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icouldtelltheworld

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Everything posted by icouldtelltheworld

  1. Has its faults but we would soon miss it if it was gone IMO. News coverage isn't the best, but at least it has the semblance of neutrality, I could see us descending into American-style polarisation if we all depended on more partisan sources of information
  2. Quiet today, but I liked seeing him calming the other players down when they were celebrating Carlos' disallowed goal. I had my doubts but he's grown into a really strong captain for us
  3. I admire your optimism here, as all the evidence suggests that things in the region have got a lot worse just this year alone
  4. Pretty sure he came from Venice
  5. Scored a hat trick against them in an early round league cup game in Lamberts first season too. Think Gareth Barry scored an own goal
  6. And what we see is the systematic imprisonment of children, the continued erosion and removal of Palestinian lands to make room for ever more settlers and a culture in which clearly at least some elements of the Israeli political elite would happily oversee the complete destruction of Gaza. The average Israeli may see things that way, fair enough. For the rest of the world, it is not just about the current bombardment of Gaza but about a range of issues that have bubbled away for many decades now. Whataboutery regarding NATO bombing of Middle Eastern countries or the atrocities wreaked by the Assad regime really don't do anything to contextualise or improve perceptions of Israel by outside observers. In fact, they do the total opposite. Anyway, I've tried my utmost to show respect for your positions and be mindful that your perspective differs from my own, whilst offering my own view on some of the nuances of the debate. You unfortunately seem to only want to address singular points within my posts and introduce the same circular arguments and strawmen. We aren't going to solve the crisis by arguing on a football forum, so I'll bow out now and we'll agree to disagree. I'm sure that we both want most of all is a peaceful solution and stability in the region, here's hoping some progress can be made towards that, no matter how unlikely it may seem currently
  7. I'm no fan of British foreign policy, hence attending protests regarding issues like Yemen. It doesn't follow that I believe there is really any equivalence or mitigating factors to be drawn from that regarding Israels treatment of the Palestinians
  8. Everyone knows Hamas are evil. The question is really whether Israel, as a supposed Liberal democracy, should be engaged in the arbitrary and wholly disproportionate detention of Palestinian minors for minor acts of resistance
  9. I don't deny that there's a certain 'popularity' to the Israel/Palestine issue that other causes don't receive, but from my own first hand experience of attending other demonstrations, I know that many of those involved in the planning/organisation of protests with regards Yemen and the Kurds are also active in Palestine solidarity campaigns. Unfortunately, the 'meme quality' of the issue will only be exacerbated due to its adoption by actors across both sides of the culture war. However, there are other factors at play. Everyone knows that we turn a blind eye to the actions of the Saudis as it suits the interests of the British state. That a highly autocratic regime perpertrates devastation is of no surprise to anyone, but as Israel insists it is a Liberal democracy (and is treated as such by its Western allies), then it is always going to come under closer scrutiny. If Israel wants to be in the club then it can have no complaints about being judged in accordance with the rules of the game. Beyond that though, Israel/Palestine has a much longer pedigree as a prominent issue with British politics. I'm in my early 30s and can remember it being frequently on the news from my childhood onwards, but it has obviously been a source of debate and tension for many decades before that. Then you have the settler-colonial aspects. None of the other conflicts you have mentioned have the removal of native people from their lands in order that they can be settled by (often) people European countries/the USA. It makes the issue somewhat of an outlier amongst modern conflicts (I know that you have lamented the influence of the settler movement on Israeli politics so I am not meaning to attack you personally here or insinuate anything about your own beliefs). And I don't deny also that for many people, the conflict does provide a useful cover for antisemitism. However, there a range of factors which combine to shed more light on Israel/Palestine within the Western conscious than issues in Yemen, Kurdistan and other such similar places
  10. There have been several demonstrations in Birmingham over the past few years protesting against Britain's role in the Yemeni civil war, and also several in support of various Kurdish causes. It's weird how some people of a more pro-Israeli persuasion seem to overlook this and try to act as though those on pro-Palestinian marches ignore/aren't bothered by other similar injustices elsewhere. It's an entirely false representation and about as helpful to the overall debate as circular arguments about the rights and wrongs surrounding the establishment of Israel in the 1940s. Of course, the core difference between Israel/Palestine and the ongoing situations in Yemen or Northern Syria is that Israel paints itself as a Liberal democracy. As such, it can expect to be held to a much higher standard by the international community (particularly those in Western Liberal democracies) when it commits mass atrocities
  11. Such a low quality game, incredible how United have managed to spend this much money to assemble such a poor team
  12. I've got one on my cock. When I tell people about this, they often tell me that my claim is poppycock, but those people presumably are just anti-British Marxist Islamist terrorists
  13. You have repeated the claim about the elimination of Jews featuring in Iran's constitution on several occasions, but I haven't been able to find any evidence of that whatsoever. Not saying that you're lying, but just wondering if you could provide evidence of this? For various reasons, I have an interest in Iranian history and it is not a claim I have ever heard anywhere else, nor have I read it anywhere when I've scanned the constitution. Khomeini has certainly made genocidal claims regarding Jews in the ME, but that's very different to the elimination of Jews being written into the country's constitution
  14. This really doesn't work as a comparison, seeing as a majority of the Catholic population don't really recognise the legitimacy of the Northern Irish state and would favour unification with the Republic. Where it might work as a comparison is that the Good Friday Agreement gave the Catholic/Irish Nationalist/Republican population the same citizenship rights as the Protestants and enshrined power sharing constitutionally. However, the likelihood of any such agreement being agreed by the Israelis that makes similar concessions seems somewhat unlikely...
  15. Incredibly offensive comment, I've been smoking crack all morning and I can still see how adding JG would improve us
  16. Think they retired his shirt because he could've gone to Man U for free and esrnt a lot more money for himself, but chose Dortmund which got them £25m and got the club out of a pretty dire financial hole. I mean, it's still laughable, but it provides some context
  17. You don't understand football if you didn't appreciate what Westwood did
  18. Moazzem Begg, one of the British Muslims that was held in Guantanamo went to the King David school
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