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Trump, breaking with Netanyahu, acknowledges ‘real starvation’ in Gaza. Reddit discussion.
This makes him the first right winger I've seen say anything about starvation after something happened recently that made lots of places start talking about it, maybe the move to GHF food distribution? I can't really trust the UN when they talk about it, since they may have been still pissed that Israel cut UNRWA out, plus I heard it was only two dedicated Gaza writers putting out statements of that kind. I can't really trust leftists when they post about it, because they fail to show me their homework and seem to argue a very motivated stance. But Trump talking about it... I don't know about that either. He has spoken off the cuff before. But it brings me to ask: how bad is it? What footage did he see and is it reflected in the data?
Supposing that there is starvation: is that Israel's intention? What is Israel's strategy going forward? I thought that making camps to move civilians into was a good idea, and then once everyone's out, painstakingly clear the whole place, but I think that the international community wouldn't accept that because it's technically ethnic cleansing. There isn't actually anything the international community would be satisfied by except for total ceasefire and return to October 6th. But I don't actually know what the intention is, is the intention to draw Hamas out of hiding to get to the food somehow? I have a hard time discerning what is true about the war and what isn't.
Eh, they're not "release the hostages" starving yet.
Are the Israeli lives more important than the lives of the Gazan children or not?
Because at this point the Israelis are holding the children hostage too.
If you are the Israeli government, then yes, the lives of your citizens are more important than the lives of an adversary. That's what it means to be a nation-state.
Same for the US. I would expect the American government to prioritize the lives of Americans held abroad above the lives of citizens of enemy - or even of third party neutral - countries.
Sorry, newborn baby, you are an immediate threat to this poor defenceless country and have to be crushed before you can attack it. But it's okay, that doctor is really a secret Hamas plant and he's lying about it all.
So is this British doctor. Everybody is lying, it's all Hamas propaganda, and Israel is totally blameless and only wants the chance to create a nation where Arabs, Christians, Jews, secular or whomever you are, wherever you are from, are all equal citizens and cherished by the nation as its people.
Wow, it really sounds like that doctor should call for Hamas to surrender. Unconditionally, even. Has he?
Or is he a regular member of his death cult, like the old women in Palestine who weep with joy that their children were killed trying to murder Jews?
I feel like, especially in this community of mostly atheistic high decouplers, that everyone posting on this topic should have to specify if they grasp the concept of what true belief in a warrior's afterlife would entail.
You know, right now I'm listening to the news on the radio and it's another interview with someone about what is happening in Gaza.
I have two options:
(1) Everyone in the world is a lying liar who loves Hamas and wants to obliterate Israel. There is no starvation, no Israeli blockades, and the hard-core Zionists who want an ethnically Jewish state for an ethnically Jewish people are just lined up waiting with bouquets and gift baskets to hand over to the Palestinians once they take control of Gaza.
(2) Maybe, just possibly maybe, the IDF are fudging the truth about what they are doing and the Israeli government is being hands-off in hopes that the problem will solve itself - no need for a Palestinian state when there are no more Palestinians (be that 'encouraged forcefully to emigrate to other countries or dead of famine and disease').
I think Hamas are terrible and should disappear if at all possible. But when people are dying, I don't give a flying fuck about their politics. Even the most obnoxious hair-dyed queer tranny activist, if they were literally starving to death, I'd say "help them" and not "hur-dur, they should have picked the right side in the political fight". Stop people dying of starvation first, worry about rooting out the terrorists second.
What I'm reading on here is awfully like all the commentary about problems in red states, with gleeful gloating about "natural disaster/economic crash serves them right for voting for Trump".
You are kinder than many people here.
Both things can be true. Hamas apologists can be lying about the extent of hunger currently and the actual risk of famine, and the IDF can be fudging the truth and the Israeli government might be foot-dragging food aid in hopes that hunger will put more pressure on Hamas and weaken resistance.
I'm skeptical that Israel's plan is literally to have hundreds of thousands of dead bodies littering Gaza as they die of starvation.
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Is it really such a stretch for people in this community to believe that a collection of NGOs staffed by the usual suspects who are the source of 100% of the information coming out of gaza might bend facts a bit?
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No, everyone who is in your curated source of news is a lying liar who loves Hamas and wants to obliterate Israel. Or is dumb as dirt and don't realize they're patsies for same.
That's not how war works, or ever has.
Reporters. Doctors. Independent charities. People on the ground. All lying shills for Hamas, while the saintly IDF forces are just misunderstood bunnies.
My news isn't curated, unless by that you mean "someone turns on the radio set to the national broadcaster station at work".
I'll say this for present day Israel, they've really successfully ridden the "any breath of criticism is anti-Semitism, are you a Nazi who wants to Holocaust us all over again?" wagon to get people blindly on their side.
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That's a lot of words to not specify if you've ever spent even 30 seconds considering the rammifications of a sincere belief in a warrior afterlife paradise.
On a very related note, the NYT just walked back their expose on the dramatic starving kid. Apparently they never bothered to check any of the details, just believed what his mother said at face value. In the new reporting he "suffers from a “muscle disorder” for which he receives specialized nutrition and physical therapy." and has “cerebral palsy, hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder”.
And yet you believe everything they say, even though they blatantly lie all the time and have for decades. Good grief man, look at the extreme disparity between those two strawmen you constructed up there.
No, it's not. Military action you deliberately provoked by acting like Dark Eldar is not "bad luck" now matter how much mindkilled Manichaens want to think it is.
I wonder if this is related to the Muslim penchant for cousin marriage.
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No, I don't believe what Hamas says, because it's not Hamas saying it. We very much have Israeli government sources saying stuff. We also, since I don't live in America, have voices from other parts of the world saying things.
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Correct, this is what a democratic theory of sovereignty means and has always meant since the French revolution at least. If the people are responsible for empowering their government, then if a country aggresses, the people are responsible for that too.
If you don't want your people to suffer the consequences of war, don't start one. It's really not complicated.
May you all live under the same conditions as the benign and beneficent rule of the IDF. After all, you're not trouble-makers so you'll be fine, won't you?
I suddenly feel a need for the cursing psalms.
Psalm 10
10 Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
2 In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.
3 For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
and the one greedy for gain curses[a] and renounces the Lord.
4 In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
5 His ways prosper at all times;
your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
as for all his foes, he puffs at them.
6 He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”
7 His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
8 He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
9 he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
10 The helpless are crushed, sink down,
and fall by his might.
11 He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”
12 Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
13 Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
14 But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
16 The Lord is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
17 O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
18 to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
I'm not ruled or mistreated by the IDF if I'm not an eternally intransigent and violent Palestinian - or any one else for that matter.
I'd expect somebody to apply a boot to my throat if I acted up a fraction of what Palestine does, regardless of my moral certitude and the justness of my cause.
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There are no American hostages being held by Hamas:
https://www.ajc.org/news/meet-the-two-american-hostages-still-held-by-hamas
There appears to be two American citizens who were fighting in the Israeli military who were killed on October 7th.
The last living American hostage was released in may of 2025, over a year and a half after being taken. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/05/12/middleeast/israel-hamas-edan-alexander-release-intl
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That isn’t the claim they’re making.
The United States supports Israel militarily. There are no US hostages being held. It is not in the interest of the United States to support the starvation of gazan children regardless of how many Israeli hostages Hamas allegedly has.
The comment was making an analogy that if what happened to Israel on October 7 had happened to America (eg across the Mexican border), the US would react a certain way. I’m not sure how this relates to American hostages in Gaza.
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