Silverseren

Shaima Refaat Alareer, the daughter of a prominent Palestinian poet, was killed alongside her family in an Israeli airstrike on a house west of Gaza City on Friday, according to multiple sources, four months after her father died in a similar attack.

Alareer’s husband and their two-month-old son also died in the strike, according to eyewitnesses and family friends.

So, I deleted everything I'd posted to Reddit almost a year ago now and have been over here in federated space since.

But I do occasionally read threads over there when they are posted over here, just to see what a larger number of commenters are saying on specific topics (or just to remind myself on how disturbing a lot of the Reddit community has gotten over time).

Anyways, to the point. I saw this thread on /r/news had been removed for violating the politics rule: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1c7fhna/us_stops_un_from_recognizing_a_palestinian_state/

I decided to send the following message to the /r/news mod team with the Message the Mods button:

"Why was this thread labeled as politics and removed? Thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1c7fhna/us_stops_un_from_recognizing_a_palestinian_state/

Meanwhile, there are multiple threads about Trump, threads about Palestinian protests, and a thread about Florida allowing chaplains in schools.

What exactly is the definition of politics that the mod team is using to claim the former is disallowed due to politics, but not many of the other front page political topic threads?

For that matter, why does a US action in the UN count as overly political in the first place?"

Not sure what I expected, but then a few minutes ago:

"You have been temporarily muted from r/news. You will not be able to message the moderators of r/news for 28 days."

So yeah. Was my message out of line? Aggressive in some manner? I wasn't trying to troll or anything like that.

Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem won the prestigious 2024 World Press Photo of the Year award on Thursday for his image of a Palestinian woman cradling the body of her five-year-old niece in the Gaza Strip.

The picture was taken on Oct. 17, 2023, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where families were searching for relatives killed during Israeli bombing of the Palestinian enclave.

Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem won the prestigious 2024 World Press Photo of the Year award on Thursday for his image of a Palestinian woman cradling the body of her five-year-old niece in the Gaza Strip.

The picture was taken on Oct. 17, 2023, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where families were searching for relatives killed during Israeli bombing of the Palestinian enclave.

A class of freshly minted dentistry graduates in Gaza had big plans. Now they are counting the dead and trying not to join them.

A special State Department panel told Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the U.S. should restrict arms sales to Israeli military units that have been credibly accused of human rights abuses. He has not taken any action.

As chaos ensued after thousands of Palestinians were turned away from returning to their homes in northern Gaza on Sunday, a 5-year-old girl was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers, her mother said.

Video shows a man carrying a 5-year-old girl named Sally Abu Laila, who was bleeding from her head, with people crowding around her in panic trying to cover her wound.

Her mother Sabreen told CNN her daughter was in her arms when Israeli soldiers shot at her. Sabreen, alongside her four children, was trying to cross through the checkpoint, when two young men squeezed in between her and other women waiting in line, prompting Israeli soldiers to fire at them.

Seven journalists were among the wounded after Israeli forces attacked a refugee camp in Gaza, CNN reported on Friday.

As civilian casualties continue to mount in the wartorn Gaza Strip, reports of Israel's use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its targeting of Hamas militants are facing increasing scrutiny. A report by the Israeli outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call earlier this month said that Israeli forces had relied heavily on two AI tools so far in the conflict — "Lavender" and "Where's Daddy."

While "Lavender" identifies suspected Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) militants and their homes, "Where's Daddy" tracks these targets and informs Israeli forces when they return home, per the report, which cites six Israeli intelligence officers who had used AI systems for operations in Gaza, including "Where's Daddy?"

"We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity," one of the officers told +972 and Local Call. "On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It's much easier to bomb a family's home. The system is built to look for them in these situations," they added.

As civilian casualties continue to mount in the wartorn Gaza Strip, reports of Israel's use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its targeting of Hamas militants are facing increasing scrutiny. A report by the Israeli outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call earlier this month said that Israeli forces had relied heavily on two AI tools so far in the conflict — "Lavender" and "Where's Daddy."

While "Lavender" identifies suspected Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) militants and their homes, "Where's Daddy" tracks these targets and informs Israeli forces when they return home, per the report, which cites six Israeli intelligence officers who had used AI systems for operations in Gaza, including "Where's Daddy?"

"We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity," one of the officers told +972 and Local Call. "On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It's much easier to bomb a family's home. The system is built to look for them in these situations," they added.

A pro-Palestine Jewish activist group has had its bank account frozen in Germany for the second time in seven years, after the bank requested a full list of its members’ details in what experts believe is a breach of German law. The group suspects the move was triggered by its involvement in a forthcoming pro-Palestine conference that has attracted intense scorn from the German mainstream.

Mrs Weiss heads a radical settler organisation called Nachala, or homeland. For decades, she has been kickstarting Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, on Palestinian land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Some in the settler movement have cherished the dream - or pipedream - of returning to Gaza since 2005, when Israel ordered a unilateral pullout, 21 settlements were dismantled and about 9,000 settlers were evacuated by the army. (Reporting from Gaza at the time, I saw many who were literally dragged out.)

Many settlers saw all this as a betrayal by the state, and a strategic mistake.

Opinion polls suggest that most Israelis oppose resettling Gaza, and it is not government policy, but since the Hamas attacks on 7 October it is being talked about out loud - by some of the loudest and most extreme voices in Israel's government.

Mrs Weiss proudly shows me a map of the West Bank with pink dots indicating Jewish settlements. The dots are scattered all over the map, eating away at land where Palestinians hope - or hoped - to build their state.

There are about 700,000 Jewish settlers in these areas now and settler numbers are rising fast.