Israel, Palestine and Iran

[chrisp65]

10 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

I take you point and agree 99%

But I don't think the UK can claim to be squeaky clean. There were numerous examples of avoidable civilian deaths. 

Its also a very different scenario.  Northern Ireland had many UK supporters in the population.  Gaza has virtually no Israel supporters in the population. 

I absolutely wouldn’t claim a blemish free record for the British.

[colhint]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

Surely the IRA and Northern Ireland is the obvious example?

There was a choice, go after Hamas relentlessly and forensically, or just commit genocide. That choice was made.

 

 

I can't agree with this at all. The UK population is roughly 10 times that of Israel . Hamas killed and took hostage 1400 people in one attack. Given our population is close to 10 times theres if the IRA took out 14,000 people in one day do you think our response would have been different. I'm sure it wouldn't be all out bombing but sure as he'll most of Britain and NATO would be invoved.

 

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, colhint said:

I can't agree with this at all. The UK population is roughly 10 times that of Israel . Hamas killed and took hostage 1400 people in one attack. Given our population is close to 10 times theres if the IRA took out 14,000 people in one day do you think our response would have been different. I'm sure it wouldn't be all out bombing but sure as he'll most of Britain and NATO would be invoved.

 

You’ve answered your own question.

[colhint]

8 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

You’ve answered your own question.

No I haven't. Israel can't call on NATO but Israel military is about 170 thousand. We could have called upon 3 million NATO troops. 

The other thing in that equation was the IRA never wanted to or set up as it's main reason the total destruction of the UK people

[Chindie]

Look, you can't justify Israeli actions in Gaza and not be a word removed. They're a rogue state committing war crimes.

[colhint]

I wasn't I was arguing it's nowhere near the same as the Irish situation

[chrisp65]

4 minutes ago, colhint said:

No I haven't. Israel can't call on NATO but Israel military is about 170 thousand. We could have called upon 3 million NATO troops. 

The other thing in that equation was the IRA never wanted to or set up as it's main reason the total destruction of the UK people

You literally asked if our response would have been any different, then in the very next sentence, said it would have been different.

 

[colhint]

Well we bombed Dresden when we were seriously attacked and the US nuked Japan when they were attacked.

Edited May 11 by colhint

[Panto_Villan]

10 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Surely the IRA and Northern Ireland is the obvious example?

There was a choice, go after Hamas relentlessly and forensically, or just commit genocide. That choice was made.

The two situations aren’t comparable at all, beyond the fact both involve a nation state taking on a terrorist organisation embedded in a local population. It’d be like saying “why was WW2 so destructive when the Falklands proved it wasn’t necessary to kill lots of people to win?”

Israel has done plenty of war crimes in Gaza. There’s no military way to defend the food blockade, or the fact that the Israelis aren’t even trying to prosecute their soldiers who break their rules of engagement.

However there’s also a whole load of stuff happening in Gaza that would absolutely have happened in NI if the situations had been similar. You only need to look at the Western-backed attack on Mosul to see that (40,000 dead and $50bn in damage). ISIS is a much better comparison point for Hamas than the IRA is imo, both in terms of ideology and threat level / intensity of the conflict.

[bickster]

1 hour ago, Panto_Villan said:

The two situations aren’t comparable at all, beyond the fact both involve a nation state taking on a terrorist organisation embedded in a local population. It’d be like saying “why was WW2 so destructive when the Falklands proved it wasn’t necessary to kill lots of people to win?”

Even that is a bit simplistic. On one level it’s a nation state taking on another nation state but the smaller nation has deliberately embedded itself amongst its people. Hamas may well be a terrorist organisation but it is also the government of Gaza.

I agree that NI isn’t comparable at all. NI was internal terrorism, this isn't.
This is essentially two countries at war with each other.

And yes ISIS is possibly the best analogy

[magnkarl]

20 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Surely the IRA and Northern Ireland is the obvious example?

There was a choice, go after Hamas relentlessly and forensically, or just commit genocide. That choice was made.

 

 

So that's a no then?

ISIS, the ongoing conflict in Yemen or the Taliban is probably the three only examples that come close. All had extreme bombing and atrocities committed to root out terrorists who had support in the population, and essentially used them as shields for their operations. Afghanistan was occupied for the better part of 20 years.

As a gaging stick, the West isn't any better at all. In fact, no state fighting a group like Hamas seems to be doing an ounce better. How's Grosny, Mosul, Halabja, Tripoli or whatever? It seems the realities of a war started by Hamas (this time around) only exists when Israel fights it.

Again, war is #¤¤% awful, but the standard that you're applying to a nation fighting a terrorist organisation acting as the government of a whole territory while at the same time using anyone they can as living shields for their launch sites seems to be well above the standard of practically any other similar situation.

It's naive to put all the pressure on Israel in this situation when Hamas keeps firing rockets (as late as today) from within refugee camps. Maybe some pressure is due on the Palestinian population to not allow a bunch of Islamists to use them as collateral in their assinine war?

Edited May 12 by magnkarl

[chrisp65]

16 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

So that's a no then?

ISIS, the ongoing conflict in Yemen or the Taliban is probably the three only examples that come close. All had extreme bombing and atrocities committed to root out terrorists who had support in the population, and essentially used them as shields for their operations. Afghanistan was occupied for the better part of 20 years.

As a gaging stick, the West isn't any better at all. In fact, no state fighting a group like Hamas seems to be doing an ounce better. How's Grosny, Mosul, Halabja, Tripoli or whatever? It seems the realities of a war started by Hamas (this time around) only exists when Israel fights it.

Again, war is #¤¤% awful, but the standard that you're applying to a nation fighting a terrorist organisation acting as the government of a whole territory while at the same time using anyone they can as living shields for their launch sites seems to be well above the standard of practically any other similar situation.

It's naive to put all the pressure on Israel in this situation when Hamas keeps firing rockets (as late as today) from within refugee camps. Maybe some pressure is due on the Palestinian population to not allow a bunch of Islamists to use them as collateral in their assinine war?

No, it’s not a no.

You don’t get to the current position without the 70 years leading up to it. Had Britain acted as murderously and as ill judged as Israel then the whole Ireland / Northern Ireland history could have been just as bad. You cannot declare that day zero was at some point last October, that’s either naive or willingly repeating propaganda. 
 

It is not naive to think that an army equipped by the U.S., with the latest ‘iron dome’ technology, with drones, with satellites, with spies, and with an eager diaspora signing up to be foot soldiers, it’s not naive to think they could do something a little genocidal than flatten Gaza and tens of thousands of innocents.

I’m also not setting Israel any different standard, that accusation often gets quickly followed by another, so let’s trash that accusation straight away.

I’m all ears on the pressure you think needs to be applied to Palestinian civilians at the moment that would yield better results.

[magnkarl]

4 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

No, it’s not a no.

You don’t get to the current position without the 70 years leading up to it. Had Britain acted as murderously and as ill judged as Israel then the whole Ireland / Northern Ireland history could have been just as bad. You cannot declare that day zero was at some point last October, that’s either naive or willingly repeating propaganda. 
 

It is not naive to think that an army equipped by the U.S., with the latest ‘iron dome’ technology, with drones, with satellites, with spies, and with an eager diaspora signing up to be foot soldiers, it’s not naive to think they could do something a little genocidal than flatten Gaza and tens of thousands of innocents.

I’m also not setting Israel any different standard, that accusation often gets quickly followed by another, so let’s trash that accusation straight away.

I’m all ears on the pressure you think needs to be applied to Palestinian civilians at the moment that would yield better results.

Britain enforced a starvation on the whole of Ireland unless you forgot, then proceeded to split the country into two. It took the better part of 200 years of struggle for Ireland to get anywhere. Yet as you yourself said IRA and the UK tried to avoid killing civilians (but obviously did). The great famine killed 1-3 million Irish.

The pressure should be put on both sides. The UN should go into Gaza and the WB and enforce some actual change for a downtrodden and hopelessly placed people. That way they might stop using terror as their only bargaining chip. We’re now 8 months into this and still there’s an eerie silence when it comes to holding anyone bar Israel accountable. I think Israel is accountable as much as I think Palestine is, but you don’t support a group that want to erase Israel and then act like a victim when Israel responds to your terror. It’s some weird mental gymnastics where the school bully gets the support of everyone for being beaten up by someone who’s had enough.

Forgive them for what they do, they’re just the whole world’s failed aid project who can’t seem to do anything but start wars with everyone around them. 60% support for Hamas.

Our actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen show that we’re inclined to follow the same line if push came to shove. 40.000 people, one town, white phosphorus and carpet bombing.

Edited May 12 by magnkarl

[chrisp65]

Yeah, to be clear, I wasn’t referencing the Irish famine 170 years ago when I suggested the IRA vs British was a similar situation.

I generally wouldn’t use the 1840’s as a reference point for how we should be behaving.

 

[magnkarl]

8 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Yeah, to be clear, I wasn’t referencing the Irish famine 170 years ago when I suggested the IRA vs British was a similar situation.

I generally wouldn’t use the 1840’s as a reference point for how we should be behaving.

 

But your argument is that anyone that uses Oct 7th as an argument for why Israel is behaving like they are is that they are not looking at history, yet when people try to use history to try to explain some of the horrible things Israel is doing (like being purged from nearly all majority Muslim countries in the ME, the holocaust, generally being treated like filth across the globe for thousands of years), it's somehow not okay. I'm sure the IRA also used the Irish famine as a reminder what Britain did when they committed terror.

The victim complex grows, using Oct 7th as a reference point is ahistoric, while using any date the Pro-Palestinian argument wants between 1948 and now is somehow 100% on point. For some, Israel's only choice of action is to sit down and take whatever punishment 70 years of wars started by their neighbours have made them deserved of. Give back the land they took after being invaded, perform some sort of benign act that no other nation does when invaded and terrorised. Never mind intifadas, invasions on holidays, suicide bombings, kidnapping and a near continual state of war declared by horrible priesthoods across the ME.

While you can argue that many of the Palestinians in Gaza alive currently didn't elect Hamas, the same argument can be used for millions of Palestinians who were born several generations after their parents fled\were pushed out\were removed from Palestine in 1948, historic accountability has to go both ways. One side can't be allowed to use everything at their disposal to argue why they should own the land, while the other can use no argument.

Edited May 13 by magnkarl

[chrisp65]

41 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

But your argument is that anyone that uses Oct 7th as an argument for why Israel is behaving like they are is that they are not looking at history, yet when people try to use history to try to explain some of the horrible things Israel is doing (like being purged from nearly all majority Muslim countries in the ME, the holocaust, generally being treated like filth across the globe for thousands of years), it's somehow not okay.

I think you’re possibly confusing me with someone else.

 

[magnkarl]

8 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I think you’re possibly confusing me with someone else.

 

Maybe I am. Sorry if that's the case.

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, magnkarl said:

Maybe I am. Sorry if that's the case.

My social media occasionally shows me lists of dates of pogroms and massacres and heinous crimes by ‘Israel’ against Palestinians. It rarely shows the other side of the ledger, there obviously is another side of the ledger.

But this current one sided war is something out of scale. It isn’t in any way a measured response or a calculated over response. A clumsy terrible way of describing it would be that it is ‘unfair’, ’one sided’. It’s an attempted eradication which everyone knows is simply not possible. Even if it were possible, even if 99% of Hamas was killed, and the remaining 1% were filmed getting on buses to be sent to Lebanon to live out their lives behind barbed wire (or whatever they did with the PLO) it wouldn’t be the ending Israel craves. Where the PLO was replaced, so will Hamas be.

History is important and right now neither side is prepared to learn from it. They both still appear stuck at level 1, tell the uneducated, the gullible, the downright nasty, that God has declared they will win if they just die enough times. Both sides are trying to convince their cannon fodder that you can kill an idea.

Destroy Hamas by killing women and children and flattening all infrastructure. Guess what, Israel may have bought itself 18 months, at best. Then we will all be commenting from our sofas on the next rinse and repeat version of this. Committed by one side or the other, because of something the other side did.

There simply has to be a better way, a better use of human resource and American dollars. I’m not claiming any level of military genius to predict that industrial scale killing isn’t the answer. Israel is smart enough to have a space programme, and dumb enough to think killing children will be an end to their troubles.

I don’t know what will fix it. But I bloody well know what won’t.

 

[magnkarl]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

My social media occasionally shows me lists of dates of pogroms and massacres and heinous crimes by ‘Israel’ against Palestinians. It rarely shows the other side of the ledger, there obviously is another side of the ledger.

But this current one sided war is something out of scale. It isn’t in any way a measured response or a calculated over response. A clumsy terrible way of describing it would be that it is ‘unfair’, ’one sided’. It’s an attempted eradication which everyone knows is simply not possible. Even if it were possible, even if 99% of Hamas was killed, and the remaining 1% were filmed getting on buses to be sent to Lebanon to live out their lives behind barbed wire (or whatever they did with the PLO) it wouldn’t be the ending Israel craves. Where the PLO was replaced, so will Hamas be.

History is important and right now neither side is prepared to learn from it. They both still appear stuck at level 1, tell the uneducated, the gullible, the downright nasty, that God has declared they will win if they just die enough times. Both sides are trying to convince their cannon fodder that you can kill an idea.

Destroy Hamas by killing women and children and flattening all infrastructure. Guess what, Israel may have bought itself 18 months, at best. Then we will all be commenting from our sofas on the next rinse and repeat version of this. Committed by one side or the other, because of something the other side did.

There simply has to be a better way, a better use of human resource and American dollars. I’m not claiming any level of military genius to predict that industrial scale killing isn’t the answer. Israel is smart enough to have a space programme, and dumb enough to think killing children will be an end to their troubles.

I don’t know what will fix it. But I bloody well know what won’t.

 

The UN could’ve fixed this long ago if there was a willingness from Russia, China and the Arab league to do so.

Palestinian lives are traded by all of the above to attack US’ friend Israel. UNRWA needs to be dismantled and proper UN military force needs to be sent into Gaza to stop this. They could arrest the Hamas leadership who are living their best lives in Qatar knowing full well what would happen after 7/10.

Alas, I think the Palestinian cause is much too great of an asset to the powers that be to keep an enormous amount of naive supporters occupied to notice far worse transgressions committed by the likes of Russia, China and Iran. Israel splits the togetherness of the West like no other and is visibly pumped up by troll factories. However grim the 35000 dead (including Hamas) in Gaza, it isn’t even a month of the ongoing Uighur genocide, Russias purging of their occupied Ukrainian areas or the RSF committing industrial genocide supported by South Africa in Sudan. 

Edited May 13 by magnkarl

[VILLAMARV]

On 30/04/2024 at 17:13, Panto_Villan said:

I mean, I agree with @magnkarl when he points out that there seems to be an awful lot of people who appear to have an incredibly narrow interest in war crimes - if Israel does them, they're constantly posting about how horrific it is, but they're nowhere to be found if war crimes are being committed elsewhere in the world (or by anyone else). The cynical part of me does wonder why that might be.

It's quite telling that almost everyone active in the Ukraine thread also posts in this thread, but the reverse isn't true - and often it's the people who are the most interested in condemning Israel who are missing.

(Obviously that doesn't necessarily make them wrong about Israel.)

I'm also perhaps one of those people you're referring to. What is 'telling' about it? What do you feel this correlation tells you? Surely people can condemn barbarism without having 'an interest' in doing so? It reads like you're suggesting there's an ulterioir motive on display from multiple posters in this thread.

For the record, and to embelish on what the other answers have said - those of us of a certain age have been witnessing events unfold in Israel/Palestine since we were in nappies and old enough to stare at a screen. In a time before Embedded Journalism was so widespread and normalised too. I remember reports of Palestinians firing rockets at civilians, I grew up with the horrors of suicide bombers at markets and other gatherings being reported on after Tizwaz and Swap Shop et al. To not share an opinion on what we have collectively borne witness to over decades is the domain of people who have little interest in geo-politics and who, for whatever myriad of reasons, don't want to think about or talk about it. We as a nation, do not have a passive role in this and never have. Britain's involvement pre-dates the Balfour Treaty, we have provided armaments, our secret services are intertwined. Israel is much more than just your average run-of-the-mill military ally. A de-facto nuclear state that runs an apartheid regime, the actions of which seem only deemed newsworthy when attacked by others and a political framework (and wider society) over here that not only seems reticent to condemn the actions of, but in recent years having been rather publically wondering how to respond to the notion of criticism of a nation state being labelled the domain of antisemitics. A country whose political classes are demonstrably more inclined to act against potential transgressors of WTO trade agreements than against transgressors of International Human Rights Laws.

FWIW, that last sentence is the 'telling' bit to my way of thinking. Not some odd correlation of VT posters and threads.

I find the Ukraine thread hawkish. I think of videos of tanks being blown to pieces along the same lines as snuff videos and I'm still wondering when it became socially acceptable to share/watch them, let alone share in any delight over them. It's hard for me to join in with 'take that putin' style rhetoric when I'm usually thinking about the poor lied to, propagandised young Russian lads sitting in the tank waiting to die. It's one of the threads that when the next unread topic button leads me there I scroll, mostly without reading anything, to the end of the last page and leave. A bit like the wrestling thread - it's not for me. I appreciate there are ex-military posters and engineers and so on among us who have different backgrounds to mine that have their life's work entwined with some of these machines of war and I'm not so far gone down the committed pacifist road that I don't understand there's a real need for a defensive force. I come from a military family. And then, as others have alluded to, I don't have the years, nay decades, of emotional attachment to that comparitively recent conflict as I do to the one I've borne witness to since sentience. As far as I'm aware, the news doesn't try to tell me how justified the aggressor is. The Russians haven't tried to conflate criticism of the Russian State or it's leaders with Slavophobia. The differences that contribute to commenting on one conflict and not the other are surely manifold and varied.

I don't subscribe to binary thoughts of good and evil when it comes to nation states or geo-politics. I'll leave that up to works of fiction. But I have no problem ascribing those labels to individual acts. Doesn't make a difference to me if it's British, Russians, Chinese, Israelis, Iranians, Saudis or Americans - murder is murder, war crimes are war crimes. There is no need to address all atrocities at the same time in order to comment on what we see in front of our eyes - any more than I need to comment on the Leyton Orient result to have an opinion on the Villa game. I don't pretend my nation of birth hasn't committed atrocities, propped up fascist dictatorships, stood idly by while ethnic cleansing takes place, engaged in rendition for allies to torture 'some folks', publically backed apartheid regimes and so on, so it's of little surprise that here we are again engaging in - at best - morally dubious tacet approval of many of those things once more. Unfortunately, there seems to be little appetite for holding these power stuctures and individuals within them to account for their crimes.

I'd like to think this post argues a humanitarian viewpoint. It's how I view and categorise my own beliefs and it's certainly what drives me to add comment in this thread and many others.