magnkarl

It's a mixture of things. Many wanted him out before this war too. His persecution of the war is a big point for the left side, some are against him for the corruption, everyone in Israel wants the hostages freed (naturally). The big difference is that the Israeli people aren't supporting their war-crime infested government outside of the settler movement and far right, like the Gazans are 50-60% in favour of the organisation that led to their current predicament. It's once again a double standard for many of the people who protest for Palestine. I don't know why it's so controversial for a Western protest to want a better life for Palestinians, which means both stopping the persecution from Israel, but also stopping the multi-faceted crime from their two governments. PA must be over the moon, once the focus went to Gaza a lot of money flowed into their coffers again after several nations held back due to issues around corruption.

That seems to be only the case for Palestinians though, who have increased their support for Hamas since Oct 7th, while Israelis by as much as 85% want Netanyahu gone for their own country's way of behaving. The Palestinian people are held to a low standard that no others get, one where whatever they do is explained by what others do.

This. Yet millions of people in the West protest for a people that in large swathes (even in WB and abroad) support a group that is on the terror list, is actively committing terrorism and have been doing so for 20 odd years. They have been steadily supporting them for a long time too, according to polling. There are no good guys, and the naivety of some of the protesters is beyond me. The top protest group for me must be 'Queers for Palestine', happily waving Islamic flags while their comrades are being thrown off of rooftops in both the WB and Gaza for simply being gay. Yet here we are, they've got their own UN-organ, receive upwards of 3 billion in aid every year and show very little willingness to move forward. At which point does the Palestine-lobby in the West start questioning if what we're doing for them is working or not? Another 70 years? I wonder where that 1 billion 'restoration' fund that Qatar sent into Gaza went. Israel uses rockets to defend their people, Palestinians use people to protect their rockets. Free Palestine.

I think you know the answer to that, what a weird question. Is 57% of Gaza's population at fault for Israel's reaction to Hamas? There's a massive difference between accountability for electing someone and carrying blame for their later actions.

I don't think I agree anymore. I think the loud minority right wing idiots who prop up Benny's government are accountable, just as I think the people who still support Hamas in Palestine\WB are accountable. If they lost their support this would be over in a moment on both sides. In Israel that number is about 15% of the population. While in Gaza the number who support Hamas, even after being confronted with what they did, is (or was when the poll got taken) 57%, and 82% in WB. Of course we need to hold people accountable when they elect idiots. Like we are trying to do with Israel. I just don't see the same currents in the people who support the Palestinian cause. Which is why I think one side shows much greater support for extremists than the other, as they're almost never held accountable for anything by the wider world. Seems to me like Hamas has all reason in the world to keep this going, they can savagely brutalise their own population, extort, kill and rape neighbouring populations, and still hold a majority in their own now completely leveled area. Again, I'm back at the point I was trying to make about the infantilisation of the Palestinian people and cause. Is there anything they can do to make their millions of supporters think for a second that part of the problem might be them? The West has given so much aid to Gaza and the WB, if someone dared to say to the recipients of said aid that they need to consider their leaders I'm sure we'd get a different government there, the same thing the US is currently doing to Israel.

Strange that, isn't it - that there has two be two sides to a negotiation on a ceasefire. One day shoot some rockets at an aid-transit point, next day, complain about its closure. Next day, deny handing over hostages, complain when the side that said that this is a red line doesn't accept those terms. It must be that the Israelis don't care about hostages. Meanwhile there's massive protests in Tel-Aviv to bring back the hostages and sign a cease-fire. How do you suppose both those things happen when Hamas doesn't want to let go of all the hostages? Palestine good but somewhat pesky, Israel bad. No room for nuance. At least it must feel great not to have to think about why things happen, and instead just spend all energy on the reaction to things one were very much in control of perpetrating oneself. Both sides need to be held accountable in order to solve this, yet as per usual Palestinians and their organisations aren't.

Okay, so let's entertain this thought for a while. How's that working out in Lebanon where Palestinians have founded a large scale Islamic militia, sent foreign fighters to Syria to loot, kill and commit wide-scale terror on civilians? What about the Lebanese civil war, the attacks on Jordan, terror in Egypt, the Olympics? How about that time when Egypt controlled Gaza and there was wide scale violence, or when Israel left Gaza only for it to implode into electing Hamas who then went on to cleanse Gaza of opposition. How is it working out in the WB where gay people are dragged through the streets behind motorbikes, PIJ recruits people en masse and aid is stolen to enrich the politicians at the top? I agree there needs to be a ceasefire and Israel needs to stop killing people, but to achieve said ceasefire Hamas needs to stop firing rockets from civilian areas, holding people hostage and Hezbollah to stop launching rockets at Israel, just as much as Israel needs to stop bombing. It isn't a one way street, you seem to think it is. As pro-Palestinians often like to say, 'the conflict didn't start on Oct 7th'. It really didn't. For either side. Yet one side is perennially kept in a state of child-like fantasies about having no blame for anything, they know not what they do, it's all Israel's fault.

Calling a terrorist organisation that killed 1200 people in October 'pesky', took people hostage and went on a general rampage sort of underscores the issue I guess. That's before you mention the first and second intifadas. Comparing domestic abuse with an organisation funded by a priesthood who suppresses their population to the point of public execution who has continually attacked for 20 years, steals aid, bombs, makes rockets out of water pipes and generally behaves like animals, isn't my cup of tea. It's possible to hold two thoughts at once. One won't stop without the other, yet responsibility in this case is only applied to one side to the point of it becoming a mantra. The Israeli electorate cares a lot about the hostages. There's massive protests every day. Minimising that is a way of comforting ones innate bias I guess. Israel bad, Palestinians good. The way the Palestinians are kept in a state of infantile unaccountability by their supporters emboldens their most extreme wings, they're just being 'pesky'. Never mind history, terror, bombs and attacks across a wide range of nations.

What is the rest of the world thinking about Hamas' proposed deal? A deal that holds dead hostages in the same regard as live ones clearly isn't serious. I don't know why you think it is something new. 'Here, have your dead mutilated citizens while we keep mutilating the others for a while, but you have to stop fighting us!'. Pressure needs to be put on Hamas and Israel to come up with proper terms, not terms designed to prolong the conflict. Hamas' 'input' to the new deal is nothing short of idiocy. I don't know why Egypt and Qatar is cow-towing to their ridiculous demands. The point about keeping Hamas responsible seems to be slipping further and further away, but we're now 7 months in and a terrorist organisation is still keeping people hostage, yet the people who support Palestine seem to struggle with placing pressure on 'their' side to do what is right regarding clear breaches of the rules of war because Israel.

Again, Kerem Shalom which the post alluded to isn't Rafah. The Kerem Shalom crossing was shut when Hamas bombed it the other day. And if you read the proposed deal it again only includes part of the hostages, whereby Hamas will keep the majority of them for several more months for leverage in what they call 'steps'. They won't even hand over the dead hostages due to the likely backlash this will bring, so they will come last. It isn't a deal that any Western nation would take off any terrorist organisation and looks designed to keep giving Hamas leverage in a situation they created for themselves.

That crossing isn’t Rafah, it was shut yesterday after Hamas bombed it with mortars and rockets. (See above).

I don't know what to say UNRWA. Maybe it's time to let the big brother (UN) step in and help?

250 reported cases of Russia using weapons banned by the chemical weapons convention by the UN just this last month. A reminder, they're a veto holder on the security council of the UN.

As far as I gather the proposed deal doesn't include the hostages. Again. I know several countries who would not accept a cease fire unless their citizens were safe, including the one you and I live in. I don't even think we'd negotiate with terrorists. It's the same deal that Egypt and Qatar tried earlier in the year, and are now rehashing to try to put pressure on Israel even though Hamas have sent hundreds of rockets out of Rafah in the last days towards aid convoys, civilians and crossings. If Egypt had any mettle in these negotiations they'd stop Hamas from giving Israel's war-crime fellowship a reason to go into Rafah, instead we're at exactly the same place as last time where the so called friends of Palestine in the Middle-East do f-all except for posturing and then feigning outrage when Israel responds to Hamas attacks within another Gaza city. This could have been over months ago if Hamas had escaped the area through one of the hundreds of tunnels they have going out of Gaza to wherever their leadership are. But that would be too easy wouldn't it, have to squeeze that last bit of anger out of people by using the last city in Gaza full of civilians as shields and then wait for the expected Israeli response. Both sides can go ¤#% themselves, the UN and the countries around Gaza can also do one. Civilians are being used as pawns in Iran and Israel's war, with what seems like flagrant disregard for their well-being from their so called leadership in the West Bank and Gaza who could've ended this months ago if they wanted to.

Yes, because what they’re doing at the moment is working out great, isn’t it? Free speech only counts when it is one side speaking. It’s turning into a monster where the people who initially protested have been replaced by racist thugs occupying and vandalising private property, all in the name of human rights of course, not due to some people just liking a good riot.

Considering the 'protests' at some college campuses in the US have now started becoming an America hate-fest where the protesters take down American flags, burn them and hang up Palestinian flags I don't see how long they'll continue. I think it was on Bill Maher the other day where someone went around one of the tent camps outside Colombia and asked people if they were a student, 1/10 of them were. It seems a bit like the new excuse to riot and occupy, and unless something happens in Rafah I don't see how Israel will continue the killing spree they had initially. International pressure has helped for sure. So, to remedy the issue around non-students taking over universities and keeping students out 'frat boys' and normal students who want to celebrate their education finishing soon have taken to counter-protesting and keeping flags and property safe. The people who were 'students for Gaza' quickly disappeared when challenged by other people than police. I wonder how much of this is fueled by social media. Coincidentally the building that was occupied at Columbia was completely trashed by the 'protesters'. Time to look at the funding especially from Qatar to colleges in the US, I don't think it's a coincidence that it's the colleges with the most money received by the same people who support Hamas who have had the worst riots and vandalism. Or here, people using their kids for some lovely protesting at one of the same camps in Sydney (yeah I know Sky Australia). I'm afraid the cause is being marred by what seems to be a rather large minority of idiots who don't understand how they are coming across, or simply don't care.

Kerem Shalom is one of the places where Humanitarian aid is brought in. Linky Three Israeli Soldiers Killed in Rocket Attack Claimed by Hamas Geo-located right inside Rafah. Fired from within the same population which still majorly supports the people that is contributing to this bloodshed and giving Israel cause to shut down humanitarian crossings. I wonder why they're even entertaining Hamas at the negotiations in Egypt.

While the guise for Benny is religious, this war is obviously not about religion. It's about land and two ways of living (Arab vs Western) crashing with one another. Israel is the West's outpost, while Palestine is the Arab and Iranian world's answer. It was likely about religion totally in the start, but that has moved more over to a geo-political war for the last 50 or so years, or else Sunni Hamas would not be supported by Shia Iran.

Coincidentally AH, JS and Pol Pot were all rabid atheists. In fact most civilian deaths committed in the last 100 years were done by regimes who had denounced religion. It's not about religion, it's about people being people, extremes come in all shapes and colours and have a particular tendency of flourishing in societies where the moral grounding that religion can have is totally severed.

No, just the eegits outside the Jewish school my granddaughter attends. I don’t think confronting a mob like that is a good idea.

I think it's been far worse in London than Cardiff, and I also probably feel that there's less of the type of person in Cardiff who'd behave like that. Here's a photo from London, right at the front of the protest. I'm sure a lot of these people took these posters from the SWP who are often at booths right at the start of protests, but I wonder if these people think? There's at least 10 people here, right at the front of the protest holding posters advocating another intifada - two periods of this conflict with widespread suicide bombing. And a bit further back: I mean, if I ever spotted someone protesting for Ukraine calling for wiping out or widescale terror against Russia I'd confront them. Same protest, different place: Just calling it 'resistance', sounds like George Galloway tbh.

Rumoured that another TU22 shot down by Ukraine today. Likely with S-200. Hopefully the one that sent that cluster warhead at civilians in Odessa.

When I've tried to have a conversation with them, that seems to be the case for about half of them, yes. 'What does from the ri... mean?' 'Hurr durr, you're trying to catch me out!' 'What does intifada mean in the context of Palestine consider you have it on your poster?' 'I got it from a stall down the road and to be honest with you I don't know but Israel!'. I think a lot of them are whipped up by people like George Galloway, SWP, Chris Williamson, the usual suspects and their underlying anti-semitic tendenies (especially if they're second or third generation from that part of the world). That's not to say that there aren't an awful lot of people with good points, I just think many of them are there because it's popular and the cool thing to do. Or else they'd also be in the protest march for Ukraine. As a population we're getting more and more dumb and divided, the way some of these people act are a byproduct of that. Hard times create strong people, strong people create better times, good times create weak people and weak people create hard times.

I do sometimes wonder - as I walk past the pro-Palestinian thugs in balaclavas wearing a uniquely Bedouin scarf screaming 'from the ri...' outside my granddaughters place of education every Friday afternoon - what would happen if Israel sent a missile with a fragmentation cluster warhead into a peaceful civilian group walking their dogs/jogging/walking/playing with their kids near a beach, when you consider in example that time when everyone was up in arms that Israel hit that parking lot outside a hospital and it then turned out to be Hamas\PIJ misfiring their water pipe rocket. I'll give it to them, they're great at stealing oxygen from conflicts that have far worse breaches of war crimes, genocide and breaches of humanitarian law in them. Everyone looks at Gaza and Israel while Vlad does as he pleases. Meanwhile I'll join the 20 odd people outside the Russian embassy to try to do the little I can to stop Russia trying to exterminate Ukrainians and several different peoples in Sudan\Darfur, and then I'll let the millions of people protest the conflict where one side attacked the other, one side went totally overboard, and the UN is using 90% of its resources on. And then I wonder how much of this is whipped up online by Iranian\Russian bots as literally no one cares about Sudan or Myanmar.