Due to the severity of the situation and the fast flowing news cycle, we have decided to create a general megathread for discussion regarding the conflict.
Informal/Satirical news sources are not allowed on the main feed of the community but you are free to post them in this thread.
Please remember that all community and instance rules apply to this thread hence keep is civil.
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Some facts about the Gaza Strip:
- Population: ~2.3 Million
- Area: 365 km² (141 sq mi)
- 41 km (25 mi) long, from 6 to 12 km (3.7 to 7.5 mi) wide
- Population density: ~6300/km² 1
Gaza is very densely populated. In Gaza live as many people as in Houston. But Houston has an area of 1658.6 km² (640.4 sq mi). Thus Gaza has nearly five times the population density of Houston. New York City is the only city in the US with a population of more than a million and a higher population density than Gaza. 2 The tallest building in Palestine stands at 76.1 m (255 ft). 3
A little less than half of the population of Gaza is made up of children. 4
There are only three (“legal”) ways in and out of Gaza:
- Rafah Crossing into Egypt in the south
- Kerem Shalom Crossing into Israel in the south
- Erez Crossing into Israel in the north
Gaza has a very small port. It can only be used by small fisher boats. 5
Israel built a wall and fences around Gaza. 6
When your illegitimate regime is definitely not losing every front including the information front and is definitely not about to eat a major L: Israel has announced that consuming “Hamas media” will now be a federal offense punishable by a year in prison, even if no actions were taken. Visiting Hamas websites is considered an offense.
That and the outright censorship you see escalating all over the western world points to one thing - the massive failure of the western propaganda model itself.
Only Democracy* in the Middle East, bby!
*Rules and conditions may apply.
Here’s the original article
I dont see anything like what you’re stating mentiond Please don’t spread misinformation
WTF?
Water runs out at United Nations shelters in Gaza
Israel has cut off the flow of food, medicine, water and electricity to Gaza, pounded neighborhoods with airstrikes and told the estimated 1 million residents of the north to flee south ahead of Israel’s planned attack. The Gaza Health Ministry said more than 2,300 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting erupted last weekend.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that Israeli officials told him they had turned the water back on in southern Gaza. But the spokesman for Israel’s energy and water ministry, Adir Dahan, said it was only flowing at a single location in southern Gaza. Aid workers in Gaza said they had not yet seen evidence the water was back and a Gaza government spokesperson said it was not flowing.
Hmm! Why would the US spread Israeli misinformation? It’s a mystery! 🙃
About half a million Gaza residents have taken refuge in U.N. shelters across the territory and are running out of water, said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee agency, known by the acronym UNRWA. “Gaza is running dry,” she said, adding that U.N. teams have also begun to ration water.
Touma said a quarter of a million people in Gaza moved to shelters over the past 24 hours, the majority of which are U.N. schools where “clean water has actually run out,” said Inas Hamdan, another UNRWA spokeswoman.
Across Gaza, families rationed dwindling water supplies, with many forced to drink dirty or brackish water. Many resorted to going to dirty wells and the sea, increasing the risk of dehydration, water borne diseases and more deaths.
“I am very happy that I was able to brush my teeth today, can you imagine what lengths we have reached?” said Shaima al-Farra, in Khan Younis.
Settlers are sick.
Everyone knows that the UN is a Hamas front. Providing the UN with water is akin to providing Hamas with the heads of babies.
Might want to add a /s tag there or something, poe’s law
The fact that I have to is a condemnation of this community.
Yeah, we are trying to very actively crack down on it but you know how things are with the influx
I’m curious what disinformation you’re talking about given what you quoted? And you implied that it is known, but why do you think said disinformation would be spread?
Also, there are no settlers in Gaza. Haven’t been for around 18 years.
The misinformation is the Zionist lie that they turned the water back on, when actual people on the ground in Gaza are telling us they don’t have water.
Also, everyone living on stolen Palestinian land and benefiting from land theft and apartheid is a settler. From the river to the sea.
To be clear, there’s one lie and then that lie got spun into something pro-Israeli.
Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that Israeli officials told him they had turned the water back on in southern Gaza. But the spokesman for Israel’s energy and water ministry, Adir Dahan, said it was only flowing at a single location in southern Gaza.
Sounds like Jake got told the same lie, and he spun it and omitted the “one location” part. Dahan lied (saying it was on at one location when it wasn’t) and Sullivan made it sound even better by conveniently dropping the “one location” part and implying that water is fully restored.
From Sullivans perspective he may be reporting the “truth”, based upon what he knows/knew at the time, but said it in such a way to imply the Israelis are better than he “knows”.
And my questions on race and who qualifies as white? Because I’m guessing you consider yourself a very anti-racist person. But that shit was racist as fuck.sorry this was a response for a different post.
IDF misinformation from the start of the conflict until now:
1. Hamas beheaded forty babies
Context: the reports of Hamas beheading babies came from an interview by i24 News of an IDF commander. This quickly spread through Western media outlets such as CNN, NBC, MSNBC, FOX News, the Telegraph, Daily Mail, etc. I haven’t done a comprehensive sweep of who picked up the story and who didn’t (and of course now it’s much harder to do so because of retractions, edits, my lack of direct TV access, and SEO), but from what I can tell AP News and Al Jazeera have been relatively reliable.
Lack of evidence: 6 days ago, Anadolu (Turkish state-owned media) reported that: Israeli army says it does not have ‘confirmation’ about allegations that ‘Hamas beheaded babies’. This was later confirmed by other sources.
Misinformation: 5 days ago, Biden stated "I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed, pictures of terrorists beheading children,” said Biden, who described Saturday’s attack as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”. The White House later posted a retraction of this claim: "A White House spokesperson later clarified that US officials and the president have not seen pictures or confirmed such reports independently,” The Post reported on Wednesday.
2. Shani Louk, claimed to be naked, dead, and sexually assaulted
Context: images circulated online about a video purporting to show Shani Louk, a German national attending the Nova EDM festival, on the back of a truck, face-down. Claims that she appeared to be naked, dead, and sexually assaulted circulated on the same media sources discussed above.
Misinformation: given the videos we have, we know with a decent amount of certainty that the video being shown is of Shani Louk. However:
A. She’s clearly not naked in the video and you can see that she is wearing black shorts as well as boots. A top is also visible (but she is face-down, so we can’t see much of it). Neither her shorts nor her boots appeared to have been removed. From what I can tell, she was initially wearing a long skirt that was likely lost in the chaos.
B. Her family claims that she is alive and receiving medical attention at a hospital in Gaza, which does explain why they would be transporting her. There is visible blood on the back of her head, but she does not seem to be bleeding profusely when the video was taken.
C. I will not comment on whether or not she was sexually assaulted.
3. 260 dead Israelis at EDM festival
Context: many news sources independently verified that 260 bodies were pulled from the EDM festival. Many sources reported that this was an act of terror with no strategic objective and a massacre of innocent civilians.
Lack of context: Nova was held in Kibbutz Re’im, mere minutes from Gaza, and also mere minutes from the IDF Gaza Division’s Re’im base. Tanks are clearly visible in videos leaving the festival, as are armed personnel. Hebrew-language interviews of released prisoners are providing more insight into these attacks, but I do not speak Hebrew so I will refrain from commenting on this further. Hamas has claimed that fighters were told to avoid harming or killing civilians.
Potential misinformation: Hamas claiming that fighters were told to avoid harming civilians does not mean that Hamas fighters did not harm civilians, obviously.
Potential misinformation: the reports indicate that 260 bodies were found, but their origin has not been confirmed. We know that armed personnel discharged their weapons against Hamas fighters (and vice-versa). How many of the dead are civilians, IDF, armed security, or Hamas?
Much of the media coverage on this conflict has been used to spread misinformation, even from traditionally “reliable” sources in the Western sphere. As a result, I would strongly recommend supplementing coverage of these events with those outside the Western sphere. The journalism being done is lazy.
The impression I had gotten from interviews (Al Jazeera, the Guardian, Haaretz) was that Israeli civilian police were there and exchanged fire with Hamas but that it was HOURS before they came across any IDF personnel. I’ve been focusing on this less as the time goes on and the catastrophic situation in Gaza gets worse and worse, so maybe further sources have come out regarding the Nova Festival.
Regardless I would like to see consequences to the people who authorized a festival so close to Gaza in the first place…
That’s the part that really doesn’t make sense to me.
There’s literally an active military base RIGHT THERE. It’s literally based in Re’im. There’s no way the IDF could be that incompetent. It’s not like forces had to be deployed from elsewhere in the country.
Supposedly, they had another location in mind but it fell through so they had to use Re’im with two days notice.
I don’t know how to confirm this myself but I have read and heard that before anything else, after it was known Hamas fighters were inside Israeli territory, the IDF first move militarily was to start bombing Gaza. No one can argue honestly that the IDF defends Israelis - its literally just the most reactionary of religious Zionists that they serve.
Secular Jewish Israelis? Nah they can fend for themselves for a few hours, we’ve gotta attack Palestinian civilians, says the IDF. And that’s not even bringing up that 20% of Israeli citizens ARE ARABS, some of whom were also attacked in their homes in Southern Israel 10 days ago, but of course the same people calling Hamas human animals will go after them next (not to suggest they aren’t already, only that Gazans face more immediate extermination).
That sounds pretty correct. From what I remember of the reporting at the time, we heard of the offensive, then immediately we had multiple reports, videos, and streams of the IDF bombarding Gaza.
I had a frustrating conversation with one person around the “40 beheaded babies” claim. Snopes dug into the claim. The IDF never I think we’ll never be able to verify that particular claim. The flip side is that in the end, a dead baby is a dead baby regardless of how it got that way. My objection is that facts matter, particularly with claims of particular brutality or when the situation is a powder keg.
Hamas has claimed that fighters were told to avoid harming or killing civilians.
I don’t buy this for one minute. Not a minute. Palestinian civilian casualties are high because Hamas and other organizations operate from inside of neighborhoods as guerrilla forces. Israel has separate forces. You wouldn’t get massive civilian casualties from Hamas targeting the IDF’s bases. They can make all the claims they want, but it doesn’t fit with the facts.
A lot of these settlements have either contracters or the IDF directly providing security. So the idea that Hamas could have broken out of Gaza and just found all the soldiers neatly in their bases seems unbelievable. The IDF is an occupying force, not a European military where it’s just some dudes with their thumbs up their asses in a barracks near some nature reserve.
Ultimately we can’t know how Hamas leadership told their soldiers to behave. But they do have a clear incentives not to condone the killing of civilians: they want to capture hostages and use them as leverage. They need to create the expectation that these hostages are treated fairly and can be returned safely so that it is entirely up to Israel whether it wants those civilians to die.
Tragically, civilians always die in wars. Both sides always propagandise this to claim that it is the other side that is just killing civilians as policy. The facts however, are abundantly clear when it comes to the question of which side shows the greater disregard for civilian casualties.
Seems like a mistake to place the danger zone on that side of the Kerem Shalom goods crossing, but then again they left that moron Netanyahu in charge so I’m sure that’s no mistake.
I heard Egypt actually warned Israel of the exact date of the initial attack and Israel still failed to react, it becomes harder every day to think this whole war wasn’t the intention of Israel leadership.
The likelihood Israel didn’t know of the attack shrinks by the day.
Israel is doing a genocide, the us and its puppets are funding or arming the genociders, and Europe is banning protests of the genocide.
Western capitalist hegemony is a fascistic death cult that will destroy us all unless we destroy it first, and every day we don’t millions are condemned to horrific deaths
I really wish I could have a permanent record of everything every liberal has ever said so I could easily demonstrate how full of shit they are in 10 to 20 years when they all collectively deny ever having supported Israel through the Palestinian genocide.
I’d say, “It’s the Internet”, but these days institutional powers seem to be able to convince even Internet archives to remove shit that’s too inconvenient for them.
Is there some reason you couldn’t make keep a record?
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To believe this is uncommon sentiment would be naive
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what do you call walling in 2 million people and cutting off food water and fuel then bombing the shit out of the walled enclosure? Israel is doing genocide right now it doesn’t matter if its official or not
Please walk into the sea.
Isreal is currently perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinian people. Kind of hard to argue they don’t want to when it’s exactly what they’re doing.
So far, it was only France that banned pro-Palestinean protests. But the French government is also far right, so it makes sense. Don’t equate their fascism to the rest of Europe, please.
I understand its not about Europe but Switzerland banned several protests in big cities as well.
Really? That honestly surprises me. Also means that I’m not really up-to-date anymore.
Apologies for the German Language, it states several were banned, one in the capitol allowed.
I’m German, so no language barrier. Thanks!
Edit: Holy hell, that poll. 65% support the ban of pro-Palestine demos because it’s “too touchy”. Media did a great job programming the public to think “pro-Palestine” is on par with “pro-Hamas”.
Germany has been one of Israel’s staunchest supporters all throughout the Cold War - despite the fact that Germany’s security services have been festering swamps of nazi-ideology before all the WW2 rubble had been carted away.
The link is to a Swiss newspaper tho, which is why I was surprised.
One of the largest worker unions in Germany (ver.di) proudly and openly proclaims that they stand with Israel and they have been doing that for years. Now why are they doing this instead of focusing on their actual purpose? Senseless activism to avoid being labeled as nazis. In Germany, being a nazi is way worse than supporting a genocide.
Every country in Europe is flirting with overt far-right ideology… as opposed to just nurturing it covertly (which is the normal state of affairs for Europe, it seems).
Mandatory watching for those interested in the history of the conflict: How Palestine became colonized.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
How Palestine became colonized.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
MSNBC had this doctor on to talk about the horrible situation in Gaza.
3 years ago, MedGlobal was born - MedGlobal
By Dr. Zaher Sahloul, MedGlobal President and Co-Founder
Three years ago, I was in Yemen with three other medical volunteers, providing internal medicine and pediatrics services to people suffering from the effects of war and famine. MedGlobal had just been formed. In between medical consultations, we talked about the goals for the future of our organization, dedicated to providing innovative healthcare to crisis-affected and low-resource areas.
I don’t know anything about him - I copy and pasted that for context.
I was listening to in the background so I don’t know how long the interview was. I think ~7 minutes at least. I noticed something very unusual. Almost zero questions. Stephanie Ruhle was interviewing him. Ruhle isn’t rude but it’s her habit to pepper guests with questions. She always does that. I’ve never seen her be so quiet. Also - MSNBC’s PR shtick is that they ask questions and it makes you smarter. I forget an recent tagline - it was something like “Never stop asking questions”.
It’s the norm that anchors/reporters ask a lot of questions. In one way - the lack of questions was really great. He was highly knowledgeable and informed the audience in stark terms about how awful things are. That’s the first time I’ve seen that on CNN or MSNBC. But the producers must have had him on because even though he didn’t pull punches about the medical situation - they knew he was very politic and he’d avoid “politics”.
The end result was that the agent of the chaos, Israel, hardly came up at all. It was like these horrible unfolding health problems were happening all by themselves due to unknown or poorly understood causes.
I love when the US helps to deescalate a situation! I’m sure no US troops will be hit by any strikes to justify direct US intervention in this conflict.
The US is going to push us straight into a world war with their mismanagement of this conflict.
mismanagement
When talking about the US, it’s more often correct to assume malice rather than incompetence
Absolutely right
However the US government has plenty of both!
The chance of a World War III happening is significantly higher by escalating the UA-RUS war than this. Palestine has no allies and they have been cornered for years. US just secures a clean genocide.
Ukraine isn’t NATO and the West has given every indication that they see it as a proxy war with Russia. Israel is already dragging in the US, and risks dragging in Iran, which would force the Arab World to choose sides.
How is Iran joining forcing the Arab world to choose sides? Iran is not well liked in the Arab world. Most of them would probably prefer if Iran goes down with Palestine and wouldn’t care much. At least not the Saudis, Iraq and Pakistan. Don’t think Egypt is too hot for Iran either.
Iran-Saudi talked for the first time in forever to align on this
Zerfuffle acct is days old with all > thousand comments solely on this conflict and only post being from ccp propaganda site global times
Yeah, clearly a propaganda account and not a very good one at that. The pre-typed, scripted lines and the emotionally charged language are kind of a dead give-away. I would be ashamed paying someone that does such a poor job, honestly lol
Iran is one of the major players in this conflict, they are financing Hamas and Hezbollah. It is plainly false to say it is Israel that “risks dragging in Iran”.
Iran is Persian, not Arab. They are also currently engaged in a power struggle by proxy with the KSA, ostensibly to determine which of them will become the region’s dominant power. There is no world in which KSA sides with Iran, and as they go (MBS really) so go most of the other big players in the Arab world.
There’s some speculation that they’re bringing in the big guns to open up the Syrian theatre again, with Russia.
A friend of mine is volunteering for this organization. We’re trying to help as IT guys but if you know anyone stranded in Israel or Gaza, or want to aid them indirectly, I thought I’d pass the link.
(They’ve helped in other crisis scenarios as well)
Can you elaborate on the helping as IT guys part?
Can you elaborate on how you’re helping as “IT guys” ?
I too am an “IT guy” and would be interested in learning how my skills could assist those in need.
Israel is doing a genocide
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When Israel meddles directly with U.S. elections, after all, it’s not labeled “foreign election interference” like when some piddly little Russian group runs shitty, ineffectual Facebook ads that nobody pays attention to (and like anyone in the universe can). So “internal” seems fair.
Power Dynamics
“Israel is doing what the unions want.”
There are a few Canadian citizens stuck in Gaza and very much in danger. I’m hoping that some solution can be found to help these people out.
Bro wtf. The millions of people in Gaza are in danger, how does their individual citizenships matter when there is non-descriminative bombing over the urban areas as well as exit routes? Israelis even bombed and killed prisoners from Israel in Gaza
As a Canadian, dude’s probably interested to see how the Canadian government will respond.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. Trudeau isn’t going to step out of line from American policy to save a few measly Canadians, and Biden won’t allow Americans to leave unless Egypt opens their borders to Palestinians (which definitely isn’t going to lead to ethnic cleansing, of course).
Are you trying to say that the Canadian citizens stuck in Gaza are somehow more special than the other citizens?
Yes! At least they are to me as a Canadian citizen. Not more important in human terms, but definitely more of interest to me to see how Canadians in a war zone are dealt with by our government.
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Thank you! Sorry ignorant American and I wanted to learn more! I’m not sure why you were down voted so much by the little bit I read.
apologies for the off topic, but this thread shows as 11 hours old and I only see 7 top level comments. for a major event mega thread I expected much more and I’m wondering if I’m doing Lemmy wrong somehow?
lemmy.ca defederated from hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml, who are driving top-level comments on here. Since you can’t see the top-level comments, you also can’t see any discussion below.
I opposed lemmy.ca’s decision to defederated from hexbear based on the perceived behaviour of hexbear users on other instances for exactly this reason: I think an instance’s role is to police the actions of users posting to that instance, not to police their users’ exposure to other instances.
Lemmy version 0.19 can’t come soon enough - it’s going to bring more moderation tools, which should help mitigate defederation.
There’s also a lack of moderators as well, which causes either overreaching or insufficient actions a lot of the time.
As a counterpoint, I don’t mind the hexbear and lemmygrad posts being hidden from view. These people have no interest in good faith arguments and instead derail every post into irrelevant arguments filled with half-truths or outright disinformation.
Server instances deciding independently whether or not to defederate gives people the option to either use an instance where they won’t see this garbage or one where they do. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Damn hexbear and lemmygrad really became the new “commie”
It’s really shone a light on how little the West actually understands communism tbh
Y’all are talking past each other because you’re operating on entirely different assumptions about what the same words mean
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Yeah that’s a good point lmao
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These people have no interest in good faith arguments and instead derail every post into irrelevant arguments filled with half-truths or outright disinformation.
I haven’t really seen any evidence of this and worldnews gets a lot of hexbear and lemmygrad posters. It just comes off as red-scaring to me.
Well a lot of the rest of Lemmy have seen numerous examples of it which is why they keep getting defederated from instances. This being about communism is a red herring as the lemmy.ml is run by self-proclaimed communists.
Furthermore, I rarely ever see hexbear users actually discussing communism or any other economic system. Typically it’s just ad hominem remarks about “the west,” strawman arguments, concern trolling as if they’re innocent victims, and carrying water for the Chinese and Russian governments.
Well a lot of the rest of Lemmy have seen numerous examples of it which is why they keep getting defederated from instances.
NGL the users of the big instances that have defederated like .world are the majority of comments I have to delete here for overt racism, supporting genocide, etc. You can check the modlog if you dont believe me.
I’m sorry, I dont really trust the opinion of the admins of instances overflowing with calls for violence and racism.
This being about communism is a red herring as the lemmy.ml is run by self-proclaimed communists.
I’ve seen the admins be called tankies by the same people complaining about hexbear and grad.
Furthermore, I rarely ever see hexbear users actually discussing communism or any other economic system. Typically it’s just ad hominem remarks about “the west,” strawman arguments, concern trolling as if they’re innocent victims, and carrying water for the Chinese and Russian governments.
Yeah this comes off to me as someone who had read a bunch of their comments with no background understanding of why the US empire is the largest purveyor of violence in the world today. I cannot blame them for not having the resources or authority to educate everyone they encounter.
Thank you. All anyone needs to know about why lemmy.world defederated from hexbear is that they did it preemptively because they didn’t agree with the ideology of hexbear users. This is based on the admin’s own statements. It was completely unjustified.
These people have no interest in good faith arguments
This is such an obnoxious sweeping statement.
Fair point, but it applies by and large and is the reason why they keep getting defederated just a short while after federating with the rest of Lemmy (after closing themselves off for the past 3 years).
It really doesn’t. A lot of the time they’re flippant not because they have no interest in discussion but because so many libs dismiss and sneer at their vilified and misunderstood political positions — I’ve seen people literally assume they’re Trump supporters or Putin supporters and go around saying so to anyone who asks — and it makes discussion frustrating or outright impossible. Conveying a lot of background information to someone who is hostile and not listening is difficult. So they’re flippant, and it becomes a vicious cycle.
It’s being extremely heavily moderated. (Not just the defederation.) You can gather the political stance by what comments remain.
Yeah, it’s not the easiest to read because most of the censorship is “user was banned from community”. Which seems to remove the comments as well.
The only comment text listed in the modlog are the truly vile ones.
Sometimes you remove comment and then ban the user and the comment removal hasn’t had time to propagate. But yeah, the vileness you see is the ballpark for what we remove.
Can you look at this one by @Pipoca 2 hours ago? I won’t paste the full text here for obvious reasons, but it seems pretty reasonable, mostly facts, and not vile at all. It just looks like a bad case of overmoderation.
mod Removed Comment - There’s a few things going on.
…
reason: Bothsidesing a genocide
If I recall correctly it described a genocide primarily through the lense of a two sided religious conflict. We remove that stuff as genocide apologia.
Oh. I thought that’s exactly what this was.
Is there anywhere on Lemmy that is allowing open discussion of this? Or is the censorship high enough up that it’s not possible on Lemmy?
That’s what I’ve been looking for too, I think maybe I need to make an account somewhere that doesn’t defederste from anyone with differing opinions?
It seems ‘People who disagree with me are ontological evil and should be silenced’ isn’t the best place to get news and accurate information from.
Isn’t salty water worse than no water because of the dehydrating effects of salt?
It can be an act of physiological and psychological desperation. There’s thousands of years of recorded history of people dying of thirst drinking seawater as a coping mechanism before the end.
I read somewhere that you can survive on salty water as long as you don’t leave it until you are severely dehydrated. You need to let your body adapt.
It was from research on how to survive lost at sea.
Not drinking water at all is a definite death sentence.
Edit: Looking a bit more into this, sea water will also kill you as it does dehydrate because your kidneys will try to deposit excess salt into your urin, but is unable to create urin that is saltier than sea water. You simply start peeing more than you drink.
The question is which option kills you faster?
I’m pretty sure drinking seawater will accelerate dehydration.
You’re right. Apparently I wasn’t going off a good source.
Salty water will simply kill you faster. If you’re severely dehydrated already and you opt for salty water you will simply destroy your body by extreme osmosis.
it fucks your liver
Israel should have to do what the whites in South Africa had to do after apartheid.
But without the economic apartheid continuing.
