Israel’s Defence Minister Yaov Gallant has ordered the complete closure of the Gaza Strip, including a ban on the entry of food, water, fuel or access to electricity as Israel intensifies its bombardment of the besieged Strip in the wake of the surprise attack by the Palestinian resistance. His comments have drawn criticism for advocating collective punishment of Gaza’s entire civilian Palestinian population in breach of international law.


Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant ordered an increase in intensity of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.

Gallant said that the war Israel is fighting against Hamas is “a war for our future.”

He added: “Exacting a heavy price from the enemy is a necessary condition for our existence in the region.”

Gallant makes the comments during a visit to the Israeli Air Force’s underground command centre at the Israeli occupation forces headquarters in Tel Aviv.

link: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231009-israeli-minister-we-are-fighting-human-animals/

  • watson387@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    He’s dehumanizing the many over the acts of a few. He’s just trying to make it easier to justify the ramping up of their genocide.

    • Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world
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      THIS! When those in power start dehumanizing others, you know there’s killing coming. Hotel Rwanda is a great history lesson on this.

      It feels like a great time for everyone to take a massive chill pill.

    • Cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
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      He’s also really blowing those “acts of a few” out of proportion, because even those acts are not a big concern, especially compared to the horrors Israel commits.

    • Fox@unilem.org
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      1 year ago

      People in gaza elected Hamas themselves. You are either with or against terrorism. There’s no in between.

      • ZenFriedRice@lemmy.ml
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        First, only the sith (and the ignorant) deal in absolutes. Second, it’s fair and right to feel for the people attacked by the Hamas, and fair and right to acknowledge the apartheid state of Israel that created them.

      • Jack.@lemmy.mlM
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        1. Palestine doesn’t have elections thanks to Hamas.

        2. Living in a concentration camp for decades fucks with people and their moral compass.

        Palestinians don’t necessarily support Hamas but support the greater cause of Palestinian sovereignty and human rights. Maybe they want to live like Human Beings instead of being treated like subhumans.

        And to add to it, Israel regularly does unimaginable vile things to Palestinians. It will only make Palestinians resent Israel more and more.

      • Voroxpete
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        1 year ago

        “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

        This is the ugly side of that. Hamas are a vile organisation full of hateful antisemites. They’re also the inevitable result of every decision Isreal has made in Palestine. When people are being violently oppressed every day of their lives, that fosters hatred. When people have nothing left to lose, that fosters violence. When people have been abused for generations, they inevitably want revenge.

        It’s a disgusting double standard to forgive Israel’s crimes, but demand that the Palestinians be perfect little angels who never feel any resentment or anger in their hearts.

        In the end, it’s not about who has done right or wrong, it’s about who holds the power, and that has always been Isreal. So it is Isreal who bears the moral responsibility to end this conflict peacefully (and the western world supporting Isreal bears an equal responsibility to use our power to make that peace the most appealing option).

          • Voroxpete
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            That’s not a question that I’m qualified to answer. But there are very smart people who can, if only they were allowed to bend themselves to the work of solving this problem. It would be very difficult, it would take a lot of hard work and the solution wouldn’t perfectly satisfy everyone, but it could be done. And for that to happen the people with power have to want to put in that hard work and set those very smart people loose on the problem.

            Even if the only solutions are imperfect, they will still be better than what is happening there right now. There is no possible universe where this is the least bad answer possible.

      • Microw@lemm.ee
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        That election was 17 years ago. Most people living in Gaza right now weren’t old enough back then to be allowed to vote.

      • Cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
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        I mean Hamas was the best option available. It just so happens to be the only group left fighting and resisting. Israel admitted that it did this on purpose; fought off all the other progressive groups but propped up Hamas.

      • Szymon@lemmy.ca
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        You’re an idiot.

        Which cultural group do you want to be lumped into for genocide? I guarantee there’s one that wants your race, whatever it is, exterminated. Hopefully for your sake they’re not in power at the moment.

        Did Hamas win 100% of the vote? No. But you’re ok with the destruction of an entire culture because of frustrating choices made by some people made in the context of generations of oppression? Sounds like racism to me.

  • Cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
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    Israel: we literally don’t think people in Gaza are human

    Westerners: I can’t tell the difference between the two sides!

    • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      Seeing as Americans Canadians and many other nationalities were killed in the attack by hamas. That was a foregone conclusion. It would have been unusual if these countries don’t respond to support those attacked.

      I cannot support hamas’s attack. I can absolutely blame Israel for creating the conditions that brought it about. When the average age of someone in Gaza is 19. And there wasn’t some sort of population boom 19 years ago. Something is seriously fucked up.

      Two wrongs don’t make a right. And I wish the United States was largely going to stay out of the cluster fuck Israel has created. But with Americans dead. As I said that was not going to happen.

  • ZenFriedRice@lemmy.ml
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    Strange, terrorist organization don’t seem to pop up in countries with better human rights.

    • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      It’s a meaningless label. Who decided they were terrorists? You?

      If killing civilians is the requirement to be terrorists, every single military on Earth is a terrorist organization. That’s what war IS.

      • WindowsEnjoyer
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        As soon as I’ve seen your instance - your comment makes sense. Thanks for your opinion I guess lol.

    • Bread
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      They can pop up anywhere. Terrorism occurs when extremists of any type had enough of whatever they are upset about and it pushes them over the edge. Whether it is reasonable or not. Regular people can also be pushed to do terrible things with just the right amount of propaganda and other emotional manipulation. Some people just enjoy it.

      Believing it cannot happen to you too with enough pressure and lies is wrong.

      • ZenFriedRice@lemmy.ml
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        You have a good point I was a bit too black and white with my comment. There definitely seems to be a correlation between size and violence of terrorist groups, and the human rights of the area they riside in.

        Also totally agree that it can happen to me. Gotta acknowledge that you don’t really know anything and you are pretty much always just taking someone’s word for things. I believe the Earth is round, but I’m just taking people’s word for it.

  • yaminoEXE@ttrpg.network
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    Reminder that everyone in this conflict besides Civilians are bad people. Hamas is a terrorist organization. The Israeli government support the genocide of the Palestinian people. Everyone else are just planning to profit from this.

      • catfish@lemmy.ml
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        When Argentina occupied the Falkland Islands, the UK military who fought them weren’t described as a terrorist organisation. Not by anyone with an ounce of sense at least, and certainly not by the islanders who’s land and homes had been occupied.

      • mindbleach
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        And therefore terrorism’s not real. Right? Because it’d be fucking stupid to mess up that basic formal logic, if there were legitimate reasons to describe an action as terrorism, a distinct from other forms of transformative paramilitary action.

        ‘All freedom fighters get called terrorists,’ so killing hundreds of civilians at a concert is exactly as defensible as destroying supply lines.

    • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      The people fighting against a genocidal state are ‘bad people’? ‘Terrorists’, even?

      What exactly is wrong about fighting back against one’s own genocide? Should they be peacefully protesting it instead?

    • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Reminder that everyone in this conflict besides Civilians are bad people.

      Shut the fuck up. Every Israeli “civilian” is complicit in the torture of Palestinians, except for children. Not to mention they’re all potential combatants anyway.

    • SovietyWoomy [any]@hexbear.net
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      The rebels in star wars are terrorists because they killed civilians living in the death star. They’re just as bad as the empire.

    • Cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
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      Israel: we literally don’t consider the people of Gaza to be humans

      You: sheesh, I really I can’t tell the difference between these two!

      • agarorn@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        *Israel Minister.

        And Hamas also thinks jews are no humans, so yes, there is no difference.

        • Cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
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          Israel Minister

          So… A representative of the Israeli state? The state founded on Zionism? That’s not a correction. That is Israel.

          Hamas also thinks jews are no humans

          Source? Hamas has a history with anti Semitic conspiracy theories and generalizations, but not to the extent of saying Jews aren’t human.

          Not to mention, even said anti semitism was dropped long ago, when Hamas underwent a radical shift in membership when Israel killed off other PLO groups.

            • Cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
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              They literally want to kill all Jews

              Source? Highly doubt

              and convert the whole world to Islam

              Not really concerned with with if they want people convert to Islam. Christians want to convert the whole world to Christianity too. Not concerning. not even close to Israel.

      • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world
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        Any of the popular definitions. If they’re simply organizations against the government, they’re terrorists as Israel basically claims Palestinian land is their own. If they’re organizations that use terror, brutality, and fear against citizens to achieve political ends, they’re definitely terrorists, and so are the IDF.

    • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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      There are non-combatants in this conflict that are bad people. They cheer on the extermination of others. Sometimes that’s Hamas or the PLO (they run a fund that gives stipends to families of terrorists). Other times it’s certain Israeli Jews who encourage conflict while not risking their own necks because they can claim a religious exemption from military service. They seek an Israel without Palestinian territories, or for that matter Palestinians at all (aka ethnic cleansing).

      I’m not saying that non-combatants should be targeted. At the same time, I am saying that just being a civilian does not mean someone lacks blame.

    • mindbleach
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      Yeah… it’d be great if the geopolitical ramifications weren’t playing out as terrorism versus war crimes.

  • KᑌᔕᕼIᗩ@lemmy.ml
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    In the Western country that I’m in the propaganda has been flying thick and fast all day today on every single media outlet there is about this. You can tell they’re trying to justify a lot of bad things that are about to happen and have already begun.

  • HowMany@lemmy.ml
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    This shitbag is a right wing fascist who would make Hitler blush with pride.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmus.org
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    Antiwar website has a biased antiwar stance.


    “We have been warning time and time again… everything is going to erupt and everybody is going to pay a price – mainly innocent civilians on both sides. And unfortunately, that is exactly what happened,” he added.

    Gaza has also been under an Israeli-imposed land, sea, and air blockade since 2007, and Israel frequently bombs the besieged enclave. The last major bombing campaign took place in 2021, when over 250 Palestinians were killed.

    “The Israeli government, which is a fascist government, supports, encourages, and leads pogroms against the Palestinians. There is an ethnic cleansing going on. It was obvious the writing was on the wall, written in the blood of the Palestinians – and unfortunately now Israelis as well,” Cassif said.


    Israeli Lawmaker Says ‘Pogroms’ Against Palestinians Provoked Hamas Assault

    https://news.antiwar.com/2023/10/09/israel-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-says-theyre-fighting-human-animals/>

    • Pxtl@lemmy.ca
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      So two different Israeli politicians are saying two different things. Great. Which one is their Minister of Defence?