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PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   33682 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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We have a few confessions from soldiers about this.

Three days ago in the Hebrew language Haaretz (translated)

For Bani, a sniper in the Nahal Brigade, changing roles is no longer enough. The wound he describes is too deep, too profound. "It started about two months ago," he testifies. "Every day, we have the same mission: securing humanitarian aid in the northern Gaza Strip." His day, and that of his comrades, begins at 3:30 a.m. Accompanied by drones and armored forces, they set up a sniper position and wait. According to him, between 7:30 and 8:30, the trucks arrive and start unloading their contents. Meanwhile, the residents try to advance to secure a good spot in line, but there's a boundary they don't notice. "A line that, if they cross it, I'm allowed to shoot them," Bani explains. "It's like a game of cat and mouse. They try to approach from different routes, and I'm there with the sniper rifle, with officers shouting at me, 'Take them down, take them down! I fire 50-60 rounds every day, I stopped counting kills. I have no idea how many l've killed, a lot. Children."

Regarding the “boundary they don’t notice”, these may be invisible or only known to the IDF soldiers:

Establishing an invisible “security perimeter” then shooting civilians who cross it has become common practice in Gaza, Israeli soldiers have testified. When asked how his squad decided whether to shoot unarmed Palestinians, Raab said: “Its a question of distance. There is a line that we define. They don’t know where this line is, but we do.”

Raab quoted in the above is an American-Israel dual citizen who was tricked by a journalist into confessing to the killing of a family in Gaza, though not at a food distribution site. He shot an unarmed man, the man’s brother who went to retrieve his body, then the father who went to retrieve the bodies of his sons. This example is unusual in that an international team of journalists pursued all the evidence they could on this one particular instance over five months. So we have a confession, a video of the killing, interviews with witnesses and survivors and the family, death records, and geolocations.

More testimonials from soldiers at the aid sites includes

It's a killing field," one soldier said. "Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire." The soldier added, "We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces." According to him, "I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish – the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light".

[a different testimony] In one incident, the soldier was instructed to fire a shell toward a crowd gathered near the coastline. "Technically, it's supposed to be warning fire – either to push people back or stop them from advancing," he said. "But lately, firing shells has just become standard practice. Every time we fire, there are casualties and deaths, and when someone asks why a shell is necessary, there's never a good answer. Sometimes, merely asking the question annoys the commanders." In that case, some people began to flee after the shell was fired, and according to the soldier, other forces subsequently opened fire on them. "If it's meant to be a warning shot, and we see them running back to Gaza, why shoot at them?" he asked. "Sometimes we're told they're still hiding, and we need to fire in their direction because they haven't left. But it's obvious they can't leave if the moment they get up and run, we open fire." The soldier said this has become routine. "You know it's not right. You feel it's not right – that the commanders here are taking the law into their own hands. But Gaza is a parallel universe. You move on quickly. The truth is, most people don't even stop to think about it."

[a different testimony] "I was at a similar event. From what we heard, more than ten people were killed there," said another senior reserve officer commanding forces in the area. "When we asked why they opened fire, we were told it was an order from above and that the civilians had posed a threat to the troops. I can say with certainty that the people were not close to the forces and did not endanger them. It was pointless – they were just killed, for nothing. This thing called killing innocent people – it's been normalized. We were constantly told there are no noncombatants in Gaza, and apparently that message sank in among the troops."

[a different testimony] They talk about using artillery on a junction full of civilians as if it's normal," said a military source who attended the meeting. "An entire conversation about whether it's right or wrong to use artillery, without even asking why that weapon was needed in the first place. What concerns everyone is whether it'll hurt our legitimacy to keep operating in Gaza. The moral aspect is practically nonexistent. No one stops to ask why dozens of civilians looking for food are being killed every day." "The fact that live fire is directed at a civilian population – whether with artillery, tanks, snipers, or drones – goes against everything the army is supposed to stand for," he said, criticizing the decisions made on the ground. "Why are people collecting food being killed just because they stepped out of line, or because some commander doesn't like that they're cutting in? Why have we reached a point where a teenager is willing to risk his life just to pull a sack of rice off a truck? And that's who we're firing artillery at?"

[a different testimony] “The claim that these are isolated cases doesn't align with incidents in which grenades were dropped from the air and mortars and artillery were fired at civilians," said one legal official. "This isn't about a few people being killed – we're talking about dozens of casualties every day."

Then of course you have the doctor testimonials. A popular Dutch newspaper just did a big investigation on this last week:

Each time a food distribution point opens, doctors in the hospitals see dozens of civilians arriving with gunshot wounds. Most are boys—teenagers and young adults. They are brought in large groups at once on donkey carts. Some still carry empty food bags. Several doctors notice a pattern in the injuries. The targeted body part differs each day, as if it’s coordinated work, they suggest.

They’re boys who try to storm the food distribution sites. Killing those who try to steal food distributed in times of war and famine has happened for thousands of years, it’s critical to preventing both fatal crowd crushes (which have killed dozens or hundreds regularly at aid distribution sites across Africa and the Middle East for many decades) and, even more importantly, to preventing young men and teenage boys from taking all the food, which they’re very liable to do and which leaves nothing for the elderly, women and young children.

As the Dutch example says,

Most are boys—teenagers and young adults.

No random sample of the population, especially when in global times of famine and in refugee camp situations women tend to be disproportionately responsible for food collection.

You have a hostile, deeply dysgenic population that has repeatedly decided to commit suicide-by-IDF for 70 years, where young boys are raised from toddlerhood to believe that being martyred by an Israeli bullet is the highest calling and achievement in life. They have no fear, it’s almost impressive. This is an ethnoreligious (ethno because it doesn’t really encompass all practicing Muslims) ideology devoted to the afterlife absolutely, far moreso than any other widely practiced Abrahamic denomination. Even millenarian Christian movements often have a love for life.

If it sounds very early 2000s hitchens atheist boomerish to describe the worldview of a lot of deeply committed Palestinian Sunni ethnonationalists as a “death cult” then so be it, but there is truth to it. Most children early on develop the ability to respond to positive or negative stimulus. Animals like horses and dogs are trained with gentle(ish) physical feedback, with punishment and reward. If you’re beaten and beaten for 75 years you might just surrender - not even to a terrible, North Korean or Cuban or Yemeni QOL but to a quality of life that is still much better than the regional average for your tribal cousins (which was the life most Palestinians had before the borders were closed or tightened after the last intifada; Israel had plenty of need for decently paid blue collar labor). Gazans don’t. They just keep fighting.

In a way, the war on Gaza is kind of like the battle against psycho drug addict violent homeless people like Decarlos Brown. Is rehabilitation possible? Is “justice reform” possible? When someone has 15+ convictions and just keeps on crusading against advanced civilization, well, at some point you have to accept that they have no intention of living peacefully. Unlike countless peoples, including the Jews for millennia for that matter, the Gazans are not content to live as vassals or dhimmis. Perhaps there is honor in that, but there are consequences to it too. So be it.

There’s no compelling evidence that they are trying to steal food or storm the sites. In some cases they are fired upon 800 meters away from a site. In other cases they are fired upon when waiting in line too early. The state of the aid distribution, if anything, make stampedes and other risks more likely, which the UN and aid groups have warned about since the start of it (even before that). The examples of stampedes which you link occurred inside buildings and in small alleys, and there’s no excuse for a stampede to occur in an open area with almost no remaining building. Additionally, the use of live rounds makes no sense when dealing with an emaciated unarmed crowd so far away, when even a paintball gun would do a better job both deterring any unwanted crowd movement and also in delineating the desired passage for the population.

The reason boys collect the aid might be because the IDF frequently shoots civilians. From the UN Human Right’s Council report on the 16th:

Importantly, the Commission has found that children have been directly targeted in various ways by the Israeli security forces since 7 October 2023, including during evacuations, at shelters, and more recently at GHF distribution sites. Medical professionals told the Commission that they have treated children with direct gunshot and sniper wounds, often to the head and abdomen, indicating that the Israeli security forces have intentionally targeted children during their military operations in Gaza. In relation to the attacks along the evacuation routes and within designated safe areas, the Commission found that the Israeli security forces had clear knowledge of the presence of Palestinian civilians, including children. Nevertheless, Israeli security forces shot at and killed civilians, including children who were holding makeshift white flags. Some children, including toddlers, were shot in the head by snipers.

The reason boys collect the aid might be because the IDF frequently shoots civilians.

An unarmed man is no more bullet resistant than an unarmed woman, so this is a strange argument. If the Gazans had surrendered, the only IDF casualties would be due to unexploded ordnance and friendly fire. Clearly given ongoing military casualties and regular firefights this is not the case, therefore the Gazans have not yet surrendered. If you look at footage of food distribution lines in violent conflict zones anywhere else in the world (esp in places like East Africa) there are almost always substantial numbers of women. The highly disproportionate number of fighting age male casualties in the ‘peaceful’ aid lines is very telling in this regard.

I don’t trust the UN when they say being against mass immigration to Europe is Dacian, so why should I trust them when they say that everyone shot outside these aid centers is an innocent lamb, especially when there have been countless firefights outside them since the invasion of Gaza began in 2023.

An unarmed man is no more bullet resistant than an unarmed woman

He is more expendable though.

Only in a polygamous society which I'm not sure is very common in Gaza.

Historically, marriage to cousins was once common. Polygamous marriages are rare among Muslim Palestinians, except among some Bedouin communities. As Palestine does not have a civil marriage option, marriage law follows the religious faith of the couple.

Can Palestinian widows not remarry?

You would still only have as many pregnant women as there are men, making men a bottleneck to reproduction the same as women.

You can just stretch the definition of men, this isn't a wealthy industrialized society where you need long job-training for a man to have the economic means to marry. Hamas enlistment is the only game in town and they'll take 13 year old boys.

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