Was this decision made in Redmond or in Israel? Microsoft has offices in Israel and these offices are likely responsible for things happening in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel is currently at "war" with Gaza and having Israeli employees of Microsoft having the ability to disable anyone's account calling civilians in Gaza is pretty horrible.
It has R&D centers and local business centers. Skype is not in Israel and there's no reason for a VoIP solution to route through a country local facility. The "complete siege" ended ages ago. Israel provides power, food etc.
How far is Israel expected to deliver the food? Right to everyone's door?
A seige means the borders are closed.
The current situation, for at least 6 months now is that Israel is letting food trucks through the border, more and more every day.
A problem exists for that last mile inside Gaza where no one wants to distribute it because militants will straight up beat truck drivers with sticks to steal the trucks and the food.
You'd think the UN would step in and do something but so far they mostly just sit on their hands bleating.
So to summarize: there are huge piles of food just inside the Gaza border that are not being distributed efficiently/at all.
I also want to point out that it's not in Israel's best interest for there to be food shortages inside Gaza. The first people who will be starved are the hostages, so Israel wants to flood the strip with so much food that some trickles down to her citizens held there against their will.
I don't think Israel cares that much about the hostages (the constant indiscriminate bombing might give a hint). But if that's true and the hostages are in the hands of Hamas, then Israel would provide food and supplies to Hamas, right?
Where are your sources about "huge piles of food just inside the Gaza border?"
> Aid groups say coordinating their movements with the Israeli military inside Gaza remains a complicated and time-consuming process, sometimes requiring hours to coordinate safe access to the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom border. And despite these efforts, Israeli airstrikes have hit aid workers on multiple occasions.
I haven't found anything on the investigation that is supposedly investigating the WCK workers murder. Unless the people who did that receives exemplary punishment, what sort of NGOs could distribute that aid? And ITF forces are still on the ground, and air.
It isn't just Skype, their hotmail accounts were also disabled. Many local countries definitely do have authority over services provided in their countries.
I would guess these shutdown orders came from Israeli security services and then were routed though Microsoft Israel to be enacted.
> The "complete siege" ended ages ago. Israel provides power, food etc.
> “Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” 10 independent UN experts, including the special rapporteur on the right to food and the special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, said in a statement on Tuesday.
...
Three conditions must exist to determine there is famine:
- At least 20 percent of the population in the area faces extreme levels of hunger;
- 30 percent of the children in the area are too thin for their height; and
- The death rate has doubled from the average, surpassing two deaths per 10,000 daily for adults and four deaths per 10,000 daily for children.
Did the 10 independent experts provide any evidence for these new claims? I can not find any in the article you have provided. I believe you should confine your assertion to “high risk” as the article states.
FTA: “ In its most recent evaluation, carried out last month, the IPC said Gaza remains at “high risk” of famine as the war continues and aid access is restricted, but stopped short of classifying conditions as a famine.
> Did the 10 independent experts provide any evidence for these new claims? I
somehow they can't get their people in, because big bad Israel, and at the same time, they seem to know exactly what's going on on the ground, and can make such claims. gaza seems to be the land of logical contradictions...
Pretty disengenious summary on your part. From the report you linked:
> Firstly, all stakeholders who use the IPC for high-level decision-making must understand that whether a Famine classification is confirmed does not in any manner change the fact that extreme human suffering is without a doubt currently ongoing in the Gaza Strip
and does not in any manner change the immediate humanitarian imperative to address this civilian suffering by enabling complete, safe, unhindered, and
sustained humanitarian access into and throughout the Gaza Strip, including through ceasing hostilities. All
actors should not wait until a Famine classification for the current period is made to act accordingly.
> Secondly, the FRC would like to highlight that the very fact that we are unable to endorse (or not) FEWS NET’s
analysis is driven by the lack of essential up to date data on human well-being in Northern Gaza, and Gaza
at large. Thus, the FRC strongly requests all parties to enable humanitarian access in general, and specifically
to provide a window of opportunity to conduct field surveys in Northern Gaza to have more solid evidence of the food consumption, nutrition, and mortality
situation.
What's disengenious about? They didn't find evidence of famine, and thus the claim "According to the UN, there is now a famine in Gaza" is factual wrong. The sprinkling of ideology on top of this fact doesn't change it.
The fact that Israel is saying something doesn't mean it's a lie and neither does the fact that Al Jazeera said it. Notice I specifically did not say Israel was innocent in that, so it's very much not the Israeli "talking point". Some things are just bad and don't have any good or convenient solution.
You're repeating a false narrative of picking a side in a problematic situation where two zero sum players are trying to engage and escalate. I'm a liberal Israeli. I have friends in Gaza too. I don't want them hurt and I'm sure they don't want to hurt me. Unfortunately, we're both stuck in a situation where people frame this as a Palestinian vs. Israeli conflict. That's wrong. It's a conflict between two zero sum players who have been pumping each other up for 30 years and sabotaging repeated attempts for peace.
Al Jazeera is run by Qatar who also host Hamas. They are a very bad actor in many cases and in line with a zero sum player in this narrative.
The solution is simple. Stop dropping bombs on Palestinian children. Just because Hamas killed 1000 of your children does not mean you have to kill 20000 of Palestinians. 1000-20000 is not zero. The fact that you are not stopping bombing children makes you as evil as Hamas, if not worse.
> 695 Israeli civilians, 71 foreign nationals, and 373 security forces.[165] This data was published in December 2023, using social security data. There are additionally five people classed as missing, including four Israelis.[165] The deaths included 36 children, of whom 20 were under 15 years old and the youngest was a 10-month-old baby.
Notice that when you say "security forces" western people don't count them in the same way. We do. Israel has a draft law. These are 18 year old kids that were killed in a surprise attack and we see them in the same way as every civilian murdered.
This doesn't include people killed by rocket fire after the 7th or by attacks from Hezbollah.
This also ignores the intention, the severity and the cruelty. It ignores the fact that hostages (including women and babies) are still kept in Gaza.
Sure, are we going to ignore that more Palestinians has been killed till October last year, even without an official war declaration in Gaza and West Bank? There are more hostages including minors, taken by Israel, before and after the said incident.
This isn't a contest of volumes and it's a very false equivalency. Hamas attacked Israel knowing the cost in lives and chose to attack anyway because they don't value human life. Even that of their own people.
Israel takes prisoners not hostages and has due process albeit flawed. Everyone arrested is arrested due to something they did. Not taken out of their home or a party. Not raped and murdered. These are not civilians, they are typically criminals.
Minors taken by Israel are 16+ unless they did something serious. E.g. two teen girls stabbed a person who they thought was an elderly Jew. Was actually an old Palestinian guy. Obviously Hamas asked to release that murderer. Israel is asking for the release of innocent people while Hamas is asking for the release of mass murderers.
Sure. Whatever you say. It's really hard to tell who's lying and who isn't with all the misinformation and also the sheer volume of facts.
It's also hard to find the "good guys" because both sides did some pretty awful things. Which again muddies the waters.
But the thing is that you chose to sweep the deck and call everything I said a lie with no nuance or thought. This brings me back to a different debate I had with someone I think here... I mentioned that Israel has gay rights and one of the most advanced human rights laws, civil rights, religious freedom etc. It's essentially a super liberal country in most regards (our labor laws will make California blush).
On the flip side I mentioned gays get executed in Gaza and wife beating isn't a crime under Hamas law. Honor killings are normal occurrences (if you don't know what it is you should seriously read up about it). I was accused of "pink washing".
Pink washing is when a corporation tries to hide bad behavior with a sham gay gesture. Israel has been pro-gay for decades, pro women and human rights. That's not something tucked on.
But the accusation reminded me of you. It accused me of stating a bad verifiable fact about Hamas while saying something verifiably good about Israel. How dare I state such inconvenient facts to assault your sensitive preconceived notions of whose "good" and whose "bad" in this narrative. I've clearly gone too far.
All joking aside. Why do you think those are lies?
Why do you choose to not believe a flawed democracy over a terrorist organization that murdered people for decades?
A terrorist organization backed by an Iran, Russia block... A terrorist organization that is killing its own people. If any of these facts seem wrong to you, I suggest furthering your research on that. I think you were deeply mislead. Israel is very flawed and did indeed mistreat the Palestinians a lot (especially in the West bank) but you need nuance. Palestinians vary Hamas is evil, the Palestinian authority is "complicated". Israel is also nuanced, it has the worst government in its history right now, but that's an anomaly. It did have more liberal governments over the years.
Unfortunately, Hamas and lack of nuance from the west help strengthen the bad players within Israel and move it further to the right.
I can see how that can be misinterpreted, that was not my intention. This isn't about race. It's about their social structure and partially about the depth of religion in their society. Also, I think it's a current state. I believe there is hope but it would require a major social shift, for that you need to put external pressure on them to change.
Right now all their leaders and wishful leaders are current/former terrorists. To climb to the top you have to prove yourself as a mass murderer. That doesn't yield good leadership skills.
But that's only a part of it. The main problem is their Hamula (extended family) structure. Their social order is to a large part dictated by major families that place their allegiance with individual militia. This is problematic, a leader needs to instill fear in the families and yet gain enough support by promising favors for each. The result is deep, rooted, inescapable corruption that tanked the Palestinian authority. Hamas has also robbed billions from the people of Gaza.
This sort of environment doesn't allow for compromise. The people who get to the top will be literally murdered by these families if they compromise. Anyone who shows statesmanship and willingness to work is quickly kicked out of the way by this cast system.
Don't get me wrong, individual Palestinians do want a proper democracy. But they can't really have it because the power of these forces is too big.
The whole war has been going for 9 months. Things change fast. It was a stupid statement by a stupid/evil government, but facts have changed quite a while back in relative terms.
People use the word "ages" to indicate a significant amount of time. In the context of this war it's correct. This obviously didn't refer to the literal meaning of ages when discussing a 9 month war.
It seems to me you're trying to nitpick on a minor choice of words instead of the substance of what I said.
Food is still scarce, with far fewer trucks let in versus pre invasion (which was 500 trucks a day), which was already calibrated according to Israeli officials to be "the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis". https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikileaks-israel-intentionally-...
> Nowadays (as in the last few months) a minimum of 250 FOOD trucks enter Gaza daily. Sometimes as high as 350.
Current estimates are that 1000-1500 trucks a day are needed due to both the backlog of lack of food and the destruction of Gaza internal food production.
Me too, I would like to see the evidence, but alas the occupying power does not allow free press to be on the Gaza strip.
I would just remind you that there is not just a famine, but a brutal genocide too, and Communications itself is under attack. Please give some leniency to the people who are bombed to the ground, killed and maimed, and using web trees to connect to the World, for not showing enough evidence of famine. Although I wonder how much of an evidence would be needed to make us all believe there is a famine. But , surely more than the evidence to believe that this is an act of defence by the occupying power is needed.
Again, I already said these things. Are you looking for an argument? To say the last word? What's your point? Why link for an article from 2011?
Power is out in specific areas because Hamas was in control of all civil offices and they're gone. So while the grid is back up, there's no engineers to connect the destroyed relays.
There's a picture of him smiling as he brings the news to his wife where you also see her smiling. I can't imagine losing a child, just thinking about him losing a child makes me tear up. It's unimaginable. Yet Hamas leaders consider the death and suffering of their own children in the Jihad as a blessing.
That is fanatic religious insanity. But they understand that the West doesn't see it that way. So they use Palestinian children in the most heinous ways possible, as couriers between their tunnels and bait. An accidental death of a child is propaganda and they live on that. Recently they published a video of an Israeli army dog attacking an old woman. They literally kidnapped that dog and used it to stage an attack for propaganda.
I'm not saying that horrible things aren't happening there due to Israeli actions. On the contrary, they are. But they are happening there for the most part because Hamas is an enemy of the Palestinian people as much as it is an enemy of Israel. It is using Hospitals, Schools and Mosques as bases. They placed a huge weapons cache under a refuge sanction, then when it exploded it was easy to blame Israel and for 24-48 hours the media reported that it was Israel.
Western ignorant good intentions are prolonging the war and making it worse because they're giving Hamas false hope.
I actually find it pretty odd that it isn't normal for religious people to be happy when a loved one dies. They are in a place of infinite happiness, that's awesome.
I have friends of all religions although I'm personally an atheist. Religion has very little to do with this deep sorrow. It's not about them, it's about the personal loss. It's about the suffering prior to death. It's a deep visceral human emotion that separates out psychopaths.
Based on that logic Hamas should welcome Israeli bombs and consider that a favor. But they sacrifice others rather than themselves. Their terrorists hide in tunnels away from bombings and send child couriers to do the dirty work for them. They find the poor suicidal soles and instead of getting them help, put them in a suicide vest and send them to kill innocent people. That's insanity.
This is absolutely not true. Whatever else you many think of what's happening, this is just a distortion of reality.
Hamas is an organized paramilitary of a semi-autonomous regino, that has spent twenty years digging a vast tunnel network and hiding weapons and ammunition in civilian homes. It is engaged in daily attacks against the IDF in Gaza, as they themselves show by posting videos of their firefights and attacks against the IDF. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have died in these battles.
>as they themselves show by posting videos of their firefights and attacks against the IDF.
Like ITF posting the looting Haza homes, wearing lingeries and destroying children' toys?
Could they post the destruction of Alshifa, the mass grave with elderly people, with their hands tied in front of the hospital? The spokesperson lying in front of the camera, saying the weeks in days are guard duty stamps?
And the Hamas, is that the same one, that the Israeli PM funded for weakening the Palestinian Authority?
Yes, one notices there's been lots of shooting and bombing going on. The question is whether the current Israeli government rationally believes it will improve its overall security position in conducting the operation in the way it is doing (the usual intended outcome of a "war"). Or whether it has other goals in mind. As its numerous (quite nauseating) statements about the long-term fate it in has in mind for both the territory in question and the "animals" who inhabit it consistently indicate:
> The question is whether the current Israeli government rationally believes it will improve its overall security position in conducting the operation in the way it is doing (the usual intended outcome of a "war").
That's a fair question and criticism. I am one of the many Israelis furious at the government for exactly this reason - we believe Netanyahu, in particular, cares more about his own political survival, than about the actual security of Israel. And while I do think the current war is in some ways making Israel more secure (by weakening Hamas), it's also weakening Israel in some ways, and that's not even getting into the question of whether it's worth it "morally" speaking at this point (in my estimation, no).
It's still a war though. And let me push back and say that if you think most wars are fought to purely to improve security and not for other reasons, including political reasons, you're very mistaken.
> Or whether it has other goals in mind. As its numerous (quite nauseating) statements about the long-term fate it in has in mind for both the territory in question and the "animals" who inhabit it consistently indicate:
For sure some extremist Israelis have these other goals. They are luckily a small minority of Israelis, but they unfortunately wield outsized political power because the actual #1 goal of Netanyahu is just to remain in power, and they help him do that.
It is not the goal of the government nor of the majority of Israelis, who oppose this.
Also, while there have certainly been bad statements made towards Palestinians, especially in the aftermath of October 7th, it's not like any Israelis routinely go around calling Palestinians "animals", despite your implying it.
Look, your criticisms of the government are right IMO, and are shared by many Israelis, hence the numerous protests and calls for Netanyahu to resign.
That said, none of that means that your initial statement was correct; this is a war, not a massacre. The IDF isn't going around targeting Palestinian civilians, at least not in general (I'm sure many individual cases of wrongdoing have happened, sad to say). The IDF is targeting militants, and engaging in daily fights with militants, in which civilians get hurt, for many reasons, but this situation isn't very different than many other battles that have taken place in urban territory.
It's terrible, and maybe the war is not justified at this point (and you might think it was never justified, though I disagree with that). But it is a war, and saying otherwise is both wrong, and will make almost anyone on the "other side" of this issue refuse to engage with you.
These are fair points, and I appreciate the thoughtful, holistic response. We may disagree on interpretive aspects, particularly as to the motives of certain parties, and the extent to which the current operation differs from "war as usual" (whatever that may mean) or even other major IDF campaigns.
But beyond that I think we can spare ourselves further predictable iteration (which would only veer further from the original topic of the thread, and change nothing about what's happening on the ground in any case).
But it matters. Hamas are non-state actors; if the conflict is legally characterized by Israel as a war, then prisoners have POW rights. Nobody is entirely sure at this point exactly what Israel's legal position is, which is going to have complex ramifications given that Israeli officials have already been charged by the ICC.
The population of Gaza is actually the concentration of the descendants the former non Jewish population of nearby communities in Israel who were driven out during the Nabka. Many in Israel are calling this war Nakba 2.
The sophistry resides in the gap between the current government's stated reasons for conducting the operation in the way that it has -- and its actual, inner reasons.
Israel is currently at "war" with Gaza and having Israeli employees of Microsoft having the ability to disable anyone's account calling civilians in Gaza is pretty horrible.
Is Microsoft via Skype and Hotmail participating in what Israel's leaders are call the "complete siege"? https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-ministe...
No appeal and no explanation available does suggest to me the shutdown orders may have come from Israeli security services or the Israeli army.