Reg

That's called diplomatic relations and professionalism, and they all still have to answer to the US-led imperial order, which after all, many of these countries are/were victims of (especially its foreign policy). Same with their reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year. Superficial, doesn't really mean anything. Diplomatic relations and trade continue regardless. Props to Niger for kicking out their French colonizers right now, by the way. Hyperfocusing on specific attacks, and then being like "Welp, that attack killed civilians, let's wrap it up folks. The Palestinian cause is no more, let's just lie down and get steamrolled by Israel with no resistance" is not a rational way of looking at reality and liberation. Things get ugly. Wars of liberation always do. Even the US government has no real qualm against radical Islamism, just look at who they funded and trained in Syria (some of these were fighters that would later become current Hamas members). Saudi Arabia isn't exactly a bastion of "freedom and democracy" either, but that petrodollar talks, especially when it can be utilized against a "former ally" like Iran, which "betrayed" the US in 1979. Washington only cares about maintaining its hegemony. It's not realistic to abandon a cause entirely when attacks like this happen, especially when considering what they have been through and what they are up against. Even more-so when it paints the oppressor as the victim.

A lot of users here suffer from the very Western-esque belief that the whole world, or at least the majority of it, shares their exceptionalist beliefs across the board - or as the US State Department likes to call it, "the international community". That "international community" they are always referring to, along with its so-called "rules-based world order" is typically more-or-less as follows: I have my biases but I don't sit around all day in communist Discord servers/pro-Hamas chats or whatever it is the lot of you think I do. My views are mine and my own, I only speak for myself. Forgive me for the crime of believing that Palestinians are humans and reserve the right to resist their brutal US-sponsored apartheid in all forms. Yes, "in all forms" which includes armed, violent resistance, which is legal under international law as was firmly established under South African apartheid. Did you all think Palestinian liberation was going to be dinner parties? Academic essays? Peace deals with concessions which Israel consistently rejects? Excuse me for not hyperfocusing on specific incidents by your government's adversaries while ignoring massively larger ones by your preferred hegemonic government. Maybe I frequent too many "global South" circles, but just what planet are you all living on? Now compare that map above with the map below, of countries that recognize the state of Palestine: Notice anything? Is it really just the rest of the world outside of the "collective West" that are all wrong here, or do you believe that you are immune to propaganda?

AOC specifically called pro-Palestinian protestors "bigots" and accused them of "callousness" just yesterday. Ilhan Omar is Palestinian-American yet she just rolls over whenever the establishment tells her to. "The Squad" doesn't stand with us.

Pardon my language, but holy sh*t.

Iran has for years been Hamas’ chief benefactor, providing it with tens of millions of dollars, weapons and components smuggled into Gaza, as well as broad technical and ideological support. But Hamas maintains a degree of independence from the Iranian regime. Tehran doesn’t have advisers on the ground in blockaded Gaza, according to former security officials and other regional analysts, and it doesn’t command the group’s activities. This has been my thought as well - placing all blame upon foreign countries for the attack, is to deny Palestine their own agency in this war. Iran has significant influence over Palestinian resistance factions but not direct command over them. Reminds me of a common view I've seen expressed in pro-Russian circles, that Zelensky is always answering to the US and has no real control over the war - I've been highly skeptical of that view, ultimately I believe it does come down to Zelensky and his administration (not to get too off-topic).

Debunked. Israeli state media reporter backtracked on it within hours, IDF spox admitted that they had no confirmation that this had occurred and no images have surfaced. Original source of the story was "some soldiers told me it happened". Wartime propaganda 101. "Saddam's troops throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait"; "Saddam has WMDs"; "Gaddafi issued viagra to his troops to rape women"; "Ghost of Kiev", etc. all over again. Western media picks up on it without verification and spreads it en masse without accountability, increased public support for war successfully manufactured overnight.

To focus on and call out "Israel's reaction" to the Hamas attacks is to frame Israel as the victim (and conveniently fit perfectly into the US State Department's agenda) - and, by no stretch of the imagination, is Israel a victim. This didn't all just begin on Saturday because "Palestinians just hate the Jews and want to exterminate them", there is over 70 years of framework preceding the current situation, and ages of British colonialism even before that which indirectly led to this entire scenario. You have apartheid, as was done previously in South Africa but on an even greater scale and brutality. The "West", aligned with Israel, prefers to have Palestinians living under apartheid just die quietly, outside of the view of the cameras, with little to no resistance. Atrocities are routinely committed by the oppressor, even after the "Never Again" of WWII - which apparently only meant "Never Again to us, but it's okay if we do it to others". Western nations stay completely silent every time, only occasionally sounding off with the routine "We stand with Israel" when tensions become high enough and geopolitical ambitions are shuffled around. Palestinians, whom are also human beings with rights (something the US government still officially refuses to acknowledge to this day) are not all going to perish quietly when constantly pushed to the brink and deprived of their humanity - some of these Palestinians may also die, but not without taking innocents with them. We Americans would do the same, as would any group of humans anywhere around the world when subjugated and abandoned this way, especially for an excessively long period of time. Now, imagine the sheer audacity and complacency of Israel, to believe that its own brutally oppressive existence can be perfectly normal, that you can hold festivals just outside of the open-air concentration camps you keep the oppressed locked in, and just live happy lives like other countries like nothing is happening. The sheer audacity of such thinking. Israel will never know a normal, peaceful existence as long as its existence is founded upon the brutal oppression of millions within its own borders, bankrolled by a conveniently-silent hegemonic government, thousands of miles away. The United States, its obedient puppet governments across western Europe, and its favorite apartheid lapdog in the Middle East - which is really a neocolonial nuclear-armed settler project masquerading as a democracy, Israel - all prefer Palestinians to die under apartheid in agony, as long as it is done quietly. Apartheid begets violence. Israel's violent existence will never be normal, and that violence will inevitably come back to it, claiming innocents. Lesson: If you don't want to bring out the extremes of humanity and have that inevitable horror come back to you, don't do apartheid. In a more easily-understandable way of saying, remember how the United States since the end of WWII has routinely exported a culture of violence across the globe - and then Americans are flabbergasted when that very same violence manifests itself domestically at home (mainly in the form of gun violence and mental illness). Remember, the United States officially had Nelson Mandela listed as a terrorist until 2008. This isn't a "both sides" issue. Israel is not the victim. Only American propaganda could work so well as to convince millions of its own citizens (as well as those of Washington's vassal states in Europe and beyond) that the oppressor, the genocider, is actually the one being genocided while the oppressed are the genociders. This kind of Twitter-style pearl-clutching "but you have to condemn Hamas" rhetoric doesn't work in this argument (BBC tried the same thing on Jeremy Corbyn just days ago) - I'm not concerned with superficial optics or having a "bad look". Why is it that when oppressed people fight back against their oppressors, it is only viewed as terrorism when Palestinians do it? Didn't the collective West just spend a year-and-a-half lecturing us about how good it was that Ukraine was fighting back against a Russian invasion, and that we need to supply them with all of our weapons and finances? Could it possibly be that the West, led by Washington in particular, is only looking after its own hegemonic interests, will spend countless lives of foreigners (and eventually America's own poorer citizens) to achieve capital gains and enhance their own wealth and influence to that end? If you're inconvenient and an obstacle to this agenda, you are now no longer a "freedom fighter' but now a "terrorist"... A tl;dr summary (put far more eloquently than I could) in a three minute video:

Interesting to see that the whole "anti-woke" right-wing in the US is suddenly using that precise "woke identity politic" state of mind to defend Israel and its crimes against humanity at any cost, now that it has suddenly become politically convenient for them. They were never anti-war, they were only anti-Ukraine war because they had made it a partisan issue within the United States political landscape. The "anti-woke" agenda was always largely a cover for racism and discrimination against minority groups. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights calling Israel out now for blatantly violating international law. Getting harder and harder for anyone to defend Israel's brutal apartheid outside of the most staunchly pro-Zionist Western circles (particularly in government). The soft "Maybe Israel shouldn't be doing X" argument is meaningless because they are already doing it and have been for some time, this is and has been thoroughly documented, filmed, and archived. Reports that Egypt is sending a massive humanitarian convoy towards its border with Gaza, against Israeli demands.

This article appears to have been published just hours before or possibly during the exact start of Operation al-Aqsa Flood on October 7 (possibly unbeknownst to the editor). Despite Iran's extensive influence on Palestinian resistance groups, Iran is not mentioned even once in the article. Frustration bubbles among Palestinians over Israeli-Saudi normalization - Al-Monitor

Heat backed off just after noon today, after peaking at 91F. All of the previous five days were 97-99F.

An actual war crime in progress.

Outright genocidal rhetoric from not only the Israelis but also their American enablers in recent days. Decades of insanely pro-Zionist media dehumanization of Palestinians has convinced millions of Americans that Palestinians are not humans and deserve what they get. Notice the complete silence on the total blockade on Gaza that Israel just announced - intentionally starving millions of Palestinians trapped there of food, water, and medical aid. This view is also reflected in the posts of some users here in this forum. Nothing but silence. Never forget these people.

Day six of this annoying backslap from Summer.