There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I agree with that. But 4 is the only one that doesn't eventually lead us back to where we are now. 3 will result in years of Israel's security forces being sniped at, captured, and huge cost, without any real security, and eventually a more moderate government will pull out and we are back where we are now in due course.
4 solves this particular problem for ever. Different problems may arise but they will be physically further away. I think it is what I would do if I was a hard line Israeli if I could ignore the mass international opprobrium that would follow. And - no, I don't condone it.
Agreed that, if you take a very cold-blooded hard-hearted view (and no I do not agree with it), 4 is the one with the most chance of a permanent 'resolution'.
However, what I mentioned FPT may be a better bet, namely Egypt and Israel turn Gaza into a co-ruled state. The Egyptians can then do the hard crackdown stuff on Hamas and the internal order while the Israelis give them support and fund Gaza. In Egypt's case, that would probably mean giving them tons of money / Western weapons plus recognition for Sisi and a blind eye to what he does. However, as a solution, it may work.
That's actually a pretty good solution. It is maybe the only one which doesn't end in terrible perpetual suffering for Gazans, or total ethnic cleansing of Gaza (beyond all the dreamland two state stuff)
Unfortunately I doubt Egypt will be interested, but maybe a TON of money could do it
It would be a ton of money but I think at this point the West and the US in particular would do whatever it takes.
There is a risk to Sisi of course but he can probably fend it off by claiming he has (part)reclaimed lost territories and / or is taking over the 'welfare' of his co-religionists.
It also stops a sh1tload of immigrants coming his way.
Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, has formally endorsed Rachel Reeves to be the next chancellor.
In a video message played immediately after Ms Reeves’ speech in Liverpool this afternoon, Mr Carney said: “Rachel Reeves is a serious economist. She began her career at the Bank of England, so she understands the big picture.
“But, crucially she also understands the economics of work, of place and of family. It is beyond time to put her ideas and energy into action.”
Is he really someone you'd use as a reference?
All that does is make me wonder why he wasn't sacked much sooner rather than thinking she must be competent.
Well of course it does, so predictable was your post it you need not have bothered posting it
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I agree with that. But 4 is the only one that doesn't eventually lead us back to where we are now. 3 will result in years of Israel's security forces being sniped at, captured, and huge cost, without any real security, and eventually a more moderate government will pull out and we are back where we are now in due course.
4 solves this particular problem for ever. Different problems may arise but they will be physically further away. I think it is what I would do if I was a hard line Israeli if I could ignore the mass international opprobrium that would follow. And - no, I don't condone it.
Agreed that, if you take a very cold-blooded hard-hearted view (and no I do not agree with it), 4 is the one with the most chance of a permanent 'resolution'.
However, what I mentioned FPT may be a better bet, namely Egypt and Israel turn Gaza into a co-ruled state. The Egyptians can then do the hard crackdown stuff on Hamas and the internal order while the Israelis give them support and fund Gaza. In Egypt's case, that would probably mean giving them tons of money / Western weapons plus recognition for Sisi and a blind eye to what he does. However, as a solution, it may work.
I hope something like that is possible - it seems like the Least Bad option. It does require Egypt openly to collaborate with the Israelis and that feels like a step too far for them. And would they really want to be embroiled in Gaza for what could be a very long time? Maybe a wider Arab led multinational agreement would be possible.
Good interview, and a quick read that people should look at. As it says, we need a rules-based order, which means rejecting the suggestions by many here calling for ethnic cleansing, collective guilt etc.
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I agree with that. But 4 is the only one that doesn't eventually lead us back to where we are now. 3 will result in years of Israel's security forces being sniped at, captured, and huge cost, without any real security, and eventually a more moderate government will pull out and we are back where we are now in due course.
4 solves this particular problem for ever. Different problems may arise but they will be physically further away. I think it is what I would do if I was a hard line Israeli if I could ignore the mass international opprobrium that would follow. And - no, I don't condone it.
Agreed that, if you take a very cold-blooded hard-hearted view (and no I do not agree with it), 4 is the one with the most chance of a permanent 'resolution'.
However, what I mentioned FPT may be a better bet, namely Egypt and Israel turn Gaza into a co-ruled state. The Egyptians can then do the hard crackdown stuff on Hamas and the internal order while the Israelis give them support and fund Gaza. In Egypt's case, that would probably mean giving them tons of money / Western weapons plus recognition for Sisi and a blind eye to what he does. However, as a solution, it may work.
I hope something like that is possible - it seems like the Least Bad option. It does require Egypt openly to collaborate with the Israelis and that feels like a step too far for them. And would they really want to be embroiled in Gaza for what could be a very long time? Maybe a wider Arab led multinational agreement would be possible.
It's all very depressing, however you look at it.
I think it could be possible - the key here will be money / investment. The Egyptians may not like to do that much business with the Israelis but they have been pragmatic enough to realise it is no one's interest to have a hot war in the region.
If Hamas can be defeated and a relative period of stability for Gaza enforced then Gaza can be rebuilt - and should be kept at peace.
Good interview, and a quick read that people should look at. As it says, we need a rules-based order, which means rejecting the suggestions by many here calling for ethnic cleansing, collective guilt etc.
Oh do shut up. Absolutely no one on here today is "calling for ethnic cleansing". It's all in your tiny brain
What we are discussing is the dire possibility that Israel might do this tragic thing: in extremis
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I suspect you are sadly correct. The thing that may prevent 4 is that the sheer international condemnation that will attract, and the risk this escalates the war to other Arab nations. But 3 has all the hallmarks of the worst decades of The Troubles, but even worse. Depressing.
The Troubles provide a map for now to solve these problems. Use security forces to stop attacks, but acknowledge the underlying issues leading to the violence and work for a settlement, including by talking to people who have waged attacks.
On topic, this is potentially rather misleading from Jon Sopel. Attendance at speeches in the hall always varies quite a bit depending on speaker, time of day, and what's going on in terms of fringe events.
It may very well be that the Labour conference is better attended and more upbeat, as you might expect with a big poll lead. But I'm not sure these photos necessarily demonstrate that.
Jon Sopel struggles to keep any sort of balance these days e.g. see his reaction to Huw Edwards story. He has gone rather Jonathan Pie in many of his takes.
I mean I can understand many of his frustrations with the current sack of shit (and obviously he hates Brexit), but he certainly allows it to cloud his judgment.
He is part of a centrist Dad podcast with the Emily Maitlis who is definitely on the same journey as he is, and Lewis Goodall. There must be money to be made in these Podcasts. They are springing up everywhere.
Problem with it, and other podcasts, as was said online last week it is largely people talking to each other who agree with each other or disagree at the margins.
It just the same traditional media bubble just shifted to podcast form and free to say what they really think (which we already could guess).
Their YouTube version of the podcast does very poorly, I presume the audio version must be doing ok. Although its Global who have pumped a load of money into starting these, so its difficult to tell how well they do business wise.
Spotify have taken a massive haircut over a similar strategy.
There has to be a point at which they will expect these podcasts to make money, either through a subscription model or advertising. However the moment they go for either I think they lost a fair chunk of their audience to other similar services.
Advertising revenue sharing on Youtube is an option but, as you say, their hit rate is dire so they won't yield a great deal.
GB News was hoping to be able to monetise Youtube but their hitrate, same with Times Radio, also seems to be quite poor too.
GB News have actually had 1 billion views on their YouTube channel ( compared to NewsAgents 3.5 million)....no idea what CPM is on these kind of 3 min snippets of news shows, but I would imagine very very low.
Mr Tesla videos on YouTube will have the details, but I think a YouTube video has to be a minimum length before it is monetised. Something like eight minutes. I think, therefore, that there is zero income from YouTube videos shorter than that.
Back in March there was a flutter of nervousness about Iranian nuclear progress. Since then we’ve had the flirting by Sheikh MBS and most recently Biden unlocking $6bn to the Iranians.
And now we are back to where we were. I am surprised more is not being said about the 100 (mega) ton elephant in the room. Put to one side Gaza’s political status and the plight of its people. If you’re running Israel, it seems unfathomable to me that you would not go in hard on the Iranian nuclear facilities right now. What am I missing?
Good luck with this one (though even PB Tories ought to approve the aspiration). Reeves says Labour would cut government spending on consultants...
I mean full time contracted civil servants are cheaper than consultants. I have a friend who is an ex full time civil servant currently doing consultancy in a role that should be a contracted staff position (and will be after Xmas). He said he is currently paid around 3 times the salary of that role if it were a proper contracted role (he doesn't get pension stuff, IIRC, and his deal was to start early and have a notice period of less than 2 weeks). It's this kind of spending that actually could save government some money because a) you're overpaying for staff and b) the talent go to a consultancy company and then work for the government anyway, when if you just treated them better you could probably pay them less than you pay a consultancy and get better results.
Oh, it makes complete sense in principle. Actually delivering the policy will be hard.
Consultancy was often used because
1) Can't pay people below band X, amount Y 2) Can't employee people at band Z - they aren't generalist managers! 3) Therefore the only way to pay people enough to get them in to do the job is consultancy.
This used to be true in banking, for instance. Apparently the sky would fall if someone permanent was paid more than their manager. But it was AOK for a consultant to be on far more (in effect).
Good interview, and a quick read that people should look at. As it says, we need a rules-based order, which means rejecting the suggestions by many here calling for ethnic cleansing, collective guilt etc.
Oh do shut up. Absolutely no one on here today is "calling for ethnic cleansing". It's all in your tiny brain
What we are discussing is the dire possibility that Israel might do this tragic thing: in extremis
Again, *the government* in Gaza launched a war against Israel. Israel is responding in kind. As Hamas are pledged to destroy Israel and slaughter the infadel Jews, its hardly as if Israel have many options left.
Israel does not want to eradicate Arabs. It makes them citizens. But they have to *want* to be citizens. For the allahu akbar lot there is no negotiation, no compromise, no half-way measures. They will fight until they are killed. Have we not learned that with ISIS?
What would really help is if Egypt allows through its border women and children fleeing the war. If they don't then...
I really don't believe the anti-Semitism we see is a result of the existence of Israel. Zionism *may* be a compounding factor, but anti-Semitism has existed for Millenia, long before modern Israel.
If Jews were to leave Israel tomorrow and spread out to every other country in the world, the same people will find reasons to hate them. Again, as has happened for so many generations.
for this reason, I can understand why Jews feel they need a land in which they can feel safe.
I listened to a podcast the other week, which featured someone talking about his granddad, who had been in a concentration camp. His grandfather was lucky enough to be liberated, and had asked a Russian where he should go. "Don't go west," the Russian said, because there was fighting there. "Don't go east, either," he also said. Because they did not want them.
Hence, Israel.
I posted this in the previous thread, but I'll share it again here:
I found this an interesting interview when it was released a few weeks ago, that has more poignancy now:
Adam Broomberg is a Jewish anti-Zionist activist who grew up in South Africa under the apartheid regime. His grandparents entered South Africa after fleeing Europe and became "accepted" in white society. He was educated in a Jewish Zionist school system, and has family members who live in Israel. He discusses his journey to anti-Zionism, his relation to activism, and how he has been called an anti-Semite by many Jewish and non-Jewish people. It was an interesting listen in late September when it released, and I think is an interesting perspective given the international situation now.
I would also add that many Jewish people are not Zionists, and conflating Israel and Jewish people is and of itself an anti Semitic trope. I completely agree with you that in a world without Israel anti Semitism would not go away, it is something I think many countries in the world have not properly grappled with. One of the criticisms of Zionism from some within the Jewish community is how it has been used by countries as a get out clause for their anti Semitism - to a) tell all their Jewish population to leave and go be good Israelis and b) to then hide their anti Semitism behind their support for Israel.
To quote myself again from the previous thread:
Over the last few years I have been listening to Daniel Khan - a Jewish folk / punk singer. One of the songs he sings, which is a translation of "Oh you foolish little zionists" (1931), has the stanza:
You want to take us to Jerusalem So we can die as a nation We'd rather stay in the Diaspora And fight for our liberation
The 1930s and 1940s showed the fallacy of just "staying in the Diaspora"
And for a many people Jew = Israeli = Israeli government; it adds a new dimension to antisemitism, already in itself a slippery and complex subspecies of racism.
I think I've mentioned on here before that my kids are at a Jewish school, and with depressing predictability we've had the emails already about upping security (already fairly tight). It's not paranoia or imagination - antisemitism here will increase, as it always does in times of conflict in Israel-Palestine.
Back in March there was a flutter of nervousness about Iranian nuclear progress. Since then we’ve had the flirting by Sheikh MBS and most recently Biden unlocking $6bn to the Iranians.
And now we are back to where we were. I am surprised more is not being said about the 100 (mega) ton elephant in the room. Put to one side Gaza’s political status and the plight of its people. If you’re running Israel, it seems unfathomable to me that you would not go in hard on the Iranian nuclear facilities right now. What am I missing?
Does Israel feel able to go to war with Iran at the same time as its operations in Gaza? It has fought wars on several fronts before, but I would have thought it won’t be its favoured strategic move.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul · 11m Proper rhetoric from Reeves. Well written, well delivered. More or less content-free
The last line really made me laugh .
It's waspish, but inaccurate
• GB Energy • National Wealth Fund • CoL pegged minimum wage
Three big policy pledges.
I thought it quite a policy light speech. Of those:
BG Energy is potentially good if it is competently run and protected from the sticky fingers of the Trade Union bosses, who would wreck it.
National Wealth Fund - do we know what this is? How do we stop the next Govt + 1 plundering it and p*ssing it away on tax cuts?
CoL pegged minimum wage. In practice we already have this, do we not - since 2000, even under Cameron the salami slicer? It has gone up rapidly in real terms (middle line below).
There was the feed-the-rabid-dog-wing stuff - Independent Schools, non-doms and Stamp Duty on foreign property purchases, but the first is probably benefitless posturing, the second will raise only 3-4% of what is needed, if that, and the third may be a rounding error.
She needs at least £100bn a year from somewhere and has not explained where it is coming from.
I hope there are *major* reforms in the wings for when they win power.
On topic, this is potentially rather misleading from Jon Sopel. Attendance at speeches in the hall always varies quite a bit depending on speaker, time of day, and what's going on in terms of fringe events.
It may very well be that the Labour conference is better attended and more upbeat, as you might expect with a big poll lead. But I'm not sure these photos necessarily demonstrate that.
Jon Sopel struggles to keep any sort of balance these days e.g. see his reaction to Huw Edwards story. He has gone rather Jonathan Pie in many of his takes.
I mean I can understand many of his frustrations with the current sack of shit (and obviously he hates Brexit), but he certainly allows it to cloud his judgment.
He is part of a centrist Dad podcast with the Emily Maitlis who is definitely on the same journey as he is, and Lewis Goodall. There must be money to be made in these Podcasts. They are springing up everywhere.
Problem with it, and other podcasts, as was said online last week it is largely people talking to each other who agree with each other or disagree at the margins.
It just the same traditional media bubble just shifted to podcast form and free to say what they really think (which we already could guess).
Their YouTube version of the podcast does very poorly, I presume the audio version must be doing ok. Although its Global who have pumped a load of money into starting these, so its difficult to tell how well they do business wise.
Spotify have taken a massive haircut over a similar strategy.
There has to be a point at which they will expect these podcasts to make money, either through a subscription model or advertising. However the moment they go for either I think they lost a fair chunk of their audience to other similar services.
Advertising revenue sharing on Youtube is an option but, as you say, their hit rate is dire so they won't yield a great deal.
GB News was hoping to be able to monetise Youtube but their hitrate, same with Times Radio, also seems to be quite poor too.
GB News have actually had 1 billion views on their YouTube channel ( compared to NewsAgents 3.5 million)....no idea what CPM is on these kind of 3 min snippets of news shows, but I would imagine very very low.
Mr Tesla videos on YouTube will have the details, but I think a YouTube video has to be a minimum length before it is monetised. Something like eight minutes. I think, therefore, that there is zero income from YouTube videos shorter than that.
This isn't true e.g. "shorts" pay money, but a fraction of the CPM for a full length video. There are a few people who make $100ks a month out of very short "react" videos, where it is very dubious how much they are really altering / adding to the original video.
The ~10 minute became the supposed optimal for the algorithm to maximise your revenue, hence why so many are around that length where people use filler to get the run length up, but AFAIK you get paid for videos less than this and I am not sure the 10 min thing even holds these days. YouTube is constantly playing a cat and mouse game over this.
That all been said, I am 99% certain the content farming approach GB News is using is something that was successful 4-5 years ago, but in more recent years YouTube had really clamped down on rewarding.
Back in March there was a flutter of nervousness about Iranian nuclear progress. Since then we’ve had the flirting by Sheikh MBS and most recently Biden unlocking $6bn to the Iranians.
And now we are back to where we were. I am surprised more is not being said about the 100 (mega) ton elephant in the room. Put to one side Gaza’s political status and the plight of its people. If you’re running Israel, it seems unfathomable to me that you would not go in hard on the Iranian nuclear facilities right now. What am I missing?
Does Israel feel able to go to war with Iran at the same time as its operations in Gaza? It has fought wars on several fronts before, but I would have thought it won’t be its favoured strategic move.
I suspect they will go for Option 1 above on Gaza. A hard response, squeeze Hamas into a quick submission. And then ask for the green light to do something direct to Iranian nuclear facilities. I expect Biden’s inclination is to say no. But events may move beyond him.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
Good interview, and a quick read that people should look at. As it says, we need a rules-based order, which means rejecting the suggestions by many here calling for ethnic cleansing, collective guilt etc.
Oh do shut up. Absolutely no one on here today is "calling for ethnic cleansing". It's all in your tiny brain
What we are discussing is the dire possibility that Israel might do this tragic thing: in extremis
Again, *the government* in Gaza launched a war against Israel. Israel is responding in kind. As Hamas are pledged to destroy Israel and slaughter the infadel Jews, its hardly as if Israel have many options left.
Israel does not want to eradicate Arabs. It makes them citizens. But they have to *want* to be citizens. For the allahu akbar lot there is no negotiation, no compromise, no half-way measures. They will fight until they are killed. Have we not learned that with ISIS?
What would really help is if Egypt allows through its border women and children fleeing the war. If they don't then...
Israel is rightly responding militarily to an attack, and will win that contest soon enough.
Israel does not treat Palestinians/Israeli Arabs as full citizens, nor does it want to include so many Palestinians within the nation of Israel that Israel ceases to have a Jewish majority.
I am forced to note, with regret, that several of you have already broken the Law of Leon, and said things I disagree with
Given that it is early days for this new dispensation, I am prepared to be magnanimous, and ignore these tomfool remarks, or forgive them as childish errors
This lenience, however, is strictly time-limited
I am completely unbiddable so you will have to put up with me disagreeing with you, teasing you and generally winding you up for a while longer.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Countries at war do not supply goods and services to those they fight. Britain didn't. No country does. It will cause great suffering undoubtedly - especially for the innocent. And, yes, the hate will continue.
What I find odd is that Israel is expected to think about the morality of their actions. But Hamas are not. Hamas are not children. They have chosen to fight in the way they have and if the result of that is that the innocent on their side suffer they have to take responsibility for that.
Hamas could abandon now their goal of seeking to destroy Israel in its entirety and kill every Jew on the planet and then there might be the possibility of some peace and a 2-state solution. But they prefer to aim for the total destruction of Israel. Why should Israelis of all people be expected to turn the other cheek? What happened the last time they ignored the risks to them from those seeking their total elimination?
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I suspect you are sadly correct. The thing that may prevent 4 is that the sheer international condemnation that will attract, and the risk this escalates the war to other Arab nations. But 3 has all the hallmarks of the worst decades of The Troubles, but even worse. Depressing.
The Troubles provide a map for now to solve these problems. Use security forces to stop attacks, but acknowledge the underlying issues leading to the violence and work for a settlement, including by talking to people who have waged attacks.
Exactly. In the end you have to talk. Israel cannot wipe out Hamas any more than the UK could wipe out the IRA, at least not without committing genocide and becoming the evil they sought to eradicate.
On topic, this is potentially rather misleading from Jon Sopel. Attendance at speeches in the hall always varies quite a bit depending on speaker, time of day, and what's going on in terms of fringe events.
It may very well be that the Labour conference is better attended and more upbeat, as you might expect with a big poll lead. But I'm not sure these photos necessarily demonstrate that.
Jon Sopel struggles to keep any sort of balance these days e.g. see his reaction to Huw Edwards story. He has gone rather Jonathan Pie in many of his takes.
I mean I can understand many of his frustrations with the current sack of shit (and obviously he hates Brexit), but he certainly allows it to cloud his judgment.
He is part of a centrist Dad podcast with the Emily Maitlis who is definitely on the same journey as he is, and Lewis Goodall. There must be money to be made in these Podcasts. They are springing up everywhere.
Problem with it, and other podcasts, as was said online last week it is largely people talking to each other who agree with each other or disagree at the margins.
It just the same traditional media bubble just shifted to podcast form and free to say what they really think (which we already could guess).
Their YouTube version of the podcast does very poorly, I presume the audio version must be doing ok. Although its Global who have pumped a load of money into starting these, so its difficult to tell how well they do business wise.
Spotify have taken a massive haircut over a similar strategy.
There has to be a point at which they will expect these podcasts to make money, either through a subscription model or advertising. However the moment they go for either I think they lost a fair chunk of their audience to other similar services.
Advertising revenue sharing on Youtube is an option but, as you say, their hit rate is dire so they won't yield a great deal.
GB News was hoping to be able to monetise Youtube but their hitrate, same with Times Radio, also seems to be quite poor too.
GB News have actually had 1 billion views on their YouTube channel ( compared to NewsAgents 3.5 million)....no idea what CPM is on these kind of 3 min snippets of news shows, but I would imagine very very low.
Mr Tesla videos on YouTube will have the details, but I think a YouTube video has to be a minimum length before it is monetised. Something like eight minutes. I think, therefore, that there is zero income from YouTube videos shorter than that.
rottenborough asked: "Does the 'back of a fag packet' joke work for younger viewers? Is that still a phrase people under 30 use?"
In the US, the equivalent phrase, at one time, was "back of an envelope". Doubt that it is used much these days. I have, a number of times, actually seen envelopes used for rough calculations, though not recently.
(I sometimes like to use "orders of magnitude", to make it clear that I am giving rough approximations: For example: As president, Barack Obama told about an order of magnitude more falsehoods than George W. Bush; the Loser (as I call DJT) told at least an order of magnitude more falsehoods than Obama.)
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
The challenge of course is how you differentiate Hamas militants from angry looking young men amongst the populace.
My point about killing people who live near Hamas is fairly simple. Hamas militants are combatants and legitimate military targets. So don't live next door to the guy who shouts Allahu Akbar whilst firing AK47s into the sky 5 times a day. Because you know what is coming.
It’s amazing how far Sopel has fallen. As BBC Washington DC corespondent it felt like he cared about facts. By contrast, that tweet is all about making his own narrative.
It’s an obvious and artificial contrast, that someone was going to highlight, but I am disappointed that it was him. Fair enough for this website to repost it of course, as it has an agenda and is entitled to advance it.
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I agree with that. But 4 is the only one that doesn't eventually lead us back to where we are now. 3 will result in years of Israel's security forces being sniped at, captured, and huge cost, without any real security, and eventually a more moderate government will pull out and we are back where we are now in due course.
4 solves this particular problem for ever. Different problems may arise but they will be physically further away. I think it is what I would do if I was a hard line Israeli if I could ignore the mass international opprobrium that would follow. And - no, I don't condone it.
Agreed that, if you take a very cold-blooded hard-hearted view (and no I do not agree with it), 4 is the one with the most chance of a permanent 'resolution'.
However, what I mentioned FPT may be a better bet, namely Egypt and Israel turn Gaza into a co-ruled state. The Egyptians can then do the hard crackdown stuff on Hamas and the internal order while the Israelis give them support and fund Gaza. In Egypt's case, that would probably mean giving them tons of money / Western weapons plus recognition for Sisi and a blind eye to what he does. However, as a solution, it may work.
That's actually a pretty good solution. It is maybe the only one which doesn't end in terrible perpetual suffering for Gazans, or total ethnic cleansing of Gaza (beyond all the dreamland two state stuff)
Unfortunately I doubt Egypt will be interested, but maybe a TON of money could do it
There will be no permanent solution until Hamas abandons its aim to eliminate Israel entirely. Lose that and a solution can be found.
I am forced to note, with regret, that several of you have already broken the Law of Leon, and said things I disagree with
Given that it is early days for this new dispensation, I am prepared to be magnanimous, and ignore these tomfool remarks, or forgive them as childish errors
This lenience, however, is strictly time-limited
I am completely unbiddable so you will have to put up with me disagreeing with you, teasing you and generally winding you up for a while longer.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Countries at war do not supply goods and services to those they fight. Britain didn't. No country does. It will cause great suffering undoubtedly - especially for the innocent. And, yes, the hate will continue.
What I find odd is that Israel is expected to think about the morality of their actions. But Hamas are not. Hamas are not children. They have chosen to fight in the way they have and if the result of that is that the innocent on their side suffer they have to take responsibility for that.
Hamas could abandon now their goal of seeking to destroy Israel in its entirety and kill every Jew on the planet and then there might be the possibility of some peace and a 2-state solution. But they prefer to aim for the total destruction of Israel. Why should Israelis of all people be expected to turn the other cheek? What happened the last time they ignored the risks to them from those seeking their total elimination?
The Israelis, for their part, might also consider stopping shooting Palestinian kids, stealing Palestinian land and generally making Palestinian lives a misery. It's a two way street.
I am forced to note, with regret, that several of you have already broken the Law of Leon, and said things I disagree with
Given that it is early days for this new dispensation, I am prepared to be magnanimous, and ignore these tomfool remarks, or forgive them as childish errors
This lenience, however, is strictly time-limited
I am completely unbiddable so you will have to put up with me disagreeing with you, teasing you and generally winding you up for a while longer.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Countries at war do not supply goods and services to those they fight. Britain didn't. No country does. It will cause great suffering undoubtedly - especially for the innocent. And, yes, the hate will continue.
What I find odd is that Israel is expected to think about the morality of their actions. But Hamas are not. Hamas are not children. They have chosen to fight in the way they have and if the result of that is that the innocent on their side suffer they have to take responsibility for that.
Hamas could abandon now their goal of seeking to destroy Israel in its entirety and kill every Jew on the planet and then there might be the possibility of some peace and a 2-state solution. But they prefer to aim for the total destruction of Israel. Why should Israelis of all people be expected to turn the other cheek? What happened the last time they ignored the risks to them from those seeking their total elimination?
The Israelis, for their part, might also consider stopping shooting Palestinian kids, stealing Palestinian land and generally making Palestinian lives a misery. It's a two way street.
After the evets of this weekend, your post is a really ill-timed and poor piece of victim-blaming.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
All war is a crime... Or as the saying goes, War is hell
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I suspect you are sadly correct. The thing that may prevent 4 is that the sheer international condemnation that will attract, and the risk this escalates the war to other Arab nations. But 3 has all the hallmarks of the worst decades of The Troubles, but even worse. Depressing.
The Troubles provide a map for now to solve these problems. Use security forces to stop attacks, but acknowledge the underlying issues leading to the violence and work for a settlement, including by talking to people who have waged attacks.
Exactly. In the end you have to talk. Israel cannot wipe out Hamas any more than the UK could wipe out the IRA, at least not without committing genocide and becoming the evil you sought to eradicate.
Hamas are more like Nazis. And in the end we - the UK, USA and USSR - did wipe out the Nazis, or at least totally strip them of power as we reduced their nation to rubble
It can be done. But it takes overwhelming force and the willingness to use it. Did Britain hold back the bombers in case we committed war crimes? No
You may say Gaza is not a threat like Hitler, but that's not how Israelis see it. This is a tragedy, but it is where we are
Countries at war do not supply goods and services to those they fight. Britain didn't. No country does. It will cause great suffering undoubtedly - especially for the innocent. And, yes, the hate will continue.
What I find odd is that Israel is expected to think about the morality of their actions. But Hamas are not. Hamas are not children. They have chosen to fight in the way they have and if the result of that is that the innocent on their side suffer they have to take responsibility for that.
Hamas could abandon now their goal of seeking to destroy Israel in its entirety and kill every Jew on the planet and then there might be the possibility of some peace and a 2-state solution. But they prefer to aim for the total destruction of Israel. Why should Israelis of all people be expected to turn the other cheek? What happened the last time they ignored the risks to them from those seeking their total elimination?
The Israelis, for their part, might also consider stopping shooting Palestinian kids, stealing Palestinian land and generally making Palestinian lives a misery. It's a two way street.
You have just missed Cyclefree’s point about unequal expectations by the proverbial country mile.
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I agree with that. But 4 is the only one that doesn't eventually lead us back to where we are now. 3 will result in years of Israel's security forces being sniped at, captured, and huge cost, without any real security, and eventually a more moderate government will pull out and we are back where we are now in due course.
4 solves this particular problem for ever. Different problems may arise but they will be physically further away. I think it is what I would do if I was a hard line Israeli if I could ignore the mass international opprobrium that would follow. And - no, I don't condone it.
Agreed that, if you take a very cold-blooded hard-hearted view (and no I do not agree with it), 4 is the one with the most chance of a permanent 'resolution'.
However, what I mentioned FPT may be a better bet, namely Egypt and Israel turn Gaza into a co-ruled state. The Egyptians can then do the hard crackdown stuff on Hamas and the internal order while the Israelis give them support and fund Gaza. In Egypt's case, that would probably mean giving them tons of money / Western weapons plus recognition for Sisi and a blind eye to what he does. However, as a solution, it may work.
That's actually a pretty good solution. It is maybe the only one which doesn't end in terrible perpetual suffering for Gazans, or total ethnic cleansing of Gaza (beyond all the dreamland two state stuff)
Unfortunately I doubt Egypt will be interested, but maybe a TON of money could do it
There will be no permanent solution until Hamas abandons its aim to eliminate Israel entirely. Lose that and a solution can be found.
That aim is loudly proclaimed on the streets of London, Sydney and other western cities and wouldn't go away if Hamas did a deal, so in reality Israel's only solution is victory.
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I suspect you are sadly correct. The thing that may prevent 4 is that the sheer international condemnation that will attract, and the risk this escalates the war to other Arab nations. But 3 has all the hallmarks of the worst decades of The Troubles, but even worse. Depressing.
The Troubles provide a map for now to solve these problems. Use security forces to stop attacks, but acknowledge the underlying issues leading to the violence and work for a settlement, including by talking to people who have waged attacks.
Exactly. In the end you have to talk. Israel cannot wipe out Hamas any more than the UK could wipe out the IRA, at least not without committing genocide and becoming the evil they sought to eradicate.
Absolutely. The difficulty that has been faced time and again is that Hamas doesn't and might not ever recognise Israel's right to exist. I think that it is a reasonable prerequisite for talks.
And if you ask Hamas they are quite comfortable with the martyrdom quota increasing as it has been and will continue to do so, intensely I'm sure, over the next few days and weeks.
As I noted (several times) previously the aim of the Hamas leadership is the cessation of Israel as a phenomenon.
It’s amazing how far Sopel has fallen. As BBC Washington DC corespondent it felt like he cared about facts. By contrast, that tweet is all about making his own narrative.
It’s an obvious and artificial contrast, that someone was going to highlight, but I am disappointed that it was him. Fair enough for this website to repost it of course, as it has an agenda and is entitled to advance it.
He's got a Podcast he needs to drive traffic to.
Yeah but isn't the whole point of his podcast to state facts and challenge misinformation? Yet there he on Twitter spreading his own misinformation?
I really don't believe the anti-Semitism we see is a result of the existence of Israel. Zionism *may* be a compounding factor, but anti-Semitism has existed for Millenia, long before modern Israel.
If Jews were to leave Israel tomorrow and spread out to every other country in the world, the same people will find reasons to hate them. Again, as has happened for so many generations.
for this reason, I can understand why Jews feel they need a land in which they can feel safe.
I listened to a podcast the other week, which featured someone talking about his granddad, who had been in a concentration camp. His grandfather was lucky enough to be liberated, and had asked a Russian where he should go. "Don't go west," the Russian said, because there was fighting there. "Don't go east, either," he also said. Because they did not want them.
Hence, Israel.
There is a book I read years ago about the Roman attitude to the Jews and its conclusion was that many of the roots of anti-Semitism started with the Romans. They were incensed with the Jews refusal even to pay lip service to Roman requirements, which was made worse by their rebellions against Roman rule. And their response to those rebellions was very severe, more so than with other rebellious groups. That hatred of Jews was then absorbed by Christians, who added their own reasons for hating them. But it did not start with them.
Let's see: Israel gave up land for peace with Egypt. That seems to have worked out well, for years. (In fact, I read the other day that Egypt's school textbooks are now even handed.) Of course that peace deal was one of the reasons Anwar Sadat was assassinated.
Israel occupied Gaza for some years, but withdrew, giving up land for peace. That has not worked out well.
For years, Syria bombarded Israeli settlements from the Golan heights. Israel captured them, and ended the bombardment, and has annexed the land. That is, so far, working out well.
The prospect of power is clearly a great aphrodisiac, including for party conference attendees
Tony Blair gained 146 seats in 1997, (from 273 seats after boundary changes to 419 seats). Keir Starmer needs 123 seats for a majority before boundary changes, which will probably rise to about 130 seats after taking them into consideration. When you look at those figures, it still seems like a difficult task for Labour to win an overall majority.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Maybe. But they are meaningless in the context of an ongoing operation. As they have been in conflicts throughout history.
The prospect of power is clearly a great aphrodisiac, including for party conference attendees
Tony Blair gained 146 seats in 1997, (from 273 seats after boundary changes to 419 seats). Keir Starmer needs 123 seats for a majority before boundary changes, which will probably rise to about 130 seats after taking them into consideration. When you look at those figures, it still seems like a difficult task for Labour to win an overall majority.
Though set against that, Kinnock had picked a decent amount of the low-hanging fruit in 1992... it's just that Major held on to just enough.
Starmer is starting from further back, but there are a lot of seats that should fall very easily indeed.
And the Conservatives are very unpopular, and seem set to stay that way until they leave office.
Today on WatO the Hamas spokesman mis-named X as Twitter so that is one enemy they have made that will be formidable.
Also he said that there was no proof that the op had incurred any civilian casualties and that we only had social media's word that any civilians had been killed.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
On topic, this is potentially rather misleading from Jon Sopel. Attendance at speeches in the hall always varies quite a bit depending on speaker, time of day, and what's going on in terms of fringe events.
It may very well be that the Labour conference is better attended and more upbeat, as you might expect with a big poll lead. But I'm not sure these photos necessarily demonstrate that.
Jon Sopel struggles to keep any sort of balance these days e.g. see his reaction to Huw Edwards story. He has gone rather Jonathan Pie in many of his takes.
I mean I can understand many of his frustrations with the current sack of shit (and obviously he hates Brexit), but he certainly allows it to cloud his judgment.
He is part of a centrist Dad podcast with the Emily Maitlis who is definitely on the same journey as he is, and Lewis Goodall. There must be money to be made in these Podcasts. They are springing up everywhere.
Problem with it, and other podcasts, as was said online last week it is largely people talking to each other who agree with each other or disagree at the margins.
It just the same traditional media bubble just shifted to podcast form and free to say what they really think (which we already could guess).
Their YouTube version of the podcast does very poorly, I presume the audio version must be doing ok. Although its Global who have pumped a load of money into starting these, so its difficult to tell how well they do business wise.
Spotify have taken a massive haircut over a similar strategy.
There has to be a point at which they will expect these podcasts to make money, either through a subscription model or advertising. However the moment they go for either I think they lost a fair chunk of their audience to other similar services.
Advertising revenue sharing on Youtube is an option but, as you say, their hit rate is dire so they won't yield a great deal.
GB News was hoping to be able to monetise Youtube but their hitrate, same with Times Radio, also seems to be quite poor too.
GB News have actually had 1 billion views on their YouTube channel ( compared to NewsAgents 3.5 million)....no idea what CPM is on these kind of 3 min snippets of news shows, but I would imagine very very low.
Mr Tesla videos on YouTube will have the details, but I think a YouTube video has to be a minimum length before it is monetised. Something like eight minutes. I think, therefore, that there is zero income from YouTube videos shorter than that.
No. I've a 58 second clip that I uploaded 10 years ago that for whatever reason last year suddenly tickled the fancy of the Youtube algorithm. At it's peak it earnt over £100/day, 18 months on it's settled down at an average of about £60/month. RPM is about 35p now, when it first went viral it was more like 75p.
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I agree with that. But 4 is the only one that doesn't eventually lead us back to where we are now. 3 will result in years of Israel's security forces being sniped at, captured, and huge cost, without any real security, and eventually a more moderate government will pull out and we are back where we are now in due course.
4 solves this particular problem for ever. Different problems may arise but they will be physically further away. I think it is what I would do if I was a hard line Israeli if I could ignore the mass international opprobrium that would follow. And - no, I don't condone it.
Agreed that, if you take a very cold-blooded hard-hearted view (and no I do not agree with it), 4 is the one with the most chance of a permanent 'resolution'.
However, what I mentioned FPT may be a better bet, namely Egypt and Israel turn Gaza into a co-ruled state. The Egyptians can then do the hard crackdown stuff on Hamas and the internal order while the Israelis give them support and fund Gaza. In Egypt's case, that would probably mean giving them tons of money / Western weapons plus recognition for Sisi and a blind eye to what he does. However, as a solution, it may work.
That's actually a pretty good solution. It is maybe the only one which doesn't end in terrible perpetual suffering for Gazans, or total ethnic cleansing of Gaza (beyond all the dreamland two state stuff)
Unfortunately I doubt Egypt will be interested, but maybe a TON of money could do it
There will be no permanent solution until Hamas abandons its aim to eliminate Israel entirely. Lose that and a solution can be found.
That aim is loudly proclaimed on the streets of London, Sydney and other western cities and wouldn't go away if Hamas did a deal, so in reality Israel's only solution is victory.
No, it isn't. Hardliners can be outflanked by talks. The IRA proclaimed loudly that nothing would satisfy them but a united Ireland, but in the end compromise was found.
Today on WatO the Hamas spokesman mis-named X as Twitter so that is one enemy they have made that will be formidable.
Also he said that there was no proof that the op had incurred any civilian casualties and that we only had social media's word that any civilians had been killed.
There are people on TwitterX vocally complaining that there is no “concrete” evidence that Gazans have raped Israeli girls, so it’s all OK. Like, yeah, OK, they kidnapped, tortured, murdered and beheaded people, but rape? No! They’re good Muslim boys
And this despite plentiful “concrete evidence” of wholesale rape, including eye witnesses at the rave
Today on WatO the Hamas spokesman mis-named X as Twitter so that is one enemy they have made that will be formidable.
Also he said that there was no proof that the op had incurred any civilian casualties and that we only had social media's word that any civilians had been killed.
Interesting that Hamas were on the BBC. Did they interview ISIS or Al-Qaeda?
Today on WatO the Hamas spokesman mis-named X as Twitter so that is one enemy they have made that will be formidable.
Also he said that there was no proof that the op had incurred any civilian casualties and that we only had social media's word that any civilians had been killed.
Dead-naming, that might finally get the Queers for Palestine to rethink their position....
The prospect of power is clearly a great aphrodisiac, including for party conference attendees
Tony Blair gained 146 seats in 1997, (from 273 seats after boundary changes to 419 seats). Keir Starmer needs 123 seats for a majority before boundary changes, which will probably rise to about 130 seats after taking them into consideration. When you look at those figures, it still seems like a difficult task for Labour to win an overall majority.
I'm slightly sceptical about that approach to the challenge facing Labour. The swing is the thing. If Labour has a 10 percentage point lead on election day, it really doesn't matter how many seats they need to gain compared with historic results - they are going to win fairly handily.
Today on WatO the Hamas spokesman mis-named X as Twitter so that is one enemy they have made that will be formidable.
Also he said that there was no proof that the op had incurred any civilian casualties and that we only had social media's word that any civilians had been killed.
Interesting that Hamas were on the BBC. Did they interview ISIS or Al-Qaeda?
Sarah Montague was robust in her questioning but the whole proscribed/terrorist thing was not addressed.
On the one hand you are hearing different points of view, while on the other people might hear on the BBC "no Israeli civilians killed" and think oh, no civilians killed in Hamas' op in Israel over the weekend.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
The prospect of power is clearly a great aphrodisiac, including for party conference attendees
Tony Blair gained 146 seats in 1997, (from 273 seats after boundary changes to 419 seats). Keir Starmer needs 123 seats for a majority before boundary changes, which will probably rise to about 130 seats after taking them into consideration. When you look at those figures, it still seems like a difficult task for Labour to win an overall majority.
Though set against that, Kinnock had picked a decent amount of the low-hanging fruit in 1992... it's just that Major held on to just enough.
Starmer is starting from further back, but there are a lot of seats that should fall very easily indeed.
And the Conservatives are very unpopular, and seem set to stay that way until they leave office.
We've had the graph showing the "record" number of seats needed on this site a few times, and that point has always come to my mind.
Focusing on the number of seats Labour needs to win is a mistake. Has there ever been a landslide majority where the opposition then had a 20pt lead in the polls for comparison?
Starmer might not have the same positive vibe that Blair had in 1997, but to get a majority he doesn't need to get anywhere like as deep into Tory territory as Blair did.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
They should decide not to have Hamas as their leadership.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
Via a humanitarian corridor which needs to be set up. As you say, Egypt has been just as complicit as Israel at imprisoning Gaza. The IDF are coming in from the top and the side - people will flee towards Rafa.
So either Egypt lets people cross its border or there will be a bloodbath.
We can't sell the IDF anything because everything they have is better than our stuff (even their F35s)
We can't send regular troops because that's actually a declaration of war
We could send in special forces, but I can't help thinking the IDF don't need them
Stuff like reconnaissance might help, but not much: everything they are deploying is small and quick
Unlikely Israel needs UK assets or support right now, but not impossible. As noted above, the big question is what does demilitarising Gaza and emasculating Hamas look like?
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
Via a humanitarian corridor which needs to be set up. As you say, Egypt has been just as complicit as Israel at imprisoning Gaza. The IDF are coming in from the top and the side - people will flee towards Rafa.
So either Egypt lets people cross its border or there will be a bloodbath.
Which with the best will in the world will take weeks even if all sides agree. And then what do you do with 3 million people?
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I agree with that. But 4 is the only one that doesn't eventually lead us back to where we are now. 3 will result in years of Israel's security forces being sniped at, captured, and huge cost, without any real security, and eventually a more moderate government will pull out and we are back where we are now in due course.
4 solves this particular problem for ever. Different problems may arise but they will be physically further away. I think it is what I would do if I was a hard line Israeli if I could ignore the mass international opprobrium that would follow. And - no, I don't condone it.
Agreed that, if you take a very cold-blooded hard-hearted view (and no I do not agree with it), 4 is the one with the most chance of a permanent 'resolution'.
However, what I mentioned FPT may be a better bet, namely Egypt and Israel turn Gaza into a co-ruled state. The Egyptians can then do the hard crackdown stuff on Hamas and the internal order while the Israelis give them support and fund Gaza. In Egypt's case, that would probably mean giving them tons of money / Western weapons plus recognition for Sisi and a blind eye to what he does. However, as a solution, it may work.
That's actually a pretty good solution. It is maybe the only one which doesn't end in terrible perpetual suffering for Gazans, or total ethnic cleansing of Gaza (beyond all the dreamland two state stuff)
Unfortunately I doubt Egypt will be interested, but maybe a TON of money could do it
There will be no permanent solution until Hamas abandons its aim to eliminate Israel entirely. Lose that and a solution can be found.
That aim is loudly proclaimed on the streets of London, Sydney and other western cities and wouldn't go away if Hamas did a deal, so in reality Israel's only solution is victory.
No, it isn't. Hardliners can be outflanked by talks. The IRA proclaimed loudly that nothing would satisfy them but a united Ireland, but in the end compromise was found.
That compromise entailed codifying a process to achieve a united Ireland peacefully.
How could an equivalent process for the abolition of Israel be negotiated?
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
They should decide not to have Hamas as their leadership.
Even coming from you that is genuinely one of the stupidest comments any one has made on this topic.
I suppose the Catholics in Northern Ireland deserved to be bombed out and killed because they had Sinn Féin councillors.
The prospect of power is clearly a great aphrodisiac, including for party conference attendees
Tony Blair gained 146 seats in 1997, (from 273 seats after boundary changes to 419 seats). Keir Starmer needs 123 seats for a majority before boundary changes, which will probably rise to about 130 seats after taking them into consideration. When you look at those figures, it still seems like a difficult task for Labour to win an overall majority.
Yes. But these numbers are interesting: Labour need to gain 123 to have control of events, with 325 seats.
But the Tories only need to lose 41 seats to lose control of events (324 seats)
There are lots of qualifications to this - eg the Tories could form a government with about 314 seats because of reasons (though it would be little fun). But that massive 82 seat gap between 'Labour control' and 'Tories lose control' gives a very large, and very probable, area for an interesting result.
Add to that that tiny majorities are also interesting results, an interesting result is pretty possible.
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I agree with that. But 4 is the only one that doesn't eventually lead us back to where we are now. 3 will result in years of Israel's security forces being sniped at, captured, and huge cost, without any real security, and eventually a more moderate government will pull out and we are back where we are now in due course.
4 solves this particular problem for ever. Different problems may arise but they will be physically further away. I think it is what I would do if I was a hard line Israeli if I could ignore the mass international opprobrium that would follow. And - no, I don't condone it.
Agreed that, if you take a very cold-blooded hard-hearted view (and no I do not agree with it), 4 is the one with the most chance of a permanent 'resolution'.
However, what I mentioned FPT may be a better bet, namely Egypt and Israel turn Gaza into a co-ruled state. The Egyptians can then do the hard crackdown stuff on Hamas and the internal order while the Israelis give them support and fund Gaza. In Egypt's case, that would probably mean giving them tons of money / Western weapons plus recognition for Sisi and a blind eye to what he does. However, as a solution, it may work.
That's actually a pretty good solution. It is maybe the only one which doesn't end in terrible perpetual suffering for Gazans, or total ethnic cleansing of Gaza (beyond all the dreamland two state stuff)
Unfortunately I doubt Egypt will be interested, but maybe a TON of money could do it
There will be no permanent solution until Hamas abandons its aim to eliminate Israel entirely. Lose that and a solution can be found.
That aim is loudly proclaimed on the streets of London, Sydney and other western cities and wouldn't go away if Hamas did a deal, so in reality Israel's only solution is victory.
No, it isn't. Hardliners can be outflanked by talks. The IRA proclaimed loudly that nothing would satisfy them but a united Ireland, but in the end compromise was found.
That compromise entailed codifying a process to achieve a united Ireland peacefully.
How could an equivalent process for the abolition of Israel be negotiated?
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Maybe. But they are meaningless in the context of an ongoing operation. As they have been in conflicts throughout history.
I don't agree. It is true that wars are horrendous and terrible stuff happens in them. That doesn't mean the horrors aren't mitigated to some degree by the fear of consequences when a conflict is over - they do tend to give at least some pause for thought when it comes to killing someone who surrenders, allowing your soldiers entirely free run of the town you've captures, or shooting at doctors.
Not to say these things never happen - clearly they do - but they almost certainly happen less that they otherwise would.
In "Playing to the Edge", Michael Hayden describes how, in hunting terrorists, the US tried to avoid killing innocents along with the guilty. So, naturally, the terrorists often used innocents as shields. For example, a terrorist leaving his home might always keep a grandson beside him.
Then there are the accidental killings. From time to time one reads of gang bangers in US cities killing small children. I am not an apologist for gang bangers, but from the accounts I have read, those killings are almost always accidents; the child was too close to someone the gang banger was trying to kill.
Speaking to local mayors on Israel's southern border earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country's response would "change the Middle East".
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
They should decide not to have Hamas as their leadership.
Even coming from you that is genuinely one of the stupidest comments any one has made on this topic.
I suppose the Catholics in Northern Ireland deserved to be bombed out and killed because they had Sinn Féin councillors.
There is huge support in Gaza for the Hamas leadership. They can send thousands of "militants" to Israel on near suicide missions. They have mass rallies of hundreds of thousands in the streets protesting against Israel and the Great Satan. They show pictures of six-yr old girls wielding AKs and crying with happiness at the onslaught happening in Israel.
But they are all harmless civilians who only want to find a way out of danger.
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I agree with that. But 4 is the only one that doesn't eventually lead us back to where we are now. 3 will result in years of Israel's security forces being sniped at, captured, and huge cost, without any real security, and eventually a more moderate government will pull out and we are back where we are now in due course.
4 solves this particular problem for ever. Different problems may arise but they will be physically further away. I think it is what I would do if I was a hard line Israeli if I could ignore the mass international opprobrium that would follow. And - no, I don't condone it.
Agreed that, if you take a very cold-blooded hard-hearted view (and no I do not agree with it), 4 is the one with the most chance of a permanent 'resolution'.
However, what I mentioned FPT may be a better bet, namely Egypt and Israel turn Gaza into a co-ruled state. The Egyptians can then do the hard crackdown stuff on Hamas and the internal order while the Israelis give them support and fund Gaza. In Egypt's case, that would probably mean giving them tons of money / Western weapons plus recognition for Sisi and a blind eye to what he does. However, as a solution, it may work.
That's actually a pretty good solution. It is maybe the only one which doesn't end in terrible perpetual suffering for Gazans, or total ethnic cleansing of Gaza (beyond all the dreamland two state stuff)
Unfortunately I doubt Egypt will be interested, but maybe a TON of money could do it
There will be no permanent solution until Hamas abandons its aim to eliminate Israel entirely. Lose that and a solution can be found.
That aim is loudly proclaimed on the streets of London, Sydney and other western cities and wouldn't go away if Hamas did a deal, so in reality Israel's only solution is victory.
No, it isn't. Hardliners can be outflanked by talks. The IRA proclaimed loudly that nothing would satisfy them but a united Ireland, but in the end compromise was found.
That compromise entailed codifying a process to achieve a united Ireland peacefully.
How could an equivalent process for the abolition of Israel be negotiated?
Ireland isn't united. It's still two countries.
One and a half on average? All in the EU, effectively, and dual citizenship in the North, anyway (though UKG does try to ignore that, as when allowing spouses in or rather not allowing).
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
They should decide not to have Hamas as their leadership.
Even coming from you that is genuinely one of the stupidest comments any one has made on this topic.
I suppose the Catholics in Northern Ireland deserved to be bombed out and killed because they had Sinn Féin councillors.
Actually, it's worse than that, since elections in Palestine are currently suspended pending goodness-knows-what. (Which, it probably needs saying but shouldn't, is very obviously a bad thing.)
Wondering whether the Corbynites still left in Labour might sense an opportunity here to go full public with what is happening in the Middle East - not only do you sprout what you believe in and will have more of an audience than you usually do but, by doing so, you undermine SKS - whose position is rooted in the belief he can deliver a majority but is not loved - by hurting Labour.
The thing is that most people still in the Labour party who you would call Corbynites do not want to hurt the Labour party, because they still see it as the best vehicle for positive change and see the Tories as such a problem. This is part of why I think Starmer's shift rightward is more real than strategic - he knows the left do not have anywhere else to go, he also knows that many of Corbyn's more moderate policies (such as renationalisation) have broad support from across the political spectrum. He isn't doing those things because he doesn't believe in them.
Yes. This is the flipside of Labourism - the belief that Labour is the only valid vehicle for progressive change in Britain.
Just as Labour members believe that the Greens, LibDems and various nats can never deserve the votes of progressives, the corollary is that they must never leave the Labour party to start their own, even when the leadership has taken a direction with which they strongly disagree.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
They should decide not to have Hamas as their leadership.
Even coming from you that is genuinely one of the stupidest comments any one has made on this topic.
I suppose the Catholics in Northern Ireland deserved to be bombed out and killed because they had Sinn Féin councillors.
There is huge support in Gaza for the Hamas leadership. They can send thousands of "militants" to Israel on near suicide missions. They have mass rallies of hundreds of thousands in the streets protesting against Israel and the Great Satan. They show pictures of six-yr old girls wielding AKs and crying with happiness at the onslaught happening in Israel.
But they are all harmless civilians who only want to find a way out of danger.
It must be very strange living inside your head where everything in the world is so black and white.
It is dangerously close to exactly the sort of attitude that led to Rwanda, Bosnia and indeed the Holocaust. Regarding people as a mass (and indeed to use the words of your friend Netenyahu as animals) rather than individuals is an easy road to 'untermensch'.
There are broadly 4 possible outcomes to the Gaza crisis:
1. The status quo is maintained with a ceasefire or similar. It is hard to see this.
2. Gaza’s current “status” is maintained but with Israel driving Hamas from power - a possible outcome but what replaces Hamas? Not entirely convincing that Israel will take that option, if it just means the cycle begins anew.
3. Full occupation of Gaza with some form of Israeli-backed government. Does create the potential for a long and bloody occupation and guerilla warfare.
4. The ‘nuclear option’ of Gaza being largely depopulated and fully annexed.
None of these options are good ones. The fifth (negotiated peace and a lasting solution) sadly looks far too remote to even suggest.
I agree with your analysis. I reckon, with some hesitation, it will be either 3 or 4, they are the only ones that give Israel the prize it wants: assurance that October 7 is not repeated
But Jeez they are bleak
I agree with that. But 4 is the only one that doesn't eventually lead us back to where we are now. 3 will result in years of Israel's security forces being sniped at, captured, and huge cost, without any real security, and eventually a more moderate government will pull out and we are back where we are now in due course.
4 solves this particular problem for ever. Different problems may arise but they will be physically further away. I think it is what I would do if I was a hard line Israeli if I could ignore the mass international opprobrium that would follow. And - no, I don't condone it.
Agreed that, if you take a very cold-blooded hard-hearted view (and no I do not agree with it), 4 is the one with the most chance of a permanent 'resolution'.
However, what I mentioned FPT may be a better bet, namely Egypt and Israel turn Gaza into a co-ruled state. The Egyptians can then do the hard crackdown stuff on Hamas and the internal order while the Israelis give them support and fund Gaza. In Egypt's case, that would probably mean giving them tons of money / Western weapons plus recognition for Sisi and a blind eye to what he does. However, as a solution, it may work.
That's actually a pretty good solution. It is maybe the only one which doesn't end in terrible perpetual suffering for Gazans, or total ethnic cleansing of Gaza (beyond all the dreamland two state stuff)
Unfortunately I doubt Egypt will be interested, but maybe a TON of money could do it
There will be no permanent solution until Hamas abandons its aim to eliminate Israel entirely. Lose that and a solution can be found.
That aim is loudly proclaimed on the streets of London, Sydney and other western cities and wouldn't go away if Hamas did a deal, so in reality Israel's only solution is victory.
No, it isn't. Hardliners can be outflanked by talks. The IRA proclaimed loudly that nothing would satisfy them but a united Ireland, but in the end compromise was found.
That compromise entailed codifying a process to achieve a united Ireland peacefully.
How could an equivalent process for the abolition of Israel be negotiated?
Ireland isn't united. It's still two countries.
That's not William's point as I understand it.
I think he's saying the NI Agreement codified a process that republicans could follow to achieve that underlying aim without violence (and also went some way to actually going there with some joint structures and self-governance). Has that yet led to a united Ireland? Clearly not, but the argument that the best way of achieving that goal remains through politics rather than the gun does seem to have achieved widespread acceptance for all the problems at Stormont.
With the Middle East, the aim of many people is the destruction of Israel as a homeland for Jewish people. You can potentially provide a roadmap for peacefully achieving a Palestinian state in addition to and perhaps even involving some land from Israel... but you can't for the annihilation of Israel.
In "Playing to the Edge", Michael Hayden describes how, in hunting terrorists, the US tried to avoid killing innocents along with the guilty. So, naturally, the terrorists often used innocents as shields. For example, a terrorist leaving his home might always keep a grandson beside him.
Then there are the accidental killings. From time to time one reads of gang bangers in US cities killing small children. I am not an apologist for gang bangers, but from the accounts I have read, those killings are almost always accidents; the child was too close to someone the gang banger was trying to kill.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
Via a humanitarian corridor which needs to be set up. As you say, Egypt has been just as complicit as Israel at imprisoning Gaza. The IDF are coming in from the top and the side - people will flee towards Rafa.
So either Egypt lets people cross its border or there will be a bloodbath.
Which with the best will in the world will take weeks even if all sides agree. And then what do you do with 3 million people?
And Israel won't wait. They want blood.
3 million who now have no consistent supply of food, water, electricity, and medication.
Speaking to local mayors on Israel's southern border earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country's response would "change the Middle East".
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
Via a humanitarian corridor which needs to be set up. As you say, Egypt has been just as complicit as Israel at imprisoning Gaza. The IDF are coming in from the top and the side - people will flee towards Rafa.
So either Egypt lets people cross its border or there will be a bloodbath.
Which with the best will in the world will take weeks even if all sides agree. And then what do you do with 3 million people?
And Israel won't wait. They want blood.
Israel *can't* wait - Hamas continue to attack them.
Killing those from other countries and attacking a music festival full of young people who were there to promote peace must surely go down as one of the worst ever decisions made by Hamas .
This really does change the feelings amongst the international community .
In "Playing to the Edge", Michael Hayden describes how, in hunting terrorists, the US tried to avoid killing innocents along with the guilty. So, naturally, the terrorists often used innocents as shields. For example, a terrorist leaving his home might always keep a grandson beside him.
Then there are the accidental killings. From time to time one reads of gang bangers in US cities killing small children. I am not an apologist for gang bangers, but from the accounts I have read, those killings are almost always accidents; the child was too close to someone the gang banger was trying to kill.
I am not sure that the previous Israeli use of white phosphorus against civilians in Gaza could be considered accidental.
In "Playing to the Edge", Michael Hayden describes how, in hunting terrorists, the US tried to avoid killing innocents along with the guilty. So, naturally, the terrorists often used innocents as shields. For example, a terrorist leaving his home might always keep a grandson beside him.
In Basra the Iraqis used to get kids to drop grenades off road bridges on to our vehicles in the occasionally erroneous hope that we wouldn't shoot them off the bridge.
Even now, using some primal survival instinct that cannot be deracinated, I occasionally switch lanes while under a bridge in case a skinny eleven year old is trying to drop a fucking RKG on me.
Speaking to local mayors on Israel's southern border earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country's response would "change the Middle East".
They’re gonna bring Gaza to some kind of end
Well he certainly marching to the edge with such rhetoric.
I really don't believe the anti-Semitism we see is a result of the existence of Israel. Zionism *may* be a compounding factor, but anti-Semitism has existed for Millenia, long before modern Israel.
If Jews were to leave Israel tomorrow and spread out to every other country in the world, the same people will find reasons to hate them. Again, as has happened for so many generations.
for this reason, I can understand why Jews feel they need a land in which they can feel safe.
I listened to a podcast the other week, which featured someone talking about his granddad, who had been in a concentration camp. His grandfather was lucky enough to be liberated, and had asked a Russian where he should go. "Don't go west," the Russian said, because there was fighting there. "Don't go east, either," he also said. Because they did not want them.
Hence, Israel.
There is a book I read years ago about the Roman attitude to the Jews and its conclusion was that many of the roots of anti-Semitism started with the Romans. They were incensed with the Jews refusal even to pay lip service to Roman requirements, which was made worse by their rebellions against Roman rule. And their response to those rebellions was very severe, more so than with other rebellious groups. That hatred of Jews was then absorbed by Christians, who added their own reasons for hating them. But it did not start with them.
Probably "Rome and Jerusalem" by Martin Goodman, which should be read in conjunction with "Pax" by Tom Holland.
Antisemitism probably begins with Antiochus Epiphanes, who attempted to force the Jews to worship the Greek Pantheon. They revolted under Judas Maccabeus.
The Romans disliked Judaism, but respected its antiquity. Caesar, Pompey, Augustus, and Tiberius were all pretty tolerant. They accepted Jewish prayers for the Emperor, in return for not requiring the Jews to sacrifice to the Imperial Cult. Things deteriorated under Caligula, and Claudius, with a succession of rotten Roman governors, until revolt exploded in 66AD.
Even then, the Jewish upper classes wanted nothing to do with the revolt, and largely supported Rome. The Roman response was utterly ruthless. Captured fighters were crucified, or fed to beasts. Towns and villages were razed, and the inhabitants slaughtered or sold as slaves. Jerusalem was besieged closely, then systematically destroyed. The survivors were all sold.
What was unusual was that the Romans refused to allow the Jews to rebuilt the Temple, something they rarely did to other conquered peoples, while still requiring all Jews to pa the tax for its upkeep. Official Roman propaganda portrayed the Jews as enemies. and it was left to Hadrian to provoke a Jewish revolt, by building a temple to Jupiter in Jerusalem, and banning circumcision, which was put down with wholesale slaughter and deportation.
Never believe the "woke" view of the Roman empire as a place of religious and racial tolerance, which is propagated by people like Catherine Nixey.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
They should decide not to have Hamas as their leadership.
Even coming from you that is genuinely one of the stupidest comments any one has made on this topic.
I suppose the Catholics in Northern Ireland deserved to be bombed out and killed because they had Sinn Féin councillors.
Actually, it's worse than that, since elections in Palestine are currently suspended pending goodness-knows-what. (Which, it probably needs saying but shouldn't, is very obviously a bad thing.)
Which do you think is the case:
The poor people of Gaza are being oppressed by the horrible Hamas government and only want peace with Israel; or there is huge popular support for Hamas and their avowed intention to wipe Israel off the map.
As the BBC guy said today, there is a bit of buyers' remorse amongst the population of Gaza right now.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
They should decide not to have Hamas as their leadership.
Even coming from you that is genuinely one of the stupidest comments any one has made on this topic.
I suppose the Catholics in Northern Ireland deserved to be bombed out and killed because they had Sinn Féin councillors.
There is huge support in Gaza for the Hamas leadership. They can send thousands of "militants" to Israel on near suicide missions. They have mass rallies of hundreds of thousands in the streets protesting against Israel and the Great Satan. They show pictures of six-yr old girls wielding AKs and crying with happiness at the onslaught happening in Israel.
But they are all harmless civilians who only want to find a way out of danger.
It must be very strange living inside your head where everything in the world is so black and white.
It is dangerously close to exactly the sort of attitude that led to Rwanda, Bosnia and indeed the Holocaust. Regarding people as a mass (and indeed to use the words of your friend Netenyahu as animals) rather than individuals is an easy road to 'untermensch'.
But he’s technically right. Polls show that large proportions of Gazans support the goals of Hamas: the elimination of Israel, the replacement of Jews with Arabs
Is it all Gazans? No, of course not. But then only a large minority of Germans voted for Hitler, and that was enough to start a war where we considered every German an automatic enemy
The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told U.S. President Biden during a Phone Call yesterday that Israel will launch an Invasion of the Gaza Strip because they have “No Choice” and that Hamas has now Forced them to make the Decision for a Long and Difficult War.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
Well, the idea of rules in war goes back many centuries, arguably millennia, and by and large most combatants in war have, at times, made choices not to do things. So I think there is such a thing as war crimes and we have, as a global community, made many steps towards an agreed an enforceable system of international law in war. And thank heavens for that! Thank heavens politicians and military leaders around the world have tried to be better than you.
The fact that Israel has the ability to cut off power , water and food supplies to Gaza highlights one of the issues that have bred hatred .
Hamas lives off the hatred . Children are brought up with the hatred and it’s just a repeating cycle.
There are still those on both sides who wanted a peaceful resolution , sadly that’s been consigned to the bin for yet more years .
Israel can raze Gaza to the ground but the hatred will remain .
But if the Israelis can somehow shift the Gazans into Egypt, then the hatred will be further away, and the chances of Hamas repeating their spectacular incursion will be greatly minimised
I do wonder if that is what the Israelis are planning. I don't see any other point in wading into Gaza at the cost of many thousands of lives, quite a few of them Israeli
Will Egypt accept them ? The whole situation is just awful. There are no good outcomes here .
Absolutely. No good outcomes
If Egypt seals the border (and they have tightened control this morning) then Israel will be left with a cornered population unable to go anywhere. What then?
I may be wrong and this isn't the Israeli plan, but then I am bewildered as to what Israel thinks it can achieve with ANOTHER invasion that does nothing but stir up evermore enmity. It simply ensures further attacks down the line
As I said last night, they might possibly be planning a renewed Occupation of Gaza, with Israel in control, and the reintroduction of Israeli settlers, who will act as a de facto spy network and military police, so October 7 is not repeated. But that's damnably tricky and could so easily go wrong
The final possibility is that Israel doesn't have a plan. It is acting in a spirit of pure revenge
With whom would they negotiate? Hamas is the *government* of Gaza. Israel has declared war on Gaza amd it shouldn't be a surprise - its *government* has launched these attacks.
So the Israeli goal will I believe be simple - remove Hamas as a threat. How they achieve that is tricky, but they won't just be pushing the cross-border terrorists back into their prison.
Removal of Hamas - and the Hamas state - has to be the goal. And that will largely mean the killing of anyone who is Hamas, supports Hamas, lives near Hamas. It is going to be awful - war usually is. Especially when the aggressor is pledged to the extermination of the other side.
That may be Israel’s strategy. That (“killing of anyone who […] lives near Hamas”) would clearly be a war crime and we, as in the UK, should do everything we can to stop war crimes. We cannot criticise Russia for war crimes in Ukraine and wave through Israel, or Hamas, committing war crimes.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
"war crimes" is a fantasy. There is/are no such thing. They only exist for the winners in war.
The fact that they are typically enforced against the vanquished rather than the victors doesn't mean they aren't a "thing".
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Should Israel deliberately target civilians? No. Do civilians have some responsibility to flee a war zone? Yes. Again Hamas are not just embedded in the civilian population, they are the government. So eradicating them is going to involve blowing a great many buildings up.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
How exactly do 3 million people flee a war zone when they are not allowed to leave by any of the surrounding countries?
They should decide not to have Hamas as their leadership.
Even coming from you that is genuinely one of the stupidest comments any one has made on this topic.
I suppose the Catholics in Northern Ireland deserved to be bombed out and killed because they had Sinn Féin councillors.
There is huge support in Gaza for the Hamas leadership. They can send thousands of "militants" to Israel on near suicide missions. They have mass rallies of hundreds of thousands in the streets protesting against Israel and the Great Satan. They show pictures of six-yr old girls wielding AKs and crying with happiness at the onslaught happening in Israel.
But they are all harmless civilians who only want to find a way out of danger.
It must be very strange living inside your head where everything in the world is so black and white.
It is dangerously close to exactly the sort of attitude that led to Rwanda, Bosnia and indeed the Holocaust. Regarding people as a mass (and indeed to use the words of your friend Netenyahu as animals) rather than individuals is an easy road to 'untermensch'.
You seem pretty conflicted about it all.
Those poor Gazans who turned out in their hundreds of thousands to celebrate actions against Israel are now to be pitied. Of course it's best that civilians leave and they can do so via Egypt or indeed the coast if they wanted to. I have heard nothing about a port blockade perhaps you know different.
I don't for one moment think that every German in 1939 was complicit in the German war aims but I have read nowhere of a safe passage being discussed for them to escape the country before we bombed it.
Killing those from other countries and attacking a music festival full of young people who were there to promote peace must surely go down as one of the worst ever decisions made by Hamas .
This really does change the feelings amongst the international community .
I was disappointed to see many in the international community, and politicians in the UK, Greens in Scotland, SF in the North of Ireland, supporting Hamas and justifying their actions.
I have been busy today but catching up on the thread it makes awful reading and goodness knows where this goes. Indeed having had a cup of tea on our patio just now, it makes us realise how fortunate we are to live in the UK, despite the ups and downs
I just 'hope and pray' that the innocent Israeli and Palestinians find safe refuge from the worst of 'mans inhumanity to man'
I missed Rachel Reeves speech but judging by this thread, and the media generally, I doubt it will achieve the cut through labour hoped, when to be fair UK domestic politics is a side show at present
I would comment that I am very sorry for Scotland's First Minister and his family and, frankly, I cannot understand why the SNP haven't immediately terminated their arrangements with the Greens following some dreadful comments by one their msps:-
Scotland's First Minister Humza Yousaf says his parents-in-law are trapped in Gaza after Hamas attack on Israel
Mr Yousaf issued an "unequivocal condemnation" of the Hamas attack. He said both he and his wife "cannot sleep" due to worry and said his parents-in-law are "trapped" in Gaza and is fearful whether they will "make it through the night or not".
The parents of Humza Yousaf's wife Nadia El-Nakla were in Gaza visiting family when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel at the weekend, killing hundreds, according to reports.
Speaking to journalists on Monday, Mr Yousaf said: "As many will know, my wife is Palestinian. Her mum and dad, my in-laws, who live in Dundee, live in Scotland, they've been in Gaza and are currently trapped in Gaza, I'm afraid."
The trapped couple were visiting the father-in-law's 92-year-old "elderly and frail" mother when the Hamas attack took place.
They have since been told by Israeli authorities to leave because "Gaza will effectively be obliterated", the first minister said.
Apparently the list of projects that the HS2 money was going to be spent on was only illustrative !
As revealed by Mark Harper on the BBC yesterday morning
Mark Harper must be mistaken. The government are definitely investing £1bn to electrify the North Wales Coast mainline. No equivocation, no caveats, Sunak announced it so it's real*. Whats more the people of North Wales are very supportive of the government for this excellent development
*Vreenack: "Its a FAAAAAAKE" Sisko: "Its REEEEAAAAKLLLL" etc
Comments
There is a risk to Sisi of course but he can probably fend it off by claiming he has (part)reclaimed lost territories and / or is taking over the 'welfare' of his co-religionists.
It also stops a sh1tload of immigrants coming his way.
Ukraine must be salty that the Semitic Military Operation is the new hotness and is getting all the clicks.
France24 has just 5 minutes explaining cricket !
It's all very depressing, however you look at it.
This is going to be as bad as Ukraine, possibly worse. Fantastic. Dystopia in stereo
Meanwhile it sounds like Israeli soldiers are now in Gaza. It begins
Hebrew Channel 12: Battles taking place between the IOF and Palestinian fighters in the Sufa settlement, south of Gaza.
https://x.com/WarMonitors/status/1711370452818382968?s=20
What on earth will they have to discuss.
If Hamas can be defeated and a relative period of stability for Gaza enforced then Gaza can be rebuilt - and should be kept at peace.
Explaining 3 different types of balls, and how the Indian one with extra raised seams helps it spin more.
Apparently protested by the cow protection movement.
Moving on...
What we are discussing is the dire possibility that Israel might do this tragic thing: in extremis
Back in March there was a flutter of nervousness about Iranian nuclear progress. Since then we’ve had the flirting by Sheikh MBS and most recently Biden unlocking $6bn to the Iranians.
And now we are back to where we were. I am surprised more is not being said about the 100 (mega) ton elephant in the room. Put to one side Gaza’s political status and the plight of its people. If you’re running Israel, it seems unfathomable to me that you would not go in hard on the Iranian nuclear facilities right now. What am I missing?
1) Can't pay people below band X, amount Y
2) Can't employee people at band Z - they aren't generalist managers!
3) Therefore the only way to pay people enough to get them in to do the job is consultancy.
This used to be true in banking, for instance. Apparently the sky would fall if someone permanent was paid more than their manager. But it was AOK for a consultant to be on far more (in effect).
Israel does not want to eradicate Arabs. It makes them citizens. But they have to *want* to be citizens. For the allahu akbar lot there is no negotiation, no compromise, no half-way measures. They will fight until they are killed. Have we not learned that with ISIS?
What would really help is if Egypt allows through its border women and children fleeing the war. If they don't then...
I think I've mentioned on here before that my kids are at a Jewish school, and with depressing predictability we've had the emails already about upping security (already fairly tight). It's not paranoia or imagination - antisemitism here will increase, as it always does in times of conflict in Israel-Palestine.
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: war crimes are bad. Don’t carry out war crimes. Don’t respond to say crimes with more war crimes. Why is that a proposition that some on PB struggle with?
BG Energy is potentially good if it is competently run and protected from the sticky fingers of the Trade Union bosses, who would wreck it.
National Wealth Fund - do we know what this is? How do we stop the next Govt + 1 plundering it and p*ssing it away on tax cuts?
CoL pegged minimum wage. In practice we already have this, do we not - since 2000, even under Cameron the salami slicer? It has gone up rapidly in real terms (middle line below).
There was the feed-the-rabid-dog-wing stuff - Independent Schools, non-doms and Stamp Duty on foreign property purchases, but the first is probably benefitless posturing, the second will raise only 3-4% of what is needed, if that, and the third may be a rounding error.
She needs at least £100bn a year from somewhere and has not explained where it is coming from.
I hope there are *major* reforms in the wings for when they win power.
The ~10 minute became the supposed optimal for the algorithm to maximise your revenue, hence why so many are around that length where people use filler to get the run length up, but AFAIK you get paid for videos less than this and I am not sure the 10 min thing even holds these days. YouTube is constantly playing a cat and mouse game over this.
That all been said, I am 99% certain the content farming approach GB News is using is something that was successful 4-5 years ago, but in more recent years YouTube had really clamped down on rewarding.
Israel does not treat Palestinians/Israeli Arabs as full citizens, nor does it want to include so many Palestinians within the nation of Israel that Israel ceases to have a Jewish majority.
But you love it really. Countries at war do not supply goods and services to those they fight. Britain didn't. No country does. It will cause great suffering undoubtedly - especially for the innocent. And, yes, the hate will continue.
What I find odd is that Israel is expected to think about the morality of their actions. But Hamas are not. Hamas are not children. They have chosen to fight in the way they have and if the result of that is that the innocent on their side suffer they have to take responsibility for that.
Hamas could abandon now their goal of seeking to destroy Israel in its entirety and kill every Jew on the planet and then there might be the possibility of some peace and a 2-state solution. But they prefer to aim for the total destruction of Israel. Why should Israelis of all people be expected to turn the other cheek? What happened the last time they ignored the risks to them from those seeking their total elimination?
In the US, the equivalent phrase, at one time, was "back of an envelope". Doubt that it is used much these days. I have, a number of times, actually seen envelopes used for rough calculations, though not recently.
(I sometimes like to use "orders of magnitude", to make it clear that I am giving rough approximations: For example: As president, Barack Obama told about an order of magnitude more falsehoods than George W. Bush; the Loser (as I call DJT) told at least an order of magnitude more falsehoods than Obama.)
My point about killing people who live near Hamas is fairly simple. Hamas militants are combatants and legitimate military targets. So don't live next door to the guy who shouts Allahu Akbar whilst firing AK47s into the sky 5 times a day. Because you know what is coming.
Suspect they'll still have issues cutting through on policy as a result.
It can be done. But it takes overwhelming force and the willingness to use it. Did Britain hold back the bombers in case we committed war crimes? No
You may say Gaza is not a threat like Hitler, but that's not how Israelis see it. This is a tragedy, but it is where we are
And if you ask Hamas they are quite comfortable with the martyrdom quota increasing as it has been and will continue to do so, intensely I'm sure, over the next few days and weeks.
As I noted (several times) previously the aim of the Hamas leadership is the cessation of Israel as a phenomenon.
Israel occupied Gaza for some years, but withdrew, giving up land for peace. That has not worked out well.
For years, Syria bombarded Israeli settlements from the Golan heights. Israel captured them, and ended the bombardment, and has annexed the land. That is, so far, working out well.
They are reasonably clearly defined by international convention, and provide at least some incentive to moderate the conduct of war in terms of impact on non-combatants. The incentive not to commit them is that if you turn out to be the vanquished, you'd probably rather slip away into exile and obscurity rather than ending up in The Hague or as a fugitive.
Tim Marshall
@Itwitius
Israeli media says sirens sounding in Jerusalem, sound of explosions.
Starmer is starting from further back, but there are a lot of seats that should fall very easily indeed.
And the Conservatives are very unpopular, and seem set to stay that way until they leave office.
Also he said that there was no proof that the op had incurred any civilian casualties and that we only had social media's word that any civilians had been killed.
If your neighbour fires his AK47 at prayers 5 times a day, it is time to leave. Because in wartime it is always legitimate to go after CCC targets regardless of where the enemy has put them.
And this despite plentiful “concrete evidence” of wholesale rape, including eye witnesses at the rave
Did they interview ISIS or Al-Qaeda?
On the one hand you are hearing different points of view, while on the other people might hear on the BBC "no Israeli civilians killed" and think oh, no civilians killed in Hamas' op in Israel over the weekend.
Focusing on the number of seats Labour needs to win is a mistake. Has there ever been a landslide majority where the opposition then had a 20pt lead in the polls for comparison?
Starmer might not have the same positive vibe that Blair had in 1997, but to get a majority he doesn't need to get anywhere like as deep into Tory territory as Blair did.
So either Egypt lets people cross its border or there will be a bloodbath.
There is also the Iranian dimension.
And Israel won't wait. They want blood.
How could an equivalent process for the abolition of Israel be negotiated?
I suppose the Catholics in Northern Ireland deserved to be bombed out and killed because they had Sinn Féin councillors.
But the Tories only need to lose 41 seats to lose control of events (324 seats)
There are lots of qualifications to this - eg the Tories could form a government with about 314 seats because of reasons (though it would be little fun). But that massive 82 seat gap between 'Labour control' and 'Tories lose control' gives a very large, and very probable, area for an interesting result.
Add to that that tiny majorities are also interesting results, an interesting result is pretty possible.
Not to say these things never happen - clearly they do - but they almost certainly happen less that they otherwise would.
Then there are the accidental killings. From time to time one reads of gang bangers in US cities killing small children. I am not an apologist for gang bangers, but from the accounts I have read, those killings are almost always accidents; the child was too close to someone the gang banger was trying to kill.
But they are all harmless civilians who only want to find a way out of danger.
Just as Labour members believe that the Greens, LibDems and various nats can never deserve the votes of progressives, the corollary is that they must never leave the Labour party to start their own, even when the leadership has taken a direction with which they strongly disagree.
I always come back to this from 2019 but it's an excellent article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/31/only-way-labour-win-ditch-labourism-corbyn
It is dangerously close to exactly the sort of attitude that led to Rwanda, Bosnia and indeed the Holocaust. Regarding people as a mass (and indeed to use the words of your friend Netenyahu as animals) rather than individuals is an easy road to 'untermensch'.
I think he's saying the NI Agreement codified a process that republicans could follow to achieve that underlying aim without violence (and also went some way to actually going there with some joint structures and self-governance). Has that yet led to a united Ireland? Clearly not, but the argument that the best way of achieving that goal remains through politics rather than the gun does seem to have achieved widespread acceptance for all the problems at Stormont.
With the Middle East, the aim of many people is the destruction of Israel as a homeland for Jewish people. You can potentially provide a roadmap for peacefully achieving a Palestinian state in addition to and perhaps even involving some land from Israel... but you can't for the annihilation of Israel.
It does not take weeks to open a border crossing.
This really does change the feelings amongst the international community .
Even now, using some primal survival instinct that cannot be deracinated, I occasionally switch lanes while under a bridge in case a skinny eleven year old is trying to drop a fucking RKG on me.
Antisemitism probably begins with Antiochus Epiphanes, who attempted to force the Jews to worship the Greek Pantheon. They revolted under Judas Maccabeus.
The Romans disliked Judaism, but respected its antiquity. Caesar, Pompey, Augustus, and Tiberius were all pretty tolerant. They accepted Jewish prayers for the Emperor, in return for not requiring the Jews to sacrifice to the Imperial Cult. Things deteriorated under Caligula, and Claudius, with a succession of rotten Roman governors, until revolt exploded in 66AD.
Even then, the Jewish upper classes wanted nothing to do with the revolt, and largely supported Rome. The Roman response was utterly ruthless. Captured fighters were crucified, or fed to beasts. Towns and villages were razed, and the inhabitants slaughtered or sold as slaves. Jerusalem was besieged closely, then systematically destroyed. The survivors were all sold.
What was unusual was that the Romans refused to allow the Jews to rebuilt the Temple, something they rarely did to other conquered peoples, while still requiring all Jews to pa the tax for its upkeep. Official Roman propaganda portrayed the Jews as enemies. and it was left to Hadrian to provoke a Jewish revolt, by building a temple to Jupiter in Jerusalem, and banning circumcision, which was put down with wholesale slaughter and deportation.
Never believe the "woke" view of the Roman empire as a place of religious and racial tolerance, which is propagated by people like Catherine Nixey.
The poor people of Gaza are being oppressed by the horrible Hamas government and only want peace with Israel; or there is huge popular support for Hamas and their avowed intention to wipe Israel off the map.
As the BBC guy said today, there is a bit of buyers' remorse amongst the population of Gaza right now.
Is it all Gazans? No, of course not. But then only a large minority of Germans voted for Hitler, and that was enough to start a war where we considered every German an automatic enemy
Apparently the list of projects that the HS2 money was going to be spent on was only illustrative !
Those poor Gazans who turned out in their hundreds of thousands to celebrate actions against Israel are now to be pitied. Of course it's best that civilians leave and they can do so via Egypt or indeed the coast if they wanted to. I have heard nothing about a port blockade perhaps you know different.
I don't for one moment think that every German in 1939 was complicit in the German war aims but I have read nowhere of a safe passage being discussed for them to escape the country before we bombed it.
This can never be justified.
I have been busy today but catching up on the thread it makes awful reading and goodness knows where this goes. Indeed having had a cup of tea on our patio just now, it makes us realise how fortunate we are to live in the UK, despite the ups and downs
I just 'hope and pray' that the innocent Israeli and Palestinians find safe refuge from the worst of 'mans inhumanity to man'
I missed Rachel Reeves speech but judging by this thread, and the media generally, I doubt it will achieve the cut through labour hoped, when to be fair UK domestic politics is a side show at present
I would comment that I am very sorry for Scotland's First Minister and his family and, frankly, I cannot understand why the SNP haven't immediately terminated their arrangements with the Greens following some dreadful comments by one their msps:-
Scotland's First Minister Humza Yousaf says his parents-in-law are trapped in Gaza after Hamas attack on Israel
Mr Yousaf issued an "unequivocal condemnation" of the Hamas attack. He said both he and his wife "cannot sleep" due to worry and said his parents-in-law are "trapped" in Gaza and is fearful whether they will "make it through the night or not".
The parents of Humza Yousaf's wife Nadia El-Nakla were in Gaza visiting family when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel at the weekend, killing hundreds, according to reports.
Speaking to journalists on Monday, Mr Yousaf said: "As many will know, my wife is Palestinian. Her mum and dad, my in-laws, who live in Dundee, live in Scotland, they've been in Gaza and are currently trapped in Gaza, I'm afraid."
The trapped couple were visiting the father-in-law's 92-year-old "elderly and frail" mother when the Hamas attack took place.
They have since been told by Israeli authorities to leave because "Gaza will effectively be obliterated", the first minister said.
*Vreenack: "Its a FAAAAAAKE"
Sisko: "Its REEEEAAAAKLLLL"
etc