Since it's been a while since we had an Israel/Palestine thread...

V

version

Well-known member
With the obvious caveat that all sorts of information's flying around and you have to take what you read with a pinch of salt, I've just read that Israel have killed 583 kids in Gaza. Apparently that's more in less than a week than they killed in 51 days of bombardment in 2014.

I've also read they've killed 40 people and injured a further 150 airstriking evacuees. This being after they'd offered a window to evacuate.

Supposedly both have been confirmed by the Ministry of Health, but I've only seen tweets repeating it and a clip of some burning vehicles in a deserted street with a bunch of people shouting.

Also heard they targeted a hospital with white phosphorus.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
seriously, fuck off back to the crypto currency thread or brooklyn culture mafia or whatever. This thread is for adults.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Mr. Tea said:
Mate, I'm not saying it's a justified belief or anything, or that every Muslim leader has the full backing of all or even most of the people he rules over. I'm simply saying that these things happened and will have been noticed by people outside the Middle East.

And at the same time, there is clearly a lot of anti-Israel feeling in many of these countries, no? There must be factories that exist purely to churn out Israeli flags just so people can burn them.
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There is a lot of propaganda from various malicious actors outside of Palestine which call for unlimited genocide of palestinians. noone (rightfully I will add) takes them seriously, especially the American kinds such as this cow.


I get your point and I agree with you that needlessly inflamatory rhetoric does noone favours but this is about manufacturing consent (I hate this is now a liberal chomskyite term) rather than any actual views or concerns for the conflict. Usually about galvanising home support in host countries, the need to appear more radical than thou. The spectacular accumulation of commodities, and politics is a form of commodity production one invests in.

As for hamas, can you really obsess over them having a rational propaganda on this when they inhabit conditions which no western (or arab, even) politico could even countenance? Of course we all should continue to demand they reach a rational, realistic understanding, but the pathological obsession in some quarters says more about those obsessing than the antisemitic propaganda itself. 'islamophobia doesn't exist because muh muslims aren't a race!' what is this, the 1730s?

BTW not accusing you of holding any of these positions, just illustrating my thinking on this matter.


Here's the man telling it as it is:

 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
thirdform said:
you're an idiot and a degenerate with no worthwhile contributions to offer to this thread, or seemingly, society at large...
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Well I’ve got a couple thousand font-downloaders who may beg to differ with you…

(For reference, this is not a large number of downloads for a font).
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I understand I understand: you might think supporting Palestine over Israel is punching up because of the score between them, but unless you are Palestinian your support counts for the World in the Jews vs the World game, and that is definitely punching down (for the world!). Also, it means your goals are dovetailing with those far right people you keep claiming you are not.

Anybody here actually Palestinian?

TL;DR if you're not Palestinian you can support Palestine over Israel but you can't say it. Capisce? Good lad.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
vimothy said:
perhaps they were hoping to provoke a massive retaliation, ground invasion of the Gaza strip and a regional war involving Israel and its neighbours.
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that was my initial thought, and I still think it must be true, but one of the interesting points in the interview Danny linked was that Hamas itself may have been caught off guard by the success of its attack. I have no doubt that Hamas leadership has been preparing for the inevitable massive Israeli response for the last two years, but my gut feeling is that they envisioned something more like Lebanon 2006 - fight the IDF to a respectable draw, which for you means a huge victory - not a war to the knife. The intent here seems to be to wipe Hamas from the face of the earth, and Hamas can't advance its goals if it no longer exists as a functional entity. Normally what stops that, in the case of Hamas or Hezbollah, is international pressure, Israeli domestic opposition, and Israeli unwillingness to take casualties. The scale and impact of the attack has ensured that none of those normal brakes will be applied.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
thirdform said:
There is no real state solution to this conflict anymore. The single state solution is what is taking place, the generalisation of apartheid to all of historical Palestine, what one might want to call greater Israel (although I am personally reluctant to use that term.) The two state solution is so unlikely simply because of the overwhelming settler ownership of land. How can you ask people to have sovereignty over lands they don't own, and what they own is 15-20% of their historical territories? This is not a state, it's not even a semi-state, it's just a generalisation of the conditions of gaza.
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This is very important I think, and speaks to viewing Hamas's actions in terms of its own goals - to make occupation unsustainable, and to demonstrate that to its backers - vs Iran's, or any other backer's

the policy of indefinite occupation has always been an impossible one, but turning Netanyahu's strategy of using Hamas as a simultaneous manager of indefinite occupation/bulwark against a peace deal back on him as part of the maskirovka to lull the Israeli govt and security apparatus into complacency was frankly, a brilliant piece of strategic jiujitsu.

and I agree 100% that a Palestinian state is impossible without settler withdrawal, which is extremely unlikely. it would tear Israeli apart. prising 8000 settlers out of a handful of settlements in Gaza that everyone agreed were both useless and indefensible was a hugely traumatic national event. Getting a half million settlers out of the WB, and another 250k in East Jerusalem? forget it.

I just think that, as I said above, Hamas may have unwittingly overplayed its hand here and strengthened Israeli in the short run. in the long run indefinite occupation will at some point become unsustainable, but this (probably) isn't the moment.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
thirdform said:
To take another example, if the question of bourgeois self-determination was available for say, Turkish Kurdistan, my political preference for survival (although I hasten to add I'm a communist and against all nationalisms, including Kurdish) would be an autonomous republic, or an autonomous devolution within the turkish republic. Mostly because unlike say Iranian or Iraqi kurds who tend to speak farsi and Arabic, we speak Turkish, and our culture is inextricably anatolian, and attempting us to unite us with the rest of the Kurdish people in one fell swoop would precipitate war and an extremely brutal form of nationalist social engineering.
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not to say this is right for the Kurds, or Palestinians or whoever, but I would note that this is exactly what did happen in Israel, with the social engineering but without the civil war. Mizrahi, Yemeni, etc Jews were assimilated into the Ashkenazi-run state after 1948. ofc they mostly arrived as destitute refugees and suffered tremendous amounts of discrimination, but no physical violence I'm aware of.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Rude Velvet said:
Hardly. China's barely said a word, Russia was probably involved, Qatar wants to cut oil. The international community is 5 eyes and the western part of the EU. And India.
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well yeah ofc, when referring to international pressure on Israel it has always meant the U.S. and to a lesser extent Western Europe

"the international community" is always whoever is relevant to and has power to influence a particular issue

so China is definitely part of the international community in re Ukraine. it basically isn't in re Israel.

the international community Israeli govt cares about is whoever is going to arm and/or trade with it, or has influence over who will arm and/or trade with it. in that sense it's hardly different from any other govt tho. unless Arab govts are going to do something to materially stop the Israelis - they won't - they'll be ignored. i.e. Israeli govt has warned Hezbollah to stay out of it, and ignored the Lebanese govt.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
padraig (u.s.) said:
that was my initial thought, and I still think it must be true, but one of the interesting points in the interview Danny linked was that Hamas itself may have been caught off guard by the success of its attack. I have no doubt that Hamas leadership has been preparing for the inevitable massive Israeli response for the last two years, but my gut feeling is that they envisioned something more like Lebanon 2006 - fight the IDF to a respectable draw, which for you means a huge victory - not a war to the knife. The intent here seems to be to wipe Hamas from the face of the earth, and Hamas can't advance its goals if it no longer exists as a functional entity. Normally what stops that, in the case of Hamas or Hezbollah, is international pressure, Israeli domestic opposition, and Israeli unwillingness to take casualties. The scale and impact of the attack has ensured that none of those normal brakes will be applied.
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agreed but the absence of brakes is not indefinite. in the words of tim sahey, israel is operating with a "window of legitimacy", due to the spectacular nature of the atrocities committed by hamas. the question for the inhabitants of Gaza is how quickly that window closes.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
vimothy said:
agreed but the absence of brakes is not indefinite
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of course. I thought that was implied or I would have said so. I agree anyway.

to expand on the other two normal brakes

the Israeli govt is also operating domestically in a very strange and specific "window of legitimacy". by all accounts I've seen/heard there is massive and widespread anger at Netanyahu and his allies. 1973 eventually brought down Meir, and it seems very likely that this will (eventually) finally bring down Bibi. he basically has one remaining task, and that is to extract vengeance. that's the mandate. I guess it's possible a victory redeems him politically, but whether it does or not this assault, unlike every serious military engagement since 73, is unlikely to experience serious domestic opposition. Hamas has done what Israelis themselves couldn't and, at least temporarily, united Israeli society and papered over its internal divisions.

and the willingness to take casualties. Israel, like the Western democracies, is highly reluctant to take casualties, especially from its citizen army. but now they've already taken more losses, counting civilians, than any war since again 73. and if they really go in, all the way into the cities and camps - let alone the tunnels - they will take serious casualties. not close to the number of Palestinians ofc, but Yom Kippur level (2500 dead, 3-4x that wounded) or worse seems possible. and they look entirely willing.
 
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