Israel And The Palestinians (now with added Iran/Lebanon)

[Theyellowbox]

1 hour ago, beefybake said:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/23/pentagon-military-advisers-air-defense-israel-hamas-war-gaza

US military advisers going in.

One of them is a guy who was heavily involved in the US assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah. 

As I recall, Fallujah was essentially razed to the ground.

Also, the US has stated that now is not the time for a ceasefire.

 

If it wasn't before, looks fairly obvious now that the US/Israel intention is to destroy much of Gaza, and make it uninhabitable. 

 

Still not a peep from our spineless political leaders.

This is the problem. We (as in the west) have such a short memory and attention span now, that some of the actions and events that happened in Iraq and Afghanistan are completely erased from our consciousness, whereas when you see a Brit or American doing x in a neighbouring country, that is the defining memory of that country. The proof is the reaction on middle England if you ask about Germans.... despite the 70+ years that have passed, a different generation and that short attention span of historical events, there is an inbuilt reaction.

That anyone thinks a US military advisor that saw action in Iraq can be seen by the majority of the middle east as an not an unbiased collaborater is frankly mental. 

Our politicians and leaders in general need to be calm and measured here and look at the longer term picture in how to handle this crisis. Calm balanced reactions will get this sorted and putting aside prior feelings. Egypt are the example here. 

 

[Granny Danger]

[JokerD]

Just imagine what would be happening in Gaza now, if the US and others had urged restraint and called for humanitarian corridors.

[Wee-Bey]

[BFTD]

Surprised to see the UN engaging in such open and blatant anti-semitism there.

[Freedom Farter]

On 21/10/2023 at 19:39, Granny Danger said:

There’s nasty stuff happening all over the place as a result of the blowback; particularly in the USA.  Major tech companies pulling out of a conference because the conference organiser had the temerity to criticise Israel’s actions, people having job offers withdrawn for the same reasons, students being threatened by their colleges for signing letters of support for Palestine.

The pro-Zionist lobby is well organised and not afraid to use their influence across all sectors of society, though if you point this out you may be accused of indulging in antisemitic tropes.

 

Here's only a tweetsworth of examples, far from exhaustive but it gives a flavour:

There is an Israel lobby much like how there's a Poland lobby or an India lobby and we shouldn't be squeamish about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_Kingdom

Overstating the reach, power or influence of that lobby is potentially antisemitic so the pushback to your comment was reasonable. Personally, I'm more interested in how that diagnosis is just wrong (to my mind) and therefore obscures the actual root cause. 

Nation states are a set of institutions to protect the wealth and interests of the ownership class of that nation of people. It gives them a monopoly on violence which they do sometimes use to eg. jail rapists, if they get around to it and the plebs demand it strongly enough, but primarily that's not what the military, police, law, etc. were set up for. Israel functions as a valuable outpost of Western elites' interests in a resource rich global region. This is why Biden says "if there was no Israel, we'd have to create one". He's the chief advocate of the US ownership class. It's that class of people who decide policy on Israel.

Regarding the folk who comprise the Israel lobby, they argue what they do due to daft identity or emotional reasons. While they're encouraged by the ownership class and some of them may themselves be of that class, ultimately they're just useful idiots. Again, same goes for eg. the Indian lobby. There may well be Indian diaspora tech billionaires in California, Hindutvavadis who love Modi, but they're only encouraged because Modi remaining in power and keeping India on its current course is great for the US onwnership class. Consider the Armenia lobby in USA, its reasonably well-funded and powerful relative to diaspora lobbies, yet it gets absolutely nowhere with influencing policy because supporting Armenia offers no advantage at all to the US ownership class.

Israel policy from the western ownership class has been bad both for the common folk in US, UK and the rest as well as for common folk in Israel. Shitloads of tax contributions from particularly working Americans has been shovelled into the arms industry supposedly to help Israelis. Yet Israelis haven't benefited at all from that as its required the worst governments in Israel to facilitate it and as recent events show, it has made them hugely less safe not more safe.

These folk being sacked from their jobs and "cancelled" for dissenting comments on Israel, that's coming about due to the state leaning on its institutions. Its not the work of some shadowy lobby. We're really seeing the nation state for what it is over this issue. Despite public polling showing clear support for a ceasefire in Gaza, look at how political leaders are responding just now. I watched parliament yesterday where MPs from all three main parties - Stephen Flynn, Zarah Sultana and Crispin Blunt - asked for UK to advocate a ceasefire and each time without hesitating, the Sunakbot repeated "Israel has a right to defend itself". We can see Biden in USA completely ignoring all calls to rein in Israel (which he absolutely has the power to do, make no mistake there). Or we see Ursula von der Leyen, former German defence minister who gave so much to the arms industry in that role she was investigated for it, ignoring the dissent of hundreds of EU staff and Josep Borrell to continue her unflinching support for Israeli actions.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Freedom Farter

[itzdrk]

 

 

[Freedom Farter]

Al Arabiya (Saudi outlet) interviewer doing a good job on the Hamas spokesman there. I was struck by how much Khaled Mashal sounded like Naftali Bennett in trying to draw a WW2 parallel and waving away civilian deaths.

[101]

I have done some googling but can't find a definitive answer. Why is it controversial to call Israel an "Apartheid" state?

From what I can tell it seems to be perhaps not as clear cut as South Africa but pretty bad.

Palestinian people cant vote in Israeli elections not live in Israel with Israeli spouses. They can't travel freely in the designated Palestinian Territories and several respected bodies such a Amnesty have called it an apartheid, even some Jewish American academics have endorsed such calls. 

So I'm turning to the informed masses of P&B to ask, why is this a decisive label to slap on them and is it the correct label?

[oneteaminglasgow]

17 minutes ago, 101 said:

So I'm turning to the informed masses of P&B to ask, why is this a decisive label to slap on them and is it the correct label?

The criticism I’ve seen of it is that using that term would question the legitimacy of the state of Israel existing. Which is pretty weak.

IMO, it’s an entirely accurate description. 

[BFTD]

43 minutes ago, 101 said:

I have done some googling but can't find a definitive answer. Why is it controversial to call Israel an "Apartheid" state?

From what I can tell it seems to be perhaps not as clear cut as South Africa but pretty bad.

Palestinian people cant vote in Israeli elections not live in Israel with Israeli spouses. They can't travel freely in the designated Palestinian Territories and several respected bodies such a Amnesty have called it an apartheid, even some Jewish American academics have endorsed such calls. 

So I'm turning to the informed masses of P&B to ask, why is this a decisive label to slap on them and is it the correct label?

Because Apartheid is generally considered to have been A Bad Thing, so to say that the state of Israel practices an Apartheid system is saying that Israel has done A Bad Thing, which is anti-semitic.

It's like how racists lose their mind when it's pointed out that they've said or done something racist - most folk feel that racism is bad now, so people get very defensive about being in that category, even if their views meet the dictionary definition of racist. They won't reconsider that their views or actions, just deny it's the case and act offended that somebody pointed it out.

[101]

2 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Because Apartheid is generally considered to have been A Bad Thing, so to say that the state of Israel practices an Apartheid system is saying that Israel has done A Bad Thing, which is anti-semitic.

So would be defenders say it's right and a good thing that a Palestinian person who marries an Israeli can't live in Israel. Seems ridiculous mental gymnastics and I get most of this is old news but it seems to have been brought into the sun light over the last month or so.

[TxRover]

1 hour ago, 101 said:

I have done some googling but can't find a definitive answer. Why is it controversial to call Israel an "Apartheid" state?

From what I can tell it seems to be perhaps not as clear cut as South Africa but pretty bad.

Palestinian people cant vote in Israeli elections not live in Israel with Israeli spouses. They can't travel freely in the designated Palestinian Territories and several respected bodies such a Amnesty have called it an apartheid, even some Jewish American academics have endorsed such calls. 

So I'm turning to the informed masses of P&B to ask, why is this a decisive label to slap on them and is it the correct label?

The hair splitting brigade would argue that apartheid applies to a political subdivision wherein the ruling race is in the minority while segregation more properly describes the condition within Israel where the ruling race is in the majority. Of course, calling it a segregated society will also result in much wailing and teeth gnashing, so that’s no answer. Given that either applied to Israel is, in general terms, reasonable accurate, it’s amusing to watch the wriggling to avoid admitting it.

[Granny Danger]

1 hour ago, 101 said:

I have done some googling but can't find a definitive answer. Why is it controversial to call Israel an "Apartheid" state?

From what I can tell it seems to be perhaps not as clear cut as South Africa but pretty bad.

Palestinian people cant vote in Israeli elections not live in Israel with Israeli spouses. They can't travel freely in the designated Palestinian Territories and several respected bodies such a Amnesty have called it an apartheid, even some Jewish American academics have endorsed such calls. 

So I'm turning to the informed masses of P&B to ask, why is this a decisive label to slap on them and is it the correct label?

It’s only controversial because the people making the rules don’t like it and we are all meant to take these rules at face value rather than challenging them.  

One of the authors of the ‘accepted’ anti-Semitism definition, Kenneth Stern, has often been critical of how that definition has been weaponised to shut down debate and pro-Zionists keep conjuring up other actions that apparently anti-Semitic.  I don’t know if it’s part of any ‘official’ definition but I’ve seen it been claimed that boycotting Israeli goods is anti-Semitic but it isn’t, it’s a legitimate way of personally protesting against the Israeli state.

 

[GTee]

Israel are launching around 400 strikes per day. Say 15 every hour. I find it difficult to believe they are targeting 'known' Hamas targets. I don't think Hamas is an army. So it isn't really a war. It's another Afghanistan - Al Qaeda  - ISIS - The Taliban.  Can't be won. A waste of time and life.

Let's get the leaders of Israel, USA, UK, France etc in combats and carry out what they are advocating. No chance. Talk tough, but cowards.

Depressing stuff.

[BFTD]

1 minute ago, 101 said:

So would be defenders say it's right and a good thing that a Palestinian person who marries an Israeli can't live in Israel. Seems ridiculous mental gymnastics and I get most of this is old news but it seems to have been brought into the sun light over the last month or so.

Yeah, it's entirely understandable why the country has ended up this way - it's supposed to be a refuge for any and all Jews who encounter discrimination in the rest of the world, which they do and will as for some reason we just can't leave the poor b*****ds alone - but it's never going to be acceptable when there was an existing population being supplanted. There's also the unfortunate reality that Israel can be quite picky about who counts as a "proper" Jew - Ethiopians are supposedly treated as second-class citizens, for example.

From what I understand, the thought going through Israeli minds (putting aside some of the psychopaths and chancers in their government) is that Israel has to exist at any and all costs because the next anti-semitic purge could begin tomorrow and that, if the rest of the world actually gave a shit about the Palestinians, they'd have found a new home for them by now. It's absolute terror that drives this; thousands of years of accumulated trauma that we'll never understand.

What's being done is dreadful, but it's driven by fear and irrational as a result.

[Dunning1874]

7 hours ago, BFTD said:

There's also the unfortunate reality that Israel can be quite picky about who counts as a "proper" Jew - Ethiopians are supposedly treated as second-class citizens, for example.

It's worth noting this goes very far. Ethiopian women in Israel were forcibly given contraceptives without consent for decades. Ethiopians moving to Israel have faced legal challenges from right-wing groups over the right of return applying to them, even though no one can deny a Jewish community has existed in Ethiopia for centuries. Going back to the foundation of Israel, it took decades for even Ethiopians who'd been there since the 40s to receive citizenship.

Where as a white European who has no Jewish background I could convert to Judaism and be eligible for Israeli citizenship as a result, the same does not apply to African Jews. Nigeria and Uganda both have small but established Jewish communities: in both cases when any members of those communities have applied for Israeli citizenship, the response from Israel has effectively amounted to "you're not real Jews, piss off."

[BFTD]

2 hours ago, Dunning1874 said:

It's worth noting this goes very far. Ethiopian women in Israel were forcibly given contraceptives without consent for decades. Ethiopians moving to Israel have faced legal challenges from right-wing groups over the right of return applying to them, even though no one can deny a Jewish community has existed in Ethiopia for centuries. Going back to the foundation of Israel, it took decades for even Ethiopians who'd been there since the 40s to receive citizenship.

Where as a white European who has no Jewish background I could convert to Judaism and be eligible for Israeli citizenship as a result, the same does not apply to African Jews. Nigeria and Uganda both have small but established Jewish communities: in both cases when any members of those communities have applied for Israeli citizenship, the response from Israel has effectively amounted to "you're not real Jews, piss off."

Yet somehow people are still worried about the extinction of our species, as though it would be an objectively bad thing. We're all awful, and will continue to be so for as long as we're obsessed with subdividing ourselves into arbitrary groups to feel superior to.

(this obviously doesn't apply to Celtgers fans, who are objectively terrible)

[coprolite]

2 hours ago, ForzaViola said:

More bullshit from the IDF to justify the next few day's breaches of international law. I'm fairly confident if this was even remotely true, the c***s would have blown it up well before now. 

 

According to my dossier, those are ICBM silos. 

[Granny Danger]

7 minutes ago, coprolite said:

According to my dossier, those are ICBM silos. 

Aye, the secondary war is the disinformation one that many will be willing to buy into, assist with and repeat.