What I Saw Was "Unfathomable": Doctor Who Worked in Gaza Speaks Out Against U.S. Arming of Israel

[Uncle Joe]

A group of American doctors who treated patients in Gaza held a press conference in Chicago on Tuesday to describe the suffering they saw among Palestinians injured and killed in Israel’s war on the territory. The press conference, taking place during the Democratic National Convention, was organized by the Uncommitted National Movement, which is pressuring Democrats for an end to blanket U.S. support for Israel. Among those who spoke was Dr. Ahmed Yousaf, who returned from Gaza just weeks earlier. “When we got to the hospital, everything I saw on TikTok and Instagram and all the television, all the stuff that we had in alternative media … it was 100 times worse than I could have ever imagined,” he said.

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.

[Oopsie Daisy]

1. It really is a shame that Hamas continues to hide among civilians and put innocent people in harms way.

What they're doing is a war crime and it's amazing to me that "Democracy Now!" continues to place blame everywhere EXCEPT where it actually belongs. When terrorists who are the target of a military operation insist on hiding their operations, their weapons, their headquarters and their leadership in and among civilians (schools, hospitals, nurseries, markets, refugee centers, etc) then it certainly makes sense that there will be civilian casualties and deaths. Why does Hamas continue to do this? Don't they care about the people in Gaza?

[ancianita]

2. Know what's REALLY unfathomable? Iran's two terrorist wings -- Hamas, & Hezbollah who trained them -- pointing

thousands of Fateh and Scud missiles at every square mile of Israel all the way to the Egyptian border.

non paywall https://archive.ph/L0B5p

According to the latest public estimates, Hezbollah has around 150,000 rockets and missiles, most with a range of a few dozen kilometers. Various reports, however, say a substantial number can reach targets located hundreds of kilometers from Lebanon.

Hezbollah is the most heavily armed non-state actor in the world, concluded researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington in an extensive 2018 report on the lethal arsenal stationed just north of Israel. The group holds a large and diverse reserve of "dumb" rocket artillery alongside ballistic, anti-air, anti-tank, and anti-ship missiles, the report found.

In a conversation with Haaretz this week, Shaan Shaikh, one of the study’s authors, warned that Hezbollah's intervention in Syria “raises concerns about its acquisition of more sophisticated standoff and precision-guided missiles, whether from Syria, Iran, or Russia.” Standoff missiles are long-range systems that can be fired from far enough away that the launchers remain protected.

According to an article recently published by the Institute for National Security Studies, Hezbollah has about 40,000 short-range Grad-type rockets; 80,000 Fajr-3 and Fajr-5, Khaibar, and Ra'ad medium-long-range rockets; and 30,000 long-range Zelzal rockets and Fateh-110 (M600) missiles. According to the article, Hezbollah has also received a limited number of Scud-type missiles from Syria. Several hundred Fateh-110 missiles, which carry around 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds), “are equipped with precise GPS-based navigation mechanisms and have considerable accuracy and destructive potential," according to the report.

What's unfathomable is that Muslim believers established from 8th Century AD now want to take land "from the river to the sea" that had already been settled by Abraham's believers since the 10th Century BC.
The Abrahamic religions (including Islam, established in 700 AD) know from their holy books that Abram was called by God to leave his birthplace in Ur at the age of 70, and lead his people to Canaan, where they later became enslaved by Egyptian pharaohs.
When Moses got the Israelites out of Egypt to the border of Canaan, a sparsely populated land, Moses appointed Joshua to lead the Israelites into Canaan in the 11-10th BC. Historians and archaeologists agree that Israel and Judah existed as separate kingdoms by c. 900 BCE and c. 850 BCE respectively.
No matter what Shia(15% of Islam) and Sunni say... That state is now Israel.

[Gaugamela]

5. But only until America the Beautiful and Israel the Righteous attack Iran and ignite Armageddon and then

Ja-Heysus gets his feckless little ass back down here so the elect can get hoovered up to Gawd’s kingdom where they will watch from the celestial mezzanine sipping their vodka gimlets and giggling like schoolgirls as all the Jews and the rest of us fry in hell for eternity!

YEEHAWWW!!!!



You know there is a whole party dedicated to this theocratic horse shit.

[ancianita]

6. Miss me with all that. This isn't about "America the beautiful" OR Armageddon.

Tell your glib toss-off to our party's leader, President Joe Biden. As both president and a Christian Catholic, he'll patiently explain why you're ridiculously beyond wrong.

The U.S. has always been Israel's major ally. In the U.N. in recent years we have voted down anti-Israel condemnations over 46 times.

Go read some Israeli press. The blood of Gazans is on the heads of the Muslim nations that have never cared to help Palestinians have land for their own state, and who only use and arm them as proxies to destroy Israel and the West, the Great Satan.

Sure, you're right that other party is about "theocratic horseshit," which is only power worshipping. They only use their christian nationalism and corporate media to find fault with this president, who is doing what he can as an ally to preserve Israel from both condemnation and destruction.

[Gaugamela]

7. You cite Old Testament mythology as justification for the establishment of Israel. My glib comments

were meant to show that you can justify anything with that kind of thinking. The Old Testament is not a land trust.

As you say, the Israelites entered Canaan and slaughtered the Canaanites (see Deut. 7.1-2; 20-16-18); this much most historians will agree to. The Palestinians are the descendants of the Canaanites (as are the Jews), and therefore have as much right to their ancestral lands as those Jews whose ancestors lived there continuously from ancient times. Unfortunately, the Romans came along and in 70 CE kicked everybody's butt and seized about 100,000 Jews and took them back to Rome as slaves. (The Romans were well known to be monsters, but that's another story.) These Jews eventually spread out across Europe and became the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. It is unfortunate what happened to them, but it doesn't give them the right to return after two millennia and kick nearly a million people off their ancestral lands. Nor was the Levant the property of Great Britain or the United States to divvy up and give away as they saw fit (today such actions would be regarded as war crimes under the Geneva Conventions). And by the way, that the US and Great Britain established and recognized Israel is hardly esoteric knowledge. Everybody knows this, and you're kind of giving yourself away when you suggest to someone they should go read up on this.

But, having said all that, I can fully understand the plight of the European Jews after the war, and sympathize with their need for a separate homeland. And what's done is done. Israel has a right to exist. But Netanyahu's ruthless mass slaughter of the Palestinian people — which is his purpose; he doesn't care about them or the hostages — just so he can keep his rancid racist ass out of prison is a war crime and a crime against humanity of the first order. You do not trap 2 million people in an open air prison and bomb them mercilessly for months on end with electronically guided weapons targeted by AI until the entire region is uninhabitable. If a bank robber holds up and takes hostages you don't kill everyone in the building just to get the robber. Moreover, Netanyahu is digging Israel's grave. It's only a matter of time, sooner not later, that Iran gets the bomb.

Biden's policy on Gaza is a bloody stain on his presidency, as was Vietnam on LBJ's. And I don't care if he's a Catholic. That has nothing to do with anything. And just for the record, the US has routinely voted to condemn Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank over the decades, and has always pushed for a two state solution, which Israel has routinely resisted. The reason Netanyahu buttressed Hamas at the expense of the Palestinian Authority 17 years ago was because the PA was adamant about a two state solution.

The situation is an unjustifiable, obscene crime against humanity, and I have no doubt that future historians will refer to it as the Gazan Genocide.

[mjvpi]

3. Thanks for posting this. I consume international news regularly. The extremes of what human beings do to each other.....

….sickens me. Yes, yes I condemn Hamas as well. I have never seen the kind of destruction that is being unleashed on Gaza. What is the future for those people? It sickens me that my tax dollars are being used against US law to commit war crimes. I would make the same statement if my tax dollars were supporting Hamas. Only a fool would think that what is going on in Gaza will lead to anything other than 3,000 more years of conflict.

[Uncle Joe]

4. Thank you mjvpi

I agree on all counts.