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Boston City Council to wade into Middle East crisis
By adamg on Tue, 10/17/2023 - 3:11pm
City Councilor Michael Flaherty (at large) tomorrow will ask his fellow councilors to unambiguously support Israel.
In a motion for a resolution, Flaherty will urge the rest of the council to "strongly" condemn Hamas's terror attacks on Israel, which left more than 1,400 people dead and to urge "our federal government to provide whatever assistance it can to the State of Israel and the Israeli people," as well as to remember the "2,700 innocent Palestinians [who] have died as a direct result of the cowardly terrorist actions of Hamas."
The council's regular Wednesday meeting begins at noon in the fifth-floor chambers in City Hall.
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Comments
Bad idea
Stay away from this. Concentrate on Boston, please.
Amen
I hope no one takes the bait.
Idiotic waste of time
.
Do you hear that?
Is that Councillor Lara's music?
I'm sure she'll have a rational response.
Nawww
The City Council has already solved all the problems in Boston, what’s a few land disputes in the Middle East to them? /s
Litmus Test
This is as stupid as when those toxic idiots took over the Green Party and demanded that people running for local offices swear that they supported Palestine.
WTF is with this shit?
What could possibly go wrong?
n/t
The City Council has a
The City Council has a history of wading into areas well outside Boston only issues. How is this different?
Well, part of the problem is that the resolution is inflammatory
because we've got two entities (Hamas and Israel) committing war crimes by killing civilians, and the proposal would explicitly only acknowledge those on one side. So it's a guaranteed shitshow even if the governance of Palestine weren't *already* a third rail topic.
If Boston City Council wanted to make a token gesture expressing solidarity with the civilians of the region and calling for an end to the violence, I would have less of a problem with it. (But it would still be largely a distraction from issues Boston sorely needs to address internally.)
Read up on war crimes
Killing civilians isn’t a war crime. Targeting civilians with no legitimate military threat is.
That’s what Hamas did, attack a dance party that was in no way a military target. They raped, murdered, kidnapped and tortured civilians.
There is no moral equivalency between what Israel is doing, which is self defense, and what Hamas did.
Context matters
And you are missing it, dear.
I certainly don't support what Hamas has done - horrifying and inexcusable. But I also don't support the horrifying and inexcusable retribution that your violent and hateful bloodlust claims is due. Which will lead to more horrifying murder of innocents.
How is it not a war crime to engage in the acts that you are calling for?
Where do the war crimes stop?
You are again acting on abusive thinking. Grow up. Read more widely. Think more humanely. Your blindness is a big part of the entire problem.
Indiscriminate killing is a war crime too.
You can read up on it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime
Carpet bombing, cutting off water and electricity to the region, blocking food and medical aid, raining down white phosphorus, and telling 1 million people to evacuate (to where?) on a short deadline -- these are all going to kill civilians just as dead as shooting them with a bullet, and this isn't just collateral damage. It's a direct attack on civilians and infrastructure. They're more "civilized" ways of killing, but do you think that matters to the dead and their survivors? Don't fool yourself.
There are now more dead in the Gaza strip than Hamas killed in Israel. That sounds like targeted killing of combatants to you?
These are not actions of necessary self-defense, they're actions of revenge and anger. You can support Israel existence as a state, but supporting these particular actions is supporting war crimes.
Nope
They are targeting Hamas, who hide among civilians. Hamas doesn’t have military bases that can be targeted.
Israel is not under any obligation to provide food, water, or electricity to its enemies.
If they wanted to indiscriminately bombs civilians, they would not have given warnings and time for innocents to flee to the south. And Hamas tried to stop them, they needed those human shields.
Entirely on Hamas. Iran thanks you for your service.
Is there...
Is there, perhaps, an obligation to not actively prevent a civilian population from seeking food, water and electricity on its own -- for example, let's say just for the sake of argument, with a blockade?
Who occupied Gaza?
Israel.
Who made Gaza a prison camp of 2 million people, 1 million of which are children? Israel
Who is responsible to provide food water and electricity to its open-air prison? Israel.
Where are innocents going to flee to in an open-air prison camp? Nowhere.
Hamas committed murderous war-crimes, sure. This does not justify reciprocal war crimes.
Largely incorrect
Israel pulled out of Gaza 8 years ago. Hamas was elected to run the place. What did Hamas spend the past 8 years doing? Building infrastructure? Power systems? Water systems? A functional economy?
No. They built tunnels and stockpiles. Which Israel now has to go in and dig out.
It's a dreadful situation all around.
Factually Wrong on All Counts
Israel pulled out in 2005 but locked everyone else inside. Hamas was "elected" in 2007 and is tacitly supported by Likud. Currently half the population of the Gaza strip is under-age. Even if they had fair "elections" yesterday the majority could not have voted for them and do not bear responsibility for Hamas' heinous actions. In any case, do you think Hamas would hold a fair election in 2023?
How can you build a functional economy in an open-air prison camp anyway? Israel blockades the Gaza Strip by land and sea and the border to Egypt is closed.
I'm not saying it's not hard.
It's a hell of a situation, and I'm not saying there's an *easy* way to root out the Hamas terrorists. But that's no excuse.
Wow. Dude.
100+ Year Old News Flash: The Doctrine of Proportionality was settled in 1907 in the Hague Conventions.
Israel has been violating it OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN when dealing with its enemies. It benefits Israel to do this because a) there's been ZERO international consequences for doing so (except to engender future attacks on themselves), and b) it furthers their goals of subjugation and elimination of the Palestinian people.
It's like it's 2014...2006...etc. all over again and yet you're all talking like you just woke up and want to give the first hot take that matches your preconceived notions on justifying who you want the victor to be...as if there's no history here at all.
Some sources:
2014: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-oe-gold-israel-gaza-proportional-force...
2006: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/israel-and-doctrine-proportionality
How Israel responds to attacks by Hamas is NOT on Hamas. It's like watching a horrific dog owner beat a dog for decades...then the dog eventually bites the owner so the owner breaks the dog's jaw and stops feeding it...then you looked at the situation and said "clearly the dog's fault..it made the owner do it".
Thank you Adam
I appreciate your posting of Pro Israeli news, and I support this resolution.
It’s simple: condemn the brutality of Hamas and recognize the blood of innocent Palestinians is on their hands.
What a cop out
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/moral-clarity
There is a lot to condemn here without creating more mayhem, murder, and wholesale execution of innocents.
This is the "logic" of a violent spouse defending their "right" to kill because "It's their fault I got mad"!
When the claim is “it’s simple”
It most likely is not.
I found this helpful
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/opinion/international-world/israel-ha...
Yeah. Not simple at all.
Uh...
That's a very very very very very loose definition of "direct result".
Sort of depends
Unless the IDF was dumb enough to bomb a hospital—which is certainly a possibility—this is a very direct result!
The World Awaits
The World awaits news from Boston, anxiously anticipating a vote of support for Israel by Boston’s municipal government.
Well, we are
the hub of the universe.
Hoping someone calls Flaherty out
This isn't just performative bullshit, it's also a blatant attempt to put his fellow councilors on the spot by forcing them to either go along with this performative bullshit statement, or be tarred by Flaherty and his goons as anti-Israel and pro-Hamas. Flaherty deserves a spanking for this and I hope he gets it.
Soliciting Soundbites
Yeah, this is definitely bait to snag soundbites and quips for future election mailers/door hangers. It's a cheap tactic and should be below any local politician, though clearly it's not.