Saturday, February 10: Invading Rafah
The one place where everyone was evacuating to is now under attack
Where do you go when everywhere is under attack? When every home you’ve ever known has been destroyed and any place you try and seek refuge is bombed mercilessly? What do you do when there’s no regard for your life? Who do you turn to?
Earlier this morning, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 31 Palestinians in Rafah, just hours after Netanyahu claimed that the only way to finally ‘defeat Hamas’ was to stage a ground invasion on the only remaining southern city where everyone has evacuated. The scumbag prime minister asked his genocidal army to plan for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of refugees in advance of this ground invasion, but it seems the military continues to believe that it’s easier to just murder anyone and everyone they encounter.
Netanyahu didn’t really provide details or any sort of timeline for this impending invasion, so his announcement set off justifiable and widespread panic because people have nowhere left to go. More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are packed into Rafah, most having already been violently uprooted multiple times by Israeli evacuation orders that now cover two-thirds of Gaza. It’s not clear what Netanyahu expects these people to do other than die.
The ever-climbing Palestinian death toll, now over 28,000 after four months, according to Gazan health officials, hasn’t really contributed to the slightest friction between Netanyahu and Biden. The worst that old man could do was kind of mildly tell Netanyahu to ‘tone down the genocide a bit,’ and then proceed to ship him and the IDF more of the latest lethal weapons technology, conveniently designed to destroy anything but Hamas. At this point it’s safe to say that the hypotheticals of what Biden could do to earn more votes with Muslims are as dried up as that dusty man’s skin.
Side Items
NYPD Migrant Lies: Last week a story came out about a group of migrants ganging up on some poor cops and beating them up in the street. Media outlets across the country seized on the moment, using it as yet another opportunity to demonize the literal refugees seeking any sort of opportunity in this country. As always, now that the bodycam footage has been released, you better believe it wasn’t the migrants who antagonized the officers. This further proves the idea that if you operate from a baseline assumption that every police officer is lying about any dangerous encounter with the criminal element, you’ll find you’re usually correct. These days if someone is arrested for “assaulting a police officer”, it’s often a result of an incident in which police attacked a civilian preemptively and without cause. Y’all be safe out there
Tortured Poet In a Private Jet: This weekend millions of people will have their eyes on Las Vegas where the Super Bowl will be taking place. Some folks care about football, others just enjoy the pageantry, (personally I’m big on the snack and only the snacks) but some will be tuning in for the first time to catch a glimpse of mayo-pop icon Taylor Swift. I’m not interested in getting into the details of why Madam Swift’s attendance is so important, but increasingly the narrative is including the fact that Swift will be flying from Japan to Las Vegas utilizing her private jet, a typical expenditure for the carbon credit queen
The Game’s Gone: Speaking of Super Bowl, the biggest sporting and marketing event just so happens to be in Vegas this year, and the gambling industry has fully consumed the sports world. The American Gaming Association expects $23 billion (WITH A B) to be spent on legal gambling during this year’s game. That’s a 44% jump from last year’s paltry $16 billion. For all this money being spent, you’d think more people would win every now and then, but thus is the fallacy of the trick. The house always wins