There’s nothing damning after the “but” though. What part specifically of “but unfortunately they are the folks bargaining for Gazans” do you take issue with? That’s the provable reality of the negotiations. I even call it unfortunate.
There’s nothing damning after the “but” though. What part specifically of “but unfortunately they are the folks bargaining for Gazans” do you take issue with? That’s the provable reality of the negotiations. I even call it unfortunate.
Israel has repeatedly stated their intent to continue the war in Gaza regardless of international approval. Netanyahu, among others, has stated intent to establish a long-term/permanent security presence in Gaza.
Since Oct. 7th the Israeli military has either directly killed or provided protection to lethal settler attacks in the West Bank, resulting in over 500 deaths in a section of Occupied Palestinian Territory that theoretically isn’t at war. So there’s Israeli military presence, violence, and oppression of Palestinians even where Hamas isn’t in control.
Hamas are not good guys by any stretch, but unfortunately they are the folks bargaining for Gazans. In the face of continued Israeli aggression, disregard for international approval/law, and stated plans it’s no wonder they’re demanding that any deals have rock-solid guarantees on an enforceable timetable.
Upvoted because it’s a story worth knowing, but as far as I can tell this is just further harassment/condemnation of anything pro-Palestinian. As of the end of April, independent review “finds no evidence for Israel’s claims about UNRWA and Hamas”.
Israel has declared organizations as terrorists on bad premises before. E.g. - in 2021 Defence for Children International was formally labelled a terrorist organization after they reported the rape of a 13-year-old Palestinian to the US State Department. Josh Paul, a director involved with the investigation, gives details in an interview about why he resigned from the State Dept. post-Oct. 7th. The short version is: the allegations of rape were credible, Israel was confronted, the next day Israeli forces seized all the local assets of Defence for Children International and declared them terrorists.
EU nations have formally rejected “terrorist organization” labels being applied to humanitarian/watchdog agencies in Israel/OPT before.
Agreed. This is more about the court saying, “You countries signed us into existence to monitor the most serious instances of international law and here’s our ruling as legal experts. Now it’s up to you to decide what to do with it.”
I still love seeing this because:
Too much clean energy that is nearly free sounds like a much better type of problem to solve than most.
Those are some mental gymnastics, to try to tell me that when a Palestinian purchases fuel or other products in Palestine and the tax money goes to Israel that it’s not Palestinian taxes. That it’s Israeli money and is only returned (or sometimes not) because Israel is kind to Palestine. Or that when Israel collects the taxes on a Palestinian’s job located in the OPT, i.e. all work is done outside Israeli borders, that it’s not Israel collecting Palestinian taxes.
Edit: Just to make sure I was doing my homework, I actually found a copy of the relevant agreement. Read Annex V point 1 (1st page) and Appendix V point 4 (2nd page). Both make it clear that Israel is collecting Palestinian taxes from Palestinians and on purchases made wholly in Palestine with a final destination inside Palestine. Given the very specific language of the agreement, I’m even more sure your assertion that it’s Israeli-sourced money is incorrect.
Your word alone is not enough, and in the absence of requested evidence I’m going to disregard it. I have found MANY sources going back years that state that Israel is collecting Palestinian taxes, as in money that Palestine would be collecting if it wasn’t occupied/was a self-governing nation. Israel also frequently withholds these taxes as a political bludgeon even though they are bound by their own signed agreements to pass that money along to Palestinian authorities. Israel even charges a 3% fee to do this for Palestine. I cannot find a single source that backs up your assertion that it’s actually Israel’s money transferred as an act of charity. Moreover, the idea that Israel is being unnecessarily kind clashes with decades of evidence about how Israel views, controls, and abuses Palestinians.
As best as -I- can tell, Israel is collecting Palestinian taxes. Here’s another article from a different outlet:
What are the Palestinian funds that Israel collects?
Israel collects Palestinian import tax revenue as agreed to in the 1994 Paris Accords signed by the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel. The tax revenue Israel collects is made up of indirect taxes imposed on Palestinian imports. It comes from two primary sources: VAT on goods and import tax on goods brought in from outside Israel.
These are taxes that would normally be collected by a country for transactions within/at their borders, not charity/extra taxes paid for by Israelis. From the Wikipedia article, Israel collects taxes on goods/services that end up in Palestine, and controls/collects tariffs on goods entering Palestine. They tax Palestinian labor both in Israel and in the illegal settlements in OPT. They have also used withholding those taxes as a form of control several times in history and those are listed in the article.
As you note, this situation was only supposed to last 5 years, instead Israel has enforced it for 30 and according to the UN it’s not because Israelis are “giving them free money”. "However, 30 years later, the financial settlement continues to give the Israeli state what the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has called “a disproportionate influence on the collection of Palestinian fiscal revenue, leading to deficiencies in the structure and collection of customs duties resulting from direct and indirect importing into Palestine”.
I am not an expert. I may be wrong. But none of the sources I’m finding frame the issue as Israel withholding charity or bonus payments or anything similar - they all say Israel is holding Palestinian taxes. I only care about proof, so if you can provide it I’ll check it and if it outweighs the evidence I’ve found and linked I’ll change my mind.
Edit: I tracked down a copy of the actual relevant agreement, and it definitely is money collected from Palestinians and on purchases made in Palestine on products that are brought into Palestine. Discussion a few comments down if interested.
I’m not sure if they collect all taxes, but according to the article they do collect at least some (and a meaningful amount):
"Under decades-old agreements, Israel collects customs and import taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Those revenues constitute most of the Palestinian budget, particularly as international aid has declined. "
My guess is: not for several years, and then it will be part of an incredibly expensive reparations deal to rebuild what American munitions are currently destroying.
So in addition to all the other forms of control, Israel collects and can restrict Palestinian taxes. Tell me again, Israeli propagandists, how Israel doesn’t actually occupy what is rightfully internationally known as Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).
This showed up in my Lemmy feed just above a story from the BBC about how Biden is planning to send 1 billion in arms to Israel. I felt these two stories next to each other was a fitting symbol of how wrong things are going.
I honestly think these people are drunk on outrage politics, and the extreme of “just revenge” is the whole point. They must somehow feel powerful introducing proposals of terrible cruelty.
Nevermind that there are several human rights groups, news organizations, medical responders, international aid etc. that would like to be in Gaza but are being denied entry. This reeks of sending people protesting terrible conditions to suffer in those conditions.
I regularly have to fight cynicism about the future, because people always talk about a golden future in which there’s enough to take care of everyone. What they seem to miss is that there is enough wealth in the world to provide for everyone many times over, and there has been for over a decade at least. Stories like this help give me hope to balance out that cynicism and keep me from becoming too bitter.
Here is a video from a press briefing in which US State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel is asked about the reasoning of getting Israel to investigate accusations made against Israel. I don’t know the channel and I’m not a fan of the quotation marks used in the subtitles, but I think the video is still a valuable, factual record of the questions and response and people can draw their own conclusions.
In my opinion, this feels like asking murder suspects to do the police work for their own court case.
Punish Russia for invading your country and if it hurts their economy perhaps that will deter other countries from pulling the same crap.
The article is paywalled but I’m guessing the warnings are because of the energy economics involved. If an effective counter-offensive drives up oil prices then maybe that will be the (admittedly likely painful) push the world needs to finally swap to other forms of energy. I’m aware it might hurt, but I think it’s long overdue regardless of wars and the decades of stalling for economic reasons has done a lot of harm to the world.
I really disagree with the narrative of “we all did this” - I consider it corporate reputation-saving propaganda. I refuse to take responsibility for choices I never had a say in (before I was born or when I was young), often no knowledge of, and opposed when I learned of them. It’s even worse for modern kids.
The truth is a small # of companies are responsible for most of the world’s pollution problems - for instance 100 companies produce 71% of global emissions. Just 20 companies are responsible for over half of single-use plastic. Here’s a 2023 article from Boston University about deliberate corporate climate lies and their scientists’ attempts to combat it online. A small # of political and business leaders made the choices that allowed all of this, they often kept attention off it, and often did it over the objections of their citizens.
It may be argued that executives and politicians across so many countries = more than a handful, but it’s a tiny # compared to all the people dealing with the results of decisions they had no influence over. Handful can be used as shorthand for “a small quantity or number”. I’m not saying you are making that argument, just heading it off preemptively.
Title should be “A handful of greedy humans have been so shitty for so long that they’ve made the world’s oceans toxic”.
Just to get it out of the way at the start - Hamas is terrible. They are violent fundamentalists and do not deserve support. Neither Israel nor Hamas are “good” and the only side that deserves support and recognition are the civilians, Israeli or Palestinian, suffering because of/under their evil regimes. Now on to the rebuttal.
Israel needs no “baiting” to kill or otherwise abuse Palestinians - it’s their policy and has been for a long time. From the Nakba until today, the history of Israeli human rights violations, violence, lies, etc. is well-established. “Look at what you made me do” is such a typical excuse used by abusers that it’s almost a trope. Moreover, Netanyahu’s government deliberately kept Hamas in power as a useful bogeyman and an way to divide/foil Palestinian statehood. There is ample evidence that Israel has directly supported Hamas and other extremists for decades.
“Hamas, for its part, is alleged to have emerged out of the Israeli-financed Islamist movement in Gaza, Israel’s then-military governor in that territory, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, disclosing in 1981 that he had been given a budget for funding Palestinian Islamists to counter the rising power of Palestinian secularists.”
"In a 1994 book, “The Other Side of Deception,” Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky contended that aiding Hamas meshed with “Mossad’s general plan” for an Arab world “run by fundamentalists” that would reject “any negotiations with the West,” thereby leaving Israel as “the only democratic, rational country in the region.” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official involved in Gaza for over two decades, told a newspaper interviewer in 2009 that, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”
As far as the nature of the demands: “one-sided deals” is a matter of opinion, but “we need guarantees you’ll actually leave, stop killing/injuring many tens of thousands of civilians, destroying hospitals/schools/aid, etc.” seems like a pretty standard request at peace negotiations. Especially since Israel has repeatedly promised to continue to prosecute the war and establish long-term armed forces in Gaza.