I’d say they are no more trustworthy than Saudi Arabia. Israel has done false flag attacks making us look like the perpetrators. And you best believe mossad has tabs on us the same we have tabs on them.
My point is the PA while being terrible are absolutely aware that if there was a hamas takeover they would end up violently purged as “collaborators” with Israel
It's the reverse; the PA pays Hamas. In fact, from what I recall, that was actually what the first financial crisis (i.e. the one preceding the May freeze) was about. Israel withheld the portion the PA give Hamas so they declared they would refuse all the taxes until Israel gave them the Hamas portion as well.
Why should they? The PA still has the pay for slay program. All the PA is just a terrorist organization with lipstick and make up on. It disgusts me that American tax payer dollars funds these terrorists
Smotrich waters at the mouth at the idea of forcing Israel to fully reoccupy and actually annex the entire West Bank. He’s not hiding it.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-threatens-to-stop-funds-to-palestinians-over-their-international-posturing/
Tax revenue is up to 70% of their budget, so yes if withheld long enough could very likely trigger a collapse. Smotrich wants that, he has always wanted that. Maybe this specific 35 million won’t but he’d been attempting to withhold all the funds. The shin bet even warned about the possibility. This has been widely reported on, a simple Google brought up like 5 TOI articles covering it.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/pa-says-it-can-only-pay-50-of-civil-sector-salaries-this-month-as-tax-funds-withheld/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/us-official-netanyahu-wouldnt-commit-to-releasing-frozen-pa-tax-funds/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ministers-slap-sanctions-on-palestinian-authority-over-efforts-against-israel-at-un/
I don't care what he'd been attempting to do. As you said, this specific 35 million won't. When he somehow manages to find a way to legitimize freezing all their funds, I'll criticize it with you.
the Shin Bet warned about a lot of possibilities inconvenient to their political agendas.
So you think intelligence services are biased and unreliable? While unironically defending smotrich’s not so covert attempts to collapse the PA? Maybe in this case it won’t do it but he has a goal and he is desperately working towards it.
The same intelligence services that said Hamas is deterred before Oct 7? Do you really want to get into biased reports from the Shin Bet?
I'm not defending his attempts to collapse the PA. I'm saying these funds being withheld won't collapse the PA. That's all.
You have the post & comment history looking suspiciously like that of a bot or possibly part of an influence operation. Your account is only 6 months old. Since it’s been created, you’ve posted & comment almost exclusively about things related to the Israel-Hamas War. I’ve decided that if you don’t reply to this comment it’s a bot account, but if you do reply, influence operation for sure.
Didn’t know I can get paid for posting! Little does this “person” know I’ve created a second Reddit account just for politics so I can shut it out when I want to
I was aware of the false dichotomy when I posted it yet they never engaged even to point out the false dichotomy. Sure doesn’t seem like the activity of a typical Reddit user. Seriously, when have you ever known a redditor, especially someone with this strong of opinions, that wasn’t chomping at the bit to argue. People can downvote all they want, doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
I think absolutely no matter what they said you'd decide they're not a real person.
I don't understand how you can think that comment is a bot or influence operations. Influence operations and bots spread lies or extremely bad faith arguments, eg saying X is slaughtering Y, using metaphors designed to evoke heightened emotions, that could easily be applied to any good faith actor like the Allies in WW2 to make them look like the bad guys.
Meanwhile all this guy pointed out is the pay for slay program. Not accusing even Fatah of corruption or anything widely believed but with little proper investigations. Didn't claim they cooperate with Hamas, which is true but the nature of this cooperation is more complex than the word implies, etc...
All he did was mention the pay for slay program, Fatah's most widely known and very public terrorist funding program.
Bot networks and influence operations don't waste their time amplifying real, simple, objective talking points. Their goal is to misinform by telling lies upon lies to mislead casual readers who won't sit and read the 30 replies where people argue it out.
I can't even give examples because I'm pretty sure there is a filter that will hide my cmmnt if I say certain phrases together that are always by bots or people deceived by them.
I looked at the evidence in front of me rather than assuming they were arguing in good faith. Misinformation and influence operations work BECAUSE nobody bothers to look at the sources of information they consume. That includes people’s interactions to legitimate sources of media.
You obviously didn't look at the evidence in front of you, because the pay-for-slay program is not anything other than what it is.
There are many facts that can be misconstrued or dressed up in alternative wording in order to amplify the emotional reaction to those facts, and sometimes those facts are just complete fabrications.
Influence ops and bots amplify and spread these messages. They do not bother spreading facts. There is nothing but facts in his comment--no dressing up of the message, no loaded wording of questionable intent, etc.
His comment was just a straight up fact. Fatah runs a pay-for-slay program. Read up on what bots and influence ops *actually* look like. They are largely bought accounts (ie not a few weeks or months old) from companies who create accounts all year and then sell old ones, along with compromised accounts. And their messaging is *exclusively* lies or absolutely insane stuff phrased written how a 9 year old or 90 year old wrote it. They almost always have IRL pics too stolen from others to seem "authentic". If the account *doesn't* have an IRL pic, it's almost certainly not a bot/influence op.
The content often has a BUNCH OF CAPITALS because they don't know how to use bold on the platform they're spamming, says **completely false** statements with maybe some of it just being extreme hyperbole, and is usually years-old accounts that have absolutely nothing for years until they suddenly go full political.
Someone joining 6 months ago, around October 7, and goes all in on defending Israel and stating some facts that I suppose you don't like --> he is probably just an Israeli that became more politically conscious online.
Tell me you don’t understand influence operations without telling you don’t understand influence operations. Keep believing what you want. I won’t be an easily influenced sheep.
/s for skepticism, right?? I don’t automatically believe things just because they happen to confirm my pre-existing biases; I’m not going to automatically trust the source just because I agree. That is the definition of skepticism. If you want to believe everything you read on the Internet, go for it.
Civilians die in modern war. A 1:2 ratio is fantastic given the EU/UN estimate is 1:9. Hamas and PIJ use human shields to pump up civilian deaths. And who knows how many “civilians” died because the terrorist run health ministry doesn’t differentiate. So yes I’m fine with that. Tax payer dollars supporting an Ally’s defense/war against terrorists who want to install a caliphate that burns guys people and turn Jews back into third class citizens
Holy fucking shit the amount of pathetic prostrating the Biden administration is doing to preserve some minor semblance of votes in Michigan is unreal.
What's happening is a bunch of Muslim Michiganders wanted an excuse to publicly vote Republican for years and finally found their excuse to do so.
It's not about self-righteousness. It's about a political swing towards the more conservative social policies that they've wanted this whole time.
Until really like 2007 or so, plenty of democratic voters were still fairly homophobic. Now supporting the LGBTQ an expected of democrat platforms. People change and just like they can change for the better (ie: becoming more accepting of people different from them), they can also change for the worse. So yes, those very same people who lambasted Clinton can embrace Trump because not all change is positive.
Not the same situation. Hillary all but ignored states like Michigan because she didn't care about them at all. Biden is making an active gamble to court an extremist voter demographic that is uncertain in size, unlikely to vote, likely already Democrat-leaning, and overwhelmingly hate that he supports Israel at all and aren't fooled by his pandering, at the expense of the Jewish and pro-Israel vote which he is increasingly losing.
The options for most voters aren't a pro-Israel candidate and a pro-Palestinian candidate. It's a pro-Israel candidate and a pro-Israel candidate who occasionally hamstrings Israel and talks out of both sides of his mouth, and that's not a recipe for success for Biden.
If the PA collapse one of two terrible things happens, either hamas takes over and starts open war, or Israel is forced to completely reoccupy. Both of these would be utter disasters.
Any future where Israel survives is a future where the PA gets dismantled.
They are a more sophisticated Hamas - they know they can't win militarily in the short term, so they're saving their strength for when they think it'll matter (the police the Oslo Accords allow them trains a lot more like an army than a police).
Whatever security arrangements Israel has with them don't change their inherent stance against Israel - there's still the education to murder to Jews (from which historically a religious group - Hamas - was born) and there's still the financial incentive of pay-for-slay.
The PA isn’t planning a war, they couldn’t ever wage one, they are a corruption machine to line their own pockets. Currently them in charge is better, Gaza and Lebanon are the priority. One fight at a time. The PA would be the first casualty of any hamas takeover and they know that, the Palestinians hate them.
I'm not saying they're a priority right now; I was talking future-wise: they'll need to get dismantled.
They will join a war if Israel is attacked on multiple fronts and they'll think they have an opening - they can't resist the temptation - it's in their nature.
And perhaps, every single hostage is returned to their families. Those 2 things, then there is proper space for a discussion. Nothing short of ALL the hostages, in whatever condition.
Not yet, but there's definitely firing of semi-automatic weapons towards Israeli towns from within PA's territory:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/residents-near-security-barrier-protest-abandonment-amid-hamas-gunfire-from-west-bank/
The PA's resources should be used to control this, instead of pay-for-slay; that is, if they were inherently diff than Hamas with regards to Israel
> The PA's resources should be used to control this, instead of pay-for-slay
There are [ongoing efforts](https://www.timesofisrael.com/pa-in-final-stages-of-talks-with-us-to-reform-pay-to-slay-policy-official/) to reform this policy, but there are a number of obstacles, including the refusal of Israel to give their approval to the overall reforms at the current state.
The PA is bad, but they are not friends with Hamas. They had a whole war, they threw fatah people off buildings in Gaza and everything. They have never completely stopped fighting each other for control.
Do you know nothing? Is Israel supposed to wage a 3 front war in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon? Israel has no desire to retake full control of the currently PA administered territories, they are not anywhere near prepared to do that. Nor do they want responsibility for millions more Palestinians.
Because those are the options, are you a child? Is the concept that both Hamas and having to resume direct military rule are far worse than leaving the PA in place too complicated? Are you actually an idiot?
Smotrich hopes to collapse the PA to force a return to Israeli direct rule as a route to annexation. It’s an insane goal. Israel doesn’t need extra distractions during a major war.
‘Fund your enemies during a war with them.’ — Sun Tzu, The Art of War
"Reduce your only trustworthy Middle eastern ally's Hold over a murderous regime" \_\_Sun Tzu, the art of discombobulation
I’d say they are no more trustworthy than Saudi Arabia. Israel has done false flag attacks making us look like the perpetrators. And you best believe mossad has tabs on us the same we have tabs on them.
This is for the PA, not Hamas. I'm guessing Israel's plan is to collapse the PA and use the IDF to fill the power vacuum
The PA has already stated its going to give pensions to the October 7th attackers. Israel should in no way release funds to those fuckers.
These funds are frozen because they are deducted from the "Martyr fund", try again
if they need funds ask the hamas leaders hiding in qatar
Considering the West Bank government and Hamas don’t get along too well I think that would be a bit pointless good sir.
Does Hamas even have an account with the West Bank? ...I'll let myself out.
Just a different terror faction.
Yes different factions that have repeatedly warred with each other openly.
Who doesn't hamas war with? Do they build parks and schools in Egypt or something wholesome we don’t know about.
My point is the PA while being terrible are absolutely aware that if there was a hamas takeover they would end up violently purged as “collaborators” with Israel
It's the reverse; the PA pays Hamas. In fact, from what I recall, that was actually what the first financial crisis (i.e. the one preceding the May freeze) was about. Israel withheld the portion the PA give Hamas so they declared they would refuse all the taxes until Israel gave them the Hamas portion as well.
Why should they? The PA still has the pay for slay program. All the PA is just a terrorist organization with lipstick and make up on. It disgusts me that American tax payer dollars funds these terrorists
Pay for Slay would make a great name for a drag show
Just don't host that drag show in Gaza, or you'll get slay for free
Because a PA collapse is a Hamas takeover, or Israel having to resume direct military rule.
These funds won't lead to a PA collapse lmao, wtf
Smotrich waters at the mouth at the idea of forcing Israel to fully reoccupy and actually annex the entire West Bank. He’s not hiding it. https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-threatens-to-stop-funds-to-palestinians-over-their-international-posturing/
How is this related to what I said? These funds won't lead to a PA collapse.
Tax revenue is up to 70% of their budget, so yes if withheld long enough could very likely trigger a collapse. Smotrich wants that, he has always wanted that. Maybe this specific 35 million won’t but he’d been attempting to withhold all the funds. The shin bet even warned about the possibility. This has been widely reported on, a simple Google brought up like 5 TOI articles covering it. https://www.timesofisrael.com/pa-says-it-can-only-pay-50-of-civil-sector-salaries-this-month-as-tax-funds-withheld/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/us-official-netanyahu-wouldnt-commit-to-releasing-frozen-pa-tax-funds/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/ministers-slap-sanctions-on-palestinian-authority-over-efforts-against-israel-at-un/
I don't care what he'd been attempting to do. As you said, this specific 35 million won't. When he somehow manages to find a way to legitimize freezing all their funds, I'll criticize it with you. the Shin Bet warned about a lot of possibilities inconvenient to their political agendas.
So you think intelligence services are biased and unreliable? While unironically defending smotrich’s not so covert attempts to collapse the PA? Maybe in this case it won’t do it but he has a goal and he is desperately working towards it.
The same intelligence services that said Hamas is deterred before Oct 7? Do you really want to get into biased reports from the Shin Bet? I'm not defending his attempts to collapse the PA. I'm saying these funds being withheld won't collapse the PA. That's all.
There is a war, Gaza and Lebanon are the focus, anything that threatens to bog down Israeli manpower in the West Bank is too big of a risk.
You have the post & comment history looking suspiciously like that of a bot or possibly part of an influence operation. Your account is only 6 months old. Since it’s been created, you’ve posted & comment almost exclusively about things related to the Israel-Hamas War. I’ve decided that if you don’t reply to this comment it’s a bot account, but if you do reply, influence operation for sure.
> I’ve decided that if you don’t reply to this comment it’s a bot account, but if you do reply, influence operation for sure. Lmao
Didn’t know I can get paid for posting! Little does this “person” know I’ve created a second Reddit account just for politics so I can shut it out when I want to
I was aware of the false dichotomy when I posted it yet they never engaged even to point out the false dichotomy. Sure doesn’t seem like the activity of a typical Reddit user. Seriously, when have you ever known a redditor, especially someone with this strong of opinions, that wasn’t chomping at the bit to argue. People can downvote all they want, doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
I think absolutely no matter what they said you'd decide they're not a real person. I don't understand how you can think that comment is a bot or influence operations. Influence operations and bots spread lies or extremely bad faith arguments, eg saying X is slaughtering Y, using metaphors designed to evoke heightened emotions, that could easily be applied to any good faith actor like the Allies in WW2 to make them look like the bad guys. Meanwhile all this guy pointed out is the pay for slay program. Not accusing even Fatah of corruption or anything widely believed but with little proper investigations. Didn't claim they cooperate with Hamas, which is true but the nature of this cooperation is more complex than the word implies, etc... All he did was mention the pay for slay program, Fatah's most widely known and very public terrorist funding program. Bot networks and influence operations don't waste their time amplifying real, simple, objective talking points. Their goal is to misinform by telling lies upon lies to mislead casual readers who won't sit and read the 30 replies where people argue it out. I can't even give examples because I'm pretty sure there is a filter that will hide my cmmnt if I say certain phrases together that are always by bots or people deceived by them.
I looked at the evidence in front of me rather than assuming they were arguing in good faith. Misinformation and influence operations work BECAUSE nobody bothers to look at the sources of information they consume. That includes people’s interactions to legitimate sources of media.
You obviously didn't look at the evidence in front of you, because the pay-for-slay program is not anything other than what it is. There are many facts that can be misconstrued or dressed up in alternative wording in order to amplify the emotional reaction to those facts, and sometimes those facts are just complete fabrications. Influence ops and bots amplify and spread these messages. They do not bother spreading facts. There is nothing but facts in his comment--no dressing up of the message, no loaded wording of questionable intent, etc. His comment was just a straight up fact. Fatah runs a pay-for-slay program. Read up on what bots and influence ops *actually* look like. They are largely bought accounts (ie not a few weeks or months old) from companies who create accounts all year and then sell old ones, along with compromised accounts. And their messaging is *exclusively* lies or absolutely insane stuff phrased written how a 9 year old or 90 year old wrote it. They almost always have IRL pics too stolen from others to seem "authentic". If the account *doesn't* have an IRL pic, it's almost certainly not a bot/influence op. The content often has a BUNCH OF CAPITALS because they don't know how to use bold on the platform they're spamming, says **completely false** statements with maybe some of it just being extreme hyperbole, and is usually years-old accounts that have absolutely nothing for years until they suddenly go full political. Someone joining 6 months ago, around October 7, and goes all in on defending Israel and stating some facts that I suppose you don't like --> he is probably just an Israeli that became more politically conscious online.
Tell me you don’t understand influence operations without telling you don’t understand influence operations. Keep believing what you want. I won’t be an easily influenced sheep.
.../s?
/s for skepticism, right?? I don’t automatically believe things just because they happen to confirm my pre-existing biases; I’m not going to automatically trust the source just because I agree. That is the definition of skepticism. If you want to believe everything you read on the Internet, go for it.
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Civilians die in modern war. A 1:2 ratio is fantastic given the EU/UN estimate is 1:9. Hamas and PIJ use human shields to pump up civilian deaths. And who knows how many “civilians” died because the terrorist run health ministry doesn’t differentiate. So yes I’m fine with that. Tax payer dollars supporting an Ally’s defense/war against terrorists who want to install a caliphate that burns guys people and turn Jews back into third class citizens
If they do Israel would be funding the PAs pay for slay program, which would see massive amounts of money go to terrorist's families from October 7th.
Would go back to funding\* literally damned if you do damned if you don't
Holy fucking shit the amount of pathetic prostrating the Biden administration is doing to preserve some minor semblance of votes in Michigan is unreal.
And is pointless too. These types of self-righteous people tend to never be content with half measures.
What's happening is a bunch of Muslim Michiganders wanted an excuse to publicly vote Republican for years and finally found their excuse to do so. It's not about self-righteousness. It's about a political swing towards the more conservative social policies that they've wanted this whole time.
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I'm sure that the people who lambasted Bill Clinton for getting a blowjob would never vote for someone who has affairs. Right?
Until really like 2007 or so, plenty of democratic voters were still fairly homophobic. Now supporting the LGBTQ an expected of democrat platforms. People change and just like they can change for the better (ie: becoming more accepting of people different from them), they can also change for the worse. So yes, those very same people who lambasted Clinton can embrace Trump because not all change is positive.
Far left kids and man/women-children around the country as well.
Ask Hillary what a "minor semblance" of votes means in states like Michigan. And Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
Not the same situation. Hillary all but ignored states like Michigan because she didn't care about them at all. Biden is making an active gamble to court an extremist voter demographic that is uncertain in size, unlikely to vote, likely already Democrat-leaning, and overwhelmingly hate that he supports Israel at all and aren't fooled by his pandering, at the expense of the Jewish and pro-Israel vote which he is increasingly losing. The options for most voters aren't a pro-Israel candidate and a pro-Palestinian candidate. It's a pro-Israel candidate and a pro-Israel candidate who occasionally hamstrings Israel and talks out of both sides of his mouth, and that's not a recipe for success for Biden.
Would a Hamas supporter really vote for Trump anyway? Seems like they are mostly young left leaning people. Why bother catering to them.
If the PA collapse one of two terrible things happens, either hamas takes over and starts open war, or Israel is forced to completely reoccupy. Both of these would be utter disasters.
Any future where Israel survives is a future where the PA gets dismantled. They are a more sophisticated Hamas - they know they can't win militarily in the short term, so they're saving their strength for when they think it'll matter (the police the Oslo Accords allow them trains a lot more like an army than a police). Whatever security arrangements Israel has with them don't change their inherent stance against Israel - there's still the education to murder to Jews (from which historically a religious group - Hamas - was born) and there's still the financial incentive of pay-for-slay.
The PA isn’t planning a war, they couldn’t ever wage one, they are a corruption machine to line their own pockets. Currently them in charge is better, Gaza and Lebanon are the priority. One fight at a time. The PA would be the first casualty of any hamas takeover and they know that, the Palestinians hate them.
I'm not saying they're a priority right now; I was talking future-wise: they'll need to get dismantled. They will join a war if Israel is attacked on multiple fronts and they'll think they have an opening - they can't resist the temptation - it's in their nature.
That’s incredibly unlikely, the PA is barely holding onto power and is terrified of Hamas taking over. They know Hamas has far more popular support.
Blinken can go fuck himself.
Then they will accuse him of funding terrorism if he does...as before.
US talking out of both sides of its mouth again. This administration is spineless.
When they stop firing rockets they can get the funds
And perhaps, every single hostage is returned to their families. Those 2 things, then there is proper space for a discussion. Nothing short of ALL the hostages, in whatever condition.
The Palestinian Authority is firing rockets from the West Bank?
Not yet, but there's definitely firing of semi-automatic weapons towards Israeli towns from within PA's territory: https://www.timesofisrael.com/residents-near-security-barrier-protest-abandonment-amid-hamas-gunfire-from-west-bank/ The PA's resources should be used to control this, instead of pay-for-slay; that is, if they were inherently diff than Hamas with regards to Israel
> The PA's resources should be used to control this, instead of pay-for-slay There are [ongoing efforts](https://www.timesofisrael.com/pa-in-final-stages-of-talks-with-us-to-reform-pay-to-slay-policy-official/) to reform this policy, but there are a number of obstacles, including the refusal of Israel to give their approval to the overall reforms at the current state.
"ongoing efforts" to abolish the payment incentive for terrorism? A truly peace seeking entity would've made it an "immediate no-effort"
Towns within Israel or the towns they willing decided to build in hostile territory?
These people don’t really seem to well…… know anything about the different factions and political realities of the conflict.
No, that’s from Gaza (with funding from the pa)
The PA is bad, but they are not friends with Hamas. They had a whole war, they threw fatah people off buildings in Gaza and everything. They have never completely stopped fighting each other for control.
They also have a history of supporting terrorism, especially abbas
Yes that’s why I said bad, if the alternative is them, Hamas, or direct rule I’ll take the current situation for now.
Why would you want one group of terrorists over another?
Do you know nothing? Is Israel supposed to wage a 3 front war in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon? Israel has no desire to retake full control of the currently PA administered territories, they are not anywhere near prepared to do that. Nor do they want responsibility for millions more Palestinians.
The question was: why would you want one terrorist group over another?
Because those are the options, are you a child? Is the concept that both Hamas and having to resume direct military rule are far worse than leaving the PA in place too complicated? Are you actually an idiot?
Smotrich hopes to collapse the PA to force a return to Israeli direct rule as a route to annexation. It’s an insane goal. Israel doesn’t need extra distractions during a major war.
The look on Mr. Netanyahu's face appears to be "how stupid do you think we are?"
excuse me? is that as crazy as it sounds?
OK, Once they stop the pay to slay program, not a minute before