[kirklancaster]

Hamas official: 50 of the 62 Gazans killed in border violence were our members

Salah Bardawil's confirmation means the number of acknowledged members of terror groups who died on Monday and Tuesday is now 53

By JUDAH ARI GROSS and TOI STAFF
16 May 2018, 4:59 pm 33
29,515

A Hamas official on Wednesday acknowledged that 50 of the 62 Palestinians reported killed during Gaza border riots on Monday and Tuesday were members of the Islamist terrorist group, bringing the total number of known members of terror groups among the fatalities up to 53.

“In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, Fifty of the martyrs were Hamas and 12 from the people. How can Hamas reap the fruits if it pays such an expensive price?” said Hamas official Salah Bardawil in an interview with the Palestinian Baladna news outlet.

Questioned about the figures by the presenter, Bardawil said they were “official' numbers..

Hamas spokesman Fawzy Barhoum did not confirm all 50 were members of the Islamist movement. He told AFP Hamas paid for the funerals for all 50 “whether they are members or supporters of Hamas, or unrelated to the factions.”

Bassem Naim, another senior Hamas official, declined to confirm or deny the number but said it was a “large movement and has great popular support.”

It was “natural to see members or supporters of Hamas in large numbers” in such a protest, he said, adding that when they were killed they were “participating peacefully” in demonstrations.

The Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad had said on Tuesday that three members of its Saraya al-Quds military wing were killed by Israeli forces in Khan Younis.

The Israeli military shared a portion of Bardawil’s interview with an Arabic news outlet, accompanied by English captions.

Hamas official, Dr. Salah Al-Bardawil is clear about terrorist involvement in the riots

“This proves what so many have tried to ignore: Hamas is behind these riots, and the branding of the riots as ‘peaceful protests’ could not be further from the truth,” said IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.

According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, 62 people in total were killed during border clashes on Monday and Tuesday.

Israel has not put out its own official death toll, but officials have questioned the accuracy of the Hamas-provided figure. In one case, a Gazan doctor told the Associated Press that an 8-month-old baby, who the Gaza ministry said died after inhaling Israeli tear gas on Monday, had a preexisting medical condition and that he did not believe her death was caused by tear gas.

The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday had said that at least 24 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were killed in day-long clashes Monday. At that stage, Hamas acknowledged 10 of the dead were its members.

Hamas press release on May 15, 2918, announcing the deaths of 10 of its Interior Ministry members in clashes with the IDF the day prior.

The IDF said its number was based on a joint investigation with the Shin Bet security service.

“Most of the people [from terror groups] killed belonged to the Hamas terror group, and some to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” an IDF spokesperson said.

Among the dead, the IDF said on Tuesday, were all eight members of a cell of armed Hamas operatives who were killed in a gun battle as they sought to breach the fence in the northern Gaza Strip.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 60 people were killed in Monday’s demonstrations, most by gunfire, and more than 2,700 were injured. Another two Palestinian men were killed Tuesday as smaller protests broke out in Gaza, the ministry said.

Israel has blamed Hamas for the deadly violence, saying the terror group encouraged and led the protests, which included attacks on Israeli troops and attempts to breach the border fence. The IDF said Sunday that Hamas planned to send armed terrorists through any breach in the fence to “massacre” Israelis.

After the first “March of Return” protests in March, Hamas acknowledged that five of its terrorists were among the fatalities, but it subsequently refrained from acknowledging whether its men were among the dead.

On Thursday, Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar said he hoped to see a mass breach of the Israeli border during Monday’s protests timed to coincide with the US embassy’s move to Jerusalem.

For Hamas, the terror group that rules Gaza and seeks Israel’s destruction, Monday’s border protest was the culmination of a weeks-long campaign to try to break the blockade on the territory. Israel says the blockade is necessary to prevent Hamas from acquiring weaponry and attacking the Jewish state.

Monday’s demonstrations also protested the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem, viewed as a major provocation by the Palestinians and the Arab world. Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

[Maru]

Yeah I was listening to Ben Shapiro's podcast... he had video and clips up where they're pretty much spelling out what their goals are, but because only the right are covering it, people assume it's all down to political motives I guess.

That's why it's become so easy for this "war of values" narrative to even exist... if we aren't supportive of folk we rightly should be suspicious of, we are somehow part of the problem. It doesn't wash. When the media is very picky about what facts, footage and information they choose to share... then we're dependent on those "facts" to determine the "moral authority". My opinion, it's war, and in the case of foreign wars, it's very difficult at a distance to draw up black versus white... people are often emotionally swayed by certain narratives, and both extremes of the political spectrum rely on this gullibility to continuously shift the blame to the other side. In the end, nobody is held accountable, but interest groups, the media and many corporations will gladly profit of this, including terrorists that depend on this type of "good versus evil" propaganda in order to keep the public distracted and misinformed...

I have my own reasons to be suspicious of Israel. They bombed the hell out of the ship that my husband's grandfather was stationed on during the 6-day war. He lost his grandfather that day. However, the worst part was the US not sending help and being complicit in the cover up... there's a memorial in the NSA since it was a spook ship, but still, no public coverage... but then the media often overlooks these types of cover-ups and they only cover what fits into their own general narrative... they're in no rush to get all of the facts out there. Left and right media are often complicit in cover-ups, of all types, and yet many many people in the population still depend on them to act as the front-lines of our moral authority... that doesn't make any sense.

I'm taking a course right now in storytelling (with graphics) and in it goes into how storytelling is basic to our way of life... we make stories out of everything and it's key in how we think, function and build references. The media to some degree has to insert some kind of narrative in order to contextualize the facts, so that's a given... but we highly attracted to storylines as context, it's pretty much irresistible... that's why we can have consistent cultural sentiments/values... it's how we relate to the world.

I think culture today takes it much further than we used to... we're not just reading the stories to pick up information, we're reading them in a way that makes ourselves the narrative... I mean, bombs are not going off on our borders... but like here in the US, both sides of the media want to inject American issues onto the situation and make it about us... how about it's about two regions that have been at war for a very long time and it's a stalemate that hasn't self-resolved... just like most people don't have a clue why anything else goes on in the world, why slavery still exists, why people would choose to live on the street addicted on pills to getting their life in order... we look for a boogeyman or scapegoat and things we will be the solution to all those problems, but at the end of the day, human nature will prevail and there's only so much that we individually (or as a nation) can control. I think people like to think they have the solution, can see it all in black and white, because then it means we aren't really at war with each other... many think, in a really narcissistic way I should mention, that eventually the opposition will come to reflect upon themselves and that their own values will prevail. That's what's so attractive about playing value/virtue sports... it's about the Self, aka individualism on steroids.


TLDR: Anyway, I suspect there isn't an easy solution to the Israel/Palestinian problem. I think it would've been reached by now... of course, people from afar will be like "Israel should just bow down and give in"... except they're not the ones who are being bombed and who have to worry about a group of people who just want to "kill a bunch of Jews". It's narcissistic to believe that a foreigner could easily resolve the situation despite not being in their shoes... is my view.


Anyway, a good article on that goes into how subjective truth has taken over in culture...

How America Lost Its Mind
The nation’s current post-truth moment is the ultimate expression of mind-sets that have made America exceptional throughout its history.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...s-mind/534231/

Each of us is on a spectrum somewhere between the poles of rational and irrational. We all have hunches we can’t prove and superstitions that make no sense. Some of my best friends are very religious, and others believe in dubious conspiracy theories. What’s problematic is going overboard—letting the subjective entirely override the objective; thinking and acting as if opinions and feelings are just as true as facts. The American experiment, the original embodiment of the great Enlightenment idea of intellectual freedom, whereby every individual is welcome to believe anything she wishes, has metastasized out of control. From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams, sometimes epic fantasies—every American one of God’s chosen people building a custom-made utopia, all of us free to reinvent ourselves by imagination and will. In America nowadays, those more exciting parts of the Enlightenment idea have swamped the sober, rational, empirical parts. Little by little for centuries, then more and more and faster and faster during the past half century, we Americans have given ourselves over to all kinds of magical thinking, anything-goes relativism, and belief in fanciful explanation—small and large fantasies that console or thrill or terrify us. And most of us haven’t realized how far-reaching our strange new normal has become.

[kirklancaster]

Great post, Maru.

[Nicky91]

[Oliver_W]

Originally Posted by kirklancaster

Hamas official: 50 of the 62 Gazans killed in border violence were our members

Wow, that's like totally shocking and unexpected.

[Crimson Dynamo]

Originally Posted by Maru

Yeah I was listening to Ben Shapiro's podcast... he had video and clips up where they're pretty much spelling out what their goals are, but because only the right are covering it, people assume it's all down to political motives I guess.

That's why it's become so easy for this "war of values" narrative to even exist... if we aren't supportive of folk we rightly should be suspicious of, we are somehow part of the problem. It doesn't wash. When the media is very picky about what facts, footage and information they choose to share... then we're dependent on those "facts" to determine the "moral authority". My opinion, it's war, and in the case of foreign wars, it's very difficult at a distance to draw up black versus white... people are often emotionally swayed by certain narratives, and both extremes of the political spectrum rely on this gullibility to continuously shift the blame to the other side. In the end, nobody is held accountable, but interest groups, the media and many corporations will gladly profit of this, including terrorists that depend on this type of "good versus evil" propaganda in order to keep the public distracted and misinformed...

I have my own reasons to be suspicious of Israel. They bombed the hell out of the ship that my husband's grandfather was stationed on during the 6-day war. He lost his grandfather that day. However, the worst part was the US not sending help and being complicit in the cover up... there's a memorial in the NSA since it was a spook ship, but still, no public coverage... but then the media often overlooks these types of cover-ups and they only cover what fits into their own general narrative... they're in no rush to get all of the facts out there. Left and right media are often complicit in cover-ups, of all types, and yet many many people in the population still depend on them to act as the front-lines of our moral authority... that doesn't make any sense.

I'm taking a course right now in storytelling (with graphics) and in it goes into how storytelling is basic to our way of life... we make stories out of everything and it's key in how we think, function and build references. The media to some degree has to insert some kind of narrative in order to contextualize the facts, so that's a given... but we highly attracted to storylines as context, it's pretty much irresistible... that's why we can have consistent cultural sentiments/values... it's how we relate to the world.

I think culture today takes it much further than we used to... we're not just reading the stories to pick up information, we're reading them in a way that makes ourselves the narrative... I mean, bombs are not going off on our borders... but like here in the US, both sides of the media want to inject American issues onto the situation and make it about us... how about it's about two regions that have been at war for a very long time and it's a stalemate that hasn't self-resolved... just like most people don't have a clue why anything else goes on in the world, why slavery still exists, why people would choose to live on the street addicted on pills to getting their life in order... we look for a boogeyman or scapegoat and things we will be the solution to all those problems, but at the end of the day, human nature will prevail and there's only so much that we individually (or as a nation) can control. I think people like to think they have the solution, can see it all in black and white, because then it means we aren't really at war with each other... many think, in a really narcissistic way I should mention, that eventually the opposition will come to reflect upon themselves and that their own values will prevail. That's what's so attractive about playing value/virtue sports... it's about the Self, aka individualism on steroids.


TLDR: Anyway, I suspect there isn't an easy solution to the Israel/Palestinian problem. I think it would've been reached by now... of course, people from afar will be like "Israel should just bow down and give in"... except they're not the ones who are being bombed and who have to worry about a group of people who just want to "kill a bunch of Jews". It's narcissistic to believe that a foreigner could easily resolve the situation despite not being in their shoes... is my view.


Anyway, a good article on that goes into how subjective truth has taken over in culture...

How America Lost Its Mind
The nation’s current post-truth moment is the ultimate expression of mind-sets that have made America exceptional throughout its history.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...s-mind/534231/

The "problem" will never be solved until both sides stop pretending that fictitious gods exist - it really is that simple.

With regards to the demo, a nasty cynical attempt again by Hamas to influence the liberal west. They really are the lowest of the low.

[bots]

the other 12 were probably their human shields. No-one was there that was not intent on violence or coerced to be there.

[Nicky91]

this whole conflict seems now more a never ending conflict


i feel sad for the israeli people who live near that warzone

some israeli's i spoke to on eurovision discord, a girl Shira said she feels very very scared to live near in that area, so yes i feel sad that those people can't really enjoy their lives just bc of some war which never seems to end

[y.winter]

I'm glad to see that people see behind the big populist headlines of "ISRAEL KILLS IN GAZA".
There's more to it than just killing because Israel was bored.
Israel doesn't look to kill innocent people on purpose, the IDF would rarely shoot without a very convincing reason and without being provoked.
Hamas is a terror organization which doesn't look for the people in Gaza more than they look to kill Israelis and provoke Israel in general. The life in Gaza could've been much better, even with the occupation, had Hamas put their effort and money in the Palestinian people.
Israel is opening the gates to Gaza for trucks supplying emergency supplies, cement and concrete - but the people in Gaza receive almost nothing. It's all being used to build underground tunnels underneath the border so their terrorist can purely kill and attack Israelis (read about the Itamar attack, one of many).
Israel has warned Gaza the day before about unnecessary provocations, and Hamas chose to ignore it - while using their terrorists and innocent human shields to threaten Israel's borders (and use this poor baby as their propaganda to justify their side).
Israel didn't look to kill just because - Israel has the right to defend its borders like any other European country would've done, rightfully so.