It’s a very good morning. Nice to have a little bit of hope that things can get better.

Yup. Israel desperately needs to hold new elections. If necessary, Gantz should threaten to collapse the coalition government if that’s what it takes. Israel needs sensible leaders like Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Lapid, and Gallant who actually understand that while it’s necessary to exterminate Hamas, the only way of ensuring long-term peace and stability in the region is to reach a political solution with a pathway towards Palestinian self-rule.

The majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi Jews who fled to Israel after almost all of them, some 850,000 in total, were expelled or pressured out of Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries from 1948 through the 1950s. About 72% (650,000) settled in Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world

The notion that Jewish Israelis are just Europeans is a profoundly racist and ignorant belief.

I’m not interested in either The Grayzone or your own attempts at Holocaust denial. Blocked.

Numerous women who were released have testified that they and many of the other women they met in the tunnels had been brutalised, sexually assaulted and raped, as well as verification by doctors.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-least-10-freed-hostages-were-sexually-abused-by-hamas-in-captivity-doctor-says/

At least 10 of the Israeli civilians released by Hamas, both men and women, were sexually assaulted or abused while in captivity, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

In a report detailing allegations of severe and widespread sexual abuse by Hamas terrorists during their October 7 onslaught and later against hostages, a doctor who treated some of the 110 hostages released from captivity told the AP that at least 10 men and women among those freed were sexually assaulted or abused.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html

Many of the accounts are difficult to bear, and the visual evidence is disturbing to see.

The Times viewed photographs of one woman’s corpse that emergency responders discovered in the rubble of a besieged kibbutz with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.

The Times also viewed a video, provided by the Israeli military, showing two dead Israeli soldiers at a base near Gaza who appeared to have been shot directly in their vaginas.

[…]

The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.

She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast.

“One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,” Sapir said.

She said the men sliced her face and then the woman fell out of view. Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women.

Sapir provided photographs of her hiding place and her wounds, and police officials have stood by her testimony and released a video of her, with her face blurred, recounting some of what she saw.

Jamal Waraki, a volunteer medic with the nonprofit ZAKA emergency response team, said he could not get out of his head a young woman in a rawhide vest found between the main stage and the bar.

“Her hands were tied behind her back,” he said. “She was bent over, half naked, her underwear rolled down below her knees.”

Yinon Rivlin, a member of the rave’s production team who lost two brothers in the attacks, said that after hiding from the killers, he emerged from a ditch and made his way to the parking area, east of the party, along Route 232, looking for survivors.

Near the highway, he said, he found the body of a young woman, on her stomach, no pants or underwear, legs spread apart. He said her vagina area appeared to have been sliced open, “as if someone tore her apart.”

The idea that Hamas “treat hostages well” is such a viciously stupid and deceitful claim I don’t even know where to start. You should be ashamed of yourself for spreading such vile idiocy, and for accepting at face value the message of a desperate hostage held at gunpoint in a Jihadist terror dungeon.

I’m so sorry. I’m keeping your friend and all the other hostages in my prayers.

the people in it is native.

Some were, some weren’t. Depends how far back you want to go, which wave of mass migration you’re talking about.

Israel is nonexistent before 1948 and the people were brought from outside

Except, of course, that none of this is correct.

First, there’s the ancient Kingdom of Judah. The Jews are the same people.

Second, Jews maintained a continuous presence in the land of Israel-Palestine ever since then. They are, therefore, indigenous to the land.

Third, the majority of Jewish Israelis are Mizrahis – Jews from Arab lands who’ve lived there since the Second Temple Period (516 BC - 70 AD), who were forced to flee from these neighbouring Muslim states due to violence, pogroms, repression and the theft of their property.

We know from numerous scientific studies of Jewish and Palestinian DNA that they’re almost identical, and share a common root, most likely both being descendents of the ancient Canaanites. Here’s a very recent one. There’s almost no genetic difference with ‘European’ Ashkenazi Jews either, because they very rarely intermarried with other faith/ethnic groups. Here’s another from 2015 in Haaretz.

Palestinians and Jews are basically cousins, genetically speaking, and both are indigenous to the land. Palestinians perceive it as an invasion, and that’s understandable despite not being true. To the Jews, they were returning from exile to their homeland only to find that there were squatters who’d let the place fall to ruin while they were gone, which is also understandable though not true.

They’ll find a way to live together one day, but it’ll require both sides to accept the rights of the other.

So was the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

They’re not going anywhere, and the people who call for the abolition of those countries are nutcases and will always be accurately understood as nutcases.

Pakistan and India were formed just like Israel was: according to international law and by partition.

If the Palestinians want a state, they can have one: alongside Israel. Those are the terms. And until they accept that, they will suffer. Sucks for them.

I’d be willing to bet good money that this is pretty fucking terrorising to the people who live in Gaza.

This is not, in fact, the definition of terrorism.

There’s no evidence this was Israel. Iran has plenty of enemies in the Middle East.

Wouldn’t solve anything.

You should probably read at least a little about Argentina’s recent history before commenting then…

Yeah it’s a nasty choice. I legit think it was: guy who already screwed the economy (100% chance of things getting worse), guy who’s madder than a box of badgers but wants to try something different (99.9% chance of things getting worse), so let’s hope for that 0.01%.

Oh damn, Moonring looks super cool. Surprised I hadn’t heard of it!

Anything to add beside a snide comment?

Here’s one bit of context. Under the other candidate, the one this guy Milei ran against, who was the economic minister of the previous government, in September inflation reached 124%.

In case you were wondering why Milei won.

You also need to know the bigger history of Argentina’s last century of economic decline.

Argentina is taught as a case study in undergraduate economics courses in ‘how not to manage an economy’.

The Economist have a good video on the current crisis (Why is Argentina’s economy such a mess? ) and this one about the broader trend since the 1900s/10s.

I’m not a libertarian, I’m a social democrat.

The last century has been a total and unmitigated disaster for Argentina. The two options Argentinians had in this election were:

1. More of the same by the guy who oversaw inflation reaching 160% (100% chance of things getting worse)
2. A total wild card (99.9% chance of things getting worse)

Unsurprisingly, they went for the latter. I don’t think anti-libertarians get to gloat in this context, given it’s the Argentinian establishment which has overseen one of the most remarkable examples of total state-collapse and economic failure in modern history.

Yep. Checking via the notifications tray really helps

I hate feeling like I need to reply to a message straight away.

But then by the time I’m, like, ready to reply, I’ve already forgotten I was supposed to!