Israel declares war on Hamas

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by blankall

Israel showed indifference towards the Muslim Brotherhood (the precursor group of Hamas) who had denounced violence. Starting in the early 80s, when it became clear that the founders of Hamas were actually pursuing violent means, Israel began to arrest them.

Even if Israel wanted to challenge the Muslim Brotherhood, how were they supposed to do that? Tear down random mosques (who had denounced violence). That would have gone over real well.

After Hamas won the election, Israel immediately began to arrest Hamas supporters. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was in September of 2005. In June of 2006 Israel had full scale military operation against Hamas after Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. Israel and the US then tried to overthrow Hamas and forced a unity government. War breaks out between Hamas and Fatah in June of 2007 and Hamas takes control of Gaza soon after. Hamas is forced to withdraw from the West Bank due to Fatah receiving US and Israeli support.

The idea that Israel put Hamas in power in Gaza is complete hogwash. Israel didn't do anything to actively support Islamist movements, and began to actively fight them as soon as the early 1980s, over twenty years before Hamas was elected into power.

I suppose trying to correct this was less aggravating and pointless for you than correcting the numerous times you’ve spread misinformation and had the opportunity to correct it? Strange.

Israel not only actively supported and enabled the creation of Hamas as a means to aid their own fight against what it deemed “bigger enemies” in the region at the time (similar to the story between the US and the taliban), but it continued to do so long after the election.

It’s fascinating that the same people who condemn aid groups for “funding” Hamas not only give Israel a complete pass for the same, they actually attempt to reframe Israel’s actions as altruistic olive branches to the Palestinian people.

[Flames Fan, Ph.D.]

You guys see the new video with the IDF forces shooting 4 people?

Hamas technology must really be advancing and they must have developed cloaking technology because you can’t even see the human shields these people are running behind.

The IDF must use some infrared or something to visualize the cloaked human shields and not shoot them while immaculately targeting the visible people.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I suppose trying to correct this was less aggravating and pointless for you than correcting the numerous times you’ve spread misinformation and had the opportunity to correct it? Strange.

Israel not only actively supported and enabled the creation of Hamas as a means to aid their own fight against what it deemed “bigger enemies” in the region at the time (similar to the story between the US and the taliban), but it continued to do so long after the election.

It’s fascinating that the same people who condemn aid groups for “funding” Hamas not only give Israel a complete pass for the same, they actually attempt to reframe Israel’s actions as altruistic olive branches to the Palestinian people.

Do you honestly believe this? The Palestinians aren't capable of choosing their own leaders. Anytime the Palestinians get a whiff that Israel is supporting a leader they instantly turn on them.

Israel did not fund Hamas in any way. Never gave them money. Got in trouble for holding money that belonged to the Palestinians, because it passed to Hamas, who is the government in Gaza.

Israel arrested their leader, Yassin, and sentenced him to life two years after Hamas was founded.

[Snuffleupagus]

Originally Posted by Zary's-Mustache

I was thinking was a very sad day on October 7th and that the world is a cruel one with monsters on both sides.

Mirror image of something Trump would say.

Maybe you didn't word it properly but on October 7th there was only one side that were monsters, the other side were just dying.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by blankall

Do you honestly believe this? The Palestinians aren't capable of choosing their own leaders. Anytime the Palestinians get a whiff that Israel is supporting a leader they instantly turn on them.

Israel did not fund Hamas in any way. Never gave them money. Got in trouble for holding money that belonged to the Palestinians, because it passed to Hamas, who is the government in Gaza.

Israel arrested their leader, Yassin, and sentenced him to life two years after Hamas was founded.

You should probably try educating yourself. When current and ex-Israel government officials are saying the opposite, your opinion is probably pretty stupid.

Why did Israel back the payments?
Israeli and international media have reported that Netanyahu’s plan to continue allowing aid to reach Gaza through Qatar was in the hope that it might make Hamas an effective counterweight to the PA and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

PA officials said at the time the cash transfers encouraged division between Palestinian factions.

Major General Amos Gilad, a former senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, told CNN the plan was backed by the prime minister, but not by the Israeli intelligence community. There was also some belief that it would “weaken Palestinian sovereignty,” he said. There was also an illusion, he added, that “if you fed them (Hamas) with money, they would be tamed.”

Shlomo Brom, a former deputy to Israel’s national security adviser, told the New York Times that an empowered Hamas helped Netanyahu avoid negotiating over a Palestinian state, saying the division of the Palestinians helped him make the case that he had no partner for peace in the Palestinians, thus avoiding pressure for peace talks that could lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

The former State Department official said that after the 2014 war, Israel felt it was better off with Hamas controlling Gaza as opposed to multiple Islamist groups, or leaving it in a political vacuum.

“It was our impression that the Israelis were comfortable with keeping Hamas in power in a weakened form,” the official said. “Our understanding was that Hamas was the lesser of a whole bunch of bad options in Gaza,” the official added, noting that at least the competing PA could keep Hamas out of the West Bank.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/11/m...l-backing-intl

MADRID, Jan 19 (Reuters) - EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday that Israel had financed the creation of Palestinian militant group Hamas, publicly contradicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has denied such allegations.

Opponents of the Israeli government and some global media have accused Natanyahu governments of boosting Gaza rulers Hamas for years, including by allowing Qatari financing of Gaza.

"Yes, Hamas was financed by the government of Israel in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah," Borrell said in a speech in the University of Valladolid in Spain without elaborating.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...as-2024-01-19/

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” retired Israeli official Avner Cohen, who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told journalist Andrew Higgins in a 2009 Wall Street Journal article, describing it as an “enormous, stupid mistake.”

In the same piece, headlined “How Israel Helped To Spawn Hamas,” David Hacham, who also worked in Gaza in the late 1980s and early 1990s as an Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military, said: “When I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake. But at the time, nobody thought about the possible results.”

Other factors certainly contributed to Hamas’ rise — funding and support from Iran, among them.

But it’s also true that the Israeli government originally viewed Hamas primarily as a religious and charitable organization.

It believed that by supporting Hamas, it could use it as a counterweight to undermine a secular terrorist organization which it considered a greater threat — the Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964 and headed by Yasser Arafat, leader of the Fatah movement.

https://torontosun.com/opinion/colum...o-create-hamas

“One effective way to prevent a two-state solution is to divide between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” he said in an interview. The division gives Mr. Netanyahu an excuse to disengage from peace talks, Mr. Brom said, adding that he can say, “I have no partner.”

Mr. Netanyahu did not articulate this strategy publicly, but some on the Israeli political right had no such hesitation.

Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who is now Mr. Netanyahu’s finance minister, put it bluntly in 2015, the year he was elected to Parliament.

“The Palestinian Authority is a burden,” he said. “Hamas is an asset.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/w...-up-hamas.html

That notion might seem counterintuitive and yet, when it comes to Netanyahu himself, it is unexpectedly on-brand. Prime minister for most of the last 15 years, Netanyahu has been an enabler of Hamas, building up the organisation, letting it rule Gaza unhindered – save for brief, periodic military operations against it – and allowing funds from its Gulf patrons to keep it flush. Netanyahu liked the idea of the Palestinians as a house divided – Fatah in the West Bank, Hamas in Gaza – because it allowed him to insist that there was no Palestinian partner he could do business with. That meant no peace process, no prospect of a Palestinian state, and no demand for Israeli territorial concessions.

None of this was a secret. In March 2019, Netanyahu told his Likud colleagues: “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/commenti...prime-minister

[Flames Fan, Ph.D.]

Posts like this always shut the thread down for a while. Then it'll start back up and after a while certain posters will return to posting the same incorrect 'facts' and 'interpretations' that this post invalidates.

Good times. And more people will die.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

You should probably try educating yourself. When current and ex-Israel government officials are saying the opposite, your opinion is probably pretty stupid.



https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/12/11/m...l-backing-intl



https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...as-2024-01-19/



https://torontosun.com/opinion/colum...o-create-hamas



https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/w...-up-hamas.html



https://amp.theguardian.com/commenti...prime-minister

There's a large difference between creating and supporting Hamas and a politician taking advantage of the situation, and playing two enemies (Fatah and Hamas) against each other.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/11/middl...ntl/index.html

The first article you quoted deals with release of payments from Qatar that were earmarked for Gaza social services, but also likely would have filtered through or to Hamas.

These payments started in 2018, over 10 years after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, which is what this discussion is about. By then Israel's reality with Hamas had changed. Also from your article:

There was also an illusion, he added, that “if you fed them (Hamas) with money, they would be tamed.”

Israel was under pressure to allow Gaza funding:

An Israeli official told CNN that any suggestion that Netanyahu wanted to maintain a “moderately weakened” Hamas was “utterly false” and that he had acted to weaken Hamas “significantly.”

“He led three powerful military operations against Hamas which killed thousands of terrorists and senior Hamas commanders,” the official said. “Successive Israeli governments before, during and after Netanyahu’s governments enabled money to go to Gaza. Not in order to strengthen Hamas but to prevent a humanitarian crisis by supporting critical infrastructure, including water and sewage systems to prevent the spread of disease and enable daily life.”

Are you suggesting that the proper thing to do was to prevent aid from going to Gaza?

All you've quoted is a bunch of opinion pieces on the two facts I already provided.

Yes, Israel did nothing to shut down mosques and schools in the 1970s and 80s. How could they? The Muslim Brotherhood had denounced violence, and Israel can't just storm random mosques and schools without huge international attention. By 1983, however, they were already arresting Yassin. Yes, in hindsight, they should have acted sooner. Do you have any evidence of Israel actually giving Hamas money?

Just an opinion piece 40 years after the fact that makes vague references to tolerance. The only evidence about Israel actually did that I could find:

[quote]
Yassin and his fledgling movement found an unexpected ally in Israeli authorities. Gaza’s new rulers loosened previous restrictions on activists promoting political Islam; officially registered Mujama al-Islamiya as a charity and later as an association; allowed its members to spread its message and build goodwill by developing a network of local institutions; and stood back when the group battled its rivals: Palestine’s secularists.
/quote]

So they let a Muslim charity, who had denounced violence, be a charity? That's the same as creating Hamas? Israel's constitution guarantees freedom of religion. They have to allow religious groups to register as charities.

Then over 20 years later Hamas takes control of Gaza. Then another 10 years later they allow Qatar to provide funds, which are earmarked for hospitals and other aid. Are you saying aid to Gaza shouldn't happen? The correct course is more restrictions? Israel shouldn't let Qatar fund hospitals? If they do, they are responsible for Hamas?

You're saying the correct approach is to pre-emptively ban Gazans from worshiping or working with charitable groups, even if they denounce violence, as there is a later chance those same groups cold become terrorist groups, and Gazans aren't capable of making those decisions for themselves?

[Bagor]

Man-made famine’ charge against Israel is backed by mounting body of evidence

Prospect of Israel facing war crimes charges has moved closer after UN condemnation of Gaza aid restrictions.


The accusation by the UN and other humanitarians that Israel may be committing a war crime by deliberately starving Gaza’s population is likely to significantly increase the prospect of legal culpability for the country, including at the international court of justice.
Amid reports that the Israel Defense Forces are hiring dozens of lawyers to defend against anticipated cases and legal challenges, the charge that Israel has triggered a “man-made famine” by deliberately obstructing the entry of aid into Gaza is backed by an increasing body of evidence.
Already facing a complaint of genocide from South Africa at the ICJ, the UN’s top court – including an allegation that senior Israeli political officials have incited genocide in public statements – Israel is also the subject of a provisional emergency ruling by the court ordering it to admit life-saving aid to Gaza.


On Wednesday, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, underlined the growing sense of crisis as he warned that all of Gaza’s 2 million people were experiencing “severe levels of acute food insecurity” – the first time an entire population of Gaza has been so classified.
Unlike other issues related to Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas in Gaza, which has claimed more than 30,000 lives and displaced more than 85% of the population amid widespread destruction, the human-made famine occurring in the Palestinian territory appears more straightforward.
While the question of civilian casualties from specific attacks and from the wider policy of bombing will need to be tested against highly contested notions in international humanitarian law such as proportionality and necessity in conflict, the war crime of starvation is simply and clearly defined.
Though Israel denies the allegation, the Rome statute of the international criminal court defines it as the crime of intentionally starving civilians by “depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival” including “wilfully impeding relief supplies”.
Underpinning the allegations is the fact that as a belligerent occupying power in Gaza, Israel is legally responsible under article 55 of the fourth Geneva convention for “ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population”, which requires the occupier to “bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate”.
A central plank of any case that Israel has provoked a famine is the data generated by the UN’s Gaza famine review committee, staffed by international experts on food security, whose findings this week fall under the auspices of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – regarded as the international gold standard in assessing food crises.
Highly technical, often cautious and designed to be neutral in its analysis, the committee – which had already warned of the risk of famine not least in the worst affected region of northern Gaza – has relied on World Food Programme surveys that concludedPalestinians were already facing IPC phase 4 and 5 levels of malnutrition – “emergency” and “catastrophe”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...idence-un-gaza


But then again the article doesn't take into account the robust defence that Israel will be able to present in defence of these allegations.

Originally Posted by Azure

the reality of the situation on the ground where Hamas is intentionally stopping aid from reaching the people.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by blankall

All you've quoted is a bunch of opinion pieces on the two facts I already provided.

There’s specific quotes from former Israeli officials regarding the period before Hamas took power and specific quotes from people like Netanyahu regarding the period after, along with articles that are written by and quoting recognized experts on the subject.

But sure, opinion pieces. You know better than people that were actually involved and people currently running the government. We shouldn’t believe them because blankall is a bigger expert on the intent of the Israeli government than the current Israeli government.

Absolutely genius stuff. Do you honestly believe you know better than current/former Israeli officials on what they did or didn’t do, and what their intent was? Just tell the truth.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

There’s specific quotes from former Israeli officials regarding the period before Hamas took power and specific quotes from people like Netanyahu regarding the period after, along with articles that are written by and quoting recognized experts on the subject.

But sure, opinion pieces. You know better than people that were actually involved and people currently running the government. We shouldn’t believe them because blankall is a bigger expert on the intent of the Israeli government than the current Israeli government.

Absolutely genius stuff. Do you honestly believe you know better than current/former Israeli officials on what they did or didn’t do, and what their intent was? Just tell the truth.

There's out of context single sentence quotes from two people who worked in random positions in the government. Then you have speculation that Netanyahu played Hamas and Fatah against each other, which is far from Israel creating Hamas

Meanwhile the actual facts show that Israel has been consistently at war with Hamas and its founders, since they first found weapons in a mosque, which was before Hamas was founded.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by blankall

There's out of context single sentence quotes from two people who worked in random positions in the government. Then you have speculation that Netanyahu played Hamas and Fatah against each other, which is far from Israel creating Hamas

Meanwhile the actual facts show that Israel has been consistently at war with Hamas and its founders, since they first found weapons in a mosque, which was before Hamas was founded.

There are multiple quotes from people who worked in “random” positions in the government, including totally random and weird titles known as “Prime Minister” (that one is so random, do you know what it means? beats me!).

It’s pretty funny to discount quotes from people directly involved and experts on the subject because you’re busy presenting “actual” facts that are just your own summary, as someone who is not remotely close to an authority on the subject at all and has been caught sharing (and never owning up to) propaganda and misinformation multiple times.

Can you at least answer the question as to whether you actually think you know better than current and former members of the Israeli government? Put your credentials on the table.

[Manhattanboy]

A little satire from the NP on this Saturday morning.

'Yes, there will be peace, Canada ... after we kill everyone': The imagined thoughts of Hamas

'Although I am hesitant to declare common ground with the Zionist occupier, I must agree with them on one point: Canada absolutely sucks as an ally'

This week saw the spectacle of the NDP forcing the House of Commons into a vote on Palestinian statehood. With some of them clad in keffiyeh — a symbol of armed Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule — the party led an ultimately unsuccessful bid to break with 75 years of Canadian foreign affairs precedent and unilaterally recognize the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank as a sovereign state.

They didn’t get what they wanted, but they did get a package of decidedly anti-Israel measures put forward as a substitute. This included a complete suspension of Canadian military exports to Israel, while retaining similar exports to countries such as Qatar or Saudi Arabia.

In Dear Diary, the National Post satirically re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Tristin Hopper takes a journey inside the thoughts of Hamas.

Monday

People ask me all the time, they say, “Hamas, what would be the benefits of Palestinian statehood?” That’s easy! As a sovereign entity we’d be able to take out loans, open diplomatic channels and import arms, all of which we could then use to annihilate the Zionist occupiers post-haste. We could use plundered Zionist resources to destroy the traitorous infidel regimes in Egypt, Jordan and — if there’s time — Saudi Arabia. What’s not to like?

So, while I am of course cheered by Canada’s attempt to secure Palestinian sovereignty, I will note their rather paternalistic claim that this would lead to a “just and lasting peace.” That’s technically true, but we still have to kill, like, 12 to 15 million people to get there.

Tuesday

Actually, the more closely I look at this Canadian statehood push, the more I’m deeply disappointed in our supposed “allies” in the Canadian parliament. I came across the comments of one representative — a Brian Masse — who said rising incidents of Canada antisemitism cannot hope to be curbed unless the current conflict is ended. Wrong: The “current conflict” is not a “cause” of antisemitism, Brian, it is a shining righteous beacon of why antisemitism must be the guiding purpose of all human endeavour.

Also, have you seen what our Canadian supporters look like? Sodomites. Unveiled women acting without the permission of their husbands. Their ranks even include self-described Jews.

In my darkest hours, when I have fleeting doubts about our righteous struggle against Jewish tyranny, I wonder about the uncanny ability of our cause to attract such degeneracy from the decadent West. Oh well; we’ll purge their likes soon enough.

Wednesday

I have a few style notes on the vampire caricature of Benjamin Netanyahu published in Canada’s La Presse. It’s a good start, but far too subtle. The cartoonist should more properly have shown Netanyahu waist deep in blood, possibly on a throne of skulls.

There was a severe deficit of Stars of David; I would have put one on his forehead, his torso, and on the handle of a knife that he was plunging repeatedly into the throat of a crying pregnant woman.

Also, the quality of the art is far too advanced to credibly pass as anti-Zionist propaganda: We generally demand that our artists do all their work on MS Paint.

Thursday

Every day at dusk is typically when Al Jazeera calls to get the day’s civilian casualty figures. I’ll admit, with everything else going on I’ve gotten a bit sloppy with this. Just the other day I answered the phone with “Hello, this is Hamas speaking” … before quickly correcting myself to “Gaza Ministry of Health.”

And we used to at least try and match these figures with the day’s events. Every air strike was good for another 50. For artillery, we’d just do 10 for every minute of the barrage. But honestly, our whole command-and-control is a bit of a mess right now, so for most of this month I’ve just been saying 250 every day — although I will occasionally switch up the proportion of children in the mix so it doesn’t look too made-up.

Friday

Although I am hesitant to declare common ground with the Zionist occupier, I must agree with them on one point: Canada absolutely sucks as an ally. If their idea of support is constant non-binding resolutions, maybe it’d actually be best for us if the Jews kept them

Oh sorry, I forgot, it’s not just resolutions. They also cut off military exports to Israel. Whoopty-doo, we’re going to defeat the IDF because they no longer have access to Canadian-made military equipment. How are they going to take Rafah without armoured snow machines?

And another thing: What’s with their MPs constantly claiming that “Hamas is not Palestine”? Check the polls, bro: We’ve got majority support across Gaza AND the West Bank — and that’s after we started a pointless conflict that got the former territory bombed into oblivion.

I’m not here to give Justin Trudeau electoral advice, but let’s see him turn half of Canada into a war zone while sitting safely in a luxury villa in Qatar built with stolen foreign aid. If he can do all that and still be poised to capture a parliamentary supermajority, then he can lecture us about representative government.

[Fuzz]

WTF is that ####? Good lord. That doesn't help anyone or anything. I assume you didn't post the source link in an attempt to hide whatever muppet shat that out.



And people say the CBC produces #### content...wow.

[Manhattanboy]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

WTF is that ####? Good lord. That doesn't help anyone or anything. I assume you didn't post the source link in an attempt to hide whatever muppet shat that out.



And people say the CBC produces #### content...wow.

Ya agreed on that. Although the line about armoured snow blowers is pretty good. Anyhow, back to our regularly scheduled back and forth...

[_Q_]

This is the most offensive horse#### I've ever seen published in a Canadian paper.

[Manhattanboy]

On a more serious note Evan Dyer of CBC News reports on how the NDP sponsored resolution represents a fundamental shift in Liberal policy that has the potential for serious implications for Canada-Israel relations. Although the NDP did not get the recognition of statehood they wanted they might have achieved much more than pundits originally thought.

NDP's motion on Israel represents a profound shift in Canadian foreign policy, says academic

https://flip.it/-hS8oa

[Fuzz]

Great article, thank you. I don't see anything to be concerned about in there. I feel better about a Canada that is concerned about an ally causing such inhumane suffering and starvation to a people. The "self defense" argument has long since been exhausted. What is happening now is dark, evil, and sad, and made worse because it could be stopped by our "ally" whenever they decide to. Unfortunately it doesn't sound like this is going to make much of a difference, unless our other allies follow our lead. Good for Canada for trying, anyway.

[Fuzz]

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, announced the seizure of 10 square kilometers (3.8 square miles) of Palestinian territory in the West Bank on Friday. The move marks the single largest land seizure by the Israeli government since the 1993 Oslo accords, according to Peace Now, a settlement watchdog group.

“While there are those in Israel and the world who seek to undermine our right over the Judea and Samaria area and the country in general,” Smotrich said Friday, referring to the territory by its biblical name, “we are promoting settlement through hard work and in a strategic manner all over the country.”

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law. Still, Israel has used land orders like the one issued Friday to gain control over 16 percent of Palestinian-controlled lands in the West Bank. The newly seized area includes parcels in the Jordan Valley and between the settlements of Maale Adumim and Keidar.

Friday’s land order is particularly problematic for the prospect of a two-state solution, experts say.

“If Israel confiscates land around Jerusalem, all the way to the Dead Sea, there will be no future for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem,” said Hamza Zubiedat, a land rights activist for the Ramallah-based Ma’an Development Center. “This is where a Palestinian capital was supposed to be located, according to the American and European talks.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...-blinken-visit

Why? Oh, right, they won't stop until they have taken everything 'cause god says it is theirs. ####ing pathetic. The less support Canada provides for this "ally" the better.

[activeStick]

Yup. In another incident that speaks to Israel's belief that everything should be theirs, the Home Affairs minister of Singapore, a country that is well known for actually being able to achieve harmony amongst its religiously diverse population, blasted Israel for a "completely unacceptable" Facebook post.

Embassies may put out statements that the Singapore government disagrees with, but it will intervene if these affect its security, peace and harmony, says Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam.

On Sunday (Mar 24), the official Facebook account of the Israeli embassy published a post containing claims comparing mentions of Israel and Palestine in the Quran.

The post said: "Israel is mentioned 43 times in the Quran. On the other hand, Palestine is not mentioned even once.

"Each and every archeological evidence – maps, documents, coins, link the land of Israel to the Jewish people as the indigenous people of the land."

"The post is wrong at many levels," Mr Shanmugam said. "First, it is insensitive and inappropriate. It carries the risk of undermining our safety, security and harmony in Singapore.

“We look after the safety of everyone in Singapore – majority and minorities" including Jews and Muslims, he said.

Pointing out that Jews in Singapore have "very little concern for their safety and security", he said posts like this can “inflame tensions and can put the Jewish community here at risk".

"The anger from the post can potentially spill over into the physical realm."

The Singapore government has made its views on the Facebook post "very clear" to the Israeli embassy, Mr Shanmugam said.

"It is wrong to selectively point to religious texts to make a political point. Even worse, in this current situation, for the Israeli embassy to make use of the Quran for this purpose."

He also called the post an "astonishing attempt to rewrite history".

"The writer of the post should look at UN resolutions, see if Israel's actions in the past few decades have been consistent with international law, before trying to rewrite history."

Israel said that officially, they were unaware that the post had been made.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/sing...nmugam-4219541

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Great article, thank you. I don't see anything to be concerned about in there. I feel better about a Canada that is concerned about an ally causing such inhumane suffering and starvation to a people. The "self defense" argument has long since been exhausted. What is happening now is dark, evil, and sad, and made worse because it could be stopped by our "ally" whenever they decide to. Unfortunately it doesn't sound like this is going to make much of a difference, unless our other allies follow our lead. Good for Canada for trying, anyway.

Oh please.

Canada is virtue signalling right now, and given our history of selling weapons to other countries killing thousands of innocents, I don't think we can start claiming that we care.

But I guess everyone cares now, because its Israel, whereas when its Yemen or Saudi Arabia, nobody gives a ####.