Israel - A Rant

[Bjornebye]

22 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

It's been asked before and not answered, but okay. What's your solution for taking out rocket-firing terrorists that doesn't risk harming innocent people at all?

Not firing rockets at them and persecuting their people in the first place would have been a good start. 

 

Would also be nice if they didn't reject the ceasefire. 

 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-wants-several-more-days-of-fighting-despite-ceasefire-proposals-report/

 

 

[Numero Veinticinco]

3 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

It's been asked before and not answered, but okay. What's your solution for taking out rocket-firing terrorists that doesn't risk harming innocent people at all?

Not resorting to terrorism and oppression is a good start. Then, to quote the Lib Dem Layla Moran on the TV yesterday, Israel should accept the request from Palestine for a ceasefire. There are a few rockets that get through, and Hamas should rightly be criticised for this, and if diplomatic solutions can’t be found then then killing them is an option. But I’d you kill 200 people and 60 of them are kids, then even assuming every single one of the other are Hamas fighters. It’s still way beyond acceptable. But they aren’t, they are often women and civilians. 

 

Then there’s the case of targeting. It is not enough to say ‘Hamas were in that school/hospital/refugee camp’ you have to show it, and if there is significant risk then they shouldn’t take the shot. Same as drone strikes on weddings. They shouldn’t take the shot if it’s going to kill so many kids. 60 kids so far. Saying ‘every life is tragic’ then following it up with more strikes on packed buildings isn’t enough. It fucking isn’t enough. They can use technology for way more accurate strikes on individuals if they wait. I honestly have no issue with the IDF killing every single Hamas fighter firing rockets. The cost is just way too high. It’s breeding more hatred and violence. We honestly aren’t far from the most humane option just being ‘kill everyone and knock it down and pretend it didn’t happen’ because the utter terror of living in Gaza is worse than being alive for some. The idea that this is just some necessity in the name of self defence is insulting. 

[Jairzinho]

It seems unlikely that those resisting oppression will stop doing so until they aren't being oppressed. 

 

What will stop the rockets? Well, stop bulldozing houses. Cutting off electricity and water. Shooting kids. Etc, etc. Show that you actually want peace. 

 

But Likud don't want peace, and neither do Hamas.

[cloggypop]

1 hour ago, Nelly-Torres said:

Birds of a feather etc, etc... 

He always has. It's where his funding comes from. 

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

Pogba and Diallo with the Palestinian flag at Old Trafford tonight, apparently 

Still no charges against Choudhury and Fofana yet. 

[Scooby Dudek]

Just putting this here, strongly held views on both sides of the motion; 

 

 

[Colonel Bumcunt]

5 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

Ridiculous. Delusionally ridiculous.

 

 

[Bruce Spanner]

“Today Iran, tomorrow Palestine.” Thus cheered the crowd in Tehran in February 1979, during the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s visit to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini just days after the success of the Iranian revolution. Arafat was the first foreign dignitary to visit Iran after the fall of the shah. For him, Khomeini’s success was a win for the Palestinian cause: His guerrilla fighters had helped train Iranian revolutionaries in Lebanon, and he was hopeful that, with Khomeini’s help, he would soon be on his way to establishing a Palestinian state.

 

This fascinating and relatively little-known episode in the Middle East’s history altered the region’s political landscape, and still informs the context in which today’s events in the Palestinian territories and Israel are unfolding. Although the personal relationship between Arafat and Khomeini soured within a year, their encounter marks the moment when revolutionary Iran’s involvement with the Palestinians began, and when the Palestinian issue inserted itself into a then-still-nascent regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

 

Forty years later, Iran continues to brandish the Palestinian cause to shore up its anti-imperial credentials and project power in the region, posing as the only true defender of the Palestinians. In Tehran’s view, that offers it a contrast to Arab countries that either signed peace deals with Israel, such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, or cozied up to it, such as Saudi Arabia. This is why the Biden administration must view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a piece of the wider puzzle as it seeks to revive the nuclear deal with Iran: because that’s how Tehran sees it.

 

That’s not to dismiss the seven-decade-long plight of the Palestinians, dispossessed and expelled repeatedly from their homes. Nor does it take away from the horror of the violence between Israeli Jews and Arabs, from Haifa to Lod, and the alarming rise of Jewish extremism.

 

But that meeting decades ago remains essential to understanding how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is used by those who aren’t directly impacted to advance their own agendas, and how differently it features in the Middle East today compared with even two decades ago.

Read: ‘We want a nation’

 

When i began researching my book on the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, I did not expect to find that the Palestinian cause had played a role in the Iranian revolution, nor that it was a thread in the long-running proxy battle between Riyadh and Tehran, which also began in 1979. The two countries’ competition for influence is the key undercurrent that has driven, and continues to drive, many of the political, religious, and cultural dynamics in the region, as well as conflicts in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq.

 

The Arab-Israeli conflict began well before the Saudi-Iranian rivalry and continued to evolve mostly in parallel, with its own dynamics of occupation, wars, intifadas, invasions, and withdrawals. Saudi Arabia and Iran used different approaches to appropriate the issue of Palestine: Riyadh by using fiery rhetoric and promoting peace plans and Tehran by funding groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Then the Clinton administration’s efforts to secure peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians failed, the second intifada started in 2001, and Iran pushed itself further onto the Palestinian scene, building on what had begun in the guerrilla training camps in Lebanon in the 1970s. Since then, the Saudi-Iran rivalry and the Arab-Israeli conflict have become even more intertwined.

 

Now Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argues that the real threat to his country comes from Iran, not what seemed to be a dormant conflict with the Palestinians—that Israel could exist with a no-cost occupation while progressively establishing relations with Arab countries such as Bahrain and the UAE. Though these countries had their strategic and economic reasons for signing the Abraham Accords, there was always an anti-Iran slant to their unspoken cooperation with Israel.

 

For a long time, Arab regimes used the Arab-Israeli conflict to defend their bloated military budgets and explain away human-rights abuses and oppression—claiming that it was all in service of a greater cause. The Obama administration tried, sporadically, to resume negotiations and find a way forward, but senior United States officials recognized that Arab regimes had been using the conflict with Israel to distract their citizens from their own poverty and hopelessness. U.S. officials still mistakenly thought, however, that this meant that Washington could put the Palestinian issue on the back burner and focus on development and human rights—especially when the 2011 Arab uprisings erupted. When President Donald Trump declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, the lack of upheaval across the region was also taken as confirmation that the fire of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict had died.

 

But decisions such as these fuel the deep sense of abandonment that Palestinians have felt over the decades. A similar feeling of isolation is what initially drove Arafat to seek out Khomeini in the late 1970s, after successive Arab defeats in wars against Israel. Even worse was Egypt’s perceived betrayal, when Anwar Sadat broke ranks and became the first Arab leader to visit Israel, in 1977. It was around then that Arafat decided he needed new friends. The region’s most powerful military, aside from Egypt, belonged to Iran, but the Shah—who was still ruling the country—was a friend of Israel. Hundreds of Iranian revolutionaries, Marxists and Islamists alike, were already training in various Palestinian camps in Lebanon when Arafat made contact with Khomeini in 1977, just as the revolution in Iran started to simmer.

 

The ayatollah had identified the Palestinian cause early on as one that could give him appeal beyond Iran’s borders and beyond the Shia Muslim community, one that he could latch on to and make his own, undermining Saudi Arabia’s leadership of the broader Muslim world.

 

Arafat’s visit to Tehran in 1979 was triumphant, but even then there was tension. Khomeini wanted Arafat to embrace the Islamic precepts of revolution and abandon his nationalist rhetoric. Arafat was not interested. Within a year, the mood had turned. Palestinian guerrillas believed the people around Khomeini were religious “nut cases,” while Khomeini’s acolytes looked at the Palestinian fighters with disdain: They drank, didn’t pray or fast, and wore ties. But Khomeini had what he needed—an in with the Palestinians, some of whom thought Arafat was too moderate. They would go on to establish Islamist factions, eventually leading to the birth of Hamas.

 

Revolutionary Iran proclaimed the last Friday of Ramadan to be al-Quds Day, or Jerusalem Day, marked by military parades and anti-Israel and anti-American chest thumping. Later, Tehran would set up the Quds Force, led for years by General Qassem Soleimani and ostensibly meant to liberate Jerusalem, though it made destructive detours in Beirut, Aleppo, and Baghdad.

 

The events this week have been a reminder of the secular, nationalist currents that have long undergirded the Palestinian cause: In the late 1970s, a poster hung on the wall in the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Beirut offices bearing the title a list the people will complete, below which were the names of several countries. Three of them, Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Spain, had red check marks next to them—countries liberated by anti-imperialists. In February 1979, a red check mark was added next to Iran, while Palestine and Egypt still waited farther down the list. Before the latest violence erupted between Arabs and Jews within Israel, and before Hamas again started lobbing rockets at Israel, peaceful protests were being conducted by young Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, speaking out in international media, talking about international law and smiling bravely while they were being arrested by Israeli forces. They believe they are hearing more and more voices in support of their cause around the world, and in the halls of power, including, crucially this week, numerous voices in the U.S. Congress. They are mobilizing in ways we haven’t seen before, in the occupied territories, in Gaza, in refugee camps around the region, and in the diaspora.

 

There is limited hope among Palestinians: Egypt is trying to broker a cease-fire. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have condemned Israel’s actions, beginning with the eviction of Palestinians from land claimed by Israeli settlers, and have called on all sides to “show restraint.” President Joe Biden has dispatched Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Hady Amr to Tel Aviv. (With more than $3.3 billion in aid given, Washington has the most influence on Israel.) But the signs are not good. Any cease-fire will be a temporary fix. Arab capitals have limited leverage. And the U.S. has twice blocked efforts at the United Nations to address the violence, with Biden rebuffing calls by some in his party to condition aid to Israel on how it treats Palestinians. Biden seems eager to avoid being dragged into the conflict. But his administration should know that no matter how much it wants to deprioritize the Middle East, even the singular goal of reaching a nuclear deal with Iran can be undermined by violence in East Jerusalem, and Hamas rockets flying into Israel.

 

Ultimately, the Palestinians are still mostly on their own. Their anger is directed against Israel first and foremost, but there is also rage for all those who they argue should be helping them but are not: the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas, who has been in power since 2005; Arab countries that profess brotherhood and common cause but only pay lip service to the Palestinian cause; Washington, which rhetorically voices commitment to human rights and justice but does little to hold its allies, including Israel, accountable on these fronts. The Syrian-Palestinian writer Nidal Betare, who grew up in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, also raged in a Twitter thread against Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In it, he accused them of having lost their role as liberation movements and having turned into guns for hire, their leaders sitting comfortably in Damascus or Qatar while Palestinians are being bombarded in Gaza.

 

Some Palestinians may look to Iran as their last ally, and may well cheer the Hamas rockets as the sole way to push back against Israel. But for more than 40 years, the Islamic Republic has used the Palestinian cause for its own advancement. These days, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweets his outrage at Israel and the “racist criminal behavior of the usurpers” before flying to Damascus to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—the same man who unleashed hell on his own country and besieged and starved thousands in Yarmouk.'

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/05/israel-palestine-iran-saudi-arabia/618904/

[Ranxerox]

Few people have done more harm to the Palestinian cause than Arafat, a man who reliably made the wrong choice every time it mattered. 

[Strontium]

1 hour ago, Bruce Spanner said:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/05/israel-palestine-iran-saudi-arabia/618904/

 

Excellent article that. The Palestinians have been unfortunate pawns in a Middle Eastern power game for decades. Most Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Syria were born in Lebanon and Syria, but are banned from having citizenship. They're treated fucking horribly by everyone, not just Israel.

[Bruce Spanner]

Hungary kicked up a fuss yesterday and refused to join the joint EU statement requesting a ceasefire.

 

Something gone very fucking wrong over there...

 

TO THE VIKTOR GO THE SPOILS: There is no joint EU position on the latest escalation in the Middle East, after Hungary vetoed a draft statement that would have called on both sides to engage in an “immediate” halt to the violence and the “implementation of a ceasefire.” EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell said only 26 of the EU’s 27 member nations backed the call during a videoconference on Tuesday, before singling out, upon request, Budapest.

 

That’s unusual. It could signify a ras-le-bol moment with Hungary, the usual dissenter on more than one hot foreign policy issue; it could also be Borrell wanting to show he did really try hard to get everybody on board, or seeking to again highlight publicly that unanimity is nuts. Or perhaps he was just following a strategy only a few understood, by pointing out the divide rather than brushing over it: Whether Hungary would have publicly disagreed otherwise, who knows.

 

How it went down: Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó lambasted the EU for an anti-Israeli bias. He said during a visit to Paris that he has “a problem in general with these European statements,” adding they are usually “very one-sided” and not helpful. He appeared to be referring to the draft statement calling the high number of civilian victims on both sides “unacceptable.” The text also said that “we fully support Israel’s right to self-defense” against the “indiscriminate rocket attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups” — if Israel’s reaction is “done in a proportionate manner.” More on what happened from Hans von der Burchard and David Herszenhorn.

 

Well. There aren’t any indications that the Israeli government or Hamas and other Islamist terrorist organizations would be impressed or influenced to implement a ceasefire by EU statements. Meanwhile, our Stateside colleague Nahal Toosi reports that the Biden administration is increasingly hopeful the deadly conflict is in its final stages, and officials are confident their mostly behind-the-scenes intervention helped avert an early Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

[Gnasher]

2 hours ago, Bruce Spanner said:

Hungary kicked up a fuss yesterday and refused to join the joint EU statement requesting a ceasefire.

 

Something gone very fucking wrong over there...

 

TO THE VIKTOR GO THE SPOILS: There is no joint EU position on the latest escalation in the Middle East, after Hungary vetoed a draft statement that would have called on both sides to engage in an “immediate” halt to the violence and the “implementation of a ceasefire.” EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell said only 26 of the EU’s 27 member nations backed the call during a videoconference on Tuesday, before singling out, upon request, Budapest.

 

That’s unusual. It could signify a ras-le-bol moment with Hungary, the usual dissenter on more than one hot foreign policy issue; it could also be Borrell wanting to show he did really try hard to get everybody on board, or seeking to again highlight publicly that unanimity is nuts. Or perhaps he was just following a strategy only a few understood, by pointing out the divide rather than brushing over it: Whether Hungary would have publicly disagreed otherwise, who knows.

 

How it went down: Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó lambasted the EU for an anti-Israeli bias. He said during a visit to Paris that he has “a problem in general with these European statements,” adding they are usually “very one-sided” and not helpful. He appeared to be referring to the draft statement calling the high number of civilian victims on both sides “unacceptable.” The text also said that “we fully support Israel’s right to self-defense” against the “indiscriminate rocket attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups” — if Israel’s reaction is “done in a proportionate manner.” More on what happened from Hans von der Burchard and David Herszenhorn.

 

Well. There aren’t any indications that the Israeli government or Hamas and other Islamist terrorist organizations would be impressed or influenced to implement a ceasefire by EU statements. Meanwhile, our Stateside colleague Nahal Toosi reports that the Biden administration is increasingly hopeful the deadly conflict is in its final stages, and officials are confident their mostly behind-the-scenes intervention helped avert an early Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

 

Gorra luv EU.

[Gnasher]

14 hours ago, scottthecanuck said:

Few people have done more harm to the Palestinian cause than Arafat, a man who reliably made the wrong choice every time it mattered. 

Yeah that might be true but he was also extremely popular with a lot of people.

 

An example, the lady who owned the fancy dress shop down the end of our street cried buckets of tears when old Yasa died and she wasn't remotely bothered by middle easten politics.

[Gnasher]

Best speech today in commons debate on Israel came from the lib dems Layla Moran...

 

 

 

[Numero Veinticinco]

13 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

Best speech today in commons debate on Israel came from the lib dems Layla Moran...

 

 

 

I thought she was by far the best candidate for Lib Dem leader. Shame. She was on the news t’other day saying much the same. 

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

Benji is set to ignore 'Murica's call for a de-escalation with a view to a ceasefire as he wants to continue until the mission goal is achieved. 

 

Benji mustn't have fully satisfied his bloodlust. Those Palestinian kids ain't gonna kill themselves! 

[Gnasher]

47 minutes ago, Numero said:

I thought she was by far the best candidate for Lib Dem leader. Shame. She was on the news t’other day saying much the same. 

I said so at the time, she could have scooped up the youth vote and been a badly needed fresh broom for the libs..but obviously not up to me, I remember Stronty baby saying he voted for Ed, who has also been surprisingly quite good imo. 

[TheHowieLama]

On 22/02/2021 at 14:53, TheHowieLama said:

I always misread this thread title to Israel-a-Raunt.

 

Tremendous franchise opportunity there.

 

On 17/05/2021 at 10:17, Colonel Kurtz said:

 Does anyone have any genuine viable suggestions as to how this conflict could be resolved ? 

 

Shared prophets.

[Ranxerox]

38 minutes ago, Nelly-Torres said:

Benji is set to ignore 'Murica's call for a de-escalation with a view to a ceasefire as he wants to continue until the mission goal is achieved. 

 

Benji mustn't have fully satisfied his bloodlust. Those Palestinian kids ain't gonna kill themselves! 

The bombing will continue until Netanyahu has secured his position as PM. That is primarily what this is all about. 

[Numero Veinticinco]

Some posters on here have asked why we care about this (with nefarious inference that we only care because we are antisemites) but not other catastrophes (which is just wrong). There is a reason it is spoken about more, and it is because the injustice is so well articulated and covered, because the British and Americans had a hand in either creating the issue or supporting them, or both, and because there are people who deflect and defend the crimes, where as nobody is making the case for Iranian state murder or Chinese oppression of Muslims. Watching this video (I've linked it to play at a specific time) illustrates one reason why people are talking about this more often that Iran or Africa, other than the fact that our nation doesn't support and fund Iranian crimes, and that's because you get to see and hear from the victims more often. If they want to make threads highlighting the plight of others - the ones they're happy to use to score a political point with, but rarely post about themselves - then I'm sure we can all give our opinion on how horrible that is too.

 

This should start playing at 3m15s. The sound of this little girl's voice and what she said is just crushing to any normal person. Anybody who watches this girl (who no doubt will a photo of her signing bombs seconds before launch posted as a rebuttal any second) and says on here - like Rico continually implies - that it's because it's 'the Jews' is just a wrongun. The question should be 'why do you care about this', the question is for them to answer... why don't you?

 

 

 

[stringvest]

There are certain regimes that should, in a fair and just world, be wiped off the face of the earth for the benefit of mankind.  Saudi Arabia and Israel are just two.  One thing I can't tolerate is intolerance.

[Gnasher]

Just now, stringvest said:

There are certain regimes that should, in a fair and just world, be wiped off the face of the earth for the benefit of mankind.  Saudi Arabia and Israel are just two.  One thing I can't tolerate is intolerance.

Same they don't just nuke each other.

[Numero Veinticinco]

I think fixing the horrible oppressive leaderships in those countries is probably a better first step than going straight for the wiping off the Earth tactic. After all, most civilians just want to get on and be normal. Normal stuff like put food on the table for their children, make sure they're safe and warm and happy. That crazy stuff. 

[Strontium]

If Israel hadn't been wiped off the map once already, none of this would be happening (and millions more people would be alive).

[Bjornebye]

1 minute ago, Numero said:

I think fixing the horrible oppressive leaderships in those countries is probably a better first step than going straight for the wiping off the Earth tactic. After all, most civilians just want to get on and be normal. Normal stuff like put food on the table for their children, make sure they're safe and warm and happy. That crazy stuff. 

I think Stringvest is focusing on the evil politicians as opposed to the masses of innocents in both countries. 

 

Gnasher though, he's just fucking ruthless