Israel And The Palestinians (now with added Iran)

[D Angelo Barksdale]

Source: trust me bro

[beefybake]

1 hour ago, Wee Bully said:

Why, it won’t change the minds of anyone on here?  It would be like screaming into the void. 

Ah, Ok, so you were just out for a troll on a Sunday afternoon.

 

 

 

Edited January 28 by beefybake

[Jacksgranda]

On 26/01/2024 at 15:48, BFTD said:

Yeah, this is feeling a death cult now, run by old men who want their view of the world confirmed. I don't know if an end to US support would make much difference.

If somehow Israel ended up politically isolated and in danger of invasion purely to stop the government committing genocide, people like Netanyahu would declare it confirmation of global antisemitism and demand Israelis fought to the death; no quarter given. His final act would likely be to fire off those nuclear weapons that they don't have.

It's obviously not helped by the fact that they have neighbours who'd genuinely wipe them off the map if they could.

Aye, that probably colours their judgement slightly

[TxRover]

16 hours ago, Freedom Farter said:

Palestinian refugees in West Bank didn't do well from that. If they tried to cross back into what had since become the state of Israel, perhaps to visit the town they'd recently been driven out of, or to visit their grandmother in a nearby town, they were often killed at the border. Both Israeli and Jordanian soldiers killed them but more often Jordanian soldiers. That shows how right from the early days, no Arab state has aided the Palestinians. They've always been on their own.

That’s a somewhat misleading take. The earliest Palestinians displaced in the 1940’s and 19’50’s were actually treated pretty well in Jordan, with a majority acquiring Jordanian citizenship. After a bit, the policies changed, and the newer displaced persons were treated wholly differently. The primary reason for the change were the more obvious factors of Israel not going anywhere and the concerns of a growing population of Palestinian Jordanians.

There was also reasonable response from Iraq, initially, but you are correct that the other Arab states were much less welcoming.

[Freedom Farter]

5 hours ago, Wee Bully said:

It is massively wrong, affected as you say by your biases. 

My bias is to show that the occupation of the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights as well as the regular incursions into southern Lebanon do not benefit any working class people in the area, including working class Israelis. It should be obvious how these occupations harm common Israelis given it was the root cause of the massacres they were victim to last October. Yet many people still defend the occupation because they think its the same as defending Israelis. Well, its defending some Israelis, the ones at the top of Israeli society. Yet its harming the bulk of Israelis and not just because it puts them at risk of violent resistance to it. I've heard older Israelis say that each new generation of their family hopes they'll be the last to be forced into the military yet it continues on. The occupation affects so much in Israeli society and rarely in a way that benefits your average Israeli.

The debate isn't over Israel existing but over Israel expanding. This is the fundamental point people miss. My belief is people miss this point because they've been led to think Israeli expansion is necessary for Israeli existence. It's that which I call a lie. I think the origin of this lie is the popular narrative around the 1967 war. The narrative goes that in order to safeguard its existence, Israel had to invade and annex territory from its neighbouring nations (Sinai - since returned - and Gaza from Egypt, West Bank from Jordan and Golan Heights from Syria). 

There's plenty quotes from the '67 war's architects that suggest Israel was warring for expansion not survival. For a change, I'll use the Syrian example here rather than the Palestinian territories. General Moshe Dayan spoke of why the Golan Heights were sought:

Quote

General Dayan said in his conversations with Mr. Tal that the kibbutz leaders who had urgently demanded that Israel take the Golan Heights had done so largely for the land.

''The kibbutzim there saw land that was good for agriculture,'' he said. ''And you must remember, this was a time in which agricultural land was considered the most important and valuable thing.''

...

''But I can tell you with absolute confidence, the delegation that came to persuade Eshkol to take the heights was not thinking of these things. They were thinking about the heights' land. Listen, I'm a farmer, too. After all, I'm from Nahalal, not from Tel Aviv, and I know about it. I saw them, and I spoke to them. They didn't even try to hide their greed for that land.''

 

Then here he describes the strategy of baiting the Syrians into combat to create the pretext for full invasion:

Quote

General Dayan interrupted: ''Never mind that. After all, I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was.''

(https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/11/world/general-s-words-shed-a-new-light-on-the-golan.html#:~:text=It went this way%3A We,would get annoyed and shoot.).

Obviously that's just one army general but there's many similar quotes from the time by other Israeli military figures and government members as well as US government figures. There's an entire Wikipedia entry dedicated to challenging the "defensive war" narrative.

[Dunning1874]

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich both appeared at a conference today called "Return to Gaza", openly planning for future Israeli settlements in the north of the strip. The establishment of such settlements by an occupying force would of course be a war crime.

Ben-Gvir said "the only humane solution for Gaza is the mass deportation of its inhabitants." Yet another explicit call for ethnic cleansing from a member of the government.

I'm sure condemnation and a total halt of arms to Israel in light of this continued genocidal rhetoric will be coming imminently, considering how quickly Western governments responded to the as yet unproven allegation that 0.04% of an aid organisation's workforce were also involved in war crimes by choosing to suspend funding to that organisation immediately.

[GHF-23]

On 28/01/2024 at 21:23, Dunning1874 said:

 

I'm sure condemnation and a total halt of arms to Israel in light of this continued genocidal rhetoric will be coming imminently, considering how quickly Western governments responded to the as yet unproven allegation that 0.04% of an aid organisation's workforce were also involved in war crimes by choosing to suspend funding to that organisation immediately.

So I wouldn't be surprised if a tiny number of UNRWA workers are affiliated with or members of Hamas, likewise I'm sure a tiny number are spying for the Israelis. But reading the FT story on it this morning it seems the evidence is a "list of Hamas members discovered during a raid" - very helpful of them and "telecommunications intercepts" - those have proved very reliable evidence by Israel so far... Of course Blinken says they have corroborated nothing but are very confident that Israel are correct. Again, it feels like we may have heard this before in recent months.

[Freedom Farter]

[Freedom Farter]

[Dunning1874]

First the IDF bombed a hospital and said it was ridiculous to allege they'd bombed it, they would never do such a thing, it must have been Hamas.

Then, as they deliberately bombed every single hospital in Gaza, it was ridiculous to suggest they didn't have a right to do so. These were obviously Hamas bases.

As we all saw war crimes happening every day with our own eyes and heard and read members of the government explicitly calling for ethnic cleansing, it was ridiculous to suggest Israel was breaking international law in any way. It was clearly self-defence.

The ICJ found it to be plausible that genocide may be taking place, ordered Israel to ensure humanitarian aid could enter and to prevent & punish genocidal statements. The very next day Israel happened to have evidence that the UNRWA, an organisation whose evidence the ICJ had heavily relied upon and which is the primary organisation for delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza, had been infiltrated by Hamas and their employees had taken part in the attacks on October 7.

At Israel's behest, multiple Western countries cut off funding to the UNRWA due to those allegations without seeing any evidence, right at the moment when there's the greatest need for aid to enter with a serious risk of starvation, while Israeli citizens blockade aid trucks trying to enter. It has predictably transpired that there was no evidence. The Israeli government made it up to distract from the ICJ.

How many obvious lies need to be debunked, how long is this charade of the Western governments going to continue, that they have legitimate concerns about international law but stand by Israel all the same, funding and arming them? How many tens of thousands of dead civilians will it take to stop? How many images of the indiscriminate murder of children, of torture of detainees, of the uncovering of mass graves need to be seen? Is it going to take European and North American governments being up for genocide themselves before they end their unconditional cheerleading for this slaughter?

No one who has supported this should ever be allowed to forget it.

[Shadow Play]

10 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

First the IDF bombed a hospital and said it was ridiculous to allege they'd bombed it, they would never do such a thing, it must have been Hamas.

Then, as they deliberately bombed every single hospital in Gaza, it was ridiculous to suggest they didn't have a right to do so. These were obviously Hamas bases.

As we all saw war crimes happening every day with our own eyes and heard and read members of the government explicitly calling for ethnic cleansing, it was ridiculous to suggest Israel was breaking international law in any way. It was clearly self-defence.

The ICJ found it to be plausible that genocide may be taking place, ordered Israel to ensure humanitarian aid could enter and to prevent & punish genocidal statements. The very next day Israel happened to have evidence that the UNRWA, an organisation whose evidence the ICJ had heavily relied upon and which is the primary organisation for delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza, had been infiltrated by Hamas and their employees had taken part in the attacks on October 7.

At Israel's behest, multiple Western countries cut off funding to the UNRWA due to those allegations without seeing any evidence, right at the moment when there's the greatest need for aid to enter with a serious risk of starvation, while Israeli citizens blockade aid trucks trying to enter. It has predictably transpired that there was no evidence. The Israeli government made it up to distract from the ICJ.

How many obvious lies need to be debunked, how long is this charade of the Western governments going to continue, that they have legitimate concerns about international law but stand by Israel all the same, funding and arming them? How many tens of thousands of dead civilians will it take to stop? How many images of the indiscriminate murder of children, of torture of detainees, of the uncovering of mass graves need to be seen? Is it going to take European and North American governments being up for genocide themselves before they end their unconditional cheerleading for this slaughter?

No one who has supported this should ever be allowed to forget it.

You appear to have a fair bit of knowledge on this subject so I’m hoping you can answer this (there doesn’t seem to be any definitive answer from the limited information that I’ve seen on the news):

From what I can gather Hamas rejects Israel’s right to exist and are committed to its destruction.  Yet Hamas must have known / suspected that would not be achieved by their attacks in Israel in 07/10 and that Israel’s response would be devastating for the people of Gaza. 

What do you think Hamas thought they would actually achieve by carrying out these attacks?  

 

[welshbairn]

The ruling party in Israel, Likud, claims sovereignty over all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river for the Jewish people only and that the Palestinian people have no right to live where their ancestors have for time immemorial. Hamas claim the rights of Palestinians to live anywhere they traditionally have between the sea and the river, and reject the legitimacy of an exclusively Jewish state.

Hamas didn't expect the Israeli response to their raid to be so slow, they expected to have time just to kidnap a few soldiers and civilians as hostages in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli jails and run back into Gaza before they were all killed. Instead they had hours with hundreds of angry men going on the rampage, including the unexpected music festival, many of them untrained and not under direct Hamas control. That's not an excuse, I'm just trying to explain what I think happened. 

[Newbornbairn]

4 hours ago, welshbairn said:

The ruling party in Israel, Likud, claims sovereignty over all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river for the Jewish people only and that the Palestinian people have no right to live where their ancestors have for time immemorial. Hamas claim the rights of Palestinians to live anywhere they traditionally have between the sea and the river, and reject the legitimacy of an exclusively Jewish state.

Hamas didn't expect the Israeli response to their raid to be so slow, they expected to have time just to kidnap a few soldiers and civilians as hostages in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli jails and run back into Gaza before they were all killed. Instead they had hours with hundreds of angry men going on the rampage, including the unexpected music festival, many of them untrained and not under direct Hamas control. That's not an excuse, I'm just trying to explain what I think happened. 

That's pretty much what I've read. Ordinary Gazans went through the holes cut in the fences and walls cut by Hamas and then went on a frenzy of killing, raping and looting. 

[Arch Stanton]

 

 

[Dunning1874]

7 hours ago, Shadow Play said:

You appear to have a fair bit of knowledge on this subject so I’m hoping you can answer this (there doesn’t seem to be any definitive answer from the limited information that I’ve seen on the news):

From what I can gather Hamas rejects Israel’s right to exist and are committed to its destruction.  Yet Hamas must have known / suspected that would not be achieved by their attacks in Israel in 07/10 and that Israel’s response would be devastating for the people of Gaza. 

What do you think Hamas thought they would actually achieve by carrying out these attacks?  

 

 

6 hours ago, welshbairn said:

The ruling party in Israel, Likud, claims sovereignty over all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river for the Jewish people only and that the Palestinian people have no right to live where their ancestors have for time immemorial. Hamas claim the rights of Palestinians to live anywhere they traditionally have between the sea and the river, and reject the legitimacy of an exclusively Jewish state.

Hamas didn't expect the Israeli response to their raid to be so slow, they expected to have time just to kidnap a few soldiers and civilians as hostages in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli jails and run back into Gaza before they were all killed. Instead they had hours with hundreds of angry men going on the rampage, including the unexpected music festival, many of them untrained and not under direct Hamas control. That's not an excuse, I'm just trying to explain what I think happened. 

Yeah, think Welshbairn has it spot on regarding what their primary aim on October 7 was. Take some hostages, get them into Gaza and use them as leverage for either a prisoner exchange or some other form of political concessions. That they are fundamentally evil fuckers who have committed repugnant war crimes of their own doesn't make them deluded: they know the total destruction of Israel is never going to happen, hence their 2017 indication that they would accept a two-state solution. Their military acts need to be looked at in terms of what they think they can gain politically as a result rather than being purely down to an antisemitic desire to kill Jews, which they are certainly guilty of.

In doing so they probably simultaneously overestimated and underestimated the IDF. Overestimated how quickly they would respond on the day of the wall being breached, meaning they got further into Israeli territory than expected and degenerated into the slaughter of civilians on top of the war crime of civilian hostage taking, while underestimating the ferocity of the military response. Obviously the resumption of a full-on war would always be a possible outcome, but they presumably thought the first response to Israeli citizens who aren't active IDF members being held would be negotiation over them rather than all-out war, as that brought with it the risk of the IDF killing Israeli hostages within Gaza themselves, which we've sadly seen happen since.

[Shadow Play]

52 minutes ago, Dunning1874 said:

 

Yeah, think Welshbairn has it spot on regarding what their primary aim on October 7 was. Take some hostages, get them into Gaza and use them as leverage for either a prisoner exchange or some other form of political concessions. That they are fundamentally evil fuckers who have committed repugnant war crimes of their own doesn't make them deluded: they know the total destruction of Israel is never going to happen, hence their 2017 indication that they would accept a two-state solution. Their military acts need to be looked at in terms of what they think they can gain politically as a result rather than being purely down to an antisemitic desire to kill Jews, which they are certainly guilty of.

In doing so they probably simultaneously overestimated and underestimated the IDF. Overestimated how quickly they would respond on the day of the wall being breached, meaning they got further into Israeli territory than expected and degenerated into the slaughter of civilians on top of the war crime of civilian hostage taking, while underestimating the ferocity of the military response. Obviously the resumption of a full-on war would always be a possible outcome, but they presumably thought the first response to Israeli citizens who aren't active IDF members being held would be negotiation over them rather than all-out war, as that brought with it the risk of the IDF killing Israeli hostages within Gaza themselves, which we've sadly seen happen since.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.  Thanks to @welshbairn as well.  At the risk of sounding incredibly negative the more I read about the issue the more it seems unlikely there will be any workable solution agreed upon for at least a generation.

[Dunning1874]

Netanyahu has rejected a ceasefire proposal which would see every hostage returned. Almost as if this has never been about getting the hostages back and that is being used as an excuse for ethnic cleansing.

Meanwhile, Gaza's health ministry has estimated that there are now over 150,000 cases of diarrheoa with over half of them in children under five. If this goes on much longer as many children will die due to disease and famine as through bombs and bullets.

[Bairnardo]

1 hour ago, Dunning1874 said:

Netanyahu has rejected a ceasefire proposal which would see every hostage returned. Almost as if this has never been about getting the hostages back and that is being used as an excuse for ethnic cleansing.

Meanwhile, Gaza's health ministry has estimated that there are now over 150,000 cases of diarrheoa with over half of them in children under five. If this goes on much longer as many children will die due to disease and famine as through bombs and bullets.

The offer to return every hostage will also shine a light on the support of countries like ours. It should bring increased heat on our scumbag govt to pressure the Israelis into stopping what they are doing.... But it won't. Just makes the West look like even bigger c***s than already. 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

Genocidal scumbags.

To where exactly?

[The Golden God]

So the Irish National basketball team didn’t shake hands with the Israeli team because a member of their camp accused them of anti semitism and that obviously makes the Irish Nazi’s.  
 

 

Edited February 10 by The Golden God