Exploding Pagers Injure Hundreds in Lebanon

[iNow]

According to the NYT: Israeli agents built the pagers.

From Axios:

The plot thickens: The supposed pager-maker, BAC Consulting of Hungary, was said to be under contract to produce the devices for Taiwan's Gold Apollo. "In fact," the N.Y. Times reports, "it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation."

• "They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers."

[joigus]

On 9/19/2024 at 2:08 AM, StringJunky said:

OK, all I'll say is you've drunk well on the Zionist Kool-Aid. Antizionist Jews and Muslims get on just fine.

I've drunk of many sources, really. I greatly respect you, as the rest of the interlocutors here, but I realise we will probably never agree on this. And I don't think personal testimonies really settlle it. Most of my friends think like you too, so my ideological ambience has been quite a different one.

So far I've only quoted Haniyah from Al-Jazeera. I didn't quote any so-called 'Zionist' sources. In fact, I could continue this discussion by only quoting Islamic and Cold-War era Soviet sources, if you want. It would be much harder though because I could prove that the numbers of victims that Hamas is providing quite simply cannot be true, and the rest of the world is taking them as just the truth at everyone's peril. But it can be done with just testimonies of the 'good guys'. I would be able to prove how tilted public opinion is to one side, at least in the West.

The Muslim-Islamist actors in this drama have never made a secret of their real intentions. The actors in the Soviets that provided support for them during the Cold War did make it a secret, but it eventually leaked. Why the West systematically chooses to ignore it is not anybody's guess. It's a political weapon of prime importance. It polarises people's minds. It makes us (you and I, for example) potential enemies for reasons having zilch to do with our actual personal situations. You must take a side!!!

You mention the Nakba, which is still in living memory, and was roughly at the same time as the exile of the Mizhrahi Jews, that's also in living memory. Here's another Muslim quotation (this one appeared on the eve of the famous Nakba):

Quote

I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre or the Crusader wars. I believe that the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will be larger than Palestine's Arab population, for I know that volunteers will be arriving to us from [as far as] India, Afghanistan, and China to win the honor of martyrdom for the sake of Palestine ... You might be surprised to learn that hundreds of Englishmen expressed their wish to volunteer in the Arab armies to fight the Jews.

— Mustafa Amin, Arab countries prepare for war, Akhbar al-Yom, October 11, 1947

Here Mustafa Amin, the editor of Akhbar el-Yom, is quoting the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam.  Seems like someone knew there was going to be a war of extermination before it happened. And happen it did. Notice he doesn't say "the Palestinians". He says "Palestine's Arab population". This distinction is essential. Back in 1945 Palestine was just a place. Nothing more. It's no coincidence that the 3rd most common Palestinian surname is al Masri, or El Masry. What does 'El Masry" mean?: "The Egyptian".

I'm well aware of the fact that there are many rotten apples in the Zionist basket. There are Zionists who dream of a world colonised by religious Jews. And that the Messiah will not come until that dream is fulfilled. Those are just religious bigots. Same as Muslims who turn 'religious' and start saying, and thinking, and acting out on the idea that the world must be all for Islam, that the other peoples of the Book must pay the jizya, and that the politheists must die or convert. Religion is poison, whether it kills you, me or others depends on accidents in life.

But the mechanisms of propaganda have worked on the minds of many people from all sides of this conflict, including many modern Western antizionist Jews who are not willing to make many fine distinctions, or perhaps are just tired, or who knows.

Anyway, we're getting sidetracked here, I don't have the time to draw the argument as carefully as I would like to now, and the counterarguments to what seems to be @MigL's and my own's position here are piling up.

But carpet bombing , @TheVat Com'on!

Quote

Carpet bombing, also known as saturation bombing, is a large area bombardment done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land.^[1][2][3][4] The phrase evokes the image of explosions completely covering an area, in the same way that a carpet covers a floor. Carpet bombing is usually achieved by dropping many unguided bombs.

There were leaflets and flyers, as well as phone calls and SMS messages in advance. The bombs were guided and from the footage I've seen, the targets were very specific. In many cases, secondary explosions reveal that the targets must have been explosive depots. In one particular case, from the footage, two or three 'fighters' or 'terrorists' were next to a cart pulled by a donkey. They were hit, but the donkey survived, only somewhat startled. That doesn't look like carpet bombing to me.

Same as this (really!) doesn't look like a concentration camp:

And the green-and-white map, @John Cuthber, that's just a piece of photoshop artistry. Nothing more. It doesn't mention the exile of hundreds of thousands of Mizhrahi Jews (or at least it paints them in no colour). It doesn't picture by what mysterious process two million odd of these 'Palestinian' became 'Israeli Arabs' and decided to stay in non-heavily-policed areas so-called 'Israel'. 

The least I can say is I see nothing of what I want to understand from those propaganda pieces that we are shown, from both sides if you will (although I generally see one and have to dig deep for the other). And yet I'm offered them every day as if must take a side.

You must take a side!!!

Edited yesterday at 11:09 AM by joigus
minor correction

[StringJunky]

@joigus ❤️ This problem is like a tangled ball of fishing line, with many ends to start untangling it from. We see the problem and the path to its  solutions depending on which end(s) we choose to start from. For me, after reviewing the relevant history of the area back to Romans, it seems sensible to focus from the period when Zionism became a tangible idea. Prior to that, history just pottered along, as it does. That's basically where I'm coming from.

This discussion is a microcosm of the different paths we travel to arrive at our conclusions. Only in this arena are we personally diametrically opposed, as I am with others here on other subjects. It is an area of difference, but I don't judge your whole person on it. Whether we like it or not, we inevitably gravitate towards social media echo chambers that support our personal views and seek evidence to that end. True objectivity is pie in the sky.

[MigL]

Yeah ... 'living memory' is apparently the new goalpost.

I wonder if you guys would give the same support to all the Germans who had to leave with the coming of Hitler to power and WW2?
Or the Polish people who lost everything and were displaced by Germans in WW2.
Or the Polish, Ukrainian and other Eastern Europeans that were displaced by the subseqient Soviet occupation.
Or all the Koreans that  were displaced by the Korean war and now own the convenience store on your streetcorner.
Or all the Vietnamese people I know who abandoned everything and fled when Saigon fell.
Or the former Yugoslavians who were ethnically cleansed and displaced in the separation wars of the early 90s.
Or the Syrians who were forced out of their country by a brutal dictator with the help of the Russians.
Maybe all these people should start firing rockets indiscriminately at their oppressor states, or strapping on bomb vests to detonate in night clubs, and rape, kill and kidnap people at music festivals where people weren't even born in 1988, never mind 1948.

As I said; how far back do you go to justify violence ?
As far as is convenient.; you just make up another word like 'living memory' to justify vilifying Israelis/Jews and keep posting pictures of little kids whose parents care more about revenge, and how soon they can be fitted with a bomb vest, a bomb vest, than their life and future.
 

This has got to be the most novel solution to a conflict I've heard.
@TheVat suggests " Stop the endless cycles of reprisal and repression"
So, allow the violence from one side, and stop the reprisals from the other.
It seems you guys have picked one side while Joigus and I have picked the other.

[joigus]

On 9/19/2024 at 10:56 AM, exchemist said:

The war the IDF is operating in Gaza certainly looks a great deal like ethnic cleansing.

And anteaters look a great deal like pangolins, but it's pangolins who are to blame for the spread of COVID-19...

No, wait! That's another misinformation thread.

Anteaters and pangolins, mmm... Someone must be guilty. It's either the ant-eaters or the pangolins. Certainly there's always someone to blame!!

Here's an idea: Let's sell rockets and tunnel-drilling tools to the ant-eaters, and... Plus  No, no, I know, I know, let's sell anti-rocket systems and drones, and other stuff to the anteaters. All with the tax-payer money of the armadillos...

See what I mean?

Edited yesterday at 01:06 PM by joigus
minor correction

[exchemist]

7 minutes ago, joigus said:

And anteaters look a great deal like pangolins, but it's pangolins who are to blame for the spread of COVID-19...

No, wait! That's another misinformation thread.

Anteaters and pangolins, mmm... Someone must be guilty. It's either the ant-eaters or the pangolins. Certainly there's always someone to blame!!

Here's an idea: Let's sell rockets and tunnel-drilling tools to the ant-eaters, and... Plus  No, no, I know, I know, let's sell anti-rocket systems and drones, and other stuff to the anteaters. All with the tax-payer money of the armadillos...

See what I mean?

No.

[joigus]

1 minute ago, exchemist said:

No.

I can't believe you can't figure out my analogy.

[zapatos]

I'm convinced by the pro-Israeli contingent here.

I'm also convinced by the pro-Palestinian contingent.

In other words, I believe both sides behave horribly, and both sides are doing so for very honorable reasons.

I don't see how either side can be embraced, or vilified, over the other.

[MigL]

Nicely put, Zap.

This will only stop when both sides decide there been enough bloodshed, and revenge isn't appetizing anymore.

[zapatos]

I can't see how this could happen but I would love to see Palestine form their own state, in a place that is NOT adjacent to Israel. Just like Israel was granted a state we could do the same for Palestine. It wouldn't be fair in many ways, but it could certainly lower the heat and as Palestinians thrived there would be less motivation for future generations to risk ruining their better life by taking revenge for things that happened in the past to someone they never knew.

[dimreepr]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

I'm convinced by the pro-Israeli contingent here.

I'm also convinced by the pro-Palestinian contingent.

In other words, I believe both sides behave horribly, and both sides are doing so for very honorable reasons.

I don't see how either side can be embraced, or vilified, over the other.

Indeed +1, war is nothing more than the struggle of life, the fog (of war) is an excuse to let slip the dog's of revenge...

[TheVat]

2 hours ago, MigL said:

 

This has got to be the most novel solution to a conflict I've heard.
@TheVat suggests " Stop the endless cycles of reprisal and repression"
So, allow the violence from one side, and stop the reprisals from the other.
It seems you guys have picked one side while Joigus and I have picked the other.

This clip does not represent all of my reply fairly.  I was suggesting that the side backed by economic wealth and billions of US dollars and SOTA munitions become the functional adult in the room and move to the table to discuss a two state solution and restoration of West Bank lands and homes they stole by force.  Please do not caricature a different opinion as approving violence - can we not by this point in the chat stipulate that all here agree both Israel and Hamas have committed vile and Geneva Articles violating acts against civilian populations?  By "stop the cycle" I mean that the powerful party shows some willingness to address its own actions and deal justly with a couple million people it has dispossessed and starved and stolen from.  The power disparity between Israel and Gaza (or the 32% of Lebanon that is Shiite/Hezbollah) is great - it is generally held that with power comes some responsibility and accountability.   Jesus Fucking Christ how hard is it for Israel to just admit, We violated your rights, stole your land, massacred civilians, denied your national sovereignty, and are currently starving a million of you or more in hideous festering camps, geez, maybe that wasn't quite right.  Surely everyone here, all people of conscience, understand that there is no peace when people are denied justice.  The US, after a long and painful process, got there with its tribal peoples; I see no reason Israel can't get there to.  Step One: dump Netanyahu and his merry band of would be fascists.

[dimreepr]

The adult in the room isn't always the oldest or the wealthiest or the most powerful, sometimes the meek shall inherit the wisdom...

[StringJunky]

49 minutes ago, TheVat said:

 Step One: dump Netanyahu and his merry band of would be fascists.

Yes, how much of this is being prolonged and people dying because Netanyahu is trying to save his own ass? I find it very hard to stomach that people like him and Trump will and do cause national and global mayhem for there own selfish reasons of avoiding accountability  for their own chronic criminality.

[CharonY]

3 hours ago, MigL said:

Yeah ... 'living memory' is apparently the new goalpost.

I wonder if you guys would give the same support to all the Germans who had to leave with the coming of Hitler to power and WW2?
Or the Polish people who lost everything and were displaced by Germans in WW2.
Or the Polish, Ukrainian and other Eastern Europeans that were displaced by the subseqient Soviet occupation.
Or all the Koreans that  were displaced by the Korean war and now own the convenience store on your streetcorner.
Or all the Vietnamese people I know who abandoned everything and fled when Saigon fell.
Or the former Yugoslavians who were ethnically cleansed and displaced in the separation wars of the early 90s.

I am not sure whether this argument really makes the point you are trying to make. I am not familiar with all of the examples, but for example in Germany and in the aftermath of Yugoslav war multiple things were done (albeit slowly), including return of property and/or reparation, prosecution of war crimes and it does include return of folks. 

Relatively recently the idea of reconciliation has become more prominent as an important part of lasting peace, resulting in structures such as the Yugoslav Commission for Truth and Reconciliation or the Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 

An important role of these efforts is to reconcile the different perspectives of the conflicts to avoid the propagation of conflicting narratives that result in future rifts and conflicts. 

So to answer your question, yes, to secure peace it is important not to ignore recent history, address the conflicting viewpoints and create a platform to address injustice, empowers communities to participate in the process and create honest and shared memories.

 

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

I can't see how this could happen but I would love to see Palestine form their own state, in a place that is NOT adjacent to Israel. Just like Israel was granted a state we could do the same for Palestine. It wouldn't be fair in many ways, but it could certainly lower the heat and as Palestinians thrived there would be less motivation for future generations to risk ruining their better life by taking revenge for things that happened in the past to someone they never knew.

I think some lessons can be learned from conflicts from former Yugoslavia (and similar conflicts, e.g. Rwanda). There are multiple aspects, but addressing power imbalance and sovereignty are important aspects, i.e. negotiations have to happen from a position as equals. Otherwise, there is a perception of procedural injustice which can endanger the process.

[MigL]

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

This clip does not represent all of my reply fairly.

I was ridiculing your views and agreeing with them simultaneously.

Why do you think an idiot like Netanyahu gets elected and re-elected ?
Why do you think the Israelis want strong immoral leaders ?
Why do you think such a little country has the largest arsenal, including nuclear, in that part of the world ?

Could it be because the day after the country was born, they were attacked by their Arab neighbors ?
Could it be because they have been attacked more times in the last 80 years, by neighbor states and proxy groups funded by those states than any other country in the l;ast 500 years ?
Could it be because the people Israel was created for, have been distrusted, hated and exterminated throughout history ?
Do you think maybe the Israelis are tired of living in constant fear ?

And maybe expecting the dog that's been beat too much, to be the grown up in the room, is a step too big to take.

 

3 hours ago, CharonY said:

am not sure whether this argument really makes the point you are trying to make.

I don't think you understand the point I'm trying to make.
Look around. How many German, Polish, Ukrainian and Italian immigrants do you see?
They all left everything behind to escape WW2 and it political and economic aftermath.
They made good lives here and need no 'reconciliation'; but they did lose what they originally had, as they came here with nothing.
Same with relatively wealthy Koreans and Vietnamese, when their feared their countries falling into Communism.
And I know how many former Yugoslavians are in Italy trying to make a better life for themselves, and how many Syrians fled their war into Europe.

There are many peoples displaced by war, who lost everything, yet they're not firing rockets at their former states, nor encouraging kids to strap on bomb vests.
( maybe they chose to be the adults in the room ? )

Do you understand it now or are you simply choosing not to, in order to cling to the deeply held ideology that Palestinians are justified in doing violence to Israelis/Jews ?

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Look around. How many German, Polish, Ukrainian and Italian immigrants do you see?
They all left everything behind to escape WW2 and it political and economic aftermath.

Your are only looking at one side of things. Folks were forced to leave and some managed to get a new life. Others, returned and/or there was some process of repatriation. This is what happened after the Yugoslav wars. Eventually folks (voluntarily or not) returned and there was a process for that. Just because some managed to emigrate does not meant that magically the issue resolved itself without a lengthy and painful process. There is a reason Bosnia is no longer a war zone, and I am fairly sure it is not because people all emigrated and are now happy. 

I think the issue with this argument is that trying to extrapolate from a small cohort and does not address the issue from a systemic standpoint. 

After all, the countries (or their successors) still exist. Bosnia is still there. So is South Korea, Syria and so on. Jewish people are living Germany again and survivors obtained restitutions.

In areas where there is now mostly peace (which would excluding Syria considering unresolved conflicts), it is not because one group fully displaced the other and everyone was fine with that.  It is because they figured out a way to co-exist. In Rwanda conflicts continued between Tutsi and Hutu until a reconciliation process was initiated (rather than displacing one group and calling it a day). 

https://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/rwanda/assets/pdf/Backgrounder Justice 2014.pdf

I believe that without any form of reconciliation, folks on either side will continue in their justification of violence. In my mind, there are no simple solutions and I don't think that successful refugees (or emigrants) provide a model that could lead to lasting peace. 

Of course, Palestinians and Israelis have to contribute to a compromise, but that is hard to find if the current folks in power (on either side) are hellbent on killing any two-state solutions.

 

[MigL]

And a simple Google search would have revealed 1.8 million Palestinians live comfortably in Israel; Either never having left, or returned there after the many wars since the late 40s.
The situation looks very similar to me.

So why such a penchant for firing rockets, and trying to kill, inhabitants of their former lands ?

Maybe they are being used as cannon fodder for other parties out to destroy Israel, and some in the West make it easy by constantly trying to deny Israel's right to protect itself.
 

[CharonY]

So you are saying that Israel should offer them citizenship?

[joigus]

12 hours ago, MigL said:

And a simple Google search would have revealed 1.8 million Palestinians live comfortably in Israel; Either never having left, or returned there after the many wars since the late 40s.
The situation looks very similar to me.

 

Members of the Knesset, bankers, entrepreneurs, etc. All of them Arabs. Almost none of them seem to be impelled to stab people to death on the street, blow themselves up, etc. Isn't that peculiar?

Why is that? Same ethnicity, same language, same traditions. Completely different behaviour. No abuse on them, no shortage of anything apparently, apart from the regular strifes of life, like finding a job or having access to a house in a certain area. They easily and frequently become friends with the other Israelies. I've been curious about that for many years. Everybody should be amazed. Many people today --certainly many political commentators-- seem not to be in the least curious about this fact.

To many of these people, as Drummond said to Brady in Inherit the wind, I'm tempted to say,

"It frightens me to imagine the state of learning in this world if everyone had your driving curiosity"

I find it very, very peculiar. Maybe some of our knowledgeable members can clarify this in simple analytical terms, and giving a rest to terms of hyperbole like "fascist", "concentration camp", "genocide", etc that anybody can apply to anybody else without giving it much thought.

Analysis is better conducted in dispassionate terms. I've personally have had enough of cliches already.

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, joigus said:

I find it very, very peculiar. Maybe some of our knowledgeable members can clarify this in simple analytical terms, and giving a rest to terms of hyperbole like "fascist", "concentration camp", "genocide", etc that anybody can apply to anybody else without giving it much thought.

Analysis is better conducted in dispassionate terms. I've personally have had enough of cliches already.

Because you are inclined towards the Israeli arguments, those terms, naturally, will be alien to you, as that isn't how you see them. You are, I'm sure, happy to call Hamas and Palestinians 'terrorists'. POV determines what descriptives one uses.

[joigus]

11 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Because you are inclined towards the Israeli arguments,

Being inclined is a relative term. The Rarámuri call themselves "the people who walk straight". I suppose to them everybody else is tilted.  

[StringJunky]

5 minutes ago, joigus said:

Being inclined is a relative term. The Rarámuri call themselves "the people who walk straight". I suppose to them everybody else is tilted.  

Or "Ooh look, my little Johnny is the only one in the parade marching to the beat".

[joigus]

5 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Or "Ooh look, my little Johnny is the only one in the parade marching to the beat".

Exactly. So we've narrowed it down to "who is playing Johnny's mum or dad here?"

[iNow]

We’re all biased, most often in unconscious ways. Suggesting otherwise is itself a bias.