[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

Post Reply New Topic

Maybe when he supports both sides, it helps extend the conflict which will lead to more infanticides. God seems to particularly like killing babies in the OT. I’m not sure what he has against them.

Terrible logic infuriates me, that's why your arguments draw my ire. Your arguments are no different from a child trying to dodge blame for their antisocial actions by shifting responsibility on to an imaginary friend.

I'm not actually explicitly supporting evil because my imaginary friend says all is going to plan and he defines good and evil.

It's fair to blame secular authorities for failing to act appropriately, it's unreasonable to conclude that it's all happening because of the boogieman.

You're no different from any other huckster offering simple lies to explain a complicated reality. The fact that a lot of people might agree that it's because of the boogieman doesn't make it so. A lot of people also believe in a flat earth, but they're objectively wrong.

There was another objectively evil regime that engaged in genocide. They believed their imaginary friend justified it, they even claimed Gott mit uns on their belt buckles. Yet, when called to account they were held responsible by courts that didn't consider their imaginary friend's feelings on the matter.

Because your imaginary friend's feelings are irrelevant to questions of morality.

That's all well and good for me, but what about Israel? Is their imaginary friend's feelings irrelevant? Shouldn't someone make the Jews aware of it?

This is what I mean by beating your heads against a brick wall. You are absolutely livid... and it isn't changing a thing.

The Israeli government is behaving like a bully. I see no evidence to support the notion that they have supernatural backing.

I'm not sure what my emotional state has to do with your reliance on handwaving to justify atrocious behaviour. How I feel is irrelevant to the lack of substance within the arguments you've made. Haha, you're upset by atrocities isn't exactly the dunk you're hoping it us; that's cringy preteen edgelord s**t. Please tell me I've misread your intentions.

It seems to be a common trend on here. When someone supports their side of an argument with logic, reason, and/or research, the other side defaults to: “You’re angry!” as though, if true, that in some way discounts the arguments that were made.

An imaginary friend’s feelings, by their very nature, are irrelevant, but people are free to believe whatever they want. Acting on those beliefs is something else. Religion has often been used to justify abuses/human rights violations, including genocide. Sometimes abuse motivated by religious hatred has been directed at Jews themselves. Religious beliefs don’t make atrocities any more okay.

Genocide, like other atrocities past and present, seems like a worthwhile thing to get upset about.

Angry citizens could put pressure on leaders to back off of their support of certain regimes. That’s why people protest.

True! If the friend is imaginary, they don't have feelings. By insinuating they do, Funeral Empire is implying they aren't imaginary.

And you are free to get upset about Genocide of Palestinians, just as I am free to get upset about the Genocide of Jews. Conveniently, the Holocaust is past tense for those of you who choose only to be outraged about the plight of Palestinians. And for those of us who have no first hand experience of a Holocaust, it takes a great effort to imagine the weight of memory carried by present day Jews who may still have family members who keep the past fresh.

They are a nation the size of New Jersey, if they are getting 'aid' from other nations to continue defeating their neighbors, this should still confound you precisely because they are a nation the size of New Jersey. How can a nation the size of New Jersey keep the world at bay? So just admit it, "imaginary friends" are handy!

Hamas has issued a formal counter-proposal in ongoing talks over a temporary ceasefire and hostage deal in its war with Israel, giving hope for the first time in weeks that more Israelis taken hostage on Oct. 7 could be released and that the fighting could pause.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met with family members of about 20 hostages on Thursday night, said the terror group was making “ridiculous demands,” leaving wide-open questions about whether progress in negotiations would continue.

The counter-proposal comes after weeks of tense negotiations in which both Israeli and Hamas officials have expressed pessimism about reaching an agreement. Under the terms that Hamas has outlined, the group would release hostages who are women, children, elderly and sick in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons, including 100 who have been convicted of murder. The women to be released would include soldiers, marking a change in Hamas’ stance.

To release the remaining male hostages, whom Hamas considers combatants regardless of whether they were captured while serving in the military, the proposal says Israel would have to commit to a permanent ceasefire, withdraw from Gaza and release all of the Palestinian security prisoners it holds.

Netanyahu rejected the terms as “still absurd” during a meeting of his war cabinet on Friday. He also said the Israeli army would continue to prepare for a planned invasion of Rafah, the southern Gaza city that has become a refuge to nearly 1.5 million Palestinians including, Israeli officials say, members and leaders of Hamas.

They are a nation the size of New Jersey, if they are getting 'aid' from other nations to continue defeating their neighbors, this should still confound you precisely because they are a nation the size of New Jersey. How can a nation the size of New Jersey keep the world at bay? So just admit it, "imaginary friends" are handy!

Go Israel!! !

With ally Hamas under attack in Gaza, the head of Iran's Quds Force visited Beirut in February to discuss the risk posed if Israel next aims at Lebanon's Hezbollah, an offensive that could severely hurt Tehran's main regional partner, seven sources said.

In Beirut, Quds chief Esmail Qaani met Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the sources said, for at least the third time since Hamas' deadly October 7 attacks on southern Israel and Israel's devastating retaliatory assault on Gaza.

The conversation turned to the possibility of a full Israeli offensive to its north, in Lebanon, the sources said. As well as damaging the Shi'ite Islamist group, such an escalation could pressure Iran to react more forcefully than it has so far since October 7, three of the sources, Iranians within the inner circle of power, said.

At the previously unreported meeting, Nasrallah reassured Qaani he didn't want Iran to get sucked into a war with Israel or the United States and that Hezbollah would fight on its own, all the sources said.

"This is our fight," Nasrallah told Qaani, said one Iranian source with knowledge of the discussions.

Speaking with Iranian and Lebanese sources
For this story, Reuters spoke to four Iranian and two regional sources, along with a Lebanese source who confirmed the thrust of the meeting. Two US sources and an Israeli source said Iran wanted to avoid blowback from an Israel-Hezbollah war. All requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The Beirut meeting highlights strain on Iran's strategy of avoiding major escalation in the region while projecting strength and support for Gaza across the Middle East through allied armed groups in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, analysts said.

Qaani and Nasrallah "want to further insulate Iran from the consequences of supporting an array of proxy actors throughout the Middle East." said Jon Alterman of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, responding to a question about the meeting.
"Probably because they assess that the possibility of military action in Lebanon is increasing and not decreasing."

Already, Tehran's carefully nurtured influence in the region is being curtailed, including by Israel's offensive against Hamas along with potential US-Saudi defense and Israel-Saudi normalization agreements, as well as US warnings that Iran should not get involved in the Hamas-Israel conflict.

Qaani and Nasrallah control tens of thousands of fighters and a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles. They are the main protagonists in Tehran's network of allies and proxy militias, with Qaani's elite Quds Force acting as the foreign legion of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

While Hezbollah has publicly indicated it would halt attacks on Israel when the Israeli offensive in Gaza stops, US Special Envoy Amos Hochstein said last week a Gaza truce would not automatically trigger calm in southern Lebanon.

Arab and Western diplomats report that Israel has expressed strong determination to no longer allow the presence of Hezbollah's main fighters along the border, fearing an attack similar to Hamas' incursion that killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages.

"If there is a ceasefire in (Gaza), there are two schools of thought in Israel, and my impression is that the one that would recommend continuing the war on the border with Hezbollah is the stronger one," said Sima Shine, a former Israeli intelligence official who is currently head of the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies:

A senior Israeli official agreed that Iran was not seeking a full-blown war, noting Tehran's restrained response to Israel's offensive on Hamas.

"It seems that they feel they face a credible military threat. But that threat may need to become more credible," the official said.

A war in Lebanon would be a blow for Iran
A war in Lebanon that seriously degrades Hezbollah would be a major blow for Iran, which relies on the group founded with its support in 1982 as a bulwark against Israel and to buttress its interests in the broader region, two regional sources said.

"Hezbollah is in fact the first line of defense for Iran," said Abdulghani Al-Iryani, a senior researcher at the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies, a think tank in Yemen.

If Israel were to launch major military action on Hezbollah, the Iranian sources within the inner circle of power said, Tehran may find itself compelled to intensify its proxy war.

An Iranian security official acknowledged, however, that the costs of such an escalation could be prohibitively high for Iran's allied groups. Direct involvement by Iran, he added, could serve Israel's interests and provide justification for the continued presence of US troops in the region.
Given Tehran's extensive, decades-long ties with Hezbollah, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to put distance between them, one US official said.

Since the Hamas attack on Israel, Iran has given its blessing to actions in support of its ally in Gaza, including attacks by Iraqi groups on US interests. It has also supplied intelligence and weapons for Houthi operations against shipping in the Red Sea.

But it has stopped well short of an unfettered multi-front war on Israel that, three Palestinian sources said, Hamas had expected Iran to support after October 7.

Before the Beirut encounter with Nasrallah, Qaani chaired a two-day meeting in Iran in early February along with militia commanders of operations in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, three Hezbollah representatives, and a Houthi delegation, one Iranian official said.
The official said Revolutionary Guard Commander-in-Chief Major General Hossein Salami was also present. Hamas did not attend.

"At the end, all the participants agreed that Israel wanted to expand the war and falling into that trap should be avoided as it will justify the presence of more US troops in the region,” the official said.

Shortly after, Qaani engineered a pause in attacks by the Iraqi groups. So far, Hezbollah has kept its tit-for-tat responses within what observers have called unwritten rules of engagement with Israel.

Despite decades of proxy conflict since Iran's 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic has never directly fought in a war with Israel, and all four Iranian sources said there was no appetite for that to change.

According to the Iranian insider, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not inclined to see a war unfold in Iran, where domestic discontent with the ruling system last year spilled over into mass protests.

"The Iranians are pragmatists, and they are afraid of the expansion of the war," said Iryani.

"If Israel were alone, they would fight, but they know that if the war expands, the United States will be drawn in."

The White House is considering options for how to respond if Israel defies President Joe Biden’s repeated warnings against launching a military invasion of Rafah without a credible plan to protect Palestinian civilians, according to one former and three current U.S. officials.

The discussions are taking place amid growing concern in the administration and frustration among congressional Democrats that the president’s pleas will simply be ignored. Israel this week inched closer to initiating an incursion into the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip.

“Time and again, President Biden calls upon the Netanyahu government to take certain actions, and for the most part, time and again, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu ignores the president of the United States. And so I think that makes the United States look ineffective,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., in an interview.

The president has issued increasingly strong words and strong warnings, but I believe that to effectively enforce those warnings the administration has to use these other tools at its disposal,” said Van Hollen, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who is among those pushing the White House to take a harder line on conditioning U.S. military sales to Israel.

The U.S. has not conditioned any military support for Israel, though Biden administration officials have considered withholding or delaying the sale of some weaponry.

The Biden administration set a March 24 deadline for Israel to provide written assurance, followed by U.S. government review, that its use of American weapons is in accordance with international law. Failing to comply could force the issue of military support and potentially push the longtime alliance into new territory.

Top administration officials indicated Friday they had not seen any plans for the military operation in Rafah that Israel said Netanyahu had approved, nor had they seen a proposal for the evacuation of Palestinian civilians. For weeks, administration officials have privately expressed skepticism that Israel had developed a thorough plan for a military offensive in Rafah, saying that the threat of an invasion was to maintain leverage with Hamas during negotiations for a cease-fire in exchange for releasing hostages held in Gaza.

The level of distrust and tension between the U.S. and Israeli governments marks an extraordinary shift from the bear hug Biden and Netanyahu shared five months ago shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel.

The White House effectively embraced remarks from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday that called for new elections in Israel to replace Netanyahu, described by the New York Democrat as “a major obstacle to peace.”

Schumer’s remarks on the Senate floor highlighted divisions within the Democratic Party that will be difficult for the president to navigate as he campaigns for a second term. His position is likely to embolden progressives who want to see it backed up by a meaningful shift in U.S. policy toward Israel, specifically using leverage by withholding aid and weapons transfers unless the Netanyahu government changes course.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., praised Schumer’s speech but said it’s not enough.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction. And the people of Israel have got to understand that they are increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. There’s global outrage at the Netanyahu right-wing extremist government literally causing starvation of hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza,” Sanders told NBC News. “We cannot continue to fund Netanyahu’s war machine.”

But other Democrats, including Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., disagreed with Schumer’s calls for replacing Netanyahu.

“Israel is our closest ally in the Middle East, and as a democracy, it is up to the Israeli people to determine their political future,” said Rosen, who faces a competitive re-election bid this fall.

The dynamic could further complicate the path to passing a package combining aid for Ukraine and Israel, with progressives like Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., opposed to an effort to provide funding for the two U.S. allies unless there are conditions for Israel.

Biden embraced the bear hug approach to Israel immediately after Oct. 7 because he believed it was the most effective way to have influence on Israel as it carried out its military assault on Hamas. But that strategy quickly began to reveal its flaws, with Israel ignoring Biden’s pleas for doing more to protect Palestinian civilians and increase the amount of humanitarian aid getting into Gaza.

Now, Biden and Netanyahu have not spoken in a month. Their last call was on Feb. 15 and focused largely on Rafah, according to the White House.