Interesting how Hamas not releasing the hostages means that a whole fucking shitload of people who are not in Hamas are purposefully starved. It’s like they’re being… collectively punished.

I think you could just ask something like “what are some of your favourite world cuisines excluding the obvious ones?” and then explain what you mean.

Apologies though, I guess this is just because it’s not your first language, what you said makes sense it’s more the connotations of the phrase. I think someone also posted a gif making a similar joke. Probably the best straight up alternative without the connotations would be “world food/cuisine.”

North Korean! Would love to try it but I guess similar to South Korean food?

I don’t want to go through all but some of the more interesting ones:

Ethiopian - delicious stew/curry type food with this fermented flatbread stuff that almost smells a bit like beer. Way better than this makes it sound, lol

Vietnamese - if you like Chinese food you will love it. It’s somewhere between Thai and Chinese. They have an awesome beef noodle soup called pho

Jamaican - my family is partially from here so bias but jerk chicken is worth a mention alone. Very well spiced and usually super juicy chicken. Meat and rice type of stuff. But ackee and saltfish is interesting too, very salted cod mixed with this subtle flavoured fruit that looks a bit like eggs? Again better than it sounds.

Moroccan - If you’re interested in Egyptian food (I also have no idea what that would be, lol) Morrocan is probably a good recommendation. They have a dish called tajine which is a well spiced chicken stew, they cook it in a special pot I think

Mexican! - I know it’s obvious but in Europe Mexican restaurants are very basic. Tacos, burritos etc. But there are so many amazing dishes like mole (chocolate and chilli sauce, fucking delicious) that always get missed. There’s one called queso relleño (?) That is basically like a very rich Bolognese wrapped in cheese and FRIED. Probably best not to eat too often. But maybe you guys in the US get more authentic Mexican food anyway

Also, saying “ethnic foods” comes across a little odd. Makes you sound like a 50 year old white guy who’s never left his home town and isn’t so sure about all this weird food these strange brown people eat. Nothing wrong with being white or culturally insulated of course, but probably not the look you were going for. Might explain the downvotes.

Did you read the article? Among many other points:

Around 70% of all water and sanitation facilities in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, the WASH Cluster, a United Nations-led group that coordinates humanitarian efforts for water, sanitation and hygiene, said on July 24, citing satellite analysis from the UN Satellite Centre.

And look at the headline. If there was “more than enough” generally, why would anyone do that?

The situation there is shitty, but to the blame of all the suffering on Israel alone is just plain wrong.

I didn’t do that. It’s just mainly their fault

What happens when you systematically deprive millions of people of food again? Either Israel doesn’t know the answer to this question or it’s a blatant GENOCIDAL ACT. There is literally no other option.

Since you ignored the question I can only assume the answer is yes.

Do you think this justifies depriving millions of people of clean drinking water?

No duuuude you don’t understand, they’re totally evil! We need - NEED - to be able to assassinate people on foreign soil and commit a genocide with no consequences bro. If they fight back that’s just proof of how terroristy they are. Come on bro we have to secure peace and protect democracy bro, just a few more bombs bro we swear

No guys they’re like, a SUPER important partner in the middle East. They’re just defending themselves bro. That Palestinian kid was going to become Hamas one day. Yeah but dude it’s the only democracy in the middle east! We have to support them, right?! Maybe they do some war crimes, but you have to think about how many war crimes we’re preventing in the process. Just one more assassination bro I swear this will be the last one… btw, got any money? I know I said I wouldn’t ask but there’s this hospital right…Hamas all over it. Hizbollahs too. They dress like doctors but that’s just how they trick you

The wiki says they are accused of it but lists many reports which found no evidence of this. In the current conflict there are apparently a couple of cases with hostages.

The big problem with most of these claims is that it’s “proximate” shielding being alleged, which is not when you are literally shielding someone (as in the recent cases with Israel using Palestinians, and assumedly those with Hamas using the hostages), but when you are just sat at home, in school, whatever, going about your usual business totally unaware. But you are a “shield” because the enemy decides they want to attack something near you.

This quote really sums up the rhetorical strategy:

“Israeli citizens in Tel Aviv are not classified as shields when Hamas launches rockets towards the Israel Defense Forces military command headquarters located in the city center. By sharp contrast, Palestinian civilians are cast as human shields when Israel bombs Hamas command centers and military infrastructures in Gaza. In other words, if Hamas kills Israeli civilians, it is to blame, and if Israel kills Palestinian civilians, then Hamas is also to blame, since, at least ostensibly, it is Hamas that has deployed these civilians as shields.”

It is a trick so that Israel can avoid responsibility for it’s actions. I’m not saying you are supporting Israel or denying their crimes (I know you explicitly didn’t), but this rhetoric is WAY more common than genuine instances of human shielding, which thus far has primarily been done by Israel, not Hamas.

Likewise, this isn’t excusing Hamas. Fuck them. But aside from the case with the hostages (didn’t check the reference but I trust it), there is very little evidence that Hamas does this. Most of the time it is an outright deception.

Edit: this is from the report cited by wikipedia:

A witness said that as Israeli forces advanced, the fighters phoned the Israeli police using one of the hostages as an interpreter, identified themselves as from the Qassam Brigades, and told the police that they would shoot those they held if the Israeli forces fired on them. During the standoff, the attackers forced about half the hostages into the yard of the home between Israeli forces and the fighters, according to two witnesses the New York Times interviewed. A man the attackers said was their commander took off his clothing and took Yasmin Porat, one of the hostages, outside to shield him as he surrendered to the Israelis. After the fighters fired again at the Israeli forces, an Israeli tank opened fire on the home. The fighters were killed, as well as 12 hostages who were killed in the crossfire.

So clearly it does happen. But cases are rare and on both sides of the conflict

MBFC is a fundamentally flawed credibility gatekeeper. Lemmy.World loses credibility every day this bot continues to operate.

Absolutely. It’s hilarious that people care about fact checking enough to want to rate sources but apparently extend no skepticism whatsoever to these ratings. “Let’s just ask that one dude and go with whatever he says, I’m sure it’ll be fine”

@[email protected] IDF now “looking into” it. Do you believe the video now?

The video shows some guys standing around some pipes and then an exterior shot of an explosion. That’s accompanied by some text and audio. It’s posted on TikTok. As far as I can tell, the claims haven’t been independently verified, that is, confirmed by credible, factual reporting extrinsic to the video.

Ok but there are two stories you say are credible just below this, and they establish clear facts.

So two questions:

Do you believe this was posted by an IDF soldier, as reported by the Times of Israel?

Do you believe the video shows the Canada Well plant, as stated by both the original poster and a representative of the Canadian government?

If the answer to both of these is yes, what remaining reason is there to doubt the video? You say the “claims” haven’t been verified but no claim is needed. It is on video. Do you mean the claim that the facility was destroyed, and that the external shot was not of something else being destroyed?

I am not being obtuse here, I just really don’t understand what you mean

If it turns out to be legit, which I would stress - since it was posted by the IDF soldiers themselves* - seems likely: would you not agree that this is likely a war crime?

*some edits to add.

From the Times of Israel article about it:

In the video, posted by a soldier to Instagram and later circulated on X, troops can be seen rigging up the water facility, known as Canada Well, with explosives. Another clip shows the site being blown up.

The video was tagged with the caption: “Demolishing the water reservoir of Tel Sultan in honor of the Sabbath.”

The Canadian government, who built the plant, also agrees that the video shows it being destroyed: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-calls-for-probe-into-demolished-canadian-water-treatment-plant-in-gaza-1.7281666

Seems very unlikely an IDF soldier would post a video claiming to be destroying a facility, which we know exists, and the people who paid to build it would identify it was the same building, and it would turn out to not be in Gaza at all. It is almost certainly the plant discussed in these articles.

In fact, it is an act of genocide, since depriving the population of water is “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Maybe the water system was supplying the tunnels, which would make it a legit target.

Isn’t the main issue whether the facility was supplying the civilian population? What about proportionality?

it certainly flies in the face of other evidence like the fact that Israel lets new water infrastructure into Gaza all the time and new water desalinization plants have opened (and haven’t been destroyed) even just since the war began.

We spoke about this before. Here is the link to the facts again: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68969239

Half of Gaza’s water sites had been damaged or destroyed as of that report.

And here is the image of three specific examples again:

It certainly doesn’t “fly in the face of other evidence,” the evidence is all pointing in the same direction.

When we spoke about this previously, you speculated (based on “probability,” in your words) that the facilities were maybe collateral damage during an attack on Hamas fighters. In this case, we have the video footage. No Hamas fighters. Charges specifically placed on water infrastructure. No attempt to access or destroy a tunnel. This is simply naked evidence of an intentional attack on the necessities of life for the civilian population.

Have you watched the video yet?

I don’t have evidence of this but I believe the owner/operator of the site is pro Israel and this bleeds through into the ratings, which are not produced in any objective or repeatable fashion. It says Times of Israel has not failed any fact checks, but it clearly doesn’t investigate this in a systematic way. I personally reported one particularly egregious and obviously false headline some months back and never heard anything.

It lists the fact checks the Guardian failed (totally fair), but overall I would say most similar websites rank them highly for factual content and for good reason.

For stuff unrelated to Israel I think MBFC is pretty solid if a little unclear and opaque in it’s approach.

The Guardian is “mixed” and yet Times of Israel is “high” for factual reporting. MBFC is trash.

There is no way they hit them purposefully.

Are you saying they missed? 6 times in 10 days?

What we want is a cease fire except we don’t cease firing.

Yeah sure thing bro