Best Of

It's quite obvious the Israeli government is simply lying here.
And of course no independent journalists are allowed anywhere near Gaza.

Israel’s ‘no hunger in Gaza’ narrative flies in face of obvious evidence
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/14/isreal-no-hunger-in-gaza-narrative-flies-in-face-of-obvious-evidence-famine

Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.

Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.

Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?

Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.

Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.

Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.

Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.

GDP is estimated to be growing at 0.7%
Population is estimated to grow at 0.6% this year.

Hmmm….

We never had that level of analysis on PB over the previous 14 years. Reporting 0.1% growth and we'd have had a street party.

GDP per capita has been stalled for a while. If that doesn’t change, then people won’t feel better off.

If we don’t change the productivity of the workforce, then adding more people will increase GDP, but not GDP per head.

I don't dispute your figures or the correlation. I am impressed with the analysis, funny we didn't see it under the Tory administration.

Close down PB and national productivity goes through the roof.

I’ve been making the point about investing in productivity for years.

For example, according to some estimates, social workers spend 60%+ of their time on admin. So if we invested in reworked processes to align with actual work, remove duplicate form filling etc. we might be able to reduce that to 40%+ (say)

Which would result in a 50% increase in the time they get to do social work in…

Or if we employed enough staff to fill the rosters in the NHS, we wouldn’t just drop the wage bill. We could rework contracts/hours to be more human friendly - which aside from improving staff retention (savings there) - could lead to the same doctors and nurses treating the same patients more often. Which would improve outcomes - increased productivity.

It's quite obvious the Israeli government is simply lying here.
And of course no independent journalists are allowed anywhere near Gaza.

Israel’s ‘no hunger in Gaza’ narrative flies in face of obvious evidence
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/14/isreal-no-hunger-in-gaza-narrative-flies-in-face-of-obvious-evidence-famine

Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.

Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.

Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?

Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.

Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.

Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.

Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.

I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?

Yes, of course it is. So was the original Hamas attack on unarmed civilians, and the murders, rapes and other crimes that accompanied it. That formed a legitimate casus belli.

However, the war crimes of one side do not legitimise* the war crimes of the other, particularly when the other's crimes are considerably in excess of the original.

* There is a case, which I'd agree with, that when one side in a war engages in actions which are illegal but give it an advantage, as a matter of policy, then that legitimises the victim to take proportionate and equivalent actions in retaliation and/or defence. This is dodgy ground legally but it cannot be right that a victim is bound to suffer further - and potentially to lose a war - in defence of a principle that the aggressor rejects. Where is the logic in that? However, that doesn't apply to Israel/Gaza, where Israel started the war with an overwhelming military advantage, and has only increased that advantage since.

We seem to have arrived at Jan 1945. Germany (Gaza) is a ruin, and any normal state would have surrendered ages ok. But they do not. The Nazis (Hamas) have a tight stranglehold and will never surrender. How then do the Allies (Israel) win?

The losers, as always in war, are the poor bloody civilians.

Well said.

We insisted upon unconditional surrender of the Nazis to end the war. Israel should do the same and we should be a steadfast ally of theirs until that happens and make it clear the war only ends when Hamas surrenders.

The mealy-mouthed talk of peace without doing anything is the worst of both worlds falling between the stools of siding with Hamas or siding with Israel. We don't need a ceasefire, we need a victory and the end of war.

At least it's not as bad as Japan 1945. No matter how bad it gets, Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza City and Khan Younis.

Saying Israel isn't going to nuke Gaza is rather damning with faint praise.

It's an existential battle for them like it was for us in 1945.

America was right to bomb Japan. Israel is fighting a horrific war better than we did.

You say this with some regularity. It remains bollocks. The fight against Hamas in Gaza is not an existential battle for Israel. Israel has complete military domination over Gaza. Israel is not going to cease to exist,

Here’s proof that it’s not an existential battle. Israel has diverted significant resources to bombing and invading parts of Syria despite no immediate threat and positive words wanting peace coming from the new Syrian administration. Israel has said they’ve done much of this to protect the Syrian Druze population. Were Israel really in an existential battle in Gaza, they wouldn’t have capacity to go into Syria. Israel is, if in a subtler manner than Putin, invading its neighbours for territorial gain.

The US in 1945 did not control Japan. Israel controls Gaza. They should do to Gaza what we did to West Germany: hand it back to the local population after a few years.

If we're being honest, by 1945, it wasn't existential for us or the Americans.

Not saying that makes what Israel is doing okay, but what happened at the end of WW2 was about making sure it didn't happen again.

Making sure it didn't happen again meant it *was* existential given what 'again' would entail.

In any case, there was no realistic possibility of ending the war with anything other than total German surrender by that point anyway.

In August 1945, the Japanese War Cabinet met.

- after Nagasaki and Hiroshima
- America had stopped producing submarines because Japan didn’t have many ships left to sink
- Trade had stopped because the submarines and aerial mining had stopped Japanese merchant shipping almost completely
- Russia had entered the war and was doing to the Imperial Japanese Army what chainsaws do to cheese.
- The Allies had supremacy to the point of battleships were bombarding the Japanese coast.
- A famine was coming that winter. Too many men away in the army, and the rice crop was failing. No imports (see trade stopping).

The war cabinet split 3-3 on continuing the war. The plan to continue the war was to recruit every civilian into the army - literally armed with bamboo spears. Then banzai charge, repeatedly, the Allies when they invaded. when the food ran out, then the civilians would get nothing - all the remaining food would go to the army…

The Emperor cast a deciding vote for peace. At which the army tried a coup, which nearly succeeded. It only failed because it was interrupted by an American air raid.

It's quite obvious the Israeli government is simply lying here.
And of course no independent journalists are allowed anywhere near Gaza.

Israel’s ‘no hunger in Gaza’ narrative flies in face of obvious evidence
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/14/isreal-no-hunger-in-gaza-narrative-flies-in-face-of-obvious-evidence-famine

Netanyahu now says flat out that he will not end the war.

Hamas could end the war by surrendering unconditionally and releasing the hostages.

Netanyahu is a bad, corrupt leader who should be replaced but even broken clocks can be right. Why the hell should Israel end the war before Hamas are defeated and before the hostages are released?

Because they are engaged in a crime against humanity.

Israel had the right to wage war against Hamas, and, by extension, the Gaza territory it was the de facto government of, within the bounds of the laws of international conflict. Those bounds have been so consistently breached, and, in its blockade, so grossly breached, that it's time for the international community to act.

Put simply, Israel is not conducting a war of legitimate military action but of, at minimum, ethnic cleansing and, perhaps, extermination. The latter would certainly be the practical outcome of its current policy if continues, as appears to be the Israeli government's intention.

Time to place full sanctions on the regime, and on the country.

I agree with this but can anyone tell me if hostage taking (and murder of said hostages) is a war crime?

Yes, of course it is. So was the original Hamas attack on unarmed civilians, and the murders, rapes and other crimes that accompanied it. That formed a legitimate casus belli.

However, the war crimes of one side do not legitimise* the war crimes of the other, particularly when the other's crimes are considerably in excess of the original.

* There is a case, which I'd agree with, that when one side in a war engages in actions which are illegal but give it an advantage, as a matter of policy, then that legitimises the victim to take proportionate and equivalent actions in retaliation and/or defence. This is dodgy ground legally but it cannot be right that a victim is bound to suffer further - and potentially to lose a war - in defence of a principle that the aggressor rejects. Where is the logic in that? However, that doesn't apply to Israel/Gaza, where Israel started the war with an overwhelming military advantage, and has only increased that advantage since.