Gaza protests go violent, 15 Palestinians dead; Israeli minister refuses inquiry - Polidicks

Here's a picture from AP: https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/media:8a100f483f9d4f0298d539061625026e/800.jpeg The one above is the funeral of a Hamas militant killed during the border clashes. Note the FUCKING GUNS. I was about to post a whole bunch of other photos of peaceful protesters firing slingshots and petrol bombs at the border but I won't bother. Just search Google photos or AP for "gaza border clashes". It's pretty much the only photos there are other than of wounded being evicted. I will say this though: This protest is called "The Great March of Return". "The Great March of Return is a message to Trump," Ismail Haniyeh, the chief of the Hamas political bureau, told the crowds. "There is no concession to Jerusalem, no alternative to Palestine, and no solution but to return. This is the Palestinian people taking the initiative and making the event for the sake of Palestine... for the sake of Jerusalem and the right of return," Haniyeh said. From here.

Is this a real post? Fuck it's easy to say this type of garbage when you live in the UK, far far away from what's going on.

Have you ever been hit in the head with a rock or lit on fire?

What is your view on Israeli settlements in the West Bank? That's arguably something that's inflaming tensions, don't you think?

Have you ever been trapped in a city and bombed by people who think deliberately targeting civilians is a legitimate response to having rocks thrown at them? Israeli's have already said they'll start if the protests don't dissipate [1], and they've never been shy about massive indiscriminate or even deliberate targeting of civilians and property. [1][2][3]

Do they go back to their homes before or after they get bulldozed

Israel has a policy of warning civilians to get out of the way before attacking, it even says that in your wikipedia article, >On 16 July, Israeli forces dropped by means of leaflets, loudspeaker announcements, telephone calls, text messages and radio messages, told the residents to leave and relocate in central Gaza City until further notice.[5] Residents interviewed afterwards by The Independent claimed lack of safe refuges and the difficulty of fleeing as reasons for staying put.[9][10][11] By 19 July, OCHA reported that while the majority had not left their homes,and ignored the warnings, up to half had gone as bombardments intensified.[5] Israel condemned Hamas for using "human shields". According to Amnesty International, the UNRWA shelter facilities were overflowing and many of the residents had nowhere to go. Residents interviewed later also cited confusion due of lack of electricity and communications.[10] The official Israeli view was that Hamas had compelled residents of Shujai'iya to stay behind in the face of IDF warnings to evacuate prior to the IDF assault, holding civilians as "hostages".[11] Jordanian-Palestinian politician Mudar Zahran wrote that a Gaza medical worker had told him "Hamas militants blocked exits, shot people as they were running and forced the rest to return to their homes and get bombed" gaza is one of the densest areas of the world, of course civilians will die in the crossfire between hamas/Islamic jihad and the IDF, esp when Hamas/Islamic Jihad hides fighters among civilians. In fact, israel has done so well in not killing innocent civilians that the Pentagon is trying to copy Israeli tactics. Israel tried to limit civilian casualties in Gaza if you actually count the civilian death to enemy combatant death ratio of the previous gaza wars, it falls far below the ratio for the Iraq war, the Afganistan war, or pretty much any Western military action in the MENA citing a ~ 200 page publication by BTS is kinda useless if you cant point me to something specific in those 200 some pages. I don't trust BTS, they remind me too much of Gideon Levy, a group of people that worship the idea of palestinian native victims without actually having anything to do with Palestinian native victims other than to go talk to them once in a while in a condescending way and then retreat into the Tel Aviv bubble circlejerking about how brave they are to stand up against Bibi while the Palestinians they pretend to help aren't helped at all. you also misstated the article, what the israelis actually said was "The Israeli military said Saturday that if violence drags on along the Gaza border, Israel will expand its reaction to strike the terrorists behind it." again *please* do some research, i know that being safe in the UK from any existential threats can cloud the real situation on the ground in Israel

Israel's policy of warning civilians is more or less purely a psychological warfare technique. The overwhelming majority of the time the warnings are issued and nothing happens. It's merely another tool that the IDF uses to terrorise the people of Gaza. If someone is locked in a cage with a phone and you dial them every few hours to say "we're going to kill you now if you don't leave the cage" and they have no where to go that's safe - and then most of the time you don't do it - it's just terrorizing them. The IDF's policy of warning civilians is nothing more than a mock execution. In the very same wikipedia article that you responded, it explicitly states that IDF armour was ordered to fire at "anything that moved" - there was no way that people could leave the battle once they knew for sure it was actually coming without being murdered. Additionally, in that same article which you apparently read - and then cherry picked some things from and ignored anything that possibly disagreed with you and threatened the lie you want to tell us all it says; "When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was overheard sarcastically remarking on Fox News on July 20 that the operations in Shuja'iyya were "a hell of a pinpoint operation,” according to Mark Perry, his comments reflected U.S. military assessments of a battle in which Israel's use of 11 artillery battalions was equivalent to what the U.S. deployed for 2 divisions, or even a full corps. The only explanation for adopting the massive firepower unleashed by a mix of Soltam M-71 guns and U.S. Paladin M109s was, according to one U.S. military expert, "to kill a lot of people in as short a period of time as possible,” adding that, “It’s not mowing the lawn. It’s removing the topsoil.” 'Mowing the lawn' is an Israeli idiom referring to periodic operations conducted by the IDF in the Gaza Strip. Lieutenant General Robert G. Gard, Jr. noted that technically, even if 10% of the shells fired on Shuja'iyya hit close to their targets, at a minimum in the range of 700 lethal shells would have landed amidst the civilian population overnight 20–21 July. 155-mm howitzer shells have a kill radius of 164 feet.[13] The conclusion of U.S. military experts interviewed by Perry is that the IDF did not target Hamas sites specifically, simply to collapse Hamas tunnels, but rather laid down a 'walking barrage' to 'crater the neighbourhood' instead of using suppressive fire to protect their forward troops, a strategy they deemed 'indefensible'. Accounting for the high civilian casualties as a result of a Hamas strategy of using civilians as 'human shields' was dismissed by one officers as a refusal by the IDF to assume responsibility for the consequences of the strategy adopted.[13] According to a report by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), after Israeli soldiers came under heavy fire in Shuja'iyya on 20 July 2014, where 13 soldiers were killed, Israel are thought to have fired 600 artillery shells were fired into the densely populated neighbourhood and dropped 100 one-ton bombs. Up to 65 Palestinians were reportedly killed that day, of whom 10 were women and 13 children, and more bodies were later found under the rubble.[52][53] The author of the report, Robert Perkins, said "Errors occur with this type of shell, it is fundamental to the way it works, but there is no margin for error in Gaza because you will hit markets, houses, and civilians, and that is what happened".[53]" Telling me to *please* do some research while you read articles and ignore anything that disagrees with you is frankly disturbing - talk about "one sided politics" - you refuse to drop your protective barrier for a moment to consider the horrible things your country has been doing. I imagine much like some of the perpetrators of the holocaust. I know that being safe in Israel from any existential threats, behind your walls as you massacre people and threaten to airstrike random districts packed with civilians can cloud the real situation on the ground, but the problem is your idea of "dialogue" and "negotiation" has in recent years become "we only accept unconditional surrender", as you steadily take what you want from people and deny them basic human rights because Israel has never thought in the post millennium world to consider non-violent or non-subjugation solutions to the conflict. It's your way or no way at all, and if you disagree we'll shoot into your unarmed protests and bulldoze your family's house. The only "existential threat" that realistically exists in your consciousness is the idea that working with or integrating the Palestinian's who's land you have occupied will dilute the Israeli state or imply that fair discussions, reparations or concessions will mean that you lose even a tiny morsel which is something you are no longer willing to offer when you can easily seize by force what you want. The only "existential threat" you're worried about is that ending the apartheid and releasing the occupation would disrupt Israel's voting blocks. These days Basic Laws have even been introduced that would declare once and for all the Israel is a Jewish only ethnostate. You're a coward - you sit here smugly defending some of the worst impulses of humanity as your cowardly nation slides further and further into hardline conservatism, unwilling to risk peace in case you have to give up an inch, until one day all that is left to do is sit around and talk about how to enact the Final Solution to rid the "frontier" of "natives" and complete your conquest.

So, FWIW the IDF is claiming it identified at least 10 of the men killed as members of various Palestinian militant groups, which if true partially supports the claim they only (or mostly) shot at people attacking IDF troops or trying to break through the border. https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2018/04/DZpjSI-XUAAZjz2-1-640x400.jpg The army did not provide evidence for its identifications. Most could be independently verified with photographic evidence of the operatives wearing uniforms or receiving a military-style funeral from the terror group in question. Others could not be immediately substantiated. At least one appears to be partially incorrect. The IDF has also released some images to prove actual firearms were used during the demonstrations. http://images.jpost.com/image/upload/f_auto,fl_lossy/t_Article2016_ControlFaceDetect/417417 The IDF Spokesperson's Office released on Saturday images of the weapons found near the border fence after two terrorists tried to attack IDF positions nearby. The two men were spotted and killed in the gun-fight that followed. But of course, that's just the IDF side.

Pretty sure Hamas acknowledged that some of the dead were their militants on Saturday. So, surprise surprise, this one Hamas doing its usual thing of using civilians as human shields for an attack.

wow, gj you managed to twist calling off airstrikes because they would kill civilians into something that harms civilians. They have a place to go that's safe, just go around the block. that wikipedia article extensively cites Al Jazeera, using AJ on a source on Israel is about as balanced as using Der Sturmer as a source on Jewish practices. They literally held a party for a terrorist who is famous for murdering an Israeli father and daughter, killing the four year old daughter by smashing her head against a rock. > I know that being safe in Israel from any existential threats, behind your walls as you massacre people and threaten to airstrike random districts packed with civilians can cloud the real situation on the ground, but the problem is your idea of "dialogue" and "negotiation" has in recent years become "we only accept unconditional surrender", as you steadily take what you want from people and deny them basic human rights because Israel has never thought in the post millennium world to consider non-violent or non-subjugation solutions to the conflict. It's your way or no way at all, and if you disagree we'll shoot into your unarmed protests and bulldoze your family's house. again, for the third time do some research, this is like a renaissance painting of ignorance. Israel's biggest existential threat is a nuclear Iran and Hezbollah's collection of rockets that can hit pretty much anywhere in Israel. Counter to what you might believe, Israel doesn't really want to massacre civilians, they want Hamas to stop shooting rockets at israel and stop with the terror attacks. Your talking about how israel can only think about subjugating people and attacking them is pretty ironic when the base reason that Hamas has so much power in Gaza is because Israel decided to stop "subjugating" it and withdrew. Same with your talking about non violent peace processes, Israel offered everything the Palestinians wanted in 2008 and the palestinians turned it down. Hand. Your talking about bulldozing homes is bs, it only happens to the families of terrorists because the Palestinians offer a large salary to terrorists. To offset that salary and encourage families to turn in terrorists, the Israelis decided that bulldozing homes is a good idea and it's worked. >The only "existential threat" that realistically exists in your consciousness is the idea that working with or integrating the Palestinian's who's land you have occupied will dilute the Israeli state or imply that fair discussions, reparations or concessions will mean that you lose even a tiny morsel which is something you are no longer willing to offer when you can easily seize by force what you want. The only "existential threat" you're worried about is that ending the apartheid and releasing the occupation would disrupt Israel's voting blocks. These days Basic Laws have even been introduced that would declare once and for all the Israel is a Jewish only ethnostate. having personally lived in israel, there is literally no apartheid and even the idiots that say that there is apartheid say that it's only in the West Bank. Israel holds peace talks every few years and made significant concessions like in 2008 when Israel offered to give up the Western Wall and the Temple mount for peace. If Israel cared about disrupting voting blocks, they would do something about Israeli Arabs and Haredim since those are the fastest growing demographics in Israel. The Israelis dont do anything about them. The Basic law you're talking about is not to make Israel a Jewish only ethnostate and that's such a retarded interpretation of the law that I can only assume you heard it on /pol/. The law is to declare Israel a Jewish state. You know how the Vatican is explicitly a Catholic state or how there are 52 states that are explicitly muslim? All it does is say that this state endorses Judaism and since Israel is founded by Jews for Jews to govern themselves, it kind of makes sense that they want to endorse the Jewish religion. Nothing about an ethnostate and the basic law itself is unpopular and only rolled out by ultra Orthodox parties if they are unhappy for some reason. >You're a coward - you sit here smugly defending some of the worst impulses of humanity as your cowardly nation slides further and further into hardline conservatism, unwilling to risk peace in case you have to give up an inch, until one day all that is left to do is sit around and talk about how to enact the Final Solution to rid the "frontier" of "natives" and complete your conquest. If Israel wanted to kill all Palestinians, we would have done it already. We risked peace with the withdrawal from gaza, that risk didn't work. We risked peace in 2008 by offering the Palestinians literally everything they wanted and the Palestinians rejected it. Once you offer your "partner" in peace everything they want and they refuse, where can you go? The israeli government is so strongly conservative now because Israel has prospered under Netanyahu and they want to keep it that way. I don't know what it is about this conflict but as you show, the people who know jack about it pose themselves as experts who know it's only the fault of Israel despite never having done any research about the conflict besides a quick reading of wikipedia to confirm your own biases. do actual research please

Plenty of excuses there for bombing civilian infrastructure in two different countries and bulldozing houses and displacing families in your own occupied territories. Do you have a good excuse for having a separate military legal system that you apply to children inside your lebensraum? But no, obviously I'm ignorant and I've never left the UK. The reason I'm calling you a coward is because I'm aware of these issues and I think you're a coward for arguing that you should bomb civilians, and shoot douzens of unarmed people because apparently two guys with guns had a go at your border fence. The last time I was in Israel a particularly irate settler decided to take a potshot at the wall behind with me, purely for recording his buddies throw molotovs into some old ladies olive grove. The IDF were very concerned about the gunshot for a moment and scrambled into action very bravely until the realised what had happened and went back to standing on a hill standing guard over the proceeding. I don't fancy going over again to get updated on the ground truth, I've seen enough.

Abbas admits he rejected 2008 peace offer from Olmert | The Time.. Abbas got upset because he wanted a map and then it died from there on. any proof at all that this actually happened? yeah when i hear jewish only ethnostate applied to israel i think /pol/ because that's /pol/s opinion on israel so when soldiers are being shot at they shouldn't shoot back because it's unfair?

I wasn't aware he had actually rejected the peace deal, but 2015 is quite a while after the event so I'm not surprised that slipped past me. I mean, when the Bill was announced, it included all sorts of references to removing Arabic as an official language. When the bill was announced there will still plans to deport thousands of African migrants, wholesale. I'm not sure what else you'd call such legislation other than an attempt to codify an ethnostate. As for proof, you mean for me specifically? Sadly not, the recording was destroyed in the ensuing drama. But I'm sure I can find some other videos of those adventures later on. Do you find it hard to believe that the IDF would stand guard over settlers damaging peoples property? I'd be surprised if you were, it would mean your coming from a position of ignorance rather than pure manipulation.

Well the answer is obvious, its a complete fuckup that ruins relations. I worked with settlers before and most of them are either batshit insane or extremely right wing. But to my surprise i also found out that a lot of them supply jobs to Palestinians in the area and overall have good relations with them, They even go into Palestinian towns to buy groceries and other merchandise. But to answer your question - no i think it's fucked up to expand settlements and build new ones, but on the other hand removing settlements doesn't help either. I once believed that evacuating settlers would help the peace process but due to recent evacuations like the settlement of Amona, it didn't change a thing. Same thing with Gaza.

I personally believe a one state solution is virtually inevitable at this point, or at least some form of more cooperative union. Israeli settlements have gone too far for there to be a serious two state solution at this point - and even if Israel did abandon every settlement and allow a two state solution, the two sides would continue to stare at each other across a demilitarised zone and blame each other for everything. The only lasting peace that will ever be found is for Israel to finish chewing what they've bitten off and fully absorb the west bank on more or less equal terms. For that to happen Israel very much needs to make a 180 on the current terminally conservative direction and it needs to stop being total fucking cowards who murder wholesale at the slightest provocation. Lasting peace will absolutely require Israel to take a brave stance of heroic self defense and serious willingness and ability to compromise. That is not what is happening right now.

The cowards are the politicians and the high echelons of the military. I'd hate to put the blame on some kids who were put in the front lines with a loaded gun and told to shoot anyone who threatens them. With that said, Israel already has specially-designed crowd dispersal weaponry that they are peculiarly not using in these protests. The escalation went from nothing to live fire. It's obvious that there's a mutual interest from both Israel (as a political institution, not as every single man and woman inside it) and Hamas to brew up another conflict.

Since we are talking about Israel's disproportionate use of force: Israeli sniper shoots Palestinian footballer who was filming himself, ending his career A Palestinian football player filmed the moment he appears to get shot in the knee, destroying the joint and his career. Mohammed Khalil, who played for a football club in the Gaza Strip, was apparently shot by an Israeli soldier as he protested near the border last week. Footage of the shooting was posted on Twitter by the Palestinian journalist Mohammed Kareem. Mr Kareem said Mr Khalil now needs knee replacement surgery in order to be able to walk again. “The high number of deaths and injuries was the foreseeable consequence of granting soldiers leeway to use lethal force outside of life-threatening situations in violation of international norms, coupled with the longstanding culture of impunity within the Israeli army for serious abuses,” said Human Rights Watch.

Totally justified shooting, a footballer standing perfectly still doing nothing is a grave threat to Israel. Israeli defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, told Israel’s public radio on Sunday that there will not be an inquiry. “From the standpoint of the [Israeli Defence Force] soldiers, they did what had to be done,” he said. “I think that all of our troops deserve a commendation.”'

The cold calculation behind the Israeli army’s sniper fire on th.. "Forces were instructed to fire warning shots at anyone who crossed a line which was a few hundred meters west of the fence, inside Palestinian territory. Following that, anyone continuing to advance would be shot by snipers, who would be aiming for the legs." There are 2 kibbutz places near the border, considering the tendency of Palestinians to brutally murder any Jews they happen to see, inside their homes even (age or gender doesn't matter). Palestinian man stabs and kills 13 I think this was a justified response, if you they want to hold their 'peaceful' protest they can do it without endangering Israeli civilians. The IDF did a good job, I'm honestly amazed that there aren't more casualties. However with how these things go, no matter what Israel did or will do in the future, it will always be met with criticism.

You know what they're protesting...right? So they get mass murdered for getting antsy enough to damage some property? That just goes to show the level of dehumanization going on

They're protesting against the blockade. I don't know about you but the blockade brought so much good for Israelis, Since its up and running there are barely any more suicide bombing on buses, smuggling of weapons and explosives into israel from Gaza almost ceased to exist and mass murdering of Israelis in kibbutzes near the border is almost non-existent anymore. The amount of lives that were saved are huge. Nothing will be done to remove it. The only thing they have to protest and fight are the tyrannical leaders they have that send them to fight an armed force like lambs to the slaughter. Not to mention the leader himself who doesn't live in Gaza at all, but in an ivory tower away from the mess.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/palestinian-journalist-in-vest-marked-press-shot-dead-by-israeli-troops-in-gaza/2018/04/07/ac57b524-3a30-11e8-8fd2-49fe3c675a89_story.html?utm_term=.e10ba8525f97 relevant i guess Murtaja, who worked for a Gaza-based news agency called Ain Media, was one of six Palestinian journalists shot, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, which said they were all clearly identifiable as media. The Israeli military has maintained that the shooting into the border crowds is carefully targeted. It could not immediately provide a comment on how six journalists could have been shot.

Currently, these 'protests' are assaulting the Israeli border. They roll burning tires into the field, blocking vision, and slowly creep forward inside a military zone. There is the actual border fence, and then some two hundred meters or so beyond it is a barbed wire that stops you from entering. These protests entail thousands of people attempting to encroach onto the IDF positions, and cutting wires. As they're all inside a militarized zone that you would normally have already been shot in, anyone sighted is shot. Journalists have no business inside a zone where the controlling military isn't even allowing them to go inside. They are literally traveling with militia that are assaulting the border, and then wondering why they're getting shot or why the burning tire smoke is making it impossible to distinguish a camera or anything else. They're wearing a black west with 'Press' on it near the border while being inside a thick cloud of smoke, what the fuck did they expect would happen? Now in regards to the Palestinian 'medics' being interrupted, the reason they're being interrupted is because the medics are being used here to stop any Palestinians from being captured. he's clearly not very injured in the video. also we don't know what happened before the video started rolling.

I don't think you even read my article since the press vest that he was wearing is blue.

Most of them are wearing black as you can see in the video, I would trust the video more than the article that you have provided that was filmed by the Palestinians themselves. But you did a nice job dismissing my whole reply based on that single detail.

I'm sorry that me point out that you got a very obvious and basic fact wrong bothers you so much. Also what is your source for that video?

It's from a right-leaning Israeli newspaper. Gotta say I'm very impressed by the Israeli marksmen, blasting four people including two leg hits with two shots, and with such laser cleanliness that there's not a drop of blood in sight either.

It's kind of shitty to repost a video without any source attached to it considering how trivially easy it is to edit footage to support whatever biases you have.

oh he got a concussion, can't arrest him now...