Hyperreality
I am never going to buy a motorbike. Why do I keep watching his videos?
For those wondering who the man in the picture is, here's wikipedia:
Itamar Ben-Gvir ... is an Israeli lawyer and far-right politician who serves as the Minister of National Security. ... Ben-Gvir, a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was known to have a portrait in his living room of Israeli-American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron, in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. ... He was also previously convicted of supporting a terrorist group known as Kach, which espoused Kahanism, an extremist religious Zionist ideology. ... Under his leadership, the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a party which espouses Kahanism and anti-Arabism, won six seats in the 2022 Israeli legislative election ... He has called for the expulsion of Arab citizens of Israel who are not loyal to Israel. Ben Gvir is "widely known for his openly racist, anti-Arab views and activities" ... led several visits to the Temple Mount as activist and member of Knesset, contentious marches through Jerusalem's Old City Muslim Quarter, and set up an office in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood which witnessed several evictions of Palestinians. On 3 January 2023, he visited the Temple Mount where the al-Aqsa Mosque is located, spurring an international wave of criticism that labelled his visit purposely provocative. As a lawyer, he is known for defending Jewish radicals and terrorists on trial in Israel. ... Prior to entering politics, he defended Jews spitting at Christians as a "an ancient Jewish custom". ... Ben-Gvir is married to Ayala Nimrodi... The couple has five children, and they live in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba/Hebron, which is deemed illegal under international law, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
I can only assume this was written with tongue firmly in cheek.
(no killing and no weapons used)
You should read this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
For example:
standard Uyghur language textbooks used in Xinjiang since the early 2000s were outlawed and their authors and editors sentenced to death or life imprisonment on separatism charges. The textbooks had been created and approved by relevant government officials
Or:
"Internment camps contain designated "interrogation rooms" where Uyghur detainees are subjected to consistent and brutal torture methods, including beatings with metal prods, electric shocks, and whips."
You could also read this:
A reminder:
- incarcerated more than an estimated one million Turkic Muslims without any legal process in internment camps.
- since 2017, some sixteen thousand mosques have been razed or damaged
- hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools
- arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in state-sponsored internment camps, forced labor, suppression of Uyghur religious practices, political indoctrination, severe ill-treatment, forced sterilization, forced contraception, and forced abortion
- from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar fell by more than 60%
- the Chinese government breached every article in the Genocide Convention
- credible reports of mass deaths under the mass internment drive, while Uighur leaders were selectively sentenced to death or sentenced to long-term imprisonment.
- reported that the Chinese government gave explicit orders to "eradicate tumours", "wipe them out completely", "destroy them root and branch", "round up everyone", and "show absolutely no mercy", in regards to Uyghurs
- camp guards reportedly follow orders to uphold the system in place until "Kazakhs, Uyghurs, and other Muslim nationalities, would disappear...until all Muslim nationalities would be extinct"
- "Internment camps contain designated "interrogation rooms" where Uyghur detainees are subjected to consistent and brutal torture methods, including beatings with metal prods, electric shocks, and whips."
- evidence of atrocities in Xinjiang "likely meets the requirements of the following crimes against humanity: persecution, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, forced sterilisation, and enslavement" and that "It is arguable that genocidal acts have occurred in Xinjiang, in particular acts of imposing measures to prevent births and forcible transfers."
- some academics and researchers have also termed the abuses as part of an ongoing project of Han settler colonialism
- rape and torture were commonplace and that authorities forced detainees to take a medicine that left some individuals sterile or cognitively impaired.
- standard Uyghur language textbooks used in Xinjiang since the early 2000s were outlawed and their authors and editors sentenced to death or life imprisonment on separatism charges. The textbooks had been created and approved by relevant government officials
Like murdering 8000 civilians in a coordinated 'surgical' strike in an operation the media would glowingly call Shock and Awe, and getting re-elected on the back of it.
Or demolishing thousands of mosques, then signing trade deals with Muslim countries, as part of the Belt and Road initiative.
Or forcibly conscripting Muslim men for the meatgrinder in Ukraine, previously leveling Chechnya, then inviting over Hamas for a visit where they praise your leadership.
I wouldn't get your hopes up too high. Once everyone's bored of this war and distracted, and the man on the street in the Arab world is once again existentially preoccupied, it's not unlikely Arab leaders will end their performative outrage and return to real politik, making money and throwing Palestinians under the bus.
That's not how it works ... Jesus, fuck, it's the Bush administration all over again. I'm having fucking flashbacks to "Why it's actually totally legal to torture 'unprivileged combatants'"
They shouldn't have gotten away with it.... but they largely did, didn't they? Plenty of tales of US forces executing men of fighting age, based on very spurious allegations. The US killed two Reuters journalists and convicted... Chelsea Manning for leaking the footage to wikileaks. Not as if this was new. Colin Powell started his career by arguably whitewashing the My Lai massacre and ended it by fraudulently justifying the war in Iraq. Certainly didn't hurt his career. So apparently, it often does work that way. You hire some lawyers, you find a technicality, and you can get away with pretending it was legal. I look forward to seeing George Bush Jr. on dancing with the Stars.
You might suspect that might makes right, and the US, China and Russia get away with war crimes and/or a bit of genocide because they're nuclear powers.
But that can't be it, can it? Because Assad gets away with war crimes constantly. IRC there was a story a few years ago, about how doctors in Syria no longer told the UN where their hospital were located. The Syrians were deliberately targetting hospitals, based on UN information. You know, the UN says: 'don't bomb this, it's a hospital, that would be a war crime'. So Assad bombs them all anyway. I think at one point they bombed 4 in one day. Anyway, Assad's still in power.
Other than the US and perhaps the UK, which western nations have given significant military aid to Israel recently?
I googled, and from what I can tell plenty of countries have sold the Israelis weapons under exiting contracts, but haven't sent much actual military aid.