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'I’m calling from Israeli intelligence. We have the order to bomb. You have two hours' (www.bbc.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

142 comments fedilink hide all child comments

By Alice Cuddy BBC News, Jerusalem

The call to Mahmoud Shaheen came at dawn.

It was Thursday 19 October at about 06:30, and Israel had been bombing Gaza for 12 days straight.

He'd been in his third-floor, three-bedroom flat in al-Zahra, a middle-class area in the north of the Gaza Strip. Until now, it had been largely untouched by air strikes.

He'd heard a rising clamour outside. People were screaming. "You need to escape," somebody in the street shouted, "because they will bomb the towers".

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[–] [email protected] 177 points 9 months ago (80 children)

Everytime I read an article like this, my immediate reaction is posting a comment expressing my disgust with the Israeli State's actions and everytime I hesitate because I don't want to suffer the inevitable wave of people defending the Israeli State's actions as somehow justifiable because Hamas did something vile first.

It's a continuing cycle of violence and the Israeli State holds a humongous power advantage. They don't use that power disparity to deescalate and integrate the Palestinian people to prevent Hamas from having support. Instead they do shit like this where they drive Palestinians straight into Hamas' hands, because the Palestinian people are given no other option to turn to.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 9 months ago (14 children)

Your last point is why I feel like what Israel is doing is just straight up illogical, even from a purely selfish point of view. The only thing they are doing here is basically proving Hamas "right" in the eyes of many Gazans, and fueling a fervent desire for revenge. If someone living in Gaza wasn't already a terrorist, they sure as hell are much much more likely to be one now.

Imagine how you would feel if your home and possibly moved ones were bombed like this, losing you everything or nearly everything you hold dear. You lose autonomy over your own life, you lose your independence and rights. I imagine it feels a lot like losing rights as a minority, or something like getting an abortion becoming illegal, turned to the extreme. And these things being threatened to be done to me already cause me to feel strong contempt against the perpetrators. If pushed far enough, things like this would cause me to become a "terrorist", in the sense of being willing to strongly resist it in an attempt to maintain my rights and autonomy.

But of course, whether I would be called a terrorist or not depends on how it's framed, and how much compassion or understanding people would give me. Hell, in the US LGBTQ+ activists, or anti-racist/anti-fascist activists are already called terrorists sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago

Their plan is to eliminate all Palestinians and take their land. The more each side escalates, the closer they can get to that; sure, some Israeli may die, but that gives them justification to exterminate scores of Palestinians every time.

[–] SuddenDownpour 22 points 9 months ago (12 children)

There are three lenses through which the Israeli government's actions make sense:

They are supremacists who were looking for an excuse to escalate an ethnic cleansing they have no way to complete without a goddamn good framing for the Western press.
They're a far right government looking to appease far right voters who only want to solve a blood conflict with more blood, and never by taking advantage of their superior position to force de-escalation. These are politicians merely trying to conserve their own seats, no matter ethical considerations or what's good for their country.
Racism, ethnic supremacism, religious bigotry, emotional meltdowns and the unability to see a conflict in any other way than seeing you as the first and last victim are all great ingredients to enter into a spiral of terribly irrational decisions. All of these ingredients are present in the Israeli government and in a good portion of Israeli society.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago

I think in the eyes of the Government it makes a lot of sense to act the way they do, it’s a great casus belli that has been dropped into their lap to ‘finally’ wipe out Gaza.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (3 children)

No, what Israel is doing makes sense from a strictly selfish point of view.

The question of 'Why doesn't Israel integrate the Palestinians?' is a good one. The answer is numbers.

Israel was founded as a Jewish ethnostate. Those who have immigrated there have done so because they wanted to live in a Jewish ethnostate. So one of the core values of the country is that it is primarily a place for Jews.

If Israel absorbed the populations of Gaza and the West Bank into Israel, the Jewish population would become a minority in Israel if not immediately then within a generation.

I don't agree with the idea of ethnostates in general and I do believe establishing Israel as one was a mistake.

... But if you imagine the viewpoint of someone who does want a Jewish ethnostate like so many in Israel you can see why this solution is a non starter.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

It's because their corrupt far-right government wants to wipe out Palestinians. That's their end goal apparently.

I just hope enough decent people both Palestinian and Israeli get the fuck out of there before the genocide shit show truly begins.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago

May Hamas, the Israeli gov't, and the IDF spend an eternity in Hell for the crimes they've committed against humanity and innocent civilians.

If the mods/admins want to ban me for saying that, feel free. I don't want to be part to any group that supports and advocates for murders and war crimes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (20 children)

I posted this article even though I nominally support what Israel is doing here. This war has a legitimate human cost and there's no reason to belive that reasonable people will never view that cost as too high.

I think the story painted here shows both the horrid cost on civilian life that these bombings have and the extensive efforts to avoid civilian casualties that the IDF takes.

Short of an Jeff Bezos takeover of Gaza to turn it into the world's biggest Amazon warehouse, I literally don't know what could possibly solve the situation. It's clear from the cheering crowds praising raped corpses that there's too much hatred to reasonably integrate Gaza into greater Israel. And it's clear from the massive terror the Muslim Brotherhood caused in Egypt, that they could never integrate into an Egyptian society . And is clear from the 4-6x Marshall Plan per person they've received in aid that aid to Gaza is a black hole that will never lead to a thriving society. After 2004 I remember this optimism and a belief that this Israel/Palestine thing was really back on pace for a 2 state solution. And now I just don't see it.

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (8 children)

This story made me cry. I am disabled and not always mobile. There are loved ones in my family who are elderly, cannot walk far, and depend on medication.

I cannot even imagine what it must be like to try to evacuate at short notice, with nowhere to go.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It is brutal, just incredibly sad. Israel’s military has a long history of weaponizing disability, as you may know, and it’s been illuminating to examine that further.

When you’re ready, the excellent disability-focused podcast Death Panel offered some insights I had never encountered elsewhere. Please listen to the following episodes on SoundCloud or wherever you would like. I hope they can offer some solace and empowerment.

Public Health and Palestine with Danya Qato

Body Politics with Jasbir Puar

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 9 months ago (7 children)

I can't imagine packing up and leaving in 2 hours with my whole family and all my cats and everything

[–] [email protected] 63 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

You dont have two hours to pack. You have two hours to not be in the area anymore

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

If you still live in Northern Gaza to this day, after all that's being going on, and all the warnings to GTFO... you better keep your cats and belongings pre-packed and ready to be several blocks away in 30 minutes, don't even wait the 2 hours.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Directed by the voices of strangers, who always seemed to know how to reach him even when his battery ran out, he pleaded for the bombing to stop and screamed until his throat hurt for people to run away.

Since the war had begun, messages had been circulating in the community Facebook group warning of hoax calls and offering tips on identifying real Israeli evacuation orders.

The area - just north of the Wadi Gaza river, a point that Israel has been ordering civilians to move south of since the early days of the war - was made up of modern blocks of flats as well as shops, cafes, universities, schools, and parks.

Mahmoud led the crowd, which included not just residents of the tower blocks, but also other displaced people who had sought shelter in al-Zahra after fleeing their own homes elsewhere in northern Gaza.

Mahmoud had been keeping his distance from his wife and five children all day - both because he was busy evacuating people and because he feared that his contact with Israeli intelligence made him a target.

Strikes on military targets were subject, it said, to "relevant provisions of international law, including the taking of feasible precautions to mitigate civilian casualties".

The original article contains 2,956 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 93%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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