The article <a href="https://reason.com/2024/02/15/israel-raids-hospital/" author="Liz Wolfe" source="Reason">Israel Raids Hospital</a> is from February but the incident it describes has been repeated at least a dozen---if not dozens---of times since. It illustrates quite concisely how you should write about war crimes when you wholeheartedly support them. It hits all the standard notes: <ul> Attacking a hospital is a normal thing. It's perfectly reasonable to tell everyone in a hospital to evacuate. The hospital is a enemy headquarters (<i>this time</i> it's true!). The enemy uses human shields. The purpose of the attack is not to destroy the hospital, but to find hostages. None of this is your own fault. You've been forced into it by the enemy. </ul> Check it out. <bq>News broke this morning that the Israeli military is beginning its raid of Khan Younis' Nasser Hospital, in the Gaza Strip. The BBC reported that one trauma surgeon said, from inside the building, that "tanks and snipers" currently surround the hospital from "all directions." <b>The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have told all people inside the hospital to evacuate immediately so that it can begin its raid.</b> The Israeli military reports that it has intelligence—including testimony from now-released hostages—that indicates that <b>Hamas is using Nasser Hospital as an important spot for its military operations</b>, which would be in keeping with the <b>well-established pattern of Hamas using civilians, including the sick and wounded, as human shields.</b> There is some belief among the Israeli military that either <b>living captives or the bodies of hostages might be located at Nasser Hospital.</b> Meanwhile, Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry officials claim that the IDF's operation has destroyed critical areas of the hospital, crippling its operations and harming displaced people who were sheltering there. Both could be true, and Israel must continue weighing whether raids like these are worth the cost—<b>a situation it's been forced into in part due to Hamas' callous disregard for human life.</b></bq> <img attachment="gaza_rubble.jpg" align="right" caption="Gaza Rubble">It's a tragedy that this is the kind of stuff that people regularly consume, believe, and then just go about their day, chirpily supporting whatever Israel needs to do in order to keep itself alive for one more day. You don't even think about the fact that Israel has essentially <i>normalized attacking hospitals</i> as if that's not a high crime of the Geneva Conventions. Of course these kinds of attacks all make sense when you're literally fighting for your existence every day, when any reluctance or hesitation or mercy would result in the eradication of Israel and the extinguishing of the entire Jewish faith literally overnight. But if that fiction is not your context, then everything that Israel is doing looks like a horrific war crime. It's always this way: when the U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11, there was tremendous domestic support since people had been told for months how their very lives depended on the U.S. "defending itself" in those countries. The indoctrination is incredibly strong; every time I return to this country and see what media they consume here, it all makes sense how people have no chance to think their own thoughts. They will do what they're told. They can't seem to turn away from it---and then they no longer even think they might want to, as they become totally engrossed in every mendacious and misleading detail. In a similar vein, the article <a href="https://reason.com/volokh/2024/02/15/biden-grants-temporary-refuge-to-palestinian-migrants-already-in-us/" author="Ilya Somin" source="Reason">Biden is Right to Grant Temporary Refuge to Palestinian Migrants Already in US, but Should go Further</a> illustrates what it looks like when an author wholeheartedly believes in the unassailable righteousness of his (adopted) country's existential clash with its implacable and incomprehensibly evil enemy. Ilya Somin is a fool, but I scanned his short article anyway. He cited another fool, then wrote that he agreed with it. He starts off by saying that he agrees with the Biden administration that 6,000 Palestinians shouldn't be forced to return to Palestine just because their visas have technically run out. <bq>[...] the Biden administration granted temporary refuge to Palestinian migrants currently in the United States, who might otherwise be subject to deportation. <b>The grant of Deferred Enforced Departure status (known as DED) allows about 6000 Palestinians to remain in the US for an additional 18 months.</b></bq> <bq>As the White House statement on the subject puts it, because of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, "humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territories, and primarily Gaza, have significantly deteriorated." That surely understates the point: thousands of people have been killed, and much of Gaza leveled. There is less extensive, but still significant, violence on the West Bank. In addition, <b>Gaza Palestinians are subject to Hamas's brutal tyranny, which is awful, even aside from the war.</b></bq> While he acknowledges the destruction in Gaza and "violence on the West Bank"---I like how he writes <iq>on</iq> rather than "in" because he thinks the West Bank is literally the bank of a river---he doesn't assign any agency to the violence until he attributes <iq>tyranny</iq> to <iq>Hamas</iq>. Somin and his peers are shockingly brainwashed. Don't worry. I didn't judge him prematurely or harshly. He goes on. <bq><b>In my view, the primary blame for this situation falls on Hamas for using Gaza as a base for its horrific terrorist attacks, and then using the civilian population as human shields.</b> But, regardless of the blame, it would be wrong to force Palestinian migrants (or anyone) to return to a deadly war zone—or to <b>live under a system of quasi-medieval oppression.</b></bq> Israel doesn't enter into this. It's all Hamas. Israel has nothing to do with the destruction in Gaza, which, to his credit, he at least doesn't pretend doesn't exist, like so many other commentators of his ideological ilk. <bq>In a previous post, I explained why opening the door to Gaza refugees is the right thing to do on both moral and strategic grounds: it can save thousands of people from needless suffering and death, while <b>also making it easier for Israel to defeat Hamas.</b></bq> It's also 100% the goal of Israel to throw out all Palestinians and not let them back in. Not a single one of them is going to "go back" after all of this. Israel will not allow it and the attack is ensuring that there is nowhere to go anyway. There will be nothing left to which to return in Gaza. <bq><b>Why would anyone other than Hamas—especially the U.S.—support locking Gazans in like North Korea does? Since 1948, Arab states and the U.N. have refused to treat Palestinians like ordinary refugees</b>, keeping them in a unique intergenerational limbo to provide a reservoir of resentment against Israel.</bq> What the f@&k are you talking about? Most Palestinians live in neighboring countries already. It's interesting to see how Somin and others portray themselves as humanitarians who care about the plight of Palestinians, but treat the Israeli violence as completely without human agency, as if Palestinians are fleeing an earthquake. <bq>Letting Gazans leave not only would reduce human suffering; it would provide a test and incentive for postwar governance. Refugees often return to their home countries when governance stabilizes after a conflict. <b>For this to happen, the new civilian administration would have to make it a place where Gazans want to live, not where they are prevented from leaving.</b></bq> <bq>[...] suggest <b>the US use its large-scale aid to Egypt as leverage to pressure the Egyptian government to let Gaza refugees leave.</b></bq> Did you get that? <ol>Literally everything that's wrong with Gaza is Hamas's, if not the Gazans' own fault. Israel has nothing to do with it, as it's just defending itself from Hamas's violence. Egypt is primarily at fault for the massacre and suffering for not letting Palestinians leave. </ol> Nowhere there does Somin address the expressed and stated fact that any Palestinian who leaves Gaza or the West Bank now will never go back. It's kind of fascinating to read a few of these, but it's tiring. The article <a href="https://babylonbee.com/news/united-nations-warns-israeli-attack-on-rafah-could-lead-to-more-hostages-being-rescued/" author="" source="Babylon Bee">United Nations Warns Israeli Attack On Rafah Could Lead To More Hostages Being Rescued</a> is on a site that considers itself to be a Christian Satirical Online Magazine. It has fully bought---hook, line, and sinker---the Israeli narrative. It literally doesn't care about Palestinians. Christian charity doesn't enter into it. If you're feeling generous, you might assume that they have no idea what's <i>really</i> going on. If you don't know, then you're in a majority of people living inside a carefully engineered media bubble that keeps out reality and maintains a sphere that allows you to go about your day without harshly judging literally everyone in your government and media. You either don't know, or you don't care. Both are bad; the second is worse.