What major event happened on 10/6? I'm being charitable and assuming that you haven't had any access to any sort of media for the past several years and are just horrifically uninformed.
Trump: "We will take over Gaza and move all Palestinians out"
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I'm surprised there haven't been any attacks already given the support we've given Israel during this war. At least we have a robust FBI, CIA, and Federal law enforcement infrastructure that can help protect us from terrorists that want to do us harm. What's that? Presidents Musk and Trump have absolutely gutted those agencies? Get ready.
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I'm surprised too.
There's been many times I've been thinking about this issue and just been sort of flabbergasted by the forebearance and patience of the Palestinian people.
If my son was one of the 20,000 kids killed by the IDF, I'd absolutely strap a bomb to myself and try to take some of the MFers out with me
RaiGuy
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What about the 200+ Palestinians that were killed in the months leading to 10/7? Or does it all have to happen in 1 day for it to count to you?
It is a shame that forebearance and patience was in very short supply on 10/7. Then those 20,000 kids would still be alive.
superrific
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You're a firefighter. Did you hear about the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland? 36 people died and others were injured. It was a complex series of events that led up to it, but as I recall from a detailed news report I read a few years ago, here were some of the factors:
1. Guy has some studio space. New developers take over his building and outlaw artists studios. He has to leave.
2. Other artists who were living in their studios were also evicted, leaving them homeless.
3. There's this seemingly abandoned warehouse with plenty of space inside, high ceilings, and the like. Perfect for artists' studios
4. Building owner had no idea what was going on.
5. Original handful of artists move in. The original guy somehow becomes a "master tenant" but the owner pays no attention to what's happening. Then, as word gets out, more artists come in, either to live or to make their art projects
6. The original guy has no idea about fire codes or maintaining a building. He thinks it's pretty cool that he's now at the center of a local art community. He has thoughts of building a new version of Andy Warhol's Warehouse in Soho.
7. More artists come in. Some of them are painters, but some are multimedia artists. Some are sculptors or fabricators who use power tools.
8. At one point, the breakers fail. As they are not living there legally, they can't call to get access to the breaker box. They end up rigging up a circuit to bypass the breakers.
You can see where this is going. Ultimately, there was a huge party there, and the power usage was too high, and the breakers would have tripped except there were no breakers, and the building -- which is not only an old building built prior to modern fire codes, but is also filled with artists' chemicals that are fire accelerants.
Now, as a fire professional, what's your assessment about the cause of this fire? Would you say, "this fire was started because they held a huge party there," or would you say that the cause goes further back than that? In my view, the fire was the result of a long series of decisions, policies and neglect that built up over many, many years. Some of those policies were relatively benign (i.e. kicking the artists out of studios); some of it was ignorant (the so-called master tenant who didn't know how to run a building); some lax supervision; etc.
I would submit that the gaza conflict is like that. Not in the particulars. I don't know who would be analogous to the absent owner or the master tenant or the artists. But the point is, the flash point isn't always the root cause. I would think you of all people would understand that quite well.
I think that most people can agree that skirmishes that result in a few fatalities here and there over a period of several months in a region that has experienced intermittent conflict for generations are expected. A major attack that kills over 1,200 people in one day and results in 200+ others being held hostage is a massive escalation of hostilities. Sort of why no one expected us to invade Afghanistan after the 1993 WTC bombing but no one was surprised at all when we invaded after 9/11.
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Good analogy, but I would argue that we need to be asking two questions.
Question 1: What caused the fire? It seems like an electrical issue caused the fire, like you pointed out. This is a typically straightforward answer that can usually be pinpointed to a single cause.
Question 2: What caused this fire to be so deadly? That's where everything else that you listed comes into play. A much more complex answer that goes back to an accumulation of decisions and mistakes that built on each other over a period of years.
If we're going to apply that logic to situation in the Middle East, then 10/7 would be the fire that caused everything afterwards up to this point. Everything else was simply existing in the background, just like the people living and hanging out at the Ghost Ship. Without that electrical fault, that fire doesn't start and those people don't die that day. 10/7 was the electrical fault that lit off the invasion of Gaza by Israel. Without 10/7, the other issues are still there, but the situation doesn't ignite in the way that it did.
superrific
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Afghanistan had nothing to do with the 1993 WTV bombing. So that's probably why we didn't take any military action.
Hamas's actions on 10/7 were widely supported by people in Gaza.
Which country did we invade in the aftermath of the 1993 bombing?
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Lebensraum baby!
superrific
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1. You're not wrong to ask those two questions. They are logically distinct. But they are empirically connected. The whole reason that there could have been an electrical fire like that was they bypassed the breakers. The reason they bypassed the breakers is that they were trying to run a collective artists' studio where an artists' studio should not have been.
All those factors did account for the deadliness but also caused the fire.
2. Is it your opinion that the building would still be standing if not for that party? Because my reading of events is that the building was destined to burn down because the entire arrangement was structurally unsafe. If that party didn't start the fire, something else would have.
Indeed, this is why we have fire codes, right? Buildings have to be built in a certain way because those are the ways that minimize the fire risks. If the building isn't built according to code, and there's a fire, the builder will be facing massive liability, yes?
3. The situation in Gaza and the West Bank was inherently unstable. Israel's policy was to keep evicting people from apartments and cramming them into the studio. It didn't matter if the Palestinians owned the apartments; it was taken, they were shunted off somewhere else. Gaza was under severe economic sanctions, and material scarcity was very high.
I just don't see how you can absolve the Israelis here, any more than you would absolve a slumlord who refused to repair his buildings to bring them up to code. If you want to blame the master tenant more than the absent owner, I don't care about that. But the owner bears considerably liability and his role in the tragedy can't be ignored.
4thgenheel
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"skirmishes resulting in a few fatalities here and there" is a hell of a way to couch 243 Palestinians killed by the IDF and Israeli settlers in the first 9 months of 2023.
superrific
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Well, we would have had to invade ourselves, since the perps were mostly US citizens. Instead, we let the courts do their jobs and the perps are still locked up and are likely never going to see the outside of a prison.
Thanks super. I'm not absolving Israel at all. I'm simply stating, reasonably IMO, that Israel would not have launched its massive invasion of Gaza had 10/7 not occurred. They simply would have continued with the status quo (intermittent skirmishes) which was tolerable for Israel. Had Israel simply decided to pursue the same invasion on its own without the justification that 10/7 gave it, it likely would not have gotten any support from the US or anyone else.
thebruinbleedstarheelblue
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it's sad for the people on the ground but LOL for those people here who didn't feel like Joe/Kamala didn't speak up enough for the brown and held out there vote.
Dems need to be better in messaging, but all these groups who voted against their self interest for this criminal/TV showman are going to find out...I just hope it doesn't go all the way off the rails. I hope there still is a deep state.
Not to mention the literal thousands of missiles launched by Hamas and its affiliates into civilian areas of Israel during the same time period. Doesn't change a thing about my post. Skirmishes are not the equivalent of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.