They exchanged text messages and emojis. Brief status updates with words of encouragement. A picture of the beloved family dog "Tutsi."
Until no more messages came.
And then, Cindy Flash, an American, and her Israeli husband Igal vanished into the violence, presumed kidnapped by Hamas.
Four days after Hamas attacked Israel, more than 100 Israelis and potentially dozens of foreign nationals are thought to be held captive in the Gaza Strip. At least 14 U.S. citizens have been killed and an unknown number are still unaccounted for.
Flash, 67, originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, is one of them. She lives in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza, where some of the most harrowing and grisly stories have been emerging during the last few days.
"They are breaking down the safe room door," Flash said in one of her final messages to her daughter Keren, 34. "We need someone to come by the house right now." She had been communicating with her parents from a few houses away.
Keren described her mother, who worked as an administrator in a local college, as someone who had the "sweetest biggest heart," who everyone knew and loved, and who had spent a lifetime advocating for the rights of Palestinians, including those who live in Gaza where she may now be held.
Any organization that calls Israel "apartheid" is comically biased.
Israel is the only country in the region where a lesbian Muslim woman can vote, get an education and hold elected office.
Claiming it's apartheid is like claiming the US was apartheid when occupying Iraq because we didn't allow Iraqis to be citizens of the US.
Words have meanings, and the accusation is demonstrably absurd.
I can't help but notice your only issues here is with how terms are used in regards to Israel and Palestine but not with the bombardment of Gaza in response to a terrorist attack from Hamas. A place where nearly half of Palestine's population lives.
Do you not have an issue with Israel's response or something?
I have no idea who Israel is targeting, but if history is any guide, it is Hamas terrorists.
And Hamas terrorists make it a POLICY to hide among civilians.
For now, I'm giving Israel the benefit of the doubt because they have very much earned it.
Then you were living through an alternate timeline. Israel has killed more than 10.000 Palestinian civillians since 2008 before this weekend. Now they have declared the Palestinians animals when announcing the blockade starving them to death now.
Also they told the Palestinians to flee into Egypt and then bombed the road close to the border crossing.
And Egypt has closed their border to Palestinians just todaySo the situation gets worse and worse
Edit: I was mistaken, their just taking steps to make it harder currently.
I don't dispute your numbers. But Israel has been in a non-stop battle against terrorists who use their own people as human shields. So I put the civilian death toll squarely where it belongs: at the feet of the terrorists.
I've seen ZERO evidence that Israel has ever as a matter of policy targeted innocent civilians. In the contrary, I've seen Israel go out of it's way to send text messages to civilians to give them time to evacuate. I've seen they drop lead weights on rooftops as a warning to the people inside you get out before actual missiles come.
I've never heard of any other nation doing that. Never. They are knowingly letting terrorists escape because it spares civilian lives.
There is no scholarly consensus over the definition of the term "terrorism." This in part derives from the fact that the term is politically and emotionally charged, "a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one's enemies and opponents..
For your consideration
Yes. Largely it is the Palestinian conflict that muddied the waters here to begin with.
After 9/11 the world was united in a war on terror, defined as I just defined it. It was in direct response to the evil of killing innocent civilians in that awful day.
And for a while it looks like the entire tactic of terrorism was going to be stamped out. Even the Irish Republican Army vowed to stop using it as a tactic.
But then people looked at the Israel conflict, and their hatred of Israel did not compute with this new war on terrorism, where the Palestinians were clearly the only ones deliberately targeting civilians.
So the anti-Israel people started muddying the waters by throwing around the term "state terrorism" which meant… Whatever they wanted it to mean… Building a fence. Bulldozing a house. Collateral damage while killing a terrorist. Whatever.
And that's where we are today… Where the anti-Israel people are very happy to muddy the waters to the point where terrorism no longer has a meaning for them. That way they don't have to remember that the Palestinians are the only ones with a policy of deliberately targeting civilians.
You don’t question your beliefs at all, why?
I question them all the time. Never seen a shred of evidence that Israel targets civilians.
And the distinction between that and collateral damage is one of intent, which is absolutely key in determining moral and practical culpability.
Just last year the IDF murdered a journalist. The illegal settlers are getting armed and protected when they assault people and Israel allowed the storming of the Al Aqsa mosque this year.
The human shield argument is also just absurd in its inhumane cynicism. "Oh look we are bombing a densely populated area. So all the people dying there were used as human shields by the terrorists who are also from that area, because we have blocked it all off. Look at what the terrorists made us do!" With this logic you can justify the annihilation of any civilian population, claiming there were military targets nearby.
Israel has every possibility to avoid the death of civillians by going in on the ground directly instead of bombing things to rubble. But that is a tactical disadvantage so they full well knowingly bomb civillians.
They also targeted numerous UN hospitals and medics, killing at least 11 so far in the current campaign. They do secondary bombings onto areas targeted before, so rescue operations are hindered.
These are all actions that speak of total disregard to civillian life and taking away their responsibility from it is absurd. In that reasoning any nation has the right to commit countless atrocities because at some point another nation did it before to them.
Even if Hamas didn't have a policy to hide amongst civilians, do civilians really have a choice but to be close to possible Hamas members? There's 45 square kilometers of Gaza with 2.3 million people. That's 50,000 people per square kilometer that's 51 people per meter approximately. So where the hell can you be in that tight space without being close to 50 or more other people.
That's an excellent criticism … of Hamas.
If they can't operate without endangering their own civilians by pure proximity, then… don't?
Take the word of some random guy on internet, or an international NGO? Tough call 📞
Or, just use your brain.
Already did.
You go first.