More likely the Lebanon model - ceasefire means only Zionists can shoot. If the non-IDF shoot back, they broke the ceasefire.
This is your regular reminder that Hamas has tortured and murdered the residents of Gaza for decades. Beaten, hung from the ceiling: Gazans speak out against Hamas brutality https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-834686
First some context... in the West Bank, Fatah has been battling Hamas terrorists (and related terrorist organizations) which keep killing Fatah officials, police, and Palestinian civilians. It is becoming pretty clear that Al-Jazeera is in bed with these terrorists. For all of those who criticized Israel banning Al-Jazeera -- what do you say about Fatah banning Al-Jazeera? Fatah bans Al Jazeera from northern West Bank for 'incitement' Fatah has reportedly banned Al Jazeera from operating in the northern governorates of the occupied West Bank as the PA's assault on Jenin continues. https://www.newarab.com/news/fatah-bans-al-jazeera-northern-west-bank-incitement
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-bottom-line/2024/12/24/whats-blocking-a-ceasefire-deal-in-gaza What’s blocking a ceasefire deal in Gaza? Video Former Israeli adviser Daniel Levy argues that dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israel blocks peace efforts in Gaza. Despite Western and Arab efforts at achieving a ceasefire in Gaza, Israel is not showing interest in reaching a deal, argues former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy. Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, tells host Steve Clemons that Israelis are aware of the atrocities they commit in Gaza, but the thorough dehumanisation of Palestinians – coupled with a desire to dispossess them of their lands and human rights – blocks any chance for progress. The result for Israel, Levy argues, is an Israel that will not be accepted in the region, even if some Arab governments “normalize” relations.
After decades fighting demolitions, Palestinian sees own home wrecked Fakhri Abu Diab in front of the ruins of his house destroyed by the municipality in East Jerusalem. (Thomas Dévényi/Hans Lucas for The Washington Post) Fakhri Abu Diab led the effort to protect homes in East Jerusalem’s al-Bustan neighborhood from demolition. In November, Israel destroyed his house. 20 minutes ago By Rebecca Tan https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/24/israel-demolitions-palestinians-east-jerusalem/ JERUSALEM — When Israeli police and bulldozers arrived in al-Bustan early on Nov. 5, few residents in this Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem expected them to go to Fakhri Abu Diab’s home. The retired accountant, with a head of white hair, was the neighborhood’s most prominent resident and de facto spokesman. For two decades, Abu Diab, 62, led the fight to protect local homes from demolition, drawing support from the United States, which condemned Israel’s destruction of part of his home earlier this year. So when three dozen Israeli officials, including police escorts, showed up with heavy machinery and plowed through Abu Diab’s gate, the neighbors watched not only with shock but fear. A chilling message was sent across Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem, residents said: No one is safe. Municipal authorities demolished seven buildings in al-Bustan that day, according to the city, including Abu Diab’s home. They have since destroyed at least eight more houses, as well as the local community center, Al-Bustan Association, residents and rights groups said. It’s “to send a message to the neighborhood,” said Qutaiba Odeh, the association’s director. “To say, ‘We’re coming. You’re done.’” The official reason for the demolitions was that the buildings, many of which have been there for years, were constructed illegally in an area the municipality had zoned for green space. A spokesman for the city, Udi Shaham Maymon, said the homes and other structures were razed to advance “urban renewal plans” he described as “tailored to meet the needs of the local population.” The vision for al-Bustan — which is nestled within East Jerusalem’s larger Silwan neighborhood — includes a mixed-use tourism and housing development with archaeological sites, a park, hotels and souvenir shops. Officials say it’s part of a broader attempt to build up tourism infrastructure around the Old City, which includes religious sites holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews. But underlying the project, Israeli and Palestinian rights groups say, is Israel’s decades-long effort to secure a Jewish majority in the city and push Palestinian residents to leave — one that has accelerated over the past year, according to the United Nations, as Israel’s right-wing government ramped up the demolition of Palestinian homes across East Jerusalem. An Israeli family walks past the ruins of a destroyed Palestinian house in East Jerusalem on Nov. 30. (Thomas Dévényi/Hans Lucas for The Washington Post) “We have an Israeli government that is operating with no guardrails,” said Shaina Low, spokeswoman for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which provides legal services to Palestinians facing displacement. Virtually every house in al-Bustan is at risk of being razed “at any time,” she said. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital, and on the eastern side of the city, which Israel annexed from Jordan in 1967, about 350,000 Palestinians live alongside roughly 200,000 Israeli settlers. Since capturing East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities have used a mix of laws, zoning regulations, court orders and other rules to prioritize settlement building and restrict development in Palestinian neighborhoods, lawyers and housing rights advocates say. The measures include thousands of demolition orders for Palestinian homes and other structures over the years, most on the premise that they were built without appropriate permits, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In Silwan, the pace of demolitions has doubled in the last year, according to Ir Amim, an Israeli monitoring and advocacy group, while the United Nations said more structures have been destroyed in the neighborhood this year than any other year since it began collecting data in 2009. The increase followed the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, an assault that killed around 1,200 people, ignited the war in Gaza and fueled a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. But city officials say the East Jerusalem demolitions are not aimed at punishing Palestinians. “Demolitions are done when buildings were built illegally and there’s no legal way to legalize it,” Maymon, the spokesman, said. “It is by no means a punitive measure.” But when Abu Diab stepped outside that morning in November, to meet the officialswho had already knocked over his gate, it was hard for him to believe he wasn’t being punished for speaking out, he said. He had defended this house for decades and he wasn’t ready to stop. “What,” Abu Diab said to the crowd, “are you doing here?” ‘I knew they would come back’ Abu Diab has led the fight to protect homes in al-Bustan in East Jerusalem from demolition. (Thomas Dévényi/Hans Lucas for The Washington Post) Abu Diab was born in al-Bustan in 1962, five years before the start of Israel’s occupation. His earliest memories, he said, are of gardening with his mother at home — dusting dirt off mint leaves and running after chickens. He left al-Bustan only briefly to attend the University of Jordan in Amman, where he met his wife, Amina. Together, they moved back into his family home in 1983. The house was just two rooms at the time, Abu Diab said. To pay for a renovation, Amina sold her dowry of gold rings and bangles, and he saved as much as he could from his income as an accountant. Soon, the house grew noisy with the couple’s five children. “It was beautiful,” said Abu Diab, remembering this period of his life. Under the surface, however, cracks were forming. Abu Diab and his neighbors applied for permits for their homes and renovations but the municipality rejected them. By the early 1980s, the city had already designated al-Bustan as an open, public space where residential development was prohibited. At the same time, Palestinians grew frustrated with the occupation and erupted into protests, leading to negotiations under the Oslo accords in the 1990s. But Israel continued to build settlements and in 2000, peace talks stalled, resulting in a new round of violence between the two sides. It was around this time — in 2004 and 2005 — that Abu Diab and other residents began finding demolition orders plastered to their front doors. East Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood. (Thomas Dévényi/Hans Lucas for The Washington Post) A sofa under the rubble of a Palestinian house destroyed in East Jerusalem. (Thomas Dévényi/Hans Lucas for The Washington Post) For the next 20 years, Abu Diab, as head of the local residents’ committee, would fight a wide-ranging legal and public relations battle to save al-Bustan and it’s roughly 100homes from destruction. And for a while, at least it seemed, thestrategy worked. By his estimate, Abu Diab hostedhundreds of diplomats, activists, lawyers and journalists at his houseto discuss the planned demolitions, helping to coordinate what were called “solidarity walks” through the neighborhood. He shook the hand of former president Jimmy Carter when he visited in 2010 and met dozens of other U.S. officials, he said. With his neighbors, he filed lawsuits opposing the demolitions and negotiated with the municipality, including presenting an alternative plan for the area, which officials rejected. During this period, the city served demolition orders in al-Bustan but never enforced them. That all changed, Abu Diab said, with the outbreak of the Gaza war. Almost immediately after the conflict started, from October to December 2023, demolitions acrossEast Jerusalem jumped 70 percent compared with previous months, according to Ir Amim. In February, authorities made their move into al-Bustan, razing an extension of Abu Diab’s home that for years had been marked for demolition. The Biden administration slammed the decision. “We condemn the demolition of Fakhri Abu Diab’s home,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said at a news conference. “These acts obstruct efforts to advance a durable and lasting peace and security that would benefit not just Palestinians, but Israelis,” he said. “They damage Israel’s standing in the world.” At the time, Abu Diab welcomed the U.S. statement, but said he’d seen Israel’s military reduce entire cities in Gaza to rubble. “I knew it wouldn’t matter to them now,” he said, referring to Israeli authorities. “I knew they would come back.” The walls come down Demolitions in East Jerusalem increased after the Gaza war broke out, according to advocacy group Ir Amim and the United Nations. (Thomas Dévényi/Hans Lucas for The Washington Post) As he waited, Abu Diab spent the spring and summer trying to rebuild. He put a small prefab container home on a corner of his lot as a precaution. Then he began renovating the main body of the house to make more space. When authorities returned in November, Abu Diab said he argued with the demolition crew, asking for more paperwork and calling lawyers and diplomats. But it was too late, he said. The walls were coming down. First went the outside sitting area, where he and Amina would start their days drinking tea and listening to the birds. Then it was the two sitting rooms where his grandchildren would sit hunched over their homework after school. Eventually, the excavators took down the kitchen, a place he loved most at dusk, when it was heavy with smoke and the smell of cooking. The demolition crew didn’t give the couple time to save their belongings, so mixed in with the broken pieces of concrete and rebar was most of everything they owned: Clothes, photo albums, birth certificates. The only items he managed to save were two portraits of Amina in her 20s and a blue oil lamp that belonged to his late mother. “Forget the furniture,” said Abu Diab, closing his eyes. “They destroyed our history.” Amina, 58, interjected. “They split apart the family,” she said. A woman with her child in the Silwan neighborhood. (Thomas Dévényi/Hans Lucas for The Washington Post) The demolition displaced most of the household, with two of Abu Diab’s sons and their families moving in with in-laws or into rented apartments. Amina and Abu Diab stayed behind in the container home. It’s too small for the whole family to gather, said Amina, and some of her grandchildren no longer visit because they hate having to pass the ruins of the old house. “Who can blame them?” she said. Workers clear rubble in Silwan. (Thomas Dévényi/Hans Lucas for The Washington Post) One night in late November, Abu Diab returned to his container home after dark and slumped into a plastic chair. Their children had asked them to move out of al-Bustan, and Ziad Kawar, a lawyer representing some of the residents, said all legal options were exhausted. Abu Diab said he knew it was a matter of time before the municipality returned to tear down the container home. But he felt like he’d already lost too much. “No, no,” said Abu Diab, shaking his head wearily. “The only thing left to do is stay.”
Jesus the prophet was an unknown person until he began his wanderings and teachings. They estimate he was killed while in his mid 30's. The canonical gospels are the four which appear in the New Testament of the Bible. They were probably written between AD 66 and 110, which puts their composition likely within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses, including Jesus's own family. So we can conclude the first writings were approx a minimum of 35 years after he was gone, ie Jesus parents would be at least in their 70's - 80's. Miraculously we have details written about 3 wise men, jesus born in a manger, star in the sky, virgin birth, The majority of contemporary scholars see clashing accounts and irreconcilable genealogies. The secular history of the time does not synchronize with the narratives of the birth and early childhood of Jesus in the two gospels. Also the book of Matthew implies that Joseph already has his home in Bethlehem, while Luke states that he lived in Nazareth. In Matthew the angel speaks to Joseph, while Luke has one speaking to Mary, and inconsistencies go on. But the point I wanted to make, the christmas celebration of jesus birth which so many partake in was written at a minimum if not after jesus parents in their old age or after their death but goes into reasonably fine detail which makes me very suspicious it's just a crock of slop for sheeple to slurp. Never mind the fact the bible is written from scraps of parchment found here or there centuries later. Among the most important are the Chester Beatty Papyri: 45, which contains the Gospels and Acts; 46, which contains the Pauline epistles; and 47, which contains the Book of Revelation. All of these are thought to date from sometime in the third century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri But don't let logic get in the way of a good christmas pissup.
Just musing in the middle of the night, now Boxing Day..... My impression, humans are evolving dumber into the future while AI is evolving theoretically smarter. But that poses the question, what is smarter, what actually is intelligence? Flying to the moon while killing our neighbours is that intelligence? Anyways, in 100 years time, if we are still in existence on earth, we'll look back, and if somehow there has been a change in the evolution of our real intelligence, we'll say to ourselves "Way back 100 years ago, humans worshipped idols of god, which they dreamt up from documents centuries old". Which then leads to the question now, "centuries ago were humans more intelligent"? But if politics is the benchmark, maybe we are not evolving. God help us!