Evil Penevil

At keast that estimate is lower than an earlier one of 186,000 published in The Lancet on July 20, 2024, for the same time period as the article above. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext#

Yes, indeed it does. For about 1,500 years (100 CE to 1600 CE) religion had been the dominant issue in Europe and the Middle East. But the English Reformation under Henry VIII and the broader Protestant Reformation inspired by Martin Luther had broken the hold of the Catholic Church and established the supremacy of secular law and government over religious practice. The American and French Revolutions cemented the idea that religion had become a matter of individual conscience and not secular duty. The separation of church and state is what today distinguishes Western democracies from Muslim states. In the West, people can choose to make religion a central part of their lives, but they are not forced to. In Muslim states, Sharia law, based on the Quran and hadiths, still has a huge influence on secular law and daily life. What Islam needs is a sweeping reformation and modernization that makes secular law superior to religious scripture.

If you are referring to Benjamin Netanyahu, he was born in Tel Aviv in 1949, after the establsihment of the state of Israel. His mother had been born near Tel Aviv in 1912 when the area belonged to the Ottoman Empire. Some of his mother's relatives had lived in what would become Israel since the 1870s. His father had been born in Warsaw in 1910, but immigrated at the age of 10 with his family to Mandatory Palestine in1920. To call Netnyahu a "Polish Jew" is absurd. The Polish government wouldn't recognize him as a citizen. Under Polish law, Netanyahu is not entitled to Polish citizenship because his father was born in Warsaw over 100 years ago and lived there for 10 years as a child. @NorthernRyland Would you say former President Barack Obama is Kenyan because his father was born in Kenya? Was the most famous Palestian leader actually Egyptian because Yasser Arafat was born in Cairo?

Let me rephrase my question: do you (or any other BM) dispute that Shamsud Din Jabbar's attack in New Orleans is an example of what is meant with the slogan used by many pro-Palestian groups, "Globalize the Intifada?"

On the contrary. Jabbar does indeed seem to have "globalized the Intifada." His deadly attack on random individuals who were celebrating New Year's Eve is very similar to the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival on Oct. 7. What else can "globalize the Intifada" mean, since the Intifada is merely a series of terrorist attacks?

It will be highly interesting to see if Jabbar has any connection to one of the U.S. pro-Palestinian groups. Israeli diplomats: Ideology of NYC ‘intifada’ march connected to New Orleans attack "This is the grim reality of the 'globalization of the Intifada' they called for. It's terror, pure and simple." https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-835926

It's possible Young's announcement that he would skip Glastonbury was part of a bargaining strategy. He doesn't like his live performances to be broadcast and when he appeared at Glastonbury in 2009 , he only allowed the BBC to livestream five songs from a two-hourr set. From the BBC: Neil Young reverses his Glastonbury 'boycott' https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrwvgj0149o

No, it's a description of "distorting the truth by presenting Hamas' propaganda."

I'll flip the two final sentences back at you: this is clearly NOT genocide by any definition of the word. To argue otherwise means you don't understand what genocide actually involves. I wrote a lengthy reply on this issue in another thread (https://aseannow.com/topic/1345458-amnesty-international-its-a-genocide-in-gaza/page/6/#findComment-19464174), complete with sources and links. Short answer is it can't be genocide because: 1) the population of Gaza increased in 2023 and 2024, despite all the deaths from military action; 2) the number of deaths in the 15 months of the conflict represents 1% to 2% of the pre-conflict population of Gaza. The exact percentage depends on what figures are used for the population of Gaza and whether the death toll includes combatants as well as non-combatants. That percentage is far below the death toll in any other conflict accurately termed a genocide; and 3) Israel has no intent to eliminate the Palestinian people but only to defend Israelis against terrorist attacks. The number of casualties is inflated by Hamas combatants hiding among civilians and using civilian facilities such as schools, hospitals, aprtment buildings, etc. for military purposes. Through the years, Israel fought in several "conventional" wars, such as the Suez Crisis (October 1956); Six-Day War (June 1967); War of Attrition (1967–1970); and Yom Kippur War (October 1973). During these conflicts, the IDF inflicted very few casualties on civilians, Palestinians or othwerwise. Because the current conflict takes place in a densely populated urban environment, it's much more dificult for IDF to avoid civilian casualties.

Some details about Shamsud Din Jabbar in the article below. Pres. Biden said Jabbar had posted videos stating he was inspired by ISIS, but that's a long way from being a member of ISIS. The FBI has not released details of the social media posts, nor has any other information emerged publicly to indicate Jabbar had any ties to ISIS other than a source of inspiration. Army record, DUI, financial trouble: What we know about suspect in New Orleans attack The man who the FBI says drove a truck into a crowd of revelers celebrating New Year's in the French Quarter of New Orleans on Wednesday served in the U.S. Army for over a decade before he obtained a lucrative job at a global accounting firm and encountered financial trouble. ... President Joe Biden on Wednesday said the suspect posted videos on social media shortly before the attack saying he was inspired by ISIS and had expressed "a desire to kill." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/01/02/new-orleans-attack-suspect-shamsud-din-jabbar/77396433007/

The brother of the accused terrorist says Shamsud Din Jabbar converted to Islam at a young age. Nearly two-thirds of Arab-Americans are Christian and only about 25% are Muslim. The Arabs who emigrated to the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th century were almost all Christians fleeing oppression in the Ottoman Empire. I haven't seen any infomation in the Internet news reports about Shamsud Din Jabbar's ethnic background beyond Arab. ‘No Terrorist to Me’: Relatives and Friends Saw Few Signs Before Attack The man identified as the suspect in the New Year’s Day terror attack in New Orleans served in the U.S. military, worked at Deloitte and grew increasingly devout. An excerpt from the The New York Times' article: Mr. Jabbar’s brother, Abdur Jabbar, 24, said in an interview in Beaumont, Texas, where the brothers grew up, that they last spoke two weeks ago and that his brother did not mention any plans or a desire to go to New Orleans. He said that they had been brought up Christian but that his brother had long ago converted to Islam. “As far as I know he was a Muslim for most of his life,” said the younger Mr. Jabbar. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/01/us/suspect-new-orleans-texan-isis-flag.html

@bannork What is it you dispute about the evidence which the IDF provided in the links in the post by @Bkk Brian? Why don't you find the graphic evidence in the various links to be credible?

Humanity may never forget, but some of the pro-Palestinian posters in this thread have short memories indeed.

Leaven

This thread keeps going round and round, but I think the main argument went flat several pages ago.

Both the helium balloon and the bird are subject to gravity, but they have different means (buoyancy vs lift) of (temporarily) overcoming gravity.

It overcomes gravity. The bird's wings (or the engine of a plane) generate the power to create lift. A helium balloon rises because of buoyancy, which is very different from lift. On the general topic, take a look here: 5 ways we can prove Earth is round, not flat Astronomers have known that Earth is a globe for thousands of years, and there are tested methods to prove this is the case. https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/earth-is-round-not-flat

If you look at the page that deals with the Israel-Hamas war on the Web site of the Committee to Protect Journalists, you'll see that of the "141 Journalists and Media Workers Killed in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Lebanon between 2023 and 2024 / Motive Confirmed or Unconfirmed," omly ONE worked for a real media outlet (a cameraman for Reuters killed by an artillery shell in Lebanon). The others were members of Hamas or terrorist groups associated with Hamas. They weren't journalists in the sense the word is commonly used in the West. Virtually all the Palestinians who were killed were propagandists for terror organizations and thereforegitimate targets. Terrorist groups don't have civilian members. https://cpj.org/data/killed/all/status=Killed&motiveConfirmed[]=Confirmed&motiveUnconfirmed[]=Unconfirmed&type[]=Journalist&type[]=Media Worker&cc_fips[]=IS&cc_fips[]=LE&start_year=2023&end_year=2024&group_by=year

The Jordan Williams incident was Black-on-Black. No one in the Black community felt sorry for the guy who was stabbed. There was no community pressure to have Williams charged.

Lakes are such small bodies of water in terms of mass that gravity has no measurable effect, except in Lake Superior and Lake Michigan-Huron, where the tide is only a matter of inches. Birds use their wings to generate lift, which overcomes gravity and allows them to fly. There nothing about the lack of tides in lakes or the ability of birds to fly that contradicts the laws of nature regarding gravity. In modern times, the people who professed belief in a flat earth were mostly Christian fundamentalists who accepted the literal truth of the Bible. Revelation 7:1 reads in part, "After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth... ." Since the Bible said the earth had corners, it couldn't be spheroid in shape, the fundamentalists reasoned. Other "flat earthers" have attempted to irritate "scientific minds" with a spurious argument. It's a debate that is not really meant to be taken seriously.

A deeply troubling answer to a serious question. Israelis have nowhere else to go, considering 80% of the current Jewish population of Israel was born in Israel. https://www.cbs.gov.il/he/mediarelease/DocLib/2024/141/11_24_141e.pdf Under international law, the Jews born in Israel have nowhere else to go. Your answer implies no other country but the U.S. wants Israeli Jews, which in fact is close to the historical record of expulsion of Jews fom various countries throughout the centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsions_and_exoduses_of_Jews It's not at all strange. In Gaza and the West Bank, Israeli Jews are defending themselves against vicious opponents who seek to destroy them and their country. Jews will no longer walk quietly to their annihilation, as Hamas and Israel's other enemies have learned.

Yup, the Daniel Penny effect has been given as a reason why bystanders were unwilling to aid the woman. But long before Daniel Penny's case attracted so much attention, New Yorkers had been hesitant to render any help to victims of subway crime. Basically, they fear the consquences of getting involved in a criminal matter. Critics say bystanders stood by while illegal migrant allegedly burned woman to death on NYC subway: ‘Daniel Penny effect’ “Nobody came to her aid,” said Guardian Angels founder and community activist Curtis Sliwa. “There’s no doubt that people don’t want to get involved. It’s the Daniel Penny factor. It’s frozen people. They’re saying to themselves: ‘I don’t want to get jammed up like Penny. “People should have been running over to the woman on fire. They did nothing. They said nothing,” Sliwa said, calling the reluctance of bystanders to intervene “the Daniel Penny effect.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/critics-bystanders-stood-while-illegal-231041397.html

It's on YouTube for free as well. Alastair Sim is a great actor, one of the best.

I actually found the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge to be much more dominant in Pattaya than in the U.S. I saw hundreds of Scrooges sitting in bars and restaurants with their bowls of gruel every night, not just Christmas Eve. They went around muttering "Bah! Humbug!" about everything connected with Thailand. Their message to the Tiny Thai Girls is always the same, even though the girls cheerfully say . 'Buddha bless us, every one!" If you haven't read it, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol gives great insight into the spirit of Christmas in the West, but the state of relations between resident Pattaya ex-pats and Thais. The Pattaya Scrooges will never be visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present or future, as these ghosts consider Pattaya's numerous Scrooges to be hopeless cases, doomed to wander bound with the chains of stinginess they forged in life. BTW, the 1951 version of Scrooge with Alastair Sim is an excellent Christmas movie, maybe the best.

To try to bring this thread back on topic, I'm posting figures on the number of deaths since 2008 due to the conflict in what's called "the occupied Palestinian territory." The figures come from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). not exactly a source friendly towards Israel. The figures don't include deaths in the Gaza Strip from the current conflict that began on Oct. 7, 2023, because OCHA says such figures haven't yet been verified. https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties Prior to the Oct. 7 attacks, the "occupied Palestine territory" had a total population of roughly 5.3 million, with 2.1 million on the Gaza Strip. The 7,093 fatalities from 2008 through 2024 cover both Palestinian combatants and non-combatants who died in the conflict. That's only 0.18% of the population, with males over 18 suffering 68% of the deaths. OCHA considers anyone under 18 to be a "boy" or "girl." Women and girls made up about 13% of those killed. That doesn't look like much of a genocide, even when you add in the 45,000 killed since Oct. 7, 2023. The expanded number would be 0.98%, or just under 1%. In the Holocaust, two-thirds of Europe's Jews (6 million out of 9 mllion) were murdered. In Cambodia under Pol Pot, at least 25% and may 33% of the country's population died. About half the Tutsi population of Rwanda died in the Rwandan Genocide. From Sudan to the Democratic Republic of Congo, many, many millions of Africans have died in various conflicts over the past 30 to 50 years. Often the goal of the African conflicts has been truly genocidal, the elimination of a rival tribe or ethnic group. Those are real genocides in terms of numbers killed and the intent to wipe out certain groups of people. What has happened in Gaza comes nowhere near a true genocide. A lot of Palestinian lives have been lost, but that is collateral damage from warfare in a high-density urban environment coupled with Hamas' use of civilians as human shields. Also according to the OCHA figures, Palestinian fatalities surged in the years the conflict with the IDF flared. Otherwise, the annual death count was far lower. In most years, the number of homicides in large U.S. cities were higher than deaths due to conflict in Gaza and the West Bank. For example, 108 Palestinians were killed in the conflict in 2016, while 778 people were victims of homicide in Chicago that year. Chicago has a population of 2.75 million. No one talks about genocide in Chicago or any other U.S. city. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/12/16/chicago-homicides-in-2024-5-people-slain-heres-how-that-compares-with-previous-years/ One final point: The population of the Gaza Strip will grow about 1.0% in 2024, according to the Palestinian Central Statistics Bureau. "Based on the data, the estimated growth rate in Gaza Strip for 2023 will decrease from about 2.7%, according to PCBS estimates for 2023, to only about 1% during 2024," the PCBS stated. Prior to 2023, Palestinian women had a significantly higher feretility rate than their Israeli counterparts. https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/Press_En_WPD2024E.pdf It's difficult to claim genocide is taking place when the population is still growing, even if the growth rate has slowed significantly. In all previous genocides, the birth rate of the victimized population fell sharply. The notion that Palestinians have been subjected to genocide for many years is nonsense with no support in reality.