such factors as poplulation displacements, or the fact that severe malnutrition comprises the immune system and as such deaths can be attributed to proximate causes (disease) rather than the distal cause of malnourishment.
4. The IPC report stated May 12 that famine is “imminent”.
An argument that IPC-defined famine may not be occurring is that the projections were for this period (May 11-September), and that imminent risk of famine may refer to any point during this period.
With all that in mind you are right at least that I should modulate my language. Mass starvation is occurring. We don’t know whether the third IPC criterion for famine is currently met. A better statement on my part would be that famine is imminent as of May 11 with a beginning expected some time between May 11-September, the famine may already be occurring, but we don’t know that the ballooning death rate has yet been triggered in this timeframe. Besides that, becoming aware of the famine (whether it has begun yet or not) won’t happen immediately considering the difficulties of gathering reliable excess mortality numbers in Gaza.
Politifact is hardly an impartial source. If I have to explain why, there's no reason to even continue this conversation.
Additionally, bringing in the "50 beheaded babies" story and calling it the most infamous hoax very clearly shows where you get your news from... and it's not trustworthy sources. That was a strawman hoax that only circulated as a debunked hoax on Jew-hating media, it started as a intentional misunderstanding of a reporter's claim. There never was a claim of 50 beheaded babies.
There is no genocide and all your "well supported facts" are either intentionally false statements that aren't facts at all or twisted to support your narrative. The reality is that there has always been more than enough food and water in gaza, war involves death and destruction and doesn't point to genocide which requires both intent and follow through neither of which are present from the Israeli side. Though they are present among anti-zionists and all of Israel's enemies both in their daily rhetoric (from the river to the sea, globalize the intifada, Death to Israel, etc) and in their daily attempts to kill as many jews as possible (missiles and rockets targeting civilian population centers, stabbing attacks, bus bombs, RPGs at school buses, RPGs at homes, shooting civilian cars, etc).
> The water resources of Palestine are de facto fully controlled by Israel […] The airstrikes led to a 95% reduction of water resources […] Gazans were limited to 3 litres per day, litres under the UN emergency limit.
> genocide which require both intent and follow through […] are present among anti-zionists and all of Israel's enemies
Hum, there’s many people that have "anti" zionism or Israel ideas but at the same time don’t want death, destruction let alone a genocide. Let’s say someone is anti trump party or anti USA (for good or bad reasons), they doesn’t necessarily are anti Americans (_the people_) and for sure most don’t want a genocide!!! For sure some of them does, but you can’t blame or reject any ideas because some of their members views. Listening calmly the moderate part is always better that pointing out the extremists.
The politifact page isn’t a news source. It presents a straightforward argument. It deconstructs the most substantial evidence I could find that the Gazan population is growing amid the genocide and quote population measures - basically some outdated population projection. The argument there is admittedly quite paltry, but so is your claim. Do you actually have any substantial arguments or evidence or do you plan to just impugn the source rather than its reasoning?
As for the notion that a reporter mangled the claim about 50 beheaded babies - that just isn’t true. People from IDF spokespeople to Biden have propagated this lie.
Children are dying of famine in Gaza. Photos, reports, statistics all corroborate this story. Israeli forces have destroyed the agriculture and are starving the helpless population. They have cut off aid. They shoot many of the people who come to the remaining four “aid” stations they operate. A fraction of the deaths that have occurred after October 7 are Israeli. Countless innocent Gazas have been murdered, toddlers sniped, families bombed, drones have played the recordings of crying babies to lure victims out of hiding. Groups in Israel have rioted for the right of Israeli soldiers to rape Palestinians. The atrocities committed against an almost completely defenseless population are horrifying. Now the population is utterly defenseless and the murdering does not cease; the goal seems to be total starvation now.
People turn to condemning the genocide after becoming appalled by the facts not out of anti-semitism. Condemning genocide isn’t anti-Semitic if it happens to be Jews doing it. Numerous Jews condemn the genocide including many holocaust survivors. Genocide is a crime against humanity. All people should unite in condemning it.
> As for the notion that a reporter mangled the claim about 50 beheaded babies - that just isn’t true. People from IDF spokespeople to Biden have propagated this lie.
This is plainly false. No other argument is needed with you because you continue to make totally false claims.
> deputy commander of the IDF's unit 71, David Ben Zion…He says: "They cut off heads… of children, of women."
> a spokesperson for Mr Netanyahu's office, said: "Toddlers, babies, I can tell you some of them... yes, heads were cut off. This is what we are hearing from... soldiers on the ground who dealt with the bodies."
> In an interview with Sky's Mark Austin on Tuesday evening, Israeli economy minister Nir Barkat echoed a similar claim: "We've seen just now... we've heard of 40 young boys. Some of them were burned alive. Some were beheaded. Some were shot in the head."
> [Biden] said: "I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed, pictures of terrorists beheading children, I never thought I would ever, anyway..."
The Israeli government views non combatants affected as expendable targets with zero value. This is what we are seeing with the strikes on residential areas. It’s not that they are “flattening” Tehran in the initial stages of war, but that Israel military policy so disregards the lives of non combatants that attacks on residential areas are justified in its view.
Thus, the notion that the Iranian people are supposed to unite with the Israeli government to overthrow the “common enemy” (the Iranian government) is absurd; the Israeli war machine should be viewed as having zero regard for the Iranian people; they are expendable as long as Israeli military objectives are furthered; that is an established pattern now and that is what is evidenced by the strikes against residential areas considered against the backdrop of the atrocities in Gaza.