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Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

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  • The CNN article got comments from two other people present.

    A resident:

    Dr. Hisham Dweikat, a resident of Beita who took part in the demonstration, told CNN that as the protest was wrapping up, the Israeli military started firing tear gas towards the crowd.

    “As people were running away, live fire was shot and a soldier fired directly at the protesters, hitting the American activist in the head from behind and falling to the ground,” he said.

    An American activist:

    Eygi was crouched behind a dumpster at the bottom of a hill when gunfire began, Vivi Chen, an American activist who was at the demonstration and who volunteers for Faza’a – another pro-Palestinian group which works in partnership with ISM – told CNN. Chen confirmed Eygi was there with ISM.

    “We were all at the bottom of the hill and the Israeli army was at the top,” Chen said. “There were two volunteers sitting behind a dumpster and they fired one shot at the dumpster. It hit a metal plane. And then there was another shot and they shot – they shot her in the head.”

    “They are one of the most advanced armies in the world,” Chen said. “They have weapons from America. It is not an accident that they hit her in the head. That was on purpose. It’s not that they shot a hundred shots at the same time, and she was hit with one. We were all standing still, not moving. Just standing there, and they shot her through the head.”







  • Go to Applebee’s and order Four-Cheese Mac & Cheese with honey pepper chicken tenders. The chicken tenders are excellent but the Mac and Cheese is the most watery garbage I’ve ever eaten. Then you will understand the true skill of making delicious Mac and Cheese.







  • “There has been widespread looting of existing stocks in Rafah after aid agencies were forced to leave warehouses unguarded following warnings to evacuate the area from Israeli Defence Forces (IDF)” This is a ridiculous oversight, the IDF should be working with aid agencies to guard evacuated warehouses and create new humanitarian corridors to facilitate aid delivery.

    Edit: Oversight was definitely the wrong word to use. I thought this evacuation was limited to a small part of East Rafah and only affected a few warehouses. It’s actually all of East Rafah and covers both border crossings and the majority of warehouses if I had to guess. Not working with aid agencies ahead of time is clearly done maliciously.



  • Do you have any proof of your particular claim? Like give a link with an example of it. Sorry to say but I’m immensely skeptical. I could claim lots of things and it could not be true.

    1. Israeli forces’ systemic denial of fair trial rights to Palestinian child prisoners amounts to arbitrary detention June 1 2023

    Thanks for the response and I understand your skepticism, I will do my best to provide sources. I found an article describing the type of discrimination Arab Israelis face, there are problems but legal rights are equal, “They have the same legal rights as Jewish citizens, but many continue to face discrimination and socioeconomic disadvantages.” Your link is about the occupied West Bank. Those are military courts applied during a military occupation, people living under a military occupation do not have the same legal rights as the citizens of the state occupying them.

    You said it, yourself. Undemocratic. Plus the two separate laws does not really define ‘‘democratic’’, does it? A Apartheid regime cannot be democratic.

    Israel has not annexed the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, they occupy them. Apartheid is two different laws for citizens of the same country, the effect of an occupation is similar but the cause and solution are completely different. The solution is to end the occupation, in apartheid the solution is to change laws to grant equal rights to all people of a country. I could see apartheid being used to describe how the Israeli military treats the West Bank, but it does not apply to Israel itself.

    Not only that if they are so democratic, why shut it down? Freedom of speech is a part of being democratic which means allowing real news and evidence to be spread into to the world, to let others know what is going on.

    1. Democracy or Apartheid: You Can’t Have Both
    2. Freedom of expression is one of the essential foundations of a democratic society
    3. Israel prevents hundreds of worshippers from entering Al-Aqsa on first night of Ramadan

    The stated reason the Israeli cabinet banned them was because they were “Harming Israel’s security and inciting violence against its soldiers” this article also mentions “Under a law passed last month, the government can temporarily shutter foreign media outlets that have been found to undermine national security.” I disagree with the decision but it only applies to foreign media and is temporary. Freedom of speech in Israel isn’t perfect but the judicial system has protected it and generally it has gotten better over time. The history of the right to free speech in Israel is interesting, here’s an article about it. Israel hosts one of its harshest critics Haaretz. If Israel was undemocratic why would they allow such a news source to exist? Other countries in the Middle East certainly wouldn’t tolerate this. Israel used to have the best score on the press freedom index for the Middle East region. As a result of the war they are now second in the region but still 30-70 ranks higher than their neighbors.

    In response to some of your sources, Israel’s actions at Al Aqsa mosque and in Jerusalem in general are issues I’ll read more on, specifically permanent residents status vs citizens living there. I don’t think it would change my overall view of Israel being a democracy though. Democracies can do a lot of bad things and still be democracies.

    Not sure if I said it in this thread or somewhere else but Israel is on paper ‘’democratic’’ but in reality they are not. In January there was a poll done whether the Israeli want their Prime Minister to stay or be gone and the majority of the Israeli do not want their current prime minister and he keeps being in power.

    1. Only 15% of Israelis want Netanyahu to keep job after Gaza war, poll finds

    In practice Israel is a democracy. People want Netanyahu out but that’s not how a democracy works. There is not an election being held right now so the only way Netanyahu can be removed is by a vote of no confidence from the legislature. People can ask the legislature to remove him and hold new elections, in fact a vote was held in January but the motion only got 18 of the 61 needed votes. As a result of Netanyahu’s war the Likud party (he is the chairperson) has lost a lot of popularity and the National Unity party has gained in popularity. Current polls indicate Likud will lose the next election which is how democracy works. It is a slow process but in the end the people decide their government by voting.


  • Two different laws. One for Israeli and one for Palestinians

    In Israel proper the laws are equal, plenty of Arabs live in Israel with the same rights as anyone else. In territories they occupy the laws are unfair, but I don’t know of any democracy that gives people in occupied territories equal rights

    They shutdown Al Jazeera

    They shutdown a foreign media outlet specifically for the duration of a war. Undemocratic, but not beyond the scope of democracy.

    People who humiliate Palestinian often do not get punished by law.

    This is discrimination not by law but by the people that enforce it, unfortunately democracy can’t effectively fix the biases of its citizens.

    The reason they are a democracy is because they have elections that determine the ruling party in the legislature. In 2022 a right wing party got the most votes and successfully created a coalition government. If the government does unpopular things then they will lose votes in the next election and be removed, ideally this limits unpopular government policy.



  • Oh I see. I wonder if they increase arrests after prisoner exchanges, I’ll have to look up the numbers if they’re available. I see your point though Israel is constantly imprisoning more people so the exchanges aren’t exactly equivalent. The difference between hostage and prisoner is complicated though, it’s basically just the accusation of some crime, Hamas doesn’t really claim the people they take have done any specific crime but most of the time Israel doesn’t either because they hold people without charges so it is very similar.