Israeli Minister Threatens Filmmakers' Citizenship over Gaza Documentary
reutersconnect.com
reutersconnect.com
I don't think many people would buy your "more logical for them to just go on the record" claim -- in this situation, people are scared! And they have conflicted loyalties as well. They want to blow the whistle, but don't necessarily want to directly accuse their immediate colleagues to their faces.
Another viewpoint is that it's partly true but misleading -- the filmmakers and whistleblowers have blown things entirely out of proportion. That sounds entirely possible. But wouldn't the "logical" response then be more transparency, rather than accusations of treason and a witch-hunt for the collaborators?
And another viewpoint is that it's all completely fabricated, malicious lies. Possibly an extreme crackdown might be an appropriate response in that case? That seems very counter-productive to me, as an outsider, but again cold logic doesn't always apply.
Which of those viewpoints do you find yourself agreeing with?
To me, the broadly true one seems most likely from the available evidence; the hiding of evidence and the attempted crackdown support that one too. It also seems like some people genuinely believe (or pretend to themselves) that it's all malicious lies. To me that smacks of sheer paranoia. Understandable after the October 7 attack, sure, but not rational or productive.
For example, apparently in the film they recount a NAZA that was done for strikes to assassinate Hamas leaders in Gaza (NAZA is an acronym in Hebrew that means “collateral damage assessment”, these are done before all strikes in order to assess potential civilian casualties). In this particular case, the strike was planned to kill the Hamas leaders in their homes at night which would likely also kill their families, as opposed to some other time to kill them which would have more or less or different civilian casualties.
So in my opinion there is no issue with killing Hamas leaders in Gaza in their homes even if their families would also die but this may offend western sensibilities for various reasons including perhaps blanket opposition to killing or military conduct at all. But then again Western sensibilities have produced Western societies which have below replacement birth rates and various other social ills which Israelis cannot even conceive of because those issues do not exist in Israel. Jewish teenagers do not go and shoot up their schools, that is something only Arab terrorists do and the reason they do that is very obvious, as are the ways of preventing that.
In the most charitable interpretation, the filmmakers chose to make this film as Western liberals trying to influence the Israeli government to adopt more Western liberal values and approaches to conducting warfare. This is still traitorous conduct since they are aligned with a foreign ideology and interests who seek to do harm against their own state and their own people.
And "the west" isn't really homogenous for these purposes. Most western countries don't have a school shootings problem, only the USA does. The parts of the west most heavily criticising Israel are not the USA, it's places like Spain and Ireland (both of which have interesting historical parallels!) I think the USA has a higher birth rate than the EU, so maybe you'd prefer them on that basis, but then you don't want school shootings, so maybe you prefer the EU. You can probably find a reason to dislike everyone if that's what you want to do.
In the most charitable interpretation, the filmmakers chose to make this film as Western liberals trying to influence the Israeli government to adopt more Western liberal values
That's hardly the most charitable interpretation! Maybe they're trying to influence Israeli citizens, or maybe they're trying to influence Zionists abroad? There's no need to assume some insidious outsider conspiracy.
Surely people are allowed to disagree non-violently with their current government! If that's the kind of "foreign ideology" that you're dismissing out of hand, well, that certainly clarifies things.
On one hand we have a functional society that is growing in wealth and also in population due to native born citizens meeting, getting married, having children.
On the other hand you have stagnant or declining societies (in real GDP terms) where people are not meeting, not getting married, not having children.
The school shootings is just one social ill I bring up, in Europe you have an issue with mass migration and Muslims engaging in mass sex crimes against children. I could go on about others (suicide rates, drug use rates, migration of young native people to other countries).
Does that make sense?
I never claimed there was an insidious outsider conspiracy although of course there is verified flows of foreign money from governments and NGOs to fund leftist causes and groups within Israel. You can look this up yourself, there are ongoing investigations in Congress as far as US moneys are concerned.
In this case I doubt that had much to do with it.
Israelis are well known for disagreeing with their government. This obviously goes beyond disagreement and into traitorous activity and it’s being treated as such by the Israeli government and Israeli public.
https://knowyourmeme.com/sensitive/memes/the-writers-barely-...
28 helicopters emptied their internal stores of 30mm autocannon and Hellfires that day, with many RTB to rearm/refuel, all of them at dense Israeli territory. Seven of them dumped their entire stores into Moshav Tkuma. To this day all deaths there are tallied to the infiltrators, with the exception of Efrat Katz. Rapid bulldozer burial of damaged vehicles and buildings was also performed, as the damage from those weapons is very distinctive. Not a gesture of honesty, that.
Tanks were also instructed to fire their main armament into houses known to have civilians inside. Israeli corpses were, again, tallied to infiltrators; any non-Israeli corpses tallied as hostile.
Pilots, soldiers, tankists, and UAS operators all asked over the radio for targets that day, but were simply directed to apply maximal fires to anything that moved in a Palestinian-like way. Hannibal was cited as justification. The Israeli Hannibal operational order, which directs the use of force to prevent soldiers being taken into captivity, was apparently being cited over the air to justify the deaths of civilians. An extreme distortion, but one which Israelis are increasingly making their peace with, alongside many others.
In addition to those see also:
Yedioth Ahronoth: Articles by Yoav Zitun and Yedioth Ahronoth reports on IDF protocols.
Haaretz: Reports involving Nir Gontarz, Josh Breiner, podcast featuring Colonel Nof Erez.
The Guardian: An interview with Lieutenant Colonel Salman Habaka by Peter Beaumont.
The New York Times: Coverage featuring Brigadier General Barak Hiram.
Khan (State Radio): Testimony from survivor Yasmin Porat.
MSNBC: An interview with Israeli advisor Mark Regev.
The Jerusalem Post: Reporting on the burial of vehicles.
The Electronic Intifada: Ongoing reporting and commentary on friendly fire incidents.
And this btw also goes the other direction - Hamas killed himself many Gazans either by mistake (missile falls in the wrong place) or on purpose; they are all counted as deaths by the IDF.
Hey, let's present our story as a series of soundbites over emotive imagery and ominous music, that definitely evokes serious journalism.
Iran for example is accused of silencing critics, when everyone else does so as a "normal thing" but Iran is the boogeyman.
I can only imagine the level of propaganda by Israel in trying to downplay their heinous crimes....
If anybody made light of anything it was the person I was responding to.
Israel has murdered journalists in Gaza. That would be the better comparison to Iran's actions. I don't think Israel removing citizenship has an equal comparison with anything Iran has done.
https://time.com/7344931/trump-threatens-to-denaturalize-us-...
and the OG version of course:
https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/source_view.php?SourceId=49...