Israel, Palestine and Iran

[Chindie]

Some people just like getting off on the bad guys kids getting splattered by high explosives in extremely high numbers, and what's wrong with that, eh?

[LondonLax]

6 hours ago, omariqy said:

No coincidence every racist loves Israel 

I can’t understand how you’ve arrived at this conclusion. There are plenty of racists who are also antisemities, Neo-Nazis being a famous example. 

[omariqy]

10 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

I can’t understand how you’ve arrived at this conclusion. There are plenty of racists who are also antisemities, Neo-Nazis being a famous example. 

Of course. I've never disputed that. The same racists that love Israel also tend to have said plenty of anti semitic things in the past. They don't see Israel in the lense of a Jewish identity. They see it in the lense of they are killing Muslims, good on them. 

[villa89]

Good to see the US passed a law giving Israel $14billion in more support for the genocide. That'll help kill plenty of more children. 

[meregreen]

Many religions  have at some stage in their history advocated Violence against non believers, be it a jihad or a crusade. Most have though, adapted their teachings to more reflect the modern world we live in now. Islam alone seems stuck in a medieval mindset. Time they had a rethink on some of their more rigid teachings.

[magnkarl]

2 hours ago, omariqy said:

Again so much ignorance in this post. I don't want to make this thread a defence of Islam thread when people are interested in Palestine and Israel  but I have to make a few points.

Just because a few (and it really is a few when compared to the wider Muslim population) have used doctrine for their own gain and to kill innocent people (which is completely forbidden in Islam) doesnt meant its Islam. Jihad is all about a personal struggle which can be non-violent. Paradise for martyers can also include those innocent people who have been killed in Palestine i.e. non combatants. You need to understand the context of every verse. Some verses are general rules and principles, some are specific to an even happening at the Prophet's time. Islam isn't a non-violent religion by any means, it doesn't pretend to be. Neither is Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism etc. Plenty of atrocities have been commited in every religions name and even in non-religions name. No religion is uniquley aggressive etc. It;s the people that follow those religions that use it in the way they want and take from it what they want for their own gain. Your choice to focus only on Islam is telling.

All fundamentalists are the worst of any fundamentalists. Do I need to bring out the stats? Islam brought in many rights for women to their own property, to a life (at a time when infanticide was rife), to rules of war, rights of prisoners of war, peace treaties, inheritance for women, etc etc. Read about Ibn Sina, the first hospitals, algebra, astronomy etc. Without Muslim scholars translating the greek texts you would not have the rennaissance. During the dark ages, Islam brought knowledge and advancement. Just because the muslim world is in bits at the moment has no bearing on Islam. Without Islam, you still have the destabilisation of the middle east and the consequences of that. 

Dar Al Harb is a concept to do with warring nations. Not those who are peacful towards Islamic nations. Again, you can tell what and who you have been listening to. Do you want me to start quoting Biblical scripture? Plenty have used that for their own gain (cough Nethanyahu). 

Islam continues to be the fastest growing religion in the world for a reason. For men and women alike. 

Again, you seem to jump straight past the point where almost all Jews were removed from pretty much every single Islamic nation in the Middle East and Africa. You defend that by saying other religions did it too.

The answer still remains, there’s one place in the ME where Jews aren’t ethnically cleansed. The cleansers, as recently as 1979, were all Islamic nations. Turkey is about the only country left in the region who has 20.000 or so Jews left after about 25.000 have left in the last decades.

One can try to defend Islam by saying it’s all about fundamentalists reading the text wrong, isn’t it then sad that pretty much all Arabic nations are applying fundamentalism to a point where there’s no minorities left anymore? What does that say about Islam? It’s not like the Ottomans treated captive Jews and Christians any different 400 years prior to Gaza being a thing.

 

Edited February 13 by magnkarl

[magnkarl]

7 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

I don't get the similarity to what I was saying. I guess the equivalent would be to say that if the US and Western nations created a supported, prosperous, safe, free place for Palestinians in the West Bank and encouraged the people of Gaza to move there, would that constitute a ruthless purge of Gaza?

No, it's not what I'm after - the link that you posted suggests that many of those that flocked to Israel did so in the spirit of a new start, of hope, not as terrorised exiles but as those wanting to come home and upping sticks for a new life in a place they'd always dreamed of.

And I'm not debating it - I think it would be ridiculous to claim that either side doesn't hate the other.

Absolutely true - but the reason here is that they finally had a place to go to, the reason was the creation of modern Israel - and I'm coming to that conclusion by the evidence of the link that you posted - not that there was a new and sudden purge that coincidentally happened at exactly the same time as the establishment of Israel, but that Jewish people moved to Israel because it was where they wanted to be.

I'm not arguing that there aren't huge sections of the ME that wouldn't happily watch Israel burn - that's undeniably true - but I am arguing that using contentious language to describe what others would call the homecoming of Jewish people across the region might be seen as a view that is strongly one sided - especially in a post that warns of the dangers of being strongly one-sided. 

Ah cool, a link that tells you a varied list of reasons for the disappearance of a whole minority also said something about some of them doing it for better lives, which must mean that they all did.

Did you read the last sentence in the paragraph where this was suggested. It says that that view is largely propaganda spread by nations who have ethnically cleansed 900.000 Jews from their populations. 

Gage your apathy and wanting towards finding other reasons for 900.000 people being removed from nations against the casualties in the current conflict, and you’ve got the moral issue for the Pro-Palestinian cause down to a T.

The few Mizrahi Jews I know from Iraq tell stories of being woken up with AK-47s aimed at them, being thrown into the back of trucks and taken to the nearest airfield to be flown to Israel.

Edited February 13 by magnkarl

[OutByEaster?]

44 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Did you read the last sentence in the paragraph where this was suggested. It says that that view is largely propaganda spread by nations who have ethnically cleansed 900.000 Jews from their populations. 

I read the whole paragraph - in fact, here it is. It says nothing of the sort, it's an apparently balanced report on the way in which the migration is reported. I have a feeling you'll be angry at the word migration, I've used it since it's the word that seems to be most used in the places where this is written about - y'know as opposed to "ruthless purge" or "cleansing".

Quote

The reasons for the exoduses are manifold, including: pull factors, such as the desire to fulfill Zionism, find a better economic status and a secure home in either Israel or Europe and the Americas, and the Israeli government's implementation of official policy in favour of the "One Million Plan" to focus on accommodating Jewish immigrants from Arab- and Muslim-majority countries; and push factors, such as antisemitism, persecution, and pogroms, political instability, poverty,  and expulsion. The history of the exodus has been politicised, given its proposed relevance to the historical narrative of the Arab–Israeli conflict. When presenting the history, those who view the Jewish exodus as analogous to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight generally emphasise the push factors and consider those who left to have been refugees, while those who oppose that view generally emphasise the pull factors and consider the Jews to have been willing immigrants, sometimes positing a "malicious Zionist conspiracy" to explain the exodus.

 

51 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Ah cool, a link that tells you a varied list of reasons for the disappearance of a whole minority also said something about some of them doing it for better lives, which must mean that they all did.

I didn't say they all did - in fact I commented to the effect of the exact opposite, that the reasons were varied and that there was nuance in it that wasn't being expressed by your claim that "all of them" moved because of a ruthless purge or a process of cleansing. My point, which I'm assuming you're deliberately avoiding was that you took a situation with a variety of factors, picked out one representation of it and added some very emotive and factional language around purges, cleansing and invasion - then reminded us of the importance of avoiding the "kind of factionalism we see from both sets of supporters today."

 

 

[Panto_Villan]

The issue with Islam isn't anything fundamental to the religion itself, it's mostly that a lot of Muslims live in the Middle East and Northern Africa which are the two of the least stable areas of the world. That's not because the people there are Muslims - there's a lot of factors for it. It's easy to blame religion for the state of the region when you're sitting in Europe or America, but Europe had more than its fair share of continent-wide religious wars up until democracy took hold, and there's plenty of examples of first world countries that had major sectarian divides up until a few decades ago (e.g. Ireland). You can't really blame Islam for the problems of the Middle East.

At the same time, it needs to be acknowledged that Islam is unusual because a number of world governments have fundamentalist Islamic leaders with violent and retrograde beliefs. That's not really true for other religions - there's no fundamentalist Christian or Buddhist or Hindu countries. That means terrorism and violence is currently much more likely to be commited in the name of Islam than any other religion.

Again, that's not to blame anything on Islam specifically. When countries do start to flirt with other types of religious fundamentalism (Christianity in America, Buddhists in Myanmar, Hindus in India etc) it's no less ugly than fundamentalist Islam is.

[chrisp65]

11 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

The issue with Islam isn't anything fundamental to the religion itself, it's mostly that a lot of Muslims live in the Middle East and Northern Africa which are the two of the least stable areas of the world. That's not because the people there are Muslims - there's a lot of factors for it. It's easy to blame religion for the state of the region when you're sitting in Europe or America, but Europe had more than its fair share of continent-wide religious wars up until democracy took hold, and there's plenty of examples of first world countries that had major sectarian divides up until a few decades ago (e.g. Ireland). You can't really blame Islam for the problems of the Middle East.

At the same time, it needs to be acknowledged that Islam is unusual because a number of world governments have fundamentalist Islamic leaders with violent and retrograde beliefs. That's not really true for other religions - there's no fundamentalist Christian or Buddhist or Hindu countries. That means terrorism and violence is currently much more likely to be commited in the name of Islam than any other religion.

Again, that's not to blame anything on Islam specifically. When countries do start to flirt with other types of religious fundamentalism (Christianity in America, Buddhists in Myanmar, Hindus in India etc) it's no less ugly than fundamentalist Islam is.

 

I think (from limited knowledge) that Modi in India could be described as a Hindu nationalist, and has been implicated in a few bits n bobs.

See the recent story re the televised opening of a new temple on the grounds of a razed mosque.

Quote

Critics have also accused the government of exploiting a religious celebration in a country which - according to its constitution - is secular. For Muslims, India's biggest minority, the event evoked fear and painful memories, members of the community in Ayodhya told the BBC in the run-up to Monday's ceremony.

 

[Panto_Villan]

4 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I think (from limited knowledge) that Modi in India could be described as a Hindu nationalist, and has been implicated in a few bits n bobs.

See the recent story re the televised opening of a new temple on the grounds of a razed mosque.

Yup, you're absolutely right - that's why I mentioned it in the last paragraph. India is definitely heading down the route of chauvanistic Hindu nationalism, and it's not at all nice to read about. Anti-Muslim pogroms and the like.

That said, it's still got a long way to go before it'd be equivalent to the level of religious fundamentalism you see in say Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan etc.

Edited February 13 by Panto_Villan

[omariqy]

56 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

Yup, you're absolutely right - that's why I mentioned it in the last paragraph. India is definitely heading down the route of chauvanistic Hindu nationalism, and it's not at all nice to read about. Anti-Muslim pogroms and the like.

That said, it's still got a long way to go before it'd be equivalent to the level of religious fundamentalism you see in say Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan etc.

Or Israel. Managed to get it back on topic!

[Chindie]

Rafah will be a slaughter. City of 250k now harbouring 1.5m people, with a blood hungry regime ready to flatten it. Would be condemned outright had a enemy nation done it, maybe even found itself being forcibly democratised. But instead we ignore it, facilitate it, offer some weasel words of contrition, and leave the innocents to die.

Shameful.

Israel should be a pariah state, a number of it's political and military leadership should hang, and the country at large should be facing sanction and rejection.

[chrisp65]

26 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Rafah will be a slaughter. City of 250k now harbouring 1.5m people, with a blood hungry regime ready to flatten it. Would be condemned outright had a enemy nation done it, maybe even found itself being forcibly democratised. But instead we ignore it, facilitate it, offer some weasel words of contrition, and leave the innocents to die.

Shameful.

Israel should be a pariah state, a number of it's political and military leadership should hang, and the country at large should be facing sanction and rejection.

You’re going to struggle with that nomination bid to be a Labour MP.

[Chindie]

27 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

You’re going to struggle with that nomination bid to be a Labour MP.

**** the Labour Party obviously.

[sne]

Attacking Lebanon now

[Rodders]

News story in the guardian about a comic who told  someone to **** off for objecting to the Palestinian flag on show has been swiftly condemned for abusing him but no comment on the racist word removed who opposed the presence of a flag on show. Maybe the comic is a word removed  too I dunno, and aggressive abuse can't be tolerated but not sure why the arsenal crowd member escapes comment. Maybe there's more context around it but...

[bickster]

5 minutes ago, Rodders said:

News story in the guardian about a comic who told  someone to **** off for objecting to the Palestinian flag on show has been swiftly condemned for abusing him but no comment on the racist word removed who opposed the presence of a flag on show. Maybe the comic is a word removed  too I dunno, and aggressive abuse can't be tolerated but not sure why the arsenal crowd member escapes comment. Maybe there's more context around it but...

I'm not sure why you'd label the member of the audience as a racist, he was a Jewish Israeli, hence his objection to the Palestinian flag, that doesn't make him a racist though

Story goes like this, Paul Currie produces Ukrainian and Palestinian flag at the end of the show and  encourages the audience to give him and the flags a standing ovation. Israeli audience member in second row doesn't stand and applaud, comedian asks him why, audience member said he enjoyed the show until the Palestine Flag came out. Comedian then tells him to get the F*** out of the show, repeatedly.

Which one do you think is the racist now?

[StefanAVFC]

32 minutes ago, bickster said:

I'm not sure why you'd label the member of the audience as a racist, he was a Jewish Israeli, hence his objection to the Palestinian flag, that doesn't make him a racist though

Story goes like this, Paul Currie produces Ukrainian and Palestinian flag at the end of the show and  encourages the audience to give him and the flags a standing ovation. Israeli audience member in second row doesn't stand and applaud, comedian asks him why, audience member said he enjoyed the show until the Palestine Flag came out. Comedian then tells him to get the F*** out of the show, repeatedly.

Which one do you think is the racist now?

Neither.

[bickster]

7 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Neither.

I agree but the comedian is the word removed in the equation. He asked someone a question and didn't like the answer so he abused him. The audience member didn't initiate the situation