A Moka pot is a cheap and easy way to make espresso. I got mine for less than $5. Of course a fancy espresso machine is going to make higher quality espresso, but for the price you can’t go wrong with a Moka pot

In terms of the reasons why they chose to attack, these are the three main reasons. Which you can find more about in the three different analysis articles below. In terms of the exact date, I’d say it was due to the shift in IDF forces in the region at that time.

First, the policies of the far-right Israeli government enabling settler violence in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem led to a sense of desperation among Palestinians and growing demands for a reaction. At the same time, the rising tensions in the West Bank caused by these policies necessitated the shift of Israeli forces away from the south and into the north to guard the settlements. This gave Hamas both a justification and an opportunity to attack.

Second, the Hamas leadership felt compelled to act due to the acceleration of Arab-Israeli normalisation. In recent years, this process further diminished the significance of the Palestinian issue for Arab leaders who became less keen on pressuring Israel on this matter.

Third, Hamas was emboldened after it managed to repair its ties with Iran. In recent years, the movement had to reconsider the political position it assumed in the wake of the Arab Spring in 2011, in opposition to Iran and its ally, the Syrian regime.

• https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/11/analysis-why-did-hamas-attack-now-and-what-is-next

Before October 7, the group not only limited its own rocket attacks on Israel but also publicly punished those who instigated attacks within Gaza to break the fragile ceasefires. Hamas has let the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fight Israel alone, not joining the fray between Israel and the PIJ in August 2022 or in May 2023.

At the same time, there was incendiary far-right political rhetoric and rising levels of violence against Palestinians. Both 2021 and 2022 set records as the deadliest years for Palestinians, as the Netanyahu government green-lit the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and settlers themselves conducted pogroms against Palestinians.

• https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-hamas-attacked-when-it-did

Israel’s focus on the West Bank may also have created an operational opportunity for Hamas. According to Uzi Ben Yitzhak, a retired Israeli general, the Israeli government has deployed most of the regular IDF forces to the West Bank to manage the situation there, leaving only a skeleton force at the Gaza border. The effort to secure permanent Israeli control over the West Bank, in this assessment, created conditions where a Hamas surprise attack could actually succeed.

• https://www.vox.com/2023/10/7/23907323/israel-war-hamas-attack-explained-southern-israel-gaza

He’s highlighting the hypocrisy. Israel is directly responsible for the prevalence of this disease during this genocide.

No, they weren’t the same thing. Zionist Land Purchases were unlike anything prior, leading to the forced expulsion of over hundreds thousand Palestinians under the British Mandate. This, along with the Zionist leadership being very open about the Concept of Transfer since the 1880s, stocked Palestinian fears of being violently forced out of their homes by these new arrivals. There is a lot of context that gets ignored during these events, and it’s not easy to summarize. I’ll include a few paragraphs but if you want more context I suggest you read the whole chapter.

The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948

Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.

The fear over control of the Temple Mount and a failure by leadership on both sides to quell the fears (and instead, incite them) sparked the terrible pogroms of Jewish Settlements.

In 1928, this meant simultaneously calling for the defence of Jerusalem and discouraging direct action on the ground. But the Palestinian masses found this kind of co-opted nationalism impossible. They lived near the holy places and saw Jews praying there in unprecedented numbers, which they saw as part of a larger scheme to ‘de-Islamize’ Palestine. A minor incident concerning prayer arrangements near the Wailing Wall, the western wall of the Haram, sparked violence that soon swept through Palestine as a whole in 1929. In all, 300 Jews and a similar number of Palestinians were killed.

The spillover of anger from Jerusalem into the countryside and other towns was not a co-ordinated plan by the leadership. Rather, it started with uprooted Palestinians who had lost their agricultural base for various reasons, including the capitalization of crops and the Jewish purchase of land. These former peasants lived on the urban margins, from where they participated in what to them was their first ever political, and violent, action. Their dismal conditions were not the fault of Zionism, but it was easy to connect Zionist activity in Jerusalem with the purchase of land or with an aggressive segregationist policy in the labour market.

The British army was slow to respond to the unrest. The 1920s had been quiet, apart from limited outbursts of violence in Jerusalem in 1920 and Jaffa in 1921. These had seemed inevitable in a mixed community, and quite normal in the vast British Empire. But the events of 1929 exceeded the level of containable violence, and the British government decided in 1930 to appoint a commission of inquiry, the Shaw Commission. After touring the country, its members pointed out the deterioration in the peasants’ living conditions and reported the growing frustration among a large number of Palestinians with British pro-Zionist policy.

• Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine Pg 138

1929 Riots: Forward and 972Mag

Shaw Commission

Peel Commission Report

The 1936-39 revolt began as a protest against the British Mandate and Zionist Expansion, and escalated in violence as the protests were met with lethal force.

One of the problems was the leadership vacuum in rural Palestine, and the failure of most attempts to fill it. One of these attempts was that of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a Syrian preacher who settled in Haifa in the mid 1920s. Many history books assert that Izz al-Din al-Qassam ignited the 1936 revolt by fusing Islamic dogmas with national ideology. But his recipe for revolution was welcomed only among a particular segment of the population. This was the poor of the cities and the unfortunate inhabitants of harat al-tanc, the shanty neighbourhoods that surrounded towns such as Haifa. In 1933, Izz al-Din al-Qassam initiated a guerrilla war in the north, recruiting fighters from around Haifa and leading them to the surrounding hills, attacking any Jews or British soldiers they encountered on the way. In 1935, al-Din al-Qassam was killed by the British army, but this was enough to make him a martyr and provide an example of a new kind of resistance.

While the expansion of Zionist settlement gave the nationalist notables a chance to reach a wider audience, there was still no genuine solidarity with the peasants, apart from rare displays of unity and firmness of purpose. Such a moment took place in March 1933 in Jaffa, where leaders of all the political factions joined in a united call for a concrete campaign of sustained pressure on the British government to change its policy. Five hundred representatives of the Palestinian elite, in a rare show of resolve, declared their intention of boycotting British and Zionist commodities, and for the first time ever rejected the legitimacy of the Mandate in the land of Palestine.

In May 1936, the Arab Higher Committee declared a general strike and organized nationwide demonstrations, the principal one held in Jerusalem, where about 2,000 demonstrators gathered inside the walls of the Old City. The demonstrations became more violent three weeks later, when British police opened fire on demonstrators in Jaffa.

At first the magnitude and nature of the protests impressed the British. They appointed a commission of inquiry, headed by Lord Peel, who visited Palestine in 1937 before making his recommendations. His commission recommended the annexation of most of Palestine to Transjordan, and urged the maintenance of a direct British presence in vital strategic positions such as Haifa and the newly built airport in Lydda, as well as in the Negev. A small portion of the land was designated as a future Jewish state. This plan was rejected, not of course by Prince Abdullah in Transjordan; but in a way it was endorsed by Ben-Gurion, who had the foresight to understand that you take what you are given when the balance of power is not yet in your favour. For Ben-Gurion, the proposal was a basis for negotiations, not a final map, hence his willingness to be content with such a small portion of Palestine.

• Ilan Pappe - A History of Modern Palestine Pg 156-159

1936-1939 Revolt: JVL, Britannica, MEE

The Jewish exodus from the Muslim world was also not the same

Criticism of the Human Rights Abuses of the Israeli State and Anti-zionism are not antisemitism. You are choosing to be willfully ignorant. Israel does NOT represent all Jewish people, nor does their actions. There have been prominent Jewish people extremely critical of Zionism since it’s inception, are you seriously saying they are antisemitic too?

Israel is the one that intentionally conflates the two in order to deflect from criticizm. When Israel commits war crimes, or human rights abuses, or land grabbing, they are the ones that claim they do so for all Jewish people. When Zionist actions are criticized, they call it antisemitic. The conflation of the two is genuinely antisemitic, as the actions of Israel in no way represent all Jewish people.

If you don’t want to be naive, I suggest you read the reports by human rights organizations. They are not antisemitic, unless you think advocates for a Secular Bi-National State with equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians is also antisemitic, which is insane.

Year before Oct 7 - Jewish Voice for Peace

2023 is ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinian children say human rights groups (Oct 6th)

HRW Events of 2022 and HRW Events of 2023

The Apartheid is very much real, and, while to a much lesser extent than the Palestinian Occupied Territories, also applies to the Palestinian Citizens of Israel

Socio-economic gaps between Palestinian and Jewish Israeli citizens are the result of discriminatory policies pursued over decades. Historically, Israel prevented its Palestinian citizens from accessing livelihoods under its 18-year-long military rule, and used them, at different times, as a source of cheap labour in order to preserve the interests of the Jewish majority. In addition to cruel land seizures, other discriminatory policies have led to Palestinians’ social and economic deprivation: the exclusion of Palestinian localities from high priority areas for development, the discriminatory allocation of land and water for agriculture as well as discriminatory planning and zoning, and the failure to implement major infrastructure development projects in Palestinian communities.

The blockade and Israel’s repeated military offensives have had a heavy toll on Gaza’s essential infrastructure and further debilitated its health system and economy, leaving the area in a state of perpetual humanitarian crisis. Indeed, Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, the majority of whom are children, has created conditions inimical to human life due to shortages of housing, potable water and electricity, and lack of access to essential medicines and medical care, food, educational equipment and building materials.

• Amnesty International Report pg 26-27

Other reports about how Israel is an Apartheid State:

Human Rights Watch Report

B’TSelem Report with quick Explainer

Maybe not explicitly a Dictatorship, but practically all parties of Israel, from Labor to Likud, have all been pro-apartheid since their origins as the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi. I certainly agree that Netanyahu is not the cause of Israel engaging in Ethnic Cleansing. Forced Transfer has been core to Zionism since the late 1800’s. Even Netanyahu’s only substantial opposition, Benny Gantz, is just as bloodthirsty. My point is that an Apartheid State is incompatible with Democracy.

This is not a normal temporary occupation. The West Bank and Gaza as occupied territories were created by the Ethnic Cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian people from the Zionist Campaign of Plan Dalet starting in 1947. The West Bank, Gaza, and the rest of Israel are all Historic Palestine. The permanent occupation / apartheid is a direct result of Settler Colonialism.

These are not ‘neighboring territories’ like France and Spain would be. Would you also ignore the bantustans of Apartheid South Africa when determining if that government was a dictatorship or not? Or the Native American reservations of America during Manifest Destiny?

It’s about Netanyahu. Are you going to pretend he is responsible for all of that?

Considering he’s part of the Likud party which was created out of the Lehi and Irgun, it’s certainly relevant.

Dictatorship is about having a power against the will of too many citizens, also silencing them, jailing them, killing them etc.

That is the reality for Palestinians, yes

Palestinian citizens are about 20% of Israeli population. Black people are about 14% of the US population. Both of them hold legal citizenships and rights but often face disparities. Does that make the US an apartheid by your logic?

Again, you are conveniently ignoring the Palestinians within the Occupied Territories. And yes, America during Chattel Slavery, where Black people did not have citizenship, was certainly a form of Apartheid.

Sure, if you ignore the discrimination and inequality of the millions of Palestinian citizens of Israel, on top of the millions within the Occupied Territories that have been under Israeli Military Control since 1967. If you ignore all of that, then your criteria of ‘how well government cares about its citizens’ could make sense.

Yet holding elections is not enough. Totalitarian regimes also engage in a process they refer to as “elections,” but this does not make them democracies. Democratic elections must reflect core principles such as equality, liberty and freedom of expression. These allow not only the act of voting itself, but also the free exchange of ideas and meaningful participation in shaping the future. Democratic elections must also ensure one vote for every citizen that is exactly equal to all others, and allow all citizens to run for office, present their platforms and work to further their agendas. Legal restrictions on voting and on running for office must be extremely limited, if at all permitted.

Roughly 5.5 million Palestinian subjects live in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967: about 3.5 million in the West Bank (including roughly 350,000 in East Jerusalem) and some 2 million in the Gaza Strip. None of them are allowed to vote or run for Knesset, and they have no representation in the political institutions that dictate their lives.

• B’TSelem

Your criteria doesn’t make sense, and ignores the reality of Apartheid. If you consider a democracy based on equality, liberty and freedom of expression, and also consider all aspects of the Apartheid Regime; Israel falls tremendously short of being a Democracy.

The Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it contols (Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.

B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.

• B’TSelem

President Joe Biden has said that there is “every reason” to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is continuing his assault on Gaza for political gain, appearing to acknowledge that Netanyahu is not interested in pulling out of the region despite the Biden administration’s insistence that the latest ceasefire deal is backed by Israel.

• Truthout

Protesters demanding new elections in Israel clashed with police near the Jerusalem house of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday after he dissolved the government’s War Cabinet, leaving him as the unquestioned decision-maker regarding the eight-month-old conflict in Gaza.

• USA Today

Have you seen what roof knocking is like?

Or that they stopped the roof knocking on Oct 9th 2023?

Or that the repeated evacuation orders, where somehow millions of people are supposed to evacuate in a mere 24 hours with no cell service, electricity, food, or water, is blatant ethnic cleansing

Or that Israel has repeatedly bombed evacuation routes, places outside the evacuation zones, and ‘safe’ zones?

Sorry, I mean ‘safer zones’ since a Safe Zone has an international definition that Israel fails to meet.

Or the deliberate targeting of civilian areas as Power Targets

Although it is unprecedented for the Israeli army to attack more than 1,000 power targets in five days, the idea of causing mass devastation to civilian areas for strategic purposes was formulated in previous military operations in Gaza, honed by the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” from the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

• ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza - 972mag

Or the use of Lavender and Where’s Daddy which intentionally bomb whole families and civilians

After the founding of Israel, the Two-State Solutions were utilized to further annex the Palestinian Occupied Territories and enact military control over Palestinians while denying them human and civil rights. This is apartheid. Despite this, both Fatah and Hamas have accepted a Two-State Solution on the 1967 borders, with the two most important factors being the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees and an end to the permanent occupation. Israel has had no intention on peace, as evidence of the constant land grabbing, dividing the West Bank into hundreds of isolated enclaves.

The Israeli imposed closure on Gaza began in 1991, temporarily, becoming permanent in 1993. The barrier began around Gaza around 1972. After the ‘disengagement’ in 2007, this turned into a full blockade; where Israel has had control over the airspace, borders, and sea. Under the guise of ‘dual-use’ Israel has restricted food, allocating a minimum supply leading to over half of Gaza being food insecure; construction materials, medical supplies, and other basic necessities have also been restricted. This has been a deliberate tactic of De-development, part of the systemic violence of the Apartheid Regime.

The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development - Third Edition by Sara M. Roy

Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ

History of peace process - The Intercept

Israel has repeatedly refused any permanent ceasefire, here is a list that follows the ceasefire talks week by week

Hundreds of Genocide Scholars have described this ethnic cleansing campaign as genocide because of the deliberate targeting of children/civilians and expressed intent by Israeli officials.

So, when we look at the actions taken, the dropping of thousands and thousands of bombs in a couple of days, including phosphorus bombs, as we heard, on one of the most densely populated areas around the world, together with these proclamations of intent, this indeed constitutes genocidal killing, which is the first act, according to the convention, of genocide. And Israel, I must say, is also perpetrating act number two and three — that is, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and creating condition designed to bring about the destruction of the group by cutting off water, food, supply of energy, bombing hospitals, ordering the fast evictions of hospitals, which the World Health Organization has declared to be, quote, “a death sentence.” So, we’re seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent. This is indeed a textbook case of genocide.

“A Textbook Case of Genocide”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel’s Assault on Gaza

Law for Palestine Releases Database with 500+ Instances of Israeli Incitement to Genocide – Continuously Updated

AP News, Time, Reuters, Vox, CBC

Don’t paint me as a Hamas support either, I’ve been critical of them too. I don’t think they should rule and they should also be tried for their war crimes. But that doesn’t change the reality of the Apartheid. And no free fair election for Palestinians can happen under an Apartheid, that must end first.

You just currently did it by justifying the Water Control of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and it’s not hard to find more apologia in your history

https://lemmy.world/comment/10200509

Deliberately ignoring all the hospitals Israel has bombed before and after the one instance where it was inconclusive

https://lemmy.world/comment/10204884

Falsely stating that Israel is trying to minimize civilian deaths while ignoring the over 500 incitements to genocide, the use of power targets, and the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure

Maybe I’m wrong, do you acknowledge that this is an ongoing genocide or that Israel is an Apartheid State?

In 1967, Israel seized control of all water resources in the newly occupied territories. To this day, it retains exclusive control over all the water resources that lie between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, with the exception of a short section of the coastal aquifer that runs under the Gaza Strip. Israel uses the water as it sees fit, ignoring the needs of Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip to such an extent that both areas suffer from a severe water shortage. In each of them, residents are not supplied enough water; in Gaza, even the water that is supplied is substandard and unfit for drinking.

Israel has been holding the Gaza Strip under blockade for more than a decade, since June 2007. It does not allow any materials in that it considers “dual purpose”, i.e., that can be used for either civilian or military purposes. This includes construction materials, such as cement and iron, and other raw materials. All these are needed to repair Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure, which were heavily damaged by Israeli bombings, especially in Operation Cast Lead (which began in late 2008) and Operation Protective Edge (the summer of 2014). The estimated damage amounts to some 34 million dollars. As of the end of 2015, more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza were still cut off from the public water network.

• B’TSelem

Will you ever stop with the Genocide and Apartheid apologia?

Absolutely true, the targeting of civilians and civilian architecture has been blatant and deliberate. 972 Magazine has a great article about it and the use of ‘Power Targets’

Compared to previous Israeli assaults on Gaza, the current war — which Israel has named “Operation Iron Swords,” and which began in the wake of the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on October 7 — has seen the army significantly expand its bombing of targets that are not distinctly military in nature. These include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which sources say the army defines as “power targets” (“matarot otzem”).

Although it is unprecedented for the Israeli army to attack more than 1,000 power targets in five days, the idea of causing mass devastation to civilian areas for strategic purposes was formulated in previous military operations in Gaza, honed by the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” from the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

• ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza - 972mag

Biden is certainly better than trump on some things like with repealing the Muslim ban. He is also worse in some ways such as deporting millions, 3x more than trump, each year.

Illegal border crossings soared in the months after Biden took office and immediately rolled back many Trump-era restrictions. Biden warned that he’d still enforce immigration laws, and he temporarily kept in place a Trump pandemic policy known as Title 42 that allowed authorities to quickly expel border crossers.

Trump vs. Biden on immigration: 12 charts comparing U.S. border security - NYT archived

The vast majority of homelessness is due to people getting priced out of the housing market and evicted, as well as zoning laws. Housing First and nice Public Housing are the ways to address that

I’m voting for Biden because of how much more fascist & pro-genocide Trump is. On most (except some items like the border) other policy, Biden is certainly more progressive relative to Trump, and that is a very important difference. In our bullshit democracy, where both parties represent the interest of the capitalist class and the rachet effect is in full swing, the only party that can still be influenced by progressives is the Democratic party. (In local politics, voting for progressive candidates and supporting Ranked choice voting is the way to go.)

However, that should in no way give him a free pass from criticism about defending and arming a genocidal apartheid state. That should never be defended or brushed aside, regardless

What part of the Three-phase plan from the UN Resolution do you find ridiculous? Apartheid is maintained by terrorizing civilians

Phase one includes an “immediate, full, and complete ceasefire with the release of hostages including women, the elderly and the wounded, the return of the remains of some hostages who have been killed, and the exchange of Palestinian prisoners”.

It calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from “populated areas” of Gaza, the return of Palestinians to their homes and neighbourhoods throughout the enclave, including in the north, as well as the safe and effective distribution of humanitarian assistance at scale.

Phase two would see a permanent end to hostilities “in exchange for the release of all other hostages still in Gaza, and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza”.

In phase three, “a major multi-year reconstruction plan for Gaza” would begin and the remains of any deceased hostages still in the Strip would be returned to Israel.

The Council also underlined the proposal’s provision that if negotiations take longer than six weeks for phase one, the ceasefire will continue as long as negotiations continue. No territorial change

In the resolution, the Security Council rejects any attempt at demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip, including any actions that reduce the territory of the enclave.

‘Buying quiet’: Inside the Israeli plan that propped up Hamas - Irish Times

For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip – money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu had not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them.

Allowing the payments – billions of dollars over roughly a decade – was a gamble by Netanyahu that a steady flow of money would maintain peace in Gaza, the eventual launching point of the October 7th attacks, and keep Hamas focused on governing, not fighting.

As far back as December 2012, Netanyahu told prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Margalit, in an interview, said Netanyahu told him that having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.

“The conception of Netanyahu over a decade and a half was that if we buy quiet and pretend the problem isn’t there, we can wait it out and it will fade away,” said Eyal Hulata, Israel’s national security adviser from July 2021 until the beginning of this year.

Qatar’s work in Gaza during this period was blessed by the Israeli government. And Netanyahu even lobbied Washington on Qatar’s behalf. In 2017, as Republicans pushed to impose financial sanctions on Qatar over its support for Hamas, he dispatched senior intelligence officials to Washington. The Israelis told US lawmakers that Qatar had played a positive role in the Gaza Strip, according to three people familiar with the trip.

Israel’s goal was “to ensure that the next confrontation between Israel and Hamas will be the final showdown”, he wrote in the memo, dated December 21st, 2016. A pre-emptive strike, he said, could remove most of the “leadership of the military wing of Hamas”.