Replies to post #547493 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[brooklyn13]

Well that's new news, said no one.

Now do Sudan, "The civil war in Sudan is considered the largest humanitarian crisis on record"- Gemini

Or, maybe, Myanmar, "Over 3 million people are internally displaced. Widespread violence, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and attacks on health care facilities have overwhelmed the country's fragile health system." - Gemini

Oh, I know, DRC will be next, "The violence has led to mass displacement, rampant human rights abuses, and sexual violence." - Gemini

I know you're very concerned about Yemen by the number of posts you make about it, "A protracted civil war has left nearly 80% of the population dependent on humanitarian aid." - Gemini

To be clear, I, in no way, am attempting a whataboutism, what's going on in the West Bank is big time criminal. (looking forward to this opinion being distorted and lied about)

My point is that it is just really weird that you're solely fixated on Israel Bad! and pay no mind to any of these other horrific and distressing situations. It's as if you think that outside the Palestinian territories eveything is just swell. Why is that, do you think?

[fuagf]

Will a ceasefire deal move forward after two years of war between Israel and Hamas?

"Israel Is Orchestrating an Economic Collapse in the West Bank"

October 9, 20255:48 PM ET
11 minute listen

Transcript

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

After two years of bloodshed, Israel and Hamas have agreed to Phase 1 of a ceasefire deal.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And I think it's going to be a lasting peace, hopefully, an everlasting peace. Peace in the Middle East.

DETROW: That's President Trump speaking at the White House today. It is a moment of hope amid a war that has had an enormous toll. More than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel's military campaign in Gaza. That's according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Israeli bombs have flattened entire towns and leveled tens of thousands of buildings. In Israel, residents still feel the ripple effects of Hamas' 2023 attack. The Israeli government says 48 hostages remain in Gaza of the 251 people taken into captivity on October 7.

Less than half of them are believed to still be alive, and families continue to mourn the roughly 1,200 people who were killed that day. In the last two years, NPR reporters have met many people in Gaza and Israel who have talked about the impact of the war and what it would take to rebuild, move forward. Ahmed Eid (ph) is a father in Gaza. He spoke with NPR after a ceasefire was announced earlier this week and said it was way too soon to celebrate.

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AHMED EID: (Speaking Arabic).

DETROW: He says, "what exactly should I be happy for with all the bloodshed and martyrs?" Eid says he's lost 150 family members in the Israeli attacks over the last two years. He's been living in a tent with his children, displaced from his home. And he says people have no food or water.

Mor Goddard (ph) lost both her parents in a Hamas-led attack on her kibbutz on October 7. She says her father's body is still being held by militants in Gaza as a bargaining chip in the war. Recently, she told NPR's Daniel Estrin about the toll of the war.

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MOR GODDARD: (Speaking Hebrew).

DANIEL ESTRIN: "I lost my trust in the country."

GODDARD: (Speaking Hebrew).

ESTRIN: "My trust in the army."

GODDARD: (Speaking Hebrew).

ESTRIN: "Terrorists entered my house."

GODDARD: (Speaking Hebrew).

ESTRIN: "Tried to open the safe room door."

GODDARD: (Speaking Hebrew).

ESTRIN: "And when they didn't succeed, they set the house on fire."

GODDARD: (Speaking Hebrew).

ESTRIN: "And nobody came."

DETROW: Goddard says she is mourning her parents, and also the road Israel has taken over the past two years.

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GODDARD: (Speaking Hebrew).

ESTRIN: "They're acting out of revenge and not out of values," she says.

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DETROW: CONSIDER THIS - there is now a pathway to end the war between Israel and Hamas. It's a moment of hope but also of skepticism. So where might this 20-point peace plan lead?

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DETROW: From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.

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DETROW: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. Real quick, before we get back to the show. We have heard from listeners who say that CONSIDER THIS has become a part of their daily routine, a way to make sense of things. If that is true for you, too, take a couple of minutes and leave us a review. It's a small thing, but it really does help people find this show. And thanks.

For the first time in a long time, the headlines out of Israel and Gaza are about the possibility of peace. That's because late yesterday President Trump announced that both Israel and Hamas had agreed to phase one of the framework of a peace deal. NPR's Daniel Estrin has been covering the war since the very beginning. He has covered the region for more than a decade. And I asked Daniel to join us to talk about this moment, the hope that comes with it, as well as the skepticism. Daniel, it has been a long week, a long 24 hours. Thank you for talking to us for a little bit.

ESTRIN: Oh, it's great to talk to you, Scott.

DETROW: Let's start with that. What is the general feeling where you are? Is it more hope, or is it more skepticism?

ESTRIN: You know, everyone here has been conditioned to be skeptical for the last two years and two days, to be exact. We've seen ceasefire efforts fall through again and again. We've seen how Hamas has fought till the last man, no matter how many civilians were killed and how much Gaza was destroyed. We have seen Israel's leadership thwart ceasefire efforts repeatedly. We've seen how prolonged war has served Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political survival. And yet it is incredible for me to say this, but for the first time, people here really are giving themselves permission to hope.

DETROW: Wow. Why do you think that is? Well, what's different this time?

ESTRIN: President Trump has been the X factor, especially for Netanyahu. It was exactly one month ago when Hamas negotiators were sitting in Qatar meeting to consider a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire when Netanyahu ordered strikes to try to kill them. It failed, but it was a pivotal moment. Netanyahu came to the White House shortly after, and President Trump said, I have a peace plan I've worked out with Arab countries. They're on board. They're going to bring Hamas on board. You better be on board, too. What's different here is that the U.S. is guaranteeing that Israel will not resume the war once Hamas releases the hostages, and that guarantee is the key factor.

DETROW: And, Daniel, is the reason that that guarantee carries weight, is that because Netanyahu has a better relationship with President Trump than he did President Biden? Is it because President Trump has been so aggressive about threatening at times Hamas, at times Israel, saying, stop this at else, at a certain time, and people are, by and large, listening?

ESTRIN: I think it's because Netanyahu has no other ally today than President Trump. Trump was his last lifeline. And Trump was able to get Netanyahu to stop the Iran war, and now he has done the same with Gaza.

DETROW: This, of course, is not the first time a U.S. president has gotten deeply involved in negotiations. And this is not the first time that there has been a feeling of cautious optimism, right? President Clinton got very close a couple of times to a lasting deal. There were the Oslo Accords. Near the end of his second term, he brought Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak together in 2000, only to have things fall apart. How are you thinking right now about the durability and the future of this new peace plan?

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[Insert: And, time. The fact the fighting has been going on for another 25 years would also be a factor that this deal just could, could finally hold. But then, with Netanyahu, and the others, still adamantly against justice for Palestinians in the form of an independent state, and with Trump's motivation of winning this years Nobel ..

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado awarded Nobel Peace Prize
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-10/nobel-peace-prize-awarded-mar%C3%ADa-corina-machado/105879576 ..

gone i wouldn't put money on Trump's deal for everlasting peace being what he claims it could be. That said, thinking of next year could be some required motivation for Trump to work a bit longer for it. For the Nobel i mean as that is his prime motivating factor.

Back to the Barak reminder, the original reason for the insert,

Ehud Barak -- I understand the terrorists
[...]I didn’t learn the stories of our massacres of civilians in school. Not the Kafr Qasim massacre (on the eve of the 1956 war), nor the Qibya massacre of 1953, nor the various massacres of the 1948 Nakba. The 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres were happening as I was attending fifth grade, but that invasion of Lebanon was for me just “Operation Peace of the Galilee”, that was meant to eradicate what Defense Minister Ariel Sharon kept calling “terrorist nests” (of the exiled PLO).

So in some general way, the wars for me, as a child, were always wars against terror. We were being terrorized and had to fight back.

Sometimes our leaders acknowledged the appeal of “terrorist organizations”. Thus, Ehud Barak told .. https://mondoweiss.net/2016/11/shattering-liberal-zionist/ .. Gideon Levy in 1998:

If I were a Palestinian at the right age, I would have joined
one of the terrorist organizations at a certain stage.

That statement shouldn’t be understood as any sort of endorsement, and it can easily be understood as a special kind of mockery. But it’s interesting to reflect that Barak saw himself as likely becoming a “terrorist” if he were on the other side – in the “jungle”, rather than in the “villa”.

So who are these “terrorist organizations” really? Recently, our Defense Minister Benny Gantz revealed it: These are six outstanding human rights and civil society organizations .. https://mondoweiss.net/2021/10/israel-faces-vast-backlash-after-labeling-human-rights-groups-terrorist-organizations/ I know these people personally, I’ve visited them and had conversations with them, been on tour with them in the occupied West Bank. My God! I’ve mingled with the terrorists!

I’m nearly 50 now. I’m just too old for this shit. Why isn’t Gantz too old for it? Because he’s a bully,...
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176600934]
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ESTRIN: Well, President Trump talks about this being peace in the Middle East. We're not there yet. This is Phase 1 of a deal to exchange hostages and prisoners. This is a deal for a partial Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. If you're thinking about peace in the Middle East, this is small potatoes. It is a huge breakthrough, don't get me wrong, but the tricky part is the next stage of the deal, which is will Hamas be disarmed? What kind of multinational peacekeeping force could be in Gaza?

And then there are the very last points of President Trump's 20-point plan for the Middle East, which discuss, in these very vague terms, some kind of future pathway for Palestinian self-determination, for a Palestinian state - what successive U.S. presidents have tried to achieve. And one fundamental shift in this war is that Israel has never before spoken so openly against a Palestinian state as it has now.

DETROW: Yeah.

ESTRIN: And the Trump administration is avoiding more discussion of the topic. So this deal may lead down the road to diplomatic ties between Israel and other Arab countries, but if we've learned anything from the past two years and two days of war, it's that as long as the root issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not addressed, most people here believe it's just a matter of time before the next round of violence.

DETROW: Let's pause for a moment, though, at this moment in time. And Daniel, tell me what, in your mind, has been lost on both sides over the past two years and two days, as you put it.

ESTRIN: I mean, what hasn't been lost? Palestinians in Gaza have lost nearly everything - their homes, their limbs, their schools, their lives. Israelis, as a collective, have fundamentally lost trust in their country's ability to keep them safe. Both peoples have experienced trauma that echo their worst chapters in history, whether that's the Nakba - the displacement of Palestinians in the founding war surrounding Israel's creation - or the Holocaust for Jews. This has bred resentment, revenge and generations on both sides that may not be hopeful that they can chart a better path forward.

DETROW: Yeah. You've covered just about every minute of this war. I still think about talking to you over the microphones in the very early hours of October 7, two years ago. What moments or stories that you've experienced are sticking in your mind today?

ESTRIN: I remember that. I spoke to you from the hospital in southern Israel...

DETROW: Yeah.

ESTRIN: ...Where I stumbled upon an old college professor of mine who split his time between the U.S. and Israel. And his daughter was killed in the Hamas attack on October 7. And I called him today, and I asked him how he's feeling in this moment. And he spoke about his children, who lost their sister in the attack. He spoke about his grandchildren - his grandson, who was there when his mother was killed. And this is what he told me.

UNIDENTIFIED PROFESSOR: I think of my grandchildren. It doesn't end for them. My grandson, in particular, when his mother died literally on top of him, and his father, next to him, with his arm blown off by a grenade. How does one exorcise that from one's memory? And at the same time, these kids went to a school for Arab and Jewish children so that they will learn to understand one another and mutual accommodation. Can they disassociate what happened to them directly on that terrible day from what is a deeply held value of the need for reconstructing relationships? I don't know, but it's going to color their life as long as they live.

ESTRIN: You know, Scott, I've heard voices also in Gaza echoing the same sentiment - that while they feel some sense of relief now, they've lost so much...

DETROW: Yeah.

ESTRIN: ...It's hard to really embrace a sense of happiness in this moment.

DETROW: And the way he just doesn't know how the future will play out. I think that's the case for so many people, whether it's the coming days of this deal or the coming years of living in that region.

ESTRIN: Yeah.

DETROW: NPR's Daniel Estrin, thank you for talking to us. Thank you for your coverage, and I hope you can get some sleep sometime soon.

ESTRIN: Thank you very much, Scott.

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DETROW: This episode was produced by Kathryn Fink, Matt Ozug and Michael Levitt. It featured reporting from Aya Batrawy and Anas Baba. It was edited by Christopher Intagliata and Patrick Jarenwattananon. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

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DETROW: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.

Copyright © 2025 NPR.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5567902