Every part of the SS was engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide, even the medical corp. How are you comparing them to Hezbollah, which only exists out of resistance to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Lebanon?

You haven’t made an argument for why they should not be considered non-conbatants

Non-combatant is a term of art in the law of war and international humanitarian law to refer to civilians who are not taking a direct part in hostilities; persons, such as combat medics and military chaplains, who are members of the belligerent armed forces but are protected because of their specific duties (as currently described in Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, adopted in June 1977); combatants who are placed hors de combat; and neutral persons, such as peacekeepers, who are not involved in fighting for one of the belligerents involved in a war. This particular status was first recognized under the Geneva Conventions with the First Geneva Convention of 1864.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-combatant

Sure, my point is that this is still terrorism and a violation of international humanitarian law. It’s worth noting that Hezbollah members aren’t just militant fighters. There are also social services and Parliamentary members, which are not combatants.

Hezbollah organizes and maintains an extensive social development program and runs hospitals, news services, educational facilities, and encouragement of Nikah mut’ah. One of its established institutions, Jihad Al Binna’s Reconstruction Campaign, is responsible for numerous economic and infrastructure development projects in Lebanon. Hezbollah controls the Martyr’s Institute (Al-Shahid Social Association), which guarantees to provide living and education expenses for the families of fighters who die in battle.

“Hezbollah not only has armed and political wings - it also boasts an extensive social development program. Hezbollah currently operates at least four hospitals, twelve clinics, twelve schools and two agricultural centres that provide farmers with technical assistance and training. It also has an environmental department and an extensive social assistance program. Medical care is also cheaper than in most of the country’s private hospitals and free for Hezbollah members”.

Hezbollah holds 14 of the 128 seats in the Parliament of Lebanon and is a member of the Resistance and Development Bloc. According to Daniel L. Byman, it is “the most powerful single political movement in Lebanon.” Hezbollah, along with the Amal Movement, represents most of Lebanese Shi’a. Unlike Amal, Hezbollah has not disarmed. Hezbollah participates in the Parliament of Lebanon.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah

I wouldn’t consider blatant terrorism ‘tactically smart.’ Yet, targeting civilians is par for the course for Israel

The doctrine is named after the Dahiya suburb of Beirut, where the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah has its headquarters, which the Israeli military leveled during its assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 that killed nearly 1,000 civilians, about a third of them children, and caused enormous damage to the country’s civilian infrastructure, including power plants, sewage treatment plants, bridges, and port facilities.

It was formulated by then-General Gadi Eisenkot when he was Chief of Northern Command. As he explained in 2008 referring to a future war on Lebanon: "What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on… We will apply disproportionate force on it (village) and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases… This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.” Eisenkot went on to become chief of the general staff of the Israeli military before retiring in 2019.

While it became official Israeli military doctrine after Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, Israel’s military has used disproportionate force and targeted Palestinian, Lebanese, and other civilians since Israel was established in 1948 based on the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians, including dozens of massacres to force them to flee for their lives.

• The Dahiya Doctrine & Israel’s Use of Disproportionate Force

This is terrorism and a violation of International humanitarian law. It’s not a war crime because Lebanon and Israel are not formally at war; yet Israel just attacked civilians in public, including health workers, and even officials in Parliament.

As an attack on Hezbollah militant fighters, sure, fair game. But this didn’t just attack them.

Photographs and videos filmed by victims and witnesses to the incident and reviewed by Human Rights Watch showed pagers exploding in various locales, such as grocery stores. Other videos that appear to be linked to the incident show adults and children in emergency rooms with severe penetrating traumatic injuries to their heads, torsos. and limbs, and other injuries consistent with the detonation of high explosives.

Hezbollah, in a statement, said that the pagers belonged “to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions” and blamed the Israeli government. US and former Israeli officials speaking to the media said that Israel was responsible for the attack. The Israeli military has not commented.

• Lebanon: Exploding Pagers Harmed Hezbollah, Civilians

“Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today. The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction. A prompt and impartial investigation into the attacks should be urgently conducted.”

• Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch

It’s worth noting that Hezbollah members aren’t just militant fighters. There are also social services and Parliamentary members

Hezbollah organizes and maintains an extensive social development program and runs hospitals, news services, educational facilities, and encouragement of Nikah mut’ah. One of its established institutions, Jihad Al Binna’s Reconstruction Campaign, is responsible for numerous economic and infrastructure development projects in Lebanon. Hezbollah controls the Martyr’s Institute (Al-Shahid Social Association)

Hezbollah holds 14 of the 128 seats in the Parliament of Lebanon and is a member of the Resistance and Development Bloc. According to Daniel L. Byman, it is “the most powerful single political movement in Lebanon.” Hezbollah, along with the Amal Movement, represents most of Lebanese Shi’a. Unlike Amal, Hezbollah has not disarmed. Hezbollah participates in the Parliament of Lebanon.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah

This is terrorism and a violation of International humanitarian law. It’s not a war crime because Lebanon and Israel are not at war, yet Israel just attacked civilians in public, including health workers, and even officials in Parliament. Lebanese civilians are people like anyone else, yet this isn’t treated like the mass terrorist attack it is in most Western Media.

Thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded across Lebanon and parts of Syria on September 17, 2024, resulting in at least 12 deaths, including at least two children and two health workers, and at least 2,800 injuries, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.

Photographs and videos filmed by victims and witnesses to the incident and reviewed by Human Rights Watch showed pagers exploding in various locales, such as grocery stores. Other videos that appear to be linked to the incident show adults and children in emergency rooms with severe penetrating traumatic injuries to their heads, torsos. and limbs, and other injuries consistent with the detonation of high explosives.

Hezbollah, in a statement, said that the pagers belonged “to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions” and blamed the Israeli government. US and former Israeli officials speaking to the media said that Israel was responsible for the attack. The Israeli military has not commented.

• Lebanon: Exploding Pagers Harmed Hezbollah, Civilians

“Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today. The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction. A prompt and impartial investigation into the attacks should be urgently conducted.”

• Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch

I thoroughly layed out the history of ethnic cleansing and Settler Colonialism with sources. The only other thing I can help you out with is with sources detailing the ongoing genocide and how Israel purposely targets civilians, children, and civilian infrastructure like hospitals, Refugee camps, and schools

The infographics were to help make it easy for you to quickly look at and understand. Otherwise, there is much more reading that explains the concepts and history of Israeli Settler Colonialism. Or would you like me to link you videos or audiobooks instead?

The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.

• Avi Shlaim

How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution

‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe

What do you think the goal of Settler Colonialism is?

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.

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

• 800+ Legal Scholars Say Israel May Be Perpetrating ‘Crime of Genocide’ in Gaza

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

• AP News, Time, Reuters, Vox, CBC

There are certainly much more dead than those officially accounted for right now, due to the ongoing genocide and eradication of the Healthcare / Aid infrastructure

• Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential

This is an actual genocide

In Matt Nelson’s words:

“My name is Matt Nelson and I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” he said in a video first uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday. “We are all culpable in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

“We are slaves to capitalism and the military-industrial complex. Most of us are too apathetic to care,” Nelson continued. “The protest I’m about to engage in is a call to our government to stop supplying Israel with the money and weapons it uses to imprison and murder innocent Palestinians, to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza, and to support the [International Criminal Court] indictment of [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli government.”

“A democracy is supposed to serve the will of the people, not the interests of the wealthy,” he added. “Take the power back. Free Palestine.”

• ‘We Are All Culpable’: Matt Nelson Self-Immolates to Protest Israel’s Gaza Onslaught

Q — outside an Israeli — or outside the Israel Embassy. Was the President aware of his death? Did he have any sort of response to it?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Yes, the President is aware. And we can — I can say that it is — obviously, is a — it’s a horrible tragedy, and our thoughts are with the family of the servicemember at — during this — I could — we can’t even imagine this hor- — horrible, difficult time.

Just thoughts and prayers. No acknowledgement of his reasons why, no policy change, just more weapons sent for Israel’s genocide

If Jill Stein and The Green Party were serious, they would advocate for progressive policies from within the Democratic party, push for ranked choice voting in each state, and run for local elections.

There is a ton of work that needs to be done before a third party is a politically viable strategy, there is no way Jill Stein isn’t aware of that.

Lets look more into the details about that. UNRWA has taken that sort of thing very seriously, especially since Oct 7th. These 9 were fired because the evidence presented by Israeli officials, with no independent verification, showed it was possible they were involved.

That doesn’t show that they were terrorists or working for/with Hamas on Oct 7th. It showed that it was possible that they violated UNRWA’s policy of Neutrality, and for that they were fired. So trying to attribute this to UNRWA workers in general makes no sense, it’s just used to justify Israel’s attacks on UNRWA staff and other aid workers working in Gaza during a genocide.

“In one case, no evidence was obtained by OIOS to support the allegations of the staff member’s involvement, while in nine other cases, the evidence obtained by OIOS was insufficient to support the staff members’ involvement,” he said.

With respect to the remaining nine cases, the evidence obtained by OIOS indicated that the UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the 7 October attacks.

Asked about the extent of the staff members’ alleged involvement, Mr. Haq responded that he did not have specific information about the allegations.

He said the OIOS investigation involved visits to Israel for discussions with officials and to see and review information held by authorities there.

“However, one thing I’d like to point out is that since information used by Israeli officials to support the allegations have remained in Israeli custody, OIOS was not able to independently authenticate most of the information provided to it,” he noted

He also appointed an independent review panel to conduct a separate assessment into UNRWA to determine whether the agency was doing everything it could to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they arise.

The panel – headed by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna - published its report in April.

• UN completes investigation on UNRWA staff

I think you accidentally double posted.

Yeah that’s fair, I agree. I think it’s important to highlight the rachet effect when it comes to Democrats, especially on harmful policies like immigration and foreign policy, but it’s also important to recognize the difference between them and the Republicans. The only avenue for progressive change is with the Democratic Party, but only with enough voters demanding better representation

The video by Adi Callai does, as does the Ilan Pappe book referenced.

The book Palestine A Four Thousand Year History - Nur Masalha also goes into that part of the history of Palestine. At that time, Israelites were also considered Palestinian. Zionism is a separate concept from Judaism.

I did accidentally respond to the wrong comment. It was in response to when you said:

First of all its ghoulishly disingenuous for you to conflate providing arms. Which is wrong I’m not justifying that. To actually killing people. That’s straight up empty virtue signaling and not solving or convincing anyone of anything.

This is not analogous to a murder case. When it comes to International and US Law, the US is complicit in the genocide because we are actively providing the arms being used for said genocide.

Also, I’m not a leninist nor a stalinist.

I’m a leftist and I’m very anti-authoritian. I even explicitly state that in my profile. The name is just an edgy pun.

Zionism is a settler colonialism project was able to start with the support of British Imperialism. Zionism as a political movement started with Theodore Herzl in the 1880s as a ‘modern’ way to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ of Europe.

Adi Callai, an Israeli, does a great analysis of how Antisemitism has been weaponized by Zionism during its history.

Since at least the 1860’s, Europe was increasingly antisemitic and hostile to Jewish people. Zionism was explicitly a Setter Colonialist movement and the native Palestinians were not considered People but Savages by the Europeans. While Zionist Colonization began before it, the Balfor Declaration is when Britain gave it’s backing of the movement in order to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ while also creating a Colony in the newly conquered Middle East after WWI in order to exhibit military force in the region and extract natural resources.

That’s when Zionist immigration started to pick up, out of necessity for most as Europe became more hostile and antisemitic. That continued into and during WWII, European countries and even the US refused to expand immigration quotas for Jewish people seeking asylum. The idea that the creation of Israel is a reparation for Jewish people is an after-the-fact justification. While most Jewish immigrants had no choice and just wanted a place to live in peace, it was the Zionist Leadership that developed and implemented the forced transfer, ethnic cleansing, of the native population, Palestinians. Without any Occupation, Apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, there would not be any Palestinian resistance to it.

Herzl himself explicitly considered Zionism a Settler Colonialist project, Setter Colonialism is always violent. The difficulty in creating a democratic Jewish state in an area inhabited by people who are not Jewish, is that enough Palestinian people need to be ‘Transferred’ to have a demographic majority that is Jewish. Ben-Gurion explicitly rejected Secular Bi-national state solutions in favor of partition.

• Page 8, The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948

• 10 myths of Israel by Ilan Pappe, summerized and full book

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

In a new research briefing submitted to the U.S. government today as part of the National Security Memorandum on Safeguards and Accountability with Respect to Transferred Defense Articles and Defense Services (NSM-20) process, Amnesty International USA details civilian deaths and injuries with U.S.-made weapons, as well as other cases that highlight an overall pattern of unlawful attacks by Israeli forces. The briefing also details practices by Israeli forces inconsistent with best practices for mitigating civilian harm and provides clear examples of the misuse of defense articles, the commission of torture, and the use of unlawful lethal force. Lastly, the briefing also details the denial of humanitarian assistance to the civilian population of Gaza.

“It’s shocking that the Biden administration continues to hold that the government of Israel is not violating international humanitarian law with U.S.-provided weapons when our research shows otherwise and international law experts disagree,” said Amanda Klasing, National Director for Government Relations with Amnesty International USA. “The International Court of Justice found the risk of genocide in Gaza is plausible and ordered provisional measures. President Biden must end U.S. complicity with the government of Israel’s grave violations of international law and immediately suspend the transfer of weapons to the government of Israel.”

“The evidence is clear and overwhelming: the government of Israel is using U.S.-made weapons in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, and in a manner that is inconsistent with U.S. law and policy, said Klasing. “In order to follow U.S. laws and policies, the United States must immediately suspend any transfer of arms to the government of Israel.”

• https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/u-s-made-weapons-used-by-government-of-israel-in-violation-of-international-law-and-u-s-law/