Israel, Palestine and Iran

[Chindie]

27 minutes ago, Xann said:

FFS  - Are we actually going to need the Large Orange to step in?

John Bolton's decades long blue balls says yes.

In the immortal words of Bill Hicks, it'll be like a wax dart.

[chrisp65]

Why would he step in yet? Wasn't his oil. Makes his oil go up in price. Makes europe have to decide if they back U.S. policy on Iran or not. Makes us realise how utterly dependent we are on the strutting manchild.

We can sweat a while. Make sure we fully contribute to any alliance of democratic action.

That's what friends are for.

 

[bickster]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

Why would he step in yet?

To piss off Obama, oh and that other reason you mentioned after, either way it's really all about him

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

Makes his oil go up in price.

Bizarrely, only yesterday I was reading an article (poss on Business Insider) that was stating that oil prices "were cooling" despite the growing tensions in the Gulf with Iran. Brent Crude has apparently fallen over the last month (haven't checked this out personally). I assumed much the same as yourself that it would be pushing prices up

 

[peterms]

 

[PompeyVillan]

I have to say it is a very provocative and clever act by Iran to seize a British tanker. They know there is absolutely no appetite for military conflict at the moment. 

Expect the rhetoric to slowly turn from "diplomacy is the only route to resolution" to "If they do this again we will be forced to defend ourselves". It may take a few months, but slowly Prime Minister Donald Johnson will please the nationalist Brexit fanatics that have been fantasising about the British Empire by bloodying the nose of the Iranian extremist savages. Teach them not to mess with the British, we won the war don't you know, we don't need trade deals. 

Expect this rhetoric to ramp up right about the time that the no deal Brexit deadline lurks closer. Farage and Widdecombe will warn us that when Iran join the EU that we'll invaded by hundreds of Jihadi Johns. The EU army didn't do anything to help us, so we'll sort this out ourselves, that's what the Orange one would do! 

Commence Operation Barbrawindsor. 

[KenjiOgiwara]

I actually expected a military escalation here. Surprised to be honest. 

[chrisp65]

I think we should strike some key Iranian targets. Water, power, bridges and airfields.

Then, I believe that will encourage a popular internal secular and democratic uprising. That uprising will, with very limited support needed from us, quickly replace the current regime. The new regime will be west facing, will invite in our biggest companies to get them up to speed as a fully functioning major free democratic business partner.

It's a tried and tested model.

[Chindie]

12 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

I actually expected a military escalation here. Surprised to be honest. 

Britain currently has a barely functioning government, there's not much danger of any escalation as things stand.

There's also not that much desire to go monster hunting in Iran outside of a few rooms in Washington. Most of Europe is much more keen on getting back to flogging stuff to Iran again.

[Xann]

Iran and Russia to run joint naval exercises.

There's a big f*** off to the West.

[VILLAMARV]

36 minutes ago, Xann said:

Iran and Russia to run joint naval exercises.

There's a big f*** off to the West.

It's Happening.gif

[peterms]

7 hours ago, Xann said:

Iran and Russia to run joint naval exercises.

There's a big f*** off to the West.

There's a strategy in Go where you mount an attack, not a real one, in order to force your opponent to pile up resources in opposition to the presumed attack.

I suppose our leaders understand strategic games like this.  Don't they?

[magnkarl]

8 hours ago, peterms said:

There's a strategy in Go where you mount an attack, not a real one, in order to force your opponent to pile up resources in opposition to the presumed attack.

I suppose our leaders understand strategic games like this.  Don't they?

You mean like Russia's been piling up their limited resources in West Sibera to counter Norway, in the Baltic region and close to Ukraine and in Syria for years? It's not like this situation is any better for Iran and Russia who have pretty much bankrupted themselves in the process of trying to look strong. Russia's just installed a new rocket defense system close to the Norwegian border while the country has more debt than a proverbial iceberg and is printing money left right and centre.

Generally I'm not sure if siding with Russia is a clever choice for Iran - Assad did the same thing and still got bombed several times over. Do you honestly think Russia would even bother to respond if Jaffa Cakes decided to bomb a few airports and coastal installations in Iran? Russia is EXTREMELY dependent on EU money from their oil and gas industry and wouldn't risk that to defend someone like Iran who involves themselves in all manner of conflicts to "show force".

[peterms]

It's a measure of the success of the Israeli propaganda operation and pressure on media outlets that something like this just isn't seen these days.

 

[villakram]

On 09/08/2019 at 03:20, magnkarl said:

You mean like Russia's been piling up their limited resources in West Sibera to counter Norway, in the Baltic region and close to Ukraine and in Syria for years? It's not like this situation is any better for Iran and Russia who have pretty much bankrupted themselves in the process of trying to look strong. Russia's just installed a new rocket defense system close to the Norwegian border while the country has more debt than a proverbial iceberg and is printing money left right and centre.

Generally I'm not sure if siding with Russia is a clever choice for Iran - Assad did the same thing and still got bombed several times over. Do you honestly think Russia would even bother to respond if Jaffa Cakes decided to bomb a few airports and coastal installations in Iran? Russia is EXTREMELY dependent on EU money from their oil and gas industry and wouldn't risk that to defend someone like Iran who involves themselves in all manner of conflicts to "show force".

The Federal deficit is not a small thing. Empires are so darned expensive, who knew!

[sne]

Quote

When an American in the IDF meets a Palestinian American in Hebron

An American serving in the Israeli army in Hebron says that in her job granting and denying Palestinians permission to work and travel, it’s a ‘conversation starter’ to meet Palestinians who back home would have full rights like her.

The video below was published Sunday by COGAT, the unit of the Israeli Defense Ministry charged with administering the military occupation of the Palestinian territories. COGAT has a rich history of producing tone-deaf videos seemingly meant to do little more than make COGAT look like the benevolent arm of the occupation, for which Palestinians should be nothing but grateful. (See here, here, and here.)

This particular video is about Alyse, an American immigrant to Israel who serves in the IDF’s oxymoronically named Civil Administration, a part of COGAT. Soldiers in the Civil Administration and COGAT determine where Palestinians may live, where and when they may travel (including to other parts of the occupied territories like Gaza and East Jerusalem), whether they can build or expand homes on their own land, whether they own that land at all, whether an Israeli settler can steal that land, whether two soccer teams from different parts of Palestine can play each other,and on and on.

At one point in the video, Alyse, who hails from Chicago and is now stationed in Hebron, notes that it’s “a huge conversation starter” to meet Palestinians who are also from the United States.

“It’s always interesting to meet people who are so different than me yet have such a similar background,” she says.

Does she ever think about what that system would be called if it were imposed back in Chicago? Or which side of the glass she might be on if it were?

https://972mag.com/cogat-american-idf-soldier-meets-palestinian-americans/143030/?fbclid=IwAR0EorIPUxZqyKm-J_CCidI0AHpHfCMJ9_4TKg4T6G7CtP537pgRiI0tvFM

[sne]

General election in Israel in 2 weeks.

As always lots of Palestinians will die.

[KentVillan]

Stumbled upon this superb piece which really resolved a lot of my confusion at (a) meeting lots of liberal left British Jewish people in London, and then subsequently (b) visiting Israel itself, which was not at all the sunny Mediterranean version of north London or New York I was expecting.

Anyway, this take on the whole thing makes a lot of sense: https://www.timesofisrael.com/nobody-hijacked-israel-its-just-not-what-its-pioneers-thought-theyd-created/

Quote

I came from the West, with the European stories of Israel — the kibbutz, the Holocaust… The longer you’re here, the more you realize those stories don’t fully represent Israel. Half the country came from the Muslim world, and that informs everything about Israel — cuisine, behavior, music, religion, politics. Many Israelis think the basis of the country is the European Jewish world — Herzl and Ben-Gurion — and that the Jews of the Middle East then came and joined that story. I think it’s the opposite: Israel is part of the continuum of Judaism in the Muslim world, together with the remnants of European Jewry.

You can interpret this in lots of different ways (please do read the whole article, it's superb, even if I don't agree with everything the interviewee says).

On the one hand it's an argument against Netanyahu's cynical conflation of antisemitism with legitimate criticisms of Israeli govt policies. On the other hand, it's a fairly strong argument against the concept of a single Jewish/Israel lobby in the West.

But it definitely makes sense to me after a visit to a city like Tel Aviv. You really don't feel like you're in Europe, or a culture descended from European culture, despite the bars and the liberal attitude to drugs and alcohol. It has much more in common with Beirut or Dubai.

I think this nuance is missing from so much of the debate around Israel and Palestine, because the assumption is that it was primarily a promised land for the European Holocaust survivors and their descendants, who were essentially "white Europeans", and had been living in Europe for centuries. In fact, many Israeli Jews are as obviously indigenous to the region as a Lebanese Christian or an Arab Muslim. These are the people who are most likely to see Israel v. Palestine in the same way a Serb sees Serbia vs. Bosnia.

I rarely see this nuance from either side - from pro-Israel voices in the UK like Danny Finkelstein, nor from anti-Israel voices like Jeremy Corbyn.

Anyway, not a debate I'd normally want to wade into, and I appreciate this is not the whole story, but still a useful perspective.

[HanoiVillan]

So Netanyahu has made an election promise to annex 'all Israeli settlements in the West Bank', plus 'other strategic areas', which presumably basically covers literally anything they feel like . . .

. . . and the opposition have reacted by moaning that Netanyahu stole their idea:

This must be how you tickle the fancy of Mr and Mrs Average Israeli Voter. 

[chrisp65]

It’s difficult to pass any comment on Israeli expansion without making absolutely valid comparisons.

[Chindie]

**** Israel.